Eddi Reader's Rabbie Burns Trip

I'm Eddi Reader.

I'm a Scot, but being a musician I've spent a lot of time

playing music here in Northern Ireland.

I love it. It's a bit like being at home. The scenery's great.

And so are the people.

Nice to meet you. I'm Ivan. You're very welcome to Ballymena

and to the town of Dunclug.

It's so lovely going over the language

and the comparisons of the words.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, actually.

My great passion is Robert Burns, the Bard.

I started out with a band called Fairground Attraction

but my musical journey has brought me to the work of Robert Burns.

I love the language in his poems and the meter in them

has allowed me to combine them with music.

But until recently I hadn't realised that you had your own bards here.

Poets from the time of Burns who were influenced by him and his work.

These poets were mostly weavers, people working in the linen industry

around the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th.

Not surprisingly, they're known as the Weaver Poets.

I'm over for a couple of concerts so I thought I'd try

and find out a little bit more about these guys.

I'm on the trail of Ulster's own bards.

Stick with me. We'll do a bit busking later.

The world's your oyster when you've got a van and a wee bit of a song.

'Oh, aye. And I'll a wee bit of singing while I'm here.'

# You're welcome, Willie Stewart

# You're welcome, Willie Stewart

# There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May

That's half sae welcome's thou art!

# Come, bumpers high, express your joy

# The bowl we must renew it

# The tappet hen, gae bring her ben

# To welcome Willie Stewart

# You're welcome, Willie Stewart

# You're welcome, Willie Stewart

# There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May

# That's half sae welcome's thou art! #

APPLAUSE

We're on our way to the Irish Linen Centre in Lisburn.

And I'm going to find out a wee bit about the life of the weavers.

See if they could handle their loom better than I'm handling this VW.

I used to work in a knitwear factory

and I noticed that I was very creative

when the machine was working, because of the rhythms of it.

I do know for a fact that a lot of work songs

come from the rhythm of the machine that they're using.

I'm imagining that their poetry was honed while they were

messing about with the rhythm of what they were weaving.

Robert Burns started out as a farmer, which earned him

the nickname The Ploughman Poet, but when he was 22 years old

his father sent him to learn the more lucrative trade

of flax dressing, heckling in Ayrshire, hackling over here,

another bond with the weaver poets.

I know about linen cloth and I know it comes from something called flax.

Can you tell me about the process?

This is the flax plant.

You can see the seed head here

and the flax has been pulled out by the roots.

From this, we have to get the flax fibre out of the plant.

The first thing that we've done was,

put the flax in stagnant water for two weeks.

And then bring it out and dry it.

And then it's possible to scutch it.

Which is, taking the flax, putting it over like this

and really beating that.

Essentially, so that you're bringing that to this, basically.

The flax fibre you're ready to hackle.

Comb out. So that you can prepare for spinning.

I'm going to hand this over to Gillian here.

-Hi.

-Hi, Gillian.

-To show you how to do this.

This is what Robert Burns would have done.

He trained in Irvine as a flax heckler in the heckling shop.

These are heckling pins that we have here.

And you can see there's three different sizes.

You start with the largest set.

You pull it through the pins

and what's left in my hands is called long flax.

It's a nice long fibre.

You work it along to the middle section,

and again, you're pulling it through.

Gie's a shot!

I do know that when Burns was doing this in Irvine,

Ayrshire, that he was at the doctors all the time because of the dust.

You would almost not see your hand in front of you

-because the dust was so heavy.

-Wow!

-I suppose doing this create this kind of shine.

-Yeah, it does.

It's sort of takes it out so it's all nice and smooth.

You're worth it.

LOOM CLATTERS

I'm loathe to disturb you.

So, Alison, this is the loom that maybe their weaver poets

might have worked with when they were writing their poetry.

Yes. Absolutely. This loom is about 180 years old.

And it actually came from a house in Lurgan.

What I've heard of the poets, when they were working on the loom,

they were able to work out of the meter of the rhyming

with the rhythm of the...

If you just do that again, I absolutely adore the sound of it.

All right.

LOOM CLATTERS RHYTHMICALLY

Fantastic.

I worked in a knitwear factory and we had the same process.

It was a jacquard machine that we worked on, knitting this fabric.

It was really great for coming up with little tunes and rhythms.

CLICKS FINGERS

-But do it again. I'm going to try and come up with a...

-OK.

LOOM CLATTERS

SHE SINGS AND HUMS IN TIME

It's absolutely melodic and rhythmic. It's fantastic.

SHE HUMS AND CLICKS FINGERS

Oh, it's gorgeous.

# Jamie, come and try me

# Jamie, come and try me... #

So certainly, they could get the meter of their poetry

right in the rhythm there of the work.

