ONE hundred years ago, Cumann na mBan activists Sighle Humphries and Fiona Plunkett initiated the Easter lily emblem to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1916 Rising.

Humphries’ uncle The O’Rahilly was fatally wounded during the Moore Street fighting on Easter Week, while Fiona Plunkett’s brother Joseph Mary was one of the executed leaders of the Rising.

The Easter Lily was also a riposte to the use of the Flanders poppy to remember the First World War dead, which was formally launched by the British Legion in Ireland the previous year, although it had been displayed for some years beforehand.

Clashes – both physical and verbal – between wearers of both floral emblems have persisted since they first appeared a century ago.

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Just months after the Easter lily was introduced, during Remembrance Day commemorations in 1926, The Irish News reported on organisers of an “anti-imperialist meeting” at College Green in Dublin city centre asking attendees to wear the symbol.

People in the vicinity wearing poppies were ordered to remove them, which resulted in several street fights.

Dublin-based newspaper The Evening Herald reported that the courts were busy in November 1926 due to “red poppies and red noses,........

© The Irish News