Editorial

The Ulster-Scots Language Society made enormous strides forward during 1994. Membership continues to increase and public awareness of the Ulster-Scots tradition increases daily. Frustration, however, still surrounds our attempts to have our language recognised and supported by Government. Approaches have been made to official bodies who have adopted bilingual logos, letterheads, and/or signs in Irish Gaelic and English (such as the Cultural Traditions Group, the Students Union at Queen’s University, Belfast and the Foyle Fisheries Commission,) but all continue to prevaricate on the inclusion of Ulster-Scots.

Belfast City Council has adopted, with all-party support, an official policy of seeking equality of treatment for the Ulster-Scots and Irish Gaelic languages and their associated traditions. Unfortunately the Northern Ireland Office maintains that calls for Ulster-Scots to be treated on an equal basis to Gaelic are “inappropriate”. The debate between Belfast City Council and Michael Ancram continues on this question.

Towards the end of the year meetings were held in Belfast City Hall to establish an Ulster-Scots Heritage Council. All Ulster-Scots interest groups will be represented on this umbrella group, and foremost among these groups are our own Society’s representatives, along with those of the Ulster-Scots Academy, the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association, the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, the Belfast Burns Association and Burns Clubs, and the Presbyterian Historical Society. The collective voice of the Ulster-Scots will prove to be an enormous boost to all aspects of Ulster-Scots culture in the years ahead. Already we can see Ulster-Scots festivals being held in various centres.

A Belfast branch of the Ulster-Scots Language Society has been established and meets once a month at the Belvoir Community Centre. As the current issue of ULLANS reveals, our writers in Ulster-Scots are becoming more proficient in their command of the modern written language. The process we are encouraging, however, is one of openness designed to ensure a future for Ulster-Scots as a modern, literary language. There are no ‘correct’ Ulster-Scots spellings at present, and no-one should feel restrained about writing in Ulster-Scots because they see words spelled in unexpected ways herein. We will not be ‘correcting’ anybody’s contributions, but rather we hope the magazine to be an open forum for Ulster-Scots writing. ‘Standard’ spellings for Ulster-Scots will only come through popular acceptance when most writers happen to adopt the same rules for themselves by consensus.