New Podcast ‘The Auld Meetin’- Hoose Green’
Date Posted: July 31, 2024
A new podcast, The Auld Meetin’-Hoose Green, has been launched, dramatising the joys and hardships of life in a small Ulster-Scots community in the late 19th century.
The sixteen episode series, supported by Northern Ireland Screen’s Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund, is based on a collection of short stories by Ballyclare writer Archibald McIlroy and set in a fictionalised version of his home village.
McIlroy mixed humour and deep affection for his community with keen insights into human nature and the impact of social changes and the Industrial Revolution in mid and late 19th century Ulster. Much of the inspiration for his portraits of village life came from stories he heard from his grandfather, as well as his own childhood memories.
McIlroy’s narration is in English but he uses vernacular Ulster-Scots for the lively exchanges between his characters. The dialogue has been brought to life by people from Ballyclare and further afield, and narration has been provide by Anne McMaster, Roy Ferguson, Sylvia Burnside and Janette McKendry. The music is performed by County Antrim dulcimer and fiddle player and composer, Dick Glasgow.
McIlroy emigrated to Canada but met a tragic end on a visit back to home in 1915. He was a passenger on the ocean liner RMS Lusitania and died with more than one thousand others when it was torpedoed in the Atlantic by a German U-Boat.
The Auld Meetin’-Hoose Green 16-part podcast series, with an introduction and bonus episode about the author, is available on https://www.buzzsprout.com/2376001 and all major podcast platforms. It is a Yamal NI production and is also available on the podcast page at www.yamal.co.uk.
