Ulster-Scots understanding in 1950

From This is Ireland: Ulster and the City of Belfast by Richard Hayward (London, 1950):

"...Newtownards, the New Town of the Ards of Sir Hugh Montgomery, owes its rise to the commercial acumen of that wily Scot who got the better of poor Con O'Neill at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The old Mercat or Town Cross still stands... I wonder, Con O'Neill, does your spirit still haunt the groves of Holywood... for sure if we can't find your forgotten grave in Ballymaghan, can't we keep a wee place in our hearts for you and your sorrows? It was you I was thinking of when I wrote a little poem many years ago, a poem of which this is the cadence:

No, there's little known about him round the hills of Castlereagh,
And the grass has hid his grey old home this manys a day
But they tell me out in Holywood they sometimes see a man,
Late afoot and sorrowing for the Yellow-haired clan..."

We can turn our noses up at the writing style, but what this shows is mainstream awareness of the story of Con O'Neill and Hugh Montgomery back in 1950 when the book was published. My parents were just 5 years old when this came out. Their generation, and mine, are still mostly clueless about this origin story of the first Lowland Scottish settlement in Ulster. And just like O'Neill's "grey old home" itself, how much understanding has been demolished or lost over the past two generations?

(NB - Con was buried at the old church of Knockcolumbkille, shown on the 1665 map below as Collum Kill. There is no trace of either the church or the burial ground there today.)

Flax Seed and Emigrants

Richard MacMaster's latest book 'Scotch-Irish Merchants in Colonial America' is a great read, and details how flax seed was imported from America (a trade which seems to have begun around 1705 when import laws were passed by government), and how people emigrated on the same ships. This was also something that Senator James Webb's recent two part tv series 'Born Fighting' touched on. My good friend Mark Anderson sent me the image below from one of his recent forays in a local library. It comes from the Newtownards Chronicle in 1916. A beautiful image! Interesting that even as World War 1 raged through continental Europe, Holland was still capable of growing and exporting goods.

• A previous post about the Ulster linen industry's impact upon the Argentinian sugar industry, through the hard work and vision of two Ballymena brothers, can be read here. One of the real paradoxes of Ulster-Scots heritage is how it can be both hyperlocal yet international.

One Hundred Scotch Hymns and Poems (Chiefly in the Scotch Dialect), Edinburgh 1881

This book is the latest addition to my wee library, instantly doubling my "Sacred Scotch Solos" collection. Click the pics to enlarge:

"Turas - a story of strangers in a strange land"

A former client of mine who quickly became a friend, Colin Neill, has written his first novel. I designed the cover for it and I expect that, given its subject matter, the book will attract a lot of interest. Already available for pre-order here on Amazon.co.uk.

From the back cover: "How do you live when that which is most precious is taken away from you? How do you respond when foundational aspects of your faith and your identity are knocked down and shaken to their core? What do you do when nothing is certain any more?

It is 2020 and Ireland has been united. During this year of striking change, a group of men meet together in a church cell group to wrestle with uncertainty through the filters of their faith and God’s word. Mingled with profound transition all around them are tales of friendship, tales of love, and tales of coming to terms with what the past has meant.

This is a story of seven Christians and their spiritual journey together into the unknown. It is also a response to living in an often religious but always divided society, which asks a series of challenging questions, and offers direction as to where answers may be found."

Cultural gold dust

I've been hunting for this for about 10 years, and finally located a copy a few weeks ago. It arrived in the post this morning - published in 1848 from Blair's personal manuscripts and also those of his son-in-law - this is 625 pages of Blair's childhood and early career in Scotland, his experiences among the early Ulster-Scots settlements of Antrim and Down, Eagle Wing, and his return to Scotland right up into the "Killing Times" of the later 1600s. The Googlebooks version is a useful research tool, with its text-searchability, but as reading for enjoyment (rather than fact-hoking) you can't beat a real book. This will also be a big help for my forthcoming biographical booklet of Blair's protegé, James Hamilton of Ballywalter. I might just have to stop blogging for a few weeks!

