[Kilsally]

Nelson McCausland is also a DUP MLA..

Scanned in from the Ulster-Scot Jan 2009 edition, given away in the Belfast Newsletter
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Will be online in the next week or so at www.ulsterscotsagency.com

Also if you live outside Northern Ireland you can receive a free copy through the post if you send a request to info@ulsterscotsagency.org.uk with your name and address included.

What was the language of the first Ulster-Scots? Part one
by Nelson McCausland

At the start of the 17th century large numbers ol Lowland Seals came and settled in Ulster . The lirst settlement started in 1606 when two gentlemen from Ayrshire, Sir lames Hamilton and Sir Hugh Montgomery organised the settlement of lands in North Down. There was also a settlement in County Donegal organised by Bishop George Montgomery, a brother of Sir Hugh Montgomery, beginning in Spring 1607. before the Right of the Earls. This was followed a lew years later by the official Plantation of Ulster (in the six counties of Armagh, Tyrone, Cavan, Fermanagh. Londonderry and Donegal) and many of those who came at that time were Scots. Those Scottish settlers were Lowland Scots and all the contemporary evidence proves that the overwhelming majority of them spoke Scots.

However, at the start of the 20th century, Gaelic propagandists first made the claim that marry or most of the Scots who settled in Ulster in the 17th century spoke Scottish Gaelic rather than Scots. That claim has been repeated time and time again and has become part of the mythology of Gaelic culture. It is used as part of the argument that Ulster-Scots are really 'Gaels' and should feel a strong affinity for the Irish language. But is this claim true and where did it come from?

1909 - EOIN MACNEILL

We can trace the story back to the leaders of the Gaelic League, which was founded in Dublin in 1893, and to an address given in Belfast on 29 January 1909 by its vice-president, Professor Eoin MacNeill (1867-1945). As well as being an academic and Irish language activist, MacNeill was a passionate Irish nationalist and in 1913 he became chairman of the Irish Volunteers.

In his address to the Queen's Gaelic Society, MacNeill spoke about the Scottish settlers in Ulster and claimed that they were mainly of 'the same Gaelic blood and lineage' as the Ulster-Irish. He also claimed that they were 'a bilingual people who spoke Gaelic as well as braid Scots'. According to newspaper reports he said that The present Presbyterian population of Ulster were descendants of a race drawn from the Gaelic district of Scotland.' He also made the bizarre claim that, 'In 1712 Irish was the universal language of the people of North Antrim.'

MacNeill made two specific claims (1) the Scottish settlers were 'of the same Gaelic blood' as the Ulster-Irish and (2) they were bilingual in Gaelic and Scots. The newspaper reports contain no evidence to support the claims but the assertion had been made and the matter did not rest there. [Northern Whig & Irish News 30 January 1909]

1910 - DOUGLAS HYDE

The argument first put forward by MacNeill was repeated and enhanced by his colleague, " Dr Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), who was president of the Gaelic League. Hyde was the son of a Church of Ireland minister but he was also a fervent Irish nationalist. After his appointment as professor of Modem Irish at University College Dublin, Douglas Hyde delivered an opening lecture and it was published in the New Ireland Reviews May 1910.

As regards the languages spoken by the settlers in Ulster, Douglas Hyde said, 'the Lowland Scotchmen in North-East Ulster... were habitual Gaelic speakers, though the bulk of them came from Galloway and Ayrshire. Indeed, almost the only non-Irish-speaking planters in Ireland were the children of a small body of planters who came from England and settled in South Ulster, in parts of Armagh, Tyrone, and perhaps in spots in Fermanagh.'

MacNeill had claimed that the Scottish settlers were bilingual but Hyde took it a stage further and claimed that the Lowland Scottish settlers across North-East Ulster were 'habitual Gaelic speakers'.

The speech by MacNeill in Belfast and the lecture by Douglas Hyde in Dublin were given at a time of great political uncertainty. Both nationalists and unionists were organising and Ireland was moving inexorably towards a crisis. Within a few years Edward Carson had organised the Ulster Volunteers and MacNeill had organised the Irish Volunteers.

Part of that process was a propaganda war and Irish culture, especially the Irish language, was a significant element in the nationalist propaganda war.

1910 - NORTHERN WHIG CORRESPONDENCE

The article by Hyde in the New Ireland Review led to an important debate in the letters section of the Northern Whig, a Liberal Unionist newspaper, and this ran for some weeks.

• The first letter appeared on 23 May 1910 with the title Habitual Gaelic Speakers and the author used the pseudonym 'Ulster'. He called on Hyde to produce some 'proof that the writers, say, of the Montgomery manuscripts, the Hamilton manuscripts, Adair's narrative, and preachers like Bruce and Livingstone, all unquestionable and typical originals of our colony were 'habitual Gaelic speakers,' although they wrote and talked and preached the best of 'braid Scots". The writer was clearly well-informed about the contemporary evidence and he threw down the challenge to Douglas Hyde. [The Hamilton and Montgomery manuscripts, to which the writer referred, have been reproduced by the Ulster-Scots Agency as a CDrom and the Presbyterian Historical Society has reprinted Adair's Narrative, which covers the period 1623 to 1670.]