MUSIC: "Jamie Come Try Me" by Eddi Reader

# Jamie, come try me

# Jamie, come try me if thou would be my love, Jamie

# If thou would kiss me, love, wha could espy thee

# If thou would be my love

# Jamie, come try me

# Oh, Jamie

# Oh, oh, oh...

Singing has always been a companion of mine.

Probably, in not a very healthy way, you know.

I'm able to be alone with my companion,

And so, I can be a wee bit antisocial, you know.

And yet, I can also turn it on and come into the pub with

everybody and sing a million songs.

And feel like the life and soul of the party.

But basically, I'm in communion with a bit of a rhythm

and a melody in my head. I enjoy it so much.

It kind of makes everything look beautiful to me.

# Oh, oh, oh

# Oh, oh, oh, oh... #

It's lovely.

There's modern references everywhere to the weavers.

This is the Linenhall Library in Belfast.

And in here, I've been told that they have great Burns material.

Much of which was donated by Burns' great grand-daughter,

who lived in Belfast.

Burns lover Dr Carol Baraniuk is my way in to that.

I'm surprised Burns didn't come here. Did he? I don't know.

There have been rumoured sightings but nobody's verified them.

-Like Elvis?!

-Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Just over here, we have an original copy of the Edinburgh edition

of Burns' Poems In The Scottish Dialect.

I'm sure you'd like to have a bit of a longer look at that.

Of course, that was when he really hit celebrity status, wasn't it?

This is the second album, you know. This is the...

-The difficult second album.

-Yeah.

-He was the Bob Dylan of lyricism and poetry and song.

-He was.

The fact that he has reached all the way across the water

and then beyond, it's not amazing when you look at his work,

because it's fantastic work. It really is.

Well, certainly here in the north of Ireland,

it was said that there would be two books in every home.

They would have a copy of the Bible and of Robert Burns.

Yeah, I'm strangely proud that.

Even though the man is not part of my DNA.

But Carol's real passion is a weaver poet,

heavily influenced by Burns. James Orr from Ballycarry in Antrim.

I love to have an opportunity to talk about James Orr.

My husband calls him the other man in my life.

THEY LAUGH

He's certainly the best known

and the best loved of the so called weaver poets.

We know that Orr, within his own lifetime,

was known as the Burns of Ulster.

Which I think maybe was flattering the first time.

Maybe if people kept calling you the Burns of Ulster,

the compliment might start to wear a bit thin.

James Orr first achieved fame through publishing in the Northern Star.

The pieces that he published were real barnstorming pieces.

And the people who set up this newspaper,

their aim was to establish an Ireland where there was real democracy.

And where, instead of sectarian conflict,

you would have the common name of Irishmen.

So their vision, really, is something that we still aspire to today.

And when all of this political tension

exploded in the 1798 rebellion,

Orr spent a period on the run.

And he actually spent a period in enforced exile in America.

So he publishes a volume of verse when he comes home in 1804.

And there is a copy of it here.

And like Burns,

he writes a great deal of his best work in Braid Scotch.

-I when approached by lasses...

-MURMURS INDISTINCTLY

Chiel. Now, chiel's a pal, isn't it?

My grandfather used to use that word.

I'm goin' oot wi' ma chiels, he used to say.

Brilliant.

I thought you might be interested, actually,

in seeing what Orr wrote about Burns.

Aye.

Because he wrote an elegy

On The Death Of Mr Robert Burns, The Ayrshire Poet.

And you can tell from this tremendous respect that he has for Burns.

He begins very dramatically.

Drawing all the elements in to back up the importance

of what he's going to say. And he says...

The lift begot a storm to brew

The cloudy sun was vexed and dark

A forked flash comes glintin' through

Before a hawk that chased a lark

Then as I ran to reach a booth

I met a swain an asked, "Whit news?"

When thus he mourned the far famed youth

Wha fills the dark an narrow hoose.

-The dark and narrow hoose. The grave.

-OK.

And there's a real sense of a lament here when he cries out,

Oh, Burns! Oh, Burns!

The wale o swains wi' thee

The Scottish music fell.

-Oh!

-It's as if...

-The day the music died!

Yeah, the day the music died.

So we're going to try another one.

It's a brilliant song all about how easy it is to make love to

a woman when you're wearing a Scottish kilt.

CROWD LAUGH

So stay a good six feet away from anybody in a Scottish kilt.

Although, I said that on stage the other night

and somebody shouted, "Aye, six feet is nothing to an Ayrshire man!"

CROWD LAUGH

So this is Charlie Is My Darlin'.

I kind of stumbled in to Burns

because I was trying to make a traditional Scottish album.

Because I wanted to go home.

