Belfast

History

Belfast was the landing site of Lord Selkirk's settlers in 1803. These poor displaced Scottish farmers soon established themselves on the best land in the area and it became one of the most productive farming districts in the colony. Until very recently, the area around Belfast was Canadian Gaelic-speaking and added many important works of poetry to Scottish Gaelic literature. The Presbyterian Scots were joined in the mid-19th century by displaced Irish Great Famine refugees who were forced to take poorer land in surrounding areas. Political, social and religious tensions between the Catholic Irish and the Presbyterian Scottish Gaels boiled over during a general election in March 1847, resulting in what has become known as the Belfast Riot. In 1917, Rev. Murdoch Lamont (1865-1927), a Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian minister from nearby Orwell, Queens County, Prince Edward Island, published a small, vanity press booklet titled, An Cuimhneachain: Òrain Céilidh Gàidheal Cheap Breatuinn agus Eilean-an-Phrionnsa ("The Remembrance: Céilidh Songs of the Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island Gaels") in Quincy, Massachusetts. In Rev. Lamont's pamphlet and due to his meticulous work as a collector, the most complete versions survive of the Canadian Gaelic oral poetry composed upon Prince Edward Island before the loss of the language there, including the 1803 song-poem Òran an Imrich ("The Song of Emigration") by Selkirk settler Calum Bàn MacMhannain (Malcolm Buchanan) and Òran le Ruaraidh Mór MacLeoid by Ruaraidh Mór Belfast, (Roderick MacLeod), both of whom were born on the Isle of Skye, but emigrated to the Belfast district.