Vintage Jesus (by Mark Driscoll & Gerry Breshears)

I love this stuff - a great book, superb online resources, magnificent design and rock-solid theology - all with an edge.

Click here

BBC Scotland, Covenanters and Dumfries

Well, what did you make of the Covenanters programme on tv? You can watch it on iPlayer here. I thought it was visually superb, but in terms of storyline (dare I say, like the Ulster Museum...) there were a lot of big gaps. No mention of the two Margarets, of Richard Cameron, of the 18,000 martyrs, of Rullion Green, no images of the beautiful banners - of many of the big events that are in all of the best summaries of the Covenanters' story. I also thought that there were a few bizarre comments made, especially the closing remarks.

Nevertheless, on Thursday morning, Radio Scotland will broadcast a 30 minute programme about Alexander Peden.

Finally, I'm heading to Scotland this weekend, having been invited to speak at the annual Covenanters memorial service at St Michael's Kirk in Dumfries on Sunday morning. It's a special location, being the church that Rev James Hamilton of Ballywalter became minister of after his return on the ill-fated Eagle Wing. I'm going to spend 2 days in Scotland meeting people, visiting sites, and doing some photography. Will post a summary here when I get back.

Feedback from the Radio Ulster / Ulster Museum interview

Thanks to all of you who have contacted me today about the short piece on the radio broadcast this morning about the lack of Ulster Scots historical content in the new Ulster Museum. I've had emails, phone calls and at an event this evening 7 people came to talk to me about it - three of whom were strangers but recognised me. It is interesting that you're all "normal people" (ie sensible middle-of-the-road folk who can't be glibly dismissed as Ulster Scots "activists" or "lobbyists") and you feel as disappointed as I do that your story has been left out. All of us thought that Northern Ireland had moved on from the old broken "two tribes" past. Sadly it seems that the heritage sector is lagging far behind the people!

NOTE - Remember that "A History of Scotland" begins again on Sunday evening on BBC Scotland. For Northern Ireland viewers it's on the Sky digital channels away around 971. This Sunday night is "God's Chosen People" - the Covenanters!

Belfast and the "Scotch"

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland is full of great stuff. I was there for most of the afternoon. I found some correspondence between two of Ulster's great Victorian antiquarians - William Pinkerton (1809 - 1871, whose father was from Paisley in Scotland) and George Benn (1801 - 1882, author of A History of the Town of Belfast). While Benn was working on the later edition of the book in the 1870s, Pinkerton wrote to him to advise:


"...Belfast was founded by the English, but the Scotch element gaining the mastery, it became little more than a Scotch trading station in Ireland, the sole aim of the inhabitants being to make money and go back to Scotland again..."


These were men of what has been described as "the first Golden Age of historians of Belfast". When you add to the list men like Robert Magill Young, William Reeves, James O'Laverty, Classon Porter, W D Killen and Rev George Hill, you find that those great historians of 150 years ago were utterly convinced of the profound cultural and historic connections between Ulster and Scotland, and devoted large portions of their lives to researching and publishing these connections.

It is a shame that so many of today's professional historians and educators in Northern Ireland have made it their business to ignore their predecessors' monumental achievements and seek to airbrush Scotland out of our story; in doing so they perpetuate the failed and divisive political "two tribes" narrative, and hide from us our full cultural heritage.

Radio Ulster again

I was interviewed this evening, it might be broadcast on Good Morning Ulster some time soon. BBC NI phoned me this afternoon, having seen the blog post below about the Ulster Museum. So, once again, I end up on the radio unintentionally. Just hope it comes across sensibly - there's a huge Scottish dimension to the heritage of Ulster that is being ignored by not just the Ulster Museum, but by almost the entire heritage sector. It's funny that this blog has such a wide reach!

On a more constructive note, thanks to everyone who has been so positive about the Covenanters in Ulster programme which was broadcast on Sunday. You can still listen to it on BBC iPlayer by clicking here.

The Ulster Museum - Part Two - Ulster Tartan

(Let's take the issues one at a time, my response to what I saw at the Ulster Museum on Saturday.)

In his excellent book Intimate Strangers - Political and Cultural Interaction between Ulster and Scotland in Modern Times - Graham Walker begins by quoting ATQ Stewart: "At the core of the Ulster problem is the problem of the Scots".

The new Ulster Museum exhibition galleries and interpretation clearly have a problem with the Scots. Example One is the Ulster Tartan. As you know from previous posts, I'm not really into tartan. But it is a solidly Scottish cultural phenomenon. And as this article by Matthew Newsome FSA Scot says, "... The only Irish district tartan that is truly historic is the Ulster tartan...".

