The Advantages of Extremism, by John Cleese

"Love Thy Neighbour"

(• Photo above is from Ullans Magazine, 1999, published by the Ulster-Scots Language Society. It shows a group of men from the Ards Peninsula and Scotland "tattie hoakin" together at the "Scotch Harvest" in 1938. The men's names and home places are given, showing that they are a "cross community" group of workers. Friends and neighbours working together).
.................

The enforced slowdown caused by the present coronavirus lockdown has created opportunities to clear out, to reflect, to remember. I'd been doing that in January and February anyway - I am just two years away from turning 50 and found myself reconsidering various things I've done with my time and energy in adulthood.

I like to meet people who are in some way different to me. It is important to try to see through other eyes. Having said that, exaggerating those differences is a disaster.

In my Northern Ireland context, I don't think there are "two perspectives" - there are hundreds or thousands of perspectives. But the old "two tribes" prism is deeply, deeply embedded –institutionalised even. Reinforced daily, unhealthily and maybe even poisonously.

Those men in the photo above were my grandfathers' generation. Labouring and sweating together till they died. And getting on with their neighbours of "the other side" because above all they were lifelong neighbours and friends first.

Let's go further back. My great-great-grandfather Robert Thompson of Ballyfrench was born about 200 years ago, in the 1820s. His best friend, and best man, was Thomas Curran (born 1820) who was originally from Ballygalget. You can work out that from the names and the geography, they were from what would be divisively called today our "two communities". Robert married Nancy McClement on 6 November 1847 at Ards Registry Office and Thomas was Robert's witness on the certificate. Robert and Thomas were later buried beside each other - still today there's a tall Curran gravestone in the Thompson corner of Ballyhalbert's ancient graveyard. We think later Currans became Presbyterian.

Actual community and actual relationship served both of those previous generations well, in life and in death. But social changes in our lifetimes have made our modern lives become more atomised, individualised, and digitalised. And consequently tribalised, maybe 'digitribalised' in an abstract way, with no actual relational context. The term 'friend' has been redefined. I find social media is very good for maintaining contact and crack with people I actually know in the real world. But I have also been ambushed a few times by passing acquaintances who are Facebook 'friends' in the digital realm only.

We form opinions of others based not on how we have actually experienced them, but on how we perceive them through their truncated, edited, digital lives. And that's what those 'friends' had done with me.

We need to meet
Current coronavirus social distancing restrictions have made it impossible, illegal in fact, to meet with other people from outside our own households. The disembodied world of Zoom meetings and Skype conferences and online church “services” is presently necessary but in our beings we know that these are deeply humanly unsatisfactory. We need to be with others, even if 2m or 1m apart.

But we have slid into a kind of socially impoverished state through our reliance on screen world that we have inhabited for at least 10 years - smartphones in our pockets, consuming curated information. Forming opinions and being emotionally recruited through outrage against people we have never met and probably never will meet. Ressentiment.

Sam Harris wrote this a few years ago –

"Social media is clearly driving us all insane. This is a psychological experiment that nobody signed up for and we are all in it, and we each have to curate the contents of our own consciousness a little more carefully than we have been, and rethink our relationship to these platforms"

I used to think it was only the more aggressive end of the evangelical fringe that loved to lambast people from afar. But it seems that keyboards and our digital world now let everybody and anybody do just the same.

On the other hand, the digital world has also enabled me to have long-distance and very positive interactions with a wide spectrum of people - some I would have lost touch with, and others I might never have met. This scrapbooky blog has been a great platform to throw ideas out there and to get responses from people in various parts of the world. For that I am very grateful.

But I will look forward to meeting some of you in person, hopefully soon. Coffee smells far better when there's more than one cup.

Kilnave on Islay – the Macdonalds versus the Macleans - Battle of Gruinart Beach 1598

If you get to the shores of North Antrim and strike out beyond Rathlin Island you will soon reach the Scottish island of Islay, home to many world-famous distilleries. It is an ancient place and full of stories. Here's one which shows that you don't need a flag, or a nation, or competing religions, to have conflict. Just envy, ambition, wounded pride and bloodlust.  I've copied this from Instagram, having caught my eye when it was posted over a year ago...