• The following day, 24 May 1910, there was a reply from Alice Miltigan (1865-1953). She was brought up in a Methodist family but joined the Gaelic League and Sinn Fein. She suggested that Hyde was quoting folk who 'had more extensive knowledge than himself and she named Eoin MacNeill and Roger Casement, but she provided no evidence to counter the first letter.

• Another reply came on 28 May from a writer who called himself 'Ulster Irish'. He hoped that Hyde would 'speak for himself and referred back to MacNeill's speech in Belfast but was unable to provide any evidence to support either Hyde or MacNeill.

• Eoin MacNeill entered the field on 30 May and referred back to his Belfast speech of the previous year. He then restated his claim that 'the Scottish settlers of the Ulster Plantation were in the main of the same Gaelic blood and lineage as the old Ulster folk into whose lands they came, and, secondly, that these settlers were a bilingual people who brought into Ireland not only 'braid Scots', which was then the adopted language of their religion, but also the Gaelic speech which had come down to them from their ancestors.'
It is significant that MacNeill referred again to 'Gaelic blood' as well as 'Gaelic speech'.

• On 31 May 'Ulster' returned to the fray and noted that Douglas Hyde had chosen to 'remain silent'. He also restated the fact that 'the existing evidence, abundant, precise, and continuous,
of the speech and the everyday life of these people contains no suggestion or trace of the use of Gaelic'.

• Another contributor appeared on 1 June with the pseudonym 'Another Ulster'. This was in fact Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916), an Irish nationalist and revolutionary who was executed for treason. He admitted that, 'Dr Hyde may have slipped into some inaccuracy when he alleges that the Lowland Scots settlers in Ulster 'habitually spoke' Irish' but he went on to claim that 'many of those Scots settlers were certainly Irish-speaking'.

By way of evidence Casement referred back to a letter dated 18 May 1711 in which a J J Maguire claimed to have met in North Antrim some Presbyterians who spoke Irish and had a Sunday service in Irish. He did not name the place and had forgotten the name of the minister but he 'supposed''that the congregation was 'composed of Native Irish and Highlanders'. That single vague 'supposition'by Maguire was the basis for Casement's grand claim!

He also referred to a speech given in the Irish House of Commons in 1783 by Luke Gardiner, who said that at the time of the American Revolution, 'the Irish language was as commonly spoken in the camp of the colonists as the English language'. Gardiner produced neither source nor evidence for this bizarre claim and indeed there is none to produce.

Nevertheless Casement, grasping at straws, took it to imply that Ulster-Scots emigrants'to America were Irish-speakers!

However in his Black Diaries, Casement referred to the letter and admitted, 7 don't think all the Scottish lowlanders, or anything like all, knew or used Gaelic but far more of them did than is generally supposed.' [Roger Casement: The Black Diaries p 217]

• The next letter in the debate came on 2 June from 'Ulster'. He acknowledged that some Gaelic-speaking Scots had settled in North Antrim but he referred back to his initial letter and the evidence that the 17th century settlement was essentially a settlement of Scots-speaking Lowland Scots.

• The final letter came on 4 June from Eoin MacNeill who said that, 'In Galloway, from which especially the Scottish immigrants to Ulster came, three hundred years ago, Gaelic continued to be spoken for a century after the Ulster Plantation.' Yes, some of the settlers were from Galloway but only some and moreover most of Galloway was by then a Scots-speaking rather than a Gaelic-speaking area.

ENDLESS REPETITIONS

Thereafter the myth that MacNeill and Hyde had concocted was repeated by Irish cultural nationalists time and time again.

Robert Lynd (1879-1949) was a son of Rev R J Lynd, minister of Berry Street Presbyterian Chinch and later of May Street. At university, however, Robert Lynd became an Irish nationalist and then in London he joined the Gaelic League. He was also a supporter and apologist for Sinn Fein and wrote for the paper of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In the preface to his book Home Life in Ireland (1910) Lynd repeated the claim that had been made MacNeill and Hyde and said, the Lowland Scotchmen in North-East Ulster... were habitual Gaelic speakers, though the bulk of them came from Galloway and Ayreshire." Ironically Lynd went on to admit that Hyde's claim was 'an exaggeration, perhaps,'but nevertheless he still repeated it!

Around 1919 or 1920 Eoin MacNeill published The Ulster Difficulty, in which he argued as an Irish nationalist against the possibility of partition. As part of his political argument he returned to the issue of language and said that 'Irish was spoken by many of the Presbyterians of Antrim and Down.' However he also admitted that 'for the most part the Presbyterians spoke English with more or less of a Scotch dialect.' In the book MacNeill also repeated the claim, previously made by Roger Casement, about the Scotch-Irish colonists in America and altered it to say that 'one half of Washington's army spoke the Irish language.'

The claim that many of the Scottish settlers spoke Gaelic was also repeated by Denis Carolan Rushe (1852-1928), an Irish nationalist and a member of the Gaelic League in his History of Monaghaniim). He said that 'the Scotch settlers'spoke 'a dialect of Gaelic'but produced not one single shred of evidence.

