I attended an excellent evening on Wednesday in Newtownards arts centre this week on the subject of Languages. Ulster Scots and Irish. There were two presentations of 40 minutes by Liam Logan, the elusive SDLP candidate for North Down on the Ulster Scots tradition and Linda Ervine, wife of the late David Ervines brother Brian, on the Irish Language followed by a question and answer session.
Without doubt Linda was the star of the show and I have no doubt the majority of the forty strong audience were there to hear what she had to say. Interestingly there was a good social mix in the audience. Crusty academics in tweed, some ladies of a certain age and determined demeanor, some younger people also who struck me as possibly politically active, a group down the back I’d guess were loyalist in inclination(forgive me if I stereotype) and me of course.
Unlike Alan in Belfast who does this type of reportage very well I settled myself with a notepad and pen. Forgive my lack of podcasts or live links.
The first forty minutes consisted of Liam Logan batting for the Ulster Scots team.
He addressed the issue of whether it was a language or a dialect from the start admitting he didn’t know the difference. He quoted a couple of Ulster Scots poems, at length, and spoke of how everyday speech in Ireland incorporates many phrases and turns of phrase inherited from the lowland Scottish influences of the planters of two centuries ago.
There was a degree of self consciousness evident in the references to the Ballymena accent and the few jokes thrown in but his failure to make eye contact with the audience as he read a clearly prepared talk left me with an overall impression that his failure to engage and warm to with a willing audience was something of a missed opportunity.
In contrast, Linda was bright, smart, interesting and instantly engaged her audience. This was an audiovisual presentation with slides, videos and delivered with passion by a very unusual, by NI standards, advocate.
She also had that unpredictable quality. Quiet anger. More on that shortly.
Her talk started with her own personal discovery of the Irish Language via the 1911 Census and how that led to her discovery of family histories including the widespread knowledge of, and use of, the Irish language amongst the Protestant community in Ireland. She mentioned Douglas Hyde, protestant head of the Gaelic League, and Mr McAdam, after whom Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich on the Falls Rd is jointly named. She made a point of acknowledging the fact that the buildings origins as a Presbyterian Church is remembered there. Genuine and impressive from my viewpoint. Linda made a point of talking about how some of the “Flag Protesters” had turned up at one of her talks, ready for a row, but left with a somewhat different attitude.
There followed a thorough examination of the origins of placenames and speech patterns and the links to the present day including an hilarious reference to the discovery that, as an English Teacher, she realised that how we phrase sentences is actually correct in an Irish language context rather than incorrect in terms of the “Queens” English.
The presentation closed with a video of the Lurgan College version as Gealge of “Wake me up” by Avicci.
Then we got to the meat on the bones with the Q and A session. I was interested by how candid and, yes, angry, linda was about what happened to her last week.
She was, shall we say, invited, to a meeting with three senior (Male) members of the Orange Order. It was, in her own words, like a trip to the Headmasters office.
The accusation was that she was diluting unionist culture. The implication undoubtedly was to back off. The Orange Order is no longer what it used to be however and Linda stood her ground. She pointedly referred to the history of the Irish Language on banners and within lodges of that group and laid bare the hypocracy of a leadership that prefer to keep their membership in ignorance rather than educate and lead from a position of strength and knowledge.
Electric stuff.
Thoroughly enjoyed the evening and I’d recommend a visit to future events.
"We in coming days may be" 
Reblogged this on da Zenà and commented:
Tradotto in Italiano
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well done Willie – you are certainly doing your best to internationalise issues in northern ireland. I am sure i am speaking for all bloggers
when i say your efforts are very much appreciated.
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Diluting Unionist culture? Only if Unionist culture is predominantly anti-Irish 😉
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BD – I believe Linda is wife of Brian not David. Interesting post.
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You are correct and I’ve corrected it, thanks
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Good stuff Mr Dub.
This kinda thing is addictive, isnt it?
An audience is always made up of these people. maybe theres just one audience.
Liam Logan…unfortunately the leading voice of SDLP in North Down.
This shows how totally unsophisticated the Orange Order are. An embarrassment.
