Belfast Harp Societies
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Belfast Harp Societies
The Belfast Harp Society (1808-1813) and its successor, the Irish Harp Society (1819-1839), were philanthropic associations formed in the town of Belfast, Ireland, for the purpose of sustaining the music and tradition of itinerant Irish harpists, and secondarily, of promoting the study of the Irish language, history, and antiquities. For its patronage, the original society drew upon a diminishing circle of veterans of the patriotic and reform politics of the 1780s and '90s, among them several unrepentant Society of United Irishmen, United Irishmen. In its sectarian division, Belfast became increasingly hostile to Protestant interest in distinctive Irish culture. The society reconvened as the Irish Harp Society in 1819 only as a result of a large and belated subscription raised from expatriates in India. Once that source was exhausted, the new society ceased its activity. Belfast Harp Society Subscribers Inaugurated at meeting held St. Patrick's Day, 1808, the Belfast Harp Soc ...
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Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom and the second-largest in Ireland. It had a population of 345,418 . By the early 19th century, Belfast was a major port. It played an important role in the Industrial Revolution in Ireland, briefly becoming the biggest linen-producer in the world, earning it the nickname "Linenopolis". By the time it was granted city status in 1888, it was a major centre of Irish linen production, tobacco-processing and rope-making. Shipbuilding was also a key industry; the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which built the , was the world's largest shipyard. Industrialisation, and the resulting inward migration, made Belfast one of Ireland's biggest cities. Following the partition of Ireland in 1921, Belfast became the seat of government for Northern Ireland ...
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William Putnam McCabe
William Putnam McCabe (1776–1821) was an emissary and organiser in Ireland for the insurrectionary Society of United Irishmen. Facing multiple indictments for treason as a result of his role in fomenting the 1798 rebellion, he effected a number of daring escapes but was ultimately forced by his government pursuers into exile in France. With the favour of Napoleon, he established a cotton factory at Rouen while remaining active as a member of a new United Irish Directory. He worked to assist Robert Emmett in coordinating a new rising in Ireland in 1803, and later had contact with the Spencean circle in London implicated in both the Spa Field riots and the Cato Street Conspiracy. In 1814, having ventured to Ireland, he was arrested and deported to Portugal. He returned again in 1817 and was imprisoned for eighteen months. McCabe died in Paris on 6 January 1821, age 46. Radical family McCabe was youngest of the three sons of Thomas McCabe, a watchmaker and cotton-mill pionee ...
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Irish Language
Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Irish is still spoken as a first language in a small number of areas of certain counties such as Cork, Donegal, Galway, and Kerry, as well as smaller areas of counties Mayo, Meath, and Waterford. It is also spoken by a larger group of habitual but non-traditional speakers, mostly in urban areas where the majority are second-language speakers. Daily users in Ireland outside the education system number around 73,000 (1.5%), and the total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who claimed they could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8% of respondents. For most of recorded ...
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Dungannon
Dungannon () is a town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is the second-largest town in the county (after Omagh) and had a population of 14,340 at the 2011 Census. The Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council had its headquarters in the town, though since 2015 it has been covered by Mid-Ulster District Council. For centuries, it was the 'capital' of the O'Neill dynasty of Tír Eoghain, who dominated most of Ulster and built a castle on the hill. After the O'Neills' defeat in the Nine Years' War, the English founded a plantation town on the site, which grew into what is now Dungannon. Dungannon has won Ulster in Bloom's Best Kept Town Award five times. It currently has the highest percentage of immigrants of any town in Northern Ireland. History For centuries, Dungannon's fortunes were closely tied to that of the O'Neill dynasty which ruled a large part of Ulster until the 17th century. Dungannon was the clan's main stronghold. The traditional site of inauguration f ...
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Arthur O'Neill (harpist)
Arthur O'Neill (1726 or 1734 – 1816) was an Irish harper, a virtuoso player of the Irish harp or ''cláirseach'': he was active during the final decades of its unbroken instrumental tradition in the later 18th and very early 19th century. He was closely associated with Edward Bunting, and the Belfast Harp Society's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to preserve the instrument, attending the Belfast Harper's Assembly and serving as the Society's harp tutor until 1813.S. C. Lanier: "'It is new-strung and shan't be heard': Nationalism and Memory in the Irish Harp Tradition", in: ''British Journal of Ethnomusicology'', vol. 8 (1999). He is best known for his lively and humorous memoir, collected by Bunting, which contained many reminiscences of famous harpers (such as Carolan) and of the environment in which they played. Life and memoirs O'Neill said he was born in Drumnastrade townland in the parish of Clonfeacle, County Tyrone, around 1737. He was blinded as the result of an accide ...
