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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.