Sir,—As a footnote to Alan Blackstock’s interesting article on the Yeomanry (HI 4.4, Winter 1996) and their place in the tradition of Protestant defence forces, it should be noted that in some places Yeomanry corps continued to exist on an unofficial basis after their official disbandment. The Fermanagh novelist Shan Bullock (1865-1935) mentions in his autobiography After Sixty Years that as a boy he witnessed church parades by a uniformed group calling itself a Yeomanry corps which existed in the Crom Castle area under the patronage of the Earl of Erne. It was composed of local Protestant small farmers and led by an ex-sergeant. He specifically mentions that they wore the motto ‘Croppies lie down’, which I see in one of the illustrations to the article on the belt buckle of a Fermanagh Yeomanry corps. Might the Crom group have derived from this corps, and does anyone know if other unofficial corps continued to exist?—Yours etc.,
PATRICK MAUME
Department of Politics
Queen’s University