[Gutenberg 42958] • Ulster

Ulster is a province much talked of and little understood-a name about which controversy rages. But to those who know it and who love it, one thing is clear-Ulster is no less Ireland than Connaught itself. No better song has been written in our days than that which tells of an Irishman's longing in London to be back "where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea"; nor indeed is the whole frame of mind which that song dramatises, with so pleasant a blending of humour and pathos, better expressed in any single way than in the phrase "thinking long"-an idiom common to all Ulster talk, whether in Down or Donegal.