Scots in Two Early Ulster Novels Stephen Dornan

Scots in Two Early Ulster Novels Stephen Dornan The representation of Scots is an important aspect of several neglected early Ulster novels. In John Gamble’s Charlton and James McHenry’s O’Halloran, the writers use Scots for a number of aesthetic and political reasons. Scots is used in subtle and complex ways to articulate a distinctive Ulster Presbyterian identity and is connected to the popular radical politics of the region in the 1790s. Keywords: Ulster Scots, dialect, national tale, John Gamble, James McHenry. The study of the representation of Scots in literary texts is a complex area fraught with paradox and tension. In his colourful study of Burns and Scots, Jeffrey Skoblow concludes that, for many readers, Scots paradoxically “beckons kinship and resists recognition” (Skoblow 2001: 20). However, it is not just that Scots connects certain speech communities to the exclusion of non-speakers, rather the use of Scots in literary texts can have the effect of simultaneously evoking feelings of affiliation and alienation. Even for those who speak a variety of Scots the experience of reading it on the printed page can be unfamiliar and disconcerting. Another dimension of the elusive, paradoxical nature of Scots is reflected in criticism on writing in Scots. Emma Letley, for example, in her study of Scots in the novels of Walter Scott, argues that “the troubled history of Scots means that its use in fiction can be a gesture of resistance, a political, nationalist reproach against the Union, against London, and against the ascendancy of Standard English” (Letley 1988: 6). Derrick McClure, however reaches a different conclusion when he suggests that in Scott’s novels there is “none whatsoever of the common European linkage between language and nationalism” and that it is “at best a defiant proclamation of an enduring cultural distinctiveness” (McClure 2000: 10). There is a tension regarding the significance of Scots here: is it an act of political resistance or does it eschew political engagement? This political elusiveness and ambivalence is fairly typical in Scots writing which has historically oscillated between and sometimes mischievously combined vigorous nationalist sentiment and a parochial or rustic naivety that seems disengaged from politics. A further complexity inherent in the representation of Scots derives from the porous nature of the language; thus Corbett suggests that 172 Stephen Dornan “what we are dealing with, when considering Scots and English, are not two monolithic and distinct systems, but a range of varieties that sometimes diverge, but nevertheless have much in common” (Corbett 1997: 6). Such considerations and tensions were not only visible in Scottish writing, but in the literature of Ulster. This essay will explore the political significance of Scots in two neglected early nineteenth- century Ulster novels and comment on the decisions that the two authors made regarding the representation of Scots. These novels, James McHenry’s The Insurgent Chief and John Gamble’s Charlton, have obvious grounds for comparison: both were set in Ulster during the 1798 rebellion and seek to revisit and explain Ulster’s recent political upheavals and traumas, both are also generically and stylisti- cally indebted to Walter Scott’s historical novels and both use Scots in dialogue. Both were published outside of Ulster in 1823; Gamble’s text was published in London, whilst McHenry’s was published in Philadelphia, where he had emigrated some years earlier. The plots too have much in common. In The Insurgent Chief, Barrymore, a young Dubliner from a staunchly establishment family journeys to radical Ulster and becomes entangled in the political contention of the region. During his adventures he grows to respect O’Halloran, the ultimately defeated insurgent chief of the title, and the culture of the Ulster Presbyterians that he finds himself amongst. He also finds love with Ellen Hamilton, the granddaughter of O’Halloran, whom he marries at the conclusion of the novel. John Gamble’s Charlton tells the story of the eponymous young Ulsterman, a moderate and edu- cated Presbyterian, who becomes reluctantly embroiled in the United Irish rebellion. Scots is used mainly in these novels in the dialogue of peripheral characters, but it nevertheless has an important function in the texts as it forces international readerships to re-evaluate precon- ceptions about the language and culture of the Irish. Gamble and McHenry’s texts insist that Scots is the vernacular language of parts of the island, rather than the stylised and sometimes caricatured Irish English that Irish characters often use in the fiction of their predecessors and contemporaries such as Maria Edgeworth, Sydney Owenson and the Banim brothers. O’Halloran and Charlton are significant novels as they are amongst the earliest to be set primarily in Ulster. The cultural, religious, political and linguistic complexities of northern Ireland form .

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