In the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1961/62, there's a 23 page academic paper about the Ulster tartan. It was discovered, preserved intact, in 1956 near Dungiven. It was peat-stained and discoloured but was taken to (guess where) the Ulster Museum for examination. A textile specialist, Audrey Henshall, carried out a detailed examination and even produced samples of the original colours - a vibrant green and red with fine details in black and yellow. The clothing was displayed at the Ulster Museum in 1958 as part of the big Elizabethan Ulster exhibition. It was an Ulster icon and graced the catwalks of swinging sixties London. Then in the early 1970s the Scottish Tartan Authority acknowledged its importance and authenticity by registering it as Ulster Tartan.

Initially I was pleased the see the garments back on display, in a glass cabinet. The leggings of the mannequin are of the reconstructed red/green/black/yellow. But then I read the small interpretive plaque, which reads as follows:

Dungiven costume
The reconstruction is based on the remains of clothing (in front) that was found in 1958 one mile north of Dungiven, County Londonderry. The find included a cloak, coat, trews and shoes of the sort that would have been worn by a male member of a Gaelic Irish family in the first half of the seventeenth century.

- No mention of tartan.
- No mention of Scotland.
- No mention of the early 1600s Ulster-Scots settlements of County Down or the tartan industry that sprang up near Newtownards.
- The only cultural reference is "Gaelic Irish".

With an artefact with such an obvious, non-contentious, credible and already thoroughly researched Ulster-Scots story to tell, the Ulster Museum has chosen to apply cultural exclusion, and you might argue cultural displacement, asserting a "Gaelic Irish" cultural connection and removing the solidly Ulster Scots.

I am both disappointed and angry. More to follow through the week...

......

Postscript: Ulster tartan is now produced commercially and available in these three colour schemes:

Ulster Modern Red (click to enlarge)


Ulster District (click to enlarge)


Ulster Weathered (click to enlarge)

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Plantation Paradise?

(if you're reading this on Facebook, this is a post from my blog - http://clydesburn.blogspot.com. All my posts there now feed across to my Facebook page)

INTRO: When I was at Regent House (1983 - 1990), one of the few things that stick in my mind was when I spotted an error in the history text book. It had the wrong date for the burning of Ridley and Latimer - I had consulted some of my da's old Victorian books about the Reformation to check. My teacher, Mrs Groves, wrote to the publishers, who wrote back and conceded that I was right - and that the next edition of their book would have the date corrected. For a while Mrs Groves had the letter pinned up beside her desk on the classroom wall.

I was about 14 at the time, and it was a big lesson learned. Textbooks can be wrong.

PLANTATION PARADISE?: Next year - 2010 - is the 400th anniversary of the Plantation of Ulster. Textbooks (and historians) often simplify and stereotype the experience of the Protestant settlers who came to Ulster in the early 1600s - English and Scottish alike. So next year carries a massive danger in that a lot of the falsehoods that are spread about the Plantation may well, once again, be pumped into the public mind. (and of course, the real origin story of the Ulster-Scots is NOT the Plantation!)

Two types of people spread this stuff - 1) those who are either opposed to, or uncomfortable with, Protestants being in Ireland in the first place, or 2) by those who have believed the false spin and who, as a result, are either uninformed, or feel guilty about, the Plantation. The arrival of the Protestant settlers here is often stupidly (or cynically) presented as a kind of social paradise - an idyllic existence where the native Catholic Irish were subjugated and the Prods lived happily ever after as oppressors and land thieves. It's divisive and false.

In the case of the Ulster-Scots community, the 1600s was a century of unimaginable upheaval and turmoil. Most of them had originally left Scotland voluntarily through the appeal of cheap rent and the hope of a new life across the water. In a nutshell here's the brutal reality of what happened to them during the next hundred years - the State which initially approved their arrival here quickly turned against them, through religious repressions / it drove some to consider and attempt transatlantic migration / then large scale massacres / then a brief period of religious respite (but which included threatened deportations by state authorities of people from east Ulster to the farthest corners of the island) / then a new King brought renewed and intensified religious persecution / which eventually became state-sponsored oppression and executions in Scotland where 18,000 were either killed or sent into exile as slaves / then a brief respite when the King (James II) was overthrown in 1688 / but in the early 1700s the persecutions resumed when James II's daughter Anne became Queen / then about 250,000 Ulster-Scots had enough and left for America...

A Plantation Paradise? Maybe for a handful of wealthy individuals in the gentry who were top of the pile - but absolutely not for the 99.9% of the common people.

"Mined in Scotland, Forged in Ulster, Exported Worldwide" was a phrase I devised about 10 years ago, and which the then Ulster Scots Heritage Council adopted as their slogan. It was the intense white-hot furnace of the Ulster experience that forged the history, character and identity of the Ulster-Scots - not some false utopia.

Don't believe the hype.