One small point. Lurgan College??? Lagan College???
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Good stuff BD. Interesting (although not surprising) to note the OO position which views any promotion of Irish language/culture as a dilution of Unionist culture. Silly Billies. 😉
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Whenever I’ve gone to those types of events (political, cultural, etc.) it’s obvious that most of the folk who participate, on the platform or in the audience, know each. They are part of the wine and cheese-cracker “circuit” which makes random strangers stand out like a – suspicious – sore thumb. To be honest its always put me off. Fair play to you for tackling it. A friend of mine made the mistake once of producing a video-camera at a public meeting on some local matter in his town. He was man-handled out by a couple of lads from the local FF cumann. Long time ago. I wonder are people more open to video recording now as part and parcel of public debate with the ubiquitousness of camera-phones?
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Séamus,
Yes I know exactly what you mean. The reason I attended was that Linda invited me directly. Simple as that. I am glad I did as you may see from the blog. I was something of a fish out of water but I must say the audience were excellent and there because they chose to be. I certainly recognised some of the suspects you mention above you mention above but there were others, myself included. I was particularly heartened to see what I would describe as a “loyalist” presence, female rather than the shaven head variety if you get me, and they were actively listening and engaging.
My notepad and paper was unremarked upon and I asked Linda to check my draft before publication for errors which she did. The only correction being my error regarding David and Brian Ervine as acknowledged and corrected above
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Looking forward to some more of this on-the-spot blogging. You and FJH are bringing some interesting insights 🙂
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There are pitfalls in Blogging as Seamas States above.
At one level I can be a typical keyboard warrior. And I’m not entirely comfortable with that.
At another level, too much proximity to the small corps of bloggers, students, post grads and political activists can suck me in to a point where I am not comfortable either.
There are essentially two kinds of bloggers….the committed and the academic.
I consider myself to be committed…republican, socialist, nationalist …with a mostly SDLP identity.
When “the Czar” was getting off the ground, I think it was Seamas who described me on his own blog as “independently minded SDLP member”. Its a label I am happy with with the caveat that this is an election year.
Theres a delicate balance.
The more I “know”, the less I blog.
To get to know stuff, to put jigsaw pieces together, a Blogger needs to get out of the house. That can be compromising, especially as it might be necessary to attend several events in a very short period of time.
Next week, there is a social gathering for Belfasts Bloggerati and politicos who take social media seriously.
With LetsGetAlongerists (oh come on, you didn’t expect to read any comment from me that did not reference them)….believing they have a right to ask artists, writers etc to act for the Common Good…and advocating Peace Journalism…..then it might be interesting to look at the fault line between the two “types” of Blogger.
What Bloggers must resist is being sucked into a recognisable “group”.
Certainly anyone staying outside a ” a community” (a Union, a closed shop) would find life difficult.
Yet there might be room for a group for “Independents”.
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Really nicely reported BD even with your deeply shameful lack of technological gizmos would may have allowed you to simultaneously broadcast live to all 5(?) continents. and receive live feedback on placenames form the tribesmen of outer whats-its-name.
The boul Linda sounds quite a girl and fair play to her. interesting to see how this pans out and interesting if the equivalent boot has on the other foot how ‘our’ side would react. Is there a fair equivalent?
Ruggerball creeping into GAA clubs?
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Thank You Sammy,
The irony of an “unrepentant” Ulster protestant arguing passionately as an advocate of the Irish Language while an SDLP’er was doing the same on behalf os Ulster Scots was not lost on me! 😉
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As someone who has recently been up to my oxters in research on another topic, I can’t help but feel that Linda irvine’s Irish speaking links are missing secondary sources. On a basic level, she is presenting the census reports but with no other corroborating evidence. Being of an inquisitive mind, I searched for irvines on the census website and I did indeed also discover Irish listed for some families in the east.
Then I looked at the actual scans. Irish had been written in and scored out. Was this an accident similar to putting a woman’s age in the male column or was it the deliberate attempt to remove a mark for Irish? I then checked an irvine in rural south down, which also had an Irish entry but no removal. It would appear that the digital translator has added the error as fact. That raises questions of its own.
