Olet maan suola. Mutta jos suola hänellä mauttomaksi, millä se saadaan suolaiseksi? Sen vuoksi on hyvä vain pois heitettäväksi ja tulla kulkeneet jalkoihin. Olet maailman valo. Kaupunki kukkulalla ei voi piiloutui. Kumpikaan on kynttilä piilotti ja laittaa vakan alle, vaan lampunjalkaan, ja se antaa valoa kaikille talossa. Anna valoa niin loistaa että teidän hyvät tekonne voidaan nähdä ja niin ylistäisi Isäänne, joka on taivaissa.

Jeesus Nasaretilainen

Suuri valo valaisee maailma on syttynyt, kasvatettu kynttilänjalka, paistaa koko maan, kuninkaallinen kaupunki hyvin linnoitettu ja kukkulalla, jossa on suuri väestö, jotka kuuluvat Jumalalle.

Virsi Saint Patrick … Bangor Antiphonary.

Seinämaalaus Kenneth Webb Bangor Abbey tilattiin ohjauksessa Canonin James Hamilton. Käyttö kolmio, joka osoittaa Pyhän Kolminaisuuden, läpäisee koko suunnittelu ja johtaa meidät ylöspäin luvut Comgall, Kolumbus ja Gall etualalla on keskeinen hahmo Nouseva Kristuksen. Piirteet Kristuksen ovat kuin musta henkilö, korostaen mystinen luonne Ihmisen Pojan. Hän on suunniteltu antavan hänen viimeinen komento: “Menkää kaikkeen maailmaan ja saarnata evankeliumia”

On Wednesday 4th June,1997, two days after I left office as Lord Mayor of Belfast, I flew from Belfast to Seattle. Kevin McBride recognised me and I got an upgrade to Business Class, which was very helpful as I was embarking on a journey of a lifetime to the High Andes in Peru and the Amazon River Basin in search of Che Guevara. On Friday 6th June , with my sister Isabel and her husband Earl, accompanied by their Entomological Professorial friends, I flew on Continental Airlines to Houston ,Texas and on to Lima, Peru. The following day we had a discussion at the home of Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias (born 21 December 1918 in Lima) a Peruvian philosopher who disputes the summary of human nature on the basis that any collective assumption of human nature would be unfulfilling and leave the public with a negative result. He made his debut in 1941 with Sentido del movimiento fenomenológico (Meaning of the phenomenological movement).

The term paraconsistent logic was coined by Miró Quesada at the Third Latin America Conference on Mathematical Logic in 1976. After Miró Quesada graduated from the University of San Marcos with a doctorate in Philosophy, he began teaching there as a professor of Contemporary Philosophy. Later, in 1952, he was granted a scholarship by UNESCO to go to France, Italy, and England to study the formation of the secondary teaching staff. In 1953, he published the Sunday Supplement (el Suplemento Dominical). Francisco was considered one of the finest intellectuals in South America.  He was most interested in my own work and the difficulties I had experienced with the reactionary Irish academia here.

Following visits to archaeological sites in Lima, we travelled through the High Andes, staying with the Quechua people and arriving at the Colca Canyon to see the Condor fly. We then travelled on to Arequipa and Cusco, Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Inca, and the Amazon Basin. The hospitality we received from the Quechua  was unforgettable. They once gave us the potato (Quechua papa ), which the persecuted Presbyterian Ulster-Scots (Scotch Irish) later gave back to North America. The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru between 8000 and 5000 BC. It has since spread around the world and become a staple crop in many countries. The earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains have been found at the coastal site of Ancon (central Peru), dating to 2500 BC.