The Tin Tabernacle by Jean Shields

This book is just published and tells the story of Craigantlet Mission Hall (1912 - 2001). A high quality production in a 64 page A5 format, the story begins when a combination of Dundonald people and two Scottish evangelists raised a marquee at Craigantlet in the summer of 1911 to begin a gospel mission in the highest hills of north Down. From initial hostility and opposition, when some locals threatened to cut the ropes of the marquee down, by the middle of September when the mission ended 60 people had been converted to faith in Christ - "the whole character of the countryside was changed and became a sober, hardworking community of worshipping people". The next year the mission hall was built and from where the simple gospel went forth for nearly 90 years.

"...a tiny square entrance hall, fitted with pegs for hats and coats, opened into the main building, consisting of a central aisle and flanked by two row of sturdy wooden forms... a coal stove graced the centre of the aisle with a pipe extending through the roof... three paraffin lamps hung from the ceiling - Faith, Hope and Charity we called them... a text at the front proclaimed 'Jesus Christ is Lord'... the walls were panelled to keep in the heat and decorated with useful slogans; 'Faith Brings Victory' and 'Prayer Changes Things" are two I recall. Within its walls we praised and prayed and were ministered unto and many, both young and old, came to a saving faith kneeling beside its hard wooden seats. To them and others the Tin Tabernacle became the 'House of God and the very gate of Heaven..."

> Click here to order a copy by email (price is £5.95)

Sir Thomas Smith’s forgotten English Colony of the Ards and north Down in 1572

(NB: If you're reading this on Facebook, you can read this post in full on my blog). This booklet (pic left - click to enlarge) is my latest historical project, and will be launched on Friday 14th May at Ards Arts Centre (the old Town Hall). It's taken the best part of a year to complete, and conscious of my own limitations I'm happy with the end result. Published through Loughries Historical Society (and without the help of Mr Balmoral the booklet would never have happened!), with the printing funded by Ards Borough Council, North Down Museum and the Ulster-Scots Community Network, it lifts the lid on what was going on in the Ards and north Down before the Lowland Scots arrived with Hamilton and Montgomery to settle exactly the same region in May 1606. The booklet has 40 pages in total, and is lavishly illustrated throughout with some very rare maps and portraits which took ages to track down. Here's the introduction:

...........

IN MAY 1572 around 800 young men gathered at the small town of Liverpool in the north west of England, bound for a new life in the Ards Peninsula and north Down.

Their venture had been planned with meticulous detail. The English authorities had been considering a scheme like this since at least the year 1515, so there was no shortage of either colonial theory or political will. It was 5 October 1571 when Queen Elizabeth I granted her Secretary of State, Sir Thomas Smith, 360,000 acres of land in this most easterly part of Ulster, “the nearest part of all Ireland to Lancashire.”

Smith and his 24 year old son, who was also called Thomas, had until March 1579 to successfully colonise the lands or else lose their grant. So, almost immediately, they began advertising their newly acquired estate to potential tenants across England, through the unique and imaginative step of publishing a range of promotional literature – a single page broadsheet, followed by a map of east Ulster accompanied by a 63 page promotional booklet. However, even though the land had been claimed by the English Crown since the late 1100s, it was disputed territory, having also been claimed by the Clandeboye O’Neills from around 1345.

The Smiths' objective was to establish a new English colony centred around a new fortress town called Elizabetha that was to be located at the upper end of the Peninsula where “it is joyned unto the rest of the Island”, and which would be defended by three major forts that the colonists would build. However, Sir Thomas was sent to France on Royal business, leaving the project in the hands of his son. But, due to delays, by the time the colonists set sail on 30 August 1572 the number of emigrants had plummeted to around just 100.

They arrived the next day and set up base camp at the small townland of Newcastle, between Cloughey and Kearney. However, a few months earlier Sir Brian O’Neill, the chief of the Clandeboye O’Neills, had acquired copies of the Smiths’ booklet. The discovery of their plan turned Sir Brian, who was described by the English authorities in 1571 as “a loyal and true subject” , into a man who “suddenly assumed a hostile attitude.” Knowing that Smith’s English colonists would make use of the vacant abbeys and any major stone buildings, O’Neill set fire to them all and left the English outpost town of Carrickfergus in ashes.

