Episode 2 Tim McGarry's Ulster Scots Journey

In the first programme, we looked at how links

between Scotland and Ulster

go back hundreds, indeed thousands, of years.

And I thought that I had impeccable Catholic roots,

but it turns out that my great-great-grandfather

was a Presbyterian assistant farmer from Innishargie

on the Ards Peninsula.

And he had a wee bit of illicit "Cohesion, Sharing And Integration"

with a Catholic maid from a couple of fields away.

Her name was Mary Anne Cleland.

His name was McClelland, both Scottish names.

So it proves that I am just a wee bit Ulster Scot.

Yes, the McClellands

and Clelands probably came over in the early 1600s,

and that's when we start the second part of our journey,

as we take a close look at the Plantation.

The Plantation is one of those historical events

that we all remember with certainty and passion.

Unfortunately, often that certainty and passion isn't backed up

by any detailed knowledge of the actual events. Why?

Because, well, it's Northern Ireland, and our current

political views often colour how we view the Plantation.

Let's look at the facts.

The Protestants, I think we would all agree, arrived here 400 years ago.

They robbed the Catholic land,

they drove us up to the hills like so many sheep, they did their best

to brutalise our language, our culture, our traditions.

Our struggle continues today to right those wrongs,

and that struggle goes on, even as we speak.

I couldn't have put that better myself.

These early settlers were fine, decent,

hardworking Protestant stock. What did they find when they got here?

They found a wasteland, a bog, as Kevin said.

Inhabited by semi-nomadic,

non English-speaking Roman Catholics.

Up to now, settlements in Ulster were haphazard and unofficial.

This one was different.

This was Plantation as government policy.

The official Plantation affected six of Ulster's nine counties.

OK? You had Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, Armagh

and a county that was originally called County Coleraine,

but then in 1613 became County Londonderry,

and that was because the London companies,

-the great merchant companies of London...

-That name'll never stick.

Well, they were given responsibility for developing

what became County Londonderry.

Planning took place in London over a number of years prior to 1610,

when it was rolled out. We see various categories of grantee.

When we think of the Plantation we think of the settlements,

they're the undertakers.

And, interestingly, they were the only group of grantees

specifically forbidden to have Irish tenants.

Now, that was the theory, and the theory, when it's devised in London,

is very different from the practice when it's rolled out in Ulster.

The theory was to have Irish removed from the undertakers' estates,

the reality is that most of those estates were Irish.

This is the trouble with Irish history - it's too complicated.

I thought it was nice and simple,

the Protestants came and stole all our land,

but that's not how it happened at all, in reality.

So these Scottish settlers arrive in Ulster.

Would they have spoken a different language from the native Irish,

have a different religion from the native Irish?

Yeah, well, they would overwhelmingly have spoken Scots.

But the Irish natives were speaking...

-Gaelic Irish.

-Oh, yes. They would have been, That's right.

Thanks.

The trouble with the Ulster Scots language

is that most people don't think it's a language.

Plus, it's too easy to mock.

I mean, any second-rate comedian can do that.

Does anybody here speak Ulster Scots?

No, you all do.

Why? Cos it's not a language.

With a real language, you need a good ear.

With Ulster Scots, you need a straight face.

With a language, there's grammar and syntax and regular verbs.

With Ulster Scots, to learn it,

all you need is six-pack of Harp and DVD of Rab C Nesbitt.

All right, Jackie, I'm one of those people you want to slap,

cos I've been on the telly taking the hand out of Ulster Scots, but...

Don't give me that look!

Monie's the time, big lad, I would like to slap you across the bake.

This could go very badly!

So, I'm not going to apologise, I'm going to tell you,

I have taken the hand out of it,

but I want to know - yous think it is a proper, living language.

You're a native Ulster Scots speaker.

Is it a language or is it a dialect?

You know, it's like saying, "is a daisy a flooer or a weed?,

or "is a dandelion a flooer or a weed?"

There's that sort of a dividing line.

Um, folk would say it's a dialect. To me, that's just my way of life.