The Handbook of the Ulster Question (1923) was a piece of republican propaganda which was prepared by Kevin R O'Shiel (1891 1970) and published by the Free State government. As part of his argument against partition, he said, 'It is on record that many of the planters spoke Gaelic hardly distinguishable from that on the lips of the old Irish.'

However, once again, he did not produce any evidence to support his claim. { Handbook of the Ulster Question, Stationery Office, Dublin, 1923, p 41]

1934 - THE CALL OF THE GAELIC BLOOD'

Aodh de Blacam (1890-1951) was born in London of Ulster Protestant parentage but he became a staunch republican and converted to Roman Catholicism. He wrote extensively about Gaelic culture and in support of republicanism and in 1934 he contributed an article entitled The Other Hidden Ireland to the Jesuit magazine Studies. In the article he said, 'As for the Presbyterians, they were largely Gaelic-speaking when they came from Scotland, and they remained so till a late date.' ['The Other Hidden Ireland', Studies, September 1934, p 443,454] This article is particularly interesting because in it the writer also sets out very clearly the political dimension of his argument. As regards the Scottish settlers in Ulster he said, 'It is a fact that English planters were assimilated in three provinces. Those planters who were not assimilated were the Ulster planters, who were mainly Scottish (ie Gaelic) by blood... The call of the blood must assert itself in the Ulster Protestants some day.' ['The Other Hidden Ireland', Studies, September 1934, p 439]

It is true that the Ulster-Scots were not absorbed into Gaelic Ireland but it is regrettable that de Blacam thought of the Ulster-Scots in terms of having 'Gaelic blood', a claim previously made by MacNeill. He harboured the hope that some day the 'Gaelic blood' would 'assert itself in a hankering after Gaelic culture. In this way they would ultimately be assimilated into a Gaelic Irishness. Of course this was written back in the 1930s by a political propagandist and is typical of the discredited vblkisch thinking of some people in that era but it is simply racialist nonsense.

1973 - HIDDEN ULSTER

Afteri a period of almost forty years the myth was resurrected in 1973 by Padraig O`Snodaigh, president of the Gaelic League from 1974 to 1978. and father of the Sinn Fein TD Aengus 0 Snodaigh. Padraig 6 Snodaigh was the author of Hidden Ulster, which first appeared in January 1973 and has since gone through several editions, with various revisions and expansions. In the preface he explained that the book was intended to counter the 'Two Nations Theory', the theory that there is no single Irish nation but rather two nations on the island of Ireland. For that reason the language of the Scottish settlers had a special political significance and he went on to claim that most of the Scots who came to Ulster spoke Gaelic: 'It has also been said that the Scottish Presbyterians who came to Ulster in the 17th century were mostly Gaelic-speaking. At least it is certain that the Gaelic-speaking element among them was a very large one.' [Hidden Ulster p4, 5]

In a letter to the Workers Weekly {1 February 1973) 0 Snodaigh repeated his claim and said that, the Irish language was the language of the home of the majority of the Planters (not 'small pockets')'

1996 - PRESBYTERIANS AND THE IRISH LANGUAGE

The language of the Scottish settlers was also considered by Roger Blaney (Ruairi O'Bleine), a prominent Irish language activist and one of the founders of the Ultach Trust. His book Presbyterians and the Irish Language appeared in 1996 and in the foreword he rejected 'the two-nations theory', an indication of the political context of his argument. As regards the 17th century Scottish settlers he said 'it is not unreasonable to suggest... that at least one quarter of the incoming Scots were Gaelic-speaking. ' [Presbyterians and the Irish Language p 19]

This is a brief overview of the way in which a myth was created and perpetuated. It has been repeated time after time, with many of the repetitions referring back to previous repetitions, but asserting a myth and repeating it does not turn it into a fact.

One hundred years ago there was virtually no evidence to support the claim. Moreover since then and in spite of all that has been written, the proponents of the myth have not managed to produce anything substantial to support it. There was almost no evidence then and there is little more today. The body of evidence is to the contrary and that will be the subject of the second part of this article.

- This article has been written by Nelson McCausland, chairman of the Ulster-Scots Community Network on the 100th anniversary of the speech given by Eoin MacNeill in Belfast,

[Kilsally]

>From the Ulster-Scot, March 2008 edition (as given away with the News Letter)
www.newsletter.co.uk
If you live outside NI then you can receive a copy for free by emailing the Ulster-Scots Agency with your name and address requesting to be added to the Ulster-Scot mailing list at info@ulsterscotsagency.org.uk
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What was the language of the first Ulster-Scots? part two

In the first part of this article we traced the history of the myth that 'many' or 'most' of the Scottish settlers in Ulster spoke Scottish Gaelic, rather than Scots. That myth appeared 100 years ago and has been repeated by many Gaelic cultural nationalists and propagandists ever since. The most recent appearance of this claim was in Fintan Vallely's book Tuned Out: Traditional Music and Identity in Northern Ireland, published in 2008, where he claimed that, 'Gaelic was spoken by some 50 per cent of Scottish settlers in Ulster.'

