Yet another great night at Bangor Abbey!

A clip from Bangor Abbey last night. No amplification or effects - the raw performance.

Before the Throne of God Above (original 1863 melody):


Full post over at our Thompson Brothers blog. More clips to be uploaded over the next few days.

Some sartorial advice from Sir Thomas Smith in 1572

...that Countrie of Ireland requireth rather lasting and warm clothes than gorgeous and deere garmentes..."


Pass that on to your wives, gentlemen!
(from A Letter Sent By T. B. Gentleman, a 63 page pamphlet published by Smith in early 1572)

The Covenanters in Ulster - coming soon to BBC Radio Ulster

Last Saturday, Dr William Roulston and I spent most of the day with Laura Spence of BBC Northern Ireland, and Elizabeth Rice and David Walker of Blackthorn Productions. We recorded a special edition of Radio Ulster's "A Kist o Wurds" about the Covenanters in Ulster - it will be broadcast in three weeks' time at 4pm on Sunday 1st November and repeated at 7.30pm on Wednesday 4th November.

It comes hot on the heels of an edition of Kist where Laura, Elizabeth and I did a lengthy but fairly informal piece about Newtownards Priory, and a shorter piece about very rare edition of the Montgomery Manuscripts, which had been discovered by my old friend Jim Tollerton of Stacks Bookshop in Dundonald. That programme was broadcast on 20 September, and I had lots of positive comments about from folk who heard it.

• BBC Radio Scotland have also recently made a programme about the Covenanter "prophet" Alexander Peden which will be broadcast over the coming weeks too. I understand it will be presented by Richard Holloway, Chair of the Scottish Arts Council. He presented the tv series "The Sword and the Cross" a few years ago which also touched on the Covenanters.

• I'm told that BBC Scotland television have also completed an hour-long episode of their mega series A History of Scotland about the Covenanters. The first five episodes in the series dealt with ancient and medieval Scotland and were originally broadcast this time last year (they've recently been repeated on BBC Four). The second five episodes begin in the late 1500s and will be broadcast starting on 8th November, with the last of the original five programmes, "Project Britain" currently viewable online on BBC iPlayer. The series is presented by Neil Oliver.

The Covenanters' story deserves a wider Ulster stage than just 30 minutes on radio - and sadly I expect that the BBC Scotland programmes will reduce Ulster to a footnote - but hopefully the programme will be a first step to something bigger. With thanks to everyone for the enormous graft that's gone into making the programme happen.

(The photo above is of the Alexander Peden memorial at Glenwherry, County Antrim - just up the Douglas Road at Mistyburn. Click to enlarge)

Ravara Pipe Band @ Portrush, August 2009

Over at Aiblins, Mr Ulster-Scot has been showing off his new blog design (which is great) and his fancy new digital video camera (which is also great). The clip below is from his impressive 57 video YouTube channel. Great quality images and audio.



It's a good example of why the future of independent publishing is definitely online, not in budget-limited, circulation-limited and editorially-controlled print - or indeed the even more controlled world of broadcasting. Ulster-Scots might make a small dent on traditional media (and congratulations to those who are working to that end, and who have given me a number of opportunities to dabble there too), but in a world that's going online, where in 2006 online advertising in the UK eclipsed newspaper advertising and just last month overtook television advertising, the internet is the medium that matters. And blogging is FREE.

I was talking to someone from Channel 4 a few weeks ago, who said that a massive 25% of the audience for the teen-docu-drama Skins only watch it online. And here's another example of how concerned European television news companies are about the internet.

(Interestingly, President Obama has been talking about a bailout of the declining mainstream media, much like the car industry, insurance giants and the banks. Perhaps the establishment needs an establishment media?).

Here at Bloggin fae the 'Burn I'm now up to an average of almost 2000 unique users every month (last month it was 1960 to be precise). Surprisingly, the post about Veda is one of the top ten most visited pages!.

