The shamrock is a three-leaved old white clover. It is known as a symbol of Ireland, with St. Patrick having used it as a metaphor for the Christian Trinity. The name shamrock is derived from Irish seamróg, which is the diminutive version of the Irish word for clover (seamair).
It is sometimes of the variety Trifolium repens (white clover, Irish: seamair bhán) but today usually Trifolium dubium (lesser clover, Irish: seamair bhuí). However, other three-leaved plants — such as Medicago lupulina, Trifolium pratense, and Oxalis — are sometimes designated as shamrocks. The shamrock was traditionally used for its medicinal properties and was a popular motif in Victorian times.
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Symbol of Ireland [link]
Traditionally, shamrock is said to have been used by Saint Patrick to illustrate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity when Christianising Ireland in the 5th century. However, this is described by the Oxford English Dictionary a "a late tradition", first recorded in 1726, and is probably false. Nonetheless, since the 18th century, shamrock has been used as a symbol of Ireland in a similar way to how a rose is used for England, thistle for Scotland and leek for Wales.
Shamrock commonly appears as part of the emblem of sporting and official organisations representing both the whole of Ireland (such as the Irish Rugby Football Union or Tourism Ireland) as well as organisations specific to the Republic of Ireland (such as IDA Ireland) and Northern Ireland (such as Police Service of Northern Ireland). Shamrock is also used in emblems of UK organisations with an association with Ireland, such as the Irish Guards. Outside Ireland, various organisations, businesses and places use the symbol to advertise a connection with the island. For example, basketball team, Boston Celtics, in the USA incorporate the shamrock in their logo and the US cereal, Lucky Charms, uses it on the product's mascot and as a shape in the cereal itself.
The shamrock has been registered as a trademark by the Government of Ireland.[1] Traditionally in Ireland, and in many places throughout the world, the shamrock is worn on the lapel on St. Patrick's Day.
In the early 1980s, Ireland defended its right to use the shamrock as its national symbol in a German trademark case, which included high-level representation from taoiseach Charles Haughey. Having originally lost, Ireland won on appeal to the German Supreme Court in 1985.[2]
Example uses [link]
- The shamrock signified the First Division of the Second Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War, which contained the Irish Brigade. It was red as were all of the division insignia of that corps and still be seen on the regimental coat of arms of "The Fighting Sixty-Ninth"
- The flag of the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada has a shamrock that is located in the lower right quadrant. The shamrock represents the Irish population, one of the four major ethnic groups that made up the population of the city in the 19th century when the arms were designed.
- The shamrock is featured in Canadian Coat of arms.
- The shamrock is featured on the passport stamp of Montserrat, many of whose citizens are of Irish descent.
- The airline Aer Lingus uses the emblem in its logos, and its air traffic control call sign is "SHAMROCK".
- The Erin Go Bragh flag, originally of Saint Patrick's Battalion, uses an angelic Cláirseach, a medieval Irish harp, cradled in a wreath of clover. A flag strongly symbolic of Irish nationalism, it is often seen on Saint Patrick's Day, usually displayed during the parades.
- Soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment of the British army use the shamrock as their emblem, and wear a sprig of shamrock on Saint Patrick's Day. Shamrock are exported to wherever the regiment is stationed throughout the world. Queen Victoria decreed over a hundred years ago that soldiers from Ireland should wear a sprig of shamrock in recognition of fellow Irish soldiers who had fought bravely in the Boer War, a tradition continued by British army soldiers from both the north and the south of Ireland following partition in 1921.
- The coat of arms on the flag of the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross Foundation was cradled in a wreath of shamrock.[3]
- During the Russian Civil War a British officer Col. P.J. Woods, of Belfast, established a Karelian Regiment which had a shamrock on an orange field as its regimental badge.
- The shamrock is the official emblem of Irish football club Shamrock Rovers and the Greek multi-sport club Panathinaikos AO and Cypriot sports club AC Omonia.
- The Danish football club Viborg FF uses a shamrock in its badge and it has become a symbol of the town of Viborg.
- The German football club SpVgg Greuther Fürth also has a shamrock in its badge as it is a symbol of the city of Fürth.
- The shamrock is among the symbols of the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang.
- Former NBA player Shaquille O'Neal nicknamed himself the "Big Shamrock" after joining the Boston Celtics.
- In the fantasy novel series, Harry Potter, the fictitious Irish National Quidditch team use the shamrock as part of their emblem.
See also [link]
Notes [link]
- ^ Use of the harp and the shamrock were registered by the Irish government as international trademarks. See Record of the meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, 26 March 2003. Retrieved 2008-07-20.