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

Kilnave Chapel on Islay has a bloody history, being the site of an atrocity committed on 5 August 1598 during the Battle of Gruinart Beach. The background was the historical possession of Islay by Clan MacDonald, which in the 1590s made it the property of the MacDonald clan chief Sir James MacDonald.

Conflict arose because of the claim by Sir Lachlan Mor Maclean of Duart on Mull, who was Sir James MacDonald's uncle, that in the 1566 the Rhinns of Islay had been given to him by Sir James' father, Angus MacDonald, as a dowry on the occasion of Lachlan's marriage to Angus's sister and James' aunt.

Sir Lachlan Mor Maclean sought to claim what he believed rightfully belonged to him by landing in Loch Gruinart with some 800 men. Negotiations with Sir James MacDonald failed, and in the battle that followed, Sir Lachlan Mor Maclean and 280 of his followers were killed. MacDonald losses were fewer, but Sir James MacDonald was seriously wounded.

Most of the surviving Macleans returned to their boats, but a group of 30 was cut off and retreated instead to Kilnave Chapel. All but one were killed when the MacDonalds set fire to the chapel's thatched roof.

Voddie Baucham on Racial Reconciliation

"The Terror" now on Amazon

I don't do "box sets" as they take too much time commitment, but I am very glad I made an exception for 2018 period drama The Terror in the early weeks of lockdown. Ciaran Hinds and Jared Harris take the lead in a claustrophobic nautical psychological horror based on the 2007 Dan Simmons novel about the infamous 1840s voyage to the North West Passage, from which Banbridge man Captain Francis Crozier (played by Harris; Wikipedia here) never returned - the ships and crew were never seen again. Harris' accent drifts up and down the A1 and M1 between Banbridge and Dublin across the ten episodes, but it's gripping stuff.

• Buy all 10 episodes here on Amazon.

Old Comber Whisky and Ernest Milligan, 1907

"To Comber A went, an' the point-to-point races,
Where lass her new gown and the horse shows his paces,
For the glass that's sae cheerin', maist heartsome o' places
An' if spared A'll do next year the same;
An' if by good chance A hae time for a tassie
O' "finest aul Comber" and meet wi' me lassie
You be sure but A'll nae hurry hame".

Robert Huddleston of Moneyrea also has a poem in praise of Old Comber.

Pinks, Pincks, Pink Brae (Portavogie) and Pinks Green (Donaghadee)

Pinks or Pincks were 17th century Dutch and Scottish boats (Wikipedia link here). The Pink Brae on the outskirts of Portavogie was very familiar to me as a boy. A few years ago I found that there is a Pinks Green on the shore of Donaghadee, which is now a children's play park.

Thanks to a discussion on the Friends of the Ulster-Scots Academy Facebook group (link here; members only), a few of us pieced together references and sources which confirm the etymology:

North Down Herald 2 May 1936. ---
"the place his father played as a boy and helped the LOCAL FISHERMEN TO DRAG UP THEIR BOATS, and, having left PINK'S GREEN far behind he brings us to Shore Street."

Belfast Telegraph 6 October, 1936. ---
"Donaghadee Urban Council met on Monday evening. Application having been made for the renting of PINK'S GREEN for the LAYING UP OF BOATS during the winter season, the Council decided that this could not be granted due to it having been purchased as a people's park.

The Scots language origins of Stable Hole, Portavogie

“Stable Hole” is an obscure, but sometimes very beautiful, wee cove at the north end of Portavogie, to which I regularly walk our dog or else land the kayak in. It's not named on modern maps, but so many Ulster-Scots placenames aren't; they are found in whatever local oral tradition remains.

Stable Hole is often soft and quicksandy – my uncle John has told me that when he was a boy it was sometimes ironically nicknamed “Purgatory” because if you went in you didn’t know if you could get out. (Theologically, the Presbyterian, Methodist and Brethren locals would have found that nickname ironic and amusing).

Well it turns out that the word “Stable” in the Dictionary of the Scots Language refers very specifically to “the part of a bog in which a foundered horse is trapped”. There is more depth to Scots words than lazy assumptions that they are nothing more than bad English. And the wee places have something to say.

