Animal cruelty

As I went up tae a wee hoose farm
A wee bark cam oot an dugged at me
I lifted my shouther over ma stick
An gien the wee dug such a lug on the lick
An made its water ee

(sent to me by Samuel, Carrowdore)

Joseph Braddell & Son, Belfast; manufacturers of breech loading shotguns, rifles & pistols. Established 1811

Saw this beautiful old label recently. Location of the shop? - next door to The Ulster Club - must have been a well-known venue in its day.

Robert Wallace Murray - Confederate Army veteran, Belfast entrepreneur and philanthropist & resident of Newcastle, County Down.

Robert Wallace Murray was born in Jerusalem, Virginia, on February 9th 1836 (in 1888 the town's name was changed to Courtland). He was educated at home by his father, Dr Robert Murray, who had been born somewhere in Ireland, and who had been a classical scholar. The family lived in a large historic building called Elm Grove which Dr Murray bought in 1832, where he set up a school for local children. One of the pupils was William Walter White (1842-1918) a minister's son who later joined the Confederate Army (see biography here).

On the outbreak of the American Civil War, aged 25, Robert Wallace Murray joined General Robert E. Lee's regiment of the Confederate Army and is said to have 'participated in the brilliant dashes which made the Southern Commander famous in the earlier stages of the war.' (The National Park Service website records a Private Robert W Murray who served in the G Company of the 6th Regiment of the Virginia Infantry which had been raised in Norfolk, Virginia in May 1861. One of the regiment's field officers was Colonel William Mahone who like Murray also came from Jerusalem).

After the War Murray moved to Warrington in Lancashire and then to Ulster. He married Marion Workman at St John's Presbyterian Church, Newtownbreda on 7 June 1866. Marion died of typhoid fever on Boxing Day 1882, aged 37. Murray married again, on 19 March 1884, to Elizabeth Murray at Fisherwick Presbyterian Church.

He prospered in his new homeland and became a J.P. for County Antrim, Chairman of the famous Belfast tobacco firm Murray, Sons & Co, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Victoria Hospital, a Director of the Belfast Ropeworks Co. Ltd. and a member of the Belfast Harbour Board. He stood as a Liberal candidate in the election of 1886 for the constituency of East Belfast.

He penned a number of works - 'Modern Hindrances to Faith', 'General Lee' and 'Eighteen Months in the Confederate Army' a lecture which was published in 1877.

His home was Enniskeen, on the Bryansford Road near Newcastle - the 1901 Census records that he was 65 years old and his wife Elizabeth was 64. They had 4 female servants. The house is now the Enniskeen Country House Hotel (website here, including this overview of the history of the house).



He died on Christmas Eve of December 1904, leaving half of his estate to the London Missionary Society, and large bequests to Forster Green Consumptive Hospital (£75,000), the Belfast Society for Providing Nurses for the Sick Poor, and Belfast Hospital for Sick Children.

The former headquarters of Murray, Sons & Co. on Belfast's Sandy Row, has recently undergone a £5m refurbishment (shown below). I am sure someone out there can do further research into this fascinating man.





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

POSTSCRIPT 1 - The Virginian Pilot newspaper of Norfolk, Virginia reported on 20 May 1900 that Murray's brother was Rev James Murray, a noted Presbyterian minister and then pastor of Hampden-Sydney College. James was planning a trip to Belfast to visit Robert, after which he planned to go to the Paris Exposition. A third brother, Dr William W Murray was a pharmacist based in Suffolk, Virginia.

POSTSCRIPT 2 - This document contains the following details: '...In 1832 Oswin Ricks sold the property to Dr. Robert Murray, an Irish-born physician. Tradition states that Murray operated a school at Elm Grove at mid-century, a belief substantiated by the 1850 census which lists fourteen girls and two boys (in addition to the Murrays's own six children) residing at the house at that time. Murray sold the property to William W. Briggs in 1858. In 1887 Lucius Manry, father of the present owner, bought Elm Grove...'

