Ulster Scots documentary: The Hamely Tongue - Hidden Culture

[Music] the lead the leaving heart don't run through the world of thorn which is endless days and endless years the first streets of the lead on a sure way back to the big weather [Music] the first stretch in a while we heard the wrecking round one were away we never yet thought were the ledge journey through her world and we never ju lose through time as will or gilead [Music] as our conspiracy [Music] foreign so [Music] i love my native land no doubt attached to her through thick and thin yet though i am irish all without and every item scotch [Music] this is almost as good as it gets in terms of people who are interested in the ulster scots literary tradition the letters that we have here in this volume that are preserved in trinity are a way into a way of life and a culture that we have almost forgotten and that there's very little evidence of except this over the 70 years from about 1790 to 1850 to 1860 practically every parish particularly antrim and down they're associated with having a poet a lot of them were weavers but i think in a way that's because a lot of people who lived in the country were weavers at that time it was just that was what life was like every house practically had a loom and if there wasn't a loom there were certainly people spinning i mean the linen industry was just so prevalent in the community that people who lived in the country were engaged in the linen industry this is a letter from james ohr of bali carrie who was one of the major poets of the late 1700s early 1800s writing to his friend samuel thompson who was probably if not better than or as good as or in terms of his capabilities as a poet and starts off dear thompson favorite of the nine with whom i shared the feast of mine before the hag of strife were hands that wreaked me bloodshed shed gone with a huge of black and red to strip my wife or life so there you get a nice metaphor where they're using the the the weaving and the loom as a metaphor for life and there's other there's another letter in this volume somewhere where one of the correspondents writes to thompson and says have you been laboring at the loom of posey so they were regarding the creative impulse making something in literature they were using the metaphor of the weaving and the loom they hud them wheeled and broken clays i cheerful ply the toilet sleighs be at the hair leaving made this money's a day there's some high nebs you know that should fade would chin lock blay [Music] neowine girl james orr mardinia than the philly feeder is far but rather kake [Music] what you need to understand about the united irishmen is that they were extraordinarily multicultural they encouraged simultaneously with encouraging the revival of the of irish music and the irish language they encouraged and supported publication in ulster scots they encouraged the weaver pilots they were huge enthusiasts of course for that guide and mentor to all those writing in ulster scots robbie burns the celebrated scottish part and i mean outside scotland belfast was the foremost center for the publication of burns's own poems but suddenly here was a part who who wrote poems bordeaux verse angry verse and impassioned verse in the language of ordinary people uh and which was immediately comprehensible uh in particular to an ulster audience arcu or orr my robbie burns olu naravisha ga foil bio akafoil or the philly actor [Music] and radhika afridi latif henry joy mccracken [Music] and yay well if you think about the port and think about the scotch verse that he wrote it's thanks to the fact that we have aur's verse that native speakers can say yes this is a real language it has a wonderful poetic tradition associated with it and it is worth preserving but thinking of or the man and his ideals those need to be i think taken to the hearts of all irish people because he believed in things that we're still just working towards achieving today that all people regardless of religious denomination or race are absolutely equal and that freedom and democracy should be for all there's a poem called the wanderer that seems to be an evocation of his period in hiding in the slemish district and an unidentified narrator knocks on the window of an isolated cabin and asks for shelter and there's a young woman inside who very quietly and secretly allows him to come in the language of the poem is very broadly scots and it evokes the furious wind and the rain and the hail that you would get on a bad night in the slamish district so he really lets you feel the cold and the atmosphere of the landscape was there she asked the one there's wrap begin the pen the lottie scarred the blast at braid and slimmer's tap would hardly let a hate be hard a free knee cried for common crimes toast through the country foreign aft fire learned could she their wolf at times the herds have been me in the loft [Music] that epic or meet we get it as usual yet for all that for storm we call ourselves the elsa from elsa creek which is the little volcanic crop just uh across the way you can see it from the county and coast my grandparents lived at glen hurry which is halfway between balomina and lauren and i visited them very every summer as a kid and so i had a sort of love for the local whale people spoke i wanted them i wanted to do something authentic and the most authentic work that i can find in ulster scots or as i call it brave scots but it's mainly in the southern southampton area and you had a whole range of well here called