A guid New Year

In years gone by this Scots song was often sung by Andy Stewart and others on BBC's Hogmanay television programme from Scotland.

A guid New Year tae yin an aa!
An monie may ye see,
An during aa the years tae come,
O happy may ye be.
An may ye ne'er hae cause tae greet,
Tae sigh or shed a tear,
Tae yin an aa, baith great an smaa,
A hertie guid New Year!

A guid New Year tae yin an aa!
An monie may ye see,
An during aa the years tae come,
O happy may ye be.

O time flies fast, he winna wait,
My freen, for you or me.
He works his wonders day by day,
And onward still doth flee.
O wha can tell when ilka yin
I see sae happy here,
Will meet again, an merry be,
Anither guid New Year?

We twa hae baith been happy lang,
We ran aboot the braes.
In yon wee cot aneath the trees
We spent oor early days.
We ran aboot the burnie side,
The spot will aye be dear,
An those that used tae meet us there,
We'll think on monie a year!

Now let us hope our years may be
As guid as they hae been;
An trust we ne'er again may see
The sorrows we hae seen.
An let us wish that, yin an aa,
Oor freens baith far an near,
May aye enjoy in times tae come,
A hertie guid New Year!

Old Scots' Monument

On 3 June 1899 the New York Times reported on plans for a memorial to be erected in Freedhold, New Jersey.  It was to mark the site of the Old Scots Meeting House and was to be known as the Old Scots' Monument.  The monument was to be unveiled in the third week of October 1899 when the Presbyterian Synod of New Jersey met at Asbury Park.

The following in taken verbatim from the New York Times report:

The granite for the monument has been quarried in Ireland, Scotland and New England in honour of the three men who constituted the first presbytery in this country and ordained John boyd as first pastor of the Old Scots Church in 1706.  The church was torn down long ago but the Old Scots' burying ground is still visited by tourists.

The mother church was located near Bradevelt.  The official records extant of the Presbyterian Church in this country begin abruptly in the midst of the ordination of John boyd, on December 29, 1706, in the Old Scots' Meeting house of Freehold.  The first two pages of the original manuscript have been lost, and, therefore, it is not claimed positively that the Old Scots' Church was the original Presbyterian Church in america, but only that it is the first one referred to in the existing records.  Francis Makemie, as Moderator; Jedidiah Andrews, of Philadelphia, and John Hampton, then recently from Ireland, composed the presbytery which ordained John Boyd.  Walter Ker was the elder of the old church.

The Rev William Tennent, Jr., wrote in 1774:

It was the first in East Jersey on the west side of the Raritan River, which was settled with the Gospel ministry.  This was owing to the agency under God of some Scotch people that came to it, amongst whom there was none so painful in the blessed undertakings as one Walter Ker, who, in the year 1685, for his faithful and conscientious adherence to God and His truth as professed by the Church of Scotland, was there apprehended and sent to this country under a sentence of perpetual banishment.

A pilgrimage was made to the site of the Old Scots Church in June, 1895, under the auspices of the Synod of New Jersey.  The pilgrimage receivbed the endorsement of both the Southern and Northern General Assemblies by the appointment of delegates to it, and resulted in a call for the erection of a monument to commemorate the events and the men thus intimately connected with the beginnings of the organic Presbyterian Church in America.

On the gables of the monument four bronze historic seals will be placed, and on one side will be a bronze tablet with the Latin inscription fom the tomb of John Boyd, who died in 1708.

A suitable plot of ground at Old Scots' has been conveyed by deed to the Trustees of the Synod of New Jersey, and the monument proper is now nearly completed.

I have written the following notes to highlight the Ulster-Scots element of this story:

Francis Makemie was born of Scottish parents near Ramelton, county Donegal, about the year 1658. He was converted at fifteen and enrolled in Glasgow University in February 1676 as Scoto Hyburnus (Scotch-Irish). Each term he sailed from Donaghadee to Portpatrick and walked the rest of the journey! Makemie was presented to the Laggan presbytery as a student for the ministry in 1680 and preached at Burt in 1682.  His first 15 years in America were spent as a travelling evangelist in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. His work on the eastern shore of Maryland and Virginia led to the formation of four or five churches, notably Rehoboth and Snow Hill. He visited Philadelphia in 1692 and planted the seed of Presbyterianism there. Makemie combined business with preaching and in 1704 he was the owner of 5,109 acres of land.