Elm Grove is on the National Register of Historic Places and is shown below:


POSTSCRIPT 3 - before some looper froths at the mouth about the Confederates, and jumps to all sorts of bonkers conclusions, I am of course aware that there were men of Ulster descent on both sides of the Civil War / War Between the States / etc., including the Union Army's General Ulysses Simpson Grant whose ancestral home is near Ballygawley in County Tyrone. He went on to become US President. Grant visited the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast in January 1879. It's easy to imagine Gustav Wolff greeting the former President, with fellow directors of related companies. I wonder if R.W. Murray J.P. was with the welcoming party, and if he revealed to Grant that just 15 years earlier they had been wartime adversaries? Or if he stood at the back quietly whistling 'Dixie'?

'he stabbed her in the heart and her heart's blood did flow...'

A new take on the famous Appalachian murder ballad 'Pretty Polly', by Vandaveer. Beautifully shot.

Multicultural Ulster - introduction

Left: Detail from the Census of Ireland form, 1911.

What if everything you know is wrong? What if the stereotype of 'two tribes' in a state of constant antagonism in Ulster/Ireland is not true? What if it is in fact a relatively recent invention - and what if the actual story of Ulster / Ireland is of a truly multicultural place with thousands of years of comings and goings of different peoples and influences?

It has been said that there is no such thing as Irish history, just Irish mythology. The Census form here shows that 100 years ago efforts were made to avoid 'vague' terminology. Sadly this wisdom has not applied for the past few generations. People have been told that there are just two groups and that they belong to one or the other and never the twain shall meet or have met. But how would this place change for the better if everyone who has been fed that stereotype throughout their lives - and who as a result is boxed in to one of those 'two tribes' - had grown up understanding a bigger, broader and more accurate story?

Maybe rushing back to a selective interpretation of the 17th century, seeking justification to hate your neighbour, (as so many people ultimately seem to do) is a very unhealthy pastime and a very bad idea.

Over a series of posts to follow I am going to attempt to map out a complex, hopefully interesting, Alternative Ulster. The next post will begin with a family trip we made to Newgrange in the Boyne Valley in 2009 - a 5000 year old structure which is older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids...

St Patricks Channel, Donaghadee

The Law v The Gospel (by Ralph Erskine, Dunfermline)

One for Sunday. The Bible shows us that the Law of God demands an impossibly high standard of perfection. No-one can achieve it - but many try to do so, and either end up:

a) filled with pride as they admire what they see as their 'successes' - as the poem above says it takes 'boasting' and 'feeds it to my bane', or

b) filled with despair when they experience repeated failure.

Jesus came and raised the bar. To paraphrase, He shocked his listeners one day by telling them 'here's a list of things that the Law says, if you do them, are sins. Well, even if you think about them that's sin too'. Only Jesus meets the perfect standard required the Law - and not only for Himself, but on behalf of all of the failures who trust in Him. I'm not a follower of Jesus because I am a 'good person' or as people in Northern Ireland often say 'good living'. I follow Him because I am a failure, rotten to the core in word, thought, deed and motive - but His perfection covers my failure completely. Ulsterman William McComb put it like this, inspired by these famous words from the Apostle Paul.

And so the Gospel, as the poem says, - 'yields me full relief'. And that relief, and gratitude, I hope is bringing about a change.

National Tartan Day in the USA

Greetings to my US readers who are celebrating National Tartan Day today. The date of April 6th was chosen as this is the date of KIng Robert the Bruce's Declaration of Arbroath on 6 April 1320 - a document seen as the predecessor of the Scottish Covenants, the US Declaration of Independence, and therefore by default both the Ulster Covenant and the Women's Declaration of 1912. Of the 46 men who signed the Declaration of Arbroath, many had served under Edward (and Robert) Bruce during their campaign in Ulster/Ireland from 1315-1318. The list of signatories is available here.

