Willie McBride

Tonight there was an excellent concert in the Belfast Waterfront Hall to mark the 40th anniversary of the East Belfast Ulster Volunteer Force Regimental Band.  According to the programme it was also an evening to remember 'those sons of Ulster who bravely charged forth in France and Flanders embedding the name of the 36th Ulster Division for ever into the annals of British military history'.

The band provided an excellent and varied programme, drawn from Ulster, Scottish, Irish and international music.  Great credit must go to those who have done so much to raise the musical standard of the band to this high level.  Great credit must also go to the band for the excellent organisation of the event.

The other performers were the Ulster-Scots Experience, with their mixture of fiddles and accordions.  They incorporated some Ulster-Scots and Orange songs into their part of the programme and were received enthusiastically by an appreciative audience.

They had several songs about war and one of these was Eric Bogle's Green Fields of France, also known as Willie McBride, which is about a young soldier who died in France in 1916 at the age of nineteen.  It is not entirely clear whether Bogle actually saw the name on a headstone but there are two soldiers of that name buried at the Authuile Military Cemetery on the Somme.  One of them is Private William McBride of the 9th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, who died on 22 April 1916.  His parents were from Lislea in county Armagh but he was twenty-one when he died.  The other McBride in the cemetery was a private in the 2nd Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusilers and he is identified only by the initial W.  He died on 10 February 1916 but his age is not given.  Another soldier, Rifleman William John McBride of the Royal Irish Rifles is recorded as having died on 2 July 1916 but has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial.

The Christian Sabbath

Recently someone posted on this site commenting that I had posted on the Sabbath. He asked if this was working and if it conflicted with my stance of not attending sporting and other events that take place on Sunday. 

I believe that God has given us the Lord's Day or Christian Sabbath and that it is a day set apart for rest and relaxation, for worship, for the family and for Christian activity. After a very busy week I value the rest, the opportunity to attend church and to be at home with my wife. As a result I do not attend sporting events or go shopping on Sunday.

Since starting this blog I have posted several times on the Lord's Day but a careful look at what I posted will show that there is a difference in the matters I comment about on Sunday. Three of them have been about Christian hymns and hymnwriters, one was about the old Covenanter preacher Alexander Peden and the other was about the Ulster Sabbath.

A Sabbath is not about doing nothing but about doing things that are appropriate.

HMS Caroline

HMS Caroline, a First World War light cruiser, was built by Camell Laird in Birkenhead and launched and commissioned in 1914.  She is therefore the second oldest commissioned warship in the Royal Navy and saw action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

Caroline was placed on the reserve list in 1922 and in 1924 Sir James Craig had her transferred to Northern Ireland as headquarters for the newly formed Ulster Division of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.  However her time as a commissioned ship is coming to an end and she will be formally decommissioned early next month.  She will then become the property of the newly created National Museum of the Royal Navy.  I had already visited the ship on 24 September but it was a privilege to be invited to the decommissioning dinner, which was held on the ship last night.

An informal group of stakeholders has been convened to consider the future of HMS Caroline - with representatives from DCAL, DSD, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, Belfast Harbour Commissioners and Belfast City Council, as well as the Royal Navy, and there is a desire that she remain in Belfast permanently as a museum ship and part of our maritime heritage.  However this will be dependent on preparing a sustainable business plan.

The guest of honour at the dinner was Rear Admiral Martin Alabaster, Flag Officer for Scotland, Northern England and Northern Ireland and Flag Officer for the Reserve Forces, and it was interesting to meet several former members of the RNR, whom I have known down through the years without realising that they were actually members of the Reserve.  A message of loyal greeting had been sent by the Commanding Officer to the Queen and Her Majesty had sent a letter of congratulation to HMS Caroline after 85 years of unbroken service as the Ulster Division of the Royal Naval Reserve.

Game of Thrones

George R R Martin is an American author and is best-known for his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, which is said to be inspired by the War of the Roses and Ivanhoe.  The first book in the series, Game of Thrones, was published in 1996 and it is now being made into a pilot television film for HBO Productions.

Work on the pilot film, which stars Sean Bean, is currently underway at the National Trust property at Castleward in county Down.  HBO will evaluate the pilot and then make a decision on whether to proceed with a full ten-part series. 

This morning I visited Castleward, along with Rick Hill and Richard Williams of Northern Ireland Screen, to see the film in production.  It was extremely interesting to be on the set and to see how some of the buildings had been turned into a medieval castle.

Northern Ireland Screen, which is one of my department's arms-length bodies, provided funding to secure the pilot film for Northern Ireland which has the potential to put around £10m into the local economy.  This shows the potential for us to develop our creative industries, including film-making.

