Episode 4 Santer

Hello and welcome to Santer.

On this week's programme,

I try go-karting with the Stirling Brothers from Banbridge.

Jenson Button won one of these, David Coulthard won one of these, and Lewis Hamilton...

well, he got a silver one.

Mark Wilson gets the length of Portpatrick on his musical journey.

In Scotland, a good party is a good ceilidh and a good ceilidh needs good music.

Liam Logan and Gary Blair tell us all about the word "thick".

-That doesn't mean they suddenly become stupid, it just means they have become brave and friendly.

-Aye.

In a very good way, of course.

And our tour of the Ards finishes up in Ballywalter.

Of course, they got on the bus to come home and a lot of the money never made it home.

For they stopped in Newtown, went into Tate's Pub and that was the end of the meeting.

Now, before all that, Emma Millar sings Caledonia.

# A sailor and his true love lay doon tae mak their moan

# When in by came ain o their ain countrymen

# Sayin', rise up my bonnie lassie mak haste and come awa

# There's a vessel lying bound for Caledonia

# Oh, said the sailor, are ye willing for tae pay

# Five hundred guineas afore on board ye gae?

# I'll pay them plack and farthing afore on board I go

# If ye'll tak me tae my bonnie Caledonia

# Oh, said the sailor, her money we will tak

# And when we're on the sea, we'll throw her over deck

# Or sell her for a slave lang ere she win ava

# But she'll never see her bonnie Caledonia

# So the captain away tae the fair maid he has gaen

# Says, what is the reason that ye're lying here sae lang?

# An' what is the reason that ye're lying here at all?

# For you've paid your passage dear tae Caledonia?

# Oh, said the lassie, oh, woe is me

# That ever I was born, sic hardships for tae see

# For the sailor's got a lassie he likes better far than me

# And it causes me to weep for Caledonia

# So the captain away to the sailor he has gane

# He's ta'en him by the neck and him overboard has thrown

# Saying, tak this cup o' water though the liquor be but sma'

# And drink your lassie's health tae Caledonia

# They've sailed east and they've sailed west

# Until they reached the land that they a' loved the best

# For the winds they did roar and the seas they did beat

# And they've all arrived safe to Caledonia

# Well, they hadna been there but three quarters o' a year

# When in fine silks and satins he's made her for tae wear

# When in fine silks and satins he's made her for tae go

# Noo she's the captain's wife in Caledonia

# Noo she's the captain's wife in Caledonia. #

Well, Alister, many's the time I've driven by this Dunseverick Castle

and never really thought much about it. Where did it get its name from?

It got its name from Severick.

That was the man who built it, so it's his fortification,

Dun Severick, and Severick was one of the joint High Kings of Ireland.

What happened was that he and his brother divided Ireland between them, basically.

They drew a line from Drogheda across to Limerick.

Severick ran the northern portion of Ireland from here,

and his brother then ran the southern portion from Tara.

It doesn't look like very much now but, when you think of it, 1,500 years before Christ,

this was the administrative centre of the top half of Ireland.

-And had a very significant part in the Kingdom of Dalriada?

-Absolutely.

If you jump forward 2,000 years to the fifth century,

Fergus then, who was the first of the Dalriada Kings.

actually, you know, brought The Stone of Destiny from Tara to Dunseverick here

and shipped it out to Dunaad in Scotland, the west coast of Scotland,

which became his new administrative centre of the Kingdom of Dalriada.

And Fergus, of course, was a local man.

And Fergus was the last King to live here, was he?

Yes, he moved his administrative centre to Scotland, to the new centre of the Dalriada Kingdom.

And that Stone of Destiny then wound up in Westminster and used to sit below the Queen's throne

when she was making the Queen's Speech.

But I think around the time of the inauguration

of the Scottish Parliament and Devolution, it was returned to Scotland.

Well, Fergus was the fifth century, of course, Alister.

There must be a whole lot more history after that?

Yes, there is indeed and to summarise it,

you have the Vikings raiding this place in the late 9th century - about 871, we reckon.

And then it's coming into the possession of various local families,

the O'Cahans and the McQuillans. and, of course, the MacDonnells, who were in direct descent

of the Lords of the Isles and who had a chain of fortifications all round this coast,

most famously, latterly at Dunluce right round to Glenarm I suppose, really.

-So when would you think, Alister, was the last time anybody lived in the castle?

