" ULSTER, THE GEOGRAPHICAL EXPRESSION." [To THY EDITOR OF TRIP
" SPECITATOR."] SIE,—Your restricted use of " Ulster " in your "News of the Week " on April 13th is not so exceptional as it might at first sight appear. While you were politically correct in confining Ulster to the Unionist counties, you were almost historically accurate also. In the course of centuries Ulster (Ukiah) has been applied to areas widely differing in extent, and during the longest period of the word's application as a place-name it designated only the present counties of Down and Antrim, and occasionally dwindled to an area corresponding to the diocese of Down, whose Diocesan was often styled " Bishop of Uladh." This shrinkage of territory, while preserving the original name, is well illustrated in our own Northumberland.
As one of the five provinces of Ireland, Ulster was in the first instance determined towards the south by a line extending across country from the mouth of the Boyne, on the east, to the mouth of the Drowes, which flows into the Atlantic, on the west. This original Ulster, as thus defined, included the present County Louth, now in Leinstor, and excluded Cavan, then in Connaught. The kings of Ulster of that day dwelt at Emania, near Armagh. In a fierce battle fought in A.D. 332 near Carrickmacross, in our co. Monaghan, Fearghus Fogha, the last Ewanian king, was slain and his army routed. The victors " seized Emania and burned it, and the Ulstermen did not dwell therein since," is the Four Masters' record of this provincial revolution. The royal elan and its supporters were driven eastwards across Glenree into County Down, and henceforth through the intervening centuries until Saxon law and Saxon methods prevailed the greater Ulster disappeared, and during all that time the Ulster of fact and of geography was the slice of territory bounded on the west by the river Bann, Lough Neagh, and Glenree or the Newry River. This long-time Ulster is now represented by the present counties of Down and Antrim, as is evident from almost every page of the native annals, which tell of many a wild raid and battle between the Ulstermen and the neigh- bouring tribes, but chiefly between them and their hereditary foemen—the Cinel-Eoghain, or men of Tyrone. Thus, for example, in A.D. 1148 we are told by the Four Masters that an army was led by Murtough O'Loohlainn across the Bann at Toome into Ulster, and they expelled its king. The restoration of " Ulster " to its former dignity as a place-name and as representative of a new unity was an English act....1 I am, Sir, &I, W. A. M'Gonroy.e. Ellingham Vicarage, Northumberland.
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