It's been so stigmatised here, because English was brought in,

and the Ulster Scots was getting bated oot ye,

should it be in school, or wherever - or even talking to folk.

But yinst you -

when you're in the schoolhouse it's always Standard English,

and yinst you stepped ower that door into the playground,

you switched, automatic.

-And essentially, you're bilingual.

-You were bilingual?

We were bilingual even before bilingual was even thought about.

In 1860, a teacher in Belfast named David Patterson

was totally appalled by the pronunciation of words

by people in Belfast.

In fact, so appalled was he that he wrote a book

with the astonishingly patronising title of...

HE READS IN AFFECTED ACCENT

Yes, even 160 years in, you still want to slap him.

He was very annoyed by the way people were pronouncing their words.

Words like "gold", he said, was pronounced "goold",

"idiot" was pronounced "eejut", and "whip" was pronounced "whop".

Even worse than that, according to Patterson,

these people actually made up words

that weren't even in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Words like "skelf", meaning a splinter,

or "carnaptious", meaning crabbit,

or "boke", meaning to listen to the Stephen Nolan Show.

These words were indeed, of course,

Ulster Scots words that had their origin in Northumbria,

and then spread to the Lowland Scots before coming here to Ulster.

We often think of the Ulster Plantation

and the movement of Scots across the North Channel

and into our own province

as being the most significant event in Scottish history of that era,

but the reality was, more Scots went to Poland

in the early 17th century than came to Ulster.

In fact, more Scots went to Scandinavia in the early 17th century

-than came to Ulster.

-And did they bring anything with them?

Hugh Montgomery established a school.

There was also a playground or a green beside the school,

in which there was space to play golf, archery and football.

You're telling me that we

wouldn't have had Rory McIlroy or Geordie Best

-without the Ulster Scots?

-Very possible.

One aspect of the Plantation we rarely discuss

is the actual character of the planters themselves.

The Reverend Blair from Bangor in 1623,

well, he was frankly unimpressed, describing the new settlers as...

And the Reverend Andrew Stewart from Donaghadee,

he was even less impressed.

He said that the new settlers were, and I quote...

The type of people, he said, who were just fleeing debt or justice.

Well, isn't that what we always say about new immigrants?

But there were some really bad boys from the Scottish Borders

who came to Ulster.

James I clamped down on a lot of the clans,

particularly the Grahams, who were the most notorious of the people

who would have gone across and stole cattle and rustled sheep...

They were a bit lawless, the Grahams?

They were extremely lawless.

So a lot of them were hanged, and some of them, actually,

when they came to Ulster, spelled their name backwards to try

and avoid the authorities.

If you spell it backwards it's roughly "Maharg",

so you find some Mahargs, certainly here in County Antrim.

Yeah, so they were really, really bad people.

Can you tell who was a planter and who was native by people's names?

It's very dangerous to make any assumptions

about someone's religious affiliation or political allegiances

based on their surname.

You take, for example, McGuinness.

You've got Ken Maginnis, Alban Maginness, Martin McGuinness.

You've people who have names

that, you know, in our own preconceived notions,

"Oh, he must be a Unionist, he must be a Nationalist," but actually,

you look at their background, it's much more complex than that.

We're all mixed up to some degree.

Well, let me throw a couple of names at you, then. Adams.

Well, Adams is, er, very much a Scottish name.

-It's a Scottish name?

-Yes.

Gerry Adams is an Ulster Scot?

Well, it's possible, certainly, but we do have to be careful with names

in that sometimes we have names

that are sounding very obviously Scottish or English,

but may actually be an Irish name that has been anglicised in some way.

So, without delving into someone's own family history, it's...

-Duncan.

-Well, again, Duncan is maybe a Scottish name, so...

Hugo Duncan is an Ulster Scot.

-Very possibly.

-You heard it here first.

Irish history has always been pretty turbulent,

featuring wars, invasions, rebellions,

and quite a lot of brutality.

But now another factor was added into the mix, and a very potent one.

Religion.

