Ulster Scots Research Articles

Robert Burns and Modern Ulster-Scots Poetry

Robert Burns’s influence on Scottish culture and literature is well attested, though in recent years bardology has been counterbalanced by a rising fashion for “bardoclasm”. In Ulster too Burns has featured prominently in official presentations of Ulster-Scots by the Ulster-Scots Agency and other public bodies. High-profile Burns Night concerts are now a staple and TV programmes have been commissioned to mark the occasion. Burns’s image also features prominently on the Ulster-Scots Agency websites and promotional materials. This essay will explore how Burns’s increased visibility in Ulster is replicated in the work of modern poets who use Ulster-Scots in their work. Modern writers from Ulster who use Ulster-Scots tend to have a slightly different relationship to the work of Burns than their predecessors, or modern Scottish writers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Ulster-Scots writers would have been intimately familiar with the poetry of Robert Burns. In modern Scotland, Scots writing, and Robert Burns especially, features prominently in school curricula. Despite some efforts to incorporate more Scots and Ulster–Scots literature into the school curricula in Ulster, these do not generally feature. This means that Burns and Scottish poetry is introduced, if at all, through less formal channels. Modern Ulster-Scots poetry began in the 1990s with the Ulster-Scots Language Society’s Ullans magazine. The major writers to emerge from this revival were James Fenton and Philip Robinson. The early 2020s has witnessed an upsurge in writing in Ulster-Scots. This essay will explore Burns’s complex influence on this corpus of work. A strand of Ulster-Scots poetry is fairly traditional, with a focus on nostalgic, rural themes and concerns. It may be intuitive to think, therefore, that Burns may feature as part of this. However, it is perhaps in the work of the most self-consciously literary of modern Ulster-Scots writers where Burns’s work is most tangible. There are traces of Burns’s influence in several areas: in the forms and themes used, and in the way in which voice is created. Burns also at times functions as a sort of symbol for the vernacular itself, and provides a source of vindication for writers using a tongue which still often attracts opprobrium and ridicule in popular discourse.

NEW ULSTER - Ulster Scots settlement of Nova Scotia

NEW ULSTER - Ulster Scots settlement of Nova Scotia

ОСТРОВНОЙ АРЕАЛ КАК ФАКТОР УСТОЙЧИВОГО РАЗВИТИЯ ДИАЛЕКТА РЕГИОНАЛЬНОГО ЯЗЫКА (на материале шотландского языка)

The island type of a dialect of a regional language can be a favourable factor of development, which makes the dialect in question more «successful» than the other varieties of the same idiom spoken on the mainland. In the domain of Scots, Ullans (Ulster Scots) proved to be its most «successful» variety, which has enjoyed favourable conditions for development since the late twentieth century. The Shetland dialect, as a vital variety having important differential features and performing a symbolic function in the community, also has a significant potential for development if the situation favours it.

The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania: A Varied People

The history of the Scots Irish (sometimes called the Ulster Scots or Scotch Irish) is important for an understanding of both Irish and early American history. Lowland Scots, who were Presbyterians, were encouraged to settle in northern Ireland as part of a plan to colonize Ulster with Protestants after the wars of the seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century, the province may have included as many as two hundred thousand Scots Irish. Changing circumstances in Ireland reduced their economic opportunities and placed these dissenting Protestants on a social and political status not much different from that of dissenting Catholics. These conditions prompted several waves of migration in the eighteenth century to the North American colonies. Pennsylvania, as Judith Ridner shows, attracted the Scots Irish because Philadelphia was a major port, and, more importantly, because it had no established church and welcomed Presbyterians. These people settled both in Philadelphia and the Delaware River valley as merchants and professionals, and also in the frontier regions of western Pennsylvania as farmers. This has given rise to two traditions associated with the Scots Irish that Ridner points out: one of rapid assimilation, upward mobility, and economic and political success, on the one hand, and one of hardscrabble, Indian-fighting frontiersmen on the other. The incredible story of Andrew Jackson, she asserts, embodied both of these images.

