A sense of identity: Ulster-Scots is not 'national'.

I should probably stop listening to local radio phone-in shows. The drama and outrage and the pitting of two views against each other is very tiresome. There has been much talk about a potential Irish Language Act here over the past week. I am supportive of Irish being conserved and available to folk who are interested and enthusiastic about it. I have seen it described this week as ‘an expression of the Irish national identity’. That may be the case for some, but in general as I get older I am nervous of local variations being ironed away in pursuit of a national anything, in any region or country. As some ‘foodies’ now insist, national is just the best of local.

Ulster-Scots (heritage, literature, migration, settlement, etc) is definitely not uniformly national – there are hints of it in most places, it is very strong and visible in particular localities of the province of Ulster, but pretty much non-existent in others. We talk of Antrim and Down and east Donegal a lot, but county boundaries are in a sense false cultural lines.

Topography and market towns and old roads reveal natural settlement patterns, and culture thrives where people are. It is more authentic to look at, for example, the Foyle Valley, the Bann Valley, the Sixmilewater Valley, the Braid Valley, etc. In County Down, the Ards is a natural shape all of its own, but further inland you really have to look towards the market towns like Comber, Saintfield, Dromore, Lisburn, Ballynahinch, Kilkeel, etc. In former times even Newry had a sizeable Presbyterian / Ulster-Scots population; books such as Alexander Peden's biography were printed there, and WG Lyttle’s famous stories were first printed in the Newry Telegraph. Newry's catchment area reaches far into Armagh and Louth, it's not restricted to County Down. All of Ulster should be re-imagined in this way.

The map below shows the road network of County Down in the mid 1800s. These are like the nervous system, the lifeblood circulation system, the veins and arteries and sinews of the communities where people would meet and trade and worship and marry and live and die and mourn and hope and yearn and leave … and return to. This is how to look at tradition and culture.

Below is an image I made for a 2015 'Shared Heritage' presentation I gave at the Europa Hotel. This is what I believe Ulster to truly be like, a warp and weft of varieties, a patchwork quilt of different influences. Overlaying a national anything over this is I think fraught with pitfalls. I have no easy answers. There probably are none. It's all about conveying the complexity again.

William Chapple MP - "Ulster should be ... tacked on to Scotland"

 

“W.A Chapple proposed that N.E. Ulster should be politically tacked on to Scotland, when a more proper suggestion would have been that Scotland should be politically tacked on to N.E. Ulster…"

William Allan Chapple was the New Zealand born Liberal Party MP for Stirlingshire, and later Dumfriesshire. He is said to have made these remarks in the House of Commons in a debate some time around June 1912, the extract above being from St John Ervine’s biography of Sir James Craig, entitled Craigavon (1949), a really interesting book with much Ulster-Scots cultural content and which also uses the term as well.  This story warrants further investigation and cross-checking. 

Discovering the Dictionary

I was well into my 20s before I knew the one on the left even existed. From that I then discovered centuries of local literature. Much of our problem is a lack of understanding.

The first to compile a dictionary of Scots is thought to be Rev John Jamieson who published his Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language in 1808. Here is a review of a recent edition. Burns had died just 12 years before, and of course some editions of his works had contained a glossary to explain some of the Scots terms for the unfamiliar reader, which are kind of mini-dictionaries in their own right. Ulster-Scots poets like Hugh Porter (published 1813) did the same.

There have been numerous Scots dictionaries since. Some of the Scots dictionaries use the abbreviation Uls when specifying that particular words are found in Ulster. And there are of course many examples of Ulster-Scots words being collected and published too, from William Hugh Patterson in the 1800s to James Fenton in our own day. There is also an extraordinary online project at UlsterScotsAcademy.com which everyone should know about, a volunteer project every bit as impressive as the online Dictionary of the Scots Language. I'm pleased that some of my literary discoveries of recent years have contributed to the ongoing database for UlsterScotsAcademy.com.

