Newtownards Priory - one of the great Ulster-Scots churches

For the first 30-odd years of my life I travelled past Newtownards Priory twice a day, either in a car or an Ulsterbus, but never knowing anything of its historic and cultural significance. It was just another old building, a bit of a wreck, no obvious signage outside it for many years and no way of getting into it either. All in all, it was an irrelevance.

How wrong I was. And why did nobody tell me this:

• it's an Anglo-Norman building, probably built by the Savages in 1244. It was one of the very earliest stone-built buildings in the Ards. Its Prior surrendered it back to the Crown in 1541 (then valued at 13 shillings and 3 pence!), who then in turn granted it to Sir Thomas Smith in 1572.

• the local landowner/land claimant in 1572 was Sir Brian O'Neill. He discovered that the English army was on its way to take over the land he believed to be his, because Queen Elizabeth had granted the land to her Secretary of State Sir Thomas Smith. Realising they would need strong buildings to garrison the troops, O'Neill burned down all of the abbeys in the area, and probably his own castle (a tower house) which was nearby.

• the Priory lay in a ruined and disused state until May 1606, when Hugh Montgomery arrived from Ayrshire with boatloads of Lowland Scots. He had struck a deal with Brian O'Neill's grandson Con - the result of which was that Montgomery got 1/3 of the O'Neill estate. James Hamilton and Con himself got the other two thirds.

• when they got off the boats at Donaghadee and did a scouting mission, the Scottish settlers found "...In the springtime of 1606, those parishes were now more wasted than America (when the Spaniards landed there)... for in all those three parishes aforesaid, 30 cabins could not be found, nor any stone walls, but ruined roofless churches, and a few vaults at Gray Abbey, and a stump of an old castle in Newton, in each of which some Gentlemen sheltered themselves at their first coming over...” (from the Montgomery Manuscripts). The Priory was one of these "ruined roofless churches".

• In 1607, Montgomery began the restoration project. There's a datestone inside the Priory with the year 1607 on it.



Montgomery doubled its' size, adding the North Aisle and the Tower (ie the parts of the building that can be seen from the road today). At the new doorway entrance to the Tower, he had his stonecutter carve some beautiful ornamented detail, as well as two Bible references on either side of Montgomery's own monogram "HLM":

"...Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil..." Ecclesiastes 5v1

"...I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD..." Psalm 122 v 1

• before winter of 1607, the Priory had been restored and "it was made decently serviceable".

• Montgomery's younger brother George was at this stage Bishop of Derry Raphoe and Clogher, so he may well have given some advice on the restoration project - he was probably doing similar work himself in the west of Ulster. Adjacent priory buildings, and the old O'Neill "stump of a castle" were also restored as residences for the Montgomeries and their workers.

• a report in 1611 said "...Sir Hugh Montgomery, Knight, hath repayred part of the abbey of Newtone for his owne dwelling, and made a good towne of a hundred houses or there aboutes, all peopled with Scottes.."

• Montgomery established a choir for the Priory, and it may well have been the first church in Ulster which witnessed the preaching of John McClelland (he went on to become one of the four Eagle Wing minister). McClelland was also the headmaster at Montgomery's classics school in Newtownards.

• Montgomery died in May 1636, and was buried inside the Priory in what was more or less a State funeral, with many nobles and lords from Ulster and Scotland in attendance. The funeral was 8 September 1636, and the emigrant ship Eagle Wing - the first ship to try to sail from Ulster to America - sailed from nearby Groomsport the very next morning.

• This postcard from 1904 shows a view of the inside - 100 years ago the Priory must have been a local tourist attraction. I have a few other similar postcards of it, scavenged from eBay




















• In 1988, parts of the building were restored by the Environment & Heritage Service. They painstakingly reproduced the ornate doorway, not on the tower of the building, but at a second entrance. Sadly they didn't reinstate the two Bible texts.



Newtownards Priory is one of the great physical examples of the impact of the Ulster-Scots, of the skill and vision that they brought to the province. Perhaps the story of the Priory, and the other first Ulster-Scots churches, are deserving of a project in their own right.

If I ever robbed a bank...

...and got away with about £30,000, this is what I'd buy - the full four-finish range of Gibson F4 mandolins, made between 1914 and 1920.







Images from this website.

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Hillbilly Murder Ballads

Old-time songs aren't all about home, faith and mother. The subject matter of the hillbilly murder ballad is usually a jilted lover who lures their unsuspecting, unfaithful, beloved to a remote location and finishes him or her (usually her) off in cold blood. Pleasant stuff. The strange thing is that these are often very sweet and melodic - lulling the listener into a false sense of security before going WHACK on the back of the head with a lump of wood and being dumped into the local river.

For example - Banks of the Ohio, performed here by Doc Watson and Bill Monroe:

(the hymn "His Hands were Pierced" is often sung to this tune)

Or the blood-curdling Knoxville Girl, performed here by the Wilburn Brothers:


Little Mathie Grove by Ralph Stanley is about a man (Arnold) who finds his wife with another man (Grove) - Arnold challenges Grove to a sword duel, kills him, and then beheads the unfaithful wife. Down in the Willow Garden is another account of a man murdering his fiancée, as is Poor Ellen Smith, who was "shot through the heart lying cold on the ground":


And just when you thought than one or two murders in a song was plenty, The Murder of the Lawson Family takes the genre to a whole new depth - a true story of the 37 year old Charlie Lawson who killed his wife and six children on Christmas Day in 1929 - and a song which entered the US Top 5 the following year. All of these songs and more can be found on this cd boxset.

The genre has been seen as an example of a "culture of honour" in the southern states of the US - a culture which has been identified with (you guessed it) the Scotch-Irish.

It all makes gangsta rap sound kinda tame. Guns don't kill people, hillbillies do.

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Footnote: I should also have included Steve Earle's brilliant Carrie Brown, from his album The Mountain. He famously said when the album was released "...The main thing wrong with country music today is there's not enough songs about killing people...". In Carrie Brown, the lyric says "I shot him in Virginia and he died in Tennessee...". Visit Bristol and you'll find out how this geographical feat would be possible!

Robert Burns - Orangeman and Freemason?!

A few folk have contacted me today following the BBC interview last evening, with my brief reference to Robert Burns having celebrated the centenary of the 1688 landing of William of Orange.

This excerpt is from Willie Drennan's most recent book, Big Lang Danner:

"On November 5th, 1788 in Dunscore, he (Burns) attended a church centennial commemoration of the landing of William at Torbay. Afterwards, in a letter, he spoke of the Stuarts and addressed “the folly of their attempts in 1715 and 1745” and followed with “that they failed I bless my God most fervently but cannot join in the ridicule against them.” Ay, Burns was firm in his political beliefs and yet liberal and hence his enthusiastic support for the American Revolution.

In the same letter he said, “I dare say, the American Congress, in 1766, will be allowed to have been as able and as enlightened, and a whole empire will say, as honest as the English Convention in 1688; and that on the 4th of July will be as sacred as their posterity as the 5th of November is to us."

[a fuller explanation of this is available here]. The connection between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Revolution of 1776 has recently been explored by American political commentator Michael Barone in his 2007 book Our First Revolution - the Remarkable British upheaval that inspired America's Founding Fathers.

So whether Williamite or Jacobite, of a Presbyterian family, possibly of Covenanter descent, and of course a dedicated Freemason (see the famous images below) - Burns was an enigma, and not just the lefty/radical/proto-Nationalist that he is often packaged as these days.

Bloggin fae the Burn(s)

I was on the BBC Radio Ulster special Burns Night programme last night (click here to listen to the 2 hour show on BBC iPlayer). However, this year's Homecoming Scotland campaign is attracting its fair share of criticism:

...There are five million Scots-born people in England, as many as the entire population of Scotland. But they, along with the Unionist Scots-Irish of Northern Ireland, have also been neglected...

