Irish Dominion questions

Still go with the kingdom of Ireland, as ancient Ireland a kingdom thus helping to keep the Royal in the Irish regiments.
 
Any ideas as to a possible national anthem? Obviously God Save the Queen would be the Royal Anthem if links with the monarchy were retained but an O Canada or Advance Australia Fair type anthem for sporting events etc would also be adopted.

Does anyone know if pre-independence Ireland had a song like O Flower of Scotland that served as an unofficial national anthem or was it just "The Queen?"
 
Any ideas as to a possible national anthem? Obviously God Save the Queen would be the Royal Anthem if links with the monarchy were retained but an O Canada or Advance Australia Fair type anthem for sporting events etc would also be adopted.

Does anyone know if pre-independence Ireland had a song like O Flower of Scotland that served as an unofficial national anthem or was it just "The Queen?"

Most patriotic songs are sectarian by nature so something special would have to be composed. Answer Irelands Call?

I always liked "A Nation Once Again" as a less "Kill the English bastards!" style anthem.

The Soldiers Song is obviously too anti-British and venerating of violence, not to mention the fact it just won't be written ITTL. Whereas ANOA doesn't have any calls to violence, only a strive for independence. Plus plenty of generic Christian elements that would appeal to many ITTL.
 
deliberately left out Irish Guards as they could stay in the Imperial army for Irish volunteers.
Okay.

Most infantry regiments has 2 battalions. Officially 1st for overseas and 2nd for home service.
According to my sources one battalion was used at home (but was also ready for BEF service if needed) whilst the other was somewhere out in the Empire, but it was by no means a division like you say: From the list for 1914, there were also plenty of regiments with their 1st battalions in the UK and 2nd battalions overseas instead, they got swapped-over sometimes, and in any case drafts of troops were sent from the battalions at home to those overseas when necessary. If you joined the regular army then you joined on the understanding that you'd serve anywhere your unit got sent, because there were no 'home service only' battalions in the OTL regular army in those days.

British army records show many of the 1st battalion were non-Irish and 2nd battalion had a majority of catholic.
Thats interesting. At what date was this? Incidentally, at least from the Haldane Reforms of 1908 onwards, even the battalions serving within the UK generally weren't stationed within their own recruiting areas: Most of those in Britain were gathered together into just a few large cantonments, ready for BEF training & deployment if needed, and of the 18 stationed in Ireland in 1914 only one -- rather than the eight that would theoretically have been possible -- belonged to an Irish regiment...

In ATL 2 battalions may be a bit much. Thoughand possibly rotate the regular regiments in the 10th Irish for overseas availability and 16th V & 36th V for home service or TA service.
The whole point in merging regiments to form the 2-battalion ones standard from 1881 until after WW2 was to have one overseas and one (unless there was a World War, or other large-scale conflict, in progress of course...) so that if the one overseas needed reinforcements the one back home could send it men who already belonged to the same regiment because this was better for 'esprit de corps' and unit cohesion than just sending generalised 'infantry' recruits would have been. If the total number of Irish infantry battalions actually needs to be cut ATL then merging pairs of regiments together again (probably selecting those pairs' members partly on the basis of which regiments have adjacent recruiting areas) and only then halving their numbers of battalions would work better than just reducing them to having only one regular battalion each and is what I'd expect the authorities to do.


Ah danke :)

Very useful, my story features a lot of soldiers so it's good to know where they're going to be from :p
Good. Soldiers weren't always from the officially-correct districts, mind you. For one thing, bearing in mind the populations of Dublin and Belfast, expect to see men from those two cities serving in "wrong" regiments simply because there weren't enough vacancies in the "right" ones when they enlisted... although in those cases they may well have joined the regiments recruiting [officially] in the areas from which they or their families had come before moving to the cities...
 
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Heh, upon finding a biography of Pearse in my garage I have just discovered that he fucking loved Napoleon and apparently kept a lock of what was supposed to be his hair.

Oh he was born to be a dictator :p

Plus it gave me an idea for how exactly his government would work. Triumvirate anyone?
 
Solving the Irish Question...

...Needs an Irish solution. I looked at it in HMS Heligoland (POD 1890) as a side-effect of a stronger Liberal Party and the survival (for various reasons) of Erskine Childers and Collins. An Irish Dominion that has a carrier, a small escort-based task force and the seat of Imperial Parliament. A template for a different India Solution...
 
