Hillary’s appeal to the Scots Irish…
Whilst we’re on the subject of Hillary, there’s an interesting line here from Jonathan Martin at the Politico website:
Her success tends to mirror the population centers of those of Scotch-Irish ancestry who settled in the more mountainous parts of the east and south.Yes, they tend to be the whitest part of each state, too. But Obama’s success in rural Wisconsin underscores that he can appeal to the right sort of blue-collar white voter (say, those in the Upper Midwest with Scandinavian roots).
But Clinton’s strength in the highlands is undeniable. Which is why she’ll do well in Pennsylvania on April 22 and then very well in West Virginia and Kentucky on May 13. And in between, she’ll probably win every county in North Carolina west of Winston-Salem and Charlotte (except possibly in Buncombe, home to bohemian Asheville).
H/T to reader Heck.
I’ve seen similar analyses, in various analogues, before.
A recent appearance was when Jim Webb, in 2006, took the Virginia Senate place from incumbent George Allen:
Those fighting Scots-Irish – Jim Webb, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Barack Obama – and George Bush
Remember Nelson Macausland getting interviewed once on why it was Scots irish in america and ulster scots here!!
Needless to say he couldn`t explain but he did ssay he wasn`t scots irish!!!
Twinbrook
Read “The People with No Name” by Patrick Griffin. The term Scotch-Irish was the name others gave to them by others (usually those who disliked them) rather than what they chose for themselves – they used a range of names. It was not until the mid/late 1800′s that they accepted the term.
Here the term more generally used has been Ulster-Scots. IIRC in the written record the term Ulster-Scots predates the term Scotch-Irish. It was first used in the 17th century and Scotch-irish the 18th century.
US is more accurate as it is more geographically correct. Plus self-identification means a community gets to pick its own terminology.
One for Nelson, a pillar of the Ulster-Scots fraternity:
“Little is known of its usage in Ireland in the 1600s except that Irish students matriculating at the University of Glasgow, etc, were identified in Latin as Scoti hibernicus: Scotch Irish. The term has been found in early America, specifically New Jersey, where it was used to distinguish native Irish from ethnic Ulster Scots — meaning people who were, by that time, almost exclusively Presbyterian and who believed their ancestors were from Scotland.”
A variation: “Professor James G. Leyburn located in the 1675 register of the University of Glasgow records and enrollment of one Francis Makemie from Ramelton. It included a notation that he was Scoto-Hibernicus. That is, of course, Scotch-Irish. This Franciscus Makemius was later to emigrate to North America where he founded the Presbyterian Church on that continent, and organized the first Presbytery in Philadelphia in 1706.”
That would be the highly efficient ‘Native American’
killers. The Ulster Scots.
>> the highly efficient ‘Native American’ killers
They got a lot of training beforehand using the Irish natives…
Her success tends to mirror the population centers of those of Scotch-Irish ancestry who settled in the more mountainous parts of the east and south.
So… you’re saying that Obama (a black man) doesn’t do so well among Democratic voters who, shall we say, are commonly identified as the natural constituency of the KKK?
What a shock. Someone give Jonathan Martin a PhD…
I hear the vote was close, but white barely won over orange for the klan favorite form of dress.
Scotch-Irish main contribution to American culture are rednecks and hillbillies (King Billy would be proud), ‘the only good injun is a dead injun’, eating mountain oysters and a slew of conservative Presidents. Their influence is still found in mountainspeak – words such as y’all (a truncated ye all), youen and hisen, and putting “a” before words like ‘thon lambs are a-springin’, ‘those critters are a-hootin and a-hollerin.’
I can see this thread going to hell in a handcart, and soon too.
The reference to Patrick Griffin (from fair_deal @ 10:19 PM) is spot-on. His definition, see note 7 on page 176, is very precise:
With all due respect, I do net see how Scottish usage helps us to define a sense of identity in Ulster or the American colonies. Griffin seems consistent in using the term “Ulster Presbyterians”, as when he is discussing the “strange humour” than led to mass emigration in 1718-9 and the late 1720s (see page 66):
At the other end of the emigration, there were different motivations. It needs to be remembered that a substantial proportion of the emigrants from Ulster went as “indentured servants”: one was George Taylor, who later signed the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from Pennsylvania. That brings us to the troubled topic of “white servitude”:
Michael Fry ["How the Scots Made America"] has an intriguing (if somewhat muddled) thought about loyalties, and how this was reflected in the link between the American Revolution and the Irish Volunteers and 1798 (see page 27):
Fry then specifically points to the unfortunate actions of “a Scotsman, Patrick Ferguson”:
So a line was drawn between the Ulstermen got on with being Americans, and the Scots who stayed loyal (Flora MacDonald, she of Bonnie Prince Charlie fame, was one of the returned emigrants who returned to Scotland from America after Independence). The Scots loyalists and many soldiers from Scots regiments were settled in Canada.