Read the rest of the article here - "Nationalist undercurrent to Alex Salmond’s jamboree".

There are many to see them

IT WAS the 22nd July 1680. He rose early, and washed his hands. "This is their last washing. I have need to make them clean, for there are many to see them." The woman of the house where he had been lodging began to cry at the finality of his message. He offered her kind words of comfort - "Weep not for me".

His men had spent the night camped on the moor, and he joined them for some refreshment and rest. But their peace was shattered around 4 o'clock in the afternoon with the news that a detachment of heavily armed royal troops on horseback had tracked them down and was now not far away. His men urged him to flee, to leave them to the fight, but he steadfastly refused to leave. Taking up the best positions they could find on the soft marsh of Airds Moss, they stood their ground and prepared for the attack, with simple blacksmith-made handswords at their sides.

One hour later it was over. He, his younger brother Michael, and seven more of their number - friends, colleagues, comrades and brethren - lay dead on the moss. They lost nine, but in the hour of hand-to-hand combat, 28 of the King's troops were dead too.

In an act of vicious barbarity so typical of the time, the troops cut off the heads and hands of the dead Covenanters and put them into a sack. They were carried as bloody trophies to Edinburgh, the city where their parents and grandparents had first declared their commitment to the Covenant, but which had for the past 20 years been a scene of relentless public martyrdom. As the troops entered the city on 24 July, his head was held aloft on the point of a sword.

His aged father, Allan, had lain in a cold prison cell in the city for two years - he had been arrested in August 1678 for holding illegal preaching meetings in his house. The precious contents of the sack were dumped on the stone floor before the old man, and the prison guards mockingly asked him if he recognised them. He took them in his hands, kissed them, and with tear-filled eyes said:

"I know them, I know them", he replied. "They are my son's, my dear son's".

Without pausing, he carried on:

"It is the Lord. Good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but has made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days".

His son's head and hands were then taken away and on 31 July were displayed on the Netherbow Port of the city, with the fingers pointing upwards, for the 60,000 people of Edinburgh to view as they went about their daily business.

"This is their last washing. I have need to make them clean, for there are many to see them."

At just 32 years old, Richard Cameron's prediction had been fulfilled.

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This is not a wind-up

Barack Obama paper dolls. Unbelieeeeeeevable. Maybe you get two in each pack, just in case you make a mistake with the first one you'll be able to do it all over again...

"Scots isnae bad English, it's a braw language in its ain richt"

Don't take it from me, but from the weans of Greenmill Primary School in Cumnock, east Ayrshire. (Alexander Peden is buried in Cumnock, just across the road from the school).



Burns Night is this weekend, but let's face it, Robert Burns (genius that he was) is the acceptable face of the Scots language. Sophisticated types feel that it's okay to associate with Burns. After all, a fancy meal, an exotic dish like haggis and a wee dram ticks one's aspirational lifestyle boxes. And a volume of his works on the shelf at home doesn't hurt anyone.

A big plus with Burns is that he's dead. This is a major advantage - he can't embarrass today's intellectuals by saying something unbecoming on tv, radio or in the press. Burns is history.

There is of course an unacceptable underbelly to Scots and Ulster-Scots - it's the ordinary folk of Portavogie, Ballymoney, Cumnock and Fraserburgh (to name but four places) who have the audacity to say "hinnae" instead of "haven't", "cannae" instead of "unable to", and "ocht ava" instead of "anything at all". These people must be humiliated, marginalised, trivialised and forced from view. And be sure to hide their centuries-long tradition of local vernacular literature away from them - they might get restless if they knew it existed.

So as the poor wee haggis is once again cut open this Sunday - dichted by the knife of rustic labour - at the behest of Burns lovers, literary afficionados, the culturally curious, and those who are just out for a night's crack, what's really being knifed every day of the week is the remnant of folk on baith sides o the Sheugh who love and use Scots and Ulster-Scots every day.

Knifed time and again by a scornful media, a cultural entertainment industry, and a largely ignorant and disinterested public.

Rabbie's deid. It'll no be lang afore the ither yins are aa deid forbye.

..........

(Here's a link to the BRILLIANT new BBC website devoted to Burns and his works. Listen to Brian Cox reading A Prayer in the Prospect of Death)
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BBC4 - Folk America

Coming up on Friday night at 9pm on BBC4 is the first part of a series of documentaries called Folk America - the Golden Age of American Folk Music. Check out the BBC4 home page for a short video clip .

The series summary is here:

Three-part documentary series on American folk music, tracing its history from the recording boom of the 1920s to the folk revival of the 1960s. The opening part looks at how, in the 1920s, record companies scoured the American south for talent to sell. This was a golden age of American music, as the likes of the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Poole, Dock Boggs and Mississippi John Hurt burst onto record, eager to have a share in the new industry and the money it made, only to lapse into obscurity when the depression hit at the start of the 30s. Contributors include Judy Collins, Steve Earle, Tom Paxton and Pete Seeger, surviving relations of 1920s greats such as Mississippi John Hurt, the Carter Family and Uncle Dave Macon, plus three actual survivors of the era - guitarist Slim Bryant, banjoist Wade Mainer and Delta bluesman 'Honeyboy' Edwards.

The first in the series will probably be the best - showing how the Scotch-Irish music of the mountains became recorded and then commercialised. It'll be interesting to see if the programme uses the cultural term "Scotch-Irish" at all, or whether they'll just blur it into the geographical term "British Isles" as is often the case with studies of early American music.

Set your DVD recorders or Sky+ boxes!

Hugh Montgomery III and Iron Man

Hugh Montgomery III (1625 - 1663) was the grandson of the first Hugh Montgomery, the Viscount of the Great Ardes (one of the two Founding Fathers of the Ulster-Scots). Hugh III had a very strange health condition.

His heart was "...plainly discernable..." - he had a bad fall as a child which left him with an injury and abcess on his left side. It never healed properly, and by the time he was 19 there was "...a very large open cavity in his side, through which the lungs, as it was believed, could both be seen and touched..." When King Charles I heard about this, he demanded to see it, and Montgomery was brought to the royal court as something of an oddity. Montgomery wore a protective plate over the wound, and when Dr William Harvey (one of the greatest physicians of the time, and the man who discovered blood circulation) inspected it, he said:

"...I found a large open space in the chest, into which I could readily introduce three of my fingers and my thumb; which done I straightway perceived a certain protuberant fleshy part, affected with an alternating extrusive and intrusive movement; this part I touched gently. Amazed with the novelty of such a state, I examined everything again and again, and when I had satisfied myself, I saw that it was a case of old and extensive ulcer, beyond the reach of art, but brought by a miracle to a kind of cure, the interior being invested by a membrane, and the edges protected by a tough skin.

But the fleshy part (which I, at first sight, took for a mass of granulations, and others had always regarded as a portion of the lung,) from its pulsating motions, and the rhythm they observed with the pulse—when the fingers of one of my hands were applied to it, those of the other to the artery at the wrist—as well as from their discordance with the respiratory movements, I saw was no portion of the lung I was handling, but the apex of the heart! covered over with a layer of fungous flesh by way of external defence, as commonly happens in old foul ulcers. The servant of this young man was in the habit daily of cleansing the cavity from its accumulated sordes by means of injections of tepid water; after which the plate was applied, and with this in its place, the young man felt adequate to any exercise or expedition, and, in short, he led a pleasant life in perfect safety.