Further to this, my father is adamant that on his mother’s side, in rural East Antrim, they had Irish as their language on the census form but this was a case of “we live in Ireland therefore we must speak Irish”
It seems that there is a spot of bandwagon jumping going on here but with no cross-referencing going on. Are there any surviving letters in Irish, any diary entries, any work records or other documentary pieces that could point to groups of Irish speakers in urban ballymacarrett?
While I have no doubt that a knowledge of spoken Irish would have been pretty common for those who lived in more rural areas into the late nineteenth century, I would find myself stretch my credulity levels with this. After all, the French language community in dublin was incorporated within a century or so, as an urban language population in an unusual setting.
Thoughts welcome.
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Carrick, I am interested in the French language community in Dublin? what was that, hugenots?
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It was indeed, alphie. They had services in French up to the mid-1750’s and then, presumably due to declining numbers, intermarriage, movement away etc, that seemed to die out. Interestingly, Dublin was in the mid-1750’s a city that had roughly the same demographic balance as Belfast does now.
I did a wee bit about it a couple of years ago but a crashed computer removed all my material that I’d dug out, mainly from the Irish Historical Studies journal (which is a great resource, if any of you are interested in the academic slant of bygone days of yore across this island and occasionally beyond, with some interesting asides into the rest of the Empire and USA in particular).
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On the subject of the Huegenots,
There was a large community which settled just outside the City Walls in an area now known as the Tenters. I lived there once. The area took its name from the Tents that they originally lived in and many of the street names in the area reflect their trades such as Weavers Square.
Believe it or not their cemetary survives to this day on St Stephens Green of all places. It is tucked away beside the Shelbourne Hotel.
Carrickally,
For secondary sources, I’ll not answer for Linda or her family, but you need only look as far as the Orange Order. The presentation included slides of Irish Language lodges and banners, perhaps a subject for you to research there?
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BTW, re-read my original post from last night and I apologise profusely; typing on an ipad really is a bad joke!
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The Hugenot Cemetery is well worth a visit if you find yourself in Dublin, Carrickally. I don’t think you can actually get into it, but I used to enjoy peering through the gates.
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Thanks for that head’s up, RJC and BD.
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BD, there is nothing in any of my ballymacarrett lodge minute books from the last years of the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries that even touches on language. As for pictures etc, we all know about Erin go Bragh at the unionist convention at balmoral, pretty sure i’Ve seen dead Mille failte on royal welcome arches but not sure if that was dublin or Belfast. Of course there’s also faugh a ballagh with the inniskillings and dare I even mention the infamous Tara mcgrath’s Ireland’s heritage orange lodge.
There’s little that’s new there I’m sure to regular students of Irish history but none are exactly corroborating evidence of a community of Irish speakers. I’d say john o’dowd’s smithereens/Craic adverts are more likely to convince me of the Irish language in everyday use than what’s been offered by Linda Irvine.
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Carrickally,
I asked Linda your question.
Reply as follows: nformation about Richard Routledge Kane and Canon John Crozier all available in Orange Order’s own booklet about Kane written by Jack Greenald who all contactable”
If you need details about how to contact please let me know, fair enough?
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I’d be curious to know what language the “Lowland Scots” were speaking when they arrived in the early 1600s.
I don’t mean the landed gentry but mr & mrs Joe Bloggs and family from Ayrshire.
Sure i read years ago the last native Gaelic speaker from Ayrshire didn’t die until 1906.
Prod Irish speakers in rural Co Down, might well be what they were speaking was brought with them across the North Channel generations before.
Btw, is Billy Logan from Scottish stock?
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Apparently PT, there were Scots Gaelic settlers who were Presbyterians who asked the Synod in Scotland to send them ministers in the 1600’s.
Generally, Ayreshire was a Scots speaking area, along with most of the central belt and Dumfries.