*That would be the highly efficient ‘Native American’killers. The Ulster Scots.* (BfB)
I understood that the ratio of casualities was initially 50:1 in favour of the Native Americans.
Presumably the Scotch Irish displayed that same unbending fortitude that would serve them so well much later against the Provos.
“Presumably the Scotch Irish displayed that same unbending fortitude that would serve them so well much later against the Provos.”
Did they agree to share power with the Amerinds?
>> Did they agree to share power with the Amerinds?
I am sure there are some Unionists who (had they thought of it) would have put those pesky Taigs and other Republicans into a reservation or two – located in the most inhospitable and infertile parts of NI of course.
Our old mucker Harry Flashman once did a post on this theme that was so spot-on that I cut ‘n pasted it into a word doc for posterity…in light of some the snidey, contemptuous and clearly sectarian-minded posts on here, I hope Harry won’t mind me quoting from it here:
“….enjoy the richness of your own culture, revel in it, pass it on to your children, but don’t treat it like a football team where it has to be better than the other fella’s. As a simple matter of fact a huge amount of what makes up the history and culture of the modern United States derives directly from the Ulster prod tradition; staunch individualism and self reliance, a visceral distrust of English aristocratic governance, frontier spirit, plain speaking, simple local level democracy, antipathy to central control etc. Now you might not approve of these traits and might comment that modern Ulstermen have hardly maintained them but to deny that they did not originate in the fields and hamlets of Ulster is fallacious.
Read James Webb’s “Born Fighting”, it shows clearly how so much of what it means to be an American is directly descended from the Scots Irish. These Hill Billys (note they weren’t Hill Tristrams or Hill Gunthers or Hill Giovannis) did produce the modern bluegrass country music which undoubtedly underpins modern rock n’ roll. They made up the core of the US Army and of US political parties and thinkers and general scoundrels. Examine the names Samuel Adams, Davy Crockett, Billy the Kid, Ulysses Simpson Grant, Kitt Carson, Woodrow Wilson, General George Patton, heck even Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. The US constitution wasn’t just printed by a wee man from Strabane it was written and brought to life by them. I never even thought about Hunter S Thompson, when you think about it he sounds like a Limavady grocer!
…you have to get over this narrow, parochial vision of culture as being a particular type of dancing or fiddle playing, culture means a lot more than that and the Ulster prods have a fair bit to be proud of their contribution.”
Amen to that, Harry
MR
“The term, coupling ethnic and geographical designations, came into use in Ireland only after the eighteenth century.”
Since the book was written earlier usage has been found.
Also as I pointed out earlier its up to a community (and individuals) to pick what it want to call itself (themselves.
SCI
“Scotch-Irish main contribution to American culture are rednecks and hillbillies ”
So the churches, newspapers, and universities etc they founded made no contribution?
What about the influence of that ‘New Light’ Presbyterian, Francis Hutcheson, the man from Drumalig?
“Your silly son, Frank, has fashed a’ the congregation with his idle cackle”, one of the elders reported to his father, “for he has been babblin’ this ‘oor about a good and benevolent God, and that the sauls of the heathen themselves wll gang tae heaven if they follow the licht o’ their ain consciences. Not a word does the daft boy ken, speer nor say about the gude auld comfortable doctrines of election, reprobation, original sin and faith” .. Barkley quoted in Finlay Holmes “Our Irish Presbyterian Heritage
fair_deal @ 11:05 AM:
Yes, I noted the point that was made by Nevin @ 10.22 and 10.42 PM.
This is a debate about identity. I’d like Nevin to confirm his grammar here, because the University of Glasgow, by identifying students as “Scoti hibernicus” (Irishman of Scot), rather than as “Scoto-hibernicus” (Scots-Irish), seems to be making the issue for me. As one who has spent his adult life being told by the Irish that he was English (because of place of birth) and by the English that he was Irish (because of education and background), I see this as Glasgow telling Francis Mackemie, “You’re not really one of us”.
So, my argument stands: this business of being “Ulster Scots” or (in the US) “Scots-Irish” is a comparatively recent attempt to discover an identity. What it does is say, “We’re not Irish”. In the US it came about because the Irish immigration of the nineteenth century was Catholic: I’ve dealt with that aspect in previous threads, commending
Noel Ignatiev’s How the Irish Became White.
I wonder if I can now trespass on everybody’s tolerance by drawing attention to James G Leyburn’s The Scotch-Irish, a Social History? It’s not going to fit into a single post, be warned.
Leyburn, writing back in 1962, makes as good an effort as I’ve seen to define why and how the Ulster Scot differs from a native Scot (this from the start of Chapter 11, pages 140-3):
Continuation of extract from James G Leyburn’s The Scotch-Irish, a Social History, chapter 11, pages 140-3):
More …
And finally, from Leyburn:
Malcolm, I would also recommend “God’s People” by Donald Harmen Akenson, for the similarities with, and differences between the Afrikaaners, Israelis, and Ulster Presbyterians, with particular reference to the key concept of covenant.