A Nova Scotia Scheme and the Imperial Politics of Ulster Emigration

AbstractEarly in 1761, a land promoter of Ulster origin named Alexander McNutt brought before the British Board of Trade a proposal to settle several thousand Ulster Scots in Nova Scotia. The board enthusiastically approved, but when McNutt returned the following year with promising news, the board forbade him from continuing the scheme, citing fears of losing Protestants in Ireland. This episode has generally been explained as evidence of the British government's ambivalence about Ulster emigration. However, rather than expressing merely a tension between two equally desirable but conflicting goals—peopling the American colonies with Irish Protestants and protecting the Ascendancy by preventing their emigration—the board's change of mind reflected the changing political environment. The board that approved McNutt's scheme strongly favored settling Nova Scotia quickly; the board that shut it down a year later included new members who viewed settling Nova Scotia as a waste of precious funds. The case of Alexander McNutt demonstrates the profound ramifications of party politics for Ulster migration during the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. It further affirms that studies of Ulster migration must be imperial in scope.

Ian Adamson: paediatrician who became mayor of Belfast and persuaded Ian Paisley to talk to Sinn Féin

Credit: Dalaradia Group Born in Conlig, County Down, Samuel Ian Gamble Adamson grew up in a modest but bookish family. His father, John, who ran the village store and enjoyed...

God you're Breaking my Heart-What is God's Response to Suffering and Evil? by Brian Grogan (review)

in the Brexit negotiations. Are nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland showing a similar commitment to operating their own part of the Agreement? It is worth remembering what all parties are committed to. The Agreement says: ‘We pledge that we will, in good faith, work to ensure the success of each and every one of the arrangements to be established under this agreement’. Given the difficulties there were in agreeing a budget for Northern Ireland, and given the collapsing of the Executive because of disagreements about the Irish language and Ulster Scots, one has to question the commitment of both Sinn Féin and the DUP to the Agreement and their respect for their pledge. This is a serious book, and will prompt readers to examine their preconceptions about a topic that will be with us for years to come. John Bruton was Taoiseach from 1994 to 1997 and has spoken and written extensively on Brexit. God you’re Breaking my Heart – What is God’s Response to Suffering and Evil?, Brian Grogan SJ (Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2016). The opening words of this well-written and very readable book claim that it has been a ‘struggle’ for the author to write and will be a similar experience for us readers. No surprises here. From time immemorial, people of religious faith have been grappling with the question of how a God of love can allow horrible events and tragedies to happen. I am reminded of what Brian Doyle wrote in his book on the heart, The Wet Engine. In a chapter entitled Imo Pectore – ‘in the innermost recesses of the heart’ – he reminds us that ‘our hearts are not pure: our hearts are filled with need and greed as much as with love and grace; and we wrestle with our hearts all the time. How we wrestle is who we are’. Brian Grogan is, however, more than a very helpful wrestling coach for us in this book. Yes, we have to wrestle with some big questions – after all, evil is a ‘dark mystery’– but the author provides some very helpful perspectives to enable us to do this. He gives us the image of the jigsaw puzzle as a framework by which we can locate the issues. In describing evil as a ‘poisonous gas’, we can understand how it permeates our lives in the most lethal and subtle fashion. Faithful to the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, however, Fr Grogan invites the reader to see God as labouring for us to bring good out of Autumn 2018: Book Reviews Studies • volume 107 • number 427 391 evil. Indeed, such is the strength of his argument that ‘for God there are no dead persons’, I sense that it must be so much more difficult for people of no or little religious faith to wrestle with these perennial problems. Sprinkled throughout the book are a number of inspiring stories of people who have faced great suffering in their lives and emerged stronger from the ordeal. Stories are a bridge to the experience of others, of course, and they stretch our hearts. It was the great Jewish author Elie Wiesel who said once that ‘God made man because he loves stories’. In Bread for the Journey, Dutch Catholic Priest Henri Nouwen wrote something similar: ‘This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made when we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us ... ’Accordingly, Brian Grogan shares with us diverse heart-rending stories that include: the young girl Malala who survived an assassination attempt on her life in Pakistan for daring fearlessly to promote the education of women; psychologist Viktor Frankl who wrote so beautifully about salvation through love following his experiences inAuschwitz; Etty Hillesum, the young Dutch Jew, who did not survive the savagery of a Second World War concentration camp, but whose spirit of victory was never broken; the celebration of Mass in the devastation of Belsen; Sister Josephine Bakhita who persisted through many years of slavery to...

Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie and Douglas M. Orr Jr. (review)

Reviewed by: Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie and Douglas M. Orr Jr. Travis D. Stimeling Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia. By Fiona Ritchie and Douglas M. Orr Jr., with the assistance of Darcy Orr, and foreword by Dolly Parton. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. [xx, 361 p. ISBN 9781469618227 (hardcover), $39.95; (e-book), $34.99.] CD, illustrations, bibliography, discography, index. In his landmark study of Appalachian history, John Alexander Williams observed that “the Irish migration proved one of the formative influences in Appalachian history, though it has created additional problems for historians,” who must work to capture the complex nature of Irishness in the British Isles and North America (John Alexander Williams, Appalachia: A History [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002], 43). Paul F. Wells and Sally K. Sommers Smith have noted similar issues arising from efforts to trace the influence of Irish music on North American vernacular musics, remarking that “the nature and significance of this impact is widely acknowledged but poorly understood, resulting in frequent oversimplification of complex historical threads” (“Irish Music and Musicians in the United States: An Introduction,” Journal of the Society for American Music 4, no. 4 [November 2010]: 395). Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia, written by National Public Radio host Fiona Ritchie and Swannanoa Gathering founder Doug [End Page 378] Orr, attempts to trace these “complex historical threads” by telling a story of a musical, dancing, and storytelling people who were almost perpetually on the move, making an indelible impact on the cultures of the people they met along the way. Lushly illustrated with images of traditional musicians, stunning rural landscapes, and maps, and filled with the voices of contemporary musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, Wayfaring Strangers offers a useful general introduction to the relationships between Irish, Scottish, and Appalachian traditional musics. Ritchie and Orr cast their narrative in three broad chapters: “Beginnings,” “Voyage,” and “Singing a New Song.” “Beginnings” explores the origins of the impulse to combine story and song, beginning with the troubadours, trouvères, and minstrels of the Middle Ages and continuing to the Scottish courts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before moving onward to Scandinavia. Particularly compelling is the careful attention that the authors pay to the specific cross-cultural interactions that occurred within individual council areas and the ways that those interactions may have influenced particular musical practices. Ritchie and Orr frequently draw upon ballad texts in their treatment of these histories, treating them as valuable sites of cultural memory. The second chapter—“Voyage”—documents the migration of the Scots to Ulster and onward to North America, using song texts to discuss the factors that encouraged such movement, including Scottish colonial efforts, rent-racking, population expansion, and religious persecution. In this chapter, one gets the sense that the Ulster Scots were faced with the prospect of ever-widening distances between their ancestral homelands and the new frontiers they settled, first crossing the North Channel from Scotland to Ulster and later crossing the Atlantic Ocean to a land of unknown promise. Not surprisingly, Ritchie and Orr spend a fair amount of this chapter exploring the ways that emigrants and the people they left behind captured the complicated emotions of these constant departures in song and rituals such as the “American Wake,” a multiday sending-off party that they describe as “heartfelt and harrowing in equal measure” (p. 95). In the last chapter, “Singing a New Song,” Ritchie and Orr continue this story of Ulster Scot migration, this time from the burgeoning urban center of Philadelphia—one of the most significant ports of entry for Scots-Irish immigrants in the United States—down the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road and the Wilderness Road into southern Appalachia. Along the way, the authors offer a cursory examination of the musical products of interactions between the Scots-Irish and German settlers (the dulcimer) and African American slaves (the adoption of the banjo), as well as their engagement with native Cherokees. Ritchie and Orr then attempt to offer brief discussions of many of the primary genres...

