Books - Ulster Scots Community Network

Townlands of the parish of Kilcronaghan

kobault — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:46:26 +0000

This study of Kilcronaghan’s 22 townlands is a treasure chest of information for anyone interested in the parish, the central village of which is Tobermore. It brings together references to previously published material and links it with original information and stories from its people. This full colour book is presented in quarto format, with 236 pages. Here you can study everywhere from Ballinderry to Mormeal and from Tamnyaskey to Coolsaragh! There are dozens of colour photographs, maps, graphs and charts together with hundreds of footnotes and references.

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Robert Dinsmoor’s Scotch-Irish Poems

kobault — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 10:51:28 +0000

Robert Dinsmoor’s poetry is perhaps the greatest achievement of Scotch-Irish writing in the nineteenth century. His work frames a vibrant culture whose ties of faith, family and friendship crisscrossed the Atlantic. He records people, places and events with humour and compassion, and was rightfully accorded the status of the ‘Rustic Bard’ of New Hampshire. Dinsmoor’s writing encapsulates the hopes and aspirations of migrants asserting their place within a confident, awakening nation and stands as a pioneering articulation of postcolonial American literature. The recovery of his work is important. It underlines the power of art to find pathways between the Old and New Worlds; and how awareness of Scottish literature and traditions could be celebrated and extended in North America. This collection brings together the long out-of-print poetry of Robert Dinsmoor’s, arguably the greatest Scots-Irish poet of the 19th century. A detailied introduction by Scots-Irish experts Frank Ferguson & Alister McReynolds

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Rathlin Island

kobault — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 10:38:49 +0000

Rathlin Island lies five miles off the north Antrim coast between Ireland and Scotland and although small has been occupied continuously since the Mesolithic period (c. 7,000 years ago). In the past it has been fought over, bought and sold, raided and blockaded. From prehistoric communities, Celtic holy men, Vikings, Gaelic Scots to Tudor English, it is a story of settlement, trade, conquest and struggle.

This publication presents the results of an archaeological survey of Rathlin Island commissioned by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency which took place from 2002 and 2007. The work forms part of a wider programme that includes surveys of the seabed, foreshore and coastal environments of Northern Ireland on behalf of the Agency. This survey provides an insight into the built heritage of Rathlin and the surveying of many sites that had not been previously recorded. The Agency’s heritage work on the island will continue particularly in the light of new and improving geophysical survey techniques for the sea floor. This volume presents for now the fullest account of the island’s long story.

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Poames

kobault — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 10:31:13 +0000

Linen Hall Ulster-Scots Writing 2022

kobault — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:41:03 +0000

Tha Jaa Banes

kobault — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:26:01 +0000

“Tha Jaa Banes” is a collection that draws on traditional genres and tropes from Scots and Ulster-Scots writing and combines these with a modern textual playfulness. It explores issues such as authenticity, identity, continuity and loss, and the intersections between oral and literary traditions. It showcases and celebrates the depth and richness of Ulster-Scots as a literary language.

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Henry McKenna

kobault — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:25:04 +0000

The bicentenary of the birth of Kentucky’s Draperstown-born distiller (born on 9 January 1819) was marked by the production of this colourful 106 page book. Here we learn about his family background and his life in USA. There are two extensive fold-out family trees for the McKennas and McGuigans (Henry’s in-laws). Over thirty colour photographs illustrate a most interesting life story.

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Handed Down by Nigel Boullier

kobault — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:19:43 +0000

Handed Down documents the traditional fiddle playing and dancing culture in County Down, in particular areas to the east and centre. Spanning over three decades in its development, this book presents a snapshot taken in 2012. The project is unique within traditional music and dance in Ireland due to the demographic nature of the county the musicians, their music and dance, having been drawn from both unionist and nationalist communities. Much of the material, including some 500 pieces of music, 30 dances and profiles on 300 fiddle players, has to date gone unrecorded. This led to research into the development of traditional music and dance in County Down, including the origin of many of the popular dances, the extensive network of dancing masters in the 1700s and how fiddle players practised their art in the late 1800s and into the twentieth century. Overall the project sheds fresh light on many of the commonly held perceptions regarding our culture. n contrast to much of the currently archived material, the musicians profiled here were, by and large, ordinary practising fiddle players; likewise the dances were carried out by ordinary folk at a wide variety of social gatherings, making this an ideal window for looking at traditional music and dance as it was practised over a century ago. Suffering serious decline as the twentieth century progressed and with most of the fiddle players and dancers having passed away, this previously rich culture continues to be practised by a diminishing number of musicians and dancers in, predominantly, rural areas of County Down. This publication presents current and aspiring traditional musicians, who have to date, in all likelihood, been unaware of the existence of this vibrant tradition, with a collection of tunes they can use to vary and increase their repertoire thus strengthening the culture as a whole. Similarly many of the dances which, having long fallen out of fashion in most parts of Ireland, can be reintroduced to the dancing fraternity.

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From Ulster to America

kobault — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:14:05 +0000

From Ulster to America documents nearly four hundred terms and meanings— each with quotations from both sides of the Atlantic—contributed to American English by these eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster. Drawing on letters they sent back to their homeland and on other archival documents associated with their settlement, it shows that Ulster emigrants and their children contributed as much to regional American English as any other group. The numerous quotations bring alive the speech of earlier days on both sides of the Atlantic, and extend understanding of the culture, mannerisms, and life of those pioneering times.

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Early Belfast

kobault — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:06:08 +0000

For most people, nineteenth-century Belfast is the very essence of an industrial city, boasting as it did by 1900 the world’s largest spinning mill, the most productive shipyard, the biggest ropeworks and tobacco factory. This book looks beyond that world to reveal an earlier Belfast where the foundations for its later industrial prowess were laid. It charts the town’s remarkable growth from site to city, from the first mentions of it as long ago as the seventh century through to the 13th-century Anglo-Norman settlement and Gaelic revival, to the Plantation town of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It re-traces not only the development of the early streets, and their names, but also the lives of those who walked and lived in them. In doing so it recreates something of the thriving commercial settlement and port that came increasingly to dominate the life of the region it served – Ulster – in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” “Using a unique series of maps, together with archaeological and documentary evidence that has been expertly pieced together, the book revolutionises our understanding of this, the most Ulster of towns, before the coming of industrialisation. Just as importantly, it reminds us that Belfast has always stood, in the poet Derek Mahon’s lyrical phrase, a ‘hill at the top of every street.

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