Stranocum L.O.L 749

09/06/2026

All welcome to our Somme Remembrance parade and wreath laying service.

12/05/2026

10/05/2026

Band master Jack (17) - speaking ahead of a 50th anniversary reformation parade and service - said: 'We have 33 members and not one of them is over the age of 20!'

https://armaghi.com/news/tandragee-news/co-armagh-teens-resurrect-short-lived-flute-band-50-years-on-after-seizing-upon-idea-at-the-somme/299555

05/05/2026

All welcome

05/05/2026

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡 👨‍🏫

This year’s Easter Monday Apprentice Boys parade in Ballymoney will live long in the memory. It is fair to say, however, that few of us on parade realised that Ballymoney had a reputation for being the town in Ireland that has best preserved Elizabethan English:

It is said that the best town in Ireland for Elizabethan English is Ballymoney, in County Antrim, where such words as troth, faith, brave, thole, allow, rue and renege are still used as Shakespeare’s contemporaries used them.

Patrick McCrory, The Siege of Derry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp 65-66.

04/05/2026

30/04/2026

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐥 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐮𝐧𝐫𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐫𝐦𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 ⚔

In October 1641, the Irish Rebellion commenced under the leadership of Sir Phelim O’Neill. The stories of wholesale massacres of Protestants led to many people becoming suspicious of the Roman Catholics in King Charles I’s household, especially of his wife, Henrietta Maria. So much so that the Irish Rebellion was described as the Queen’s Rebellion. The Scottish Covenanters agreed to send an army to Ireland to suppress the rebellion at the expense of the English Parliament.

On 15 April 1642, Colonel Robert Munro landed at Carrickfergus Castle with 2,500 troops, the first part of a force that rose to 10,000 men by August. As a result of their suppression of the rebels, large parts of Counties Down and Antrim were quickly reoccupied. On 29 April, O’Neill’s forces were defeated at Kilwarlin Wood near Lisburn, and the town of Newry was recaptured the following month. Consequently, the rebels, understanding their weakness, refuse to be drawn into open battle, disappearing into the country’s interior. [1]

[1] Raymond Campbell Paterson, A Land Afflicted: Scotland and the Covenanter Wars 1638-1690 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1998), pp 60-62.