See the Declaration of Arbroath online here.

Multicultural Ulster?

If you take the time to read the great historical volumes published in the 1800s, ie prior to the political turmoils of the various Home Rule crises which began in 1886, what you'll notice is the orthodox view was that Ulster as a province had been, throughout the centuries and millennia, a truly multicultural place. This is not understood today. Will post more here soon to develop this idea.

New DNA evidence indicates 10% of Scottish men are descended from the Picts; 3% of Northern Irish men too.

Interesting story here. '...The Picts were assumed to have “disappeared”. But this version of history has since been updated and it is now believed they were overtaken by political events becoming assimilated by incoming Scots invading from Ireland...'

(oops - just fixed genuine typo in title - thanks Mick!)

This Easter, the biggest tv show in America is 'The Bible'

The other night I listened to an interview on BBC Radio Five Live with British-born tv man Mark Burnett, the producer of "Survivor" and "The Apprentice" to name but two examples, discussing his new series "The Bible: A story of God and all of us". It is being broadcast on The History Channel and has already been watched by an estimated 50 million people. See article here. Of course the Guardian hates it.

I have not seen it yet, so am not endorsing it, just letting readers know about it.

Roll Away Your Stone

One with a hint of Easter Sunday.



'You told me that I would find a hole
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal
And all the while my character it steals...

It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But you say that's exactly how this Grace thing works
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with the re-start...'

Duck Commander

Thanks to Robert for this.

History of Lisburn

'... the town possesses much historic and modern charm. Its old name was Lisnegarvey ("the gamester's fort"). It was laid out in 1609 by Sir Fulkes Conway, of Conway, Wales, and one can glean from its signboards how English, Irish, Scotch and French Huguenots contributed to its making...'

from Belfast and Northern Ireland Illustrated Guide Book by Ward Lock & Co, c. 1945.

St Patrick and Donaghadee

'... Among favourite short walks from Donaghadee is that to Bangor, by the shore road, and that to St Patrick's Well, a mile southward from the town by the Mill Isle Road, beyond the cable-house. The water is reputed to be a cure for headache ...'

from Belfast and Northern Ireland Illustrated Guide Book by Ward Lock & Co, c. 1945.

St Patrick and Donaghadee (Templepatrick townland to be precise). People used to know this stuff. Nowadays it's implied that only nutters and extremists dare bring this information to public attention. What a strange world we live in.

Ward Lock and Cos 'Belfast and Northern Ireland' 1940s

A gem of a wee book found yesterday in Bushmills. More excerpts to follow.

Dear Someone

Some lovely renditions of the Gillian Welch / David Rawlings waltz tempo song.

An Independent People - The Story of Ulster's Presbyterians.

The first part of this three part series was broadcast here in Northern Ireland last night on BBC2, presented by William Crawley and made by Below the Radar television.

Those of you who know me know that over the years (I think justifiably) I have often been critical of how television companies and broadcasters have got away with stereotyping the story of the Ulster-Scots. There is not enough space here to rehearse all of that, and to hoke it up now would be a distraction.

The first part of 'An Independent People - The Story of Ulster's Presbyterians' dealt with the 1600s, set the 1500s context of both Scotland and Ireland as well as the Reformation in Geneva, and did not shy away from some of the tough stuff around 1641 and of the deceptions around 1690.

I have to commend the production company, William Crawley, and the researchers and scriptwriters. The production values and visual qualities were beautiful in places. There were admittedly a couple of wee wrinkles from contributors - but overall it was an excellent piece of work and judging by emails and phone conversations I have had today, a lot of hard-to-please Ulster folk that I know thought likewise.

Our story is a mighty story and it was refreshing to see it given due respect, treated with depth and substance and not reduced to caricature. I am very much looking forward to the next two episodes.

Click here to see the promo clip

Washington Phillips (1880 - 1954) - 'What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?'

The Lone Bellow - NPR Tiny Desk Concert