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A right few came from Borders area, escaping the lawlessness of that region, and some of these settlers were in fact the lawless. A lot of the Johnsons of Fermanagh are supposed to be ‘rievers’. In early 1600’s quite a few came from England, Wales and the Isle of Man. 1690’s mostly Scots. I understand the term ‘British’ took hold during this era in relation to Ulster as officials got fed up saying ‘English, welsh, scotch and manxmen’
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The whole Lowland Scots in Ulster story always seemed a bit vague to me.
The term Scottish Lowlands cover a very large geographical area stretching from Stranraer area in the Southwest to Aberdeen in the Northeast.
Anything that ain’t the highlands or islands.
Did the Plantation Scots all go freely?
Or were most of them pressed ganged into crossing the North Channel?
Plus the Ulster Scots seemed to be written out of history at Scottish street/book level.
No mention of where they left from on the Scottish side other than the vague “lowlands”.
As usual the little people get written out the story.
I’d doubt there’s too many Ulster Scots who could trace their family directly back to the early 1600s and a specific area of the lowlands.
Now if there was townlands out there called Dundee or St Johnston!!!
Okay okay, they’re in East Donegal.
I knew that.
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in reply to political tourist who doubted whether many Ulster scots could trace their ancestry back to the early 1600s.
my late father always claimed our ancestors came from the isle of bute (1 main family surname matches and is well known and accepted as a Scottish surname ) they moved to Ulster under the protection of the the earl of antrim in the late 1500s (1580 onwards).
We are reportedly a sept of the Stuart clan and have the right to wear Stuart tartan, though we have our own. The group settled in an area of Co antrim According to my father who visited the town his father had come from some 20 years ago, many of the professional people and shop owners, traders etc were then owned by people with our surname. don’t know what it is like today -never been there, must go sometime!!
People with our surname worked in medicine, engineering, physics and mathematics, the armed forces – no musicians or novelists that I am aware of . I am sure like everybody else’s family there were also tinkers, tailors, farmers,bakers, factory workers and horse thieves!! needless to say – they didn’t make the family roll of honour.
best to all
ben
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Be interesting what language they were speaking on the Isle of Bute circa 1590.
Having a Scottish or Irish surname is one thing, pinning it a townland or hamlet in the back of beyond 400 years ago is probably impossible.
And any general Scottish history book gives the plantation of Ulster no more than a two lines with a nod to James 1 of England and a vague mention of a second wave fleeing a Scottish famine of the 1690s.
Fact is most Ulster Scots haven’t the slightest idea where they came from in Scotland and most would have no idea when their Scots ancestors left the place.
Btw, most working class people couldn’t go back any further than three or four generations.
Then again most ordinary joes don’t think their part of the “chosen few”.
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can trace my mums family back to 1600’s small place in Ayrshire. A Scot was given a Co.Antrim land grant and he encouraged his tenant farmers to make the journey
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Can’t let the occasion pass without mentioning that Bangor has a new superhero in the form of Kelly Gallagher who won Olympic Gold at the Paraolympics at Sochi for Team Great Britain and NI. Or as we like to say in East Belfast , Team Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Well done Kelly inspirational – TeamGBNI’s first Gold!!
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Indeed Aphiedale,
Well done Kelly!
I trust given Alphiedales remarks above, the same congratulations will be extended to athletes choosing to represent Ireland from now on in equal measure such as, for example, footballers?
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Oh dear Bangordub, whats that got to do with anything? Kelly is from your adopted hometown and deserves mention. Not everyday a small town can boost GOLD success at the Olympics…
If someone wants to play for the Republic let them fire on-though don’t abuse the system deprive an U-21 shirt from a kid who genuinely wants to play for Northern Ireland knowing you are biding your time for the republic
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Indeed, it appears alphiedale,political tourist and I are all right to some extent.
Always best to have the full picture
some ulster scots did indeed trickle towards Ulster the end of the 16th century – but the plantation occurred in the 17th century
many arrivals were anonymous and untraceable
people on the isle of Bute were originally gaelic speakers, then they were conquered by the norsemen.