Malcolm, that’s the first time I’ve seen Scoti used in this context so it may well be suspect:
“Francis Makemie or McKemey, the ‘father of American Presbyterianism’, was born of Scottish parents near in Fanad ca. 1658, but moved with his parents to Ramelton as a child. His decision to opt for the ministry was, in his own words “wrought on my heart, at fifteen years of age, by, and from the pains of a godly schoolmaster”. Having studied at Glasgow University, where he enrolled as Franciscus Makemius Scoto Hyburnus, and a period of trial in the Lagan in East Donegal, he was licensed as a minister in the Autumn of 1681, and ordained with a view to going to the Maryland Colony in 1683.”
I wonder how familiar Leyburn was with Scottish and Ulster history. Those of the 1717 era might well have been first generation emigrants from Scotland. Up on the Causeway Coast they are just as likely to have come from the Highlands and Islands as from the Lowlands and their Presbyterianism may have been acquired here rather than being transplanted. Leyburn appears to me to lack nuance but my own knowledge of local history is quite limited.
Nevin @ 05:10 PM:
Yes: “Scoto Hybernus”, I have to concede, seems to be the usual term for a class of aliens at a Scottish University. I see that Google, in its wisdom, has digitised the class lists for Edinburgh from the 1590s to 1858. This includes “Scoto-Hibernus” among some other nationalities and descriptions: “Anglus”; “Gallus”; “minister verbi apud Hibernos”; “ex Insula Manniae”; and (a personal favourite, if only because it caused me a second’s thought, “Bervico-Britannus”).
My point stands, though: these are terms by which the Scots were differentiating others. I do not see any evidence from this that “Scoto-Hibernus” was a term in common use in Ulster.
Then you imply that there was continuing immigration from Scotland to north-eastern Ireland over an extended period. Again, the evidence is not obviously there. Of course, some population movement happened; but all the evidence is of a surge in the early decades of the seventeenth century, then a tapering off. Captain Nicholas Pynnar, in 1618, found “at least 8,000 Men of Brittish Birth and Descent to do his Majesty’s Service for Defence thereof” in the Plantation. These are men of fighting age, so the usual estimate is to quadruple the number for wives and families, with another 18,000 in Antrim and Down from the Montgomery and Hamilton settlements, plus more in the colonies in Monaghan. Lecky reckons 100,000 by 1640, derived from Carte’s estimate of 120,000 and Latimer’s of 100,000.
On the other hand, the Londonderry Plantation continued as a near-disaster. The Irish Society thought they were getting 40,000 acres: they got more than half-a-million; and simply could not plant them, ending up with “meere Irish” occupying many of the tenancies.
Francis Makemie was, as you point out, in Maryland in 1683, coincidental with (and, probably, for the same reason as) the arrival in Pennsylvania of German Pietists, Mennonites, Amish and the other sects, led by their ministers. Penn himself was recruiting settlers in the Rhineland in 1677; and he published a prospectus in London in 1681, Some Account of the Province of Pennsylvania in America. So Makemie, and other Presbyterians, had established 13 congregations in Delaware, Cecil County (Maryland) and around Philadelphia before the Scots-Irish migration which started in 1717.
I reckon, on that basis, I’ll stick with the outline of Leyburn’s appreciation.
Fascinating and really enjoyable stuff!
Malcolm, in the context of some of those insights. Would it be fair to say that Ulster Prods are trying to repair ties that are long long forgotten? Perhaps even invent?
Funny enough Charlie I remember Harry’s contribution myself and was thinking about it when I read your bit. I remember engaging with him on that thread and am sure he had other bits worth mentioning too, stuff about fighting and not accepting bad government etc.
Earliest known written usage of the term “Ulster Scots” was in 1640 (by one of their most avowed opponents, Sir George Radcliffe) following the signing of Scotland’s National Covenant in 1638
Absolutely fascinating stuff. I had always rubbished “Ulster Scot” for being makey-uppey, while having respect for “Scots/Scotch-Irish” – not least, admittedly, because I find it semantically noxious, denying the “Ireland” and “Irish” in the culture, and deliberately so, or so I believed … and still do even after reading the above.
Malcolm Redfellow quoted: “While his experience in northern Ireland and his Presbyterianism led him to make a clear distinction between himself and the native Catholic Irish, nevertheless the home of the Ulstermen was in Ireland, not Scotland. … Scotland, on the other hand, was a folk memory and little more, since few of the Scotch-Irish immigrants to America had ever seen it.”
In searching around this topic based on what I read here, I found the following (apparently late-eighteenth century Ulster Presbyterian, Samuel Thompson):
I love my native land, no doubt,
Attach’d to her thro’ thick and thin
Yet tho’ I’m Irish all without
I’m every item Scotch within.
Thoughts on Irishness and Ulster Scots/Scots Irish/Ulster Protestantism/Presbyterianism then today?
