Blinking Red Hand

New Yorkers will have noted the swapping out of the WALK / DON'T WALK signs with the walking white man and disembodied orange hand at every intersection blessed with a traffic light. Graphically, the new illuminated signs make some sense, as they speak to those who speak and read in tongues other than English. Graphically too, the same signs have all sorts of (unintended) resonances: the walking white man struts his superior stuff, selected in preference to walking green men elsewhere in the world (where green = go); the uplifted hand is similar in its posture to the Red Hand of Ulster, an unhappy echo in a city where the majority of Irish immigrants and their descendants are Catholic, and proud of it.

Dimly aware of the significance of the Red Hand to Ulster Protestants, and confused by one I saw on the wall of an Irish bar in Denver, CO, I surfed a few "No Surrender" sites. The most imaginative claims to the red hand's origin to Zarah, son of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, whose unfairly disinherited descendants roamed the earth, founding the Kingdom of Ulster in 1480 BC. The Red Hand? We look to Genesis 38, v 18-20:

"And it came to pass, when she travailed that the one put out " his hand, and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying "This came out first" And it came to pass, as he draw back his hand, that behold, ; his brother came out, and she said, "How hast thou broken forth? This breach be upon thee". Therefore his name was called Pharez. And afterward came out his brother that had the scarlet thread upon ftis hand, and his name was called Zarah."

Since this story ascribes a dubious religious foundation to Ulster, I prefer to ignore it and go the Celtic route. This from the (ahem) Orange Historical Society:

The Red Hand, has its origin in the tale of a race between two giants contesting for the possession of Ulster in a race across the Irish Sea from Scotland, and legend has it that one of the giants, namely O'Neill, to claim victory cut off his hand and tossed it ashore on to Ulster. However, as attested to by English heraldry based on the legend it was the left hand that was cut off symbolized with the left hand on the grant of title of a baronetcy.

The above quoted verbatim, with the interesting grammatical structure laying siege to the claim of Ulsterman as loyal English-speaking subjects of the Crown.

The next time the city changes the pedestrian traffic signals, let her adopt the international symbols of the little red man standing to attention (stop) and the little green man walking (go). There's room for graphic creativity within this convention: Berlin's walking man is a chipper little fellow, and in the pursuit of fame he's made the leap from traffic signals to T-shirts.