I was fed up living in London and I felt I'd had my fill of it.

I kind of felt that I wanted to make an album of music that was

culturally my own. Or part of me.

So when I was looking for traditional songs,

all the songs I loved turned out to be Robert Burns songs.

Without me knowing that they were Robert Burns songs

a lot of the time.

# 'Twas on a Monday morning right early in the year

# That Charlie came to our town, the young chevalier

# O Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling

# Charlie is my darling, the young chevalier

# As he was walking doon the street

# The city for to view

# O there he spied a bonnie lass

# The windae peekin' through

# Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling

# Charlie is my darling, the young chevalier... #

I started to develop an interest in his story as well.

And then I started to become a bit obsessed with Burns.

And turning into the person that would bore people to death

with him, really.

# So light he jumped up the stairs

# A tirl'd at the pin

# And wha's sae ready but herself to let the laddie in?

# Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling

# Charlie is my darling, the young chevalier

# He set his Jenny on his knee

# All in his Highland dress

# For brawly weel he kent the way

# To please a Highland lass

# Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling

# Charlie is my darling, the young chevalier. #

I'm having a rare time with this.

I don't get to play with the orchestra that often.

Of course, boys, what's it like?

We have to put our suits on and do it...come in at the right time.

Sometimes it's a bit scary up here, you know?

I think Burns, in his own way, was quite punk about his work.

I mean, when you look at how he wrote, which was quite unusual, even

though there were other poets that were writing in the Scots vernacular,

he was definitely being awful cheeky and certainly pushing boundaries.

Just outside Ballymena is a quiet estate named after weaver poet

David Herbison, who lived here.

And I've found a relative, Ivan Herbison,

to tell me more about the Bard of Dunclug.

-How are you?

-Hello.

-Good to meet you.

Nice to meet you. I'm Ivan.

You're very welcome to Ballymena and to the town of Dunclug.

I think that though he definitely felt culturally Scotch,

problems of identity, I think, were always close to the surface

of the weaver poets.

In particular,

I think that's summed up by a little couplet from Samuel Thomson.

The Bard of Carngranny.

Tho I'm Irish all without

I'm every item Scotch within.

And what about his life as a weaver?

He was apprenticed to weaving about the age of 14.

He developed this interest in poetry.

With his very first wages, round about 1814,

he walked from here to Belfast

to buy a copy of The Poems Of Allan Ramsey.

-How many miles is that we're talking?

-About 30 miles.

He walked 30 miles to buy Allan Ramsey's collection?

Yes, and the following year, with his second wages saved up,

he made the same journey to buy a copy of The Poems Of Burns.

So, Ivan, is there maybe a poem by your relative that you think

might have been heavily influenced by Robert Burns?

-Is there an example you can show me?

-Certainly.

It's entitled To A Mouse That Had Cut A Portion O The Author's Web.

The web being, not a spider's web, but the fabric.

The fabric that he's weaving.

..That he's slaved over. Right, OK. On you go.

My curse upon you for a mouse

You're grown of late sae very crouse

You never fail to range the house

Frae wa' to wa'

Destroying things that are o' use when I'm awa

While e'er you kept frae aff the loom

I ne'er was seen to scowl or gloom

But when you there began to toom your swollen bags

I hunted you frae room to room

Wi' poison'd rags

Aye, aye! You've done the deed at last!

And now are held in fetters fast!

Your cares and troubles a' are past

I'll sing again

Through a' the house, the joyfu' blast

Death has you ta'en.

SHE LAUGHS

Brilliant.

Nothing like Burns' poem but...the opposite of Burns' To A Mouse.

Exactly! Burns is sympathising with the mouse. That's why I chose it.

Because it might seem that there's an imitation of Burns there,

but it's a very different poem.

And in fact, David Herbison was asked to recite this poem

in houses where people had trouble with mice.

Next door is the cemetery where Herbison is buried

and in which stands a very impressive memorial to him.

There's Taggart, McCallum, a lot of Scots names.

Andrew.

There's the monument.

A thistle and a shamrock... together on the monument.

Hiya, David. Well done.

Being looked after by the community as a poet.

I salute you.

Congratulations.

You did it for all poets.

May you rest in peace.

BIRDSONG

# And we'll all go together

# To pluck wild mountain thyme

# All around the purple heather

# Will ye go, lassie, go? #

# Midnight... #

These weaver poets, I'm proud that they admired Robert Burns so much

that they took him into their own lives

and spread the word about him.

Because the one thing I do believe in is that poetry and song

has no borders whatsoever.

It's fantastic to be able to take a song from your culture and spread it

and go over to India, Japan, Australia, and express yourself.

