Francis Joseph Bigger was born 17 July 1863 in Little Donegall Street, Belfast. He was educated at Royal Belfast Academical Institution, of which grandfather had been a founder 1810 and his father a governor. He studied law at Queens College Belfast and King’s Inn in Dublin, qualifying as a solicitor in1887. In 1889 he set up a practice in Royal Avenue in partnership with George Strachan.

In 1884 he joined the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club, founded in 1863. Its membership included the photographer R.J. Welch and the botanist Robert Lloyd Praeger. He soon became its secretary and later its president. In 1894 he revived the Ulster Journal of Archaeology after a lapse of 30 years, becoming its editor and remaining so until 1911. He acquired a lifelong interest in the Irish language, learning to speak it. He joined the Gaelic League and was appointed to its Executive Committee. This brought him into contact with Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill, who would influence many of his ideas. He founded the Belfast College of Irish and supported it until its closure in 1923. In 1894 he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

His interest in archaeology led him to buy the 15th-century Jordan’s Castle at Ardglass in County Down. He restored the castle, naming it Castle Sean, a model of the Celtic Revival and a meeting place for its more prominent people, finally bequeathing it to the state. Bigger produced in excess of 400 articles, contributing to Irish antiquarian journals and daily newspapers. Several of his articles were issued as pamphlets. He also wrote numerous articles on his two favourite pastimes, gardening and bee keeping. Other writings included Four shots from Down (1918) and Crossing the bar (1926).

Bigger was promoter of all things Irish, and was involved in the revival of processions, pageants, ceilidhs and feiseanna. He was a founder member of the Ulster Literary Theatre, the Irish Folk Song Society, the Irish Peasant Home Industries, the Ulster Public House Association, and schemes for improved labourers’ cottages, as well as serving as a committee member of the Belfast Art Society and the Irish Decorative Art Association.

In 1898 Bigger was a driving force behind the Belfast Gaelic League pageant to mark the centenary of the 1798 rebellion. He also helped organise the Irish harp festival of 1903 and the Sir Samuel Ferguson centenary in 1910. One of his greatest achievements was founding the Feis na nGleann in 1904.

As a conservationist he was keen to restore what was left of Ulster’s heritage. He uncovered unique pre-Reformation sculpture and medieval stained glass, and funded restorations of several ancient monasteries and monuments. Bigger also attempted to locate, relocate, or mark the graves of several national figures such as St Patrick, Robert Emmet, and Henry Joy McCracken.

In July 1926 Bigger received an MA from QUB in recognition of his services to archaeology and local history. He died on 9 December 1926 at his home, Ard Righ on the Antrim Road, Belfast, and was buried in the Bigger family plot at Mullusk .

Helen’s Tower, Conlig

Helen’s Tower was designed in 1848 by William Burn in the Scottish style and construction was completed in October 1861. It was part of an ambitious landscape project by Lord Dufferin covering the five miles between it and the coast at Helen’s Bay, to aid local labourers  made destitute by the Great Famine. The tower was eventually named in honour of his mother Helen, who was a grand daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the great Irish playwright, orator and politician.

It was built as a Gamekeeper’s residence but became a retreat for his mother who suffered from cancer of the breast and poems were written in its honour by Tennyson, Kipling, Argyll and other luminaries of the nineteenth century literary world. Like most children in Conlig I loved to visit the caretaker Mrs Bruce as a boy and the Bluebell and Primrose plantin around it. In an alcove of the Tower was a wishing seat, where my mother sat when she was pregnant with me.

Ulster Tower, Thiepval

However, the tower took on an unforeseen poignancy after the battle of the Somme in 1916. The land around the tower had been used as a training camp by the 36th (Ulster) Division prior to their embarkation from Belfast for France and, for those soldiers, Helen’s Tower would have been a lasting image as they sailed out of Belfast Lough. For this reason, in 1921, funds were raised by the families of the fallen and an exact replica, the Ulster Tower, built on the battlefield at Thiepval.

