Ulster Covenant

On September 28, 1912, around half a million people signed the Ulster Covenant in support of civil and religious liberty and in opposition to Dublin-based Irish Home Rule. Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about this stirring event called Ulster 1912. In remembrance, both the covenant (in two parts: a covenant for men and a declaration for women) and the poem are reproduced below.

The Covenant (for men)

BEING CONVINCED in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognize its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names. And further, we individually declare that we have not already signed this Covenant.

The Declaration (for women)

We, whose names are underwritten, women of Ulster, and loyal subjects of our gracious King, being firmly persuaded that Home Rule would be disastrous to our Country, desire to associate ourselves with the men of Ulster in their uncompromising opposition to the Home Rule Bill now before Parliament, whereby it is proposed to drive Ulster out of her cherished place in the Constitution of the United Kingdom, and to place her under the domination and control of a Parliament in Ireland. Praying that from this calamity God will save Ireland, we hereto subscribe our name

Ulster 1912
by Rudyard Kipling

Their webs shall not become garments,
neither shall they cover themselves with their works:
their works are works of iniquity
and the act of violence is in their hands
(Isaiah lix. 6).

The dark eleventh hour

Draws on and sees us sold

To every evil power

We fought against of old.

Rebellion, rapine, hate,

Oppression, wrong and greed

Are loosed to rule our fate,

By England’s act and deed.

The Faith in which we stand,

The laws we made and guard,

Our honour, lives, and land

Are given for reward

To Murder done by night,

To Treason taught by day,

To folly, sloth, and spite,

And we are thrust away.

The blood our fathers spilt,

Our love, our toils, our pains,

Are counted us for guilt,

And only bind our chains.

Before an Empire’s eyes

The traitor claims his price.

What need of further lies?

We are the sacrifice.

We asked no more than leave

To reap where we had sown,

Through good and ill to cleave

To our own flag and throne.

Now England’s shot and steel

Beneath that flag must show

How loyal hearts should kneel

To England’s oldest foe.

We know the war prepared

On every peaceful home,

We know the hells declared

For such as serve not Rome—

The terror, threats, and dread

In market, hearth, and field—

We know, when all is said.

We perish if we yield.

Believe, we dare not boast,

Believe, we do not fear

We stand to pay the cost

In all that men hold dear.

What answer from the North?

One Law, one Land, one Throne

If England drive us forth

We shall not fall alone!

Kipling's Holy War

In 1917, as World War I was raging and Britain was under seige, Rudyard Kipling found inspiration in John Bunyan's allegorical The Holy War. And so he paid tribute to the "Immortal Tinker" (whom he refers to as "The Father of the Novel / Salvation's first Defoe") and his tale of good versus evil by issuing a rallying cry for his own day:

"No dealings with Diabolus
As long as Mansoul stands!"

The Holy War

("For here lay the excellent wisdom
of him that built Mansoul, that the walls
could never be broken down nor hurt
by the most mighty adverse potentate
unless the townsmen gave consent thereto."
BUNYAN'S Holy War.)


A tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A private under Fairfax,
A minister of God-
Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!

He mapped for those who follow,
The world in which we are-
"This famous town of Mansoul"
That takes the Holy War.
Her true and traitor people,
The Gates along her wall,
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.

All enemy divisions,
Recruits of every class,
And highly-screened positions
For flame or poison-gas;
The craft that we call modern,
The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed
In Sixteen Eighty-two.

Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
Who crack beneath a strain-
John Bunyan met that helpful set
In Charles the Second's reign.

Emmanuel's vanguard dying
For right and not for rights,
My Lord Apollyon lying
To the State-kept Stockholmites,
The Pope, the swithering Neutrals
The Kaiser and his Gott-
Their roles, their goals, their naked souls-
He knew and drew the lot.

Now he hath left his quarters,
In Bunhill Fields to lie,
The wisdom that he taught us
Is proven prophecy-
One watchword through our Armies,
One answer from our Lands:-
"No dealings with Diabolus
As long as Mansoul stands!"

A pedlar from a hovel,
The lowest of the low -
The Father of the Novel,
Salvation's first Defoe,
Eight blinded generations
Ere Armageddon came,
He showed us how to meet it,
And Bunyan was his name!