Signs of the Times

Away back before Ulster-Scots became "officialised" under the terms of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, local community efforts were already working away to restore a sense of place.

This photo shows one of the "Fair Fa Ye" signs which greeted motorists arriving into the Ards Borough Council area, from memory these were installed around 1994-ish. It's a greeting used by William Starratt, James Orr and of course Robert Burns. Some of the Ards Peninsula villages also had brown signs installed to restore awareness of historic street names, alongside the blander names which had been introduced by policies in the 50s and 60s (see this previous post for Killyleagh examples). This restoration was all fairly positive and affirming stuff.

But, when Ards Borough Council merged with North Down Borough Council in May 2015, the "Fair Fa Ye" signs were all taken down. This was said at the time to be only a temporary thing due to forthcoming new council rebranding. Which was technically true, because new signs were indeed installed. But they are Ulster-Scots-free jaggy blue triangles which appear to be statements of corporate council power. The town and village arrival signs have little taglines about Rory McIlroy, the seaside, tasty spuds and suchlike. But the linguistic component is gone.

These (one might say 'sleekit') actions in 2015 reflect the same 'modernisation' policies of the 1950s and 1960s. The powers that be know better, and they literally have the 'power' to do what they want. There will of course have been a modicum of public consultation and a discussion at a Council meeting showing an exciting range of blue triangles that you can choose from. But once you enter the conversation about blue triangles, you have already conceded that blue triangles is what you're going to get. I know a few folk who exhausted themselves trying to fix it, to no avail.

Significant parts of Northern Ireland are run by a suburban-minded 'white collar supremacy' layer of policy makers.

Drawing upon 1798 - the Battle of Antrim, the Barn of Scullabogue, and the Bard of "Donegore Hill"

The anniversary month of June is upon us again, marking the Battle of Antrim (7 June), the Battle of Saintfield (9 June) and the Battle of Ballynahinch (12 June), as well as many local events and skirmishes around these dates. Two slightly different illustrations of the Battle of Antrim are below, by J.W. Carey, in one of which a flag bearing the word Liberty can be clearly seen. They're fairly romantic heroic artists impressions, from 1895.

• James Orr of Ballycarry
Also below is the Bard of Ballycarry James Orr's Old Testament reference-laden intro to his poem Donegore Hill about the events preceding the Battle of Antrim and the aftermath. Published in 1804, his account is far more realistic than the two visualisations by Carey. The rage in Orr's pen is evident. Why did so few "turn out"? Why does Orr rage at those who were "laith to lea the rigs"?

• Who Dares to Speak of Scullabogue?
Part of the answer might well be found two days earlier and 220 miles south in County Wexford at Scullabogue, on this day, 5 June, in 1798.

The illustration below is George Cruikshank's famous drawing of the burning of the barn at Scullabogue in Wexford, where the United Irishmen insurgents imprisoned almost 200 civilians, overwhelmingly Protestant, into a barn and set it on fire. It is as grisly as Carey's are heroic, with echoes of the engravings of Portadown bridge in 1641 and the barbaric images in early volumes about "The Killing Times" in 1600s Scotland. You can read more about Scullabogue on Wikipedia here.

It's widely accepted that news of the horrors of Scullabogue had a major effect on diminishing support for the Rebellion in Antrim and Down, although in Ireland: The Politics of Enmity (link here) Professor Paul Bew asserts that the reports hadn't come north before the Battle of Antrim - but that there was a further sectarian massacre on the bridge of Wexford just over a fortnight later on 20 June.

• Claims, allegations and invoking the memory
It was said that it was done in response to rumours that some of the United Irishmen who had been captured at New Ross were being executed. In later years, it was alleged that the barn atrocity at Scullabogue had in fact been carried out by agents of the Dublin establishment to purposely –

"palsy the efforts of the North at that more critical period of the people's cause ... that massacre was concocted in the Castle of Dublin ... the object was gained by this infernal scheme. The Northern Presbyterians, believing the story, gave up their arms ... national independence had been superseded and has merged into a religious warfare."