them the weaver ports and they were writing the way the people spoke and they wrote about everyday people the everyday things that they did and therefore there's this whole social history social commentary and that's the only place that can be found [Music] i collect old island pipe shooters from the past and i have this very very rare tutor by cookley 1804 and there are tunes at the back of it and among those is this turn called burns farewell so we think that burns actually composed this tune and it was used in ireland if anybody was emigrating and they had to wake for them because the reagan they weren't going to ever see them again and this was all chin was always played at the immigrant's wake [Music] is [Music] on [Music] read up clobber hunker the hiemly tongue the james fenton fuckel agus frassie of the ogum agony [Music] the glance and jab and sturdy flail of the forks toasting the turling shaves the fluff and flurry of the calf doing like yellow flakes but soon a banana have been every sun and field or yards hour the country and dune the long years chamber and via hangar and yen of the will mcavoy ugg's willy crummy will won the common albinish olude the language to say you're one of the founder members of uh you tell me a bit about that when it was foreign roughly about what 91 19 90 young and then a woman up the road they're elizabeth barnes and a couple old boys for current they aren't and they got together and that's how it started uh many were there and at the start there would be about half a dozen i would said at the beginning and while they enjoy it next about a year and he was interested and built up for that what was the sort of the the idea behind it to save the old tongue that's the way i i see it it was a sort of language of the land teos but it's still the same place it used to be ah that that was a cat was a oh no you can't know the living room we caught a kitchen and then there was a skull right at the back and the ceiling was upstairs it was only a single story and uh i mean years ago there was a uh it was tongue and groove sailing and the levy trap door of me yes i asked my mom what was up there you know what anyone there very guns up there uh i'd rather and me we were curious to see we had to see a bit what was up here so we found that i was gone found a gun it was a hunting gun it was a haunting gun sure bit of a pun where to show up there wouldn't have been many geese left on the lock after the first shot oh no no you don't need to call that manner no it wasn't some with them unbelievable [Music] well you lay in the shore you see that when the tide birds used to feed and you know what we call it feed nan but the tide was coming and they would have been in about four or five inches of water well you went there maybe two hours before you know and lay there and we had it on them coming home they've got amazon range bang bang you don't kill massive numbers 10 20. the biggest i got was 27. we get one shot and father 36. you know but you don't going to do that like if you're not going to get if you're only going to eat the meat there's not much support in there no no support on it that chip in a chumpsy head will or heal because i'm sure not harder a gallowing slider schleicher griebe known the monaster halia sigi consolation the bell is a story of the exterior connell or hor bloggin and jimmy i kept jannatul through saying he can tap them on utter graver but you can't attack graver out of the man [Music] portuguese culture creation check italian roddy ura of the sprague well uh irish music the play the street melody no double stops no fancy work a lot of fancy rows cuts tips and stuff like that there are double rules uh tonight federal players they would be very they would use the up and down boom or like a short stroke but we also put in another double string double stop with two strings certain appalachian music they would nearly at all double stubborn and music but uh the donegal fiddlers got their uh a lot of their styles from scotland because they went over the help of the harvest you know the and the wheat and the potato and they brought these uh read different answers back tell them that's why i think that they've done fiddlers for years were capable of the competitions the number one commentator because i was too scottish and i heard an adjudicator saying this there are two scottish and they're shouting two notes at one sometimes you know so but now they've adapted you know but now there's no regional stage really in ireland because all you don't want to learn enough cds tape recorders and stuff like that there so years ago i got it when i was a young man i could have told what part of the country a fiddler came from but i can't do that now because they're all learning of the top-notch fiddle player and what's the significance of the whole stuff what's well it's uh they imitate the bagpipes more or less i think uh donna gorman told me that now on the monday at morning they told me it was they love the bagpipes the early pioneers you know and but the bagpipes didn't go down too well so they tried to imitate the uh bagpipes around the drone on the fiddle [Music] hmm [Music] you would know what you and i think is rift [Laughter] there was one i just i just read it there uh what's up here no it's not it's uh scale scale we would talk about scaling down not to change the subject but just scaling down you know your seaweed if it was lumps in the field you know you put it in with a curtain then scale it with grape you know what i mean by that because