'Tis the Season to March in Belfast
To an outsider, even a sympathetic one, Northern Ireland feels strange at the height of the marching season. The zenith comes on July 12, when tens of thousands of Protestant men, wearing sober suits, bowler hats and orange sashes, parade through the streets to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne.
That was the victory, in central Ireland, of a Dutch Protestant king, William of Orange, over a Catholic English monarch, James II, in 1690. In these commemorations, Christianity and newer forms of sacred history are fused. Indeed, there is an old joke about a tourist, caught up in an Orange parade, who shyly enquires who King William was.… Seguir leyendo »