This is the text of a paper I gave to the Ulster-Scots Agency (or the Boord o Ulstèr-Scots),of which I am a Board member. The Ulster-Scots Agency was set up to promote Ulster-Scots on the island of Ireland along with Foras na Gaeilge, which was set up to promote the Irish language. The agency is part of The North/South Language Body established as a result of the Belfast Agreement of 1998.
On 10th March 1999 Marjorie Mowlam, one of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, made Order 199 No 8591 North/South Co-Operation (Implementation Bodies). The functions of the Language Body in relation to Ullans and Ulster-Scots cultural issues would be exercised by an Ulster-Scots Agency of the Body. “Ullans” was to be understood as the variety of the Scots language traditionally found in parts of Northern Ireland and Donegal. “Ulster-Scots cultural issues” related to the cultural traditions of the part of the population of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties which was of Scottish ancestry, and the influence of their cultural traditions on others, both within the island of Ireland and the rest of the world. This was a very skilfully crafted document which allowed a distinction between the language, which is spoken by people of varying ancestries and nationalities and the cultural traditions which are an amalgam of Ulster and Scottish traditions, Highland, Lowland and Hebridean.
I first used the term Ulster Lallans in the chapter on “The Language of Ulster” in my “Identity of Ulster” (published under my own imprint Pretani Press in 1982). I followed this up in 1992 by publishing “The Folk Poets of Ulster Series”, including the “Country Rhymes” of James Orr, Samuel Thompson and Hugh Porter. In line with the Scots magazine “Lallans”, I suggested the use of “Ullans” as the name of the magazine for the Ulster-Scots Language Society, first published in 1993. The term appeared particularly useful, not only as a contraction of Ulster Lallans but of the words “Uladh” (Gaelic for Ulster) or Ulidia and Lallans – Scotch for “lowlands” – as well as an acronym of the Society’s aims in its support for the Ulster-Scots language literature and native speech. Both Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson used the term Lallans to refer to the Scots language, Burns in his “Epistle to William Simpson”, Stevenson in his “The Maker to Posterity”.
I also suggested the name for a proposed Ullans or Ulster-Scots Academy which I founded in June 1992 following a meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada between Professor R J Gregg and myself. This was to be based on the FrIesian Academy of Sciences in the Netherlands, with its three departments of Linguistics and Literature, History and Culture, and Social Sciences, which I had visited in 1978 and again in 1980 with a group of community activists from Northern Ireland. The Academy would fulfil a need for regulation and standardisation of the language for modern usage, but both these standards would be initiated on behalf of the whole Ulster-Scots Community, Protestant and Catholic, Nationalist and Unionist, as well as being academically sound.
What we dIdn’t need, however, was the development of an artificial dialect which excluded and alienated traditional speakers and unfortunately this is exactly what happened. There may come a time when Ullans can expand its vocabulary by going back to its own past by reviving the language of the Medieval Poets, even inventing new forms or borrowings from other tongues, including English, if that is found necessary. C M Grieve (Hugh McDiarmid) used this for Scots, James Joyce for English in “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake” and there was some success in Norway, the Faeroes, Israel and South Africa. But that position in the history of the Ulster-Scots language planning is still a long way off.
The formation of the Ulster-Scots Agency has been a great step forward for the development of Ullans, both in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It has however no jurisdiction in the south-west Scottish area of northern Great Britain, Galloway and Carrick, the old British kingdom of Rheged, where Ullans is also spoken and where it is known as “Galloway Irish”. The Ullans or Ulster-Scots Academy should therefore be based in Belfast which is at the epicentre of Ullans speech in all three jurisdictions. The Academy should also be used to explore the relationships with Ulster Gaelic or Ulidian, which was also formerly spoken in all three areas and is still spoken in Ulster and the Inner Hebrides.
Nevertheless the Ulster-Scots Agency should oversee all developments on behalf of both Sovereign Governments while the Heirschipe village concept , initiated by the Ullans Academy, with its focus on cultural tourism, should also be developed under its remit. The issue of Ullans Medium Schools, with a focus on Ulster-Scots Language, Literature, History, Culture and Social Sciences, needs to be addressed through the Department of Education. Only when we have complete access to all aspects of our language, history and culture will the conditions be created which will allow us at last to cross the religious and political divide.
Dr Ian Adamson OBE
President of the Ullans Academy
12th April 2010