“I DONT CARE ONE CENT WHAT [Ø] GOYING ON IN GREAT Britten”: BE-Deletion IN IRISH ENGLISH

In the English-speaking world, be-deletion, or copula absence, is best known as a likely creole feature of African American English (AAE) and basilectal Caribbean Englishes. This historical case study examines Raymond Hickey’s contention that attestations of be-deletion in present-day Irish English (IrE) must lead to revision of accounts assuming that be-deletion does not and did not occur in the Englishes of Britain and Ireland. A survey of reports of be-deletion in present-day and historical varieties of British English (BrE) and IrE suggests that be-deletion is and was found not only in Ireland, but also in Scotland and northern England, regions that contributed greatly to British settlement in Ireland. Deletion appears to have been widespread in IrE historically and was present in time to cross the Atlantic with Ulster Scots (Scotch-Irish) settlers in the eighteenth century and with other Irish emigrants in the nineteenth. However, an analysis of the letters of one individual writer from the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (CORIECOR) shows that his be-deletion in a range of preceding and following grammatical environments deviates from the robust patterns reported for AAE and Caribbean Englishes. IrE is thus unlikely to have exerted much direct influence on be-deletion in AAE and Caribbean varieties. Nonetheless, be-deletion in IrE may have provided input into some marginal grammatical contexts where deletion was once found in AAE but has since been lost. Some of these—such as following what, it, that, and this—seem to be robust contexts for be-deletion in the IrE letters and are contexts where copula deletion in the Irish language suggests that the Irish substrate exerted some influence on be-deletion in IrE.

The Irish Ulster Scot

Liam Logan, someone from an Irish nationalist background, gives his perspective on Ulster Scots as a cross-community tongue. Ulster Scots has been unfairly burdened with politics and has suffered misunderstanding as a result. The article also attempts to show how Ulster Scots is part of a broader network of relationships between Scotland and Ulster. The article also attempts to show how Ulster Scots is part of a broader network of relationships between Scotland and Ulster and how it has been the victim of various elite agendas.

Language and Politics in Ireland – a Constructive or Destructive Interconnection?

This paper demonstrates that the idea that a language, a culture and a nation are tied together as one single unit just because they share the same name is almost always fundamentally flawed. In Northern Ireland, the tying together of “Irish language”, “Irish culture” and “Irish Nationalism” has led to a mirrored response from opponents of Irish Nationalism, who have sought to present “Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture” as a single entity. Because they are not a single entity, the outcome of this has been the presentation of “Ulster Scots” as something at best unreal and at worst invented. This has merely meant that the identity crisis that some in Northern Ireland are experiencing has continued, while much needed work on promoting “Ulster Scots language” and “Ulster Scots culture” as the distinct entities they are has gone undone.

Beyond the rhyming weavers

This paper examines the origin, development and construction of John Hewitt’s concept of the Rhyming Weavers. It argues that there is a need to reassess his concept in the light of contemporary critical concerns, and to develop critical perceptions of the work of the weaver poets beyond the parameters first established by Hewitt. An examination of the work of Thomas Given (1900) and Adam Lynn (1911) casts doubt on Hewitt’s treatment of the Rhyming Weavers as a past or vanished tradition, and argues that Hewitt’s views on politics and religion led him to neglect or undervalue poets such as Given and Lynn. It is also argued that the concept of Rhyming Weavers needs to be extended to encompass more female poets, poets of the Ulster Scots diaspora, and poets beyond Counties Antrim and Down, such as W. F. Marshall.

Translating for linguistic minorities in Northern Ireland: a look at translation policy in the judiciary, healthcare, and local government

Europe as a multilingual continent hosts three main types of languages: dominant languages, autochthonous minority languages, and new minority languages. From a policy standpoint, planning for speakers of these languages and their needs become a complex matter in which many actors with different interests are involved. Of the many issues which policy-makers must deal with, the role of translation is often unexplored. However, in any multilingual territory, the adoption of a language policy implies decisions whether to translate or not. With that understanding, this paper explores the role of translation in language policy in Northern Ireland. By doing so, we highlight the translation implications of policy decisions. This helps to illustrate the complexity of language and translation policy. In detail, the paper explores the complexities of language policy as seen in translation policies for speakers of Irish, Ulster Scots, and new minority languages. Specifically, it considers translation policies in the judicial system, in the healthcare system, and in local governments.