Ernesto Guevara spent long periods traveling around Latin America during his studies of medicine, beginning in 1948, at the University of Buenos Aires. In January 1952, Guevara, then a 23-year-old medical student, and his friend Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist, set out on their journey and The Motorcycle Diaries is his memoir of what happened. Leaving Buenos Aires,  on the back of a sputtering single cylinder 1939 Norton 500cc dubbed La Poderosa (“The Mighty One”), they desired to explore the South America they only knew from books. During the formative odyssey Guevara is transformed by witnessing the social injustices of exploited mine workers, persecuted socialists, ostracized lepers, and the tattered descendants of a once-great Inca civilisation. By journey’s end they had travelled for a symbolic nine months by motorcycle, steamship, raft, horse, bus, and hitchhiking, covering more than 8,000 kilometres (5,000 mi) across places such as the Andes, Atacama Desert and the Amazon River Basin. The diary ends with a declaration by Guevara, born into an upper-middle-class family, and descended from the ancient British aristocracy of Dalaradia in Ulster, displaying his willingness to fight and die for the cause of the poor, and his dream of seeing a united Latin America.

Guevara (left) kick starts La Poderosa whilst holding the handlebars

“This isn’t a tale of derring-do, nor is it merely some kind of ‘cynical account’; it isn’t meant to be, at least. It’s a chunk of two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams. In nine months a man can think a lot of thoughts, from the height of philosophical conjecture to the most abject longing for a bowl of soup – in perfect harmony with the state of his stomach. And if, at the same time, he’s a bit of an adventurer, he could have experiences which might interest other people and his random account would read something like this diary.”

—Diary introduction

The trip was carried out in the face of some opposition by Guevara’s parents, who knew that their son was both a severe asthmatic and a medical student close to completing his studies. However, Granado, himself a doctor, assuaged their concerns by guaranteeing that Guevara would return to finish his degree (which he ultimately did).In Peru, Guevara was impressed by the old Inca civilisation, forced to ride in trucks with Indians and animals after “The Mighty One” broke down. As a result he began to develop a fraternity with the indigenous campesinos. In March 1952 they both arrived at the Peruvian Tacna. After a discussion about the poverty in the region, Guevara referred in his notes to the words of Cuban poet José Marti: “I want to link my destiny to that of the poor of this world.” In May they arrived in Lima and during this time Guevara met doctor Hugo Pesce, a Peruvian scientist, director of the national leprosy program, and an important local socialist. They discussed several nights until the early morning and years later Che identified these conversations as being very important for his evolution in attitude towards life and society. Surely Guevara was a true son of Columbanus, the Patron Saint of Motorcyclists.

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.

Main Street, Conlig, where I learned everything I know. The Telephone Kiosk  is beside my house. My two sisters and I are on the right.

Today Queen Elizabeth celebrates the 63rd year of her accession to the British throne, making her the longest reigning monarch in British history, the previous longest serving being her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria, who died in 1901. In the early 19th century, with fear of revolution and counter-revolution, there was also the knowledge that the monarchical system was well entrenched throughout most of the world, as was evident in the funeral cortège of King Edward VII. But the First World War was to change all that. Monarchies and empires were to fall like ninepins, to be replaced by the ghastly 20th Century dictatorships of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. If Verdun and the Somme were the price of victory, Auschwitz and Dachau were the price of defeat. The Royal Family saved us from all that.

In the 21st century, although constitutional monarchies continue to exist in Europe and Asia, there has been a steady if gentle decline in their significance and they seem to have less and less relevance to young people. Nowadays, demands of the monarchy are not measured in the mystery and magic of history and heritage, but in best value and media hype over family problems. Gone are the days of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Few are there left to stand with Cuchulainn against the mighty Maeve and fight the Morrigan. Few weep for Deirdre and the Sons of Usna. Few follow Finn and the Fianna or hear the poems of the great Oisin. These heroes are nothing if they have not the romance of royalty. The very idea of a republican form of government would have been repugnant to their Old Irish system of law.

Princess Elizabeth, the elder daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York (later GeorgeVI and Queen Elizabeth), was born at 2.40am on 21st April 1926 at 17 Bruton Street, the London home of her mother’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. The Princess was brought up at the family home at 145 Piccadilly and Royal Lodge, Windsor Great Park. It was at the latter that she had her own small house, called in the Old British tongue Y Bwthyn Bach (The Little Cottage) which was presented to her by the people of Wales in 1932 and installed at Windsor in December that year.