Instead of a verbal answer, therefore, I carried the young man himself to the king, that his majesty might, with his own eyes, behold this wonderful case; that, in a man alive and well, he might, without detriment to the individual, observe the movement of the heart, and with his proper hand even touch the ventricles, as they contracted And his most excellent majesty, as well as myself, acknowledged that the heart was without the sense of touch; for the youth never knew when we touched his heart, except by the sight or the sensation he had through the external integument. We also particularly observed the movements of the heart, viz., that in the diastole it was retracted and withdrawn; whilst in the systole it emerged protruded; and the systole of the heart took place at the moment the piastole or pulse in the wrist was perceived; to conclude, the heart struck the walls of the chest, and became prominent at the time it bounded upwards and underwent contraction on itself..."

(Quoted from The Montgomery Manuscripts)

For those of you who haven't seen it, the movie Iron Man is an adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero, who has a tiny nuclear reactor implanted inside his chest to keep him alive. It's a good job Montgomery III didn't have access to Iron Man's technology otherwise the Ulster Presbyterians of the 1600s would have been in real trouble... Adair's Narrative tells his devious story. Here's the Iron Man trailer, which is now out on DVD - just £5.98 on Amazon!

Come one, come all to the Welcome Hall - and come in your working clothes!

This was the slogan used by the world-famous Amy Carmichael, the great woman evangelist who was born jut up the road from me in Millisle, then moved to Belfast and worked among the millworker girls, and ended up in India where she founded an orphanage and a mission in a place called Dohnavur.



The Welcome Hall still exists, on Cambrai Street in the Shankill, and was refurbished recently. Their website has a page about Amy.

With a name like Carmichael you'll not be surprised to learn that she and her parents were Ulster-Scots Presbyterians! She died in 1951, and her name is still legendary among the older folks in the Millisle district today, and the Dohnavur Fellowship in India is still going strong!

37 today

Another year on the clock; no big celebrations as I'm fortunate enough to be flat-out busy with enough work to keep me going well into the summer. So to help today glide by, I ordered two new Jayhawks-related cds from Amazon, which came in the post this morning.

The Jayhawks were one of my favourite bands in my late teens and early twenties. They're from Minnesota, and I can remember one night driving to Dublin to see them play in a dingy wee club, and then drove through the night to get back home (back in Belfast by about 5am). The two founder members were Mark Olson and Gary Louris, who sing some of the most beautiful, delicate harmonies you'll ever hear.

Their new album is called Ready for the Flood, and Gary Louris' most recent solo album is called Acoustic Vagabonds. Both are superb and highly recommended. Below are a few YouTube clips of them, very "brother duet" in style.

A great way to put in a windy and wet Saturday while Hilary and the weans are oot and aboot...

Gary Louris: She Only Calls me on Sundays:


Gary Louris and Mark Olson: Blue (from the 1996 Jayhawks album "Tomorrow the Green Grass"):


Gary Louris, Mark Olson & Maria McKee [on Later with Jools Holland]: Precious Time (from her 1993 album "You Gotta Sin to Get Saved"):

Everything's gonna be alright

Forget about Gaza, Israel, Iran, economic downturn, collapse of the banking system and all that stuff. What really matters is that Hey, America Feels Kinda Cool Again. This is the name of one of the Obama Inauguration celebrations being held in Washington DC, headlined by the Beastie Boys.

Somehow I think it'll take more than rock concerts, saying the word "change" all the time, and feeling "kinda cool" to address the world's problems. I just don't get the Obamania thing. Guess that must mean I'm a racist.

Also, prepare yourself for the impending death of satire. All of the comedians and satirists who've spent the past 8 years attacking George Bush, and the past 12 months eulogising Barack Obama, will have no hate figure any more. Happily, the excellent Onion has come up trumps!

The Martyrs of Scotland - Covenanter poem

Found this online a few days ago, by the great Scottish hymnwriter Horatius Bonar (1808 - 1899):


There was gladness in Zion, her standard was flying,
Free o'er her battlements glorious and gay;
All fair as the morning shone forth her adorning.
And fearful to foes was her godly array.

There is mourning in Zion, her standard was lying
Defiled in the dust, to the spoiler a prey;
And now there is wailing, and sorrows prevailing,
For the best of her children are weeded away.

The good have been taken, their place is foresaken-
The man and the maiden, the green and the gray;
The voice of the weepers wails over the sleepers-
The martyrs of Scotland that not are away.

The hues of her waters is crimsoned with slaughters,
And the blood of the martyrs has reddened the clay;
And dark desolation broods over the nation,
For the faithful are perished, the good are away.

On the mountains of heather they slumber together,
On the wastes of the moorland their bodies decay;
How sound is their sleeping, how safe is their keeping,
Though from from their kindred they moulder away.

Their blessing shall hover, their children to cover,
Like the cloud of the desert, by night and by day;
On, never to perish, their names let us cherish,
The martyrs of Scotland that now are away.


This great hymn is also by Horatius Bonar.

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Johnny Cash - American VI

2009 should see the long-awaited release of the sixth (and final) album from Johnny Cash's remarkable "American Recordings" sessions which he recorded in the final years of his life, right up to just a week before he died in September 03. The first five albums are rightly regarded as materpieces, as is the subsequent 5 cd box set "Unearthed", which is a collection of other tracks recorded during the same sessions. The rumoured track listing for American VI is:

• San Antonio
• Redemption Day
• Here Comes a Boy
• That's Enough
• 1st Corinthians 5:55
• I Can't Help But Wonder
• Nine-Pound Hammer (the old Monroe Brothers song)
• North to Alaska
• His Eye is on the Sparrow (great old hymn)
• If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again (another great old hymn)
• The Eye of an Eagle
• Don't Take Everybody for Your Friend
• Belshazzar
• Loading Coal
• A Half a Mile a Day
• Flesh and Blood
• I Am a Pilgrim (another great old hymn)
• Beautiful Dreamer
• Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down (another great old hymn)
• Family Bible (another great old hymn)

The album's been talked about for a good few years, so hopefully it will indeed come out during 09. Meanwhile for all you Cash fans out there, this book might keep you going till the CD come out: Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation - click here for more information.
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Let's lighten the mood a little

It's been heavy going on here for the past while. Here's a lighter moment.

Some of you will know that I haven't shaved in 2 weeks - I put it down to Christmas laziness and relaxation - and as a result I am now sporting a full beard. Not just the wee goatee thing I've had for the past 15 years or so, the real McCoy - linking sideburn to sideburn, running right down to my thrapple (that's Adam's Apple for you English-only speakers), and overwhelming the goatee into something that looks a bit like this:



Well that's a bit of an exaggeration, (and that's not me in the photo left) but it's the closest thing to a proper beard I've ever had the patience to grow. The question now is whether to shave it off or not. It's looking a bit lumberjack-esque, which isn't a good thing. Looks fine with a checked shirt. Looks baaaaaaad with a shirt and tie (like an old BBC2 Open University tv presenter). No doubt Hilary will decide on its future, and probably sometime this week. If I still have it by next Monday that will be something of a breakthrough!

This website provides an easier option for potential beard-wearers, male and female. Check it out!

This all started just before Christmas. Our Charlie was born on Christmas Day 2002, and we have his birthday party in early December just to make a bit of space between it and the Christmas festivities. This year it was fancy dress - so everyone who was invited had to come wearing their own home-made Santa beard. So we had about a dozen wee boys raking about the house with big white cotton wool beards. The thing is, some of these beards were very fresh indeed, and we found big lumps of PVA-covered cotton wool in various parts of the house afterwards. I'll post a pic or two later on.



Iver an oot for noo!

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What exactly is Ulster-Scots?

This is one of those things that crops up every now and again. At risk of boring you all, I'll hazard a post in the hope of stimulating a wee bit of thought and maybe debate...