As long as the Scots and Ulster-Scots literary tradition is kept in the dark, people will continue to live in ignorance. And make decisions with no understanding of context or pedigree.

1826: Scotch Poems for 'the Poor of Belfast'

This advert, from the Belfast Commercial Chronicle newspaper of 4th November 1826 has a great bit of marketing ‘spin' in it, tantalising the reader with a tale of a mysterious anonymous visitor from Scotland, a will, and a bundle of documents including a collection of poems - ‘fugitive pieces, on various subjects, chiefly in the Scotch dialect’ including ‘On a Visit to Grey Abbey’, ‘Bonaparte’s Soliloquy at St Helena’, ‘To A Mountain’, ‘Farewell Verses’. The air of intrigue is upped even further at the end, discouraging the reader from enquiring as to the writer’s identity due to his request ’that his name might not be disclosed’. The philanthropic fund-raising aspect of this is also very interesting. 

I’ve made a few enquiries of people who are knowledgeable on these things, but this seems to be a new find. 

1690: The Stuart Kings were mostly Protestants

Above: a 1647 painting of the Protestant King Charles I and his son James II, who converted to Catholicism c. 1669.

There’s been a lot of fairly standard stereotype-reinforcing again in the past week in the news coverage about Northern Ireland. A BBC Newsnight piece was presented by someone parachuted in from England, and of course began at a King Billy mural on Sandy Row, and spoke of “the victory of a Protestant King over a Catholic King in the 17th century”. Sad voices, sad music, urchin-like children stacking up bonfires on wasteground etc. I’ve pasted it below.

So this got me thinking. Of course the statement is partially true, and a grain of truth is often all that’s needed to carry a narrative. But it’s very far from the whole story. Let’s take a quick look.

• The Stuarts in Scotland: 1371–1567
The Stuart monarchy had ruled Scotland from 1371, and up until the Scottish Reformation they like everyone else were Catholics. The Stuarts remained Catholic up until Mary Queen of Scots. She had become Queen at just six days old, and spent much of her young life in France, with Scotland run by ‘regents’. She came back to a reforming Scotland in 1561 but was forced to abdicate in 1567 in favour of her infant son, King James VI. James had been baptised in a Catholic ceremony but was raised under tutors such as Presbyterian George Buchanan. John Knox preached at James’ coronation in 1567. James was now head of the country, but most definitely not head of the Church - as ministers like Andrew Melville and Robert Bruce famously told him to his face.

• The Stuarts in England and Ireland: 1603–1688 
When this Presbyterian-influenced James VI became King James I of England and Ireland in 1603, he was fond of the new Church of England role which came with the new job, making him Head of the Church as well as of the State. And this is where the problems began, as he set his sights on (potentially) troublesome fellow Protestants. James commissioned a new Bible; one reason for doing so was to get rid of the marginal notes of the existing Geneva Bibles which equated ‘King' with ‘Tyrant'. Conflicts began to open up between King and Parliament. James began to flex his muscles upon the Church back in Scotland. ‘Non-Conformist’ English Puritans began an exodus to New England fleeing persecution. His son Charles I was even worse, and who was famously seized and beheaded in 1649. His son, the eventual Charles II, fled to France, but he deceived Scotland’s Covenanter Presbyterians that he was in fact one of theirs, and they crowned him King of Scotland in 1651. But despite this titular coronation, for 10 years there was no monarchy - the Interregnum - with Cromwell in charge. Charles II was back in England by 1660, was crowned King of England and Ireland at the ‘Restoration' in 1661. He iimmediately began deposing Presbyterian ministers in Ulster and Scotland, and eventually rounding up Presbyterian people in both places too. It was with his dying breaths that Charles converted to Catholicism, in 1685 (so throughout his reign he was Protestant). His brother, now James II, had converted to Catholicism during a time in France around 1669. James reigned until 1688 when William of Orange showed up. (Technically, William, his wife Mary and also Anne were Stuarts. But we’re looking at William v James so let’s stop there for simplicity’s sake).