Also, what toughs on the influence of the Scottish settlers on Ireland, not only how Ireland changed them. From here courtesy of Nelson McCausland:
Ronda Rich also commented on the character of Scotch-Irish. ‘We Scotch-Irish foks are kown for our peculiar ways. “Quaire”, my grandmamma always said, using a distinct work of our people.”
If so “quaire” then I, from west Mayo with Gaelic surname, am kin and kindred – as is every other Mayoman that I have ever met.
Finally … “Bervico-Britannus”?
Oh … and has anyone seen the new Bulmers ad? It features a southern American deep-south trad-rock music played over apparently Irish musicians playing a mix of typically traditional Irish and Scottish instruments (or so it seems to me).
Thoughts on this hybrid and mix of culture? Or is it?
james orr @ 08:54 PM:
Yes: the source for that is hamiltonmontgomery1606.com. Radcliffe, Wentworth’s cousin, imposed the Black Oath with the support of half of Wentworth’s army; and did Wentworth’s bidding as MP for Armagh.
When Parliament sent the Newcastle Demands to the King in July 1646, Radcliffe qualified as one of the persons who shall expect no pardon.
Hence, I think we might safely deduce he intended the term “Ulster Scot” as one of abuse. So, I suggest my point, derived from Leyburn, endorsed by Griffin, still stands.
I would correct a sweeping judgement in my previous posting: there was, of course, a further influx of destitute Scots into north-eastern Ireland during the famines of the end of the seventeenth century. This increased the Presbyterian congregation.
Prince Eoghan on Mar 10, 2008 @ 08:29 PM:
Would it be fair to say that Ulster Prods are trying to repair ties that are long long forgotten? Perhaps even invent?
I’d go further than even that. The Ulster Presbyterian has had a long-running crisis of identity.
The “Church Men” (i.e. Anglicans) had no problem: they were, or identified with the Ascendancy class. Only when Home Rule came back on the agenda did some combine interests with the despised Dissenters. To do so, there had to be a lessening of class, social and ideological divides: in fact, of course, for much of the next century the Presbyterian tenants and burghers were induced to vote for capitalist interests.
The Dissenters had grievences with the Penal Laws (for example, the failure to recognise Presbyterian marriages). Throughout the eighteenth century, though, they generally prospered, under a lax regime, with trade, education, the empire and emigration providing opportunities for advancement. Jonathan Bardon nicely characterises this as:
That radicalism did not begin and end with Wolfe Tone and the Volunteers.
There was the Tenant-Rights movement (the three “f”s: fair rents, free sale and fixity of tenure) from the late 1840s, also explicitly both Presbyterian and Catholic. It foundered, in large part, because of Pius IX appointing a Catholic hierarchy in England, thus provoking the Liberal Government to protest, thus causing the Irish Party to go rogue. There then followed the religious revival after 1859 (imported from the US, driven by the likes of Moody and Sankey, and featuring the rise of Baptist churches). Just what the doctor ordered — simultaneous Catholic, Non-conformist and (less so in Ireland, obviously) High Anglican revival simultaneously: result, blood-shed.
I’d like to see it demonstrated (because I don’t think it can be) that “Ulsterism” was more significant than confessionalism at any point before the twentieth century. After all, right down to the last few years, the cry of the Unionist is to be “British”. Only when Britain began to fragment and to fail them was it necessary for the Ulster Presbyterian to rediscover this “Ulster Scots” nonsense.
So there is an argument that we can specify two precise moments when different political “Ulsters” began: 3rd March 1905, with the foundation of the Ulster Unionist Council. From there on everything that went with the “old” Stormont seems inevitable: the jettisoning of southern Unionists, machinating a statelet, reinforcing social division — perceived privilege and oppression — on denominational lines.
The second symbolic moment, and the coming of the “Ulster Scot” was 9 December 1986, when Paisley was ejected from the European Parliament for haranguing the British Prime Minister.
Spot the moment in that when I realised I was bored with the whole damn thing.
Oilifear @ 10:09 PM:
“Bervico-Britannus”?
My decoding: Berwick, neither Anglus nor Scotus, so Britannus.
And, yes, I groaned, too.
“Only when Britain began to fragment and to fail them was it necessary for the Ulster Presbyterian to rediscover this “Ulster Scots” nonsense.”
On the contrary Malcolm, surely taking a greater pride in your ‘Scots-Irish’/Ulster Presbyterian (and indeed ‘Celtic’) history and heritage makes a lot more sense than a fabricated forelock-tugging ‘Britishness’ that pretends that Ulster prods have more in common with their ‘fellow-citizens’ across the water in Surrey than people who they’re sharing an island with…
It still angers me that while stuff about the history of the British monarchy was forced down our throats in prod schools, we were never taught anything about Ulster immigration to America and its significant influence on U.S. politics and culture…if this Ulster-Scots ‘nonsense’, as you call it, helps redress the balance on that front, I’m all for it…
Charlie @ 08:23 AM:
Fair enough, except …
Can one imagine the Oz response to a freshly discovered “New South Gallo-English” identity?