Some of the Gaelic propagandists, such as Eoin MacNeill and Aodh de Blacam, linked it to the idea of 'Gaelic blood' and de Blacam even expressed the hope that, 'the call of the blood must assert itself in the Ulster Protestants some day.' ['The Other Hidden Ireland', Studies, September 1934, p 439]

However in spite of a century of research and writing there is still no evidence to support this claim that 'many' or 'most' of the Scottish settlers spoke Gaelic.The fact, rather than the fiction, is that the Scottish settlers who came to Ulster at the start of the 17th century and indeed throughout the century were Lowland Scots and they spoke Scots, not Gaelic, as their everyday language. It was the language of the Scottish Lowlands and it was the language of the royal court of Scotland.

In considering the matter we will take evidence from both sides of the North Channel - from Scotland and from Ulster.


THE SCOTS LANGUAGE IN SCOTLAND

According to the Scottish academic Dr Caroline Mcafee, 'Scots... was the normal language ot the population ot Lowland Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, regardless of social class.' Gaelic survived in the Highlands and in the western isles but Scots was the language of the Lowlands and it was from the Lowlands that the Ulster-Scots came. [Concise Ulster Dictionary p xxix]

Scots was the language of the people and it was also the language of the Kirk.

Rev Robert Bruce (1554-1631) was moderator of the Church of Scotland and he was a close friend of many of the Scottish ministers who came over to Ulster. He preached in Scots and some of his sermons were first published in 1590 and 1591 in Scots (right).

It has been claimed by Irish language propagandists that some of the settlers came from West Galloway and that this part of the Lowlands was still Gaelic-speaking in the first half of the 17th century. However Professor Paul Johnston, a historical linguist, has concluded that, 'Some (areas), like Galloway... were all but totally Scots-' speaking by 1600, with pockets, if that, of the old language remaining.' [ The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language p56]

We can therefore conclude that at the start of the 17th century the Scottish lowlands were almost entirely Scots-speaking.

WHERE THE SCOTTISH SETTLERS CAME FROM

The first Ulster-Scots settlement began in May 1606, a year before the Flight of the Earls, and it was led by two Scottish gentlemen from Ayrshire. Sir James Hamilton (1559-1644) was the son of Rev Hans Hamilton, the first Protestant minister in Dunlop, Ayrshire, and Sir Hugh Montgomery (1560-1636) was the son of Adam Montgomery, the Fifth Laird of Braidstane. They settled an area that stretched from Crossgar and Killyleagh up to Holywood and Bangor and also included much of the Ards peninsula. From this bridgehead, Scottish settlers spread across Antrim and Down and took the Scots language with them.

Around the same time there was a settlement of Scots in the west of Ulster. Bishop George Montgomery was a brother of Hugh Montgomery and also from Braidstane. He was appointed to the sees of Deny and Raphoe and Clogher and after he arrived in Ulster in the autumn of 1606, he played a key role in the settlement of Scots in his new dioceses. These Scottish settlers came through the ports of Londonderry, Donegal and Killybegs and according to a 17th century source, the most that came were from Glasgow, Ayr, Irvine, Greenock, and Largs, and places within a few miles of Braidstane.'

Turning then to the official Plantation of Ulster, we know the names of the Scottish undertakers and the places from which they came. These undertakers were wealthy landowners who 'undertook' to develop the land they were given and to settle it with British settlers. The nine chief undertakers were Michael Balfour, Lord Burley, who had lands in Fife and Kinross; Sir James Douglas of Sprott, son of the 4th Earl of Morton; Sir Alexander Hamilton of Inerwick; James Hamilton, Earl of Abercorn; Sir John Hume of North Berwick; Sir Robert McClelland of Bomby in Kirkcudbright; Andrew Stewart, Lord Ochiltree; Esme Stewart, Lord Aubigny; and Ludovic Stewart, Duke of Lennox. There were also fifty ordinary undertakers but all of these undertakers would have spoken Scots and they brought with them folk from their own area and surrounding areas, who also spoke Scots.

A few years after the Union of the Crowns in 1603, King James I decided to 'pacify' the Scottish Borders and deal with the reiver families, such as the Armstrongs. As their power was broken, some of the reivers were moved across to Ulster and these folk also spoke Scots.

In the end the British settlement in Ulster was overwhelmingly Scottish and the ratio of Scottish to English settlers has often been put at five or six to one.

THE POETRY OF THE SCOTTISH SETTLERS

Sir John Hume of North Berwick, who built Tully Castle, was one of the chief undertakers in Fermanagh and his brother Alexander Hume was an ordinary undertaker in the same county. According to M Perceval Maxwell, they were the sons of Alexander Hume of North Berwick and so they were related to Alexander Hume (cl557-1609) of Polwarth, who wrote Hymnes or Sacred Songs, a small volume of poems in Scots. We know therefore that Scots was the language of the Hume family.

It is also worth noting that Sir Hugh Montgomery's uncle was the Scots language poet Alexander Montgomery (1545-1610), author of The Cherrie and the Slae and Flyting betwixt Montgomerie and Polwartmd the poet laureate to the court of King James VI of Scotland. Scots was therefore the language of the Montgomery family.

