Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund

Last Autumn, I was invited to take part in an event at BBC Northern Ireland, as a discussion session about Ulster-Scots and broadcasting. The audience was made up of the local independent television production sector (I blogged about the event here.) The Fund itself comes from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in London, is set at £1m per annum for five years, and will be administered through Northern Ireland Screen. Just before Christmas N.I. Screen invited me to join the Committee, for an initial 2 years, which will oversee the Fund and the programmes which it decides to support.

I've accepted this role (unpaid!) and am very much looking forward to seeing the proposals which are brought forward, and to working with such a professional, experienced organisation as N.I. Screen. As such, I have declined a number of approaches from tv companies to assist with their programme proposals. Submissions are to be made by 4th March.

• NI Screen information about this first call for proposals is available here.
• BBC Northern Ireland has published guidance for independent producers which is available here.

Born Fighting - episode 2

"Born Fighting" on UTV was superb tonight. Senator James Webb (shown here with some other man who I think I've seen before somewhere) is a marvellous ambassador for our story. Despite the many critics, cynics, apathetics and outright opponents who have done their best to silence it, Ulster-Scots awareness is steadily moving back to where it should be - right in the mainstream of life in Northern Ireland, and perhaps as the most dominant and dynamic element within our cultural life.

Born Fighting - programme one - a short review.

Well? I'd be interested in your views. For what it's worth:

Positives:
- I thought James Webb presented it very well.
- I thought the broad narrative was fine, connecting some of the projects I've worked on - the Bruce period, through to the early Hamilton & Montgomery settlements, the Plantation and the Covenanters

Negatives:
- great shame that it skipped from 1641 to 1688. There are hugely important Ulster-Scots events in this period which were ignored.
- I was disappointed at some of the comments by the Scottish academics. Qualifications and understanding are not the same thing. I've Sky-plussed it so will watch again when I get the chance.
- it probably over-emphasised the periods of war and bloodshed at the expense of other themes, as well as peddle the old stereotypes about stealing land from the Irish. In the late 1500s Antrim and Down had been "wasted" and largely depopulated, and the Scots who settled here did so as a result of business transaction or invitation. And the story in the rest of Ulster was far more complex than "landgrabbing".

Let's see what programme two brings.

UPDATE: watch the first programme online here.

"True Grit" and "Protestant Hymns"

This interview with the Coen Brothers on Telegraph.co.uk about their acclaimed remake of True Grit has an interesting excerpt:

'...The film is underscored by four different 19th-century Protestant hymns, the most notable of which, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, builds slowly throughout the movie, rising in prominence as the story hurtles towards its action-packed conclusion, and the main characters learn to depend on each other. “Choosing that hymn was important,” says Ethan, “because that Protestant attitude is such a part of who Mattie is. The music speaks of faith and certitude, and that she has in spades.”...'

The film also includes What A Friend We Have in Jesus (written by Ulsterman Joseph Scriven of Banbridge), Hold On To God's Unchanging Hand and The Gloryland Way. It's good to see that even mega-famous directors have a regard for transatlantic evangelical culture. If you know the hymns already, then the style of the score on this clip will move you. (True Grit opens here in the UK on Feb 11th)

BBC - "We're Fur Hame"

The first two programmes of this new series have already been broadcast on tv, and are currently available on BBC iPlayer. The series tells the story of a group of American tourists who arrive in Ulster with Glen Pratt (President of the Ulster-Scots Society of America) in search of branches of their family trees and the heritage of their emigrant ancestors. It's clearly an emotional experience for many of them, and is definitely worth watching. You'll also spot some well-known local faces.

Along with UTV's "Plantation - the Truth and the Legacy" which was broadcast before Christmas, and next week's simulcast of Senator James Webb's "Born Fighting" on UTV and STV, it is encouraging to see our stories emerging from the shadows, being well told, and reaching a wider audience.

First two episodes are on the BBC iPlayer here.

Born Fighting - coming to a tv near you this year

This year will see the broadcast of a two-part series entitled "Born Fighting". It will be presented by Senator James Webb, author of the book of the same title. Some of the filming took place here in Northern Ireland last August, and Senator Webb spent some time here interviewing a number of people. I provided the producers with a bit of help on sourcing visual material. The series is a three-way collaboration between the Smithsonian Channel, Scottish Television and Ulster Television. More info to be posted here when I get it.

BBC and the Broadcasting Fund

A few weeks ago I was invited to take part in a BBC panel discussion which was held this morning; we did our best to give them an overview of everything Ulster-Scots from daily vocabulary and historic language literature, to general history and cultural stuff. There were about 40 programme makers in the audience, and they spent much of their time asking us questions - so I asked them a few in return. One of these was "How many of you were reared in rural Ulster - now, reared, not moved out to the country when you made enough money". Only 4 or 5 raised their hands. That lack of natural home-grown cultural understanding within the media, and indeed within the decision makers of Northern Ireland, is a huge part of the future challenge for Ulster-Scots. Projects which are being funded, and managed, by people who don't really "get it" are particularly risky and vulnerable. I threw in a few slightly mischievous comments as well, it'll be interesting to see if these surface elsewhere in coming weeks.