The family moved into Buckingham Palace on 15th February 1937 and Princess Elizabeth attended the coronation of her parents as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey on 12th May. She enjoyed a happy childhood with loving parents who gave her every opportunity to mix and make friends with other children of her own age. In 1939 she met her third cousin Prince Philip of Greece and by 1944, when she was just eighteen, it was clear that she was in love with him. Following the War, her engagement was announced on 10th July 1947 and her wedding was celebrated at Westminster Abbey on 20th November that year.

On the death of her father her coronation took place on 2nd June 1953 at Westminster Abbey, signifying the hopes of a new Elizabethan age. Against the wishes of her cabinet she insisted that her coronation be televised so that as many as possible should be able to observe the ceremony and from the time of her accession she has worked assiduously at her many constitutional duties.The Queen has been very fortunate during her reign to have been spared the constitutional crisis that so marked the reign of her grandfather King George V.

Speaking on the occasion of her Silver Jubilee on 4th May 1977 she said of nationalist aspirations “I number Kings and Queens of England and of Scotland and Princes of Wales among my ancestors and so I can readily understand these aspirations. But I cannot forget that I was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Perhaps this Jubilee is a time to remind ourselves of the benefits which union has conferred, at home and in our international dealings on the inhabitants of all parts of the United Kingdom.”

The Queen has done much to insure that the monarchy has adapted to social change, while remaining a strong force for continuity and stability. She has sought to modernise the monarchy and render it more informal, while at the same time preserving its dignity and its roots in tradition, based as it is on the ancient Brytenwalda, ruler of all Britain and its islands including Ireland and accepted in early, medieval and modern times by the scholar priests of the Vatican.So it is not inevitable that the institution must be dumbed down or made to disappear altogether. There remains much scope for our sovereign to play a significant role in filling the gap left by a modern political system which responds generally to the needs and wishes of a majority of voters while remaining insensitive to the needs of others, particularly ethnic minorities and disadvantaged groups.

There is an acknowledged role for a monarch who can encourage, advise and council with legitimate authority to counteract the excesses of a majoritarian government. Inevitably, the precise role of The Queen in advising her ministers will not be known for some time. Yet consider The Queen in 1976 when she encouraged James Callaghan, as Foreign Secretary, to take an initiative to solve the Rhodesian Problem, or 10 years later when she gave a subtle rebuke to Margaret Thatcher who continued to oppose sanctions against South Africa over apartheid, or the Prince’s Trust which has done so much to help the deprived and alienated youth of our country in a way that the political process never could.

The year 2015 still sees a monarchy held in high esteem throughout the world, imbued with the established wisdom of an ancient civilisation; a monarchy which is the embodiment of the culture and heritage of Great Britain (Albion) and Little Britain (Ireland); a monarchy whose Ulster Scots origins lie deeply in the heartlands of Ireland’s most ancient kingdoms, the hill of Tara, the Ulster realms of Dalriada and Dal Fiatach, and the Cruthin Kingdom of Dalaradia, as well as those of England, Scotland and Wales; an enduring symbol of the shared inheritance and common identity of all the peoples of these British islands, the ancient Isles of the Pretani.

The ancient British ritual centre of Tara is of immense significance. The pre-Celtic Cruthin King of Tara, Congal Claen (Cáech or One-Eye), overking of Ulster and Scotland was one of the Queen’s ancestors. Known to us through the Seventh Century Old Irish Law-Tract on Bee-Keeping Bechbretha, which stated Congal was King of Tara until a bee-sting in his eye put him from his kingship, he was killed at the watershed Battle of Moira in 637AD. So when the Queen visited the Republic of Ireland in May 2011 she was coming home and, as Chairman of the Somme Association, I was honoured to be introduced to her there.

The Queen’s grandson Prince William’s ancestors have very strong Ulster connections, and he  has one of the most illustrious family trees in History, with much of the Ulster and English aristocracy included in the Spencer family tree, the Scottish in Bowes Lyons, and the whole continent’s in the Mountbattens. Not only is he descended from Stuarts and Tudors, but O’Neill and McAlpine, even Sarsfield and Schomberg.  Although for generations they tended to marry European Royals, most of the British input to the Royal Genes is via the Queen Mother and Princess Diana, whose mother was from a Cork family, her grandmother from County Tyrone, ancient British Venniconia.