One of the false perceptions of the Plantations,

with regard to the Scots, for instance,

that they were Scots Presbyterians, and exclusively Scots Presbyterians,

that's not the case at all.

Some were undoubtedly people who had sympathies with Presbyterian system.

Others were Episcopalians, still others were actually Roman Catholics.

There was a small but significant colony of Scottish Catholics

at Strabane in the early 1600s.

Some people ask why Scots decided to settle here in Ulster.

Well, isn't it obvious?

In Scotland the weather is wet and miserable, whereas here...

RAIN PATTERS AND WIND WHISTLES

Exactly 400 years ago,

the Reverend Edward Brice arrived in this village, Ballycarry.

He was the first Presbyterian minister in Ulster, indeed,

the first ever Presbyterian service in Ireland was held here

in the year 1613.

This is the church that Brice preached in.

He would have preached here from 1613 until 1636.

The early Presbyterian ministers who came here into Ulster,

almost, I think, to a man,

were all out of favour with the church authorities.

But also there was the pull-factor of these new settlements

of Scots without ministers.

There were about eight or nine very influential Presbyterian ministers

in South Antrim and North Down, at places like Bangor.

Robert Blair is probably the most prominent of them all.

But John Knox's grandson, he ends up in Temple Patrick.

So these were Premier League guys who were coming across here,

at the time.

And so that sense of Presbyterian identity, that starts to cause

all sorts of problems, but not necessarily with Catholic Irish.

With Anglican bishops.

The Plantation may have been more complicated and messier

than we imagine, but it undoubtedly fostered tension and resentment,

both political and religious, with the native Irish.

Eventually, resentment and anger boiled over.

Rebellion broke out in Ulster in the year 1641.

English settlers were massacred by the native Irish.

Initially, the Scots settlers were exempted from attack,

but very quickly the violence spread.

There were massacres of Scottish settlers in Armagh and Portadown.

This led, in the following year, 1642, to a Scottish Covenanter army

arriving to defend the Presbyterians.

There were further atrocities on both sides,

and then, just to add to things, civil war broke out in England.

After a bloody civil war,

King Charles I was defeated by the forces of parliament.

Their leader was a man who, even today,

wouldn't get a pint in certain Irish bars.

Not that he'd want one. Those Puritans.

Catholics in Ireland used to have two pictures

hanging on their living room wall -

one of the Pope, and one of John F Kennedy.

Neither of whom is quite as popular as he used to be.

One man whose picture would never grace a Catholic home

is Oliver Cromwell.

He of the famous massacres at Drogheda and other places.

Cromwell is to Catholic Ireland what Osama bin Laden is to America.

What I didn't realise, however, is that Oliver Cromwell

wasn't much of a friend to the Ulster Scots, either. Why?

Well, during the English Civil War,

the Ulster Scots made the mistake of supporting the Royalists.

So when Cromwell arrived in Ireland in 1649,

he also wanted to have a word not just with the Catholics,

but also with the Ulster Scots.

In December of that year, he defeated a combined

Ulster Scot-Royalist army at Lisnagarvey just outside Lisburn.

Oliver Cromwell famously told the Catholics that they could go...

He then told the Ulster Scots that they could go...

Which, to be honest, doesn't have quite the same ring about it.

Cromwell had a list of 150 key Ulster Scots leaders

that he was going to send on a trip to Tip.

But then he relented, and said that the Ulster Scots could stay

as long as they paid large fines.

Yes, as far as Cromwell was concerned,

Presbyterians weren't the right sort of Protestants -

but at least they were Protestants.

When the short-lived English Republic came to an end

and King Charles II came onto the throne,

things actually didn't improve for the Ulster Scots Presbyterians.

Yes, they were Protestants, but according to the established church,

they weren't the right sort of Protestants.

Indeed, all the Presbyterian ministers in Scotland and Ulster

were expelled from their churches.

The Ulster Scots had been badly treated

by the Catholic King James II, plus the settlers had very real fears

about a repeat of the massacres of 1641.

So when revolution again broke out in England,

it was clear whose side the Ulster Scots would be on.