-I would say 1641,

when it was ransacked by Monroe's incoming Scottish army at the time of the Great Rebellion.

That's all that's left of it - those two walls. But when you think about it,

here's a fortification from which half of Ireland was run

and built 1,525 years before the birth of Christ.

Now, that's ancient Ireland and that's pretty impressive.

Now, what about a wee rhyme from a lass from Balnamore?

Mere Than A Twang.

A've jaist bin considerin' tha wurds that a use

Whun taakin tae freens or expressin' ma views.

Tha Ulster-Scots leid, A'm gye heppy tae taak

Tho thar's aptly sniggerin' gan oan ahint ma bak.

At nicht whun A'm tired, A'll say that A'm daen,

A'll tell fowk A daen richtly if A fin oot A've won,

Tha middle-aged Romeo is jaist a fool oul cod

Splaterin' oor tha dance fleur lake a horse needin' shod.

If A'm coul, A'll be starvin', an no hungry ava

A'm taakin foreign in London but untherstud in Buckna.

Tha moral o tha rhyme is forget society's conventions

An taak tha wye ye aye did wi'oot airs or pretensions.

An be proud tae spake tha leid o tha boul Ulster-Scot

Tha leid so mony o oor nybers haes sadly forgot!

And now to Scotland, where Mark Wilson continues on his musical journey.

A journey which started in Carlisle in England

and took me up into Dumfries

and on into Wigtown

is now taking me further along the path of the exiled border reiver,

towards the coast and the beautiful little harbour town of Portpatrick.

The border reivers, who were exiled from their lands by James I,

they sailed from places up this coast just like Portpatrick

and sailed the 15 miles across to Ulster.

That short distance would eventually become a permanent ferry and transport route.

Hugh Montgomery was granted a charter to control the route

between Portpatrick and Donaghadee

and he also built the Ulster-Scots settlements on the Ards Peninsula.

They traded in all sorts of goods - cattle, sheep,

but it also brought back and forwards between the two lands,

young couples wanting to get married, and here in Portpatrick,

the local ministers really just disregarded the laws

about the reading of banns, about a settled address here in Scotland,

and couples used to sail across here into Portpatrick to get married.

And Portpatrick became known as the Irish Gretna Green.

And of course, with every good wedding, there's a good party.

And in Scotland, a good party is a good ceilidh

and a good ceilidh needs good music.

Fred Morrison, one of the greatest pipers the world has ever known.

Thanks so much, Fred, for coming down and joining me here today in Portpatrick.

-It's an absolute pleasure.

-You play highland pipes, you play lowland pipes,

you play reel pipes, whistles, just about everything.

Well, yeah. I started off as a highland piper, that was really my background.

My Dad was a piper and of course, I never played in a band, mind you, but I got into the solo thing

and I did all the big serious competitions and then out in Northern Ireland a lot

doing recitals and all that kind of thing,

before I got into the kind of other pipes and whistles and all that kind of thing.

You're also probably the guy most responsible for the resurgence in lowland piping.

I actually hadn't really heard much about lowland pipes.

It was round about 1992 when I was first approached by a guy -

a very, very respected and very fine maker of pipes -

and he said, "Look, try these pipes."

At the time I was playing with the group Clanalba and I wasn't interested.

I said, "Look, I've got enough on my plate," and all that.

Then I saw him again and he said, "Remember I told you?

"Just have a go at them and I'll give you a good price."

I said, "Look, I don't want them. I can't make it any more clear."

And then a few days later, the postman came and this package arrived and I opened it up.

and this set of pipes was inside and he said, "Just try them anyway," he said - there was a wee note there.

I wasn't convinced but I played them and then I started a wee group

and went on tour and that was it after that.

The thing with the lowland pipes is, of course, that they're a more mellow instrument, for one.

They're kind of the same volume as the accordion, the fiddle, the guitar.

It just hits the spot with other instruments.

And it means that you could walk into any session or folk group

and play with all the others - the fiddles, the accordions.

And that's really had a lot to do with the resurgence of it -

it opened the scope for music.

You weren't just going to the games or going to the competitions. You were doing your own thing.

You could, whether it was social or professional or crossing over or that kind of thing,

there were so many more doors, so many more avenues open to pipers.

Some of the instruments that could play along with it

like the harp, the fiddle, that accompanied

the ballads that they had here maybe 300 and 400 years ago,

that's meant a lot of that music coming to the fore again.