Rydych chi yn y halen y ddaear. Ond os yw’r halen hwn a colli ei arogl, a’r hwn bydd yn cael ei halltu? Mae’n hyn allan yn dda i ddim ond i’w fwrw allan, ac i gael eu sathru dan draed. Rydych chi yn y Goleuni’r Byd. Ni all dinas a osodir ar fryn yn guddiedig. Nid yw cannwyll cuddio ac yn rhoi dan lestr, ond ar ganhwyllbren, ac mae’n rhoi golau i bawb yn y tŷ. Gadewch Llewyrched felly eich goleuni y gall eich gweithredoedd da i’w gweld, ac felly gogoneddont eich Tad yr hwn sydd yn y nefoedd.

Iesu o Nasareth

Mae Golau mawr goleuo Byd wedi cael ei gyneuodd, a godwyd ar ganhwyllbren, disgleirio dros yr holl ddaear, yn ddinas gaerog brenhinol dda ac yn gosod ar fryn, lle mae poblogaeth fawr sy’n perthyn i Dduw.

Emyn i Sant Padrig … Antiphonary Bangor.

Mae’r murlun gan Kenneth Webb yn Abaty Bangor Comisiynwyd dan arweiniad Canon James Hamilton. Mae’r defnydd o’r triongl, sy’n dynodi y Drindod Sanctaidd, yn treiddio drwy’r cynllun cyfan ac yn ein harwain i fyny oddi wrth y ffigurau o Comgall, Columbanus a Fustl yn y tu blaen i’r ffigur canolog y Esgynnol Grist. Mae nodweddion Crist yw rhai’r person Black, gan bwysleisio natur cyfriniol y Mab y Dyn. Mae’n cael ei genhedlu fel rhoi ei Command diwethaf:”Ewch i’r holl y Byd ac bregethu’r Efengyl”

Leaving Sioux City in August 1965,  I travelled by Greyhound bus up to Calgary, Alberta, over to Vancouver where I studied the Haida, down to Seattle,  on to San Francisco, where White natives called “Flower Children”, young and not-so-young White persons, practised strange rituals called “Flower Power” under the influence of drugs, and put flowers in their hair, in opposition to the War in Vietnam…. and finally by Chihuahua bus through Los Angeles to Mexico City, There I went on my pilgrimage to see the Virgin of Guadalupe, the first of several visits to Marian shrines as a Pro-Life person. My companions from France would not come with me. But my friend the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Alderman Hugh Smyth 30 years later gave me his copy of a beautiful book in Spanish on México City, presented to him, containing the whole culture of the city, when I was his Deputy. I had told him all about my travels.

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Virgen de Guadalupe), is a title of the Virgin Mary associated with a celebrated pictorial image housed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in México City. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in México City is the most visited Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in the world, and the world’s third most-visited sacred shrine. Official Catholic accounts state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, a Nahua peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of a maiden at a place called the Hill of Tepeyac, which would become part of Villa de Guadalupe, a suburb of México City . Speaking to him in his native Nahuatl language which I have given above (the language of the Aztec Empire), the maiden identified herself as the Virgin Mary, “mother of the very true deity” and asked for a church to be built at that site in her honour.

From her words, Juan Diego then sought out the archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, to tell him what had happened. The archbishop instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the lady for a miraculous sign to prove her identity. The first sign she gave was the healing of Juan’s uncle. The Virgin also told Juan to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill, which was normally barren, especially in December. But Juan followed her instructions and he found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, blooming there. Juan arranged the flowers in his tilma or cloak, and when Juan Diego opened his cloak before archbishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Juan Diego’s tilma has become Mexico’s most popular religious and cultural symbol, and has received widespread ecclesiastical and popular support. In the 19th century it became the rallying call of American-born Spaniards in New Spain, who saw the story of the apparition as legitimizing their own Mexican origin and infusing it with an almost messianic sense of mission and identity – thus also legitimizing their armed rebellion against Spain. Historically the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe did not lack clerical opponents within Mexico, especially in the early years, and in more recent times some Catholic scholars, and even a former abbot of the basilica, Monsignor Guillermo Schulenburg, have openly doubted the historical existence of Juan Diego. Nonetheless, Juan Diego was canonized in 2002, under the name Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. 

