A slightly bizarre story has taken some of the headlines north of the border. This has to do with the fact that the Chief Executive of the Ulster Scots Agency, Ian Crozier, has defended the fact that there is no need for the Commissioner for the Ulster Scots and Ulster British Tradition to be fluent in Ulster Scots.
The post has recently been advertised and is regarded by some as a quid pro quo for the fact that the Northern Ireland statelet has taken more steps to enhance the position of the Irish language within the public services, including a recent lifting of a centuries-old prohibition on the use of Irish within the legal system.
Cynics might argue that the granting of such an equivalent status to Ulster Scots is little more than a bone thrown to cranky loyalists who at every stage of the institutionalisation of the former republican tradition and former militant republican organisations have been made feel a similar love and outpouring of “community funding” from the British state.
Irish has undoubtedly fared better under the new dispensation. Mind you, despite having made much of their advocacy of the Irish language, Sinn Féin has recently come under criticism from Conradh na Gaeilge and others for its failure to push for greater recognition of the Irish language as set out in the recently published programme for government.
What exactly is Ulster Scots? Well, here is a flavour of it from the translation on the Northern Ireland Civil Service website advertising for the said Commissioner.
TAAKIN OAN O’ A COMMISSIONER FER THE ULSTER SCOTS AN’ THE ULSTER BRITISH TRADEETION
The Executive Offaice baes leukin tae tak’ oan a Commissioner fer the Ulster Scots an’ the Ulster British Tradeetion.
We are leukin fer an’inspirin’ boadie wha baes het fer maakin the maist o’ this unco chanst tae mak’ betther an’ forder the leid, airts an screevins adae wi’ the Ulster Scots an’ the Ulster British Tradeetion. The roul wul bae needfu’ o’ a boadie wi’ a deep unnerstannin an’ a strang commitment tae forderin thon airt o’ waark an’ a track record o’ successful delivery.
Now I do not want to be a Smart Bottom – or Clever Aul Get as my Ulster Scots translator would have it – but it would surely be the shortest Duolingo course ever in order to acquire proficiency.
There is a connection between Ulster Scots and the dialect of English that would have been common among the lowland Scottish Protestant settlers who arrived in Ulster in large numbers from the early 17th century to take residence on expropriated lands that had belonged to the Gaelic Irish lords – and in the process largely eliminating the native language and indeed many of its speakers.
Scots from which Ulster Scots derives is a variety of older forms of English as it was spoken in the north eastern part of that country and it was the dialect of English that displaced the Gaelic language in much of Scotland as it became anglicised and the political and landed elite jettisoned whatever lingering connection they had to the Gaelic and originally Irish ways.
Erudite readers may be familiar with the verse of the 18th century Scottish poet Robbie Burns or indeed the more recent attempts by Hugh MacDiarmid. Burns was a fine lyricist as those who have heard his wonderful song Westlin’ Winds and other examples will know.
For the life of me, however, I can think of no equivalent piece of work by an exponent of Ulster Scots. The Ulster Scots Academy has an impressive list of authors who in my ignorance I had never heard of before and all are long dead. There is a link to a 1879 novel Orange Lily by May Crommelin who died in 1930 but other than extracts from poems by Burns at the head of chapters and some of the dialogue it is written in orthodox English.
Which makes it no more a literary example of a separate language than the use of dialect in Thomas Hardy or indeed the sort of stage Irishisms you might find in Sommerville and Ross. More recent attempts are frankly risible and I will forebear inflicting them upon you. My own scribblings are enough for any person.
In a perhaps jaundiced overview written in 1999 just after Ulster Scots had been granted an equivalent status to Irish by the Good Friday Agreement, the late Aodán Mac Póilin described it as a largely artificial creation based on “a disproportionate quota of obsolete words and of neologisms invented in Northern Ireland (e.g., ‘langblether’ for telephone; ‘stour-sucker’, a direct translation from German, for ‘vacuum cleaner’).”
Let us not, however, be demeaning of those who do claim not only that it is a unique and distinct language but who claim to be able to speak and read it – of whom there were more than 26,000 according to the 2021 Census in the north, and a further 190,000 who claimed to have some knowledge of it. That would include anyone who has ever watched Ralph C. Nesbitt.
While there have been complaints from enthusiasts of the “hamely tongue” the controversy over the Commissioner’s proficiency appears to have excited little anger among the loyalist community. There have been no threats to make Ulster ungovernable and no indications that someone on their way home from Mass or the GAA club might pay the price for such an insult.
Mey the road lift up in front o ye