When King William of Orange arrived in the year 1690,

the Ulster Scots supported him to a man.

He arrived here in Carrickfergus Castle,

and if you want to know what happened next,

well, look at a gable wall near you.

So, Jackie, I don't now if you know, but I found Ulster Scots roots.

My great-great-Grandfather Clelands and McClellands

from Innishargie and Nuns Quarter. So, I am part Ulster Scots.

-I'm starting to like you already, big lad.

-Are you?!

I'm sorry to have pushed you aroon, after all.

Least that's time to slag you off now, anyhow, on the TV, there.

We did some vox pops in town and asked people about Ulster Scots,

and a couple of things emerged.

We're doing a wee documentary about Ulster Scots.

-Och, aye?

-"Och, aye"!

-I'm fluent in it!

-Are you fluent?!

-Especially with a few drinks in me.

What about the Ulster Scots language?

I haven't a clue.

It's no more a language than Glaswegian's a language.

That's the way I see it.

I don't think it's a language, you can't convince me it's a language.

You just can't convince me of it. It's a makey-up thing, I think.

In terms of the language, either they mocked it,

or they thought it was merely a dialect.

In all honesty, and I'm not trying to dodge the question,

but I don't think it matters.

Because what I think is important about it is that it's a living thing

that people here still use, and I think that should be valued.

I think that there's a Scottish vocabulary,

an Ulster Scots vocabulary, that is entirely universal here.

Um, and I think what matters is that those things

make this place feel special, make it feel different.

The 1600s had been extremely violent and traumatic.

The 1700s were slightly less violent until the end of the century,

but equally as traumatic.

Throughout the century,

the Ulster Scots Presbyterians suffered discrimination

at the hands of the established Anglican church,

the Church of Ireland.

Presbyterians were barred from public office,

their marriages weren't recognised, they could even teach.

And when they died, their burial ceremonies had to be in accordance

with Church of Ireland rules.

And, to top it all, the Presbyterians had to pay

the Church of Ireland a tithe

for the pleasure of being discriminated against.

And you know what Ulster Scots are like - that was bound to hurt.

Persecution took many forms.

The Reverend John McBride from the Presbyterian church

in Rosemary Street in Belfast

had a few difficulties with the authorities.

From about 1703 to 1712 he was effectively on the run.

The portrait here, we can see on the wall, of McBride.

The Sheriff of Belfast came with some soldiers to arrest him.

And McBride had been tipped off, and escaped.

And the Sheriff of Belfast, in seeing McBride had gone, drew his sword -

he couldn't stab McBride,

so he stabbed the next best thing, which was the portrait.

Ongoing persecution, a series of famines and rising rent

led many Ulster Scots to emigrate to America for a new life.

Plus, let's face it, the weather was better as well.

While many Ulster Scots fled to America,

those who remained behind continued to suffer

discrimination at the hands of the established church.

Then the American Revolution broke out in 1776.

It was led by the close friends

and relatives of many of the people of Ulster,

and this, in turn, led Presbyterians to becoming more radical.

Then, in 1789, the French Revolution broke out,

and this radicalism became even more militant.

In 1791 the Society of United Irishmen was formed here in Belfast.

And many of its members worshipped in this church.

LA MARSEILLAISE PLAYS

The United Irishmen's core support came from Belfast Presbyterians.

Originally, they wanted political reform,

but when Revolutionary France declared war on Britain,

the government clamped down on the organisation,

and the United Irishmen started to demand not reform,

but revolution.

In 1795, Wolfe Tone and Henry Joy McCracken,

the leaders of the United Irishmen,

came up here to McArt's Fort on the Cavehill, and they swore an oath...

Three years later, however, McCracken was back on the Cavehill,

this time on the run, in hiding after the violent and bloody failure

of the 1798 rebellion.

Many of the founding members of the Linen Hall Library

were United Irishmen, but it's wrong to suggest that everyone in Belfast

sympathised with them.

The Society had to accommodate both the United Irishmen, you know,

the radical politics of the time, with conservatism.

