What do “roses” represent in the history of Protestant vs Catholic conflict?

Question

My history is a little rough, but I am aware that Ireland's past, particularly that of North Ireland, is wrought with conflict. I know there are multiple causes, but that -- whether as cause or excuse -- the fact that the English and Scottish colonists were Protestant while the rest of the island was predominantly Catholic. Through generations of conflict many atrocities were committed by both sides.

I was recently listening to some Irish folk songs, one of which is a lament of the blind nature of this rift and the lives lost in revenge killings in both directions. At the end there is an unidentified reference to "Roses", as if that symbolized something in the conflict between religious traditions. In fact the name of the song is "There Were Roses" (youtube), but it is entirely about Catholic vs. Protestant relations.

Did the rose symbolize something religious during the North Ireland conflicts or would this be a reference back to the War of the Roses (which was more a struggle for power between two related houses not an extension of Catholic/Protestant aggression).

Answer 1

The róisín dubh, “little dark rose” or “little black rose,” is a symbol of Ireland, and has been used as a term of endearment for Ireland by Yeats and other poets.

The 15th-century folk song “Róisín Dubh” is a love song in which Ireland is personified as a woman nicknamed Róisín Dubh, not unlike the way France is “Marianne” or the United States is “Columbia.” It is not related to the use of the rose as a symbol for the Lancastrians and Yorkists, which anyway predates Henry VIII's Reformation as well as the English plantations in Ireland by some years.

The poet James Clarence Mangan wrote a more explicitly nationalistic translation entitled “Dark Rosaleen” in the early 19th century.