A COAT "We're not a mile off it," I heard him say, with an ought Dragging and lengthening out the sound of that "not"? For Mr Simpson, though he worked in Magherafelt, Was from Antrim and glottal and more of a Pict than a Celt. But an Ulsterman. An Ulsterman for sure, Calling a spade a spade and the door the dure And any child he was fitting with clothes the wean. My father poked his cattle-dealer's cane Into the coats on the coatrack for the only one That took his fancy and when I had put it on, "We're not a mile off it," Mr Simpson said again, Uneager and sure of the sale; and confidentially then, "Ulster, you know, is the name for an overcoat. The Oxford English Dictionary even gives it. Ulster." He paused and he mused. "All over the world Good cloth and good wear and the whole of your money's worth." I hear him still when I reach deep into the long Cold draught of the sleeve of some ulster I'm fitting on And wish my hand would come through and beyond all that Deep glottal purchase and worth, like the virtual flight Of The Red Hand of Ulster beyond the beyond of its myth, Back to its unbloodied cuff at its unsevered wrist, Flexing its fingers again and combing the air And a wild, post-Shakespearean streel of gallowglass hair. -- Seamus Heaney Webster's Dictionary: ulster: a long, loose, heavy overcoat (from Ulster, in Northern Ireland)