And there's a minute from around 1793

that says that while books on religion and politics

are very important, these topics will not be discussed

within the Society, because they were so divisive.

In the same year that Henry Joy McCracken

pledged himself to an Irish Republic,

the Orange Order was formed in Armagh

after vicious clashes between Catholics and Protestants.

The United Irishmen said they wanted to unite Catholic, Protestant

and dissenters, but in the south,

the 1798 rebellion often descended into sectarian conflict.

And whilst the rebellion in the north was mainly

led by Presbyterians, certainly not all Presbyterians supported it.

Thomas Russell was our second librarian.

Because of his United Irishmen activities,

he was arrested on the library premises in 1796.

Now, he wasn't released until 1802,

and he had ended up in Fort George in Scotland.

So he was, I think,

the longest-serving State prisoner at the time.

So it shows how dangerous they felt, the government felt, that he was.

There was a real split between those who were friends of Russell

and those within the society who had given money towards

the reward for his arrest.

Like all wars and conflicts,

the 1798 Rebellion had its own small tragedies.

There was a local boy, 16-year-old William Nelson,

who was hanged for his part in the rising.

He's called the Ballycarry Martyr.

The authorities believed Nelson knew who the key people were

and they wanted him to give the names

and, because he was so young, I think,

they reckoned he would be the one to crack, he'd be the one to break.

He was brought back here with two men, who were flogged,

but Nelson ended up being hanged.

BAGPIPES PLAY

At the same time as all this political turmoil,

the greatest writer in Scots, Rabbie Burns, burst on the scene.

He wrote in the language of the Ulster Scots

and his own radical views reflected theirs.

Burns certainly was a leader of the movement

to use what we now regard as Ulster Scots language,

and to use the Scots...

And a lot of his books were written actually in Scots and English,

with translations in some of them, in fact,

for people who didn't understand the original works.

Burns regularly sent pieces of his work to Belfast

and they were published in the Belfast newsletter.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am the poet, Robert Burns.

The first book of Burns' poetry that was published

outside of Scotland was actually published in Belfast.

Burns had a huge influence on the rural poets

and the movement known as the Rhyming Weavers,

people like Samuel Ferguson,

who wrote poetry based on their experiences of rural life in Ulster.

An' cut ye up wi' ready slight Trenching your gushing entrails...

'Burns's radicalism resonates with the radicalism of people in Belfast

'and the North of Ireland in the 18th century.

'His radicalism can be equated with the radicalism'

in the North American continent at that time,

when they were going through independence

and the War of Independence.

BAGPIPES PLAY

Burns was an inspiration in politics and poetry.

One man who took up both causes was the greatest poet

the Ulster Scots ever produced, James Orr.

Well, James Orr is a very interesting figure

in the history of the Ulster Scots community.

The poet John Hewitt referred to him as having written poems

that were better than anything written by Burns.

He didn't go to school at all, is that right?

He didn't spend a day at school in his life

and I think it's phenomenal that somebody who, you know,

never spent a day in a formal school environment

ended up the most prominent poet of the Ulster Scots.

Don't be telling schoolchildren that.

So he didn't go to school at all

and he's one of the most famous poets

-that the Ulster Scots have ever produced?

-Absolutely.

Orr was involved in the rising itself.

June the 7th, 1798, he gives, I think,

one of the best accounts of what happened

for these people on the 7th June.

The preparations the night before - in with the blacksmiths,

making the pike heads and all sorts of things.

Wives baking bread for the men, wrapping them up.

He says they baked bread with tears instead of water.

He refers to how some of them, when they marched towards Antrim,

make a pretence of what he calls "making their burn",

which is going to the lavatory.

"Making your burn"?

I like the sound of that. It's a new euphemism on me.

But they never come back to join the column.

He also reflects on the fact that it was a beautiful summer day

and they got to Donegore.

The Presbyterian farmers in Donegore had turned out as well

but they'd turned out to harvest their crops.

And he says...

And it talks about the aftermath of the battle, when they arrive home.

