The Bloody Hand Logo
The story surrounding the Bloody or Red Hand involves a Viking war party in a lean, dragon-headed longboat along the coast of northern Ireland. It is hunting priests and warriors. The leader of the fierce Northmen urges on his warriors: the first man to touch the sweet Gaelic land with his hand or foot takes possession of it. He gets to keep whatever is there—precious metal, cattle, women, boys. There is a man aboard the longboat called O’Neill. It is an Irish name and, perhaps, in the style of slithery allegiances in Ireland, he is a turncoat. He has abandoned his family and gone over to the Norse raiders, wilder even than the wild Irish. This man desires plunder and the haven of his own piece of land. It seems he craves those things more than reason, certainly more than any Viking aboard. As the longboat approaches the shore, the crew strains for the jump and its prize. Then O’Neill, the man from Ireland, lays his arm along the bulwark. He severs his hand with one swift sword blow and throws it ashore onto the sand before anyone else can make the leap. His Viking chief keeps his word. He gives that part of Ulster to his mutilated mercenary, and O’Neill takes the bloody hand as his crest and symbol.
Both Lorre and her husband are descendents of the O'Neils as are about half of the Irish Americans in the Northeast United States. Thus the creative thinking and the Coat of Arms, a modified version of which is our logo.