12th July Celebration Thread

Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when King Billy (below) defeated the army of the pretender James II, and in doing so secured the religious liberties that had been fought for over the past century. As a result of this victory Britain would become a healthy constitutional monarchy with parliamentary sovereignty, and the threat of Stuart absolutism was removed once and for all (well more or less).

https://img854.imageshack.us/img854/1452/kingbilly.jpg

So every year the Orangemen march in commemoration of this event. In Scotland we had the parades last week because the bands go over to Ulster for the 12th itself. My little hometown only has a population of about 20k but we got get around 3,000 marching in the parades (in fact we have a more controversial march here, leading to the high street being dubbed Scotland's Garvaghy Road. The one below is from my hometown...

URL=https://img543.imageshack.us/i/oolocal.jpg/]https://img543.imageshack.us/img543/8019/oolocal.jpg[/URL]

To celebrate I'm just going to be chilling, got my first day off in a while so I'm off to the footie later and will have a toast to good King Billy.

Happy Twefth!

Fine I'll just celebrate by myself!

Sorry I was out getting the round bale silage in today an I missed your post( seriously we baled it today)

I have to say the 12th is so passe the real party is in Rossnowlagh 30 bands 50 lodges and probably about 4 guards in total on duty more for the traffic chaos than anything else.

As usual the best parties are in the South :wink:

Is Scotch involved? Count me in.