And, in fact, I do know that the Maoris in New Zealand,

when you go to new Zealand, you have to go and witness the Haka

and you have to be initiated.

They have to say welcome and in their welcoming they ask you to sing a song

from your grandfather or your grandmother.

And when I asked them why, they said, "So we know who you are."

# Beauty is within grasp

# Hear the heavens call

# The last mile is upon us

# I'll carry you if you fall

# I know the armour's heavy now

# I know the heart inside

# It's beautiful just over the wild mountainside

# Snow is falling all over

# Out of clear blue skies

# Crow is flying high over

# You and I are gonna wander

# High up where the air is rare

# Wild horses ride

# It's beautiful, let's go roaming

# The wild mountainside... #

Knowing who you are, combining words, verse and music is so important.

One man who shares my passion for this is Willie Drennan.

I didn't really understand until I was about 15 or 16.

I saw this book on a library shelf at school,

picked it up and I was absolutely hooked from there on in.

I was into Bob Dylan at the time,

so I noticed some of the revolutionary similarities between Rabbie Burns and Bob Dylan.

And then the language was absolutely fascinating, you know.

And he was read in Belfast by the intellectuals.

And his songs have been sung by the workers in the fields in County Antrim.

Crosses all genres, divides.

Crosses all divides, as far as I'm aware, you know.

Even in Scotland it's the same.

What one of Burns were you fond of? What was the one you read in the school?

It was A Man's A Man For A' That that really impressed me at first,

because it was all those revolutionary ideas

about equal opportunity for everybody in life.

And it was through a friend of mine whose mother was into Rabbie Burns

and she told me about the weaver poets and I'd never heard tell of them.

I find that quite criminal that you've never heard of the weaver poets

-in your own place, where they came from.

-Criminal it was, aye.

What's wonderful about the weaver poets is you're getting little...

It's almost like, here's this little tapestry from life's rich pageant

-and here's my wee bit, and look how wonderful it was for me.

-Aye.

And this is my experience.

Like a little videogram from centuries ago.

-Have you recorded any of these?

-Aye. Even though some were written as ballads,

there were no tunes mentioned that I could discover, so I made up my own wee tunes.

I'd love to hear one.

I'm fed up talking about the poetry. Would you sing us a bit?

-I believe you'll know this tune.

-Sitting back.

# Lassies all... # Yeah, cool.

On it goes.

# Heartsome is the clock and o

# Heartsome is the clock and o

# Where every hour I hae to spare

# Is passed in mirth and lachan o... #

And then he says...

Maiden, maiden, hands are dear The bowler that he's haudin' o

Wi' carcass, claes, blood and beer

The flower is lying-o...

That is quite dense for me.

I have trouble understanding what that is but I can hear Scots in it.

Would you be tempted to adjust it so the clarity of meaning comes out?

From an academic point of view, it can get very boring

if you're reciting poetry that nobody understands.

-Exactly.

-But I think there's a way of delivering it in short verses

and explaining that this is what it's about.

That poem there was about the Ballycarry Fair

where people would go to the fair and then afterwards they would have a wee drink

and a wee dance and have a wee fight.

-Yeah.

-And that's really what it's all about.

I want to thank you for making the attempt to get

some of these poor wee guys' works at least into people's lugs,

because I don't think people listen to poetry as much as they listen to song.

And perhaps some of the kids at school might learn a few of those tunes with those words,

-which they will in turn teach their children and beyond.

-Aye. Let's hope so.

I was very surprised to find that these poets are not in every school,

there's not a book in every school for kids, for young girls and young boys to be inspired by.

Cos that's what I think these poets would do for language here.

If they want to keep it, you've got to teach the kids.

And the kids have got to have fun with it.

Particularly, it would be great if some of the poetry could be done as song.

That's the way to spread the word about poetry,

to turn it into something that people do recite in pubs in a hundred years' time.

It might seem strange these days, but 200 years ago

it was common for poetry to be published in the papers.

This meant the working-class poets reached a wide readership

and sometimes even gained a celebrity status.

The Central Library in Belfast has a remarkable collection of newspapers,

including early publications of the Belfast Newsletter dating right back to 1739.

Dr Jennie Orr studies Burns as well as Ulster's weaver poets.

Her particular fascination is Samuel Thomson, the Bard of Carngranny,

who we do know actually met Robert Burns.

Thomson's an interesting character because although he's traditionally classed as a weaver poet,

he was in fact a schoolmaster.

-OK.

-So he's from County Antrim.

He's in charge of a lot of young minds

and he's also started a literary coterie.

He's got other poets writing to him and he's lending them volumes of verse.

So he was very much the guy who promoted Burns among these other poets.

-OK, so he feels almost like he owns him in a lot of ways.