Yet in November 1869 in County Cavan, the Ribbonmen movement revelled in the power of the folk memory when they threatened local opponents with a proclamation they posted in public places around the county. It advocated the sectarian boycott of a miller named William Matchell of 'Killyconnell', and ended with "remember Scullabogue Barn and tremble".

The barn site was cleared in the 1990s; a memorial stone stands nearby today, with this message within the inscription –

The remorse of the United Irish at this outrage, a tragic departure
from their ideals, is shared by the people of Ireland.

This blog has more details. An ecumenical memorial service was held at St Mary's Church in Old Ross in 1998.

• The Two Henrys
Also, compare the memorialising of the two Henrys of Antrim and Down. Belfast Presbyterian United Irishman leader Henry Joy McCracken and his role the Battle of Antrim (as well as his public hanging but not beheading in Belfast) is a celebrated figure. Yet the Lisburn Church of Ireland United Irishman leader Henry Munro and his role at the Battle of Ballynahinch (as well as his public hanging and beheading in Lisburn) is nowhere near as well known. Maybe his Church of Ireland dimension just confuses the Presbyterian-heavy narratives which are so commonly told now. Or maybe Belfast sets the storytelling agenda.

• The Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian divisions, Inter-National and Ulster-Scots
1798 is very complex. There is much to learn from 1798, and how we remember matters. I think much of the remembering is well-intentioned but is not always well-informed. People are keen to find an era of heroic cross-community co-operation, a shining moment, and edited versions of 1798 provide that. Often the attraction is to what 1798 represents, rather than to what actually happened. Here are just a handful of examples –

• The Portaferry and Ballyhalbert Presbyterian minister William Steele-Dickson's account in his 1812 memoir Narrative shows that the Church of Ireland dimension was very significant - of the 20 leaders he listed by name and denomination, 4 were Catholic, 6 were Presbyterian and 10 were Church of Ireland (link here).

• The "Presbyterians = all of one mind" or "Presbyterians = good" or "Presbyterians = pro-Rebellion" simplifications that you come across today just aren't true. The Preface of Steele-Dickson's book shows that the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster had gone to war with him and had "laboriously struggled to prevail on Dr Dickson to degrade his character".

• There were atrocities in Ulster too carried out by United Irishmen. In a Scullabogue-like horror, a family called McKee were infamously besieged and burned to death in their farmstead home at Craigy near Saintfield - a family account of the event is online here. One of the wider family circle, Joseph McKee, went to Nashville and became a pioneer in educating African-American freed slaves (previous post here). The minister of St Mary's Comber, Rev Robert Mortimer, was shot dead in cold blood while travelling towards Saintfield and his body reportedly sent back home tied onto his horse.

• The connections with similar movements in Scotland and England are usually overlooked due to the limitations of concepts of nationality. The United movement was in a sense an 'inter-national' movement, with United Scotsmen and United Britons. Dickson made frequent visits to Scotland to develop those links and to propose a simultaneous rebellion there.

• That the language of the Antrim and Down rebellion was Ulster-Scots (weaver poets, WG Lyttle, Samuel Keightley, etc) doesn't sit comfortably with many.

• that so many of the thinkers and leaders were Freemasons hardly gets a mention these days, because it’s not socially or politically useful to do so. Yet culturally and historically that’s a pretty significant dimension

But complexity matters because convenient simplifications can be dangerous. The Presbyterian poet Francis Boyle lived in Granshaw, in the hinterland of Comber where so many United Irishmen were from and returned to. Published in 1811 his poem 'The Colonel's Retreat' ends with –

My friends, be admonished no more to rebel,
Its dreadful effects there's no Poet can tell,
It desolates countries, proves nations' o'erthrow,
Brings men to the scaffold like General Munro.

FURTHER READING –
• A History of the Rise, Progress and Suppression of the Rebellion in the County of Wexford (1829 edition) by George Taylor of Ballywalter in Wexford, is online here. Taylor had escaped from the massacre on the bridge of Wexford on 20 June 1798. It is a fascinating primary source and ends with his horrific personal testimony dated 18 July 1798. The illustration below is another by Cruikshank, a depiction of a murder taking place on the bridge.