John Hampton was born in Burt, county Donegal, and was the son of Rev William Hampton, a Scot who was ordained in Burt in September 1673 but seems to have returned to Scotland around 1689.  In 1704 Francis Makemie returned to the British Isles seeking financial support, prayer and more ministers. He brought John Hampton back with him to America and he was minister at Snow Hill Presbyterian Church, which had been established through Makemie.

Jedidiah Andrews, the third minister in the presbytery, was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and was the son of Captain Thomas Andrews, who was born in England.  He was educated at Harvard College in Maryland.

John Boyd, the minister who was ordined, was probably Scottish and his ministry was short.  It lasted less than two years, for he died on 30 August 1708, at the age of twenty-nine.

William Tennent (1705-1777), who is mentioned in the article, was born in county Antrim and was the second of four sons of Rev William Tennent (1673-1745).  He emigrated from Ulster to America with his father and was educated at the Log College at Neshaminy, Pennsylvania.  His brother John Tennent died in 1732 and William succeeded him as pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Freehold.  He was ordained there on 25 October 1733 and ministered in that congregation for forty-four years until his death.  William Tennent was thoroughly evangelical and evangelistic and a trustee of the College of New Jersey.

Culture Matters (9)

What exactly is equity?

In a shared and better future our diverse cultural traditions must be treated on a basis of equity and that can be applied in several areas, which I call the four Rs – recognition, respect, resources and representation. 

There must be recognition of the existence of each cultural tradition. Those whose cultural traditions are excluded or ignored will feel themselves to be excluded or ignored and indeed they are being excluded. 

Some years ago Dr Ivan Herbison was speaking at seminar on the Ulster-Scots poetry of the Ulster weaver poets and he referred to the Field Day History of Irish Literature. He continued by saying, ‘Here is what it says about them,’ and then he stood in silence for a minute or more. That silence was powerful and eloquent and it told us that the editors of this influential volume had totally ignored this aspect of Ulster literature. They did not even recognise its existence. 

The denial of recognition is not only to be found in the field of language. I can well recall an encounter with someone employed in the community arts sector, who told me that I was Irish whether I acknowledged it or not! On another occasion a traditional arts officer, who was also an Irish traditional musician, spent much of a meeting arguing with me that there was no such thing as Ulster-Scots traditional music!  Consider too the column inches in some newspapers telling us that unionists have no culture.

Cultural traditions are part of our cultural wealth and as such they should be recognised.

There must be respect for each cultural tradition and it should not be demonised or disparaged. Those whose cultural traditions are demonised or disparaged will feel themselves to be demonised or disparaged.  My culture is part of what I am and to ridicule that culture is to ridicule me personally.

We have seen such demonisation in relation to the Orange Order, with the murder of Orangemen in their halls, the burning of Orange halls, and orchestrated republican opposition to Orange parades. Equally, the burning of GAA halls shows a lack of respect for that culture.

Where public resources are being allocated, then each of our cultural traditions should be treated on the basis of equity and this is about more than money.  As well as public funding it is about such things as access to the media and inclusion in the education system because education and the media are especially important in affirming and promoting cultural traditions.

Apart from the Twelfth broadcasts on television, when is Orange culture reflected in the media? For example, when did the BBC or UTV last produce or broadcast a documentary on the painting of Orange banners? Orange culture is confined to one day in the year, with the coverage of the annual Twelfth celebrations. Yet Gaelic games, which reinforce and validate a Gaelic identity, receive substantial coverage week by week throughout the year. The Twelfth broadcast has the highest viewing figure of any produced locally by the BBC and there is clearly a large potential audience for such programmes.

What too of our education system? What provision is made for cultural traditions in the various sectors of that system? Roman Catholic schools and Irish medium schools have an Irish cultural ethos and they both affirm and validate that culture. They play Gaelic games, they play Irish traditional music and they will be exposed to the Irish language. But is there a corresponding access to the cultural traditions of Protestant children who attend controlled schools?