Yeah, the resurgence of bringing the instrument back into play,

you know, of course, will help any resurgence in the lowland culture.

I mean, I think there's a real gap. I think people need to hear it.

It's not the background I come from but I've heard a lot of it.

Beautiful music, and it suits the instrument.

WHOOPING AND APPLAUSE

It was here in Portpatrick that the reivers' Scottish journey

would have ended as they got in their boats

and sailed the 12 or 15 miles across to Ulster.

But I'm not going home yet. I'm going to turn and head northwards

up the west coast in search of even more musical tradition.

And we'll join Mark on his journey throughout the rest of the series

as he heads north to Dunoon

and then on to Campbeltown at the edge of the Mull of Kintyre.

Throughout this series, Gary Blair and Liam Logan

have been looking at the different meanings to words in Ulster-Scots.

So far, you've had "road", "rough" and "big".

This time, the word's "thick".

Of course, Gary, there are some words that mean

something different in Ulster-Scots than they do in English.

Aye, I agree. I know what you're saying.

Words like "thick".

"Thick" would be an excellent example.

Most people, when they use the word "thick" in English, mean "stupid",

somebody that's not very bright.

But when we would use it in Ulster-Scots,

it would be, to my mind, somebody that was stubborn.

-Aye, "thick and thran".

-Thick and thran.

"Thran", I think, comes from Scots. I think the initial word is "thra".

And that meant when you got a beast

and it threw its heid about,

you would say it was "brave and thran".

They'd toss the heid and get into a whole thran,

and start thranin' with you.

-And you would get people like that.

-Aye, true.

And then you have friendship, closeness,

-where two people could be thick.

-"Friendly"?

-Aye.

That goes right back to Elizabethan English,

and it's still in use in ordinary English today.

The phrase, I think, is "as thick as thieves".

"Him and her have got very thick lately."

That doesn't mean they've suddenly become stupid.

It just means they've become brave and friendly,

in a very good way, of course.

But yet, if they fall out, they're not very thin!

HE LAUGHS

If only you could be, Gary, that'd be great.

It would serve me well, too, I can tell you!

You know, I've never been go-karting before

and I'm really looking forward to it.

Maybe it's a good job there's nobody else here.

Oh, I thought I had this place all to myself.

-How many times did you boys lap me?

-I stopped counting after a while.

-How fast were we going in those karts there, Adam?

-Not fast enough.

I can go a lot faster.

Adam and Carl Stirling are twa o' three brothers who have been

big achievers in the sport of go-karting.

They have won trophies on both the British and the world stage.

I started when I was eight, so that would have been 2001.

At first I wasn't the best, to begin, but with time and practice

I eventually ended up achieving the British Championship.

I also started when I was eight, in 2002.

I came third in the World Championship, winning the second round in Alcaniz in Spain.

And you have another brother, Craig, that races as well, or had been racing?

And you can't, I believe, start this sport until you're eight.

-You have to be eight years of age?

-Yes, that has been the case but they've now brought out

a new class called Bambinos, and I think that starts at five -

five years to eight years old -

and then you move into the normal karting then.

It's just trying to get drivers into karting as soon as possible.

I was in the normal go-kart you would get

whenever a crowd of boys goes out on a stag do, or girls go out.

-What would the difference be?

-Well, for example, just take this section of the kart here.

You've got the tyre, for instance.

This tyre would only do two, three races, whereas the tyres you were on

would maybe be two, three months old.

The pods, for example,

these would be much more streamlined to try and get maximum speed out of a kart.

The top speed of this here, which would be a Senior Max,

would be 70mph, whereas one of those karts you were in would have been 40mph.

-I did believe there I was doing quicker than 40.

-THEY LAUGH

Maybe not.

So how much would one of these karts cost me if I was buying it?

This kart here would cost between five and six grand.

Well, I know you've won lots of trophies, boys,

but you are holding the two that are maybe the dearest to your hearts.

Carl, could you tell me what you got this one for?

This is an MSA Gold Flag and you only get this if you win

an MSA British Championship - junior or senior.

And I won mine at a junior level.

Jenson Button won one of these,

David Coulthard won one of these.

And Lewis Hamilton, well, he got a silver one.

Adam, I see you got this one in 2010.

It's the FIA CIK Trophy. This is the most important trophy to me

because I came third in the Under-18 World Championship.

