I have been using the newspaper library in Belfast Central Library to look back at some old newspapers and in the course of other research I came across these two items.
- On 15 July 1967 the Belfast Telegraph carried a advertisement for an Ulster-Scottish Crusade in Portstewart Town Hall. The preacher was the Ulster evangelist Hedley G Murphy and the soloist and the organist were Scottish. I suspect that the title was chosen to interest the many Scottish folk who used to come to Ulster holiday resorts such as Portrush and Portstewart every summer in the 1960s but I think it also says something about the close spiritual and cultural connections between Ulster and Scotland.
- The 12th annual meeting of the Ulster Scottish Friendly Society was held in the Midland Hotel in Belfast on 24 June 1970. The secretary of the society was R A Houston , with an office at 22 Great Victoria Street. It was reported that they had assets of more than £5m and group funds of more than £7.5m. I wonder if anyone has some more information about the Ulster Scottish Friendly Society?
The connection between Ulster and Scotland stretches back a long way in human history and it created its deepest and most enduring legacy when Lowland Scots settled in Ulster at the start of the 17th century and thereafter. That settlement and the creation of an Ulster-Scots community gave Ulster a cultural diversity that is different from the rest of the island.
... ... and there are welsh speakers in Patagonia, Roma in Marseille, Indians in Fiji, and a plethora of British & Irish surnames scattered all over the world... And that's all great... except for maybe the Roma in France who are in the process of being ejected... None of these peoples are claiming independence from the rest of the land on which they have settled.
ReplyDelete