-I suppose he does, yeah.

-And managing his fame and...

-Managing his reputation, absolutely.

A lot of the poems introduced into these newspapers were done by Thomson.

Thomson went to Scotland, he met with Burns,

he took down Burns's poems, came back and into the newspaper they went.

-Some man. He spread the word.

-Hmm.

Great. We'll find out more about that.

-Shall we have a coffee?

-That would be lovely.

-Let's do that.

Let's talk about Burns and his connection with him.

Samuel Thomson actually wrote to Burns

and in 1794 Thomson travelled to Scotland to see his hero.

-Has he left writings or diaries?

-We have one letter, and Burns actually sent a volume of poetry,

-Robert Fergusson's poetry, over to Thomson in Ireland.

-Lovely.

And in exchange, Burns received a bit of snuff from Thomson. Some Dublin Lundy Foot snuff.

Written by Mr Thomas Sloan on behalf of Mr Robert Burns,

to Mr Samuel Thomson of Templepatrick.

But he remains influenced by that romanticism within Burns, that need to celebrate the Scottish people,

celebrate your own culture.

And for Thomson, obviously, that's Ulster,

but Burns provided a good model for how that could be done.

EDDI SINGS TO HERSELF

I'm in the heart of County Down on my way to a small town called Rathfriland.

This wonderful rural landscape provided inspiration to many of the Ulster poets,

including Hugh Porter, a farmer-weaver who lived near the village in Moneyslane.

I've arranged to meet Dr Frank Ferguson

and I'm curious to know why we're meeting in this particular place.

Well, we're here today in Rathfriland Library

because Hugh Porter came to Rathfriland

and he was attracted by the book society that they had.

And Porter was from a generation that books where finally made available to people like him.

They were storehouses of poetry and song and information.

And that's why this place is so important.

And you can actually come here and you can take his book off the shelf.

Something that he would have loved, to know

that his book was still available

and still available to the people of Rathfriland.

Can you tell me who he was as a man, his life, a little bit about that?

There are stories about his early life that maybe he was a United Irishman,

maybe a bit of a radical,

but after the United Irish rebellion, when people were trying to rebrand themselves,

Porter began getting a reputation as a poet.

Burns is kind of the template, kind of the hero

and kind of the inspiration for him to get started.

And for him, it was the way to avoid the drudgery of working on the farm or working at the loom.

I'd really like you to point me in the direction of an example of his work.

If you want to see the basic influence of Burns coming out in Porter's work,

his answer to Burns' Lovely Jean is probably one of the key things.

Because we have Burns here,

Porter is pretending to be the character from Burns' poem

-speaking to him after Burns is dead.

-OK.

'In Burns' original poem, he's expressing his love for his wife Jean,

'but Porter has turned things around writing from Jean's point of view, lamenting the death of her husband.'

It's so lovely. He's being Jean and he's painting a picture of what it would be like without him now.

She'll "fill my Robin's room". Now Robin...

That just breaks my heart, because Robin is Robert Burns's pet name.

So he's using the fact that Jean would have called him Robin,

and I find that really touching.

-Would you read some for me?

-Sure.

-I want to hear what it will sound like with your accent.

-OK.

I'll do my best.

My Burns is gone I'm left alone

My dearest spouse no more

Shall bless my arms and praise my charms

And tell them o'er and o'er

We baith confess'd We baith were bless'd

But O! transportin' scene Too soon ye fled, my Burns is dead

And I'm no more his Jean.

And I love this poem because this is a man writing about another man.

And it shows a real sense of, you know, of...real closeness and affection.

And, you know, Porter's finding a way to really express his sense of loss.

-Yeah.

-And it profoundly shows the connection between Ulster and Scotland.

Because you have the language there, but you also have the sense of how poetry can connect people.

One of his poems seems to be

exactly the metre of For A' That... A Man's A Man For A' That,

-which is Burns's fantastic poem.

-Oh, yeah. Song On Marriage.

You've got it? It's called The Song On Marriage.

I noticed it and thought that's fantastic.

For example...

# The day has come my bonny bride

# That ye're my ain an' all that

# Till death we mun together bide

# They say it is a law that

# The law that, the law that

# It is an unco law that... #

An unco law that.

# ..The knot that ties for life it is

# A knot that would not draw that. #

And there's the word "unco", which I know they only speak in Ayrshire.

I only went there a couple of months ago and I met a drunk man in the street

and he said, "I'm getting fu' and unco happy!"

Which is a very typical Ayrshire saying for getting drunk.

-And straight out of Burns as well.

-Straight out of Burns.

And I think what you showed by singing that

is the layers of connection that people would have realised when they opened this book in County Down,

that it wasn't just the poetry that connected County Down to Scotland,

-it was the song as well.