Is the claim to be “Ulster-Scots” an identifier or a discriminator?
Is it an attempt to fuse an identity with the nascent Scottish nationalism, or to distance itself from the Irish element?
Could it even be a fig-leaf of respectability to hide the shame of having, for opportunistic gain, abandoned the “southern Unionists” (with whom I do find some co-identify)?
For me the proper discriminator is the one which was proudly borne and good enough to last three centuries: “northern dissenter”.
Thirty years ago, Lerone Bennett was one of the early revisionist historians of the Black American experience: he did not recoil from the term “Black American”. He proposed a definition of “internal colonialism”:
Notice that “Ulster Scottishness” emphasises an alien origin, identifies with a metropolitan power outside the borders, and harkens back to a time of “economic exploitation based on inequality and contempt”.
This thread has strayed a long way from its “Scots-Irish” starting point. To reflect back there for a moment reminds me that “Scotch-Irish” is used as early as 14th April 1573, in an Elizabethan state-document, referring to the Highland Celts:
Presumably these are the same ethnic group who appear in Macbeth, I.ii.12-13 as from the Western Isles … kerns and gallowglasses. In any case, the biology is correct, for the Gaelic Scots and Irish did see themselves as a homogenous group. What is not correct is then to apply the term to the descendants of the Lowlanders: Angles, Danes as well as (doubtless) assimilated Scots, then interbred with the hated Irish. Mitochondrial DNA distinguishes the daughters of Helena and the daughters of Tara.
American usage can also be precisely dated: it appears in a report of June 1695, by Sir Thomas Laurence, Secretary of Maryland:
After 1717, the term used for arrivals from Ulster was “Irish”, modified as “Ulster Irish”, “northern Irish” (indeed!) and “Irish Presbyterians”. The good Puritans of Massachusetts regarded the arrival of these “Irish” as “formidable attempts of Satan and his Sons to Unsettle us”. In 1737 the Ulstermen joined the other Irish of Boston to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and found the Irish Society.
Then there’s the Friendly Sons of St Patrick, of Philadelphia, collecting $103,500 for the army starving at Valley Forge. They deliberately did not identify with the parallel Thistle Society (which tended to loyalism). Leyburn, on whom I have previously relied, says of this:
Later, Leyburn adds:
‘Only when Britain began to fragment and to fail them was it necessary for the Ulster Presbyterian to rediscover this “Ulster Scots” nonsense.’
Patent nonsense. The Scottish influence has always been there – in speech patterns, vibrant cultural expressions such as pipe bands, ongoing familial ties, etc. No amount of selective quotation from dusty tomes changes this, Malcolm.
“Is the claim to be “Ulster-Scots” an identifier or a discriminator?”
Fair question Malcolm and sometimes I feel that the tone of publications like The Ulster-Scot (e.g. tiresome insistence on saying ‘Londonderry’ rather than Derry etc) further perpetuates the same old sectarian schisms but on a more positive note, Ulster’s deep-rooted affinity with Scotland and the ‘Scots-Irish’ of America (the huge popularity of country music and Western movies in Ulster isn’t accidental!) has always been there – it was just that the cloying pseudo-English Unionism of Basil Brooke and his lackeys left a legacy that did much to distract from it…
Star of the County Down @ 11:39 AM:
Aw, c’mon! It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Gimme some competition here!
Are the “dusty tomes” a comment on my/your neglect of studies or of housekeeping?
Nobody is denying the debt of Ulster dialect to Lowlands Anglic, nor that there are continued family ties, education and the rest. After which it all starts to get a bit squiffy.
Those pipe bands: how long established are most of them? If they are “vibrant cultural expressions” of “Scottish influence”, why do they mimic the tartans and faux culture of the Highlands (thank you, Walter Scott, anyway), with which the Ulster Presbyterians have little shared identity? To refer to my very undusty tomes for a moment, Hugh de Lacey went to no little trouble to evict the true Scots from North Antrim: that’s why Carrickfergus Castle got its walls and gatehouse.
The one thing that is really, admirably different and strong about Ulster Calvinists is that they broke decisively with the feudal cultures of Scotland; and they emerged as self-reliant, egalitarian, entrepreneurial individualists, nose-thumbing and bloody-minded. The Scottish “Enlightenment” had reactionary aspects that needed to be overcome for a modern society to evolve (example: why did Hume’s History totally ignore the Declaration of Arbroath?). The northern dissenters, and their off-spring, the Scots-Irish in America, had made that transition a century or more before.
You still do not address the essential issue: why deny the obvious characteristics (Irish birth and four centuries of history, the living Dissenter tradition) while inventing a spurious alternative universe? The answers are: latent contempt for the “natives”; the total failure of Unionism; a lack of politics derived from economic interest (this used to be called Marxian or “class” politics, but we’re all “New” something these days), a lack of confidence in what the Ulster protestant/ northern dissenter has been and could be again.