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Edward Bunting
Edward Bunting (1773–1843) was an Irish musician and folk music collector. Life Bunting was born in County Armagh, Ireland. At the age of seven he was sent to study music at Drogheda and at eleven he was apprenticed to William Ware, organist at St. Anne's church in Belfast and lived with the family of Henry Joy McCracken. At nineteen he was engaged to transcribe music from oral-tradition harpists at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792. As Bunting was a classically trained musician, he did not understand the unique characteristics of Irish music, such as modes, and when transcribing tunes he 'corrected' them according to Classical music rules. One proof of this is that some tunes published by him were in keys that could not have been played by the harpists. His notes on the harpists, how they played and the terminology they used is however invaluable, and also many tunes would have been lost if he had not collected them. Bunting's arrangement of the festival melodies for the pian ...
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Robert Simms (United Irishmen)
Robert Simms (20 March 1761 – 1843) was an Irish radical, and a founding member in Belfast of the Society of United Irishmen. A Presbyterian born in Belfast, Simms was the owner of a paper mill in Ballyclare with his brother William Simms, one of twelve proprietors of the '' Northern Star'' newspaper. A close friend of Wolfe Tone who nicknamed him 'the Tanner', he was one of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen in Belfast in 1791 and the author of "Declaration and Resolutions of the Society of United Irishmen of Belfast." Simms served as the first Secretary of the Society, drafting many of its early letters, pamphlets and papers. Following the French declaration of war on Britain in February 1793, the movement was outlawed and went underground from 1794 as they became more determined to force a revolt against British rule. Simms, along with his brother William and Thomas Addis Emmet were arrested, but swiftly acquitted. The leadership was divided into those who wis ...
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Parliamentary Reform
In the United Kingdom, Reform Act is most commonly used for legislation passed in the 19th century and early 20th century to enfranchise new groups of voters and to redistribute seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Reform Acts The parliamentary franchise in the United Kingdom was expanded and made more uniform through a series of Reform Acts beginning with the Great Reform Act in 1832. Sources refer to up to six "Reform Acts", although the earlier three in 1832, 1867/8 and 1884 are better known by this name. Some other acts related to electoral matters also became known as Reform Acts. There are many other electoral reform acts in the United Kingdom that are not known by the name "Reform Act". Such legislation typically used the Short and long titles, short title of Representation of the People Act, by which name the 1918, 1928 and other acts in the 20th century are better known and a term that was adopted i ...
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Catholic Emancipation
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, and later the combined United Kingdom in the late 18th century and early 19th century, that involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws. Requirements to abjure (renounce) the temporal and spiritual authority of the pope and transubstantiation placed major burdens on Roman Catholics. The penal laws started to be dismantled from 1766. The most significant measure was the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom. The Act of Settlement 1701 and the Bill of Rights 1689 provisions on the monarchy still discriminate against Roman Catholics. The Bill of Rights asserts that "it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant Kingdom to be governed by a P ...
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Irish Volunteers (18th Century)
The Volunteers (also known as the Irish Volunteers) were local militias raised by local initiative in Ireland in 1778. Their original purpose was to guard against invasion and to preserve law and order at a time when British soldiers were withdrawn from Ireland to fight abroad during the American Revolutionary War and the government failed to organise its own militia. Taking advantage of Britain's preoccupation with its rebelling American colonies, the Volunteers were able to pressure Westminster into conceding legislative independence to the Dublin parliament. Members of the Belfast 1st Volunteer Company laid the foundations for the establishment of the United Irishmen organisation. The majority of Volunteer members however were inclined towards the yeomanry, which fought and helped defeat the United Irishmen in the Irish rebellion of 1798.Ulster Museum, History of Belfast exhibition According to Bartlett, it was the Volunteers of 1782 which would launch a paramilitary tra ...
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Bastille Day
Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In French, it is formally called the (; "French National Celebration"); legally it is known as (; "the 14th of July"). The French National Day is the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, a major event of the French Revolution, as well as the Fête de la Fédération that celebrated the unity of the French people on 14 July 1790. Celebrations are held throughout France. One that has been reported as "the oldest and largest military parade in Europe" is held on 14 July on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in front of the President of the Republic, along with other French officials and foreign guests. History In 1789, tensions rose in France between reformist and conservative factions as the country struggled to resolve an economic crisis. In May, the Estates General legislative assembly was revived, but members of th ...
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Belfast Charitable Society
The Belfast Charitable Society, founded in 1752, is Belfast's oldest charitable organisation. It continues its philanthropic work from Clifton House which the Society opened, originally as the town's poor house and infirmary, in 1774. History In 1752 a group of Belfast's leading merchants agreed that "a poor-house and hospital are greatly wanted in Belfast for the support of vast numbers of real objects of charity in this parish, for the employment of idle beggars who crowd to it from all parts of the North, and for the reception of infirm and diseased poor". The growth of the town's port and the textile industry had been drawing in poor, often destitute, labourers and their families, from the surrounding districts. The town's burgesses, the exclusive nominees of the Earls (later Marquesses), of Donegall, had made little or no provision to alleviate their frequent and chronic distress. The Society raised money through a lottery scheme and subscription and, following formal r ...
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