For me, the term has always been primarily about people, the people who left the Lowlands of Scotland in large numbers from 1606 onwards and came across the narrow sea to live in Ulster. The first written usage of the term was in 1640 by Sir George Radcliffe, and described them as people who had a general inclination to the Covenant. Those people brought culture, heritage, industry, language, music, sport, religion and a myriad of traditions with them. And many of these have become mainstream, not narrow cultural markers but broad themes in our society. None of these things were fossilised, frozen in a 1600s timewarp. The traditions have developed, changed and grown over time (and now even have Highland aspects to them, to the horror of many. Even Lowland Scotland today shows many examples of how what was once just Highland culture has effectively become Scottish culture, but we've been there before...). The people and traditions have also been spread to other parts of the world in the 400+ years ever since, as shown in this recent post which touched on Psalm singing in America.

But weren't they just Scots in Ulster? And as someone patronisingly said to me over Christmas, aren't Ulster-Scots just wannabe Jocks? At what point did they cease to be Scots in a different land, and became something else? That's harder to pin down, some would say that by the 1650s when the first generation were becoming adults there were clear signs of them being different than mainland Scots. Certainly when some of the Ulster-based Presbyterian ministers went back to Scotland in the late 1630s, the Scottish ministers were not impressed by some of their practices and in 1640 the General Assembly criticised many of these practices as "Irish innovations" - so even by 1640, they were becoming different.

Over recent years, particularly in the past post-Belfast Agreement decade when Ulster-Scots has become popularised - some might justifiably say "contrived", or the cynics and opponents will say "invented" - the term is sometimes (in my view) mis-used in a much broader context, to describe anything which connects the two places of Scotland and Ulster. Surely a more appropriate and distinctive term for this geographical connection could be Ulster-Scottish?

But what about pre-1606? The Bruces were in Ulster in the 1300s, the Gallowglasses flitted between Ulster and Scotland for about 300 years before the 1600s. Even before these two examples there were famous, ancient, migrations back and forth. Can these be described as Ulster-Scots? But wait a minute, if the term wasn't in use until 1640 is it wise to apply it retrospectively to events and people before the 1600s? In fact, before King Robert the Bruce, some would say that Scotland didn't exist as a single nation and certainly not as a single people - so can the term "Scots" even be used?

Maybe it's okay to use the term "Ulster-Scots" more broadly than the fairly pure definition in the first paragraph of this post. But perhaps in making it too elastic, it will lose its meaning. Email me with your thoughts.

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On another note, I had a conversation over Christmas with a friend who is very much a Calvinist. He dismisses modern evangelicalism as "Tesco Christianity" by which he means God is presented as being available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just come on in whenever you want. He usually has a wee dig or two at me and implies that I'm one of these "Tesco Christians" because of my non-Calvinistic upbringing.

But he got me thinking - when I was a wee boy the old-time Brethren men would often pray that the Holy Spirit would bring people to recognise their need of salvation, and for conviction of sin. They would also often close a Sunday evening gospel meeting with a hymn from the "Warning and Entreaty" section of Redemption Songs, and would plead with any one in the hall who might be under conviction to get right with God while they had the opportunity, for tonight might be the last time He calls - all of which are ideas not too far removed from Calvinism itself... but I see that Colin Maxwell has beat me to this one! The old-timers also regularly scorned what they called "easy-believism" (there was no Tesco in Northern Ireland back in those days!)

[ You can find out more about the Calvin 500 events in France and Switzerland this summer on this website.]

God's Peoples by Donald Harman Akenson

Israel is in the news again - Ashkelon and Ashdod are among the Israeli cities which have been hit by long range rockets. Do a search on BibleGateway.com for Ashkelon and you get eight interesting Old Testament references, from Samson going there and killing thirty men who had co-operated with Samson's first wife in a scheme to deceive him, to this verse in the book of Amos - and this verse from Zechariah reads like a press release on tomorrow's breakfast news.

I've been picking through this book again today (which I've blogged about before) - there's some great stuff in it. It compares the cultures of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, the Presbyterians and Ulster-Scots of Ulster, and the Jews/Zionists of Israel.

"...the major component of the Ulster-Scots mindset has been the conceptual grid that the Presbyterians of Ulster assimilated from the Hebrew scriptures... for the Ulster-Scots, the Hebrew scriptures served as an entire cultural cupboard..."

from the chapter The Covenantal Culture of the Ulster-Scots, page 103

Ulster 1912 - Part Two

The two great hymns of 1912 were also linked with the Titanic and the Ulster Covenant. It is said that as the Titanic sank into the icy waves, the string quartet (who had been playing up-tempo, jazzy dance tunes throughout the voyage) played the hymn Nearer My God to Thee. It was written in 1841 - some more information about the hymn is available here. There has been much debate about this over the years, some of it summarised here. It is usually sung to the tune "Bethany" - here's a clip from YouTube of a simple fiddle version:



The other hymn is O God Our Help in Ages Past, which was sung at many of the Ulster Covenant rallies and demonstrations in 1912, and became something of an anthem for the pro-Union cause. It's a paraphrase of Psalm 90 and was written by Isaac Watts and first published in 1719. Watts was a committed Non-Conformist, and the list of 696 hymns he wrote is astounding - not only the quantity of them, but that 250 years later many of these are still being sung - When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Not All the Blood of Beasts, We're Marching to Zion and I'm Not Ashamed to Own My Lord to name but a few. The clip below is also from YouTube, however it seems to have been taken from a tv programme and has an editing blip at the start:

Ulster 1912 - Part One

I've been thinking about the recently-announced Titanic visitor centre in Belfast, which is due to be completed and opened in 2012 to coincide with the centenary of the ship's fateful launch and voyage. It was a momentous year for our wee country. The young CS Lewis had left his leafy East Belfast home four years previously for boarding school in England, returning regularly to his home city as she blossomed into a world industrial centre, and then a hotbed of political unrest.

By the end of the year, 500,000 people had signed the Ulster Covenant and Edward Carson had finalised his plans to establish the Ulster Volunteer Force. My own great-grandfather and his brothers signed it in Troon in Ayrshire (they must have been over there for the annual "Scotch Harvest"). You can search the Ulster Covenant database for your own ancestors signatures here.

Four famous pieces of creative writing summarise the Ulster experience of 1912, two poems and two hymns. Here are the two poems:

1. Ulster 1912 by Rudyard Kipling

The dark eleventh hour
Draws on and sees us sold
To every evil power
We fought against of old.
Rebellion, rapine, hate,
Oppression, wrong and greed
Are loosed to rule our fate,
By England’s act and deed.

The Faith in which we stand,
The laws we made and guard,
Our honour, lives, and land
Are given for reward
To Murder done by night,
To Treason taught by day,
To folly, sloth, and spite,
And we are thrust away.

The blood our fathers spilt,
Our love, our toils, our pains,
Are counted us for guilt,
And only bind our chains.
Before an Empire’s eyes
The traitor claims his price.
What need of further lies?
We are the sacrifice.

We asked no more than leave
To reap where we had sown,
Through good and ill to cleave
To our own flag and throne.
Now England’s shot and steel
Beneath that flag must show
How loyal hearts should kneel
To England’s oldest foe.

We know the war prepared
On every peaceful home,
We know the hells declared
For such as serve not Rome—
The terror, threats, and dread
In market, hearth, and field—
We know, when all is said.
We perish if we yield.

Believe, we dare not boast,
Believe, we do not fear
We stand to pay the cost
In all that men hold dear.
What answer from the North?
One Law, one Land, one Throne
If England drive us forth
We shall not fall alone!




2. The Blue Banner by W F Marshall
(Like many of his generation, Marshall took the Covenant imagery of 1638 and applied it to the Ulster experience of 1912 - a the time he was assistant minister at First Ballymacarrett Presbyterian Church in Belfast. This poem was printed in the Northern Whig on Ulster Day 28th September 1912 and would have been read by many thousands throughout Ulster as they made their way to sign the Ulster Covenant. Marshall even uses the Scots word "leal" rather than the English "loyal")

Firm-leagued we face the future, tho’ the road be dark and steep,
The road that leads to honour is the lonely road we keep,
And, though all the world forsake us, this is the course we hold,
The course our fathers followed in the Cov’nant days of old.

