THE Dubs have their Ha’Penny Bridge but we have our Tuppenny Road. You may not be familiar with it but it runs between Ahoghill and Gracehill and it was Margaret Cameron’s route to school.
Both villages are of note: Ahoghill, built in medieval times, apparently, has three Presbyterian churches, one CoI, a chapel and a gospel Hall. Gracehill was founded in 1759 by the Moravians during the United Irishmen’s Rebellion of 1798 when the settlement gave refuge to those who arrived seeking safety regardless of religion or whether they were friend or foe.
It’s against this background that Margaret has written her collection of short stories, Ower The Tuppenny. Even as a child Margaret appreciated her surroundings and the unique speech of her family. “I can boast of being bilingual,” she says, “We spoke Ulster-Scots at home and ‘proper’, meaning English, at school.”
Like her friends and neighbours she delighted in the local dialect – Ulster-Scots.
“At a function in Ahoghill, I was talking to a man about a lady who’d been ill but was now visibly enjoying the tea and buns. He said ‘Agh, she was aye a guid feeder.’”
The richness of the words is familiar, most common of all the ubiquitous ‘wee’. What’s your wee name, fill in your wee address, have you a wee phone number?
Smaller than a wee thing is ‘weethin' as in weethin wet, hardly worth putting your boots on, different when its ‘teeming’ down. Have you ever been ‘scunnered', (disgusted), or jumped a ‘sheugh' – a drain. Your ‘neb’ (nose) a ‘glipe' (uncouth fellow), you might well ‘gulder' at him (an angry shout). And so it goes on, taking a ‘dander’ up the lane, ‘footering' around looking for something, swatting a ‘cleg’ and replying in the affirmative with ‘Aye’.
And I now know what my mother meant when she called me a ‘sonsie' wee girl. Buxom or plump!
This is a ‘quare guid’ book. Each story tells a tale of everyday folk, even the falling out between neighbours over a rooster.
If I have one complaint about Tuppenny Road, it’s that the short stories finish too soon. I’d like to know more of what went on in Gillen’s Grocery, Hardware and Meal store that overlooked the square. It housed the post office and was a meeting place where customers gathered. The craic must have been mighty as women bought their Kerr’s Pinks and the men War Horse pipe tobacco.
And what happened to Melanie and Hubert as they ‘phutt, phutt, phutted' away down Nursery Road on the 500cc Norton motorbike? And poor wee Meg McKenzie hiding a secret: did Hannah forget to give her change when she went for the messages?
“I saw ould Hannah going up the road to Aghalee a while ago probably to evening Mass,” said Willie McKenzie. Was it to ask forgiveness for trying to diddle Meg?
The countryside and its contents come alive. Two pillars standing like two forgotten snowmen at the mouth of the lane, and Jimmy strutting around like a banty cock. And farmer McDonald lamenting "A fat lot of good that ould Basil Brooke is to the farmers, they have cut the calf subsides," and his daughter’s revenge.
Then there’s Isobel and Liz like two round balls of wool trundling along – always knitted from head to toe, dressed the same since their birth 76 years ago.
Margaret Cameron has a wonderful turn of phrase. The language is rich, the stories little cameos of country life and a beautifully produced book published by the Ulster-Scots Agency. A couple of the short stories are told in pure Ulster-Scots and the glossary at the back of the book comes into its own.
Details from www.ulsterscotsagency.com. Tel: 028 9023 1113
Book Marks
TALKING of books, Daniel Gray’s Scribbles in the Margins sounds interesting – 50 short essays recalling memories, a discovered bookmark, connecting with a character and finding joy in good books sometimes bad books and above all, the fascination of second-hand books.
Made me think of a couple of my own memories. I would go to Smithfield with my dad and my list of school books for the new term and Mr Flood would sort through the bookshelves and usually came up with the good as new recycled goods. On one occasion I was ecstatic when I discovered the last owner had written down the answers to all the maths problems in the margin. I did well that year.
Then there was the day a gentleman phoned me at Ulster Television to say he’d found my birth certificate and my marriage certificate in a cookbook I’d given to a cancer charity shop.
And the poetry book bought at an Edinburgh book fair which had a letter inside, addressed to the author who turned out to be a princess living in Italy and writing to Helen Halff when she gave away her address in The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and both women wrote back to me. I was thrilled to bits. Miss Hanff told me her New York flat was overflowing with fan mail but she liked my letter because I’d worked in television and so had she.
Value For Money?
I’VE seen it all. Went looking for a couple of smoke alarms, found them in Tesco but guess what? They have a hush button! In case the noise becomes annoying, you employ this button. I understand you can also get alarms with a silence button as well.
I know from experience that the constant piercing bleep needs to go through the house when there is a fire. Wouldn’t it be awful if it sounded, someone thought ‘that blasted noise again’ and hit the hush button, thinking it was a false alarm, and a disaster happens?
I’d rather have the alarm screaming out non-stop until everyone was out of the house.
