WG Lyttle Blue Plaque Unveiling

17 December 2013, 11:00, First Trust Bank, 85 Main Street, Bangor

Runs to 17 December 2013

WG Lyttle was thought to have been born near Newtownards, County Down in 1844.

An accountant, a teacher of shorthand and an elocutionist he also had an alter ego 'Robin' a jovial country farmer who regaled his audiences in Ulster-Scots.

Lyttle had been a lecturer in Dr Corry's Irish Diorama Company, which toured Britain and America with a show entitled Ireland, its scenary, music and antiquities.  For most of the 1870's he lived in Belfast where he began to write and perform his humorous monologues.  In 1880 he established the NOrth Down Herlad in Newtownards.  In 1883 Lyttle moved the newspaper to Bangor and added the additional title of Bangor Gazette.

He was the author of a great many poems and sketches in Ulster-Scots.  His humorous monologues, recited in the speech of an Ards farmer, were reproduced in his newspaper and subsequently published as Robin's Readings.  Betsy Gray or Hearts of Down, his most popular work, originally appeared in serial form in the newspaper.  It was printed in paperback in 1888, a third edition came out in 1894 and an illustrated sixth edition was published in 1913 by Robert Carswell, revised by the antiquarian Francis Joseph Bigger.

He wrote two further novels, Sons of the Sod and Daft Eddie or the Smugglers of Strangford Lough.  He regularly performed at various public events as 'Robin Gordon of Ballycuddy'.

WG Lyttle died on 1 November 1896 and is buried in the grounds of Bangor Abbey.  His memorial there reads '...a man of rare natural gifts, he raised himself to a hihg position among the journalists of Ireland.  He was a brilliant and graceful writer, a true humourist and an accomplished poet.  Robin was a kind friend, a genial companion and a true son of County Down'.