The Smith scheme struggled on, but it was doomed from the start, being dogged by both local Irish opposition and internal strife among the colonists themselves. On 20 October 1573, just over a year after arriving in Ulster, Thomas Smith jnr was killed by two Irishmen he had employed. The high profile murder sent shockwaves through the English authorities in London. The original Smith colony was then scattered, with most of the colonists returning home to England. After a few failed attempts to start afresh, by late 1575 the scheme was abandoned; Sir Thomas’ health deteriorated and he died in August 1577.

Sir Thomas Smith’s nephew and heir, Sir William Smith, had built a new church at Theydon Mount in Essex, and Sir Thomas was buried there. Sir William tried to revive the Ards project in June 1579, but it was too late. The deadline of the original grant had passed and the great adventure was over.

Nevertheless, Sir William Smith (and, later, his second son who was also called Thomas Smith) clung vainly to the hope that they might one day reclaim the family’s grant. However, after the Queen died in 1603, Sir William Smith was sent by the new Scottish King James I to Spain. Smith left his Ulster affairs in the hands of one of the King’s men - James Hamilton - giving Hamilton inside knowledge of lands in east Ulster which, once he had acquired them for himself, would make him famous. The failure of the Smiths’ English colony, and the destruction which it brought about, cleared the way for the success of the Hamilton & Montgomery lowland Scottish settlement of the same lands that would begin 34 years later in May 1606.

“Hamilton & Montgomery succeeded where Sir Thomas Smith failed. They created the bridgehead through which the Scots were to come to Ulster for the rest of the century.”
from The Narrow Ground by ATQ Stewart.

............

Copies will soon be available from Loughries Historical Society. Get in touch if you want to come to the launch evening.

The O'Neill burnings are referred to on the present-day interpretive signage at Newtownards Priory, Holywood Priory and at the new visitor centre at Grey Abbey (pic below - click to enlarge)

Enough to start a riot in a Cathedral

(NB: If you're reading this on Facebook, the original post is from my blog). 1637 Book of Common Prayer, Scottish edition. As (not) recommended by Jenny Geddes. On eBay now for $900!

Book Launch - Alexander Peden - Kellswater

(NB: If you're reading this on Facebook, the original post is from my blog) It's taken a bit of time to organise, but the Alexander Peden book will be launched at the end of Feb at Kellswater Reformed Presbyterian Church in Co Antrim. Poster below (click to enlarge) as well as GoogleMap link for any of you who want to go but aren't sure of how to find the church. I contributed one chapter to the book - may well be saying a few words at the launch on Saturday - I'm very sure that Rev David Silversides will be worth hearing.




View Covenanters Heritage Trail - Ulster in a larger map

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

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.

New Alexander Peden (Covenanter) book - just £6.99!

I'll be advertising a few Covenanter related things over the next week or so. First up is the new 108 page book "Some Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Alexander Peden, Prophet and Covenanter, in Scotland and Ulster". It's a reprint of a 1755 Belfast edition, and has a new Foreword, Biography, selection of Historical Poems, an article entitled "The Unforetold Legacy" and an article entitled "Publishing Peden". It contains 26 photographs and illustrations. Put this on your Christmas list!

It's hot off the presses - copies are already available here from the Ulster-Scots Language Society - you can either buy online or from their premises. Alternatively, phone Derek on 028 9043 6716.

A big thank you to everyone who helped so willingly in its production - Jack, William, Glen, Alastair, Dane, Derek and the folk at the Ullans Press. (It's mostly in English, with just the historical poems and one quotation in light Scots). Click the photos to enlarge.



From the back cover:
Alexander Peden - the man whose prophecies enthralled the rebels of 1798, who lived the life of a fugitive on the Glenwhirry moors, and whose memory is perpetuated by a faithful band of Covenanters who still gather at the Mistyburn in his memory. In the era of the “chapmen”, the door-to-door pedlars who sold cheap and popular literature, Alexander Peden fascinated readers in Scotland, Ulster and America for centuries after his death. This reprint of the 1755 Belfast edition contains many stories of Peden’s life in Ulster, and gives Peden his rightful place as one of the most important figures in Ulster-Scots history.