So, in a nutshell, here are the Stuart kings and their religious backgrounds:

James VI & I  /  reign 1603–1625  /  Church of Scotland & Church of England
Charles I   /   reign 1625–1649  /  Church of England
Charles II  /  reign (Scotland 1651) 1661–1685  /  Church of England
James II  /  reign 1685–1688  /  Roman Catholic 

As Facebook relationship statuses worldwide declare, it’s complicated, but as this quick overview shows, the Stuarts had been increasingly tyrannical and undemocratic Protestant monarchs for a lot longer than they were Catholics - excluding the Interregnum, they had roughly 72 years as a Protestant monarchy v 3 years as a Catholic monarchy. The ratio is 24:1. 

• ‘The Liberties of England and the Protestant Religion I Will Maintain'
This was reputedly the motto on the banner which accompanied William from Holland to England. The Glorious/Williamite Revolution was therefore as much about civil liberty and Parliamentary authority as it was theology. And of course various individuals and groupings seeking to either maintain or acquire power and control … and the universal human conditions of greed and ambition and all that goes with them.

Stereotypes and sad music depress the viewing audience. But we can’t just blame broadcasters and ‘outsiders’ for this, there are plenty here at home who don’t understand or explain the broader context and who selectively use history to fuel present-day fires. Inform and educate matters as much as entertain. Let’s not perpetuate things which are only partly true. The fuller story is much more compelling.

(PS, the presenter needs to visit Lewes in east Sussex on 5th November)

 

An Ulster-Scots Gospel Conversion, James Meikle, Killinchy, 1839

"It is a new secular religion"

Go to 13 minutes. Outstanding. Peter Boghossian is an atheist academic and Dave Rubin a gay, married, non-religious Jew. Alliances of liberty are emerging across the western world, and across people who aren't 'on the same page' on every issue, but who see common purpose on some big important universal themes. Interesting times. (choice language here and there)

"a hearty Irish Roman Catholic" and "a gentle Scotch-Irish Protestant"

Ronald Wilson Reagan’s parents were described as such in this New York Times obituary (click here).

John Knox in 'The Orthodox Presbyterian', 1832

Two thistles, a rose and some shamrock. This periodical was published by William M’Comb - known in his day as ‘The Laureate of Presbyterianism’ - for about 10 years.

Multic-Ulster-al (1956) – "the lallans of Antrim and Down"

Sam Hanna Bell (1909–90) was one of our greatest writers, thinkers, folklorist, collector and broadcasters of the 20th century. To understand an Ulster which few today can remember, Sam Hanna Bell’s writing will take you there with a clarity and authenticity that’s hard to find now.

Glasgow-born but reared near Raffrey in County Down before moving to Belfast, I would encourage everyone to get hold of his work and visit a different world. His début collection Summer Loanen (1943) has lovely natural touches of Ulster-Scots vocabulary. The world he presents was not idyllic, but which culturally speaking was far more nuanced and whole than the political perspectives which have come to dominate. An Ulster which seemed to better understand its multiple cultural strands than most do today.

If there is to be a holistic 'Culture Act' in Northern Ireland then Sam Hanna Bell had at least some of the vision for how it could be. He envisaged a ‘Folklore Commission’ and soon after the 'Committee on Ulster Folklife and Traditions’ was set up. It is easy to pass laws. But where are the minds, the hearts, the eyes, the ears, the voices and the pens? Where is today’s “body of trained folklorists”?

Fine Gael badge, 1930s?

So the Republic of Ireland has a new man at the helm, Leo Varadkar from the political party Fine Gael. The badge below is an interesting design choice, as is this flag. I know next to nothing about politics in the south, so other smarter people than I might be able to add comments below to explain this one.

 

"A Great American Tapestry, The Many Strands of Mountain Music"

A new film by David Weintraub is about to premiere from the wonderfully-titled Centre for Cultural Preservation. It will also be available on DVD soon.

