Facebook offered me an online tutorial from a thing called Udemy to learn an architectural software package called Autodesk Revit. The image is below. Which looks amazingly similar to Seamus Heaney Homeplace. Perhaps there is some kind of collaboration. Check it out here.
A superb version of the Horatio Spafford classic hymn, which was born out of unspeakable tragedy. Google his name for the full story; context is meaning.
One benefit of the unexpected break in normal busyness just now is that it creates an opportunity to pause and go through various piles of info that have gathered up. An octogenarian former school principal gave me a box of his books and researches last year and I've finally had a chance to work through it.
The story of Martha 'Mattie' Mulholland of Carrowdore was reported in the County Down Spectator on Saturday 2 February 1935. Clippings below. Her son Thomas (erroneously named 'Robert' in the subtitle) can be found here on the 1901 Census of Ireland, then living at Ganaway just south of Millisle, and with a daughter named after his legendary mother. Another version of her story is also on the lodge's website here.
Maybe the graves, and homestead, of the Mulhollands exist somewhere still today.
By an extraordinary coincidence in their darkest hour of need, one of the monks had a vision. It told him that King Arthur himself was buried nearby...
...In these days, when the chief city of Ulster and many towns and country districts all over it are become working centres of the Gaelic revival, a book of verse like this will almost come as a shock to the Irish-Ireland reader.
He has been busily working for the de-Anglicisation of the Irish nation, looking forward to an era when the West British shoneen will be extinct, end behold here is reminder that there exists within the borders of our island a country population which is not West British nor shoneen, which has not got to be de-Anglicised, for the simple reason that its speech is not English, as we know it, but Lowland Scotch.
The people speaking this tongue are to found mainly Antrim, Co. Down, but also on extensive tracts of land in the North-West, coming right against the Gaelic frontier of Tir-Conal, in the Laggan district, it is called, in Donegal.
But let not the Irish-Irelander brand those survivors of the Ulster Plantation as aliens and foreigners. This Scotch-Irish dialect, so ragged and almost distasteful to our hearing, was the speech of men who stood side by side with the Northern Catholic Gaels on the battlefields Antrim, who camped on the wooded height of Ednavady, and lined the ditch behind “Saintfield Hedge in the County Down.” was the mother tongue James Hope, and the congregations of those United Irish Presbyterian worthies, Porter, and Steele, Dickson, Kelburn, and Warwick.
It a pity that there is nothing in the little volume before us to recall the patriotism the men of Down, not a single verse echoing the spirit of fine old street-ballad that might well have served as a model.
"Oh were you at the Battle of Ballynahinch
Where the country arose to make its defence
Where the country arose to prove their overthrow
When led on by that hero called General Munro..."
All the same we welcome this volume as evidence of the fact that the Scotch-Irishman has not lost the gift of song. The subjects are homely and natural; the verses fluent and tuneful. The satire in “The Ministers Call” and “The Six Road Ends” will be appreciated in Presbyterian circles. There are local poems for many of the North Down villages – Carrowdore, Comber, Donaghadee, Ballylesson and Bangor...
Found this online. A bit dated now, and I'd phrase some things differently, but I think this is probably still the key point –
"Thanks to the high profile of my predecessor, probably everyone on the planet knows of Ulster Scots. Having said that, what do they know about Ulster Scots? I see that as my role: starting to fill in the blanks and bring some credibility."
Full article is online here.
Here's a still of yours truly and Ruth from the new intro sequence for the recently-aired second series of Hame. We started filming them in September 2017 and the first series of 6 episodes was broadcast in early 2018. Two years later in early 2020 the next three episodes were aired.
• All nine episodes are now available on BBC iPlayer here.
Another series is being planned just now, and at the end of those we'll hopefully have covered all nine of Ulster's counties at least once, and maybe a bit beyond. Lots of talented, committed and experienced tv professionals have made Hame possible. I plan to watch the first 9 again soon just to see them with fresh eyes, to cringe at myself, but more importantly to see the Ulster-Scots community contributors in action on-screen, sharing their places and stories. I have emphatically believed from the very start that Hame is all about them.
In two years I'll be turning 50, having spent a fair chunk of the past 20+ years semi-obsessed with Ulster-Scots and on a voyage of personal rediscovery, and to share almost-forgotten stories with as many other people as I could. My first Ulster-Scots Agency function as Chair in 2005 was at Bready Jubilee Primary School in west Tyrone, geographically it’s nearly as far from “my ain hame” as it’s possible to be, but among folk whose world is so like mine. I remember seriously suggesting that at least one Agency board meeting should be held in a country church hall, not in a boardroom or a swish hotel. I've travelled all over the place to meet folk, to play music and sing, to give talks, and now a bit of broadcasting off and on. Where the folk are.
"... from Scotland came many, and from England not a few, yet all of them generally the scum of both nations, who, for debt, or breaking and fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, came hither …"
"... who seemed rather to flee from God in this enterprise than to follow their own mercy. Yet God followed them when they fled from him — albeit, at first it must be remembered that they cared little for any church…
... Thus, on all hands Atheism increased, and disregard of God — iniquity abounded, contention, fighting, murder, thieving, adultery ...
... While thus it was, and when any man would have expected nothing but God's judgment to have followed the crew of sinners, behold the Lord visited them in admirable mercy, the like whereof had not been seen anywhere for many generations.What did that bring about? –
…fell into such anxiety and terror of conscience, that they looked on themselves as altogether lost and damned, as those of old who said, " Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved ;" and this work appeared not in one single person only, or two, but multitudes were brought to understand their way, and to cry out, " What shall we do?”
... I have seen them myself stricken,* and swoon with the Word — yea, a dozen in one day carried out of doors as dead,so marvellous was the power of God smiting their hearts for sin ...
... Yea, I have heard one of them, then a mighty strong man (now a mighty Christian), say that his end in coming to church was to consult with his companions how to work some mischief, and yet at one of those sermons was he so catched, that he was fully subdued.
But why do I speak of him? We knew, and yet know, multitudes of such men who had no power to resist the word of God ; but the heart, being pricked and smitten with the power of God, the stubborn, who sinned and gloried in it, because they feared not man, are now patterns of sobriety, fearing to sin because they fear God
and this spread through the country to admiration, so that, in a manner, as many as came to hear the word of God, went away slain with the words of his mouth, especially at that river (commonly called the Six-Mile Water), — for there this work began at first ..."
