It was a time when 'eggs were real and they had big orange yolks', a time when hens were happy and roamed the fields, locked up only for their own safety to protect them at night from foxes.
The quality publication comes, complete with 17-track audio CD, in a very attractive production. Much of the book stems from Willie's rural Co Antrim roots, like the Lambeg Drum, or thran Ulster-folk. The poet and musician has also lived in other parts of the world, in particular in Nova Scotia in Canada.
His New Scotland experience also informs his tales, but Willie looks further South in the Americas for a photograph to illustrate Mister Lignite Man. It portrays the 20th Century strip-mining of Eastern Kentucky, which has decimated and destroyed the beautiful landscape of the Bluegrass State. I noted it with horror myself on a road-trip from the meadows and racehorses of the Northern part of Kentucky to the dirt-poor east of the state.
Drennan asks whether this could happen to the Ulster-Scots communities of North Antrim of the 21st Century if lignite mining were to become widespread.
The chorus of Mister Lignite Man rallies opposition to potentially destructive forces: "Mister Lignite Man, ye're jist taakin greed".
Drennan's book is beautifully produced. It might be classed as a wee luxury in places but, in Ulster-Scots, it's probably classed 'half-dacent' according to a story which Willie tells against himself. On his return from Canada, he tried to hire a 'luxury coach'. He realised, however, that he would be better off asking for a "half-dacent yin".
The Wee Book is a wee treasure and it has the best response to any snide remarks about the ill-fated liner in its Titanic song -
"Don't blame Billy, Geordie or Sam. Don't blame Hughie or Wee Tam. Don't blame us and don't blame me, for poor Titanic beneath the sea."
On a sad note, a shiver ran down my spine for the men of the Somme, with Willie's information about the village of Craigywarren in Co Antrim. In common with many other Ulster locations, every young man between the ages of 16 and 20 was killed at the battle on July 1 in 1916: "Farewell tae oor darlins, we micht ne'r kiss again."
Liz Kennedy
Belfast Newsletter
BOOK CHOICE
One of Northern Ireland's best known folk troubadours has ventured into print for the first time. He is the musician, song writer, poet and story teller, Willie Drennan, who is a leading light in the Ulster-Scot cultural renaissance.
His new publication is entitled Wee Book - Stories, Poems and Songs of a Wandering Ulster-Scot, and in it he brings together many of the songs and yarns which he performs as a member of the popular Ulster-Scots Folk Orchestra and its 'splinter group', Nae Goat's Toe.
Much of the material has its roots in his native Co Antrim - he lives near Ballymena - but there are also references to his travels outside the province, which included an 11-year stay in Nova Scotia, Canada. He returned from there 10 years ago and has been prominently involved in the Ulster-Scots revival scene ever since.
A fine traditional fiddle player, Drennan is also a virtuoso performer on that percussive colossus, the Lambeg Drum, which is always a big crowd pleaser on the group's tours abroad, and he celebrates the instrument in one of his songs, the chorus of which, in pure undiluted Ulster-Scots, goes as follows:-
"Blaater awa on tha Lambeg Drum.
Blaater fae noo til tha Kingdom Come.
It's writ in aa tha buiks o lore,
Oor yins blaatert in tha days o yore."
Whether you regard Ulster-Scots as a dialect or a language, there is no denying that couplets like these achieve Drennan's purpose by being compellingly rhythmic. Elsewhere in his entertaining Wee Book - it's a sort of country ceili in print - he examines the way in which the Ulster-Scot emigrants brought their music with them to the mountains and backwoods of America where it gradually evolved into what we know today as Bluegrass and Country Music. "On a recent visit to Kentucky, as part of an Ulster-Scots Folk Orchestra tour, I was struck by the similarity of character of these rural Appalachian folk and rural Ulster folk," he says.
"We also had the pleasure of taking part in jam sessions with local traditional musicians, and the number of fiddle tunes we had in common was amazing - quite often with different names and played in a different style, but nonetheless, the same tunes."
All of the material in the book was written by Drennan specifically to be performed on stage, and to give the reader a sampler of what they sound like live, it is accompanied by a CD containing some of his songs, poems and yarns.
So in addition to being a diverting read, it is easy listening as well. To quote a typically assertive Ulster-Scots saying, "Ay sowl, heth ay."
Neil Johnston
Belfast Telegraph