then you wouldn't watch call for and be fast probably not we don't really scale much dumb [Laughter] and the lord come down to see the tongue and the tear that the children of mankind had begged and the lord said look see what they're ought for the folk are as yan and they are who the unlead and they'll know be an end to their conniving come up one day and let his gun down and pet a lead and a hitler push say they're calling understand you on another so the lord's skilled and with other in the other hour of the heal earth and the hottie quad begging the turn so the name of it is babel for that was there that the lord dumb thunder the leader of the hill earth and for there that the lord skilled them to the fair ones eichnia medge and chomadash ashtahan [Music] foreign [Music] her beam wheel harnessed by a hike as geared as johnny ross could map and cut her ban that won a slack or let it rave when plumen wilds a hatchet tin and wadgers drive [Music] oh hui lumka khan and hashel and her interma aloo [Music] where the green lands [Music] [Applause] oh i started off with one of the secretaries we had 10 muscle and then was a bit 13 year old and i've got a harmonica an uncle bought me that but i took up the piccolo of a little bit seven year olds there was a shelton lauren um william lawyer he called it they started drama phone records you've got them for sections in the sun elites there's a fella called patrick he actually crossed the border years ago and he took me down to the flowers and uh i can remember when that was over the border but i think it was it cut hal the um there was a fella the first time i ever saw them there was a chop something with the yelling patient and i i never saw this before and that's how they felt about fighting the tumor something playing together but i stumbled up my muscles actually [Music] in well the soirees have been hacked in this hall here for now for two years a couple of dozen people showed up the first night and then more people came and now i think he stopped advertising it's literally bound full you know yeah every month so you might get over 20 people who actually participate you know somebody will sing a wee song summary recite a poem and then somebody plays a tune everybody joins in that sort of thing you know it's really good craig you know it's very informal it's absolutely brilliant seeing the young folk crying on the tradition you know [Music] [Applause] and then the first lesson of the seventh year the festival now and uh looking forward to it just gets bigger and better every year i've been involved with it now for about five years and just it's amazing to watch it grow and grow saturday night is the big finale uh this is the big suary of the year and the place will be absolutely packed the marquee will be packed and maybe get maybe up to 40 musicians or performers you know suddenly got them do a wee song and somebody would say up home then everybody joined in somebody strikes up the chewing that sort of [Music] thing [Music] do [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] nichola [Music] i'm sure [Music] you can't reduce ulster scott's culture to orange culture or vice versa the united irishmen were just as ultra scots as the orangemen were and came from same roots and in some ways similar philosophies but expressed politically in very different ways so the two areas overlap a lot a lot of uh people involved in orange culture would also consider themselves to be also scotch but they're not the same thing you can be else to scots without being an orange one and you can be an orange man without being officer stocks one of the reasons the ulster scots culture perhaps has or the revival has grown so strongly so quickly is that it's attracted a very broad range of people who are interested for some people uh who are dedicated loyalists and else their else to scott's culture is an expression of their loyalism but for other people uh ulster scott's uh culture offers an identity that is broader than loyalism uh or even an alternative to loyalism for some people um ulster scott's identity can be viewed as an alternative to irishness but it can also be viewed as a particular way of being irish and and for some loyalists ulster scott's identity offers a way to be irish on their own terms without having to accept any of the the baggage of nationalism uh that has sometimes been associated with irishness [Music] [Music] ella how many times have you turned out for the country ah well i heard for the minor so many times played against tupperware in crooked park in the miners well i've tried put it that way right hey what why do you strain pieces oh it says when you sprinkle in the field there and we'll run myself and do press ups and do this and that i says we don't name things i'll tpg but i said when i was her in the early 50s that's working there now you call your contractor and they'll sit there and have now to track their knee cabinet just get their dung for farmers you know and you went in the morning there and you started off in the morning and you fell down get down and get a big feeder right now you know and then you know that night again and you get them you're gripping with our grip you see there and uh you just really know fellas from that little one out front and later i said see that when you fell down well [Laughter] cradle of the himley tongue that's the antrim plateau it runs for a ballet castle up there in the north right the way down through armoire loch gil denloy right down in balamina and valley claire and this