Leinster
Twelve counties in the east, and the only province that is visibly two provinces stitched together. Leinster is the old kingdom of the Laigin plus the old kingdom of Meath — the fifth that used to be the fifth.
The name is from the Laigin, a people who held the south-east, with the same borrowed word for “land” on the end that Ulster and Munster carry. The Gaelic kingdom of Leinster before 1171 was a good deal smaller than the province on the map today: it did not usually take in Meath, or Osraige, or the Viking towns of Dublin and Wexford.
What changed it was the Norman invasion and, after it, the Pale — the fortified enclave around Dublin inside which English rule actually held. The Pale straddled both Leinster and Meath, and under it the two fifths gradually merged into one province. The modern county of Meath and the modern county of Westmeath are what is left of a kingdom that was once the equal of the other four.
That merger is the reason the Irish word for a province is cúige, a fifth, while there are four of them. Mide, “middle”, was the fifth. It began as the country around the Hill of Uisneach in what is now Westmeath, where Beltaine was kept, and it was swallowed by the province that surrounded it.
Leinster is the most populous of the four provinces, and Dublin is in it, which accounts for most of that. Its traditional flag is a golden harp on a green ground — the same harp that the State took for its arms.
A homeland is where the name is first recorded and densest, not a boundary — people moved. The whole map of the surnames →
How many counties are in Leinster?
12: Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow.
What is Leinster in Irish?
Cúige Laighean — “the fifth of Laighin” — pronounced roughly “KOO-ig-uh LY-un”. The province itself is Laighin, said “LY-in”.
Where the fifth province went — what should you know?
Ask why cúige means “a fifth” and the answer is Meath. It was a kingdom in its own right from the 1st century to the 12th, running from the Irish Sea to the Shannon at its height and taking in parts of Cavan, Dublin, Kildare, Longford, Louth and Offaly as well as Meath and Westmeath. It did not vanish; it was absorbed. People sometimes say Ireland “has a fifth province” as a poetic idea — the phrase has a real kingdom behind it.
Does Leinster have any official status today?
No. The provinces have had no administrative or political function for centuries. They survive as historical and cultural units, and most visibly in sport — the rugby provinces and the GAA's provincial championships.
Know Leinster better than this page does? Tell us. · All four provinces · The counties in Irish