I have written here before on the many positive interactions between Scotch-Irish and African Americans, and music is an arena where this is particularly identifiable - the musical origins of Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams to name just three have famously strong black influences. It's also excellent to see that the recent BBC Wayfaring Stranger series was tapping in to some of the same contributors, who are therefore recognised and credible practitioners from a US perspective. Many of them were new to me, it is reassuring, but not surprising, that the producers of Wayfaring Stranger were so well-informed in their selecting! This bodes very well for any potential US broadcasts of Wayfaring Stranger in the future. 

Here is the full story, reproduced here from the website Mountain Xpress from Asheville, North Carolina (online here).

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New Mountain Music Documentary’s World Premiere in June
The Center for Cultural Preservation is pleased to announce the world premiere of David Weintraub’s new film on the history of Appalachian Music titled, A Great American Tapestry, The Many Strands of Mountain Music screening at three venues in WNC in June. The documentary tells the story of the southern mountain’s musical birth and evolution through the strands of the Scots-Irish legacy, oft-overlooked African-American tradition and through the longest lived music in the Americas, the indigenous tradition. 

According to Director/Producer David Weintraub,

“Mountain music is often discussed as a Scots-Irish tradition that came over here by the Ulster-Scots and that’s true. It is a fascinating story.  But what often gets overlooked is that the West African banjo was played in this country by blacks for nearly 100 years before it was ever picked up by white musicians. African-Americans also played a key role in developing the syncopated and rhythmic fiddle styles that symbolic of old time and bluegrass music. The blended cultural result is exactly what makes mountain music as beautiful and captivating as it is.”

The film features the leading luminaries of the ballad tradition including balladeer extraordinaires Sheila Kay Adams, Joe Penland and Bobby McMillon as well as Grammy Award winning founders of the world renowned black string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops including Rhiannon Giddens, members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, David Holt, and musicologists and historians who tell the story of the great melting pot that became Appalachian music.

According to Phil Jamison, professor of Appalachian Music at Warren Wilson College and a participant in the film, “The reality of the southern backcountry was a diverse mix of Europeans, African-American and indigenous native peoples. Not racially, culturally or economically homogeneous, it was home to wealthy landowners, poor tenant farmers, sharecroppers, merchants, subsistence farms and enslaved African-Americans.” All of them shaped the music and made it special.

In addition to a film screening, several musicians participating in the film will perform at the start of each program. A brief discussion with the filmmaker and participants follows the screenings. Hendersonville’s world premiere will feature performances by Sheila Kay Adams, local old time band Rhiannon and the Relics and rising star Amythyst Kiah.

The world premiere of A Great American Tapestry will be held at the following locations/date/times:
• Blue Ridge Community College, Bo Thomas Auditorium at 7:00 pm on Thursday, June 22nd
• Fine Arts Theatre, Asheville at 7:30 pm on Thursday, June 29th
• White Horse, Black Mountain at 7:30 pm on Saturday, June 30th

Tickets are $10 and $15. Tickets are expected to sell out quickly so it is highly recommended that they be ordered soon on the Center for Cultural Preservation’s website at saveculture.org. For more information about the program and for group sales call the Center at (828) 692-8062.  For more information about future film screenings, online purchases of the DVD and more information about the film, contact the Center for Cultural Preservation at (828) 692-8062 or www.saveculture.org.

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Somebody should bring this film to our side of the Atlantic. In fact there should perhaps be a film festival...

"Convey the complexity"

It has been a very odd 48 hours here in Northern Ireland, with the London-centric media in a frenzied state of simultaneous amnesia and horror at the possibility of the weakened Conservative Party striking an arrangement with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party. (I have to declare an interest here for those who are unaware, they've been a regular client of mine for 20 years). The DUP have just won 10 seats in Westminster, their highest-ever total, and the Conservatives now need them onside.

Amnesia because numerous previous Labour administrations have approached the DUP with similar overtures, horror because Northern Ireland is meant to be kept in the back room like the crazy elderly relative that nobody wants to admit is part of the family but who they’re forced to put up with at occasional awkward gatherings. To the GB population, Northern Ireland is thought to be ‘fixed’ and so has therefore ‘gone away’. Yet here the DUP are, thrust centre stage, in an unprecedented position and with significant influence. Cue outrage from the self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ media talking heads.