-Music.

They feel themselves very much... nearly the same community.

-Yeah.

-Rathfriland is not that far away from Ayrshire.

-Hmm.

-It might be a good idea now to actually go Porter's village, Moneyslane,

-to get a sense of the world that he came from.

-Aye. Love to.

This is Moneyslane.

This would have been the closest village to where Hugh Porter lived.

And it's the place that he sort of takes on as his bardic name.

He's Hugh Porter of Moneyslane.

This would have been his turf.

He would always have felt himself attached to this part of the country.

And he really didn't move.

His world would have kind of been where he could walk to.

How beautiful is that view!

-This is sort of the imprint of the past here.

-Hmm.

You could imagine him sitting in an evening...

sitting on a wall somewhere talking to his friends.

You get a sense of somebody who has to get the job at hand done before he can write.

He's a weaver-farmer.

So we get the sense of him even telling the muse in some poems

that his web of linen has to be put out to bleach in the sun before he can actually talk to her.

It's a massive fight to be a human in society and be free enough in your head

to allow creativity to happen.

# Ae fond kiss

# And then we sever

# Ae fareweel, alas for ever

# Deep in heart-rung tears I'll pledge thee

# Warring sighs

# And groans I'll wage thee... #

What I've found are kindred spirits.

First of all, I share a love of Burns with them and I understand them completely.

I know exactly what they got out of him, because it's the same thing I've got

and still have every time I dip into him and rediscover him all over again.

And now I've got new guys to tap into.

And I'm really in love with this idea that these guys were coming up

with poetry while they were at the loom.

Normal life gives you so many rhythms.

So mostly I've got this visual picture of these people

that, if I had met them, we would have had a great drink.

And it seems to me that they're still alive today.

# ..I wish

# That you could show

# That you could show

# Bye-bye

# Bye-bye

# Bye-bye. #

So here I am, on the way to Donegal, and I love the way they talk.

It's...

I just stare at them and even if they're saying something serious

they've got to shake me, because all I'm hearing is...

SHE IMITATES SINGSONG ACCENT

It's just wonderful. It throws me, accents. I think...

I hear a song in everything and...

certainly the voices here just make me think everybody's singing.

So here we are, going across the Craigavon Bridge, into Derry.

It's quite spectacular.

'We're heading into Donegal, because it too was home to weaver poets.

'Donegal was a big part of the Ulster Scots story

'and this landscape reminds me so much of parts of Scotland.'

Beautiful rolling countryside. It's kind of similar to Ayrshire.

There's a group of people I'm meeting

that say they speak in the hamely tongue.

It's definitely the hamely smell, anyway.

Phew!

'I've seen a lot of the Scots influence in the language of the weaver poets,

'but I'm keen to know how much it can be still heard today.

'Jacqui Reed has invited me to her home

'along with a couple of friends from across the border in the North, Ann Morrison Smyth and Gary Blair.'

Can you tell me about how much of the language from Scotland

has survived through the generations

and stays here in this part of the world?

Well, I think Donegal would be a great speaking zone.

But where we live, in North Antrim, would likely I think be the strongest.

Definitely a lot of the Scottish words have survived there,

but I do believe that the language has always been there, that it didnae come with the plantation.

And the ancient kingdom of Dal Riata, of course,

was partly in Ulster, in the north-east, where County Antrim would be today,

and the western part of Scotland, what's now Scotland.

And that was one kingdom.

Divided by water but one kingdom, and one kingship ruled it,

until Fergus moved over to Scotland to sort it out.

Aye, to sort us out!

Ah, the accent's marvellous. I can hear it all coming in very...

I mean, you're using words that I...don't use, but...

Well, funny, I seen Eddi on TV the other night and she was talking

about Rabbie Burns, and she said she thought he was steaming

-when he wrote this. And I was, "Oh, God!"

-So you knew what that was?

-I knew what it meant.

-Oh, we use steaming here.

-Do you?

-Aye.

-It's a good word.

-Aye, and look at what it represents.

You can see the steam coming off of somebody, like... Wonderful.

It's great to hear it today as well, it's alive, still alive.

Aye. And when it's raw.

It's nice if you come to a speaking zone

and can hear the raw Ulster Scots being spoken.

When I went to school, our teacher, Mrs Calhoun,

we had elocution lessons,

because we talked broad, you know, doon, dour, oxsters,

all those words were classed as broad, and if you wanted

to go to university or if you wanted a job you didn't speak like that.

So I can still see her going, "Tee...tee..."

Like pulling the thread through your teeth for pronunciation.

Well, there was, not very long ago, a time when actresses and actors

had to use Received Pronunciation just to get a part down south,

and I think it was Billy Connolly that said,

and it was a magical thing he said,

that when some people down south said...