The commemoration to mark the 170th anniversary of the Great Famine has just been held at the Albert Basin in Newry, County Down. Attended by ministers from the Irish government and the Northern Ireland Executive, it was the high point of a week of talks, walks, music and drama about the tragedy. In her remarks, the Irish Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys, recalled how in Newry workhouse all the health professionals died of fever. “A point that has struck me forcibly is how the legacy and memory of the famine is deeply ingrained in the collective memory of the host community in Newry,” she said.

The Great Famine of 1845-51 has the grim distinction of being the most costly natural disaster of modern times. Ireland had witnessed a massive surge in population from 2.6 to 8.5 million by 1845 when blight struck the staple food of the masses – the potato. Some 80% of this teeming population lived on the land, making Ireland one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. Under a land system where most of the land was owned by the great Plantation landlords, vast numbers of the poorest ‘cottier’ class lived on ‘potato gardens’, often sub-divided among their sons. By the 1840s, close on two-fifths of the population were totally dependant on the potato and it was the major food-source of the rest.

 

Between 1845 and 1849, the potato crop failed in three seasons out of four. The result was starvation and the spread of the “road disease” – dysentery, typhus and cholera.One million people died of hunger and disease during the crisis and more than one million emigrated, mainly to the United States – often in the notorious ‘coffin ships’, so-called because many people died because of the terrible conditions during the crossing. In dealing with the crisis, the  government introduced ‘Outdoor Relief’ – the provision of soup kitchens in distressed area and public works, such as the building of roads and harbours. However, these measures were woefully inadequate. The country’s workhouses were grossly overcrowded, adding to the vast mortality. The claim that the Famine did not affect Ulster has been debunked by recent historical research. Between 1845-51 Ulster’s population fell by 340,000, a drop of 15.7% compared with 19.9% for the whole of lreland.

 

The greatest losses of population were in the south Ulster counties of Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan. Fermanagh lost almost 30% of its inhabitants. Tyrone, Antrim and Armagh were close to the national average with rates of around 15%. Surprisingly, research shows that the events from 1845 to 51 affected normally prosperous parts of the north-east, including Belfast, north Down and particularly the linen triangle of north Armagh. By December 1846 the first deaths from starvation were reported in the local press. By early 1847 cholera was spreading in Fermanagh, with the Erne Packet reporting: “In Garvary Wood hundreds of corpses are buried, they were the victims of cholera and their relatives too weak to carry them to the graveyard.” One of the most surprising aspects of the Famine was its searing impact on traditionally prosperous parts of eastern Ulster. Particularly hard-hit was the Lurgan-Portadown linen triangle of north Armagh.

Image copyright Picture: Mark Carline

Lurgan Workhouse in 1847 recorded the third highest mortality of any workhouse in Ireland. An inquiry blamed the crisis on overcrowding and the fact that the corpses of fever victims were interred beside the workhouse well. The result was a cycle of death. In normally prosperous Newtownards, there were queues at the soup kitchen of “emaciated and half-famished souls”, covered with rags. In 1847 the worst affected areas in Down included the Mournes and the fishing port of Kilkeel. The reactions of the landlords varied. Not all were as compassionate as the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava Lord Londonderry, the largest landowner in north Down, rejected rent reductions due to “personal inconvenience” and was much criticised.

Newry – the site of the all-island Famine Commemoration – became a key centre of emigration from south Ulster, with vessels carrying thousands direct to Canada and the United States. Among these was the ill-fated ‘coffin ship’, the Hannah, carrying emigrants from South Armagh. Fifty people were drowned when it struck ice near Quebec. The Famine had a traumatic impact on the growing industrial town of Belfast, which attracted large numbers of famished and disease-ridden people from all parts of Ulster. In March 1847, typhus fever swept the town following the arrival in the port of the Swatara, an emigrant ship from Connacht.

The Plaguey Hill at Friar’s Bush Graveyard in south Belfast is a grim cenotaph commemorating some 800 victims of ‘Black ’47’.