The reaction by some mainstream journalists has been pretty appalling. A glance through Twitter will show that. Some whose views I don’t always agree with, but whose professionalism up until now I have admired, have gone far beyond acceptable limits to smear and blacken not only the DUP but by implication the DUP electorate. It is a hairsbreadth from Hillary Clinton’s infamous ‘basket of deplorables’ remarks of last year. And even plenty of non-DUP, and even anti-DUP, folk I know have been taken aback by the barrage. Meanwhile my GB relatives are swallowing all of this up and are messaging my wife with well-meaning expressions of concern!

My mother worked in a factory, my father has worked two jobs his whole life, their parents lived off the land and from their grandparents back all of their ancestors had been tenant farmers for as many centuries as we know about. So I have a fair streak of working class in my bones and my sense of identity. Yes I am now 'white collar' and ‘creative industry’, but I can handle a clawhammer, a handsaw, a shovel and a cement mixer. But this new metropolitan authoritarian Left is a vicious beast - as shown by Emily Thornberry in 2014 and prior to that by Gordon Brown in 2010. Owen Jones, once the defender of England’s underclass in his 2012 book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, and who was in 2015 pro-Brexit, has now turned against both.

Nobody is perfect. Everybody's history will throw up something which today seems at best distasteful. As I type some header on the BBC NI Talkback phone-in programme has alleged the DUP to be anti-Black racists. The madness is contagious.

Ulster is not the only place to suffer from convenient stereotyping. Appalachia is very much the same. Here is an excellent article, by Tom Porter of Bowdoin College in Maine, outlining the endless challenge for Appalachians to present themselves and their region in an authentic manner, and in so doing debunking the metropolitan stereotypes.

… The most important consideration though, said McCarroll, is not whether a film portrays the region she’s from in a positive light, but whether it’s able to convey the complexity of Appalachia and offer a true context...

• PS the excellent Brendan O’Neill, the self-described ‘Libertarian Marxist’ editor of Spiked Online, has just posted this excellent article on the subject. The image above is from that article. 

Imaging Billy - William III of Orange in bronze, paint and glass around the British Isles

It is always healthy to look back into the Northern Ireland 'goldfish bowl' from a wider, external perspective. Generally, this helps to expand understanding and challenge existing perceptions.

July is only a few weeks away - a period which has become known as the 'marching season' and in recent years in Belfast, OrangeFest. For me throughout my childhood it was just called 'the bands' and of course 'the Twelfth', and in Scotland is generally the 'Orange Walk' - none of which have the militaristic connotation of 'marching’. King Billy has adorned gable walls and huge Orange banners for maybe 150 - 200 years, with various degrees of artistic skill, some brilliant, some very crude and almost ‘folk art’ in style. There’s a hand-painted wooden example at the Museum of Orange Heritage in Belfast which looks almost like a piece of ancient Shaker furniture.

I remembered that a while ago I looked into the locations of various statues of William of Orange around the UK and Republic of Ireland. There seem to have been 14 in total, most of which still exist, and are listed here in chronological order:

1692 - Preston - Hoghton Tower - unknown if still exists
1701 - Dublin - Dame Street / College Green - blown up 1929, fragments still exist
1718 - Portsmouth - Historic Dockyard - still there
1734 - Hull - Market place - still there
1735 - Glasgow - Cathedral - still there
1736 - Bristol - Queen Square - still there
1754 - Boyle, Co Roscommon - bridge, then ‘Pleasure Grounds' - destroyed 1945 (base still there)
1757 - Petersfield, Hampshire - Market Square - still there
1808 - London - St James's Square - still there
1889 - Belfast - Clifton Street Orange Hall - still there
1889 - Brixham, Devon - quayside - still there
1907 - London - Kensington Palace - still there
1930 - Belfast - King William Park, Lisburn Road - plaque still there
1990 - Carrickfergus - Castle Green - still there

There may be more. And perhaps even further afield there are others, such as the one I tried to locate at William and Mary College in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia last summer.