Malcolm Redfellow –
Thanks for the background info -just a few points.
‘ Were the Scotch-Irish true Scots in culture and outlook, in character and temperament, or had the experience in Ulster significantly changed them?
There had always been some population flow between south western Scotland and the East Coast of Northern Ireland and between Scotland and Ulster in earlier and ancient times . The English conquest of Ireland and Scotland disrupted those contacts. Ulster was a partial ‘desert’ following the 9 years war and the Flight of the Earls left the Gaelic Irish leaderless . The province had been depopulated following on from the incessant wars of the previous century 1550 through 1690.
That part of Ireland provided an opportunity which other parts did not .
The ‘Irish ” environment would have changed anybody particularly those of a different faith and to some extent language . Stemming from their precarious background in Scotland these people would have been only too well aware of local indigenous resentment . Thus from the earliest times comes the ‘fear’ of being swamped -put out – etc etc by the locals .
Oddly enough it was as a result of famine conditions -rising rents and official discrimination against Presbyterians that helped to push many out to the USA . If they had’nt gone Ireland today would be quite possibly predominantly Presbyterian or non RC anyway.
‘Thousands of those who went to the New World were so poor that they had to pay for their passage by becoming indentured servants for a period of time; these people were generally those who had remained tenant farmers in Ulster’
True but that did not only apply to Ulster people. Many English and other Irish also could only afford to go as ‘indentured ‘ servants usually for a period of 7 years .
‘It was in Ireland that they had had their troubles and had won their struggles. Here their fathers had made their farms and built their homes, shed blood for the defense of their families, developed their industries; here generations of their people were buried.’
Hopefully it will be in Ireland that they’ll stop shedding blood and instead develop their industries !
The so called Scotch Irish /Ulster Scots /Northern Irish /Unionists as a people like everybody else have positive as well as negative characteristics . A case could be made for stating that the past century has seen a tenency to accentuate the ‘negative’ in particular in the early part of the 20th century and in the period 1965 through the present . Perhaps the time is coming when the positive may be accentuated ?
MR
“Those pipe bands: how long established are most of them? If they are “vibrant cultural expressions” of “Scottish influence”, why do they mimic the tartans and faux culture of the Highlands”
Read the ordnance survey reports of Antrim and Down of the 1830′s for the clear indications of the strength of Scottish cultural traditions in communities or the various travelogues before or after. I particularly like the one sympatheic comment about my family’s home parish Drumtullagh “The Scotch language is spoken in great purity”
Pipe Bands – A significant amount of them have been around for decades (beginning in the inter-war period and blossoming past WW2). The fact that the development of band culture here followed the trend in Scotland shows the continuing inter-connectivity.
The tartan phenomoenon is largely a post-Victorian development however it is one the Scots have willingly embraced.
“why deny the obvious characteristics (Irish birth and four centuries of history, the living Dissenter tradition) while inventing a spurious alternative universe?”
The fundamental flaw in this line of argument is that you are trying to select for others what they see as important to them. Its not your choice, its theirs.
There was no need for invention, it was all there.
Also you fall into the old trap of ‘irish’ being real and other identities an invention.
malcolm redfellow,
‘I would correct a sweeping judgement in my previous posting: there was, of course, a further influx of destitute Scots into north-eastern Ireland during the famines of the end of the seventeenth century. This increased the Presbyterian congregation.’
What is missing or only alluded to in part all of the posts is the probable influence of climate change in the historical period under question .
It’s now accepted that a little Ice Age had a major impact on agricultural output in the period 1350 through 1850 . Some commentators eg Brian Fagan ‘The Little Ice Age ‘ attribute climate change as being of greater significance in socio political and economic shifts of power between and within nations/countries etc than was heretofore believed . Among these changes Fagan lists the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the Irish Famine .
Everybody has heard of the Irish Famine in 1844-45 . Not too many have heard of the 1816 famine in which some 65,000 died or the earlier small famines in the 18th century and later which ‘pushed ‘ some 200,000 mainly Ulster presbyterians out of Ulster to the Americas.
Fagan maintains that we now know that short term climatic anomalies stressed northern European society during the period of the LIA and that we can begin to correlate specific shifts with economic , social and political changes to try to assess what climate’s true impact may be.
In this context it’s not unreasonable to assume that Scotland being the most northerly would have been the first part of these islands to have suffered from intermittent downturns in food production in the period of the LIA . This would have sparked food riots disguised as cattle wars/reiving etc . Similar climate stress could have been instrumental in the escalating of the traditional O’Neill/O’Donnel/McDonnel tribal wars that weakened Ulster Gaelic society prior to the second Tudor conquest in the late 16th century .
There had in any event been population movement from south western Scotland and the Highlands to Ulster from time immemorial .