Cracker craic: the politics and economics of Scots-Irish cultural promotion in the USA

A growing number of festivals celebrate ‘Scots-Irish’ heritage in the USA, spreading out of the southern highlands traditionally associated with the eighteenth-century settlement of migrants from Ulster. Myths and confusion still abound with respect to Scots-Irish identities, yet the newfound visibility is undeniable. Does this cultural revival represent a consequence of the genealogy boom or an attempt to capitalize on it? Is it part of a turn in depressed regions toward cultural heritage tourism as an economic development strategy? Does it represent an outgrowth of multiculturalism or white ethnic backlash against ridicule and ‘reverse’ discrimination? State tourism offices and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, supported by federal government grants, have played a central role in encouraging commemoration of Scots-Irish culture. Heritage, genealogy, and economic development have come together in these projects, with implications for both the cultural legacy of Ulster Scots migrants to the USA and cultural policy more generally.

Janet Muller: Language and Conflict in Northern Ireland and Canada. A Silent War (Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities)

Written by an author who serves as Chief Executive Officer of POBAL, meaning ‘community’ in Irish, a non-governmental organisation for the Irish-speaking community in Northern Ireland, this book reflects the unique insights that such a role allows into language issues in contemporary Northern Ireland. Situated within the broader context of conflict resolution, the book explores the approach adopted to managing linguistic diversity in Northern Ireland against the socio-political background leading up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and onto the present day. Following years of political strife, the agreement between staunch political opponents reflected a milestone in the North’s history, whereby a devolved Assembly was established, only to be suspended in 2002. It was a further 5 years before devolution was re-established through the St Andrew’s Agreement in 2007. Among the measures as part of the agreement was a commitment to enact an Irish language act which, at the present time, is still outstanding. As the author outlines, the linguistic situation in Northern Ireland reflects religious and political differences. The complexity of the situation, however, is further enhanced by the fact that English as the dominant language co-exists with not just one, but two minority languages whose minority status differs considerably, namely Irish and Ulster Scots. In the latter case, the author calls into question its status, suggesting that it may be more appropriately considered a dialect of English given that Ulster Scots is comprehensible to speakers of English. While an Irish language act was envisaged as part of the St Andrew’s Agreement, no similar arrangement was considered for Ulster Scots. Following on from an initial chapter which situates language policy in the context of conflict resolution, the chapters provide substantial insights into the factors surrounding the potential for an Irish language act in Northern Ireland, in relation to demographic, educational, media and political issues. Chapter 2, for

Deliberating the Irish language in Northern Ireland: from conflict to multiculturalism?

The Belfast Agreement (1998) contains a clause on respect and tolerance for linguistic diversity in Northern Ireland (NI). It is unsurprising that this clause was included given the role of Irish – and Ulster Scots – in identity politics in the region. The call for respect for NI's languages can therefore be seen as a type of conflict management. Renewed powersharing through consociational arrangements points to a relatively successful peace process, while inward migration has greatly increased in recent years. NI's sociocultural landscape has diversified to such a degree that respect for linguistic diversity should no longer be viewed solely as a means of reconciliation between just two communities; it can be treated as a move towards overall multiculturalism in the region. Yet language issues remain divisive, recently highlighted by the rejection of legislative protection for the Irish language. This article examines current attitudes towards linguistic diversity in NI, with reference to the comprehensive Northern Ireland Languages Strategy and the ongoing dispute over Irish. Viewed through the prism of linguistic diversity, it suggests that the basic consociational arrangements be re-thought to include a deliberative democratic model for language planning, in the long-term path from conflict management to multiculturalism.