Following the Conquest in 1519–21, the Spanish destroyed a temple of the mother goddess Tontantzin at Tepeyac outside México City , and built a chapel dedicated to the Virgin on the site. Newly converted Indians continued to come from afar to worship there, often addressing the Virgin Mary as Tontanzin. What is purported by some to be the earliest mention of the miraculous apparition of the Virgin is a page of parchment (called Codex Escalada) which was discovered in 1995. This document bears a pictorial representation of Juan Diego and the apparition, several inscriptions in Nahuatl, referring to Juan Diego by his Aztec name, and the date 1548. Doubts have been cast on the authenticity of the document, however. A more complete early description of the apparition occurs in a 16-page manuscript called the Nican mopohua, which was acquired by the New York Public Library in 1880, and has been reliably dated in 1556. This document, written in Nahuatl, but in Latin script, tells the story of the apparitions and the supernatural origin of the image. It was probably composed by a native Aztec man, called Antonio Valeriano, who had been educated by Franciscans. The text of this document was later incorporated into a printed pamphlet which was widely circulated in 1649.

In spite of these documents, there are no written accounts of the Guadalupe vision by Catholic clergymen of the 16th century, as there ought to have been if the event had the importance it is claimed to have had. In particular, the canonical account of the vision features archbishop Juan de Zumárraga as a major player in the story, but, although Zumárraga was a prolific writer, there is nothing in his extant writings which can confirm the story. The written record which does exist suggests the Catholic clergy in 16th century Mexico were deeply divided as to the orthodoxy of the cult springing up around the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, with the Franciscan order (who had custody of the chapel at Tepeyac) being strongly opposed to the cult, believing it idolatrous, while the Dominicans supported it.

Pope John Paul II visited the shrine in the course of his first journey outside Italy as Pope from January 26–31, 1979, and again when he beatified Juan Diego there on May 6, 1990. In 1992 he dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe a chapel within St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. At the request of the Special Assembly for the Americas of the Synod of Bishops, he named Our Lady of Guadalupe patron of the Americas on January 22, 1999 (with the result that her liturgical celebration had, throughout the Americas, the rank of solemnity), and visited the shrine again on the following day. On July 31, 2002 he canonized Juan Diego before a crowd of 12 million at the basilica of Guadalupe, and later that year included in the General Roman Calendar, as optional memorials, the liturgical celebrations of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (December 9) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12).

The shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage destination in the world. Over the Friday and Saturday of December 11 to 12, 2009, a record number of 6.1 million pilgrims visited the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the apparition. The Virgin of Guadalupe is considered the Patroness of Mexico and the Continental Americas; she is also venerated by Native Americans, on the account of the devotion calling for the conversion of the Americas. Replicas of the tilma can be found in thousands of churches throughout the world, and numerous parishes bear her name. Due to a claim that her black girdle indicates pregnancy on the image, the Blessed Virgin Mary, under this title is popularly invoked as Patroness of the Unborn and a common image for the Pro-Life movement. Even the Ulster Caleban could not disagree with that.

’Namejwan ankatej ken istatl ixko yin tlaltikpak. Pero tla in istatl kipolos ipuyeka, ¿kenik oksemi puyeyas? Mach ok kuale, sa se kitlamotla ipan ojtle iwan in tlakaj sa ipan tlajtlaksaj.  ’Namejwan ankatej ken tlanextle ixko yin tlaltikpak, ken se weyikan katlej kajki ipan se tepetl iwan mach weli motlaatia.  Nion amakaj kitlikuitia se tlanextle para se kitlaatis itlampa se chikiwitl. Sino se kitlalia ajkopan para ma kintlawili nochtin katlej katej kalijtik.  Namejwan no ijkón, ma tlawi namotlanex inmixpan nochtin in tlakaj, para ma kitakan tlan kuale ankichiwaj, iwan ijkón ma kiweyikixtikan namoPapan Dios katlej kajki ilwikak.