 

 

Frankie was first elected to Belfast City Council in 1972, representing Dock, then the Antrim and Shore Road areas. He held his seat at each subsequent election until retiring in 1993. He was Deputy Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1981-2 and 1992-3. He was also elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 for Belfast North as an Ulster Unionist Party anti-Sunningdale Agreement candidate. He held his seat on the Northern Ireland Constitutional Cinvention in 1975 as an independent Unionist, and for the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly.In the late 1980s, he campaigned against the privatisation of the Harland and Wolff shipyard.His son, Frank MIllar, Jr. was also an Ulster Unionist Party Assembly member.

I was very fond of Frankie and Alderman Tommy Patton O.B.E., also a shipyard worker and former Lord Mayor, whom I used to run home from Council meetings. Frankie was Chairman of the General Purposes and Finance (Development) Sub-Committee of Belfast City Council. With the support of  Tommy, Aldermen Fred Proctor, Nigel Dodds,M.A, (Cantab), B.L., John S.D.(Dixie) Gilmore, O.B.E., Hugh Smyth O.B.E., and Sammy Wilson and Councillors Margaret Clarke, Margaret Crooks, Mervyn Jones, F.C.A. and Robin Newton, and then Full Council, Pretani Press published for the Council in 1991 a facsimile edition of The Great War 1914-1918, Ulster Greets her Brave and Faithful Sons  and remembers her Glorious Dead. This was first published in 1919 by the Citizens Committee, City Hall, Belfast. Copies are still retained by the Council for distribution on special occasions.

Malmö, Sweden.

On 9th June, 1992, Frankie and Suzanne Wylie, a young and up-and-coming officer of the Health, Meat and Markets Committee, and I travelled to a Healthy Cities Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Frankie was chairman of that committee and I was vice-chairman. We both thought that Suzanne would go a long way in the Council. I talked to Frankie of the Vikings, both Norse and Danes, and the influence they had on the history of the British Isles; how Danish Dublin was founded by British slaves from Dumbarton, capital of the British Kingdom of Strathclyde, of the Norse in the Hebrides now classified as “Gaels” and of the Great Danish Army who conquered most of the east of England and are now called “English”. The  Great Danish Army, known by the Anglo-Saxons as the Great Heathen Army, was a coalition of Viking warriors, originating from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, who came together under a unified command to invade the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that constituted England in AD 865.

A map of the routes taken by the Great Heathen Army from 865 to 878

But, of course , he knew most of this, for he was a very intelligent and forthright person, indeed forthright to a point not always to his own interest. We took a sea-trip to Malmö in Sweden and on this he told me about his exploits as a seaman in the Baltic and how Stalin awarded him the Order of Lenin.

The Order of Lenin (Russian: Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina), named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union. The order was awarded to:

• Civilians for outstanding services rendered to the State,
• Members of the armed forces for exemplary service,
• Those who promoted friendship and cooperation between peoples and in strengthening peace
• Those with meritorious services to the Soviet state and society

From 1944 to 1957, before the institution of specific length of service medals, the Order of Lenin was also used to reward 25 years of conspicuous military service.

Those who were awarded the titles “Hero of the Soviet Union” and “Hero of Socialist Labour” were also given the order as part of the award. It was also bestowed on cities, companies, factories, regions, military units and ships. Corporate entities, factories, various educational institutions and military units who received the said Order applied the full name of the order into their official titles.

The order was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6, 1930. It was last awarded on December 21st, 1991, bringing it to a total of 431,418 .

In November 2009, I brought my friends The Lord Bannside, Rev Dr Ian Paisley and Baroness Eileen to the Tullycarnet Library in  East Belfast to hear the Lewis Psalm Singers who have made a significant contribution to the work of Colmcille and to inter-community understanding in Northern Ireland. The Paisley family were already well acquainted  with this singing through visits to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, the third biggest island of the Pretanic Isles after Albion (Great Britain) and Ireland (Little Britain). Psalm singing is at the heart of worship in the Presbyterian Gaelic tradition in Scotland. Bringing with them a unique sound and singing tradition the Lewis Psalm Singers from the Free Church congregations on the island of Lewis, have given audiences here a unique insight into Gaelic culture .

Colmcille was a partnership programme between Foras na Gaeilge and Bòrd na Gàidhlig, promoting the use of Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic in Ireland and Scotland and between the two countries. Colmcille aimed through its work to foster understanding of the diverse experience and culture of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic communities, and to encourage debate on common concerns in social, cultural and economic issues with a view to building self-confidence within the Gaelic language communities.

