W2B-001 Cultural issues-2.txt
A CHIP OFF THE OLD...
THE COUNTRY RHYMES OF JAMES ORR

THE BARD OF BALLYCARRY 1770 - 1816

DAN Quayle can say goodbye to the White House and fade into obscurity safe in the knowledge that he was, after all, correct about the common spud!

The man who once described a group of Samoans as "happy campers" and told his supporters that if they did not succeed they ran the risk of failure, thought he was helping out in a school quiz.

He spelled it POTATOE and squirmed when the world's media ridiculed him - but it now emerges that the retiring vice-president of the United States got it right.

In some eyes at least.

And it is the writings of a once well-loved Ulster poet whose verses are re-published today which may help save Quayle's face.

The very first poem in The Country Rhymes of James Orr (Pretani Press, £ 5.99) is called "To the Potatoe".

And Orr, a United Irishman who took part in the 1798 Rebellion and then renounced violence, had got the spelling of the vegetable correct - down to the final letter.

He was writing in the broad Scotch (braid Scotch) which has now been pronounced a lesser-used language by the European Community.

"And it was the folk poets of Ulster who were spelling the word properly," says Dr Philip Robinson of the Ulster Folk Museum, editor of the new edition of the Orr book.

"What happened to change the spelling in the English language later isn't the fault of James Orr or Dan Quayle."

The politician, George Bush's sidekick through thick and thin for the past four years, has been sent a copy of the book.

Philip Robinson and Pretani Press await his comments with interest.

Perhaps if Dan's vindication had come a little sooner there might have been a few more votes cast in the direction of the Bush-Quayle camp in the Presidential election!

There is currently an upsurge of interest in the Ulster-Scots language, particularly among the young of the province who are researching their roots.

The Ulster-Scots Language Society has been formed - and is flourishing - to give the Ulster-Scots tongue new age respect.

And an Ulster-Scots dictionary is being prepared which will be introduced into schools along with literature in the language, like the folk poems of Orr.

Around Carrick, Ballymena, Greyabbey and some other places where Ulster-Scots trips off the tongue easily to this day, the dictionary won't be required.

Born in a thatched cottage in Ballycarry, Co Antrim, Orr was taught weaving by his father. He wrote his first verses as a boy at Ballycarry Presbyterian meeting house.

His parents educated their only son at home to ensure a strict Calvinistic upbringing. He wrote a poem called A Parent's Flinty Heart to express his disapproval of his father and mother's restrictive views.

But they couldn't stop him straying into the United Irishmen.

After the '98 Rebellion young Orr fled across the Atlantic to New England and, like many of his contemporaries, took with him Ulster's own varieties of the potato (or potatoe?).

Within a year James was back home. He preferred to be among the people and the places he wrote about. But he did have poems published in America and earned some critical acclaim.........