The fourth area of equality is that of representation. In our society there are publicly appointed bodies that have a specific cultural remit, dealing perhaps with arts, broadcasting, cultural diversity or museums. Our cultural communities should be represented on those bodies and the bodies should be representative of Northern Ireland society, but is that the case? This is actually a denial of an important cultural right, recognised in international agreements, for cultural communities to be represented in the decision making processes that affect their cultures.

Their memberships of these publicly appointed bodies may reflect the religious balance of Protestant and Roman Catholic or the balance of unionist and nationalist but do they reflect the cultural balance of our society? For example, how many members of these public bodies watch a Twelfth demonstration, or go to a pipe band competition or a band parade or a gospel concert? Yet band music and banner painting are gospel music are cultural traditions and forms of artistic activity.

Legislation requires that the memberships of the Equality Commission and the Human Rights Commission are representative of Northern Ireland society and whilst this requirement is honoured by the NIO more in the breach than the observance, the principle of representativesness has been established.

A shared future is every bit as important as equality and human rights and the requirement for a representative membership should be applied to the organisations that make up the cultural establishment, both in principle and in practice.

Away in a Manger

Away in a Manger is one of the most popular Christmas carols of all time. At some point in the days leading up to Christmas, children in almost every church, Sunday school or primary school in Northern Ireland, sang the carol and it has been sung in countless church services.

The first two verses appeared in 1885 in America in a Lutheran Sunday school collection and the third verse was added in 1892. It can be sung to a number of tunes but in the United Kingdom it is usually sung to the tune Cradle Song, which was composed by William James Kirkpatrick in 1895 for Around the World with Christmas. 

I wonder then, how many people in Ulster know that the man who wrote the tune was himself an Ulsterman and that he was born in county Tyrone in 1838.

William James Kirkpatrick was born on 27 February 1838 in the parish of Eerigal Keerogue in county Tyrone and his parents were Thompson Kirkpatrick (1795-1867) and his wife Elizabeth Storey (1805-1881), who were both Ulster-Scots. The only significant settlement in the parish was Ballygawley, which was then ‘a small village on the main road from Dublin to Londonderry’.

Later the Kirkpatrick family emigrated from Ulster to America and lived for some time in Duncannon in Perry County, Pennsylvania.  In the spring of 1854 William J Kirkpatrick settled in Philadelphia where he devoted his life to composing the words and tunes for gospel songs and hymns. 

The tune has no great musical merit and much of Kirkpatrick’s other work is far superior but it is immensely popular. Of that there can be no doubt. Here is another of the little gems of Ulster’s cultural history but unfortunately it is a gem that has lain hidden and out of sight for many, many years.

Culture Matters (8)

Identity - who do you think you are?

It has been said that Protestants in Ulster are suffering from an ‘identity crisis’ or a confusion about identity. This point was made many years ago by the poet and critic John Hewitt (1907-1987) who said: 'In my experience, people of Planter stock often suffer from some crisis of identity, of not knowing where they belong. Among us you will find some who call themselves British, some Irish, some Ulstermen, usually with a degree of hesitation or mental fumbling.'

And Hewitt was certainly not the last person to say this.  A personal perspective by one Presbyterian in the Presbyterian Herald of April 1999 was entitled 'Have you got an Identity Crisis?'  In this the contributor said, 'People in the North of our fair green isle are nothing if not fanatical about identity. For those in the Roman Catholic community this usually means a clear declaration of Irishness, manifest in school, music, sport, art and literature. There are of course variations or degrees of Irishness within the Roman Catholic community but it’s a statistical fact that most Catholics see themselves as Irish.For us Prods, of course, things are a tad more confusing. British, Northern Irish, Irish, Ulsterish or even the ambiguous title ‘European’ are all terms we use in the struggle to define a national (or should that be provincial?) self.  Recent talk of an Ulster Scottish identity has added to this maelstrom of ethnic confusion.'

The question of identity has been around a long time and two hundred years ago the weaver poet Samuel Thomson (1766-1816), the Bard of Carngranny, wrote: 'I love my native land, no doubt, Attach’d to her thro’ thick and thin, Yet tho’ I’m Irish all without, I’m every item Scotch within.'

Who then are we?  Are we Protestants, or are we British or are we Irish or are we unionists or are we Ulster folk or Ulster-Scots?  Which one are we?  The answer is that we can be some or all of these – we do not have to pick one – because identity is complex and it is multi-layered or multi-faceted. 