Colmcille had originally invited the Gaelic psalm singers to Belfast in 2005 where they sang to 450 people in the Ulster Museum during the Leabhar Mòr Exhibition. They had since sung to capacity audiences in Iona Abbey, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and St Columb’s Cathedral, Londonderry, and in many other venues, including Áras Éanna in Inis Oírr in the Aran islands. Dr Paisley and Baroness Eileen came with me to meet Colmcille in the Cregagh Library for I had told them much of their marvellous work, which they greatly appreciated.

My own favourite church in Lewis is St Moluag’s (Gaelic: Teampall Mholuaidh), a 13th Century edifice in the village of Eoropie in Ness, now used by Scottish Episcopalians. The church is dedicated to St Moluag or Molua, a Bangor monk from Dalaradia in Ulster. There is a Church of Ireland church dedicated to him at Stormont. One of the most enduring traditions associated with St Moluag’s church is its power as a place of healing, especially for those afflicted with mental problems. Perhaps one of the most interesting stories and traditions associated with the church is its links with a god of the sea, Seonaidh. If true the origins of its healing ceremony may be very old indeed, and may be a lost link with the practices of the pre-Christian islanders.

Gaelic Psalm Singers from the Hebrides

This is a form of singing now largely restricted to the Western Isles of Scotland. The precentor (literally ‘one who sings beforehand’) sings the line of a psalm, and the congregation sings the line back in a cappella style (without musical accompaniment). The precentor’s duty is to pronounce the words clearly and precisely, but also to give a hint of the melody line. The role of the precentor is very important, as traditionally he or she arrived at church not knowing which psalms were to be sung, and had to think of a melody ‘on the spot’ when the minister announced the psalms. The congregation’s singing is much more ornamental, with many passing and grace notes. The result is a distinctive and emotive swell of sound. This style of singing is also learned from an early age in the home, where it is an integral part of family worship.

This form of singing developed in Britain after the Reformation to help illiterate congregations to sing psalms without needing to read them. The practice died out in most of mainland Britain due to church reform, but survived in the Hebrides as many were unable to read their native Gaelic owing to the hostility of the educational authorities. Today, many Gaelic speakers can read the Bible in their own language and maintain psalm singing in the traditional style. However, there is concern that the tradition is in danger and psalmody classes have been arranged in Gaelic-medium schools.

The Reverend Dr. I. D. Campbell minister of the Free Church in Back, Isle of Lewis, explained the endurance of the Gaelic psalm singing tradition, ‘A lot of the new songs and hymns that are being used elsewhere just don’t have the depth of feeling and the ability to marry theology and personal experience together in the way the psalms do.’

Few who listen to Gaelic psalm singing can fail to be moved. Lesley Riddoch, who is originally from Belfast and is now Radio Scotland’s best-known presenter, declared that listening to the psalms made hairs stand up on the back of her neck and she found the music very moving. When she played a track from this choir’s CD on her show many listeners were amazed – one caller said ‘I did not know that Scottish men could sing with such emotion.’

Professor Willie Ruff, of the University of Yale believes the Hebridean style heavily influenced the black gospel tradition of ‘lining out’ psalms, as Scottish Gaelic speakers and black slaves shared the same churches for many years in the southern United States.  Willie played a CD track to an old Black precentor who burst into tears, recognising the similarities immediately. There are also striking similarities to be found in the singing styles of the Coptic Church of Ethiopia. 

The Free Church of Scotland 

Psalm singing is popular with many Presbyterian churches, and in Northern Ireland today, the Reformed Presbyterian Church maintains the tradition of unaccompanied psalm singing. Gaelic psalm singing is a distinctive feature of the Free Church of Scotland, the strongest Presbyterian Church in the Highlands. This Church was borne out of religious controversies during the mid-1800s when Highland lairds were clearing the lands of their crofters (tenant farmers) to make room for sheep runs and hunting grounds. The ministers of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland were often chosen by the landlords and were obedient to them, telling their congregations it was God’s will they were to leave their traditional homes and travel as far as Canada and Australia.