Promoting Northern Ireland in 1971

I was going through a box of old tourism brochures this morning (I have a collection of them going back to the formation of the Ulster Tourist Development Association in the 1920s - how sad is that?!) and found one from 1971. The scanned page below was the inside front cover. (Click to enlarge).

"...one more triumph for the crass stupidity rapidly replacing culture in this country..."

No, it's not about certain aspects of present-day Ulster-Scots activity (although you may feel that it could be), but is instead an excerpt from the football fanzine / magazine When Saturday Comes. Football isn't rocket science, and frankly it's not that important (even though I enjoy it immensely) however WSC has recently published two pieces ripping apart how even something as trivial as football coverage has been dumbed down. This article is about former Soccer AM presenter Tim Lovejoy, and this one is about the dire James Corden's World Cup programmes that dominated ITV's coverage of this years tournament.

Here are a few excerpts from the Corden article: "...a thickening culture of bullish arrogance, absolute pride in not thinking. This idea that it's all a laugh. It's eating away at everything now, and it's only getting worse..."Lovely stuff!" barked Corden, banging his cards on the desk. Somewhere in Britain, another library closed...

...no idea of his own limitations, never sensing when people are sick of him... underneath the insecure bluster, he may even be a nice guy... what he has to realise now, as he weeps over England's exit, is that he's part of the problem. Sure, it's only a laugh – but this overbearing oafishness bolsters the culture which has England stinking out one tournament after another, bullishly arrogant, proud of not thinking. Corden would probably scoff at the thought, but I guess you have a different perspective when you're making a career of it..."

The language in both pieces is rough in places, so be warned before you choose to click through. Apply the themes as you see fit.

The Broons - on their way to a tv near you

Yes, a live action TV version of the Broons (not an animation) is on the way. it could be absolutely dire, or brilliant. The programme makers, Baby Cow Productions, are one of the UK's major comedy factories and are planning a one hour pilot as a test. We got Broons annuals every Christmas when I was a wee fella; I remember back in 2006 or 2007 buying a copy for each member of an organisation I was involved in at the time, but only two of them had ever heard of the Broons!

Blurring the edges

There's an odd notion that the three main cultural communities in Ulster (English / Scottish / Irish) have hard defined edges which separate them. Whether language, cultural traditions, music, or landscape, this is nonsense. The edges are soft and blurred. One that I hear all the time, because of where I live, is that there's a hard cultural line that cuts across the bottom of the Ards Peninsula below Kir(k)cubbin and across to Cloughey/Kirkistown. Crudely put, the myth goes that around 1606, in an Ulsterised version of the "Operation Passage to Freedom" the incoming Scots struck an arrangement whereby the few resident Irish (that's polite code for Catholics) were moved south of this line to live on the Savage estates, and that all the incoming Scots (that's polite code for Protestants) settled north of this line. It's not true but it gets perpetuated all the time. There are concentrations of Ulster Scots above and Ulster Irish below, but there's not, and never has been, a hard division.

The Savages had arrived in Ireland as one of the new Anglo-Norman families in the late 1100s. Initially they had massive estates within the old Earldom of Ulster which more or less covered County Antrim and County Down, but as the centuries passed their lands were reduced to just the southern tip of the Peninsula and a bit of Lecale. Ongoing attacks from the Clandeboye O'Neills didn't help.

The truth is that there was a significant degree of co-operation between Hamilton and the Savages, and Montgomery and the Savages. In the 1640s a list of tenants on the Savage estates shows that between a half and a third had Scottish surnames. There are loads of examples of well-recorded overlaps and co-operation. The land boundaries of the Savage/Hamilton/Montgomery estates weren't even clearly defined (which is why Hamilton paid big money to get the Royal cartographer, Thomas Raven, onto the job in 1625. The original maps can be seen at North Down Museum in Bangor). And even where the boundaries were well understood, the three families exchanged and leased townlands with one another, with some Irish tenants on Scottish-owned estates, and as shown above, vice-versa. Henry Savage of Ardkeen gradually embraced the Protestant faith of his new neighbours - he was described as"...moderate in his Romish religion, and read the Holy Scriptures; and, on his death-bed, (whereon he lay long) assured me, that he trusted for his salvation only to the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ. He kept no images in his house, and if he had any picture (or such like) he said he would meditate on it, but not worship it. He used to say, that invocation of Saints was needless, although it were supposed they did hear us, or know our wants; because he was sure his Saviour was God all-sufficient..." (Montgomery MSS p 328). As the century drew to a close, in 1690 one branch of the Savages fought for King William III at the Boyne, while another branch fought on the other side for King James II - but some of this branch later changed their minds. Over the following centuries, many became famous high-ranking British military officers.

