Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to be here at the invitation of the Ulster History Circle to commemorate a distinguished son of Belfast who made a particular impact on the development of Irish poetry in Victorian times. Samuel Ferguson was born in a house on this site exactly two hundred years ago to this day, and from this beginning he went on to study at Inst, and at Trinity College, Dublin, and to practise as a barrister. But it is as a poet and an antiquarian that we honour him, as the author of poems such as 'The Forging of the Anchor', and of poetry collections such as the 'Lays of the Western Gael' and 'Congal'. Ferguson certainly influenced W B Yeats, who called him 'the greatest poet Ireland has produced'.

Samuel Ferguson was deeply interested in antiquities, and wrote many papers for the Royal Irish Academy, becoming its President in 1882. His work reorganising the Public Records of Ireland earned him a knighthood in 1878. The people at this gathering in his honour this morning represent those who acknowledge Ferguson's lasting importance two hundred years on. One hundred years ago, my predecessor as Lord Mayor of Belfast, R J McMordie, stood here to unveil a plaque to Sir Samuel Ferguson as part of a series of civic celebrations held throughout the city. That plaque has now vanished - [and let's hope today's blue plaque doesn't suffer a similar fate!] - So it is appropriate that we mark Ferguson's bicentenary with a new plaque. Today's celebrations of Ferguson include a conference at the Linen Hall Library, and I am pleased to see many of the delegates here present. So now, in a spirit of civic continuity with one hundred years ago, and on the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, I am delighted to unveil this plaque to Sir Samuel Ferguson, Poet and Antiquarian, born here on March the 10th, eighteen hundred and ten............

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