As poor tenant farmers turned to their religion for comfort, evangelists who disagreed with the Church of Scotland’s doctrine were outraged by the landlords’ influence over ministers. One third of the Church of Scotland’s ministers and 60 per cent of the laity seceded to form the Free Church. They endured many years of hardship, having to meet in barns and boats, for example, but eventually they triumphed over the established Presbyterian church in the Highlands. In the Lowlands many Free Churches returned to the Church of Scotland after it was released from Government control in 1874, but many Highland Churches remain ‘Free’. Many Highland Presbyterians came to believe that the distinctive Gaelic church was a bulwark against the irreligious licentiousness of the Lowlands, and the Free Church Presbytery of Lewis can insist on a commitment to learn Gaelic on the part of ministers who do not know the language. Many posts for ministers on Lewis are advertised as ‘Gaelic essential’.

This group of psalm singers have released three CDs, the profits of which go to the Bethesda Care Home and Hospice in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. You can read more about the group’s work at www.gaelicpsalmsinging.com

Ulster Tower, Thiepval

On Friday 12th September,1986, I first brought my friend Dr Ian Paisley, MP, MEP, accompanied by Nigel Dodds, Fred Proctor and Jackie Hewitt  to the Somme Battlefield, where they visited the Ulster Tower at Thiepval, the trench system at the Memorial Park Beaumont-Hamel and the Thiepval Monument. Dr Paisley confirmed he would arrange a meeting with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission about re-opening the Ulster Tower Museum and the provision of oral documentation and photographic displays which Farset Youth and Community Development would help to provide.

Signing the Visitor’s book at the Ulster Tower.

                             Looking towards Thiepval Wood from the Top of the Tower

The Ulster Memorial Tower stands on what was the German front line during the Battle of the Somme, July to November 1916. It is opposite Thiepval Wood from where the 36^th (Ulster) Division made its historic charge on the 1^st July 1916 and is in close proximity to the village of Thiepval.

The Tower stands 70 feet tall and is a lasting tribute to the men of Ulster who gave their lives during the First World War. Its position on the battlefield is a permanent reminder of the 36^th (Ulster) Division’s heroic charge at the Battle of the Somme on the opening day of that great offensive.

The Ulster Memorial Tower was the first official memorial to be erected on the Western Front and was dedicated on 19^th November 1921. The Tower itself is a replica of a well known Ulster landmark, Helen’s Tower, which stands on the Dufferin and Ava Estate at Clandeboye, above Conlig, County Down.

Helen’s Tower, Conlig

                                  Clandeboye Camp with Helen’s Tower in the distance

When demands grew for the construction of a publicly-funded battlefield memorial at Thiepval in honour of Ulster’s fallen, Sir James Craig proposed, at a meeting held in Belfast’s Old Town Hall on 17^th November 1919, that the monument should take the form of a prominent Ulster landmark. The proposal struck a chord and Helen’s Tower seemed the ideal choice, standing as it did in view of the Clandeboye training camp of the 36th (Ulster Division)

On Saturday 19^th November 1921 the completed Tower was opened by Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, later assassinated by the I.R.A. The principal room inside the Tower is a sixteen feet square memorial chamber, faced throughout in stone, with an inscription tablet in marble. The inscription reads:

This Tower is dedicated to the Glory of God, in grateful memory of the Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers and Men of the 36^th (Ulster) Division and of the Sons of Ulster in other Forces who laid down their lives in the Great War, and of all their Comrades-in-Arms, who, by Divine Grace, were spared to testify to their glorious deeds.

The upper portion of the Memorial Tower provides accommodation for a caretaker. By the late 1980s however the Tower had fallen into disrepair and public access was limited.

