The Shire Reeve's Tale:49

Today, as High Sheriff of Belfast and President of the Ullans Academy I attended the Loch Lao Heritage Festival Civic Reception at the City Hall , Belfast. The welcome address by the Lord Mayor was as follows:

Good afternoon elected members, ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests. I am Councillor Niall O’Donnghaile, the Right Honorable, the Lord Mayor of the City of Belfast and it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to our City Hall for this afternoon’s reception which forms part of the week long celebrations of the Feis Loch Lao, which translates into English as the Blackbird festival.

I want to extend a heartfelt fáílte to all those representatives of the Loch Lao Partnership who are with us today and to give a very special Céad Míle Fáilte go Béal Feirste to Maria Hufenus, and to her partner Professor Ernst Zeigler who have travelled from their historic city of Saint Gallen in Switzerland where the Abbey Library of St Gall houses so many of our great manuscripts.

We are delighted you are with us for this celebration and appreciate the time you are giving to be with us this week to share your knowledge and to celebrate the shared heritage between our city, Belfast Lough and St Gallen.

In fact, your visit is an example of the ongoing exchange of knowledge and Christian cultural traditions that began in monastic times when monks and scholars travelled from here to Europe where they established monastic communities and left a rich legacy of records and manuscripts that brought enlightenment to the areas where they settled. Often scholars or those they taught would return home again to share their learning. The cultural legacy of St Gall and those first scholars has continued to evolve over time and today we celebrate the strong cultural traditions and links that have developed between our regions.

I am pleased that so many of you have been able to attend this afternoon’s event and congratulate the Loch Lao partnership in bringing together so many diverse groups from around this historic area of Belfast Lough. It is good to see so many from varying traditions coming together to jointly celebrate and cast new light on the hugely rich and shared heritage bequeathed to us by those first monks who lit the darkness of Europe with new light and hope.

Feis Loch Lao reminds us how much light was thrown across the shadows of time and place during the period known as the Dark Ages. This festival provides an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of those first monks to engage with each other to re-energise the spirit of bridge-building between the people of Belfast Lough from every background and to establish wider links as we look forward to next year and the 1400th anniversary of the arrival of St Gall in Switzerland.

I congratulate you in reigniting the links between St Gallen and Loch Lao, we are pleased to be part of the Feis Loch Lao celebrations which I know will continue to inspire bridge-building, enlightenment and peace.

To be continued

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