It's a great honour for someone from this country -

it's very small and we don't get much recognition,

so I'm very proud of that there.

So you don't see me ever coming up behind you

in one of those big World Championship tracks, no?

Over the last few weeks, storyteller Will Cromie

and musician Gibson Young

have taken us on a really enjoyable tour of the Ards.

Their journey finishes this week in Ballywalter.

You know yourself, Gibson, this is my home town

and where you're born, that's where you belong.

No matter where you go to, you belong to nowhere else.

And we're just standing here beside the war memorial.

Now that, as a war memorial, would be about the oldest of its kind in this country.

That was built in 1925 and it means a lot to me when I come up to it

because you'll see, up at the top there, that's my Uncle Davie.

Now obviously I don't remember him. He was killed in 1917.

But on the side wall there, for the Second World War,

my brother David, there.

Then you'd Harry, a cousin,

and Bobby, who'd have been a second-cousin.

That's the three of them up there in the Second World War.

There are four of them and three of them are related to you?

-Directly related to me.

-Boyso?

You remember your brother David going away to the sea?

I do. I just mind him when I was a wee fellow.

I mind him with the navy uniform on when he went away down the hill

and the white hat, you know?

The Royal Navy?

The Royal Navy. He took the hat off and he waved

and shouted back to the family as he went away.

That was it - he was never seen again.

Every Remembrance Sunday, I would come down and put a wreath down,

and go along with the boys there.

But that's what it's for, to me.

This is a treacherous bit of water here.

There were literally hundreds of shipwrecks here over the years,

especially out there. The yin that they call Skulmartin, just over my shoulder.

That's it there, with the perch on it.

From here it looks like a big red pole with a triangle on the top.

-Yes.

-That was for putting the boys on it if anybody was shipwrecked?

That was put up there specifically for that purpose.

You went in through the stepladder onto the platform

and it was said then it would have held about 20 folks standing up.

So that meant the boat was wrecked,

but if they could make that rock, there was a good chance they'd be saved.

So the harbour was built in 1851

so the perch had to be in around that time.

All the other villages had fishermen

but down here we had the "dully men".

They were known as that because they gathered the dulse, an edible seaweed.

And they would have went away out in their wee boats along there,

out into the rocks, round the back, gathering it in.

They brought it in here and then carried it up in bags

and they always spread it on the shingle beach because the wind got in below it,

and got it perfectly dry.

They put it into big bales and then it was taken away.

Transport came and took it away to Belfast.

They took it to Belfast and then they would have gone up and the boy paid them.

It was weighed and laid out. "There's your money," and back home.

Of course, they got on the bus to come home.

A lot of the money never came home because they stopped in Newtown,

went into the pub and that was the end of them eating!

When I look back on it, Gibson,

you see the wee bit of green? There's an old van on it.

Those were our what they would have called "half-loft houses".

The dry toilet was up the yard.

But then it was easy building.

They backed onto one another to save building a wall between them.

The folk could have had a conversation, and you would have been up...

They called it a "vennel", the wee lane down the back.

You would have been walking along and the next thing you would have heard a voice from the toilet!

STRAINING: "Is that you, Bella?"

And of course, Bella would say, "Aye, it's me!"

And she'd say, "What's that...m-m-music there?"

"The wee lass is learning... the piano."

"Oh, what's that she's playing?"

"It's... Oh, it's..." What did she say? "..Tchaikovsky."

And the neighbour said, "Boy, that's a hard bit."

Well, to finish this week's Santer, Eddi Reader sings us out with the Burns song Winter It Is Past.

See you next time.

# Oh, the winter, it is past

# And the summer's come at last

# And the small birds are singing in the trees

# Their little hearts are glad

# Oh, but I am very sad

# For my true love is parted from me

# All you who are in love

# And cannot it remove

# I pity all the pain that you endure

# For experience lets me know

# That your hearts are full of woe

# And it's a woe that no mortal can cure

# My love is like the sun

# In the firmament does run

# Is ever constant and true

# But his is like the moon

# Aye, it wanders up and doon

# And is every month changing anew

SHE HARMONISES

# Oh, the winter, it is past

# And the summer's come at last

# And the small birds start singing in the trees

# Their little hearts are glad

# Oh, but I am very sad

# For my true love is far away from me

# Their little hearts are blessed

# Aye, their little lives at rest

# But my true love is parted from me

# Oh, the winter, it is past. #

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