An Unidentified Flag from the Easter Rising

Can you help identify this flag? In the course of the Easter Rising, a soldier appeared at a house on Mount Street, Dublin. He asked the family living there to keep some bullets and a flag for him, saying he would come back for them. However, the soldier never returned. Many years later, when the family handed the bullets and flag to the Michael Collins museum, nobody was able to shed any light on the origins of the flag. One theory is that the flag may have a Wild Geese or an Irish-American connection. Jenny Smyth of Flags Ireland suggested that it could be of American manufacture, as the eagle is an American rather than an Irish emblem. The combined shamrock and laurel motif was a feature of flags of the Irish Volunteers in the period 1770 - 1800. Michael Merrigan of the Genealogical Society of Ireland believes that the flag may belong to the Irish Republican Brotherhood or the Fenians, in both cases originating from the USA. Curators at the National Museum in Dublin were unable to identify the flag, indicating that it was not an official flag of the Rising. However, the care and skill that went into the making of this flag prove that it was not produced in a hurry by an amateur.  Flagmaster magazine describes it as a 'carefully and beautifully made parade flag'. If you have any information that might help find the origins of this flag, please contact us here.

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