DOCUMENTS FROM THE 17TH CENTURY

A considerable body of Ulster-Scots documentary material survives from the early decades of the 17th century. These documents were written in Scots or in a mixture of Scots and English but none of them were written in Gaelic. According to Professor Michael Montgomery, who has studied this material extensively, 'Family letters and legal documents from Scottish settlers in Ulster in the 17th century reveal that Scots was their primary language: [ Ullans 8 p.18]

The following are just a few examples of the sort of documentary evidence that is available, taken from these documents.

• An inventory of the jewels of the first wife of Sir Hugh Montgomery, dated 24 October 1632, included these items: Item, a other ring, with aucht sparks lyke saphirs, wit twa emptie places. Item, ane other ring, wit thrie grein little emeralds, and twa emptie places...

• The Earl of Abercorn was the arbitrator in a dispute between Sir James Hamilton and Sir Hugh Montgomery and he wrote the following on 3 October 1614: Maist loving cousing having spent thir thre wekis passit in trying an clering all maters questionabill betwixt my cousing Sir James Hamilton & Sir Hew Montgomerie als weill in the marchis of thair landis as vtherwayis quhairin I thank God I have made ane guid progress as I hope to bring it to ane happe end for thame boithe and to many gentilmen ofgud faschion duelling vnder thame in this Kingdome quhair thai have above 2000 habill Scottis men weill armit heir rady for his Ma/service as thai sail be comandit.

• Robert McClelland came from Kirkcudbright to work as a land agent for the Haberdashers' Company in county Londonderry. Some of his papers are now in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and these contain many examples of Scots spellings and grammatical forms.

• Archibald Edmonstone, a native of Duntreath in Stirlingshire, came to county Down for a few years and then in 1609 he settled in Ballycarry in county Antrim. Among his surviving papers are forty-five letters, some of them letters to family members, associates and members of other families such as the Hamiltons and Montgomerys, and these were written in Scots. His wife Isobel Haldane used many Scots words such as gif, unco, sic and ilka and she wrote, 'Giff God hes nocht giffen me ane warldly wyse hairt.'

• We also find some examples of Scots in the session books of Presbyterian congregations in the mid-17th century. The session book of Templepatrick Presbyterian Church contains this entry from 27 July 1647: 'To the wch agues Dazell answered and called her ane Hell sow and said yt she cutted her keil and staw her peits (that she had cut her cabbages and stolen her peats.)

Such firm evidence of the use of Scots contrasts sharply with the lack of evidence produced by the Gaelic propagandists.

THE SCOTTISH MINISTERS IN ULSTER

The early Scottish settlers spoke Scots and so did the Presbyterian ministers who came over from Scotland to work amongst them. They had preached in Scots in Scotland and they continued to preach in Scots to the Scottish settlers in Ulster.

Patrick Adair (1624-1694) was born in Galloway and was the third son of John Adair of Genoch. He came over to Ulster and was ordained at Cairncastle on 7 May 1646. Later he became minister of the Presbyterian congregation in Belfast and he wrote A True Narrative of The Rise and Progress of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. The work was unfinished at the time of his death in 1694 but it was published in Belfast in 1866 with an introduction by the Presbyterian historian W D Killen, who noted that Adair was 'accustomed to preach in the Scottish dialect'. [A True Narrative of The Rise and Progress of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland p xii]

SOME SMALL POCKETS OF GAELIC SPEAKERS

We know that during the course of the 17th century some Gaelic-speaking Scots did arrive in Ulster but they were very few in number and most of them seem to have arrived towards the end of the century.

There were 'several families' of Gaelic-speaking Scots in north Antrim. In a letter dated 12 May 1711, Archibald Stewart, wrote to Rev John Richardson of Belturbet:

Soon after the late War in Ireland, when a great part of the country was waste and uninhabited, several families who could neither speak nor understand any language but Irish, found their account in coming from the Western Isles of Scotland, and settling in the northern parts of the County of Antrim.

Some members of a Scottish family named McNeill, who were from Kintyre and spoke Gaelic and Scots, settled at Ballymascanlon in county Louth in 1688. They brought over ministers from the Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland, particularly the island of Islay, because very little English was understood in this district until well into the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, according to Roger Blaney, another member of the family, Niall Buidhe MacNeill, who was also bilingual in Scots and Gaelic, made his home in Killquin in county Antrim. [Presbyterians and the Irish Language p 13.14]

There is also some evidence of Scottish highlanders settling at Rasharkin around 1690 and they too spoke Gaelic. [ The Annals of the Parish of Derrykeighan P 16,17]

However such small pockets of Gaelic-speaking Scots - a few families here and a few families there - arrived around ninety years after the first settlers and do not in any way undermine the fact that the Scottish settlers in Ulster were overwhelmingly speakers of Scots.

