THE REIVER AND THE GAEL.
By Randall Stephen Hall. A song that tells the story.
https://soundcloud.com/
www.randallstephenhallsongs.
“The past affects our future. As children we don’t choose to do this, any of this. By the time we are 18, the damage is done. We are still divided in the north.” RSH.
I grew up in north Belfast but I had to reach my forties
before I came across the “Border Reivers”. As I was growing up
I had no manual to help me understand what was going on in
Northern Ireland, or why, where there was so much violence.
I was about twelve in 1969. Born in 1957. I encountered some
of that violence myself but that’s another story. . .
There were many like me on both sides of the situation
who didn’t buy into what was going on and who didn’t accept
the beliefs and dogmas on offer. A narrow menu of choices.
“These chips or those chips”, yet both were chips.
This gave me a great curiosity and inspiration to look beyond my own branding.
To be described as “just another Northern Prod” was narrow minded and unimaginative. Underneath all this historical debris I just knew that there was more to find.
I was lucky to study Irish History as our special subject in school but there was no mention of this Reiver story. I have never seen a documentary covering Irish history that ever touches on the Pacification of the Border Reivers.
In the mid 1970s I was at school with students who all shared many of these Reiver names including the teachers. Yet, I was unaware of the significance of this and its relevance in the now to us all. Some of these names are listed below.
When I came across this story I realised that it was an important missing jigsaw piece
that bridges many of our divisions that still exist in the north. The internal conflict still goes on. Still exists.
Yes, the violence, in the main, has left us. But the old dogmas around what Ireland should be
rather than what it could be still remains. Ireland could be much more than merely a place confounded by division.
The story of the Border Reivers. Exiled from the war torn region between England and Scotland shortly before the Plantation of Ulster circa 1610.
With no memory of these events most people in Northern Ireland today
are unaware that it is a significant and shared narrative, as the Reivers, removed
to Ulster, eventually ended up on both sides of the conflict during the Troubles, hundreds
of years later.
The Reivers a collection of many clans both English and Scottish. Their means of survival
was to steal off other folk, steal off each other, kill folk, fight with each other, vendettas, murder their enemy, blackmail the innocent, rape and pillage, riding out from their isolated tower strongholds.
What did those towers look like? Think of Scrabo Tower, near Newtownards.
During the pacification of the Borders 1603 – 1610 by King James the 1st, before the Plantation these Reivers were hung, drowned, jailed, forcibly removed from the land they owned and taken to mainly Ulster. They were all technically Catholic but in reality Godless. Who got their land and did anyone care?
To be bereaved was to be visited by these men on horseback. Reivers looking for cattle, sheep goods, money and prepared to take your life to get it. They sound a lot like bad cowboys or even vikings.
Some names from the Borders are Graham, Kerr, Elliot, Hume
Turnbull (Trimble), Hall, Jamieson, Huddleston, Irvine, Kerr, Robson
Charlton, Douglas, Scott, Herron, Maxwell, Nixon and many more.
The last detail of the story is from 1998. John Hume and David Trimble stand shaking hands
as part of The Good Friday Agreement. Two men with Reiver ancestry. An ironic
example of how we are all so connected here, yet so politically, denominationally
educationally, socially and culturally divided. We are even divided by the sports we are told to play at school.
“As children we don’t choose to do this, any of this. By the time we are 18, the damage is done. We are divided. We are still divided in the north. RSH.”
An opportunity should exist for people to know this story of the Border Reivers, to talk about it and above all, to share it.
“There were many like me on both sides of the situation
who didn’t buy into what was going on and who didn’t accept
the beliefs and dogmas on offer.” RSH
Let us get it straight.. From the start of the the Northern Ireland state there was one side that controlled everything. The Protestant side..
The Protestant Founding Fathers of the Northern State immediately institutionalised Sectarian Hatred, Sectarian Bigotry Sectarian Discrimination and Gerrymandering against the Catholic Population.
Some Protestants may not have agreed with what went on, but for 50 years there were always more than enough of you both locally and nationally who voted tho carry on the suppression of their Catholic neighbours..!!
The Protestant Sectarian Hatred has been handed down from generation to generation.and remains as malevolent today as it was one hundred years ago.