A while ago, over at Balmoral Perspective, Mark Anderson posted a clip of the slow Irish tune "Raglan Road". I posted a comment that there's a far faster, Ulster, version of the same tune which is used for the Belfast song "The Ballad of William Bloat". Renowned Scottish singer-songwriter Dick Gaughan points out here that the same tune might be Scottish in origin.

But it's easier to claim division and distinction, rather than to take time to explain the blurred edges. The result doesn't turn Northern Ireland into some bland whitewashed cross-community soup, but a place of interesting and myth-challenging contours. Some commentators need to stop pumping out dumbed-down lazy nonsense and take the time to read the early records for themselves. There's a far more interesting, and accurate, story just below the surface.

A gospel moment in "Prince of Persia"

(NB: If you're reading this on Facebook, you can read this post in full on my blog) There's a moment in the new Disney movie "Prince of Persia" that some of you will enjoy (I took Jacob to see it last week). I must admit I wasn't expecting a movie based on a computer game to be much good, but it was a swashbuckling cracker with lots of very scary curved swords, warriors and grisly (implied) deaths.

The hero, Dastan, reveals to his rival Princess Tamina (who of course he ends up falling in love with) that he is not of Royal blood. In the heat of an argument he shouts at her "I wasn't born in a palace like you - I was born in the slums of Nasaf, where I lived and I fought and I clawed". Shocked, she asks, "And how did you become a prince?". Dastan pauses and replies, "The King marched into the market one day and he, I don't know, he found me, he took me in..."

The kirks and braes o' Killyleagh (and the media and museums of course)

(NB: If you're reading this on Facebook, you can read this post in full on my blog)

Whilst Northern Ireland's suburban media élite have once again spent their day ridiculing Ulster-Scots, I was in Killinchy and Killyleagh, visiting some local, historically-important, churches. I'll not mention the people by name (just in case the thought police go and hunt them down) but I had a marvellous afternoon talking with local folk, born and bred on the other side of Strangford Lough, about local history and fast-disappearing vocabulary. One of them gave me her personal collection of old yellowed newspaper cuttings of Ulster vocabulary, dating back to the late 1800s - a real treasure trove of information.

They also told me of old Ulster-Scots street names in Killyleagh which have been replaced by bland alternatives within their lifetimes - Braeside which led to Breakey's Brae, Barracks Brae (which was changed to Shrigley Road), Sabbath Brae (changed to Castle Lane) - and up near Raffrey, Bratchey's Brae (probably Bradshaw's Brae, just like in Newtownards - but still spelled as "Bratchey's" on a nearby house), which joins the Temple Burn Road.

Not that any of these things would interest the opponents of Ulster-Scots. The dominant attitude of the establishment in NI towards Ulster-Scots has always been hostility of one kind or another. That antagonism can be traced back in various forms for centuries. In more recent decades that has included the trivialisation of tradition, the wiping out of old place names and the exclusion of our story from the classroom, or - dare I say it - most museums. I've blogged about that before.

The smug, constructed world that today's media and cultural élite lives in is one where they can talk down their noses about 'reinforcing elderly rural protestant stereotypes', and get away with it. Their airbrushed world bears little resemblance to the lives and interests of ordinary Ulster folk. As I've said manys a time, the closest many of these "experts" get to rural life is the car park at Marks and Spencer.

(See the recent post on GF Savage-Armstrong's clashes with the literary élite of a century ago - click here)

"The Eastern Gate", the Delmore Brothers

(NB: If you're reading this on Facebook, the original post is from my blog) This is a song that was played constantly in our house, on a tape by the old Belfast group the Echoes of Grace which they brought out ("released" is far too contrived a term for how it was done back then!) in the early 1980s. The Wee Echoes had mandolin, guitar, and lots of singers - usually 7 or 8 in the group at any time. My da still watches video tapes of their concerts, and herds visitors into the front room to watch them too!

It was only much later in life that I discovered that an enormous amount of the songs recorded by Ulster gospel groups in the late 20th century were originally old hillbilly and "brother duet" songs from the early part of that century. "The Eastern Gate" was written by Isaiah Martin in 1905 and was recorded a few times in the 20s and 30s, eventually made famous by the brilliant Delmore Brothers who recorded it in 1940:



Early American recordings of artists like the Delmore Brothers and Jimmie Rodgers travelled as far as the Shetland Islands off the north coast of Scotland, as shown in this advert from the National Theatre of Scotland, about Thomas Fraser, which features his version of the Delmores' song "The Mississippi Shore":



I hope that the forthcoming Ulster-Scots broadcast fund will enable projects like this to be produced, which delve into deep, rooted stories of real people and their culture.