The movement of people from Scotland to Ireland may have been mostly as a result of the particular combination of climatic change and the political instability and ensuing conflict therefrom. This movement of people was not unusual in the europe of this period and it was followed later in the early and mid 18th centuries and later mid nineteenth centuries with the mass movement of many europeans to ‘new ‘ lands’
In some ways not perhaps dissimilar to what is happening in todays world except the movement is now from underdeveloped to ‘developed’ countries
‘The history of this period can be seen as a race between productivity and population explosion. Productivity was generally ahead, but the province was more exposed than before to international fluctuations and the downturn of the 1770s stimulated rural unrest and intense political excitement. The route to America provided an invaluable safety valve,’
Just as the route to Britain and the ‘white’ Commonwealth and the USA provided a safety valve for the nascent Irish Free State political experiment in the period 1922 to the mid 1980′s.
Britain also made use of the same safety valve in the period 1700 through the present . It’s known that Irish born overseas amount to approx 1 million people . What’s not so widely known is that there are 9 million Britons living outside the UK with some 150,000 now resident in the Irish Republic .
All of the above is not to downplay the very real achievements of Ulster presbyterian migrants to the New World and their influence but to set that role in it’s total political , economic and environmental context .
In today’s USA – Irish political influence be it of the ‘Scotch Irish’ or ‘Irish Catholic’ vein is very much diminished mostly due to the absorbtion of these people into the American ‘melting’ pot . There are a few remaining ‘islands’ of course in Boston , Chicago and in the Carolinas, West Virginia and Kentucky. But it appears as almost an irony of history that having left the poor but economically marginal provinces of Scotland to the Ulster ‘desert’ the Scotch Irish or a large number of them should end up in the most economically ‘marginal ‘ and poorest backwood states of the USA?.
Is it not even more ironic that their distant cousins in Ireland could be said to now reside in Ireland’s ‘poorest’ economic backwater ?
Perhaps they might consider asking for directions after all if you don’t know where you are going you might end up somewhere else or even worse in the same place yet again?
They left all the art, literature and culture here.
‘There are a few remaining ‘islands’ of course in Boston , Chicago and in the Carolinas, West Virginia and Kentucky.’
To be sure, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia= Irish Catholic, GAA etc. Carolinas, West Virginia and Kentucky= Ulster Scot, Presbyterian, Baptists, not very fond of Catholics. Oh ya.. ONE!! AOH group in Florida….. Different breeds of cat. North Irish Catholics, Southern Ulster Scots…. Don’t let the surnames fool ya..
>>What is not correct is then to apply the term to the descendants of the Lowlanders: Angles, Danes as well as (doubtless) assimilated Scots<<
Malcolm.
Only part of lowland Scotland could be said to have mixed populations of ‘Celt’, Angle and Dane. This would be the south east, and further inland the more ‘Celtic’ the people. Various settlements of Norse settled around the solway firth after being chased out of Ireland and losing the fight for York. However my main point is that the border reivers, lowland Scots from the west(Galloway and Ayrshire) and Highland and Islanders(some Norse here also) would have been overwhelmingly of the ‘Celtic’ variety of gene pool.
Interestingly(and slightly off topic) the genes tell us a lot. A study in Iceland put their gene pool at male 80% norse 20% ‘Celtic’ Female 60% ‘Celt’ and 40% Norse. Suggesting that the slave traders were doing roaring business around our western periphery.
Malcolm, from the Edinburgh list p165 circa 1700, Robertus Rodham, Bervicus-Britannus. Could he be an ancestor of Hillary Rodham Clinton?
It would appear that the roots of the Ulster tenant-right custom date back to the period of the Ulster Plantation and to the influence of the English copyhold tenure.
“I’d like to see it demonstrated (because I don’t think it can be) that “Ulsterism” was more significant than confessionalism at any point before the twentieth century.”
Malcolm, it features in the Ulster Unionist Convention of 1892 which had its roots in earlier conventions in 1782, 1783 and 1793. In the latter case parishes sent delegates to a county meeting and these in turn sent delegates to the Ulster convention. There were calls for a convention at the time of the first Home Rule crisis in 1886 but the real momentum for it came in 1892. Thomas Sinclair, a Liberal Unionist from Ulster, promoted another convention and he had the support of Joseph Chamberlain, Liberal Unionist leader. [The Great Convention - Gordon Lucy]
fair_deal, I’ve got some resources for the parish of Derrykeighan and the Grange of Drumtullagh,which was once part of the former. There you’ll find the townland (and former school) of Tullyban!!
The status of the Scotch tongue was in some dispute at the time of the Ordnance Survey Memoirs (circa 1832) – and the outbreak of blue tongue disease took place in the Grange.
In the land of GoD: “It is chiefly peopled by the numerous and industrious descendants of the Scottish and English emigrants. The Scotch language is spoken in great purity. .. Dancing and a little cock-fighting are their principal amusements. There are no peculiar customs, saints’ or patrons’ days (except St John’s and 12th July) nor anything peculiar in their dress, manners or habits. .. The introduction of schools has had a very perceptible and happy effect on the moral habits of the people.”
cf Derrykeighan: “The population of this parish is very considerable in proportion to its size. The greater part are said to be the descendants of Scottish settlers. They are an industrious and peaceable people, almost all Presbyterians. They speak the English language, but the dialect of the peasantry bears a great resemblance to that of the Scotch.”