Scotland and the Ulster Plantations: Explorations in the British Settlements of Stuart Ireland

The ‘New British History’ of the early modern period may be less influential than it once was, but it is still very pertinent when it comes to Ulster, where the native Irish had to contend not only with a heavy-handed English government but also with interference from Scotland. This book—the fruit of two conferences held in 2006—provides further ‘explorations’ into the vexed relations between the three nations, and specifically the interaction between Ulster and western Scotland, whose geographical closeness across the North Channel was reinforced by migration and plantation, as well as by occasional invasion from both directions. The essays in this volume are, in the main, of the highest quality, with four of the leading scholars of early modern Ireland—Ciaran Brady, Raymond Gillespie, Robert Armstrong and Michael Perceval-Maxwell—giving their usual polished performances. Brady examines eastern Ulster and the MacDonald lordship during the later sixteenth century, a time when their inconsistent treatment at the hands of the successive regimes gave an opening for the rebellious earl of Tyrone to take control of the region. Gillespie's article is broader in focus, looking at the Presbyterian experience throughout the seventeenth century, and especially the way in which the wars of the 1640s, and especially the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643, encouraged the Ulster Scots to develop into a community distinct from their cousins in Scotland. Armstrong seconds Gillespie's argument with an in-depth study of Viscount Montgomery of the Ards, whose awkward position as head of an embattled Scottish interest in eastern Ulster in the later 1640s was made impossible by events in Scotland and England. Perceval-Maxwell carries the story through to the reign of Charles II, examining how the relatively lenient policies in Ulster, masterminded by the lord lieutenant of Ireland, the duke of Ormond, differed from those of the governors of Scotland—resulting in relative stability rather than the constant unrest and rebellion experienced by its larger neighbour. All four articles emphasise the differences as well as the similarities between the Ulster Scots and their cousins on the mainland, and it is interesting to note that this divergence seems to have grown more pronounced as the seventeenth century continued. Supporting them are Alison Cathcart's contextual piece surveying the interactions between Ulster and Scotland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Padraig Lenihan's restatement of his view that the Confederate Catholics of the 1640s were wrong to consider Ulster a more important target than Dublin and the Munster ports; and David Menarry's detailed (and, at times, indigestible) account of Cromwellian attempts to subdue the Ulster Scots in the 1650s.

<em>The Duel: Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry</em>, by Giles Hunt

Reviewed by: The Duel: Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry Nancy LoPatin-Lummis (bio) The Duel: Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry, by Giles Hunt; pp. xiii + 214. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2008, £20.00, $37.00. On 21 September 1809, Foreign Secretary George Canning and Lord Castlereagh, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, fought a duel. On the surface, this might not seem extraordinary; the infamous and deadly duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr had taken place only five years earlier. But Britain was at war with Napoleon and in the middle of economic chaos. Whatever would possess two members of the government to engage in such cavalier behavior? Answering this question is the purpose of Giles Hunt's biographical and ideological study in political ambition and contrasting success in the age of high politics and war. Organizing the book in chapters that contrast their early lives, education, and political careers, Hunt argues that Canning and Castlereagh came to serve His Majesty's government from two very different paths. On the one hand, Canning's father had been disowned for his choice in marriage, leaving the family bankrupt when he died during Canning's infancy. While his grandfather held estates in Northern Ireland, the young Canning relied upon his uncle and only upon his grandfather's death was his grandmother able to pay for his formal schooling at Eton. Robert Steward, later Lord Castlereagh, on the other hand, descended from an Ulster Scots plantation fortune and the commercial wealth of an Indian nabob. He was born into privilege and grew up at his grandfather's estate, Mount Stewart, experiencing the social and education expectations of his rank. Canning landed a place at Christ Church at Oxford with the assistance of a family friend. Brought up as a Foxite Whig, he became "Pittized" (33); the new alliance brought him to the House of Commons for Newton, nominated by the Prime Minister, and soon allowed him to join the Foreign Office under William Grenville. Castlereagh also rejected family political connections to the Whigs. He went to Cambridge rather [End Page 169] than Trinity College, Dublin, under the influence of his step-grandfather, Lord Camden. He launched his political career with the calculated choice to govern Ireland "by force" rather than "by reason" (32), openly opposing Henry Grattan and the Irish Parliament. By 1794, Castlereagh severed himself from Irish politics and embarked upon a political future in Westminster. The drama, Hunt shows, started to manifest itself as early as 1801 when William Pitt resigned and was replaced by Henry Addington over the failure of Catholic Emancipation. When war resumed with France merely a year after the Peace of Amiens, an attempt to bring Pitt back into power divided political loyalties and Canning and Castlereagh assumed leadership roles in the cabinet. When Pitt died in January 1806 his government fell and both men were now in opposition to the Ministry of all the Talents. They should have found common ground, particularly after King George III dismissed the coalition government and asked the aging Duke of Portland to form a government. But others' ambitions were stirring up policy differences, generating criticism, and otherwise undermining one by evoking the name of the other. In the end, Canning was forced to resign and a humiliated Castlereagh challenged him to a gentlemen's duel. Meeting at Putney Heath at five o'clock in the morning on 21 September, the standard gentlemen's resolution could have ended the conflict. Canning, however, did not fire in the air on the first shot, putting Castlereagh in the awkward position of restoring his damaged political reputation by showing "superiority not by trying to kill him, but by shooting him, literally and metaphorically, in the foot" (137). When Canning aimed for a second shot, Castlereagh shot Canning in the thigh, nearly hitting his femoral artery. What did this all mean? Hunt argues that the duel impacted public opinion, personal reputation, and political legacies, even more so than the political backbiting and squabbling going on behind the scenes. Criticism of the two cabinet ministers dueling during a foreign war was nearly universal. Castlereagh panicked about Canning's...