Mandolin therapy

Therapy for the mandolin, and therapy for me too. I've been footering with it now and again in between other things - here are the before and after pics. (I first blogged about it back in May).

Bothwell Bridge, 20 June 1903

(click to enlarge)

This photo is from the "Bothwell Bridge National Memorial" book, which was produced following the installation of the monument to the many Covenanters who fought and died on this spot in 1679. 224 years after the battle, 25,000 - 30,000 spectators gathered for the installation event.

Of the many dignatories on the Committee which organised the monument and event was Lord Rosebery. He had been Prime Minister from 1894 - 1895, and in a speech in Edinburgh in November 1911 (where he shared the platform with Whitelaw Reid, the US Ambassador to Britain who was of Co Tyrone Covenanter descent) Rosebery famously said:

"I love Highlanders and I love Lowlanders, but when I come to that branch of our race that has been grafted on to the Ulster stem, I take off my hat in veneration and in awe. They are, I believe, without exception the toughest, the most dominant, the most irresistible race that exists in the universe at this moment."

Things not to say to your wife

Was sent this today!

Tonight on RTE - "Cork's Bloody Secret"

For those of you who're staying in the house tonight, this programme looks like essential viewing.

In April 1922, in Dunmanway, County Cork, the IRA pulled ten Protestants from their beds and murdered them. For the first time ever, the victims' families in the tiny Protestant remnant in Cork have agreed to talk about those events on camera.

Read the review by Eoghan Harris about it here:
Exorcising the dark, bloody secrets of IRA in West Cork

An earlier, similar story is The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor, which was nominated in 2002 for the Booker Prize. You can read Feargal Keane's review here: A timely reminder of the Irish Republic's brush with a kind of ethnic cleansing

The "victims issue" of the recent Troubles has been under scrutiny again in Northern Ireland over the last few weeks. And there are more, so many more, long-forgotten atrocities. May society, and the world, never allow these tragedies to be swept under the carpet.

Ulster-Scots lecture week in Markethill

I'm off to Markethill in County Armagh this evening to give a 40 min Powerpoint / illustrated talk on the Hamilton & Montgomery Settlement of 1606. It's the first in a series of talks being given every night this week in the Old Courthouse. The full list is:

Monday 5th October - Mark Thompson
1590s - 1625 (Hamilton & Montgomery Settlement)

Tuesday 6th October - William Roulston
1625 - 1660 (Covenants)

Wednesday 7th October - Knox Hyndman
1660 - 1689 (Persecution)

Thursday 8th October - Harry Coulter
1690 - 1811 (Covenanters to Reformed Presbyterians)

Friday 9th October - Robert McCollum
1811 - Present (19th & 20th Centuries)

The events have been organised by the local (Ballenon and Ballylane) Reformed Presbyterian churches. Each talk begins at 7.30

Barnamaghery Yin Yin

No, it's not the Ulster dialect of Chinese!. Barnamaghery is a small townland out near Darragh Cross and Kilmore in the middle of County Down. This is a photo of the Orange hall, and the lodge that meets there is Barnamaghery LOL 11 - or, as the locals say, Barnamaghery Yin Yin. It might be a surprise to find evidence of Scots speech in that part of Country Down - but Montgomery's estates in 1606 included the area around Kilmore, so maybe some of the folk there date back to that first major settlement.

New Music!

Have just uploaded three of our "Scullery Table Demos" for people to listen to. Hope you enjoy them, rough as they are!