-RP ACCENT:

-"I can't understand a word you're saying,"

and then he would say,

"But you can put on Neighbours and understand somebody that's

"5,000 miles away from you. So, you know, make a wee bit of effort."

And it's wonderful hearing you

because I thought it might be difficult and it isn't

and I can hear it flowing, and all I'm getting from it,

-as I was saying earlier, I get the singsong in respect of the voice...

-CONVERSATION FADES OUT

-It was a wonderful night last night.

-Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

It was so lovely going over the language and the comparisons of the words.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, actually, to be honest,

and I'm sure there's a lot of people would have been flummoxed

by following it,

-just because it's so...it bounces from so many different roots.

-Yes.

-So we're going up to the... An Grainne, is it?

-An Grianan.

-An Grianan, An Grianan.

-An Grianan Aileach.

-An Grianan Aileach.

-Fort of the Sun.

-The Fort of the Sun.

-Yeah.

-Gorgeous.

When I first heard Ann and Gary speaking, it was...

It was quite remarkable what it did to me, because I could hear...

It was almost like...there was... one part of the sentence...

In a seven-word sentence you would get the dialects

of Ayrshire, Shetland, Kirkcaldy, Fife, Dumfries and Ulster, all in the one...

-Sentence.

-In the one sentence.

'The Fort of the Sun. Brilliant name.

'And we're heading there because this area was home to a poet called Sarah Leech,

'one of only a couple of female weaver poets that we know about.'

I can't imagine that you could not be affected lyrically

-and poetically by just looking out at this.

-Yeah.

And it was simple poetry, you know, about the land and about the fairies

and the wee folk and, you know, the stories that were told,

-or the thrashing or the harvest.

-I mean, look at that.

It just gets better as you go up.

The area of water that you see down here, that's Lough Swilly,

but locally it's called the Lake of Shadows. It's beautiful.

If you look now you can just kind of see that there's

the shadows of the mountains, their dark reflection on the water.

And there would be quite a few local poems and stories about it,

about their love and the Lake of Shadows, and...yeah.

That's what I love about the use of language, is that it would be

a local language that would call it that, not an official kind of...

-what we're supposed to call the area.

-Yes.

But the locals would call it the Lake of Shadows and use that romantic....

-And use it romantically in their writing.

-Yes.

So this is the entrance.

I'll let you go in first, Eddi, just to let you take it all in.

Oh, my goodness. This is a lovely place for a gig, I think.

# Mona Lisa, Oh, oh, oh, oh

# Hup! #

It's amazing. It's just bouncing round.

-If I take you up these steps up here.

-OK.

And you can take in the view.

Wow, look at that. That is just amazing, stunning,

and this is what would have inspired Sarah Leech.

-She was gambolling around here, was she?

-It is.

And that's one of the reasons I brought you up here,

because, if you look directly across here,

down through the valley there, and that far, distant hill,

that's Binnion Hill,

and at the bottom of Binnion Hill is Sarah Leech's home place,

-and it's a wee place called Lettergull.

-Lettergull.

-Lettergull.

-I have a wee poem here that she's written.

Oh, she's leaving it in this bit, this verse. "But fare ye weel.

"May you have clothes," or, "May you ha'e claes,

"Wi' health to roam about the braes,

"And Guid preserve you a' your days, Frae Satan's reach,

"Is what the muse sincerely prays. Yours - Sarah Leech."

-So she's addressed herself in her own poetry.

-She has, yes.

She would have worked on the spinning wheel,

so whenever you're doing her poems, they have that rhythm.

Around the ages of 16, she lost her eyesight,

probably measles or poor light from working.

So, by the time that these were being published,

in the Londonderry Journal, which was the local paper,

she would have been blind at that point.

It wasn't until after she died that her actual poetry was published

in a book, and as far as we're aware we've only come across the one book.

-There she is, look.

-That's her there, yes.

She's holding a book in this hand

and she's got the spinning going on in this hand. That's her inkwell.

Her inkwell, so that she would have been ready to write,

for inspiration that would have come.

# My luve is like a red, red rose

# That's newly sprung in June

# My heart is like a melodie

# That's sweetly play'd in tune

# As fair art thou, my bonnie lad

# So deep in luve am I

# And I will luve thee still, my dear

# Till a' the seas gang dry

# Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear

# And the rocks melt wi' the sun

# And I will luve thee still, my dear

# Though the sands o' life shall run

# But fare thee weel, my only luve

# Fare thee weel, a while!

# And I will come again, my dear

# Tho' it were ten thousand miles... #

'There's a few miles between us but this has been a wonderful journey

'finding a love of Burns that matches my own at home.