• This review of Professor Tom Dunne's 2004 book Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798 looks like a fascinating critique of the 'official' bicentenary commemorations in Wexford in 1998. Local councils in Northern Ireland were criticised in 1998 for not doing very much at all to mark the Antrim and Down events*, with some critics alleging that this was due to the mostly Unionist makeup of those Councils. Well it looks like the Wexford events can be viewed with an equivalent skepticism.

• Remembering 1798 by Professor Roy Foster is a strong read (link here).

* PS - I think there's a hint of conspiracy about this theory. In my experience, in general, local councillors have little influence over policy and sadly very few are passionate about local history anyway. But they are busy – they have day jobs, they are expected to be across multiple briefs, with various committees to attend in evenings and functions at weekends, and unlike the swarms of 9-5 public servants who are salaried to daily craft policies and yet more red tape, councillors just don't have comparable time to devote.

But the booklet that Ards Borough Council published in 1998 (previous post here) is an important one as it contains information not available elsewhere. The Mayor that year was George Ennis. He grew up in my area. I first met him around 1999 when he was trying to prevent bad planning policy wrecking Ballyhalbert, but he was a lone voice in that effort. I have always found him to be a quiet, straightforward and community-minded man with a genuine interest in local heritage. He didn't stay long in politics; I like bumping in to him when out and about and he always has a kind word to say about my own efforts. His preface to the booklet is below.

For good or ill, "what we plant now we will harvest later"...

... and no planting will mean no growth, and no harvest. The crops might fail but you still have to plant. Image below from New Garden Society design studio in Serbia, via Instagram here.

"The Psalms - Frae Hebrew Intil Scottis" by P Hately Waddell (1877) - review in the 'Belfast News-Letter', 10 May 1941

It took the Belfast News-Letter a total of 64 years to get round to reviewing it, but all the same their reaction was pretty positive. I wonder who 'Viator' was?

The Hunt for Red O’Donnell

“Spanish Archaeologists have discovered human bones in their search for the remains of Red Hugh O’Donnell, one of the great tragic heroes of Irish history...” link here to this recent story in The Irish Times.

This will be a remarkable discovery of a key figure of late 1500s and early 1600s Ulster, around whom so many totemic stories revolve.

But compare the high level national excitement, south of the border, around this potential discovery with the fact that the burial places of James Hamilton (Bangor Abbey) and Hugh Montgomery (Newtownards Priory) have been known for nearly 400 years and neither of them even has a small memorial plaque. 

Consigned to history

History can be dull. It can be fascinating. But it is over. What happens today and tomorrow matters more. Because without those, all you have is a fossil, a museum, a nostalgia trip, a dead thing. What’s happening now? And why should anyone care?

James Kirkpatrick (1676–1743) on Liberty

"Civil Liberty has been always supported by invincible force of Argument; and, Civilized Nations have never reckoned it too dear a purchase, when they could gain and secure it at a vast expense of Blood and Treasure … and with a just Zeal for the Right: of Mankind never to be Sacrificed to Arbitrary Power in any Shape."

So wrote Scottish-born Belfast Non-Subscribing Presbyterian minister James Kirkpatrick (1676–1743). His essay A Defence of Christian Liberty was published in 1743, after he died, and is online here on Google Books. His An Historical Essay Upon the Loyalty of Presbyterians was published in 1713 (online here).

– biography is online here

Harry Dorrian (b. 1895) and the "Protestant Fenians of Greyabbey / The Green Lodge of Gray'ba""

During the current coronavirus period there have been many examples I've seen on social media of cross-community co-operation and good neighbourliness, folk I know personally being supportive of each other. One of them every week posts positively about all of the places of worship in the locality, and he posts four photos from the Greyabbey and Kircubbin area - of a Church of Ireland building, a Presbyterian building, a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Building and the Catholic chapel -  as he puts it "we are all looking out for each other and thinking of each other". He's well-known and well-respected man of the older generation, has a small family business, and he's an Orangeman. He's a good neighbour to all, which is reflected in the comments that folk post.

