Talk:St. Patrick's blue

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A fact from St. Patrick's blue appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 17 March 2008, and was viewed approximately 27,584 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that Presidential Standard (pictured)? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/March.

Does this color perchance have something to do with the color picked by the [pseudo-]fascist Blue Shirts? Dahn (talk) 18:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• When I was writing this article the same question came into my head but I didn't address it. Jnestorius kindly added some Blueshirts info but as the info doesn't say specifically whether that is St. Patrick's Blue they are consciously using, I have moved that info to the part of the article concerning blues that might be St. Patrick's Blue. BTW, Jnestorius thank you VERY much for refining the footnotes! House of Scandal (talk) 19:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • You're welcome. The cited reference does say St Patricks Blue, regardless of the Wikipedia article. I've update the wikipedia article in any case. jnestorius^(talk) 20:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The text and references for this has been lifted straight from the St Patrick's Day page. I propose that we use a link to that page instead. DeanKeaton (talk) 03:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean merge the two I think that page is much too long already... --

•wicke 23:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

No, I wasn't proposing a merge. My concern was that much of this paragraph had not been well-sourced, and that corrections to the page it was copied from might not make it here. DeanKeaton (talk) 14:08, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's my belief that the name "Saint Patrick's Blue", like "Saint Patrick's Cross", derives from the

Some of the sources in this article are dubious (others are dead links). "St. Patrick's blue didn't turn green until many centuries later when they mixed it with the Protestant orange of the north" is bullshit.

The claim that 'Almost invariably "St. Patrick's Blue" is spelled with a capital "B"' is unsupported. I've seen this in heraldic blazons and the like all tinctures are capitalized, but not in ordinary prose. jnestorius^(talk) 00:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any specific quote which mentions the Army Comrades Association's rationale behind the rejection of green? I'm sure I have read before that women used to wear green ribbon in their hair on Saint Patrick's Day, long before the Grand Orient of France created the republican movement. But the colour green seems to have been used in subversive naturalist and proto-communist movement's for quite some time before that in Europe; the

I've removed the infobox. Saying "citation needed" is one thing, but the colour looks plain wrong by any definition. The light blue of the Robes of the Order is similar to the light blue of the UCD sporting kit and quite different from the colour of the Presidential standard; none is as dark as the colour of the infobox. Since there is such a variety of colours which the name has been used of, I think an infobox which plumps for any one of them is very misleading and worse than no infobox. jnestorius^(talk) 11:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Shown here is the St Patrick's Blue (with saffron) of University College Dublin. It's quite a pale colour, reminds me of another college blue, that of Cambridge in England (here worn by their all-conquering frisbee team). Ok, they're not identical, but they're pretty pale, and I note the assertion in the opening article paragraph that "in modern usage in the Republic of Ireland, it may be a darker shade". Hakluyt bean (talk) 03:19, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm probably the main contributor to this page so far, and I admit I don't know the answer. Every color term is vague to some extent; anyone can assign a specific exact color space value to a given colour-name, but that's an arbitrary convenience. That said, Patrick's Blue does seem unusually variable. I can set out my opinion as follows, but these are just hunches, and I hope someone better informed can confirm or refute them in a manner that can be added to the the article itself:

• Blue was the heraldic colour of the English/British monarchy in Ireland from
  arms of Ireland were three gold crowns on a blue field; later one (or three) gold harps on a blue field. Azure
  is blue in heraldry, the exact shade unspecified.
• The Order of St Patrick used this pre-existing blue as its initial colour. It was called sky blue. The Order's blue gradually got lighter through the nineteenth century, perhaps to make it less like the Order of the Garter's darker blue
• Orange, and opposed to the Green of republicanism and nationalism. White sometimes combined with Green, as in the whiteboys. Sometimes the symbolism was Green=Catholic, Blue=Anglican, Orange=Presbyterian
  .
• There was controversy in the later nineteenth century about whether green (nationalist) or blue (unionist) was the "real" national colour of Ireland. Both sides appealed to St Patrick. In fact, pre-19th-century depictions of Patrick usually show him in white bishop's vestments. Blue was indubitably the heraldic colour, but that wouldn't cut much ice with the anti-royal republicans. Green has a smattering of earlier Gaelic poetic use, but the evidence is patchy at best.
• I can't find use of the phrase "St Patrick's blue" before the 1868 reference in the article. Early uses are in pro-unionist contexts, the Governor-General and so on.

