British Overprint

The overprint on this British stamp signifies that the stamp was issued for use by:

a) British Offices in Turkey
b) Channel Islands
c) Ireland
d) Scotland

After a long struggle for independence from Great Britain, Irish Republicans won an Irish Free State in January 1922. While Ireland’s first stamps were being designed, Irish postal authorities overprinted the existing stock of British stamps with a Gaelic inscription which reads as

(c) “Provisional Government of Ireland 1922”. The first original Irish designs appeared later that year also in Gaelic and bearing the new country’s ancient name of “Eire.”