The Quireboys in Belfast - Friday 4 December

We all have regrets in life - things we didn't do that we should have, things we did do that we shouldn't. One of mine is not going to see the great Newcastle-upon-Tyne band the Quireboys when I was 18. It was 20 years ago, the year of my A levels, and what I recall is that the date of the concert clashed with our school 6th Form formal. For a variety of reasons I (reluctantly) opted for the formal, whilst my mate Darren went to see the Quireboys. For a variety of reasons my night didn't go the way I'd hoped it might (in hindsight, there was probably one colossal missed opportunity in the midst of it all...) and of course Darren claimed it was the best concert he'd ever been to. The Quireboys' sound is like classic 70s British rock music, with a Rod Stewarty vocal sound. They have an acoustic album on the way for November, and the track "Mona Lisa Smiled" on their website has some lovely wee splashes of mandolin all over it. So I reckon I might well go and see them, and fill in the gap that's been missing for the past 20 years! Mona Lisa Smiled: Misled:

Albert Einstein and God

Was sent this video today:



It seems to be a tv ad (made by an advertising agency based in Belgrade called New Moment, New Ideas) for the Government of the Republic of Macedonia as one of a series of commercials aimed at promoting education.

There's no evidence that the story shown in the video ever took place, but it's an interesting piece anyway.

McCravy Brothers, the Gleaner Quartet and the importance of old 78s

Graeme and I were out last night playing/singing at the Iron Hall in east Belfast. We played "Victory in Jesus", a hymn I learned from an old 78 that my aunt Rhoda loaned me a few years ago. The recording was by the Gleaner Quartet from Belfast and recorded in the late 40s / early 50s. So I told that story after we sang it, and to my amazement at the end of the evening 4 or 5 of the older men in the church made a beeline towards us when the meeting was over.

One of them was the son of one of the Gleaners! - and, better still, the folk in the church had found an old reel-to-reel tape of their recordings and had digitised it. So they gave us a CD each of 9 Gleaners recordings, and all really good stuff! The best part of the story is that the old 78 had a song on the B side which wasn't on the old tape, and which these men have never heard. The son told me that his father had died about 3 years ago, and that his mother plays the cd regularly as a reminder of her husband. Poignantly, the song that I have, which they don't have, is "If We Never Meet Again this side of Heaven". So I'll be posting it to them on a CD this week.

Also, the McCravy Brothers were an American (South Carolina) brother duet that Rhoda also had a few 78s of. Both of the Brothers are now dead, but one of their cousins, Paul McCravy, has been in touch with me by email. He's amazed that people across the Atlantic had even heard of the McCravy Brothers, and so he's going to send me photos and information about them that have never been published.

To think of the old recordings, books and photographs that have been dumped over the years... what a legacy they held, and how much has been lost! I'm just fortunate to still have some that were passed down to me, and to be able to make connections with today's families - both here in Ulster and across the Atlantic - through the surviving recordings of 50 years ago.

Clips of both are below, firstly Johnny Cash doing "If We Never Meet Again", and then the McCravy Brothers doing "The Glorious Gospel Train":

Alexander Peden and Alex Salmond

What might these two have in common, apart from their first names? Well, back in 2007 when Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, visited Stormont he gave a speech with a very emotive reference in it. In reference to the links between Scotland and Ulster, he said:

"...You are the blood of our blood and the bone of our bone..."

That made a quite few people really sit up and take notice. He had used the same figure of speech a few days previously on BBC Northern Ireland's "Hearts and Minds" programme in preparation for his visit.

It's not the kind of thing most people say in daily speech. So I was amazed to find when I was reading Alexander Peden's The exact Copy of a Letter from Mr. Alexander Peden to the Prisoners in Dunnottar Castle, in the Month of July 1685, pretty much the same terminology, but in a different context:

"...to send all the Elect into the world, and to deliver them all fairly to CHRIST; and also to give him a Body, Flesh of their Flesh and Bone of their Bone; and to carry CHRIST through in all his Undertaking in that Work, and to hold him by the Hand..."

Now it could be coincidental (can I suggest coincidence with a Calvinist Covenanter?!) but it is very interesting...

Robert Burns: The People's Poet - on BBC4

Saw this on BBC4 last night - really superb documentary, and more about his life rather than his work. Was about 1 1/2 hrs, highly recommended. But of course the special significance of Belfast was left out. There is DEFINITELY enough good material for a television programme to be made about Burns and Ulster.

