Sir, - Recently I received an invitation to attend in the Irish College, Paris, the announcement of the Irish Government grant of £7 million for the restoration of the college. The invitation card bore the device of the crowned harp i.e. a harp surmounted by a crown, which is a copy of the sculptured image over the great entrance door of the College.
This device derives from the earlier connections of the college with the royal House of Stuart. After James II was defeated by William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne, he and his followers fled to France. The early Jacobites were close associates and early benefactors of the Irish College.
History is full of anomalies, not least of which is that the Irish College in Paris, a bastion of 18th century Irish Catholicism, and the RUC, a modern day bastion of Ulster Protestantism, should now share the same emblem. The only difference is that the RUC emblem contains also a profusion of shamrocks. Is it not strange that such an emblem (representing the defeated Catholic James II) should be so strongly opposed by the Catholic nationalist community in Northern Ireland and equally adamantly defended by the Protestant unionist community? - Yours, etc.,
Liam Swords (former archivist of College des Irlandais, Paris), Ranelagh, Dublin 6.