Scene set for the commemoration of an historic landing

by Billy Kennedy

The 400th anniversary of ‘Dawn of the Ulster-Scots’ will be marked with style and pageantry in the North Down coastal town of Donaghadee on Thursday May 25.

The Ulster-Scots Agency has organised a highly colourful and informative day-long celebration, with the highlight a landing at Donaghadee harbour which recounts the arrival in 1606 of pioneering Aysrhire lairds James Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery and 20,000 Scottish Presbyterians for the start of the Scottish Plantation in the north-east part of Ireland.

Sailing ship The Ruth and a flotilla of boats will strategically move into place at the Harbour with the launch of two shells to announce the arrival of ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Montgomery’.

The Valhalla Players, a drama group from Newtownards, will give the lead in performing part of their play ‘18 Miles to Freedom’ and extracts of the Hamilton and Montgomery story.

The re-enactment pageant will move from the ship to Lemon’s Wharf, where Mark Thompson, chairman of the Ulster-Scots Agency, George Patton, Agency Chief Executive, and members of the Agency board will lead the welcomes.

Arrangements for the festival are being co-ordinated by Vanessa Wilson, the Agency’s director of culture. 

Music, dance and historical re-enactment will be a feature of the day and Kirkiston Pipe Band will provide appropriate backing and Gillian Jones and her Ulster-Scots Highland dancers will perform a unique display to commemorate the ‘Dawn of the Ulster-Scots’.

Beggars Row, a Scottish folk band, will also appear and the world champion Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band, from Castlereagh, will lead the parade along Donaghadee sea front.   

Hamilton Flute Band, from Londonderry, will play a selection of Ulster-Scots music and Scottish airs.

The festival will conclude with a mammoth fireworks display over Donaghadee harbour area.

Earlier in the day (from 1pm onwards) local Donaghadee school children will be invited to attend musical and cultural workshops in the Marquee at Lemon’s Wharf.

Ulster-Scots musicians and storytellers will take part  and there will opportunities for children to participate in workshop activities and try playing the tin whistle, fiddle, accordion, drum and the bodhran.

There will be story-telling activities and opportunities to learn about the ground-breaking events of 400 years ago when James Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery and their compatriots first travelled over to a new land.

The children will be shown around ‘The Ruth’ sailing ship and will witness what it must have been like for the Scots to have travelled across the North Channel to Ulster 400 years ago, a distance of 18 to 30 miles.

Various fun activities, art competitions/poetry writing activities and exhibitions are planned.

The Weans Project, produced by pupils of Edenbrooke Primary School on the Shankill Road in Belfast in association with the Ulster-Scots Heritage Council, will be featured.