We fain would look for comfort to the land from whence we came,
Where still abide our kith and kin and clansmen of our name,
Where lives were deemed of small account by valiant men and true,
For Christ, His Crown, His Cov’nant and the war-worn folds of blue.

Long years have been and faded since the old-time banner waved,
See! How it flashes once again ere dangers must be braved,
The Cov’nant oath we now will swear that Britain may be told,
We stand for faith and freedom and the memories of old.

For all they died for gladly in the homeland o’er the sea,
For blood-won rights that still are ours as Ulsterborn and free,
For the land we came to dwell in, and the martyr’s faith we hold -
God grant we be as leal to these as were the men of old!

The Ten Commandments

I watched some of the amazing 1956 film "The Ten Commandments" this afternoon on More4. It was absolutely superb. The director, Cecil B DeMille, is said to have been the greatest movie director of all time. He was born into an Episcopalian family in the USA in 1881, and he suffered a near-fatal heart attack on the set of The Ten Commandments. Here's a quote from him, related to the series of great Biblical epic movies he made in the first half 20th Century:

"...All my life, I've wondered how many have been turned away from Christianity by the effeminate, sanctimonious, machine made Christ of Sunday school books. The Christ was actually a man with a body hard enough to withstand 40 days of fasting and long journeys on foot and nights of sleepless prayer, a man with a mind razor sharp, whose ranging thoughts measured the kingdoms of the world against the lilies in the field, a man who had compassion for sinners, and unleashed His anger and biting scorn only on the hyprocities who made a travesty of His father's temple. There could well have been a note of admiration in the voice of Pilate when he said of Him: 'Behold the Man!'..."

It's a far cry from "little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay"... And by the way, there was no stable. And no innkeeper. And no three Kings. This great wee cartoon bursts some of the storybook bubbles that have grown up around the Nativity story.

For the past few weeks I've been reading the story of Moses with my 10 year old son Jacob - not from picture story books, but directly from the Bible, chapter by chapter, taking a verse each. He has lapped it up, and watching the film this afternoon with him proved that even in today's age of computer special effects wizardry, it's the power of the story that really matters.

A wee Christmas Message

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The Psalm / Hymn tune "Ulster" by Robert Lowry

Written by the hymnwriter Robert Lowry (1826 - 1899) who was himself of Ulster descent, this tune features in Psalters and in many traditional hymnbooks, best known as the tune for the Fanny Crosby hymn "All the Way My Saviour leads Me". Click here to listen.

Lowry also wrote another Psalm tune which he named after himself, best known as the tune for "Saviour Thy Dying Love".

There is also a Psalm tune called Bangor. Here's a nice simple rendition of "Ulster" from Youtube:



Psalm tunes are of immense significance to Ulster-Scots culture, even in their emigration to America in the early 1700s:

"...the hold of the Scottish type of Psalmody was materially strengthened by the great volume of immigration from the North of Ireland. The Scotch-Irish brought with them The Psalms of David in meeter bound in with their Bibles, and to their minds almost a part of it. They had been accustomed to a Scriptural Psalmody as of course: few of them knew any psalm book but their own..."
from The English Hymn, Its Development and Use In Worship by Louis F Benson (Philadelphia 1915)

Robert Burns and the Ulster visit legends

Jan 25th is Burns Night, and next year is a special one, the 250th anniversary of his birth. To tie in with this the Scottish Government has branded 2009 the year of Scotland's Homecoming. There are some Burns legends, of alleged but unproven visits to Ulster. As usual, one from County Antrim and one from County Down.

In the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Sept 1894, this letter appeared:

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Was Burns ever in Co. Antrim?
Some four or five years ago an old gentleman, now dead, told me that when he was a boy he knew an aged farmer who professed to have met Burns repeatedly in different parts of the north-east of Co. Antrim, at country jollifications especially, when the poet, he said, would sometimes sing his own songs for the company. According to this tradition he would seem to have been here "fou for weeks thegither". The point was thrown out to me by my informant as worth investigating. Since I first heard of it I have, at odd times, turned over a mass of Burnsiana in the hope of finding something that would corroborate the statement made, or disprove it; but my search has been fruitless. Can any reader help me to some light on this dark subject? I shall be much obliged for any information that this query may elicit. That Burns should cross to Co. Antrim is probable enough in itself for many reasons, but something better than abstract probability is desirable. To arrive at some record of the poet's sojourn in the North would be highly interesting, if he really did visit as alleged.

S.J.

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

The renowned antiquarian, academic and historian Rev George Hill replied to this over two pages in the Dec 1894 edition. Blurry digital pics of his reply are below. Sadly he dismisses the story.






There's another legend (told to me by Ian Wilson, who got it from the late Jack McCoy, the first local studies librarian at the library HQ in Ballynahinch) of Burns being invited to Donaghadee by an Ulster poet/fan. Donaghadee was the main "port of entry" from Scotland from 1606 - 1862. It is said that as Burns got off the boat and walked up the quayside, the Ulsterman spotted him and greeted him by saying something along the lines of:

"I can tell by your claes
An' the cut o' your hair
You're the bold Robert Burns
Fae the oul toon o' Ayr"

To which Burns responded in a similar spontaneous rhyme. They then retired to the famous Grace Neill's pub for some liquid refreshment!

Quite a few years ago there was a controversy when Belfast's Linenhall Library came close to quietly selling off its wonderful collection of Robert Burns material, the largest collection outside of Scotland. The collection of over 1000 books belonged to an Andrew Gibson, one of the most prominent Baptists of his generation. Thankfully the sale was prevented and the collection remains in Belfast. Perhaps it should be put on display to the public next year - yet another powerful example of the Ulster-Scots links.

Is Ulster-Scots a class issue?

Over the years I have found that the greatest objection to Ulster-Scots is neither political nor religious. It is in fact demographic. The toughest group to get the cultural message through to are "middle class Prods", the people who like to think of themselves as sophisticated and upwardly mobile. The type who have a weekend holiday home in North Antrim but who avoid any contact with the locals. They probably never eat egg & onion sandwiches any more - their developed palates prefer couscous and skinny lattés.*

This is not unique to Northern Ireland. The urban and suburban media, worldwide, loves to mock and patronise rural people and our ways.

Two examples: Sarah Palin was savaged by the oh-so-smart media who loved to characterise her as an Alaskan throwback. Her apparent lack of knowledge of international affairs was wrapped up with her rural roots. Google "Sarah Palin" with "hillbilly" and you'll get over 240,000 returns.

"Hillbilly" is a classic term of abuse used by the media to demean rural people. A quick visit to GoogleNews will bring up this story, of yet another American author who has chosen the Scotch-Irish folks of Appalachian Kentucky as his target.

So does this apply to Northern Ireland? I believe it does. For example, in David Adams' (ex-UDP) recent piece about identity in the Irish Times, he reverts to the unthinking stereotype of "...The recent invention of the deliberate - and deliberately exclusive - misnomer "Ulster Scots" is a laughably pathetic late attempt to fill this self-created vacuum..."

Many people who have cushy columnist jobs in the print and broadcast media have now reached a self-congratulatory pompous stage where cynicism is analysis, and where sarcasm is humour. And the only remaining group that it's socially acceptable to be prejudiced towards and to pour scorn upon is the rural people - in America the hillbillies, in Northern Ireland the Ulster-Scots.

Sure Ulster-Scots is just Ballymena people who can't speak properly - there is no 400 year Ulster-Scots literary tradition, is there?