So what did William represent or signify to those who decided to commission and install these statues? Some show him on horseback, some are just figures. Some are bronze, whereas the Portsmouth and Hull statues are painted gold. In some he is depicted in classical toga and laurel wreath, Others are the famous long-haired pose with wide brimmed hat and sword. The inscriptions on each tell us something. Maybe some research into the social context, the funders and the sculptors would reveal an interesting story. 

How many art collections include portraits of him? Below is one I photographed at Castle Ward back in Easter of this year, hung high on a staircase wall, directly above Sir James Hamilton. Below this is a photo of the 'William III' stained glass window from the Great Hall of Belfast City Hall. 

Below: a few publicity images from the Greenwich Painted Hall, showing a detail of William and Mary from the painting The Triumph of Peace and Liberty over Tyranny by Sir James Thornhill, which was painted from 1708–14. It is currently undergoing major refurbishment.

Ards Peninsula tuberculosis 'experiment', 1951

This took place within my parents' lifetime. My father's parents' generation suffered very badly from T.B.. So much for all that supposed privilege eh?. In my generation, there has been a particular effort by SureStart and HomeStart in the Peninsula, I have been told a few times that this was due to 'genetic deficiencies' down here. Of course they'll never say that officially...

The Northern Ireland Tuberculosis Authority was established after WW2, with a reported 14,235 sufferers, 20 dying every week and 60 new cases appearing every week. By 1958 the Authority was deemed to have been a success and its functions distributed to the hospitals and local health committees.

Moana - "We Were Voyagers"

Moana is one of the better Disney animated movies of recent years. Here’s the scene where she realises that her people - now timid, fearful and detached from their proud history - once had endless vision, ambition, and determination. She finds their long-lost ships and artefacts, buried deep in a cave. She strikes the ancient drum and the cave comes alive with scenes of the past.

We were voyagers. Why'd we stop?

'The Ulster Scots, unbending as the oak of Britain' (1834)

And this one from the Northern Whig, 4th September 1834, an extract of a poem by Presbyterian minister Rev William Kennedy M’Kay of Portglenone. Again an early use of the term Ulster Scots as a community identifier.

Tipperary Catholic and the Ulster Scot: 'pledged against a common enemy' (1847)

From the Dumfries & Galloway Standard newspaper, 13 October 1847, reporting on the Presbyterian General Assembly in Belfast and the tenant-right land issue of the time. Also another demonstration of the pedigree of the term ‘Ulster Scot’ as an understood description of a community

Mama's Opry - Iris DeMent

It’s two years today since my mother ‘went ahead’. This song by Iris Luella DeMent (a friend of Merle Haggard's; a huge talent and a Pentecostal-raised girl from Arkansas) has been a big favourite of mine for many years, and even so now. It’s almost autobiographical for me in so many ways. (She also recorded the old hymn Higher Ground as a duet with her mother, but it doesn’t seem to be on YouTube - seek it out, it’s magnificent).

She grew up plain and simple in a farming town

Her daddy played the fiddle and use to do the calling
 when they had hoedowns

She said the neighbours would come
 and they'd move all my grandma's furniture round

And there'd be twenty or more there on the old wooden floor 
dancing to a country sound

The Carters and Jimmie Rodgers played her favorite songs

And on Saturday nights there was a radio show
 and she would sing along

And I'll never forget her face when she revealed to me

That she'd dreamed about singing at The Grand Ol' Opry

Her eyes, oh how they sparkled when she sang those songs

While she was hanging the clothes on the line 
I was a kid just a humming along

Well, I'd be playing in the grass,
to her what might of seemed obliviously

But there ain't no doubt about it, she sure made her mark on me

She played old gospel records on the phonograph

She turned them up loud and we'd sing along
 but those days have passed

Just now that I am older it occurs to me

That I was singing in the grandest opry

And we sang Sweet Rose of Sharon, Abide With Me

Til I ride The Gospel Ship to Heaven's Jubilee

And In That Great Triumphant Morning my soul will be free

And My Burdens Will Be Lifted when my Saviour's face I see

So I Don't Want to Get Adjusted to this world below

But I know He'll Pilot Me when it comes time to go

Oh, nothing on this earth is half as dear to me

As the sound of my Mama's Opry

 

