Ulster Language and Dialect Archive

Its unique language and dialect contents are among the greatest treasures of National Museums NI today. They are of national and international significance as gateways to diverse ways that Ulster people spoke and wrote in the past, and how these forms of expression have interacted with layers of personal and communal identity over the last two centuries and beyond. 

Ulster Dialects (1964)

Ulster Dialects (1964) was the very first publication of the Ulster Folk Museum. The volume represented a cornerstone of the museum’s past, present and future curation of our intangible heritage. It represented the culmination of a decade and more of research by the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club in the 1950s and the Dialect Archive at Cultra from 1960, even before the vernacular buildings were installed there. In the immediate sense, it comprised the research papers of leading phonologists and dialectologists on how people in the eleven northernmost counties of Ireland spoke, as delivered at a symposium at Cultra in 1961. Above all, however, it served as a founding charter of the museum’s study of spoken language and dialect in all their complexity, studying and celebrating them as essential and overlapping strands of history and culture that were on the verge of being lost.

The 3 Main Strands of the Archive

These founding principles informed the work of the book’s editor, G. B. Adams, as Curator of the Dialect Archive from 1964 to 1981. A renowned polyglot, Adams collected, presented and published extensively on three particular lines of regional speech:

• Hiberno-English – the common colloquial vernacular of the north, now known principally as ‘Irish English’, and also occasionally described ‘Mid-Ulster English’ or ‘Ulster Anglo-Irish’
• Ulster-Scots (sometimes called ‘Scotch-Irish’). 
• Irish Gaelic, as surviving in Ulster still or until relatively recently in certain areas.

From the start, each of these different language and dialect elements were explored and promoted by Adams and the Folk Museum as complementary, overlapping and worthy of celebration, without contention or adversarial commentary. Such policy continued to underpin the research and activity of National Museums NI in showcasing Ulster’s linguistic diversity.

The Concise Ulster Dictionary 

The material in the archive at Cultra was central to the compilation of two important volumes in later years. 

The first was the Concise Ulster Dictionary (1996). The dictionary contents have been electronically captured and can be obtained in PDF form here.

The Academic Study of Ulster-Scots

The second volume of note was The Academic Study of Ulster Scots: Essays for and by Robert J. Gregg (2006), which was compiled by National Museums NI staff. It can be accessed here. 

‘Archives Revealed’ Grant

The award of a yearlong ‘Archives Revealed’ grant from The National Archives (Kew) has enabled the Ulster Language and Dialect Archive to be extensively reorganised and catalogued by a dedicated Archivist, Niamh Dolan, during 2023-24. 

The archive is now mostly catalogued to item level, and includes the following collections:

• Robert Huddleston collection – over 1,000 manuscripts of compositions and correspondence that Huddleston (1814-87) wrote in his native vernacular of north Down, being a very rich source of words, phrases and grammar used in Great Famine-era Ulster.
• Sir John Byers collection – an extensive glossary, principally handwritten notebooks and typed transcripts detailing Ulster dialect items as manually recorded from patients’ speech while attending Dr. Byers’ (1853-1920) medical practice, c.1890-1910
• G. B. Adams papers – documents and correspondence focusing on phonological research of Hiberno-English, Ulster-Scots and Irish, plus place-names and folklore, gathered by Adams (1917-81) as Curator of the Dialect Archive at Ulster Folk Museum 
• Montgomery papers – glossary of dialectical terms collected from a Ballymena family, 1880s-1960s
• Prof. R. J. Gregg word-lists – records of the dialect of Glenoe, Co. Antrim, and Coolshinney (Mid-Ulster), plus the notes, papers and published works of the pioneer of the academic study of Ulster-Scots
• T. G. F. Paterson notebook on the Fews Dialect (south Armagh), undated (pre-1970)
• Rev. W. F. Marshall’s glossary of dialect terms – with etymological discussion and references to source material (e.g. Shakespeare’s plays)
• Dr. Robert L. Moore glossary and collection – compiled between 1918 and 1942 by Dr. Moore in Bangor, plus associated folder of children’s rhymes and riddles