One of my clerical colleagues told me a story. A good story, short, beautifully told. About
two youngsters in North Antrim mitching
from school. They had their day
out but wanted to get back into school before closing time. On their way back one of them fell into a ditch. My friend told
the story so well that when I met him in North Antrim I would ask him to tell the story again. Being a
Belfast yin I could not tell it the way he did. All I could say that sounded even like it was
the end of the story where the youngster
who hadn't fallen into the ditch rushed
up to the school to tell about the accident. He goes into the classroom all
excited and says , "........Hey
Maister, wee Johnny hae couped i ' the sheugh an' he's up tae the houghs in glaur...."
Local dialect like that is better spoken than in print. But some writers have made a brave
attempt to write in it. Paidric Gregory
an architect of many churches in Ireland and abroad, and a composer of
many verses in homely local dialect was one.
About the same time as my clerical colleague was telling me his story
Gregory was publishing a book in Belfast
called "Ulster Ballads" (published by Mullans, Belfast, in 1959). One of the ballads was entitled , "What
I Heard in a Country Grocery Store:
Ach, how're ye Rab, Troth I'm wet clane thro'
God knows 'twas a
tarr'ble dhreep o' a day.
Gi'es a half-yin o' yella whuskey - nate !
I'll need it tae help me up 'Vogie Brae.......
Professor Estyn Evans of Queen's University , Chairman of the Committee on Ulster Folklife
and Traditions wrote a Preface to
Gregory's book : "Here the reader will find the lore and
the wisdom of past ages distilled in verse , flavoured with the tang of a
strong regional tongue and shot through with quiet humour.
Whatever the subjects , the folklorist and the student of dialect will
find in these poems material of value to them".
Another author
writing in Ulster Scots and not widely known now was Archibald Mc Ilroy, who
also lived in Belfast. One of his books was a collection of short studies
entitled "The Humour of Druid's
Island", published in 1902 also by Mullans. The Druid's Island of Mc Ilroy's imagination
was set in County Fermanagh. One of his Druid's
Island characters, Geordie , refuses to have chloroform
in his leg operation :
"........ a intent' tae
watch what goes on. Why man, ye micht hae leg an' a' awa' wi' ye whun a got
waukin't up". Mc Ilroy writes in
the Preface to this collection : " We
in Ulster are very proud of our unique dialect...We have a supreme
contempt for poor creatures who have nothing to fall back upon but the pure
English tongue".
For many of us the Scots dialect probably means Robbie Burns but in recent years there has been a reaching out towards a more extensive audience in Scotland and Ireland .
In 1992 The Saltire Society - an association founded in 1936
to promote aspects of Scottish culture and development - published "Tales Frae the Odyssey O Homer
Owerset Intil Scots"
by William Neill. In his Introduction ('A Ward Anent This Buik' ) William Neill remarks
that these tales "... hae been
telt tae the auncient Greeks lang afor... scrievit doun ..... " and makes
a vigorous defence against the idea that "...Scots is no a leid (language)but a
'mere dialect'.....".
You can see in
Neill's book his resentment against, as he puts it, the
"cockapennies ettlin (trying)
tae yird (bury) " Scots as a
dialect rather than a language.
Dialects are not languages but develop within languages, sometimes because of mingling ,
sometimes because of isolation. The
Irish language has Ulster, Connaught and Munster dialects; English has dialects in Scotland and England, other European countries have standard language and local patois. Sometimes local dialect is indeed looked
down on for instance it took a long time
for the BBC to allow local dialects to be spoken in its programmes. But we need
not be too hard on them for that because even after the great French Revolution
the new regime tried to standardise the French language by the elimination of local dialects,
so that
is what "cockapennies "
of whatever nationality do.
Coisceim , producer of beautiful Irish Language books of many
shapes, titles and sizes, published a few years ago a guide to words, phrases and usages of Ullans, Ulster Scots.
Whether a particular
way of speech like this is a language or a dialect is often , and sometimes hotly, disputed. One
of the dangers of trying to promote a dialect into a language is that, in the haste to do it,
we may end up with little more than the
existing dominant language spoken or written with too much of the same with local variations and in different spelling and accent and saying this is a language in its own right.
And that does nobody's dignity - or enjoyment - much good.
Ulster Scots deserves a better fate than that. But for political reasons there's a danger of it.
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