A 360° video series immersing you in the world of Ulster’s Rhyming Weavers – Ulster-Scots poets who flourished over the 18th & 19th Centuries. In this episode, filmed at the Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum, we hear about Thomas Beggs, a poet born in 1789. For much of his life Beggs alternated between employment and periods devoted to writing. He published his first book aged 30 – ‘Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse’. Other poems and prose-pieces followed, most of which proved popular. Beggs was inspired by nature and by the landscape of County Antrim in particular; and his poetry is personal, thoughtful and often spiritual. He has been described as “one of Ulster’s most romantic literary figures”. Enjoy a reading of “The Auld Wife’s Address To Her Spinning Wheel”. Mechanisation was changing the face of linen production – shifting it from village-based cottage industries to large scale factories and mills. The impact on Ulster’s rural way of life was seismic and in this poem Thomas Beggs laments the change for which he blames the greedy and unscrupulous mill owners. The old woman is reflecting on her youth when she got her spinning wheel second-hand, and she remembers how good times were back then and paints a delightful, homely scene, but now heartless mill owners have made her wheel redundant and she deplores the invention of machinery which makes masters wealthy but worsens conditions for the poor. Produced with the support of Northern Ireland Screen’s Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund, the series has been filmed using a 360° camera. You can use your mouse (or a VR headset) to look all around you. For best experience, watch using a desktop, laptop, tablet or VR headset.