 

Today, to mark its opening, with special guests Dr. and Mrs Bob Jones, Greenville, South Carolina, the Bannside Library Ltd presented its first two publications. In 1937, when he was eleven years of age, Ian Paisley received a copy of Canon Hugh Forde’s “Sketches of Olden Days in Northern Ireland” as a Sunday School prize. It was presented to him by his father Pastor J. Kyle Paisley, and was treasured all the days of his life. When planning the opening of his personal library for public access, he chose to reproduce this book to mark the occasion. He felt it was universal in appeal and a timely reminder of how greatly we need to treasure our rich inheritance and teach its cultural wealth to the next generation. He further requested that I write the introduction. The book has been reprinted under the title of “Northern Ireland, Our Lesser known Story” and this is my tribute to him in the book.

It is a great privilege for me to write a foreword for this little book on the history  of Ulster placenames, a Sunday School prize which was treasured by my friend Rev Dr Ian Paisley, the Lord Bannside PC. I do this both in honour and in tribute to him. I was his Personal Physician and Advisor on History and Culture from July 2004 until his death on 12^th September, 2014. Indeed a very close friend of both Dr Paisley and his family, I was deeply affected by his final illness and passing from this world to the next.

His great oratory and acute perception of the human condition made him the most prominent British politician of the second half of the 20^th Century. But I will remember him particularly as a wonderful travelling companion to the bookshops we visited regularly both here and in Great Britain. He loved his books and his magnificent library. He was indeed the most intelligent and widely-read person I had ever met, a kindly and responsive man, for whom no request for assistance ever went unheeded.

On New Year’s Day 1985, Dr Paisley presented me with two special volumes from that library which he had himself written, America’s Debt to Ulster and The Massacre of St Bartholomew. These two historical treatises he loved, the latter especially as Eileen was of direct Huguenot descent. The history of Edward Carson and James Craig were also of special interest to him and he gave me a valuable photographic collection on the subject. And, of course, we cannot forget his deep knowledge of Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne.

On 1^st July 1986, under the auspices of Rhonda, then Lady Mayoress of Belfast, we held a Press Conference to launch through the Farset organization what was to become the Somme Association. At this event in Belfast City Hall, Dr Paisley explained his position as a European MP and committed himself to help us refurbish the Ulster Tower at Thiepval in France and open a museum both there and at Conlig, County Down, where the original Helen’s Tower stands. He emphasized that this was a project to honour everyone who had fought at the Somme, both Unionist and Nationalist, Roman Catholic and Protestant.

When he and Rev David McIlveen went on missionary work to the Cameroons, I gave them their Yellow Fever vaccinations. Dr Paisley became very ill on one occasion and I diagnosed him as having West Nile Fever. For the Christmas of 1987 he therefore gave to me his two volume edition of Rev J. A. Wylie’s The History of Protestantism, inscribed by him To Dr Ian, with best thanks for injecting me, medicine and history !!! Following this, in 1992, he made representations to the government to help me set up the Ullans or Ulster-Scots Academy which was predicated on the preservation of Ullans, Ulidian or Ulster Gaelic, and Ulster English, including Belfast English, as well as the history of Dalriada, Dalaradia, Dal Fiatach, Galloway and Carrick, much of which you will read in this book.

But it was the history of early Christianity in the British Isles which became the focus of his work with the Ullans Academy. Dr Paisley and Eileen, now Baroness Paisley, were our principal guests at the St Patrick’s Breakfast and Feast of Columbanus events we held regularly, his speeches demonstrating the incomparable grasp he had of a subject he held so dearly in his heart. A second Columbanus himself, his long and fruitful life had as its guiding principle his abiding love and worship of his Master Jesus. All his activities were subordinate to this one ideal and through it he worked out his Salvation by the wondrous pathway that he knew. He was a politician only by circumstance, a theologian by vocation, a contemplative man driven to action by the evils of this world, a Pilgrim on the Road to Paradise. He has arrived home at last. Christ loved Ian Paisley…Well too, did he, the Lord.

The second book was “This is my friend, The Personal Reminiscences of Rev. David McIlveen on his Friendship with Ian, Lord Bannside“, who writes ” Having had the experience of being with him in some of the most remote areas of Africa, and dining with him in the company of the world’s poorest, as well as with the world’s richest, I have observed a man whose life was characterised in contentment and whose interest in others was remarkably unique. Of his Saviour he could say, This is my beloved, and this is my friend”