Going further back to the Wars of the Three Realms we have the Declaration of Derrykeighan (1641/2) that justified the killing of anyone that didn’t speak Irish.
Mosside, the ‘capital’ of GoD, is now allegedly North Antrim UDA HQ.
Scotland’s Mark on America
There’s a significant article on the New York Times blogs, under the by-line of Timothy Egan, which has just appeared on my feed:
True Irish
For a time, Gaelic was the common language in the mining warrens beneath Butte, Mont., and by the dawn of the 20th century the city had a higher percentage of Irish than any other in America – including Boston.
Butte was a hard-edged, dirty, dangerous town on the crest of the Continental Divide, and if a single man lived to his 30th birthday he was considered lucky. Yet entire parishes left the emerald desperation of County Cork for the copper mines of Butte, fleeing a land where British occupiers had once refused to let mothers educate their children, and where famine had killed a million people in seven years’ time.
We are about to enter a long weekend of blarney and excess in celebration of all things Irish. The diaspora is remarkable, in part, for its numbers: a tiny island nation with a population now of 4 million has produced the second-largest ethnic group in the United States — 36 million who trace their primary ancestry to the old sod, according to a 2006 Census report. Both Senators Barack Obama (or is it O’Bama?) and John McCain have some Irish in them, each from his mother’s side.
But before too many pints of Guinness are drained on behalf of a leprechaun-lite version of Ireland’s legacy in the New World, it’s worth remembering an Irish verity from a long-forgotten place like Butte.
It is a city looking for a tomorrow, with too many poor and old, a city of memories, once the biggest between Minneapolis and Seattle. In Butte, you find people on St. Patrick’s Day who remind you that “Danny Boy” was written by an Englishman who most likely never set foot in Ireland. And more than once you will hear this Irish saying: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gives it to.”
I heard something in a graveyard there about 10 years ago, and it has stayed with me, particularly when the Paddy hoo-rah kicks into high gear. I was strolling through St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Butte, looking for family clues. My grandmother had lived in that part of Montana for a spell, and she didn’t miss it — the winter days of 20 below zero, the air so full of grime that the streetlights were turned on at midday. Among the rows of Dalys and McGees, and Grogans and O’Farrells — many having died young, in their teens and 20s — I started up a conversation with a man who was tending the tombstones.
“The thing about the Irish,” he said, “is that we have always been there for the little guy. We go through life as underdogs. We die as underdogs. There is no other way for the Irish.”
Every family, every ethnic group, every country needs a guiding narrative — sometimes more mythic than real. For the Irish, misery is our currency, and the key to all Irish story-telling. Thus we love the book about the most wretched Irish Catholic childhood — Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes” — because it solidifies our identity.
It is only when the Irish forget about the underdog, as the keeper of the graves said, that they stray. In the 1930s, there was Father Charles Coughlin, a virulent anti-Semite who had a radio audience larger than that of Rush Limbaugh’s today. He used his microphone for hate. In the 1950s, another man with a link to Ireland, Senator Joseph McCarthy, twined ignorance and fear to make a mockery of congressional inquiry. Today, there are television bullies with Irish surnames on Fox, backing more tax cuts for hedge fund managers, and doing everything they can to keep the poorest of Americans from getting health care.
I’d rather think of Grace Kelly, or George M. Cohan, or Bill Murray, or Bing Crosby (briefly, a college roommate of my grandfather’s at Gonzaga in Spokane). Or John F. Kennedy, despite his many demons. Like many Irish-Americans of my age, I grew up in classrooms with just two pictures on the wall: the Pope, and President Kennedy.
But the glamour Gaelics, much as we love to talk about them, are not what resonates deep in the Irish-American soul. For that, you have to go to the famine — or the Great Hunger, as it was called. A wet summer allowed a potato blight to spread, killing the crop on which so many poor Irish subsisted. Between 1845 and 1851, a million people died, and another million left — a human rights tragedy on a scale of Darfur today. In some counties, one in four people starved to death.
[A couple more paragraphs to come]
[New York Times piece, concluded]
Listless, their bellies bloated before death, many Irish were reduced to foraging in fields; contemporary accounts mentioned the green stains on their teeth from eating grass. Herman Melville wrote of “endless vistas of want and woe staggering arm-in-arm.” And the Choctaw Indian Nation sent cash for relief.
Butte, Montana, was built on the backs of the famine Irish and their children. In another half-century, I fear, Butte may end up a ghost town. But as long as there are Irish who remember where they came from, this city will always be a part of the Irish-American character.
— Sorry about the length of that. It’s well worth going to the site and reading the 80+ comments, and counting, that have been added. MR.
More about Butte