For example, the Labour peer Baroness Valerie Amos, speaking at a seminar on 12 October 2000, said: 'My identity is defined in a number of different ways – I am British – have lived in this country for most of my life. (I also say it is what I know and understand as my home) but I am also Guyanese (that is where I was born), I am a product of the Caribbean and of Africa and I also see myself as a European. All these influences have shaped who I am, how I see myself.'  Baroness Amos was quite comfortable with her identity and the elements that contributed to its complexity. 

We can see therefore that Ulster Protestants are not unique in in having multi-layered identities.  They are not abnormal and indeed their experience is perfectly normal because identity is multi-layered.

Gregory Campbell made that point when he addressed a meeting in the Bogside in Londonderry in August 2010.  He said, 'I have inherited my identity and I have kept it by conscious choice.  I am an Ulster Protestant who was born, reared and lived my entire life in Londonderry.  I am British.  I am an Ulster-Scot.  I am a Unionist.  I am a member of the Apprentice Boys.'

My own experience is that I have a national identity and I am British.  I also have a regional identity in that I live in Northern Ireland and am an Ulsterman.  My cultural identity is Ulster-Scots, my political identity is unionist and I have a religious identity as an evangelical Protestant, who adheres to Wesleyan theology.  I also have a local identity as a Belfast man and I am an Orangeman.  All of these aspects of identity and indeed others contribute to what I am.'

But not every unionist will share that set of identities.  A person can be a unionist and also a Presbyterian or Roman Catholic.  A person can even be British by nationality and have an Irish cultural identity.  The important thing is to recognise that identity is important, that it is multi-layered or multi-faceted and that one of those layers or facets is a cultural identity.

Ulster, Ulsterite and Ulsterian

On 20 November I posted about the word Ulsterite but this is a more comprehensive post on the words ulster, Ulsterite and Ulsterian.

We are all familiar with the word Ulster as meaning either the province of Ulster, or in everyday speech, Northern Ireland.  However there is another use of the word and also several associated words, with which many people are less familiar. 

The name ulster was given to a form of overcoat designed by John Getty McGee (1816-1883) who had a shop in High Street in Belfast and owned the Ulster Overcoat Company.

At that time male travellers used to wear greatcoats, fitted with capes and other accessories, which covered them from head to toe. These kept them warm but were awkward to wear. McGee decided to make a coat that would give more freedom of movement. Several designs were tried before the Ulster was evolved and it was so successful that a woman’s model was made also. Orders poured in from all over the world and the design was extremely popular and profitable. 

The great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes had a liking for the ulster overcoat. He first appeared in A Study in Scarlet in 1887 and at one point in the story he was described as ‘enveloped in an ulster’. An ulster overcoat was also worn by Billy Connolly when he was playing Queen Victoria’s ghillie, John Brown, in the 1997 film Mrs Brown. 

The success of the ulster led on to the design of an ulsterette, which was defined as ‘a light ulster’ and the creation of the word ulstered, which meant ‘wearing an ulster’.

The word Ulster is used as an adjective as well as a noun but there are also the words Ulsterite and Ulsterian.  Ulsterite can be used as a noun, meaning an Ulsterman or Ulster person, and occasionally it has been used as an adjective meaning ‘of or associated with Ulster’.

In November 1912 the Ulster Unionist MP Ronald McNeill achieved notoriety when he hurled a book at Winston Churchill in the House of Commons and one newspaper headline read ‘Wild Ulsterite Attacks Winston Churchill’.

The following year the New York Times (28 September 1913) reported a speech in Chicago by Lord Northcliffe with the headline ‘Cannot Coerce Ulsterites: So Says Lord Northcliffe, Who Doesn’t Expect Home Rule.’ Again in 1916 the New York Times referred to the ‘prospects of an Ulsterite-Nationalist Agreement’.

The word was used on both sides of the Atlantic and in reviewing a publication by James Connolly, the Socialist Standard (June 1914), which was published by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, referred to the ‘struggle between Home Ruler and Ulsterite’.

