In Northern Ireland, the Eleventh Night or 11th Night, also known as "bonfire night",[1][2] is the night before the Twelfth of July, an Ulster Protestant celebration. On this night, towering bonfires are lit in Protestant loyalist neighbourhoods, and are often accompanied by street parties[3] and loyalist marching bands. The bonfires are mostly made of wooden pallets and locally collected wood. They originally celebrated the Williamite conquest of the 1690s, which began the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland and has been maintained by the Protestant community.[4] Eleventh Night events are often condemned for sectarianism or ethnic hatred against Irish Catholics, Irish nationalists, and Irish people broadly, such as the burning of Irish tricolours, and for damage and pollution caused. Some are controlled by loyalist paramilitaries, and authorities may be wary of taking action against controversial bonfires.[5] In 2021, there were about 250 Eleventh Night bonfires.[6]
- ^ Simpson, Mark (12 July 2004). "Damping down the flames". BBC News. Retrieved 17 July 2011.
out with one of the crews on their busiest night of the year – Bonfire Night. It is the eleventh hour of the eleventh night
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Santino, Jack (1998). The hallowed eve: dimensions of culture in a calendar festival in Northern Ireland. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-8131-2081-2. Retrieved 18 May 2011.
While the term Bonfire Night once referred to Halloween, in Northern Ireland today it refers to the Eleventh Night [...]
- ^ Mark Simpson (10 July 2009). "Turning hotspot into friendly fire". BBC News. Retrieved 13 July 2009.
- ^ "Eleventh night bonfires getting ready in NI". BBC News. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
- ^ "Paramilitary control of loyalist bonfires exposed in leaked report". The Irish News, 26 February 2018.
- ^ "Eleventh Night: Politicians call for bonfire regulations". BBC News, 13 July 2021.