'But home is never defined by borders.

'We're at home with each other when we share our art

'and similarities of our cultural heritage.

'Art is about life. Of course, life isn't about art.'

# My luve is like a red, red rose

# That's newly sprung in June

# My heart is like a melodie

# That's sweetly play'd in tune

# As fair art thou, my bonnie lad

# So deep in luve am I

# And I will luve thee still, my dear

# Till a' the seas gang dry

# And I will luve thee still, my dear

# Till a'

# A' the seas

# Gang dry. #

'At the heart of the movement of Scots into Donegal

'was the little village of Ramelton, close to where Sarah Leech lived.

'Thousands arrived here from Scotland,

'bringing the language and poetry of their native land with them.

'Jacqui has brought me to meet Celine McGlynn,

'who shares her enthusiasm for the work of Sarah Leech.'

There must have been another female writers

involved in the linen industry and...

Where are they and what happened to them? Where's their work?

Undoubtedly there are other female poets,

and female weaver poets, who have fallen through the cracks,

and a lot of women who were published were published under

male pseudonyms as well, so Sarah Leech was very lucky,

and we're very lucky that the potential in her work was recognised.

Do you have direct proof that she was influenced by Burns in her writing?

There's one poem in particular addressed to a mouse,

and it's...it's got a resonance with his poem.

This is the second time I've heard a poem by a poet, a weaver poet,

referencing To A Mouse. The other one was David Herbison.

Burns' To A Mouse is talking about how they share the dominion here,

and they're equals, the mouse and the man,

and David Herbison, his poem was more about how you

get rid of them, because they're a nuisance. So how does she...

-How's her take on it?

-Sarah's poem was on killing a mouse in harvest.

Hers was her guilt. She'd felt so bad, because, as she said...

-It was accidental.

-Yeah, with the reaping hook,

the hook that they would have taken the green with.

And she just felt so bad because she was saying,

such a wee creature, that it didn't deserve to die.

And the same way as Burns relates it to man

and man's place in the world and the way of things,

she does the same thing at the end of the poem, you know,

that man is so vain that he doesn't see actually that he's

on the same level playing field as the wee mouse now dead on the floor.

Would you mind reading me the last verse?

"Alas, vain man cannot foresee, or such misfortunes he would flee

"Frail helpless creature much like thee, beset wi' woes

"Still hoping better days to see, he onward goes."

It really mirrors Burns' poem,

because Burns says all you've got is what's ahead,

and it's full of woe and fear, and it is quite a vulnerable poem from Burns.

You know, he's worried about the future.

We're in this beautiful setting. I just wondered if, could we get another poem?

Could we get you to read a little bit of Sarah

and we imagine she's here with us?

Um, she has a beautiful poem here, and it's called The Wish.

She's so contented with her life, and you're thinking,

at the age of 21, that's where her life stopped.

She made it no further,

but she's not looking for anything or wanting anything else.

She's totally contented.

I get such a feeling of wealth when I read this poem.

I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces I've ever read.

Well, it's the truth, that's what art does,

it makes you all the better for experiencing it.

The Wish.

"The great of pedigree may vaunt For that I little care

"Ye powers let me have rhyming can't Of common sense a share

"Gi'e me a bale gown for my back

"Let not my food be stinted For wealth I dinna care a plack

"I'm with my lot contented

"Let some clear streamlet be my drink

"Where bonnie flow'rets waver

"There I shall sit upon the brink And woo the Muses' favour."

# Mmm

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# And never brought to mind?

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# And days of auld lang syne

# Aye, for auld lang syne, my jo

# For auld lang syne

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For the days of auld lang syne... #

I'd have loved to have met Robert Burns.

I'd love to take Robert Burns by the hand

and take him to all these places that know him.

And I think he would have been amazed.

What Burns did for me, which is I think what he did for the poets,

was reveal to them that it was OK to sing in your own voice.

And of course I was aware of that before

but certainly with the weaver poets it sounds like to me

that things that they maybe had been told to tone down,

they were allowed to erupt and make bloom and flow, kind of,

in a beautiful way.

"My curse upon you for a mouse You're grown of late sae very crouse

"You never fail to range the house Frae wa' to wa',

"Destroying things that are o' use When I'm awa."

It's kind of touching to know that human beings continue to create

and will always create and will never stop

and that all we have to do is say, it's OK to do it. Do it.

Don't stop, do it.

And never be scared to use your own voice,

and never be scared to... to say what you mean.

# And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!

# And gie's a hand o' thine!

# We'll tak a right gude-willy waught

# For auld lang syne

# For auld lang syne, my dear

# For auld lang syne

# We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

# For the days of auld lang syne. #