He sent me the attached article a while ago, which I hope is legible here, from 1977. It's a biographical interview with Harry Dorrian who was then aged 82. He was raised in Greyabbey and had fond memories of his childhood in the village, and of what we today would call community relations. He's listed in the 1911 Census of Ireland as Henry Dorrian, aged 15, a 'shop boy'. Interestingly it reveals that his mother Mary Jane was from Scotland.

There has not only ever been conflict. Be suspicious of people who claim there has.
Cui bono? Those making those claims usually do.

"Wha Saw The 42nd" – Robin Hall & Jimmie MacGregor

I love this hard-driving, banjo, mandolin and double bass version of "Wha Saw the 42nd?",  the story of the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment, also known as the Black Watch, leaving Glasgow for the front. There are many different versions of the lyrics.

Even though from Scotland the regiment recruited in Ulster in the late 1800s and early 1900s; its band played here, as the 1889 newspaper advert below shows. Also known as the "Gallant Forty Twa" they are referenced in the Ulster regimental song "The South Down Militia". The song is also the basis of our local Greyabbey version "Wha Saw the Greba Lasses?".

Wha saw the Forty-Second,
Wha saw them gang awa?
Wha saw the Forty-Second
Sailin doon the Broomlielaw?

Wha saw the Forty-Second,
Wha saw them gang awa?
Wha saw the Forty-Second
Sailin doon the Broomlielaw?

Some of them had tartan troosers,
Some of them had nane ava,
Some of them wore kiltie clothin,
Sailin’ doon the Broomie-Law.

Wha saw the Forty-Second,
Wha saw them gang awa?
Wha saw the Forty-Second
Sailin doon the Broomlielaw?

Some o’ them had jeelie pieces
Some were greetin’ for their ma
Some were singin ‘Auld Lang Syne’
Sailin doon the Broomlielaw

Wha saw the Forty-Second,
Wha saw them gang awa?
Wha saw the Forty-Second
Sailin doon the Broomlielaw?

This cutting below is of a man who lived at the "Pink Brae' outside Portavogie, who joined a Scottish regiment – Lance Corporal George Laidlaw of the Cameronian Highlanders whose postal address was given as Ballyeasborough, Kircubbin. There was still a family of "Ledlies" as it was pronounced still living at the Pinks when I was a boy in the 1970s & 1980s.

James Bruce - philanthropist who built Thompson House, Lisburn

The impressive building shown above was built by James Bruce (1835–1917), who was one of the directors of Royal Irish Distilleries / Dunville's. He traced his ancestry back to King Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Initally known as the Thompson Memorial Home for Incurables, Bruce built it in 1885 at a cost of £60,000 in memory of his father in law Dr William Thompson FRCSI. On its opening the Northern Whig said "rarely in Ulster has so large a sum been expended by any family on a purely philanthropic project". The architect was Godfrey William Ferguson. Today the building is known as Thompson House Hospital and it is said to have had a memorial to James Bruce inside it, which hopefully is still there.

The building looks very similar to James Bruce's country residence Benburb Manor, shown below, which was built just a few years later in 1888–90. It's a building I know well having completed an interpretative project there in summer 2017. Since 1949 it has been run by the Servite Order as Benburb Priory - it, and the setting of the Valley Park and River Blackwater, are definitely worth a visit when you are in the area.

The Ballad of William Bloat - by Raymond Calvert of Helen's Bay (1906-1959)

This famous and brutal old black comedy murder ballad is very well known, but its origin less so. It was written by Helen's Bay man Raymond Calvert, who lived at Banchory House and went to Bangor Grammar. He was a student at Queen's University where he was in the Dramatic Society.

In December 1926 they had just been to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, where 20 year old Raymond recited it for the first time at an after-party. He went on to become a stockbroker as a director of Belfast firm Taylor, Calvert and Cox. His wife Irene became an independent MP. Irene later said that "it was conceived as a piece of fun with no political significance whatsoever ... the ballad has passed into the folk memory of Ulster people at home and abroad".

It is thought to have been first printed in the 1950 miscellany Brave Crack, An Anthology of Ulster Wit and Humour, (an interesting and cross-community collection from 30 writers including Marshall, Hayward and Bell) and is set on the 'Shankill Road' (the shocking and comedic cultural reference to 'solemnly cursed the Pope' just belongs in a mythical Shankill setting). The defective razor blade was 'German made' whilst the indestructible sheet was 'Irish linen'.