Professor Michael Montgomery was co-author with Professor Robert J Gregg of the chapter on Ulster-Scots in The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language and also co-editor of The Academic Study of Ulster-Scots: Essays for and by Robert J Gregg, which was published in 2006 by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. He has carried out extensive studies on the language of the early Scottish settlers and has concluded that: 'The great majority of those who came... were Scottish settlers who with few exceptions spoke neither Gaelic nor English. Their language was Scots... and that was the everyday language of Lowland Scotland at the time. These speakers and the descendant of their language, Ulster-Scots, produced a pluralism that has now differentiated Ulster from the rest of Ireland for 400 years.'
[ 'The Linguistic History of Ulster'-, http://www.bbc.co.uk...nt/history/brit … sterscots/ ]

All the evidence that is available shows that the primary language of the overwhelming majority of settlers was Scots. Those who came to Ulster at the dawn of the Ulster-Scots brought their Scots language with them and that is the source of the Ulster-Scots language. For this assertion we do not have to rely on endless repetition and tiny scraps of dubious 'evidence'. We have solid evidence that Scots was the language of the settlers.

Surely it is time for the myth of 'Gaelic-speaking settlers' to be put to rest and what better time than now. exactly one hundred years after it first appeared.

This article has been written by Nelson McCausland, chairman of the Ulster-Scots Community Network, on the 100th anniversary of the speech given by Eoin MacNeill in Belfast.

[Kilsally]

Michael Montgomery, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of South Carolina, examines how the Plantation of Ulster shaped the linguistic history of Ulster

The linguistic history of Ulster
http://www.bbc.co.uk...on/ulsterscots/
By Prof. Michael Montgomery


the official Plantation is often seen as independent from surrounding developments...

The Plantation of Ulster, promulgated in 1609 by King James I and launched a year later, lasted 15 years. Like many other events with definite dates, the official Plantation is often seen as independent from surrounding developments. Although it is given considerable prominence in history books from the viewpoint of the Crown it was only a mixed success. True, it brought thousands of ‘planters’ from England and Lowland Scotland to settle a landscape in six ‘escheated’ (confiscated) counties west of the River Bann that had recently been wrested from Gaelic lords.

But was the Plantation, perhaps the best-known chapter in Scotland's long relationship with Ireland, the landmark it is so often described to be? After all, Scots had been drifting across the narrow waters of the Irish Sea into Antrim and Down for a generation or more (the success of Scottish lairds James Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery in bargaining for portions of the land of a Gaelic chief in north and east county Down in 1605 is a famous episode). Moreover, a much larger influx of people crossed the channel three generations later, in the 1690s, after famine and other disruptions beset Scotland.

Ulster-Scots, produced a pluralism that has now differentiated Ulster from the rest of Ireland...

The answer is yes, the Plantation was a landmark. It set in motion or in other cases accelerated a series of migrations, settlements, and interactions that would forever change the cultural and linguistic landscape of the historical province of Ulster. The great majority of those who came then and later in the century were Scottish settlers who with few exceptions spoke neither Gaelic nor English. Their language was Scots, a Germanic tongue that had a common origin with English in the Anglo-Saxon language of Britain centuries Earlier and that was the everyday language of Lowland Scotland at the time. These speakers and the descendant of their language, Ulster-Scots, produced a pluralism that has now differentiated Ulster from the rest of Ireland for 400 years. Ulster-Scots remains to this day a vibrant medium of daily life in parts of four Ulster counties -- northeast Down, north, mid and east Antrim, north Londonderry, and east Donegal.

The ratio of Scottish to English settlers in Ulster during the 17th century has often been put at five or six to one, with one rough estimate reckoning there were 100,000 Scots and 20,000 English at the time of the rebellion of 1641. The proportion would have been much higher in Antrim and north Down and more evenly balanced in the six west Ulster counties involved in the official Plantation scheme. The Gaelic-speaking Irish still formed a significant majority in most parishes in those counties by mid-century. Demographic patterns established by Plantation settlements ensured that there were two, often three, cultural traditions in contact in much of the province.

The Gaelic-speaking Irish still formed a significant majority ...

Plantation settlers from Scotland were dominant in and gradually extended their influence (especially in the form of Presbyterian churches) over parts of the province most accessible by sea to Scotland, for example, the Ards Peninsula and the Lough Foyle estuary. At the same time, English settlers were concentrated in Armagh, the Lagan Valley of north Down, south Tyrone, Fermanagh and elsewhere, producing the Mid-Ulster speech area still discernible today as having much more influence from England and much less from Scotland. Both Ulster-Scots and Mid-Ulster English were profoundly affected by Irish Gaelic, borrowing a good deal of vocabulary and some grammatical constructions. At the same time, with the influx of non-speakers of Irish into much of Ulster, that language receded more quickly there than in other provinces. Elsewhere Irish competed strongly with English until well into the 19th century, and in certain parts of Ulster (north Tyrone, much of Donegal) it did so as well.