The co-producer of the film, Mark Huffam, was born in Northern Ireland and educated at Campbell College.  He has been in the film industry for over 24 years and his credits include Saving Private Ryan and Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster was in Belfast on  27 October to consider broadcasting in the province.  The committee was chaired in his inimitable style by Sir Patrick Cormack MP and those present included two Ulster MPs, Iris Robinson and David Simpson.

In a session which lasted about two and a half hours they put their questions to Peter Johnston, Northern Ireland controller of the BBC, Michael Wilson, the managing director of UTV, and Stuart Cosgrove, head of nations and regions at Channel 4.

The session was held in the Senate Chamber at Stormont and I was able to get a DVD of the proceedings, which I watched last night.  Many of the key issues for Northern Ireland were addressed, including local television production in Northern Ireland, the cultural balance of local broadcasting and the representation of Northern Ireland on television programmes seen in Great Britain.

David Simpson asked some important questions about the imbalance between the broadcasting of Ulster-Scots language and culture and Irish language and culture.  He also said that someone in the BBC had told him there was an anti-unionist bias in the BBC.  Peter Johnston said the balance of Irish and Ulster-Scots was appropriate and he denied there was an anti-unionist bias.

A visitor from Nova Scotia

Today I met Brian Doherty, who was visiting Northern Ireland in connection with his work with the International Fund for Ireland, on which he represents the government of Canada.  Brian was originally from county Tyrone but set off around the world with his band Barley Bree and settled in Nova Scotia about 25 years ago.  The band eventually broke up but he still performs as one half of the duo Evans & Doherty.  In addition to this he has some business interests and is also president of Music Nova Scotia.  It was useful to hear about the music industry in Canada and the approach of Music Nova Scotia to the development and promotion of the music industry.

During the meeting mention was made of the historic connections between Ulster and Nova Scotia and there are indeed many of them.  Here are just a few.

In 1760 a group of Ulster-Scots from Londonderry in New Hampshire settled in Colchester County, Nova Scotia, and called their new home Londonderry too.  They were joined by a party of Ulstermen who arrived in Halifax from Belfast in 1761, brought over by Colonel Alexander McNutt. The colony grew and prospered and in time they peopled Truro, Onslow and many neighbouring towns.

St Paul's Church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was founded in 1749 and is the oldest Protestant church in Canada.  With the arrival of an Ulsterman Charles Inglis as the first Anglican Bishop of Nova Scotia and the first colonial bishop in 1787, Saint Paul’s Church in Halifax was made a cathedral.

In St Paul’s churchyard there is a plain slab that commemorates a famous Ulster solider, Major-General Robert Ross (1766-1814) of Rostrevor, who fought in the American War of 1812. This is the soldier commemorated by an obelisk in Rostrevor.

One of the most famous Nova Scotian political families was named Archibald.  The first of the Canadian branch of the family was David Archibald who emigrated from Londonderry and settled in Truro, Nova Scotia, in 1762. He was a Presbyterian elder and the first Member of Parliament for Truro in 1766.

In Halifax County there is an Antrim, which was settled in 1850 by the McMichaels, Kerrs, McMillens, McDowells and Moores, all from Ulster.  They had set out from county Antrim for the United States of America but diverted to Halifax because of the American civil war.

Orangeism in Canada can be traced back to 1799 when a military Orange lodge was operating in the town of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The first non-military lodge in Nova Scotia was established in Halifax in 1845 and was called Roden Lodge after the Earl of Roden. By 1872 there were 55 Orange lodges in Nova Scotia.

Much attention is focused on the Ulster influence in America but there was also a powerful Ulster influence in most of the provinces of Canada.

An 'ice-cream poke' in Millisle

The Holywood actress Kiera Chaplin was born in Belfast on 1 July 1982.  She is the daughter of Eugene Chaplin and his last wife Oona O'Neill and a granddaughter of the famous actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin. 

According to an article in Sunday Life (1 November 2009), Kiera Chaplin 'fondly remembers holidays in Millisle and the 'pokie man' who sold her ice creams.'

This reference to the 'pokie man', the man who sold ice-cream pokes or cones, caught my attention.  The word 'poke' is a good Ulster-Scots word and many Ulster children have bought their 'ice-cream poke' from the 'poke man' in the 'poke van'.

I remember as a boy being on holiday in England and going into an ice-cream shop where I asked for a 'poke'.  The man behind the counter looked at me in confusion and it took some time for me to explain what I wanted.  However I did not encounter the same problem when I was on holiday in Scotland, because the word is found in Scots as well as Ulster-Scots.  The word poke can also be used for a small paper bag for sweets or chips.

Keira Chaplin, who has starred in a number of films, as well as the television series Baywatch, has happy memories of an 'ice-cream poke' in Millisle and so do many other Ulsterfolk.