 |
 |
|
||
|
|||
Traveller in the Glens: 'Our Antrim Dialect'Before continuing our journey we may as well devote a paragraph or two to the dialect of the Nine Glens, a dialect which isn't exactly the same in any two of them, though there are many words and phrases which they have in common. Some years ago Rev. W. F. Marshall, Ulster’s greatest authority on dialect, in a series of radio broadcasts under the title ‘Ulster Speaks’, included illustrations of dialect words in common use in the Glens, using them to show that the Nine Glens speech shows the brands of the Rose, Thistle and Shamrock.We can easily trace how this came about. The brand of the shamrock was the retention by the native Irish of words from the old tongue when English became the general speech;the brand o fthe thistle came when the Scottish of the people who settled in the Braid and other surrounding districts became grafted on the still-new language;and the brand of the rose – oldest brand of all – which was the Elizabethan English used by the people such as the Earls of Antrim, who had intercourse with the Royal Court, and whose servants, recruited mostly from the local people, took pattern from their masters' speech. Another influence, though to a lesser extent, was that of the French settlers who in Huguenot days fled to Ulster and, as mentioned in a previous chapter, were the founders of the linen industry, and this impact of a French-speaking people, coming on top of the influence of the McDonnell clansmen, many of whom were tri-lingual (Gaelic, Scots-English and French), account for the number of words whose French ancestry is obvious. It sounds like a hotch-potch, but we must bear in mind the fact that English has survived and spread throughout the world, because it has always been most accommodating and receptive to suitable words from other languages, and our distinctive branch of the English tongue is more easily intelligible than, for instance, the dialect of Cumberland or ‘Zummerzet’. One defect we have, our poor delivery, as the visitor is always struck by the fact that we talk in a monotone, what could be a most musical speech being thus reduced to something resembling unintelligent reading. For this defect many people blame the present system in rural schools, where elocution seldom, if ever, figures in the curriculum. Our dialect can be a little puzzling to a stranger at first, as for instance, when he hears somebody say, ‘He’s a right omadaun, that!’ or ‘Jamie's a right sort of boy, ’or maybe the reply, ‘Och, he’s only a gulpin!’ Now, an ‘omadaun' is a foolish person, and so is a ‘gulpin’, but the difference between the two is that the ‘gulpin’ is, in addition to being a bit of a fool, also conceited and self-assertive, whereas the ‘omadaun’ may become a ‘right sort of boy’ when he gets ‘a bit of wit’. An amusing use of a local dialect word was when Field-Marshal Sir Alan Brooke (later Baron Alanbrooke) and Field-Marshal Sir Harold Alexander were receiving the freedom of Belfast on October 17, 1945. The Ulster Prime Minister, Sir Basil Brooke, at a banquet given in their honour in the Parliament Buildings, Stormont, said that the teamwork which won the war would help them to win the peace. ‘And,’ he jokingly added, ‘if Britain wants any more field-marshals they can have a ‘wheen’ of them from us.’ From the Appletree Press title: Traveller in the Glens (pb), click here for more information. Part 2 of this 'Traveller in the Glens' Antrim Dialect article |
[ Back to Top ]
All Material © 1999-2005 Irelandseye.com and contributors