Unmistakable evidence of Scots can be found Early in the Plantation period, as in legal documents left by those who came from Scotland. For example, among the papers of Robert McClelland, who left his native Kirkcudbright (modern-day Dumfriesshire) to serve as land agent for the Haberdashers’ Company of County Londonderry survive receipts, leases, promissory notes and land assignments in Scots now on deposit in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The beginning of a 1614 lease follows:

I Sir Robert McClellane of Bomby knight be thir presentis does faithfullie promeiss to my gud freynd David Cunynghame of Heurt his airis and assignayis to set to thame ane sufficient Laice of twell scoir aikeris of land that I haif of the Happerdaschers portion of Lon-dary and that for the space of one and fiftie yeirs lyand within the Countie of Culraine in ony pairt of the said Happerdaschers proportioun now perteyning to me exceptand and reservand the stone hous and mannis ...

in the 17th century Scots can be found only in fragments...

This short passage exemplifies numerous Scottish spellings and grammatical forms, including the demonstrative adjective thir ‘these’, noun plurals (presentis ‘presents’, airis ‘heirs’, aikeris ‘acres’), a verb marked with -s that has the subject I (I Sir Robert McClellane ... does), the article ane ‘one’, present-participle verb forms in -and rather than -ing (lyand ‘lying’, reservand ‘reserving’), and other variants such as twell ‘twelve’ and haif ‘have’.

Other documents, including letters, also survive from the period, but thereafter in the 17th century Scots can be found only in fragments in church records and other historical documents. Presbyterianism came to Ulster as Early as 1613, with formal organisation of the first presbytery in 1642 under the auspices of the Scottish army arriving to assist compatriots after the 1641 rebellion. Formal records apparently began shortly thereafter, as evidenced by the session minute book of the Templepatrick Presbyterian Church of south Antrim. An entry from 27 July 1647 read ‘To the wch agnes Dazell answered and called her ane Hell sow and said yt she cutted her keil and staw her peits’ (‘... that she had cut her cabbages and stolen her peats’).

English inevitably became the language of commerce...

Generally, however, Scots was displaced in all types of writing by English and even the traces of it all but disappeared by century's end. The Plantation had brought direct rule from London, and with it English inevitably became the language of commerce, government and writing in the province, relegating both Ulster-Scots and Irish to being spoken languages of the countryside and the home. Nor did the tens of thousands who arrived from Scotland in the 1690s leave any record of Scots. That the language neither died nor moved was shown in the middle of the next century. The anonymous author of a 1753 ‘Scotch Poem’ from east Donegal wrote ‘Ye're welcome hame, my Mar’gy/Frae the grim craving clergy;/How deeply did they charge ye,/Wi’ fair oppressive tythe?’, expressing sentiments well known to Presbyterians and other non-conforming Protestants.

More dramatic was the appearance of the ‘Rhyming Weaver’ poets, a remarkable movement of popular versifiers in north and mid Antrim and northeast Down who by trade were weavers of linen or otherwise involved in textile manufacture. Much of their work, which appeared originally in local newspapers, has been lost, but dozens of these poets flourished from the 1780s until past the middle of the next century. Many assumed the stance of community spokesmen and acquired nicknames signifying this. James Orr (1770-1816), who was perhaps the most notable of these poets and called the ‘Bard of Ballycarry’ wrote in ‘The Dying Mason’ (c1798):

Nae mair shall I gang, while in this side o' time ...
Nae mair, while ilk mouth's clos'd, an' fast the door bar'd,
Initiate the novice, baith curious and scaur'd;
Nae mair join wi' scores in the grand chorus saft,
Nor fandly toast `Airlan' - and peace to the craft';
I aye cud been wi' ye, but now I maun stay
Confin'd in my lang hame - the cauld house o' clay.

Within this territory Catholics as well as Protestants speak Ulster-Scots...

At other periods as well Ulster-Scots has found a voice in literature based on the spoken version of the language. This includes the present moment, when a cultural revival has prompted some who grew up with Ulster-Scots to write poems and stories in it.

In the Early 1960s, Professor Robert J Gregg from Larne in Northern Ireland, outlined the precise geographical boundaries of Ulster-Scots which embrace the four counties of northeast Down, north and east Antrim, north Londonderry, and east Donegal and reflects closely where Scots settled in the Plantation period. Within this territory Catholics as well as Protestants speak Ulster-Scots, and it remains distinct from English especially in its pronunciation (e.g. toon ‘town’, hame ‘home’) and grammar (disnae ‘does not’, cannae ‘cannot’). This is not to deny either the influence of Ulster-Scots on the English spoken throughout Ulster (from the ubiquitous wee ‘small’ to whenever ‘when’ to refer to a one-time occurrence) or the influence of English and Irish on Ulster-Scots. The long-term effect of the Plantation has been to produce three historic, interwoven linguistic and cultural traditions in Ulster.

Ulster-Scots became a recognised regional language ...

Under the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, formulated by the Council of Europe in 1992, Ulster-Scots became a recognised regional language by the European Bureau of Lesser-Used Languages. When the government of the United Kingdom ratified the document in 1999 and signed it shortly thereafter, both Ulster-Scots and Irish achieved official status within the realm for the first time. The value of both, and other languages as well, had already been recognised by the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement:

All participants recognize the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance in relation to linguistic diversity, including in Northern Ireland, the Irish language, Ulster Scots and the languages of the various ethnic communities, all of which are part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland.

