Sidney Oldall Addy

“ I think it is likely that "Scotland" here means "Irish land," especially as Scotland street and the neighbourhood of West-bar are at this very day the quarters of the so-called "Irish." The Scots, as is well known, were an Irish sept, and the old Germans regarded a "Scot" as a roving trader from Ireland. [9] It is possible that these roving traders established at an early period a settlement in Sheffield, forming a distinct class or caste. It is however possible that Scotland means "conveyed land," or land conveyed by a symbolical act. ”

“ All the vagaries and nonsense practised at these festivals in India are so many symbolical expressions of the power of the non-Aryan tribes during the admitted period of license. There is no reason why in Britain they should not express, in survival, the same village festival with all its significant ethnic symbolism. ”

“ But there is evidence that in early times a body of men known as "Irish," or perhaps as "Scots," settled in Sheffield by the side of the Teutonic colonists, and occupied a quarter of their own. I have no evidence to show that these "Irish" were ever in a state of serfdom under the dominant inhabitants, but it is clear that they formed a separate class or caste. ”

“ On the eve of the feast, which is yearly held on the 29th of May, the anniversary of the restoration of our second Charles, parties of the inhabitants repair into the neighbouring country; whence, chiefly however from Walkley-bank, celebrated as Sheffield schoolboys too well know for birch trees, they bring home, at dead of night, or morning's earliest dawn, from sixteen to twenty well-sized trees, besides a profusion of branches. The trees they instantly plant in two rows; one on each side of the street, just within the curbstone of the flagged pavement. ”

“ Gomme quotes the "Statistical Survey of Roscommon" thus: "In many of the ancient corporate towns and boroughs in Ireland, certain quarters are known under the appellation of Irish Town, [6] and were occupied by the so-called 'mere Irish,' in contradistinction to the more favoured inhabitants of a different caste. In walled towns the quarters very commonly stood outside." [7] In Sheffield the lower caste seems to have been settled under the castle walls, and to have extended thence in a northerly and westerly direction towards Shales Moor, or Shale Moor, and towards Scotland street. ”