Dear help these folk if they ever dare to venture further south than Newtownards. As the Chief Exec of a major public organisation who was reared in Ards told me just last week "when we were wee, we were told we should never go beyond the flood gates"!. The flood gates mark the edge of the town, and are the last glimpse of civilisation before entering the Low Country. There is an unspoken cultural Maginot Line that runs from the flood gates up to Six Road Ends, and down the Cottown Road into Donaghadee. South of that line... beyonde this pointe thar be dragons and country folk.

Finally, a story was told to me a few years ago by another civil servant, who in a previous job with the Housing Executive had to visit an elderly couple in their wee house in Portavogie. He was cautiously welcomed into their home, set down on the wee sofa, and the man and his wife then retreated to the kitchen. He overheard the wife whispering to her nearly-deaf husband "Noo Albert, you watch thon boyo - he's fae Bangor!"

Of course there are many fine, committed, Ulster-Scots enthusiasts in the towns and cities of Ulster. Ulster-Scots is not limited to rural life. My point is one of media portrayal, and of the attitudes that pervade their world. Comments would be welcome as thousands read this blog but hardly anyone posts!

..........

* forget fancy grub. There is no culinary joy that can compare with the mouth-watering saliva surge of biting into the heel of a plain loaf, folded in half, with country butter and homemade blackcorn (blackcurrant) jam in the middle!

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Presbyterianism Through the Ages

It's funny how we (ie Ulster Protestant evangelical Ulster-Scots folk) have lost a lot of our creativity over the past few generations. We're "tighter", more reserved, less imaginative, wary of doing something new in case we get criticised - and until very recently, had forgotten our wonderful history. It's a strange situation, but it was once very different...

Back in February 1948, as Northern Ireland emerged from the poverty and loss of World War 2, the Presbytery of Ards performed an 18 scene drama entitled "Presbyterianism Through the Ages - a Historical Pageant". It was played over two consecutive nights in Newtownards, and then again in Bangor shortly afterwards. The script was written by M Beatrice Lavery, the secretary to the Moderator.

In the foreword, the Moderator wrote of how the Pageant "...vividly represents our stirring history, and links us with Brice and Livingstone, Blair and Hamilton*, Knox and Calvin..." (* - my friend from Ballywalter - I'm glad previous generations recognised his importance!)

The Pageant was performed not by professional actors, but by members of local congregations within the Presbytery, as follows:

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

Prologue - The Burning Bush - Rev J C Ferguson BA BD

Scene I - The New Testament Church; the Eldership - presented by Millisle and Ballyfrenis

Scene II - St Columba in Iona - presented by Second Newtownards and Regent Street

Scene III - John Calvin - presented by Rev W A A Park MA

Scene IV - John Knox and Mary Queen of Scots - presented by Trinity, Bangor

Scene V - Andrew Melville and James VI at Falkland Castle - presented by Kirkcubbin and Portaferry

Scene VI - Janet Geddes in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh - presented by First Bangor and Conlig

Scene VII - The Signing of the National Covenant in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh - presented by Hamilton Road, Bangor

Scene VIII - The Children's Bond - presented by Ballygilbert Guides and Brownies

Scene IX - A Conventicle (in the Pentland Hills) - presented by Ballywalter and Carrowdore

Scene X - The Killing Time - presented by Ballyblack Boys' Auxiliary

Scene X - The Last Martyr of the Covenant, James Renwick

Scene XI - Kirkbride (Scots language poem) - presented by Rev R J Laughlin BA, Mrs H Gilmore and Rev J Forbes BA

Scene XII - The First Presbytery in Ireland; the Army in Carrickfergus - presented by First Newtownards

Scene XIII - Closing of the Gates of Derry - presented by the Donaghadee Churches and Groomsport

Scene XIV - The Siege of Derry - presented by the Donaghadee Churches and Groomsport

Scene XV - King William III granting the Regium Donum at Hillsborough Castle - presented by Ballyholme and Helen's Bay

Scene XV - Rev Francis Mackemie; the Apostle of American Presbyterianism - presented by Miss Peggy Ferris

Scene XVI - Union of the Synods - presented by First Holywood and Ards Presbytery

Scene XVII - An Old-Time Service - presented by Greenwell Street, Newtownards

Scene XVIII - In Their Footsteps - presented by Trinity Bible Class

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

On the back cover is a message from Lord Tweedsmuir, which closes with the following statement:

"...You have heard and seen what Presbyterianism has been in the past; you know what it is today; its future - it depends on your realisation of your responsibility as an heir of such a magnificent heritage..."

Would a play like this happen today? Does the knowledge exist? Does the interest exist? The scripture text on the first page summarises it well:

"These days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city... nor the memorial of them perish from their seed..." Esther 9 v 28

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Big Christmas musical announcement!

A few weeks ago I promised there would be a musical announcement sometime around Christmas. Here it is - the amazing new album from the Thompson Brothers. Buy it today!

Can you see anything wrong with this photograph?

A real photo taken recently at the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast - how long it will it take these guys to get home?

BBC Scotland: "Scotland's History"

Here's a link to a page on the BBC Scotland website, outlining the 5 recent broadcasts. I understand that 5 additional episodes will be broadcast in 2009. See the first 5 on BBC iPlayer here.

There are interesting references to John Knox in this overview of Mary Queen of Scots. As usual, beautifully filmed, dramatic landscapes, and presenter Neil Oliver combines knowledge, style and an excellent storytelling ability.

Maybe we should get him over here to record a 12 part series on Ulster-Scots history? Here's my list:

1. The Ancient Links
2. Robert the Bruce and Ulster
3. Hamilton & Montgomery Settlement
4. The Plantation and 1641
5. The Covenanters in Ulster
6. Derry, the Boyne and Emigration
7. The Ulster-Scots Revolutions - 1776 and 1798
8. The Weaver Poets, Language and Literature
9. Ulster-Scots in America
10. Ordinary Folk: Ulster-Scots folklife throughout the centuries
11. Belfast - a Scottish City
12. The Ulster Covenant, the Somme and the establishment of Northern Ireland

Of course all of these subjects would deserve a series of their own, never mind a half hour each. But a half hour each would be a good start, supported by a 12 deep websites and a six part radio series for each one.

Cud Ye no Dae a Wee bit Mair for the Lord?

A few years ago, a big man called John Montgomery from Connor Presbyterian Church told me that the prayer meeting which is often claimed to have been the beginning of the 1859 Revival began because of the power of these words, which were spoken by the local minister to a young man who had recently been saved. I've been digging around trying to find a source for it. Here are a few:

• "... In the spring of 1855... at the close of a Sabbath evening of that period, at one of his Bible-class examinations, Mr Moore addressed a young man present, and affectionately urged upon him the duty of doing "something more" for God..."
from William Gibson's The Year of Grace, a History of the Ulster Revival of 1859 (1909)

The "something more" he encouraged them to do was Bible study - "reading and searching the word of God".