Barry Aron Vann . In Search of Ulster‐Scots Land: The Birth and Geotheological Imagings of a Transatlantic People, 1603–1703 . Columbia : University of South Carolina Press . 2008 . Pp. ix, 252. $39.95.

What the Mediterranean Sea was for Fernand Braudel and the Atlantic Ocean has been for a host of contemporary scholars, the north Irish Sea is for Barry Aron Vann. In the early modern world, bodies of water provided the most effective means of moving people, ideas, and institutions throughout large areas and defining the cultural space of distinct and important regions. Vann's Ulster-Scots Land emerged in the seventeenth century as Scots Calvinists moved readily throughout southwestern Scotland and eastern Ulster. In the process, Puritan divines created among themselves and their congregants an imagined community of shared beliefs, rituals, and enemies. The plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century first engaged Scottish landlords and their dependents in colonizing Ireland for the interest of English security during a series of European struggles between Protestant and Catholic powers. But it was the politics of religious conflict in the 1630s, the English Civil Wars, and the Stuart Restoration that welded leaders of the Scottish Kirk into a community embracing the northern borders of the Irish Sea. Imbued with the fervor of Knoxian Calvinism, English Puritanism, the Scottish Confession of Faith, the National Covenant, an Old Testament sense of the Scots as God's chosen people, and a vision of Ireland as a New Canaan, Presbyterian ministers crossed and recrossed this sea in the service of salvation and sacred destiny. The result was not only the creation of an “Irish Sea culture area” (p. 11) but also the forging of the Ulster Scots as a providential people. Vann's familiarity with the sources for Presbyterian theology, the history of the Kirk, and the culture of Puritanism make for a strong argument about the historical integrity and regional coherence of an Ulster-Scots Land and an identity for Ulster Scots more closely associated with the “geotheological imagings” of this land than with any sense of Scottish, Irish, English, or British nationhood.

PRESBYTERIAN RELIGION, HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND ULSTER SCOTS IDENTITY, c. 1800 TO 1914

ABSTRACTThe links between Presbyterians in Scotland and the north of Ireland are obvious but have been largely ignored by historians of the nineteenth century. This article addresses this gap by showing how Ulster Presbyterians considered their relationship with their Scottish co-religionists and how they used the interplay of religious and ethnic considerations this entailed to articulate an Ulster Scots identity. For Presbyterians in Ireland, their Scottish origins and identity represented a collection of ideas that could be deployed at certain times for specific reasons – theological orthodoxy, civil and religious liberty, and certain character traits such as hard work, courage, and soberness. Ideas about the Scottish identity of Presbyterianism were reawakened for a more general audience in the first half of the nineteenth century, during the campaign for religious reform and revival within the Irish church, and were expressed through a distinctive denominational historiography inaugurated by James Seaton Reid. The formulation of a coherent narrative of Presbyterian religion and the improvement of Ulster laid the religious foundations of a distinct Ulster Scots identity and its utilization by unionist opponents of Home Rule between 1885 and 1914.