One possible antedating is this, from an 1834 account of a riot in 1787:

During the Windsor election they hired a mob to go down and throw Lord Mornington (Lord Wellesley) over Windsor Bridge, and Fitzpatrick said it would be so fine to see St. Patrick’s blue riband floating down the stream.

...which I think means "the blue riband of the Order of St. Patrick" rather than "the riband whose colour was St. Patrick's blue "

• UCD's university colours date from 1910, and seem to match the contemporaneous shade used by the Order
• Post-independence, it seems to me that anything which was in any sense official in the new state, and which happened to be coloured any shade of blue —from royal blue through to pale blue— is liable to be described as "St Patrick's Blue". That applies to the upholstery of the chairs and carpets in the Oireachtas and the Áras; to flags and medal ribbons; to uniforms of military or police units or national sports teams. I don't know whether it's
  • just journalists lazily applying a label that seems appropriate and is vague enough to be irrefutable; or
  • if there is semi-official usage of the term from, say, the government press office; or
  • more official usage and definition recognised in statutes, regulations, or printed protocols.
• Some internet sources assert a distinction between "Patrick's Blue" and "Presidential Blue", with the latter covering the darker shades. I don't know whether that label has any reality.

jnestorius^(talk) 16:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree with these edits.

• I think "Former use" naturally belongs as a subsection of "History" rather than being separated from it by "Modern use"
• The reference to the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom is irrelevant unless the blue there is called "St. Patrick's blue".
• Reference to the "the British tradition" and "the Irish tradition" sounds like Northern Ireland Peace Process -speak. "
  Usage
  " is the usual word for questions of language.
• The claim that dark rich blue is 'used by the President of Ireland' is not supported by the reference.

jnestorius^(talk) 12:25, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How did I know before clicking that those would be my edits? :-)

• The former use section is a section of "things that used to be blue", it's not a "history of why things are blue". That's why I pulled it out.
• Victor Meally, ed. (1968), Encyclopaedia of Ireland, Dublin: Allen Figgis, p. 171, [The harp] was represented in gold on a blue ground, 'St. Patrick's blue' being the colour originally associated with Ireland. To-day the ancient badge of the country survives in the personal flag of the President of Ireland and also on the British royal arms ...
• It is Northern Ireland Peace Process-speak - but ain't that newspeak? Any suggestion for something better?
• I added it for balance. I cite that there are two blues and that President uses the darker shade. But ultimately, it was just for style and to give a real-world reference to the colour intended that I added it.

--

✍) 19:22, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

• Apologies, I don't follow. But unless you object to the present ordering, I don't suppose it matters.
• see below
• Yes: the word usage is more appropriate than tradition.
• fine, but amend references in synch with changes to content. jnestorius^(talk) 11:25, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Really we need a separate National colour of Ireland page for the green-vs-blue debate. A partial family tree of blues is:

• 16C arms of Lordship of Ireland
  • 17C Royal Standard
    • 20C Royal Standard
  • 18C arms of Kingdom of Ireland
    • 18C robes of Order St Patrick
      • 19C robes of Order St Patrick
    • 1945 state Arms / Presidential Standard

Azure in heraldry covers a broad range, like most things in heraldry. So these colours may all be different from each other.

I have found no evidence of "St Patrick's blue" being applied contemporaneously to ancestors of the 19C regalia of Order St Patrick. It may be applied retrospectively by Encyclopaedia of Ireland et al. AFAIK "St Patrick's blue" was first applied to the Order's robes, and in the 19th century, at a time when they had already become lighter than the heraldic colour from which they originated. Describing the heraldic azure as "St Patrick's blue" was a later innovation in Ireland. (Irish usage also retains the older sense, e.g. the UCD colours.) Since the British Royal Arms are primarily British, the fact that an Irish book describes them as 'St. Patrick's blue' is not authoritative. If, say, the royal website did so, that would be worth citing. jnestorius^(talk) 11:25, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]