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

Here's some background on Thomas Fraser, presented by Rob Ellen of The Medicine Show:

"the pinnacle of thranness!"

(NB: If you're reading this on Facebook, the original post is from my blog) Wendy Austin said this today, to Danny Kennedy, on Talkback on Radio Ulster. Maybe you language enthusiasts out there should start to list the various Ulster-Scots terms that are used on the local media? It would be a quare gunk for a lot of folk! (you can hear it on iPlayer at about 40 min into the programme)

Media hysteria and "War of the Worlds"

I watched the remake of HG Wells' "War of the Worlds" with Jake and Charlie the other night on BBC3. In places it was a bit scary for both of them, so we kept flicking over to some gardening programme. The story was written in 1898 and is about an attempted alien invasion of Earth.

40 years later War of the Worlds was famously turned into a radio programme by Orson Welles, and was broadcast in the USA on October 30 1938. The style was one of a musical concert being broadcast live, which was then interrupted by a series of emergency newsflashes, gradually revealing a violent Martian landing at Grovers Mill in New Jersey. Millions of unsuspecting listeners (from an audience estimated at six million people) believed it to be true. Here's an excerpt:

"...Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed... Wait a minute! Someone's crawling. Someone or... something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks... are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be... good heavens, something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it's another one, and another one, and another one. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing's body. It's large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face, it... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate...

A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What's that? There's a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they're turning into flame! Now the whole field's caught fire. The woods... the barns... the gas tanks of automobiles... it's spreading everywhere. It's coming this way. About twenty yards to my right...

Then silence. A few minutes later, an announcer interrupts,

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grovers Mill by telephone. Just one moment please. At least forty people, including six state troopers, lie dead in a field east of the village of Grovers Mill, their bodies burned and distorted beyond all possible recognition..."

The result was widespread panic, and some people are said to have been killed in the stampede to get away from New Jersey. You can listen to part of the original broadcast here:



And fake stories are nothing new. Here's an astounding CNN broadcast from YouTube, by this major US war correspondent, allegedly from Saudi Arabia in 1991 (there's a series of outtakes until 3:11 and then the newscast begins):



In closing, the brilliant 1997 movie Wag The Dog is about a fake war between the USA and Albania, created in a Hollywood studio and pumped into newsrooms worldwide, purely as a short-term manipulation of public opinion. If you haven't seen it, get it! Here's the trailer:

Nothing good on tv this Christmas? Here's something to fill 40 minutes!

This is the 2006 documentary about the Hamilton & Montgomery Settlement of 1606, "The Dawn of the Ulster Scots", made by Straightforward Productions. I was partially involved behind the scenes with this, and it turned into one of BBCNI's most watched programmes that year. A good and easy to follow summary of the story, presented by actress Flora Montgomery, a descendant of the original Montgomeries:

Wordia in Northern Ireland!

Wordia.com, the visual dictionary, are over here this week filming a series of videos about different people's definitions of particular words. As yesterday was St Andrew's Day, that's the theme for the week. Here are a couple of videos already online.





As Ulster-Scots speech is fundamentally about vocabulary, I'd like to see what the Wordia guys could do with that as a subject - getting definitions of all of the classic words would not only be good fun, but also would be a great way for the older generation to pass on words to the younger web-savvy youth. So maybe technology can positively affirm regional identity, rather than erode it?

"The Secret History - Our Own"

As you know I've recently been drawing attention to the complete absence of any meaningful Ulster-Scots cultural history in Northern Ireland's institutions, whether in museums, education or the general media. Everything here is viewed through political glasses, and as a result cultural identity or history that doesn't neatly fit into the pre-determined political "two tribes" stereotypes gets suppressed, or scorned. (would it be too cynical of me to suggest that a lot of people have made careers and hefty incomes out of perpetuating "two tribes"? Flying round the world giving lectures on "conflict resolution" and "peace and reconciliation" must have its benefits...) So when I saw this large quote in an article in the Sunday Herald when I was in Dumfries, it caught my eye. Looks like the folk in Scotland are caught in a similar experience as we are ourselves. The article was entitled "The Secret History - Our Own", by Ian Bell. Try to find it online, it makes interesting reading.




Two great letters are available on The Scotsman website:
"...People are more interested in entertainment than sacrifice. Jacobites have good pub songs. Covenanters have hymns..."

FOOTNOTE: Back in 2006, when I was working on the Hamilton & Montgomery Settlement project, I had two sharp comments aimed at me. One was "you're just doing this to trump the Flight of the Earls in 2007", and another was "'Ayrshire to Ulster' doesn't have the same romantic appeal as 'Rathmullan to Rome'". My response to the first one was to laugh. My response to the second was "it really depends on your theological and cultural reference point".

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!