” Lowlanders speaking Scots began to trickle over the channel in the second half of the sixteenth century (indeed it was (in part) their presence in Ulster which first alarmed and provoked the Tudors to attempt early but largely unsuccessful plantations), but their first significant infusion occurred around the turn of the seventeenth century, in the very earliest years of the reign of James VI/I. Through private grants or other means, they arrived in east Ulster in numbers sizeable enough and were sufficiently successful in developing the land to exclude the counties of Antrim, Down and Monaghan from an official plantation … begun in 1610 …that initiated the recruitment of Scots and English to take up land in the province … … (London)Derry was included in the official plantation plans. Its settlement was the prerogative of the London companies, which had little luck in the enterprise. The Lowland Scots, because of their closer bases, were able to take over a good portion of the north-east corner of the county and penetrate loosely the rest of (London)Derry and Tyrone. It was also as part of the official plantation plans that Scots were brought over to Donegal from 1610 onwards … They were settled in the northern parts of the low-lying east Donegal region known as the Laggan. … … The plantation was only one phase of a wider process of Scottish migration that can be sketched only in outline, because much of the later to-ing (and fro-ing) between Lowland Scotland and Ulster was anonymous and untraceable. (1997: 572) http://www.dsl.ac.uk/SCOTSHIST/output4.php?file=NEW-Revised2Origins.htm#_ednref35
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Not exactly the brightest lights on the Christmas tree those Orange leaders.
Maybe the should look to their Scottish Brethern who don’t seem to have any hang ups about Gaelic.
Every railways station in Scotland has it’s name in large letters in both English and Gaelic.
Yet funnily enough not in Scots.
Wonder what the Gaelic is for Larkhall or Bridgeton.
It’s a funny old world.
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I would share Carrickally’s scepticism re regarding everything recorded in the 1901 or 1911 censuses as being necessarily completely accurate. I know that in my own area of County Antrim (the Braid Valley) at least one family was recorded as speaking both English and Irish : some of these people lived long enough for me to know them and, in fact, what they spoke was Scoto-Irish dialect (Ulster-Scots). Perhaps this was so unintelligible to the census taker that he assumed they were speaking Irish. A relative of my grandfather’s generation is recorded as being able to both read and write, whereas, in fact, he signed his children’s birth certificates with an X, he and his family were probably too sensitive to admit that he was illiterate.
Most of the 17th Century Scottish migrants to Ulster came from that segment of South-West Scotland closest to Ireland, i.e. from Galloway, through Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire, to Argyll and the Southern Hebrides. Raymond Gillespie in his book “Colonial Ulster : The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600-41” maps the origins of the migrants and they are heavily clustered in this South-Western segment, with the odd outlier in places like Stirlingshire. The east and North-East are almost entirely absent as a source of migrants. I know that the Scots dialect of my own area, apart from the fact that it has been influenced in its syntax and its adoption of loan words by Irish, is very similar to the dialect of Galloway and Ayrshire and the Scottish surnames mirror those of the whole south-western segment.
I think the fact that Scots has survived in places like East and North Antrim for almost four centuries would suggest that most of those who came in the 17th Century spoke that dialect, instead of Gaelic, though that doesn’t mean that their ancestors weren’t Gaelic speakers, sometimes of relatively recent provenance. Gaelic was spoken in Galloway and Ayrshire for around a millenium and according to John MacQueen, writing in the “Companion to Gaelic Scotland,” it survived there until the 16th century, but declined very rapidly to extinction thereafter. Of course, places like Bute and Arran were definitely at least semi-Gaelic speaking for very much longer. In “A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, circa 1695”, Martin Martin says that, in relation to Bute, “the inhabitants generally speaking the English and Irish tongue…”. And, referring to Arran, “they all speak the Irish language, yet the English tongue prevails on the east side, and ordinarily the ministers preach in it, and in Irish on the west side.”
I find the artificial confrontation between Irish and Ulster-Scots incredibly tedious, though perhaps an inevitable consequence of the politicisation of both. I’m glad that I was brought up speaking what is now called “Ulster-Scots”, but acutely aware that, with McCullough and McCrory grandmothers and a plethora of other Mac surnames in my family tree, most of my ancestors probably spoke another language. Why can’t we just enjoy the cultural richness and fascinating cros-fertilisation this has led to?
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