An Irish-born American named William Bourke Cockran addressed the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate in Washington on 30 August 1919. He spoke at some length on the subject of Ireland and in doing so he repeatedly referred to Ulstermen as ‘Ulsterites’.  Later that year, in December 1919, the Chicago Tribune also described Sir Edward Carson as an Ulsterite. 

With the appointment of the Boundary Commission to review the border between the Free State and Northern Ireland, the New York Times (29 October 1924) carried a report with the headline ‘Ulsterite on Boundary Board’. 

The word also appeared in settings that were not related to Ulster politics and it was used by a number of American historians. In 1921 James T Adams used the word in his book The Founding of New England, where he said that ‘the Puritanism of any individual today may derive from an ancestral Pennsylvanian Ulsterite’.  Another historian, Professor Thomas J Wertenbaker, wrote The Planters of Colonial Virginia, which was published in 1922 by Princeton University Press and Oxford University Press. In it he referred to ‘the poor Ulsterite' who arrived in America in the 18th century. 

Dr H M Klein wrote A History of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania in 1926 and said, 'It is generally recognized that the first dominant Scotch-Irish settlements in Lancaster county were in its 'Upper End' or northern part, not in the 'Lower End', as the five Scotch-Irish townships of southern Lancaster are sometimes called.  The settlement of the aggressive Ulsterites in Lancaster county seated a power which soon became evident in the local government.'  Again in The Annals of Southwestern Pennsylvania, written around 1939 by Lewis Clark Walkinshaw, an Ulster-Scots emigrant named John Laird is described as ‘an Ulsterite from County Donegal’.

Some years later, on 14 July 1947, away from politics and history, Time magazine described the famous Northern Ireland golfer Fred Daly as a ‘jaunty little Ulsterite’.

Rev Dr Robert F MacNamara, a Roman Catholic historian, used the word Ulsterite in the April 1963 edition of Rochester History to describe a young Roman Catholic woman who had emigrated from County Cavan to America.

The word is still used occasionally in America and appeared for example in a chapter in a book entitled Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century, which was published in 2001. There the authors spoke of ‘a possible Ulsterite identity … built on the richness of both cultures’.  It also appeared in an article by James A Haught, the news editor of The Charleston Gazette, in 2002 and again in the same year in a book by Professor Kimberly Cowell-Meyers of American University in Washington, who has written extensively on Northern Ireland politics. In her book Religion and Politics in the Nineteenth Century, she described the unionist reaction to the possibility of home rule and said, ‘Faced with the threat of home rule, the Irish Protestant minority … defined itself as separate again, as Scotch-Irish, as Ulsterite, and as unionist’.

The word Ulsterite was used in 2005 in an article published by a California division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America and as recently as 2007 Eric P Kaufman used the word Ulsterite in The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History, when he said that Brian Faulkner ‘displayed his national identity as British rather than Ulsterite’.

Today the word is comparatively rare but it is an alternative word for an Ulsterman and it is also used in relation to a resident of Ulster County in New York.

The word Ulsterian is an adjective referring to the province of Ulster or to a geological division. The latter meaning is derived from Ulster County in the state of New York and is a subdivision of the American Devonian period.  The use of the word Ulsterian in relation to the province of Ulster has been less common than the use of the word Ulsterite, but it does appear in dictionaries and can be found in some other publications. 

On 27 June 1918 the New York Times considered the possibility of a federal United Kingdom ‘including Wales, Scotland, England, the two Irelands, North and South – if non-Ulsterian Ireland can be brought to consent to that division’.

The word was also used by the famous writer J R Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings, who said of his friend, the author C S Lewis, that he had an ‘Ulsterian motive’.

Queen's Speech

This year the Queen's speech on Christmas Day was broadcast from Hampton Court because it was there in 1604 that King James I convened the conference that was to lead to the translation of the Authorised or King James Version of the Bible.  The Authorised Version was published in 1611 and next year is the 400th anniversary of that important event.

In her speech the Queen spoke about the relevance of the Christian faith and the contribution of the King James Bible to the culture of our nation. 

She also referred to sport but that accounted for just one third of the speech, about 2 min 41 seconds out of 7 min 18 seconds.  Nevertheless most media reports, both before and after, preferred to ignore her comments on Christianity and the Bible and instead they focused on her comments about sport. 

Is this not a reflection of the way in which the media today marginalise the Christian faith?