The 3 Irish Divisions.
!0 Irish (Sir Bryan Mahon KCVO, CB, DSO from Galway)
Did active service in WW1(29 brigade, 30 brigade, 31 brigade) consisted of men from the Royal Irish Regiment, Royal Irish Rifles, The Connaught Rangers, Leinster Regiment, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Royal Munster Fusiliers, Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers & Royal Irish Fusiliers. Battle honours Turkey, Macedonia & Palistine. King Ferdinand of Bulgaria stated," thoes gallant Irishmen maintained thier position to the last and held up the advance of my army."
At Gallipoli 3,000 (25%of the division) died during their 8 week battle.
This division was an all 'Airlann' division, thus the main reason for it being an ATL expeditionary force unit along with cavalry/armour.
The other 2 '16th' & '36th' are known for their locality ie northern & southern theirfore logic would dictate in ATL they could be raised as a TA/home guard type force and provide in a WW"2 type scenario battle field casualty replacements for 10 Irish.

At the museums in Enniskillen, Derry, Belfast etc a number of men who served were listed with addresses in England; ie form Manchester or Coventry etc so i've accreded them as non-irish.

I acknowledge many regiments had more than 2 battalions (27th Inniskillen had 3 battalions from 1805 to 1826) but like the idea of the 'skins' with the 27th & 108th keeping their history alive.

The Royal Irish Rifles, (83 county Dublin & 86 county Down) from 1948 to the formation of the Royal Irish Rangers in 1968 were 1 Royal Ulster Rifles & 6th Royal Ulster Rifles TA. So 1 regular and 1 TA could work.

The Royal Irish Rangers battalions were known locally as 1st Northern protestant & 2 southern Catholic. This was not policy just the was it happened. During the 1990's & the 'naughties' 1 Royal Irish were locally known as the 'English' battalion.

Hope this helps to clarify my view for ATL Irish army.
 
I acknowledge many regiments had more than 2 battalions (27th Inniskillen had 3 battalions from 1805 to 1826).
Extra batalions raised during the Napoleonic Wars -- such as the 3rd/27th whom you mentioned there -- were all disbanded again IOTL by the late 1820s, as were some of the more junior regiments that had originated during that conflict.
By the time of the Crimean War it was 3 battalions each for Grenadier Guards & Coldstream Guards, 2 battalions for the Scots Guards, 2 battalions each for the 1st to 25th regiments, 4 battalions each for the KRRC & the Rifle Brigade, and 1 battalion each for any other British or Irish infantry regiment.
Under the Childers Reforms of 1881, with a reduction in the actual number of regiments through mergers, this became 3/2/2/4/2, with the sole exception of the Cameron Highlanders who -- as there wasn't another single-battalion regiment left over for them to merge with -- were kept at just one battalion until 1897 when they finally raised a 2nd battalion for themselves.
During the Boer War the Scots Guards gained a third battalion, the Irish Guards were established as a single-battalion regiment, and eight English regiments whose recruiting areas included major urban areas were expanded from 2 to 4 battalions each although in one regiment's case that increase only applied for the duration of the war.
Under the Haldane Reforms of 1908, so that funds could be redirected into improving the territorials, the Scots Guards went back from 3 battalions to 2 (and the Coldstream Guards were supposed to do likewise, but actually managed to get the loss postponed indefinitely) and four of the [non-Rifles] 4-battalion regiments were reduced back to 2 battalions each.
And so, in 1912 OTL, the situation was _ Grenadier Guards & Coldstream Guards @ 3 each, Scots Guards @ 2, Irish Guards @ 1; KRRC, RB, and three English 'line' regiments @ 4 each; all other British or Irish infantry regiments @ 2 each. (Also the 'West India Regiment' @ 2 battalions, but that never served in Europe...)


Thinking further about this, however, TTL's POD of a milder famine might actually have butterflied-away some of the OTL Irish infantry regiments. Maybe there being a larger population would have balanced out the fact that with higher propserity a lower proportion of that population would have chosen to enlist during peacetime, but maybe it wouldn't have done... and if it didn't then the former regiments numbered #100-104 & #108-109 might well have been a lot less Irish in composition in 1881 (if they even still existed by then) than was the case IOTL and therefore might not actually have been assigned to regiments with recruiting districts in the island, which of course would probably also have changed the pattern of the country's division into recruiting districts for those Irish infantry regiments that did exist...
 
Any ideas as to a possible national anthem? Obviously God Save the Queen would be the Royal Anthem if links with the monarchy were retained but an O Canada or Advance Australia Fair type anthem for sporting events etc would also be adopted.

Does anyone know if pre-independence Ireland had a song like O Flower of Scotland that served as an unofficial national anthem or was it just "The Queen?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_Ireland

And before you point out that it's not particularly Unionist-friendly, neither is "Flower of Scotland".
 
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