Ireland’s only Ulster-Scots local newspaper column marks first birthday

THE first Ulster-Scots Leid Loanen (Language Lane) column ran in the Ballymoney Chronicle, written by myself on October 6 2022. 
Broadly, it aims were to produce topical copy with pictures, in accessible Ulster-Scots language, but with a particular focus on hoking out and celebrating lesser used or no longer used words from grass roots native speakers as well as drawing on our large literary heritage, the weaver poets and others.

I wanted to move away from the idea of Ulster-Scots as a Hamely Tongue, propagating an ethos of Reclaim the Leid.
To challenge the idea, so powerful in the community, that the level of Ulster-Scots spoken today is somehow complete and inviolate.

To challenge the idea that words no longer or seldom used, or found only in the literature are archaic and using them is 'false', artificial, or 'archaic' or that their use is 'making up' a language.

Using these words, is in fact a good thing and people can help reclaim the language, by using them.
I aimed to constructively highlight the sad reality that the vocabulary currently used is a much depleted one.
One cannot start to deal with a problem, until one has accepted that it exists.
Most importantly of all, I wanted to enjoy the language in all its power, humour and quirkiness, and encourage readers to do the same thing.

Since it started the column has run around 20 times, coming out first in the printed paper, before being uploaded to the Chronicle website.
During that year stories on the website have been consistently well visited, very decent for the first year of a project with a niche readership.
Website figures do not include hard copy readers, whose numbers are more difficult to assess, but anecdotal feedback has been very positive.

I have found the year a rewarding part of my own Ulster-Scots language journey, a learning experience in every way.
One of the joyous discoveries of the year was the powerful wealth of Ulster-Scots vocabulary locked away in popular old sayings, often reduced to an ember of life.Sayings I had never heard before, such as gantings smittle (yawning is infectious); a hawthorn year is a braw year and the like, were explored.

Discussions about articles on social media revealed the striking amount of rarely used Ulster-Scots word memory that people actually have.I was also amazed by the wealth of words out there, that are only used by a few people, perhaps never going beyond a family circle, passed on from generation to generation.
I was regularly struck by how people’s use of words, and the meanings they put on them, often varies from meanings recorded in Hamely Tongue, and other resources.
For example, joogins, in Hamely Tongue, mean tattered clothes, but to some in and around Ballymoney it means your guts, or insides.
Some articles treated verses of poetry from the likes of James Orr or Samuel Thomson, exploring words they used, no longer common.

Generally, these were not as popular as articles about sayings, that people already recognised and had a way into.
Social media, in my opinion, has been the great vehicle driving the revival in Ulster-Scots in recent years, allowing people to share their interest.

For Leid Loanen, it allowed, both as source of articles and as audience, input from further afield than north Antrim.
The origin of two examples already given in this piece were from my native Donegal.
Powerfully, when people’s memories get jogged by articles, the language knowledge revealed, is sometimes extraordinary.

From feedback, despite my efforts to be accessible, I am left with the impression that readers, even older native speakers, find it hard enough going.

This, in spite of the fact that I have avoided an overly dense Scots style and usually include the English word in brackets beside words not commonly used, such as aiblins (perhaps), eydent (industrious) etc.
I think the main problem is that readers are put off because, unlike quaint recognition takes on reading Ulster-Scots, it is actually tedious to partially understand a text.

Interestingly, I’m finding, that often this isn't because people don't know the words, it’s because they aren’t used to seeing them written down.
It was a colleague who said that gye for very was commonly used out where she was, but it had thrown her, to see it written. Others have said similar.

Recently I went through an article with a reader, who read it aloud. It was the really simple unexpected things that stumped her, like not recognising that gress was grass - obvious when the penny drops.
When she read more slowly, a second time, allowing the words to sink in, I saw the article open up for her, before my eyes, sentences flowed as she tapped into her hidden reserves of leid wittins (language knowledge).
Her grandson, in this 20s, read it, and whilst his visceral knowledge wasn’t as good, he immediately flagged up the word jinkin (turn nimbly).

He said there was a Scottish footballer called Jinky Johnstone – who was, what else, but a quick turning nimble footed player.
My main advice to readers, is don’t rush, you already know it, you’ll get it.
Back in early 2023, Scots language activist Billy Kay, said in an interview in the Scots Language Society journal Lallans, (translation):
“I’ve got this theory now, that every Scots word that has ever been expressed is living in someone’s mouth as we speak.”
Since starting Leid Loanen, I think there would be reasonable justification in applying Billy's theory to Ulster as well.