In the 17th century the Plantation of Ulster laid the groundwork for much of this linguistic diversity. It remains one key to understanding the complexities of Northern Ireland in the 21st century.

[The McCain]

Of interest to all would be Dr Peter M Toner's work on the Irish Presbyterian Gaeltachtaí in New Brunswick circa 1850s into the 1900s. It surprises me I must admit, that there seems to by amnesia concerning the numbers of Argyll and Hebridean Scots living in Donegal, northwest Tryone, and obviously north Antrim. Lads... they spoke Ulster Irish, some still do.
These falls into that narrow category of fact and is devoid of politics one way or the other.

Dr Toner did a cracker jack of a paper, using census data from New Brunswick, which he presented at the last Ulster American History Symposium. Plus you have anecdotal evidence of Gaelic speaking Scotch-Irish in Colonial America.

There was just much more late immigration from Argyll into Ulster circa 1568 to late 1590s than most realise I think. But it is there in the crown records, plus you see Argyll surnames, Gaelic surnames, on the Hamilton estates very early in the 1600s. That is the source of the Gaelic speaking Ulster Scots group, that and Irish converts into the Presbyterian faith.

I work with DNA, and we do find Irish Presbyterian families that are native Irish in origin.

Off topic, but an Independent Ulster, now that's a good idea. I once talked with Ian Campbell, Laird of Canna (the island); he wanted a similar set up to the Isle of Man for the Hebrides. He was a great Gael BTW. Amazing man.

Mise le meas,

Barry

[anvaer]

The Scots language came to Ulster with the Scottish settlers of the Plantation in the early seventeenth century. Its presence was sustained and reinforced by later migrations and by the strong social and economic ties across the narrow North Channel.

Ulster-Scots (or ‘Ullans’ or even the ‘Braid Scotch’) is a variant of Scots, the language used by Robert Burns in many of his poems.

Scots is still spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland today and is often called Lallans, the Scots word for ‘lowlands’.

Scots is part of the West Germanic family of languages. Other West Germanic languages include English, Dutch, Flemish, German, Afrikaans, Frisian and Yiddish. The Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) are North Germanic languages. The East Germanic languages, including Gothic, one of the earliest Germanic languages, are all now extinct.

Scots (and Ulster-Scots) is descended from the Northumbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon which was brought to the British Isles approximately 1,500 years ago. Modern English is derived from the Mercian dialect of Anglo-Saxon.

Scots is distinct from Scottish Gaelic which is a Celtic language. Other Celtic languages are Irish, Welsh, Manx, Breton or Cornish.
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[sakthi23]

In sum, Ulster-Scots is recognized by scholars as a historic spoken variety of Scots used in rural Ulster for four hundred years, a mode of expression maintained in the home and community but having had little public use and no institutional life. Within its territory it varies geographically and socially, and it has a non-discrete relationship with English. Because of great pressure from English, it now has low prestige and is on the decline. Ulster-Scots has many limitations, most notably its lack of modern vocabulary, since it is tied to an eroding folk culture, and in real-world terms it is and will remain inferior to English in so many ways. However, it is unreasonable to say that either Ulster-Scots or Lowland Scots is a 'dialect of English' simply because it is not a 'fully fledged language'.

A different way of looking at languages is that adopted by the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (EBLUL), an agency of the Council of Europe that has fostered public education and awareness of what it calls 'regional' and 'minority' languages, terms that until recently would have been oxymorons for many Europeans. Under the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages approved in 1992, the Council of Europe agreed that '... the protection of the historical regional or minority languages of Europe, some of which are in danger of eventual extinction, contributes to the maintenance and development of Europe's cultural wealth and traditions'. EBLUL's approach is applicable to western European varieties of language like Ulster-Scots that have a close genetic relationship to a dominant language of power, literacy, and nationhood.
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[gowtham]

Scots, mainly Gaelic-speaking, had been settling in Ulster since the 15th century, but large numbers of Scots-speaking Lowlanders, some 200,000, arrived during the 17th century following the 1610 Plantation, with the peak reached during the 1690s. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one.

Literature from shortly before the end of the unselfconscious tradition at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is almost identical with contemporary writing from Scotland. W G Lyttle, writing in Paddy McQuillan's Trip Tae Glesco, uses the typically Scots forms kent and begood, now replaced in Ulster by the more mainstream Anglic forms knew, knowed or knawed and begun. Many of the modest contemporary differences between Scots as spoken in Scotland and Ulster may be due to dialect levelling and influence from Mid Ulster English brought about through relatively recent demographic change rather than direct contact with Irish, retention of older features or separate development.

Scots in Ulster has been influenced by contact with Hiberno-English, Mid Ulster English and Irish. Mid Ulster English, the dialect of most people in Ulster, including those in the two main cities (Belfast and Derry), represents a cross-over area between Ulster Scots and Hiberno-English; it is currently encroaching on the Ulster Scots area, especially in the Belfast commuter belt, and may eventually consume it. Ulster Scots should not be confused with Scottish Gaelic or Irish, which are Celtic languages.
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