They say to him, "You've arrived safely." And the person says,

"I'm going to have to say it was somebody else, forc'd me out..."

# I'm the changingman

# Whoa, built on shifting sand... #

The 1798 Rebellion ended in total defeat for the United Irishmen.

Their leader in Ulster, Henry Joy McCracken,

was court-martialled and hanged in Cornmarket.

He was eventually buried here, in Clifton Street Cemetery,

alongside his sister, Mary Ann McCracken.

Mary Ann herself was a remarkable character.

She was actively involved in the rebellion in 1798

and she adopted Henry Joy's illegitimate daughter

and raised her as her own.

As well as that, she was a radical for her time -

she actively opposed slavery in Belfast, she was a feminist.

But also, like many Presbyterians of her time,

she came to accept the Act of Union.

They turned away from the idea of an Irish Republic, essentially.

They moved more in the sense of social reform, I think.

And it's interesting when O'Connell starts his campaign

for emancipation, Catholic Emancipation,

which is really the last of the Penal Laws from the 1690s,

the Presbyterians...

Henry Montgomery, one of the main Presbyterians leaders,

supports that campaign and a lot of the Presbyterians support that

because it's about equality in society.

During the 1800s, the Protestants of Ulster

and indeed of Ireland became more pro-Unionist.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, the Church of Ireland

ended its discrimination against nonconformists

and, secondly, there was a religious revival,

led by this man, Dr Henry Cooke.

Henry Cooke, better known as the Black Man,

presumably because he's green(!)

Henry Cooke effectively turned the Presbyterians of Ulster

from being anti-establishment to being pro-establishment.

Added to that, the campaigns of Daniel O'Connell

for Catholic Emancipation and then repeal of the Act Of Union

effectively associated Catholicism with nationalism.

The politics of Ireland were becoming deeply sectarianised.

From the 1840s, right up to today,

the history and politics of Ireland has been us and them,

Nationalist versus Unionist, Republican versus Loyalist.

And, like everything else, the history and culture

of Ulster Scots has been seen through the prism.

With the introduction of the national schools

came a single national curriculum.

And, of course, the language of that curriculum was English.

That meant that written Ulster Scots tended to die out

and spoken Ulster Scots came to be seen as a language

of the rural and the uneducated.

If the native speakers dinnae take it on beard,

and we dinnae get it into the education system...

We'll dae it. Definitely, we'll dae it.

"Dinnae take to the beard"? What's that?

If... If... Sorry there?

"The beard," did you say?

If... Ugh. BEEP

If the native speakers dinnae take it on beard - being take it on BOARD...

-Oh, right. Right.

-A beard.

A beard to you is that there beard, that's right.

If they dinnae take it on beard, the level in English will dee off.

It'll just go, sort of thing.

I'm needing my BBC subtitles here with deeing and beard, right here.

Sometimes we need to stop and take off our political glasses,

our Troubles-tinged perspective on life

because it's not always about British versus Irish

or Unionist versus Nationalist.

If you set all the politics aside, you know,

what makes Ulster special as a province is the interweaving

of English, Irish and Scottish cultural influences

throughout the centuries.

And I think that's something

we should all know more about and enjoy.

So we've come to the end of my Ulster Scots journey

and what have I learned? Well, I've learned that our history

is even more complicated than I thought.

I've learned that Scotland was named after Irish people

and girls from Nuns Quarter aren't necessarily as pure as nuns.

But what I've also learned is that Ulster -

historical, geographical Ulster - has had a long-standing

and incredibly close link with Scotland.

It's not just the border or our accents that make us

different from the rest of Ireland, it's our Scottish roots.

Now, that's not a political statement.

It's just that I think our Ulster Scot heritage is part of who we are.

You can, of course, choose to reject that

but I think, on occasion in future, I will embrace my inner Ulster Scot.

Now, as we say in Ulster Scots, it's time for you to "make your burn."

And then tell your friends to go and iPlayer this.

# Alternative Ulster

# Alternative Ulster

# Alternative Ulster

# Alternative Ulster. #