Before the Throne

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great high Priest whose Name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in Heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Saviour died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

Behold Him there the risen Lamb,
My perfect spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I AM,
The King of glory and of grace,
One in Himself I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by His blood,
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Saviour and my God!

This beautiful hymn was written by Charitie Lees Smith (1841-1923), whose father Rev Sidney Smith, an Ulster-Scot, was rector of Drumragh in county Tyrone. she composed it in 1863, just four years after the great Ulster Revival of 1859. 

There is fine version of this hymn sung by Kristyn Getty, who is accompanied by her husband Keith Getty, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLy8ksqGf9w

A barrage of bad language

Why is it that some modern playwrights feel obliged to pepper their work with so much bad language?

Yes, I know that many people swear.  I hear the occasional swear word in the street or some other public place and some people are particularly prone to swear. 

But I have come across a number of contemporary plays where the frequency of the bad language far exceeds anything I have ever heard from anyone in the street.  In one play that was performed recently in Belfast a few 'swear words' were used repetitively in sentence, after sentence after sentence.  The audience were battered with bad language and indeed if that language had been removed the play would have been cut in half.

Putting such a barrage of bad language into a play, or some other piece of literature, sounds artificial and detracts from the play.  It does nothing to enhance it and it can totally spoil an otherwise well-written and well-performed play.  Some folk will argue that this is realism but I would suggest that in fact it is unrealistic.

As a politican and someone who is out and about in the community day after day, in all sorts of areas and situations, I meet thousands of people and I have never encountered the intensity of profanity that appears in some of these productions.

Stephen Collins Foster

The great American songwriter Stephen Collins Foster has been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.  Foster's ancestors were Ulster-Scots who emigrated from County Londonderry to America in the 18th century.

He wrote many great songs including Beautiful Dreamer and My Old Kentucky Home but died in 1864 at the age of thirty-seven.

The family were very conscious of their Ulster-Scots ancestry and Stephen's brother was a member of the Scotch-Irish Society of America.

Banning the voice of Israel

In an earlier post I quoted a Northern Ireland Friends of Israel report which stated that following representation from NIFI, Professor Geoffrey Alderman had been invited to join a panel discussion on the topic 'Conflict in the Middle East' to provide a pro-Israel perspective.

The two original contributors were Professor Avi Shlaim, who was born in Baghdad in 1945 of Jewish parentage but is now a critic of Israel and Zionism, and Professor Beverley Milton-Edwards, who is a professor in the school of politics, international studies and philosophy at Queen's University.  In a BBC Radio 4 Sunday Programme in 2007 she described Hamas as a 'Muslim national movement' which was trying to bring law and order in Gaza and at the time journalist Melanie Phillips described her as having 'had a history of promoting the interests of Islamist terrorists'.  That quote is still on Melanie Phillips website at http://www.melaniephillips.com/.

Professor Alderman is a respected author and academic who appears frequently on radio and television as an authority on the politics of the Middle East and he would have made a valuable contribution to the debate as well as providing some muc-needed balance.

However I have just received an e-mail from Professor Lewis H Glinert of Dartmouth College in America stating that last Friday Professor Alderman received an e-mail from Festival director Graeme Farrow informing him that 'a mistake' had been made in inviting him and that although he could join the audience, the event would go ahead without his participation in the panel!

This was a copy of an e-mail that Professor Glinert had sent to the QUB Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gregson, and in it he said, 'This is an unprecedented attack on academic freedom - and an insult to the Jewish community in the UK.'

This is a disturbing development and the Festival has a responsibility to explain why the invitation to Professor Alderman was withdrawn, how the 'mistake' was made and why they decided to stage a one-sided discussion that excluded a pro-Israel speaker.

Return visit to Ulster Museum (3)

Beside the Ulster Museum there is the historic Friar's Bush graveyard, which is one of the oldest graveyards in Belfast.  One of the rooms in the Ulster Museum overlooks the graveyard and in it there is a panel which  depicts 'the mysterious Friar's Stone inscribed 485AD'.

The circular stone features three crudely cut crosses, the date 485AD and the inscription 'this stone marks ye friar's grave'.  Now any inscription written in 485 AD would have been in Gaelic or in Latin and certainly not in English.  But in any case there are no ancient or medieval references to such a stone.  The earliest references are in the early 20th century.

In fact Belfast historian Eamon Phoenix describes the date as 'implausible' and most other historians simply describe the stone as a Victorian fraud.  Why is the museum so reluctant to admit that it is a fraud?  The description 'mysterious' could mean anything or nothing and is totally inadequate.  It certainly leaves open the question of the stone's authenticity!

Even the South Belfast News managed to get it right when it quoted the gatekeeper Gerry Ward as saying, 'There is a crude stone in the graveyard with three rough crosses and AD 485 inscribed on it, but we know it is a fake.  It was put there by a local hoaxer for reasons known only to him. Apart from the markings being wrong for that era, a painting of the spot from 1782 doesn’t show the stone.'

Return visit to Ulster Museum (2)

For me one of the highlights of any visit to the Ulster Museum was always the magnificent Ulster Past and Present mural by the popular Belfast artist William Conor (1884-1968).  This was painted back in the 1930s for the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, now the Ulster Museum, and it was then the largest mural in Ireland.

Various books and websites state that the mural is in the Ulster Museum and it is but there is no point in going there to see it.  With the refurbishment of the Ulster Museum the mural has been banished to the store room.

This was a magnificent piece of art and it is sad that after so many years visitors are to be denied the opportunity to see it.  The explanation that there is not enough wall space for it simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. 

Return visit to Ulster Museum (1)

On Saturday I went on an 'off duty' visit to the Ulster Museum, along with my wife, and we had a very pleasant afternoon.  There were not the very large crowds of the early days after the reopening but there was a steady flow of visitors.  During the visit I took some photographs and they form the basis of this short series of posts.

As regards Orange and Hibernian banners, which are part of the colourful culture of Northern Ireland, there are none at all on display.  There is a trade union banner and there is space immediately beside it for another, as well as wall space elsewhere, so why avoid these other colourful examples of local folk art?

Some years ago the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum had an excellent exhibition on The Brotherhoods of Ireland.  Alongside the exhibition there was also an excellent booklet and both the exhibition and the booklet were produced by Dr Tony Buckley.  The exhibition had a wealth of regalia and banners and other materials associated with fraternal organisations, including Protestant organisations, Roman Catholic organisations and friendly societies.  The most striking thing for me was the similarities between the organisations in terms of icons, symbols and ritual.  King William on an Orange banner was very similar, albeit with different colours, to Patrick Sarsfield on a Hibernian banner!

I have seen Orange and green banners in museums in Scotland, England and Eire and it seems utterly bizarre that the Ulster Museum has no Orange or green banners or regalia at all on display.