Click here to watch it, or even to download.

Satan, your Kingdom must come down

Here's a version of a strange old American negro spiritual:



It was made famous in the early 90s by the American alt-country band Uncle Tupelo, but one of the earliest recordings of it appears on this box set, sung by Reverend Willie Mae Eberhart & Sister Fleeta Mitchell.

Stuggy and Wee

As I've posted here before, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family, in a community, in an area, where Ulster Scots words and phrases were part of everyday life, and even though it was more diluted than the Ulster-Scots of my parents, who in turn used a form more diluted than their parents, Ulster-Scots still leavened and coloured our daily speech. Not in the classroom, or even in the closest town (Newtownards), but certainly at hame wi oor ain yins.

Well, fast forward 30 odd years - Hilary took our two boys to get their hair cut yesterday. When they came back, Charlie's looked very uneven, so I brushed my hand through it and said "Charlie, your hair's all stuggy". It was a word often used in our house when I was wee, as my ma used to cut our hair for us - and despite her best efforts, with us as moving targets, stuggy was a regular aftermath!

The definition of stuggy from Chambers Concise Scots Dictionary is "a jagged or uneven cut, anything left coarse by uneven cutting". (Interestingly, stuggy isn't in The Hamely Tongue )

There was a discussion on Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster a few weeks back about the use of the word "wee", as in "put in your wee PIN number", or "what about a wee biscuit" etc. "Wee" is part of everybody's speech in Northern Ireland, and whilst I'll admit it's over-used to a ridiculous degree, it's another example of cultural markers of Scottish origin which permeate everybody's life here. The presenters seemed to be doing all sorts of contortions to NOT describe "wee" as Ulster-Scots though. The closest they got was when one of them said "isn't that a Northern Irish and Scottish word". But maybe even that small acknowledgement of a cultural continuity that stretches across the water is another wee step forward...

Rangers story in today's Daily Telegraph

Here's an excerpt from today's paper that will interest some of you. It follows Rangers' very credible 1-1 draw with Stuttgart in Germany on Wednesday night:

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

Sectarianism alive and well in Stuttgart

Rangers' visit to Baden-Württemberg this week was their third excursion to the area on Champions League business, a fact remarked upon by the Vfb Stuttgart president, Dr Erwin Staudt, when he addressed the Ibrox directors at the lunch traditionally given by the host club for their visitors on the day of the match.

"We specially welcome our friends from Glasgow with whom we are building a bond," said the affable Staudt.

"You have been here three times and we have been in Glasgow three times. We are both football clubs with long histories and passionate supporters."
The Rangers VIPS, who have had to become used to picking their way through the minefield of political correctness in recent years, nodded in agreement at these unexceptional observations.

However, they were bolt upright in their seats when the Herr Doktor went on: "And what is more, you are a Protestant club – and we also are a Protestant club."

Staudt then pointed at one his own directors and boomed: "We only employ one Catholic – and it is him!" At which the nominated director threw his hands in the air and cried out: "I am sorry! I am sorry!"

Altogether now, as they might sing in Baden-Württemberg: "Hallo! Hallo! Wir sind der Billy Boys!"

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

It's hard to know where fact ends and fiction begins in the piece, but it seems like the allegedly humourless Germans have more humour than the British press. Here are the goals:



.

Ballyhalbert airfield

Right behind my hoose was a WWII airfield. During my lifetime it was/is a caravan park, now being developed with a massive housing scheme. These pics are available at larger sizes on this website, showing the airfield and also showing just how narrow the Peninsula is.








I've got some original memorabilia from RAF Ballyhalbert - posters for Christmas pantomimes, formal balls in the Officers' mess, that kind of thing. Hamilton, Montgomery and Thomas Smith would have found aerial photography a big help in planning their Ards Peninsula estates 400 odd years ago!