• "...Rev J H Moore, minister of the Connor congregation... was a great believer in setting his members to some definite work in the church and about this time he spoke to some of his more promising young men about taking up some such active work in the neighbourhood. "Do something more for God", he said to them..."
from Carson, God's River in Spate, Chapter II, p 7. (1958)
(The young men were James McQuilkin, Jeremiah Meneely, John Wallace and Robert Carlisle, who soon after began to run a Sunday School at Tanneybrake near Connor, and then a prayer meeting)

• "...It is interesting to note that the very month Jeremiah Lanphier commenced the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting in New York, September 1857 that four young men, James McQuilkin, Jeremiah Meneely, Robert Carlisle and John Wallace, began a weekly prayer meeting in the Old National Schoolhouse near Kells, not far from Ballymena. The Rev J H Moore had exhorted a handful of his young men to 'Do something more for God. Could you not gather at least six of your careless neighbours, either parents of children, to your house or some convenient place on the Sabbath and spend one hour with them, reading and searching the Word of God Each of them accepted the challenge and a Sabbath School and prayer meeting starter in a schoolhouse in Tanneybrake. Two months later the group moved: for the sake of convenience to a more central location in the Old National Schooihouse in Kells where they began to meet on a Friday night for the Believer's Fellowship Meeting..."
quoted from this blog

• "...In 1855 Rev. J. H. Moore, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Connor, Northern Ireland, urged one of his young men to do "something more" for God. "Could you not gather at least six of your careless neighbors and spend an hour with them in reading and searching the Word of God?" The young man agreed to at-tempt "something more." And the result was the commencement of the Tannybrake Sunday school. After two years' labor, the teachers of this little school did again "something more." They asked the parents of the children to come to a meeting for prayer and Bible reading at the close of the school. Only one responded at first, but the meeting grew, and soon the Sabbath School Teachers' Prayer Meeting became intensely interesting, for the Spirit of God came pouring into this newly-opened channel. "Christ and the Cross" became the one absorbing theme of the gathering..."
from Old Time Revivals by John Shearer (1932)

Authors don't often write in the vernacular, so I expect that Gibson tidied up the original quotation into standard English, which has then been repeated over the years by subsequent writers. Rev JH Moore of Connor and his brother Rev SJ Moore of First Ballymena were both local men. I expect they may well have spoken with the local folk in Ulster-Scots, and not necessarily theological college English. Anyway, I prefer it the way John Montgomery told it to me:

"Cud ye no dae a wee bit mair for the Lord?"

Catching up

Just getting caught up on a few things. Graeme and I were out singing on Sunday night - Stephen Jamison did a fine job with the preachin' as usual - and we played 5 old hymns. One lady came up to us at the end and said that we had brought tears to her eyes when we played one of them. Thankfully it wasn't because we were excruciatingly bad (!), but because it had been her father's favourite hymn and he sang it constantly when she was a wee girl.

We've also been invited to play a few songs for Radio Ulster's forthcoming New Years Eve Ulster-Scots special programme. Not sure we can fit it in though as it's pretty short notice - being recorded this week. Nice to be asked though!

I survived Seven Days on Sunday (got plenty of text messages from people after the programme had finished!), and it must have went okay - the BBC were on the phone again this afternoon to see if I would do some other radio stuff with them between now and Christmas. Hopefully it'll work out - the shopping's all done, Santa's been sorted out, but the weans are starting to get a bit twitchy with expectation.

Finally, for those of you who are in Belfast, make a point of travelling down Great Victoria Street in the evenings between this coming weekend and Christmas. I'm working with the Presbyterian Church to project massive Christmas-themed gospel messages onto the side of Church House. We did some testing this evening, the brightness and legibility are holding up well - hopefully these will make some impact on the late night shoppers and party revellers over the next 3 weeks.

Iver an oot for noo!

Cameron in Ulster

Not David Cameron (who was over here at the weekend) - I much prefer Richard Cameron. He preached in Ulster, and was reprimanded for a sermon he gave in Strabane in 1673. Utterly committed to his cause, after he published this declaration in the village of Sanquhar in 1680 he was a marked man. He was dead within a month - cut down by Royal troops in the moorland of Airds Moss between Cumnock and Muirkirk.

Forget David. Read about Richard!

Busy weekend!

Blogging might be quiet for a day or two - we have Charlie's birthday party this afternoon (he'll be 6 on Christmas Day, but we try to have his party a few weeks early), I'm on the studio panel for Radio Ulster's Seven Days programme from 1 - 2 tomorrow afternoon, and then Graeme and I are out musicalising in Belfast tomorrow night. It's all go, so will report back when I can.

OrangeChristian.net

I've only had a quick glance at this new website, but it looks like the three Grand Lodges of Ireland, Scotland and England are to be congratulated for their efforts.

Sandy Halliday's Sacred Scotch Solos

I was sent another copy of "Sacred Scotch Solos" recently, this time a different edition from someone in Canada. It has a lovely biography of the author/compiler, Sandy Halliday:

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

"...In issuing this revised and enlarged edition of Sacred Scotch Solos, written by the late Mr. Alexander Halliday, we feel that a few notes regarding the writer will not be out of place. He was of but humble Scottish birth, with no advantage to fit him for the battle of life, but one, i.e. a mother who feared God and made Alexander a child of prayer. Like many other such mothers, she had the sorrow of seeing him a wayward lad, but her faith failed not, and she doubtless was crowned with joy when in the middle of September, 1915, she could say in "the home on high," in the words of one of his own hymns :-

"This my son safe hame has come frae a faur kintree."

From the day of his conversion his was a joyful life. He could not keep from singing :-

"His life flowed on in endless song, above earth's lamentation,"

there was a great contagion in it. His songs were caught up and echoed far and wide - Canada, Australia, Africa, the trenches in France, and the rugged rocks of the Dardanelles have been made to resound with them. We cannot claim that there is any literary finish about them, but in some there is a happy heart lilt, in others a tender pathos, and in nearly all, a note of urgent invitation to the Saviour he himself had found so powerful and so precious.

"Sandy Halliday," as he was popularly known, did not confine his efforts to hymn-writing and hymn-singing, but he was wholehearted in all aggressive Christian work, especially labouring in the Anderston district of Glasgow in association with the Anderston Working Men's Mission. His labours with it extended over forty years. He was ever at home working amongst the children, and he will not be forgotten for at least another generation, because of the place he found in the heart of many a bairn. But we are sure that even when these are all gone, his Scotch Solos will still keep his memory green, and be sung far and wide to the glory of God and the Salvation of Souls..."

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

It includes an advert for Redemption Songs, and old editions of Redemption Songs that I have include adverts for two other old Scottish hymnbooks that I've found Scots language hymns in - Duncan McNeill's Hymn Book and Songs from the King's Highway. So there was obviously a wee cluster of evangelicals, and small publishing industry, in the late 1800s and early 1900s producing all of this material - and all printed by Pickering and Inglis.



Click below to read the biography, and on the facing page the last ever hymn that Sandy wrote.

Branding the Shankill

Branding is usually commissioned by intellectual middle-class people, who hire intellectual middle-class people to create brands that are targeted at intellectual middle-class people. Consequently most branding is slick, glossy, "aspirational" - and sometimes shallow and contrived.

So what happens when a branding man from an ordinary working class background who isn't ashamed to admit a love for egg and onion sandwiches gets commissioned to create the first-ever brand for a world-famous loyalist working class district such as the Shankill Road?

The outcome was launched today in a lunchtime event at the Shankill Library, and it looks something like this...

(all media enquiries should be directed to Roz Small at the Greater Shankill Partnership on 028 9050 4555)

Irishness, identity and "Three Wee Ulster Lassies"

I see that today's News Letter front page story reports that "Northern Irish", as an option between "Irish" and "British", is rapidly gaining popularity. I'm not so sure about it yet - I first heard it about 10 years ago, around the time of the Belfast Agreement, and I'm still getting used to it. I suppose at least it's an improvement on singular monolithic "Irishness", which as I've blogged before, doesn't really exist anyway.

Even the President of the Republic of Ireland recognises that - but Republican Sinn Fein don't. Below is a clip from YouTube of a 1946 promotional film, which clearly outlines that Northern Ireland is an blend of English, Scottish and Irish.



I have a lovely wee book from 1883 entitled "Three Wee Ulster Lassies - news from our Irish cousins". It's an allegory to help explain the complex Ulster situation to people in Great Britain. Its three characters are Bessie Stronge (the Ulster-Saxon), Jennie Scott (the Ulster-Scot) and Nelly Nolan (the Ulster-Kelt).