- ^ "How Ireland lost the battle for the shamrock in Germany - The Irish Times - Sat, Dec 31, 2011". The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/1231/1224309679626.html. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ College of Arms Newsletter, August 2004
References [link]
- Nelson, E. Charles; Loughin, Bernard (1991). Shamrock: Botany and History of an Irish Myth: A Biography of the Shamrock in History, Literature, Music and Art. Boethius Press. ISBN 0-86314-199-4.
External links [link]
- The Shamrock : A Further attempt to fix its species, by Nathaniel Colgan, published in the Irish Naturalist 1893 on the From Ireland web site. Retrieved 2008-07-20
- The truth behind the shamrock on the BBC News website, dated 17 March 2004. Retrieved 2008-07-20
- Landscaping: Shamrocks and 4-Leaf Clovers on the About.com website. Retrieved 2008-07-20
- www.decodeunicode.org/en/u+2618 Shamrock as a symbol in Unicode
https://wn.com/Shamrock
Shamrock (song)
Shamrock was the fifth single released by the Japanese rock band, Uverworld. It was released on August 2, 2006. The limited pressing of the single has a DVD containing the video digest of their live performance from their Timeless Tour @ Shibuya-AX. It reached number six on the Oricon charts and sold approximately 97,091 copies. It was used as the drama Dance Drill's theme song.
The full version of the ringtone has reached platinum status in February 2010 since its download started on August 2, 2006.
Track listing
References
Shamrock, Texas
Shamrock is a city in Wheeler County, Texas, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 2,029. The city is located in the eastern portion of the Texas Panhandle centered along the crossroads of Interstate 40 (formerly U.S. Route 66) and U.S. Route 83. It is 110 miles (180 km) east of Amarillo, 188 miles (303 km) west of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and 291 miles (468 km) northwest of Dallas.
History
Located in south central Wheeler County, Shamrock was the largest town in the county in the late 19th century. George and Dora Nickel consented to keep the first post office in their dugout there in 1890. The mail was to be carried once a week from Mobeetie. The neighbors decided to let George name the office. His Irish mother had told him always to depend on a shamrock to bring him good luck, so he suggested "Shamrock" for the name of the office. But when a mysterious fire destroyed his dugout, George Nickel's post office never opened. Mary Ruth Jones became Shamrock's first postmistress, running the Shamrock post office out of the Jones family home. In 1902 the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway set up a station in the town, calling it "Wheeler" like the county, but changing it back to the original name of Shamrock in 1903, which prompted the reopening of the Shamrock post office. By 1907, the town was competing with the towns of Story and Benonine as trade centers.
Ditch
A ditch (Dutch: sloot) is a small to moderate depression created to channel water. A ditch can be used for drainage, to drain water from low-lying areas, alongside roadways or fields, or to channel water from a more distant source for plant irrigation. A trench is a long narrow ditch. Ditches are commonly seen around farmland especially in areas that have required drainage, such as The Fens in eastern England and the Netherlands.
Roadside ditches may provide a hazard to motorists and cyclists, whose vehicles may crash into them and get damaged, flipped over or stuck, especially in poor weather conditions, and in rural areas.
In Anglo-Saxon, the word dïc already existed and was pronounced "deek" in northern England and "deetch" in the south. The origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank alongside it. This practice has meant that the name dïc was given to either the excavation or the bank, and evolved to both the words "dike"/"dyke" and "ditch". Thus Offa's Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench, though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property boundary marker or small drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a running dike as in Rippingale Running Dike, which leads water from the catchwater drain, Car Dyke, to the South Forty Foot Drain in Lincolnshire (TF1427). The Weir Dike is a soak dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen.
Ditch (fortification)
A ditch in military engineering is an obstacle, designed to slow down or break up an attacking force, while a trench is intended to provide cover to the defenders. In military fortifications the side of a ditch (or gorge) farthest from the enemy and closest to the next line of defence is known as the scarp while the side of a ditch closest to the enemy is known as the counterscarp.
Uses
In early fortifications, ditches were often used in combination with ramparts to slow down the enemy whilst defensive fire could be brought to bear from the relative protection afforded by the rampart and possibly the palisade. In medieval fortification, a ditch was often constructed in front of a defensive wall to hinder mining and escalade activities from an attacker. When filled with water, such a defensive ditch is called a moat. However, moats may also be dry.
Later star forts designed by military engineers like Vauban, comprised elaborate networks of ditches and parapets, carefully calculated so that the soil for the raised earthworks was provided, as nearly as possible, entirely by the excavations whilst also maximising defensive firepower.
Ditch (disambiguation)
The term ditch may refer to
