Hame an Awa

28 November 2024, 13:00, Tower Museum, Londonderry

Learn more about Scots wurds in Irish toonlands with Alan Millar as part of Ulster-Scots Language Week.

Born and reared in the Laggan of East Donegal, Millar explores the interconnections of locality and language running through his own work, using as his touchstone the glossary and subscribers list of Newtowncunningham poet George Dugall’s The Northern Cottage, published exactly 200 years ago this year.

Through the words of the glossary and the townlands named on the subscribers list, we are transported back to a very familiar, yet strikingly different, world. The glossary, filled with Ulster-Scots still spoken today, is layered through with many words now lost to the Laggan, but still alive in other places, creating a sense of shared Scots language, running past into present, between Fintown and the Shetlands. The subscribers list teems with Irish townland names, giving the address of every person who bought Dugall's book. The subscribers may be long dead, but the townlands remain as intimately recognisable today as the day the book was printed. 

Join Alan on his anniversary journey through these idiosyncrasies, tracing their contemporary resonance through his own work and learn how his latest poetry project led him in the footsteps of St Columba to the Hebrides and to Sligo. 

Free admission. Booking is essential. 

Light refreshments will be provided from 12.30pm. 

To book your place contact the Tower Museum on 028 7137 2411 or email: tower@derrystrabane.com.