But when Raymond Calvert died, on 11 July 1959, the Belfast Telegraph reprinted the lyrics a few days later but they oddly say 'Newry Road' rather than 'Shankill Road'.

The 1982 Blackstaff Press edition shown here (illustrated by Hector McDonnell) has the more familiar 'Shankill Road' but this time the razor is more benignly 'foreign made' and again 'Irish linen'. I have, as you might imagine, heard the combination of 'Dublin made' and 'Belfast linen'. Wendy Dunbar won an Irish Book Design Award in 1983 for her work on the Blackstaff edition.

I've no idea who it was who first set it to the melody The Dawning of the Day but it fits perfectly –



Tommy Makem's recording here has the razor blade 'British made' but the rope 'Belfast linen'. The Phil Coulter recitation below has 'Free State Made' and 'Ulster Linen'. A Clancy Brothers version has 'English made' and 'Irish linen'. Just insert your own prejudice!

David Hammond referred to it in his 1978 Songs of Belfast. As an outstanding achievement it was also selected to appear in Kingsley Amis' New Oxford Book of Light Verse in 1979 due to a persistent campaign of persuasion by Gregg Coulson, a retired press officer with the Post Office in Northern Ireland. I wonder what its genteel readership made of it!

However... if I was a Shankill person I might not feel as relaxed about it. Yes it is humourous, but when a drama student from swanky Helen's Bay reinforces a whole panoply of stereotypes - social poverty, nagging wives, domestic violence, religious bigotry – it's worth pausing for thought.

In a mean abode on the Shankill Road


Lived a man named William Bloat;
He had a wife, the curse of his life,
Who continually got his goat.
So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on
He cut her bloody throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash

Oh never was crime so quick

But the drip drip drip on the pillowslip
‘
Of her lifeblood made him sick.

And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor

Grew clotted and cold and thick.

And yet he was glad he had done what he had


When she lay there stiff and still

But a sudden awe of the angry law

Struck his heart with an icy chill.

So to finish the fun so well begun

He resolved himself to kill.

He took the sheet from the wife’s coul’ feet


And twisted it into a rope

And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,

‘Twas an easy end, let’s hope.

In the face of death with his latest breath

He solemnly cursed the Pope.

But the strangest turn to the whole concern

Is only just beginning.

He went to Hell but his wife got well

And she’s still alive and sinning.

For the razor blade was German made

But the sheet was Belfast linen.

Andrew A. Watt & Co. Ltd. Whisk(e)y Distillers - Londonderry and Glasgow

As 16th May is World Whisky Day I thought I should post something relevant. Andrew A. Watt & Co. Ltd. of Londonderry and Glasgow claimed an origin year of 1762. The mirror above was recommended to me by Abby Wise who had frequently seen it when visiting the George IV Bar on the George IV Bridge in Edinburgh. I now badly want one of them!

The Watt family had moved into the city from Ramelton in Donegal in 1762. They had two firms – Andrew A Watt & Co., and David Watt & Co., at Abbey Street and the Waterside.

Andrew Alexander Watt (Wikipedia here) was also a director of The Distillers' Company Ltd (Edinburgh), which had been founded in 1877 and owned a number of Scottish distilleries, as well as Chairman of United Distillers Ltd (Belfast) which included the Avoneil and Connswater distilleries. He closed the family business down in 1921 following a dispute with employees. He died at Easton Hall, Grantham, England on 11 October 1928, leaving £904,614 in his will.

Distillery Brae on the Waterside is one of the few remaining memories of this once mighty brand. It was famous for its Tyrconnell Irish Whisky (a brand which still exists today, but owned by a different distillery) and also its Craigdhu Old Highland Scotch Whisky. The firm had an agent in Glasgow based at 20 Union Street.

The company was succeeded by a new firm inventively called Iriscot Limited, seemingly around 1937, with Geoffrey Watt as one of its directors. Iriscot continued to make Craigdhu and other products up until 1972 when their bonded warehouse building, at the junction of Bond's Hill and Simpson's Brae, burned down.

• Further information is on this website.