is where i would say the hamley tongue would be out of strongest and i wouldn't like to gave the impression that everybody that lives here is exactly the same there are a whole range of differences out there political social religious but the hearing tongue cuts across all of that this deloitte would see itself very much as an irish place home of gaelic sports and gaelic culture but at the same time you kind of deny that there's a strong ulster scots influence on it and that's that's what i think is really the future of ulcer scots that people acknowledge the fact that it's there that there are people that speak that way uh it's less about definitions and mayor but saying we're here get hurt in don loy here liam there's it shows that the two languages are coming together in the stones that are down there with for philly and falca i think also shimmy it's about two communities coming together as well it's an acknowledgement and a recognition by the both of them that they hear validity that they're as a root and it's about people coming together not just tongues the other moon and then a gland we had to get male as hard as flint ale edward bruised 12 sticks of land strepta shark though nobody did him stunt to this hard work [Music] gave jerry [Music] [Music] dog [Music] the father [Music] on the presbyterian august in chiang mai law alabama [Music] mukhis of israel falcom albany august [Music] at their core son [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] mike [Applause] augustine madrow funcha and culture culture funcha and hemley tongue foreign listen to my father who was born in 1891 it certainly occurred to me i haven't heard that word for a while these words you've been using even funny words like where director or that or even talk about hand about a herbal or a health meaning he was lame or having a limp and for some reason i got myself a notebook and i wrote down one at home all the ones i could remember had the ahara's hennig james breshogg is troubling chomsky focal august frasier interma a gorilla munchen a hatchet i think the same thing just means jameson not a dictionary a dictionary yes but a living record of the tongue the idiom the sayings all those aspects that make a language living i wanted that in the book so to all those people without them there could never be in that book i put it together i wrote it and i worked hours and long long hours there knows adam but without that i couldn't have done it so it's at least this means this the fact that they were the contributors the fact that they were native speakers goes further to establish the authenticity the validity of this book as a record a real record of ultra scots [Music] it's fella a james excre freak leave mish excre a tradition naviatory fellata a tradition james ore [Music] here is stan on the hooven herd of antrim looking back away at one far other hills the cluttered dreamy hills of wild scushia elephant whoever hunt neckers hard yet and clear and word and sound and feeling hoosts and pew ah that new and long range [Music] here is down back looking new to near their house to this waiting line around me where yenca heard and witchel stood loosed away between dreams and saw our dreaming sauce rich and bread a forum another ray another flock bread gathered throughout her far we're next one or no are dreamed yet for all the better walk than all night thus land that cried the dreamers back for this is him [Music] well that's correct we since i last stood in slimish uh i knew that because my son was with me and he was only a ritual then but uh and i'll never stand on again but while i'm standing on slemish then or whether i'm starting to hear news it makes no difference because i'm actually really standing on slimming the lid where bob and i have run after the troops and the iliacus and the grunts i can see the fields in the houses looking down our laven look eel looking our drama darker was born in the booth that long book runs through the correct mosque near bellamone the hill way to gloryford that was my word put me at the sunk road and i'll walk down that other brew the main sitting here and i'll tuck you through every quad by every shock and burn i'll take you through every screw because that's my word that uh run as a wee fly looking for whops and heather blitz mcmahon s p weeps where i run as a youth where i own as an elder buddy i mean it just like that and that word you're asking me what i see and i'm standing slimish i'm standing and i see all that that's my word that's quite right about that and nothing else it's key gochuku creek the maharas is an adso lay of mish ajanta legium's phantom [Music] tajaku uragam agus tischkan's missile [Music] [Music] so [Music] attacked harlow [Music] [Music] as stuart i see her james heart the greyhound show a leg stuart a hyung leon the oh the leads journey through your world and we never jealous through time as well was gaily orr [Music] by the last slush one on the mill rodden a decent tumbled in the back fire splashing and chittering and juggling one on the hanging branches [Music] they run together with the most awares back into the water it came free they ran on and on three were shortening days were quite minor [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Forged In Ulster

Views: 24,001

Keywords: ulster scots, scots irish, scotch irish, ulster, scottish, irish, british, culture, language, Scots, dialect, gaelic, northern ireland

Id: Xa6ujVQx09M

Length: 49min 41sec (2981 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 21 2018