Jennie Scott is said to have been "reared on oatmeal and the Shorter Catechism... such were Jennie and her friends. You can see a touch of the grim humour in their face, sarcasm in their lips and eyes, and independence on their brows. They have been taught to aim high, and if you looked at the little girl's face, you might learn that her family mean business and would stand no nonsense".


Later on, Jennie is interviewed:

Q: And what makes you like Scotland?

Jennie: What makes makes me like Scotlan'! Why shouldn't I like Scotlan'! Isn't Scotlan' the lan' o' Knox and Cameron - the land o' psalms and sangs - the country o' the Covenanters wha stood up for their rights, and were afeard o' naebody! That's why I like Scotlan'!

Jennie closes by saying:

I like Irelan' weel enough; but there are so many folk - some running after gentry, some after priests - that my faither says he would rather hae Scotlan', whar "a man's a man for a' that!".

Buy a copy for yourself here on Abebooks.com

Is Jewish identity an invention?

According to Israeli academic and historian Dr Shlomo Zand of Tel Aviv University it may well be. His book When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? has been top of the bestseller lists in Israel for the past six months. It's only available in Hebrew and French at the moment, but there are plenty of reviews online - here's another from Haaretz from back in March.

Lewis Headrick and the Do-Re-Mi Singers

This is a video clip from October 1996, at the Museum of Appalachia's Tennessee Fall Homecoming Festival. Every year old-time gospel music plays a major part in this event - Hilary and I sat spellbound the following year when we visited on our honeymoon. When we got home I wrote to Lewis, and he was good enough to send me a videotape of 2hrs of the previous year's singing. He also sent me a copy of their hymn book. I digitised the tape, and will be uploading it all song-by-song onto YouTube.

This is in a wee log cabin church that has been relocated to the museum grounds - a great place if you ever get the chance to visit. There's a bit of old traditional shape-note singing here as well.

A Kist o' Wurds

I caught a great episode of A Kist o Wurds on BBC iPlayer - Andy Brown from Ballywalter, Will Cromie (formerly of Ballywalter) and my friend and neighbour John Adair. Catch it here for the next few days.

John's bit starts at about 22 minutes in, and his quip about "that oul' Posh Spice" needin' a soda farl and a Manx kipper - best episode of the programme I've heard in ages - great stuff!

Covenanter Postcards for sale: £3.95 for pack of 7

A friend of mine, County Antrim man Alastair Bonar, has been collecting Covenanter items for many years and has a wonderful library of Covenanter books, including a first edition of Rev Samuel Rutherford’s Letters published in the late 1640s, and Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himselfe published in 1647. Rutherford was a friend of the early Ulster-Scots ministers and wrote to them just before they sailed for America onboard Eagle Wing.

Alastair also has over 300 antique Covenanter postcards, showing scenes from Covenanter history and of many of the monuments across Scotland, from the famous Two Margarets memorial stake at Wigtown, to the large obelisk at Deerness on Orkney where 250 Covenanters drowned when the slave ship they were in, heading for America, was shipwrecked. 10 of the survivors are known to have fled to Ulster for refuge.

Alastair has just produced a new range of postcards, of portraits of famous Scottish and Covenanter heroes of the faith – John Knox, John Welsh, Donald Cargill, John Brown of Priesthill, James Guthrie and James Renwick. The portraits on the cards are from John Howie’s book The Scots Worthies.

To order a pack of seven cards (six individual portraits plus one card featuring all six), please send a cheque for £3.95 inc. postage (payable to A. Bonar) to:

A. Bonar,
c/o 1 Goland Buildings,
Glencairn Park,
Newtownabbey,
Co Antrim
BT36 5EN

Protestant Art

Protestantism and visual art is often an uncomfortable pairing.

In my professional life, I have often found that clients who are traditional Ulster Prods either don't value, or are highly suspicious of, visual presentation. In Reformation times, all sorts of ornament and imagery was smashed to pieces - for example it was the followers of John Knox who smashed the grand Italian grave of King Robert the Bruce in Dunfermline Abbey in 1560; the damage was so bad that it wasn't found again until 1818. The wee halls I grew up in only ever had the Word on the walls - a scripture text above the platform, and maybe a few more texts around the walls. I've even designed a few texts over the years for my uncle John who runs the People's Hall in Portavogie, to match the original hand painted one which has been there since the Hall opened in the 1930s.But art is increasingly common today in churches all across Ulster, usually as tapestries or other hand-sewn fabric art.

So here's a suggestion. The most iconic piece of graphic design from the Reformation era is (for me) the wonderful title page of the Geneva Bible. It features the emblems of the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 disciples, the 4 gospel writers in a beautiful woodcut style. Here's the 1599 version - feel free to make use of this - pass it on to the arty sorts in your own church the next time they're wondering about what they can hang on the walls. Click on it to get the full size version.

(there also seems to be a piece of staff music along the bottom edge - if you know what tune this is please let me know)

World financial meltdown and the breakup of the USA?

This article makes interesting reading, from one of Russia's leading political analysts.

He says: "...In 2006 a secret agreement was reached between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. on a common Amero currency as a new monetary unit. This could signal preparations to replace the dollar. The one-hundred dollar bills that have flooded the world could be simply frozen. Under the pretext, let's say, that terrorists are forging them and they need to be checked..."

Something very similar happened a few years ago here in Northern Ireland.

PS - as usual there's lots of stuff on YouTube about the Amero.

Dublin and Chinese Democracy

I was in Dublin yesterday meeting with Tourism Ireland. It was a beautiful crisp, cold, autumn afternoon. Had the camera in my pocket and took a few pics of the Daniel O'Connell monument on O'Connell Street. It has a very impressive Red Hand of Ulster, which I'll add to this project I'm building up.





En route to the meeting, I went into HMV and bought a copy of the new Guns n Roses cd "Chinese Democracy". I listened to it last night on the drive home It is rubbish, as numerous online reviews will confirm.

It just goes to show that - even after 17 years of work, $13m dollars, every gadget and instrument you can think of, expert production in the best recording studios on the planet, guest appearances by some of the world's best musicians (who were later dropped from the final mixes) - no amount of time, money or gadgets will automatically produce great music. "Chinese Democracy" is one to be avoided for sure.

This, on the other hand, IS great music. Two voices, two acoustic instruments. You can't get better than this - Gillian Welch and David Rawlings live in London back in 2006. (their first CD was called "Revival"):

1859

I am delighted to see that the 1859 Revival commemorations are coming together. There will be a sequence of events in mid-Antrim, organised by the Presbyterian Church, Reformed Presbyterian Church, Church of Ireland under the theme "Revive Us". Their website is an excellent starting point for 1859 information, history, books to read, all sorts of excellent materials.

I notice that next year (the 150th anniversary of the Revival) the 12th July is on a Sunday. I would hope that people of influence within the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland will organise an appropriate event, or perhaps year-long initiative, to educate today's membership. The 12th celebrations in 1859 were remarkable - I may well blog more detail about this over coming weeks.

The map below shows the places which had experienced Revival by the end of October 1859.



The other document below shows that 14 years earlier, the people of the Ards Presbytery were preparing their hearts and lives for "the revival of religion in our Church".



The Revival had a massive spiritual impact on our country - which also became a social and political impact as well. Life in Ulster was changed in 1859. The Presbyterian Church is holding a 6 week long prayer initiative entitled "Awake! Prayer: Stirring Passion for Mission" which will run from 1st March until Easter Sunday - a recognition that revival only comes when God's people have a heart for prayer. I commend them for their vision. For all of these positive steps, revival does not come about by man-made techniques or strategies. It's not a tap that can be turned on by people. But if our lives, hearts and prayers are united in a cry to God for revival in Ulster today, and if He chooses to answer, 2009 could be a special year too.