Look closely at the Hibernian crest and you will find a harp sitting alongside Edinburgh Castle and the ship of Leith. Two of those three symbols are obviously local.
The harp is there because the club was founded by Edinburgh’s Irish community, in a part of the Old Town then known as Little Ireland. Even the name points back across the Irish Sea: Hibernian derives from Hibernia, the Latin name for Ireland.
Hibs have just completed their 150th anniversary season. Now 151 years old, the story of how the club came to exist says as much about Victorian Edinburgh as it does about football.
Little Ireland
By the middle of the nineteenth century, around 25,000 Irish people were living in and around Edinburgh’s Little Ireland, with another 2,000 or so settled near the docks at Leith.
Many faced poverty, poor housing and hostility from the wider city. The Cowgate became one of the centres of the community, and St Patrick’s Church, which opened there as a Catholic church in 1856, became one of its most important institutions.
Father Edward Joseph Hannan arrived in Edinburgh in 1861. Born in Ballingarry, County Limerick, in 1836, he had studied at St Munchin’s College and All Hallows in Dublin before entering the priesthood. Four years after arriving in the city, he helped establish the St Patrick’s branch of the Catholic Young Men’s Society.
Football would eventually become part of its work.
The story of a rejection
The traditional account of Hibernian’s formation begins with rejection.
Michael Whelahan, Malachy Byrne and Andy Hughes were young members of the Irish Catholic community who watched the growing football scene around the Meadows. Later Hibs histories tell how Byrne and Hughes had briefly played for a street side called White Star before being excluded when their Irish Catholic background became known.
The details are difficult to prove from contemporary records, but the story has remained part of Hibernian folklore. Whelahan subsequently approached Hannan about forming a club of their own.
Whelahan himself had been born in Kilglass, County Roscommon, in 1854. He arrived in Scotland as a small child after his family moved to Edinburgh.
6 August 1875
Hibernian Football Club was formed on 6 August 1875, during celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell.
Hannan became the club’s first president and manager, with Whelahan as its first captain. Green became the colour of the new side, while the Celtic harp and the phrase Erin go Bragh – Ireland forever – expressed its identity openly.
The name Hibernian came from Hibernia. In Victorian Edinburgh, there was no ambiguity about what the new club represented.
That identity also created problems. The young Hibs encountered resistance from Edinburgh’s established football authorities and initially struggled to gain recognition. A contemporary account later characterised the Scottish FA’s attitude as being that the association was “for Scotchmen”, reflecting the hostility an explicitly Irish Catholic club could face.
Acceptance eventually came before the 1876/77 season.
Hearts, of all clubs
The first recorded Hibernian match had already taken place by then.
On Christmas Day 1875, Heart of Midlothian agreed to face the new club on the Meadows. Hearts won 1-0, but the fixture began a rivalry that would become one of the defining institutions of Edinburgh football.
Hibs made their Scottish Cup debut in 1877, when they were drawn against Hearts. After a goalless first match, Hibernian won the replay 2-1.
A decade later, in 1887, they lifted the Scottish Cup for the first time.
The club’s reach eventually extended far beyond Scotland. In 1955, Hibernian became the first British side to compete in the European Cup, reaching the semi-final of its inaugural edition.
A connection that never disappeared
The Irish link has never been merely decorative.
January 2026 marked the centenary of Michael Whelahan’s death, an anniversary acknowledged during Hibs’ 150th season. In 1991, a Mass was held at St Patrick’s to commemorate a century since Hannan’s death, at a time when some supporters felt the club’s Irish foundations had been allowed to fade from public view.
Alan Lugton’s three-volume The Making of Hibernian, published between 1995 and 1998, did much to bring that early social history back into focus.
When discussing the Edinburgh-Ireland relationship with Simon Winter, author at Casino.com Ireland, he noted how sporting and betting cultures travelled with migrant communities rather than stopping at national borders. Hibernian is one of the clearest surviving examples of that wider exchange: an institution created by an Irish community that eventually became inseparable from Edinburgh itself.
Still standing
St Patrick’s is still on the Cowgate. Easter Road has been Hibernian’s home since 1893. The club founded by a priest from Limerick and captained by a young man from Roscommon has survived religious division, financial crises, ownership changes and almost every transformation Edinburgh football could throw at it.
It is now simply part of the city.
That is what makes the modern badge so effective. Edinburgh Castle represents the city. The ship represents Leith. The harp explains how Hibernian came to be there in the first place.
It is not decoration.
It is the reason the club exists.
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