Where does the phrase 'left footer' come from?

Glyn Jones, Leeds, West Yorkshire

• In nineteenth century Ireland, the widespread use of the narrow spade with one wide edge for the foot, (different in design from the modern spade), allowed the manufacturers to provide an option where the the wide edge could be on the left or the right. Farm labourers in Ulster who were predominantly Protestant preferred the spade with the wide left edge and were said to "dig with the left foot", hence the phrase Left Footer.

  Margaret Toale, Co Meath, Ireland

• It's the Catholics, surely, who are called left footers?

  Peter Prictoe, Barnsley, S Yorks

• Why?

  Margaret Toale, Co Meath, Ireland

• It is an allusion to the fact Catholics genuaflect in front of the altar in church. In so doing they have their left leg ''kicked'' forward.

  Dick McMahon, Eastbourne, East Sussex

• 'Left Footer' is a derogatory term, applied to Roman Catholics, which has military, rather than argricultural, origins. The phrase evolved during the time when the protestant militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force, was in the process of being absobed into the regular British Army in readiness for the first war. In the rhetoric employed by those who 'stood' for the defence of Ulster and the prepartion for war -'Standing for Ulster', 'Standing up for Jesus' 'Marching towards the Somme'- podal imagery was, and still is (qv 'the line in the sand' over which the unionists will not tread), employed widely. The right foot, was equated with the 'best foot' and as such 'left footer' became a euphemism for someone not involved in the struggle for Ulster ie a Roman Catholic. The phrase is still in popular usage in Ulster today.

  Washington Irving, London

• My father was a Catholic and my mother a Protestant. This was a big deal in 1941 and they almost didn't get married! They did, however, and my brother and I were raised catholic. When I was about ten I was selling raffle tickets to a Greek lawyer neighbor, who knew my parents. Somehow it came up that my mother was Protestant. He said to me ,"Don't tell me you are a left footer!" I asked him what that was. He laughed and said, "Go home and ask your father and tell your father that only in America a Greek lawyer has to tell a young Irish kid what a left footer is." My father laughed and confirmed that a left footer was a Protestant Irishman. He didn't know why.

  James McGivney, Bay Ridge,Brooklyn USA