"another class of people put us somewhere just below"

So sang Merle Haggard in his classic track Hungry Eyes, recorded in 1969. Most music journalists don’t ‘get' Haggard because he could be both (small c) conservative and also working class, and in journalist-land these do not go together.

This might be because most journalists are middle-class, white collar and left-leaning. But not the old-time left, the new and supposedly improved version which is apparently ‘progressive’. But it is more likely because Haggard doesn’t fit easily into the pre-cooked ‘boxes’ that many writers come to any subject already armed with. Try this from Rolling Stone in 2016 just after Haggard’s death. And Slate ran this piece. Haggard could be many things to many people, just like Robert Burns had been. Most of the interesting people I have met don’t easily fit into boxes.

I’ve never been in a ‘canvass-covered cabin in a crowded labour camp’. But still sometimes I get a lump in my throat as Haggard unfolds the story of poverty and struggle, a mother’s sacrificial love and a father’s life of hard work to try to support the family. Of unfulfilled yet still faithful prayer, of parental age and decline, and of a child’s reflections and pained realisation that life had dealt them a tough hand, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

'...I guess my opinion is all out of style
Don't get me started because I can get wild ...
We're just some of many that can't get no respect
Politically uncorrect ...'

Crafts of the Ards - 16,000 'peasantry' women employed producing 'Scotch work' embroidery

Above: William Kirkpatrick, his wife Mary and infant daughter Jane at their home at Cunningburn just south of Newtownards, around 1910. William was WM of the local Orange lodge, Loughries LOL 1948. Mary and an unidentified girl are pictured 'flowering'.

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Excellent information here from the classic Ireland, its scenery, character by Mr & Mrs S C Hall, Vol III, London (1843) - online here.

“...Throughout the whole of this district - the Barony of Ards, and that of Castlereagh - a large proportion of the peasantry are employed in what is technically termed “flowering” - embroidering muslin, chiefly for the Glasgow manufacturers, who supply the unwrought material, and pay fixed sums for the workmanship… between 2000 and 3000 girls from five to twelve years of age employed at veining… sewers employed at needlework for Belfast houses, between 2000 and 3000... about 10,000 employed as needle-workers for Glasgow houses... nearly the whole of the work sent from Glasgow to London and other parts of England is produced in this district. It is bleached in Scotland, and sold as “Scotch work”..,

The people of County Down also had a visible appreciation for tartan clothing –

 ... soon after entering the county of Down, we began to feel we were in another country; in a district at least where the habits as well as the looks of the people were altogether different from those to which we had been accustomed... Both men and women wore neat and well-mended clothes. Tartan shawls, ribands and even waistcoats, intimated our close approximation to the Scottish coast...

...the nearness of this county to the Mull of Galloway has made the districts, on the two sides, scarcely distinguishable; and the stream of Scottish population can be traced most distinctly from Donaghadee and Bangor, upwards to the interior..."

 On page 24 there’s a brilliant description of how the people looked different, sandy-haired and blue eyed, spoke Scotch. They had very little furniture in their homes. Large Bibles, covered with green tartan, a few books, and 'the usual northern group of orange lilies’.

……...

The Ulster Folk & Transport Museum has a pretty extensive collection of Ulster-made Ayrshire embroidery; on their website here they specify the Ards Peninsula as the main region where it was produced. The image below is of a christening gown from Maybole in Ayrshire. But it was maybe made in the Ards.

This Google image search will show you just how beautiful and intricate a craft this was.