Prof R J Gregg - Blue Plaque

Professor Robert John Gregg

Professor Robert J Gregg, one of Larne’s most gifted sons, is known as the founding father of Ulster Scots Studies.  His pioneering work established the study of Ulster-Scots as an academic discipline. 

Born on 2nd July 1912, in a house on the Glenarm Road, Robert John Gregg was the eldest son of Thomas Gregg and Margaret McDowell. 

The McDowell family came from the Glynn/Gleno area of Larne. 

In I905, Robert’s grandfather, George Gregg, and his family arrived in Larne from the Clough area of Co Antrim.  George Gregg & Sons commenced a very successful road contracting business, and many of the roads in and around Larne were built by the Gregg Company. 

Brought up in Larne town, Robert attended Larne Grammar School and developed a curiosity for language and went on to pursue his passion and graduated from Queens University with a B.A. Honours degree in French and German with Spanish subsidiary in 1933.  Gregg's M.A. dissertation at Queen's, on the historical phonology of the East Antrim Ulster-Scots was presented in May 1953.  During these years he also studied Latin and took a B.A. in Spanish from the University of London. 

In 1954 he decided to pursue an academic career abroad, Robert emigrated to Canada with his wife Millicent and young family.  After a short period teaching in a secondary school in Vancouver, he was appointed Assistant Professor of French at the University of British Columbia in January 1955.  He taught there for twenty-five years and was given the job as Professor in the Department of Linguistics in 1969 and later passed Advanced Level Royal Society examinations in Russian.  This subject formed part of the course he taught as Head of the Modern Languages Department when he was promoted in 1972. 

He retired after a distinguished career.  He continued to 'trail-blaze' by setting up a language laboratory at UBC, the first in any Canadian university. 

Throughout his years in Canada, Robert kept in close touch and collaborated with colleagues back in Ulster, taking part in conferences and working with the Ulster Dialect Archive. 

In 1960 he travelled back to Ulster on a year’s sabbatical from UBC.  He attended and spoke at the conference inaugurating the Ulster Dialect Archive at the Ulster Folk Museum.  The year’s absence enabled the culmination of three decades of his informal observations and documentation, and the mapping of where Ulster-Scots was spoken in parts of Antrim, Down, Londonderry and Donegal produced.  The map continues to be cited and reproduced by scholars as a point of reference on the geography of the Ulster-Scots speech areas. 

Professor Gregg passed away peacefully in Vancouver on 15 November 1998, aged 86.