Ulster Scots

“ The Scots however took little foothold in Cavan and Fermanagh. The emigration of Presbyterians to America in the eighteenth century must have seriously weakened the Scottish element, as that of the 19th century has weakened the Irish. Woodburn holds that 200,000 people left Ulster for America between 1700 and 1760. At the present day if we take religion as the distinctive test we should estimate the Irish element in the six counties at 60 per cent. ”

“ In vain for them authentic history may tell of the ceaseless wanderings of the Gaelic people across the narrow seas. From Ireland the Scots in early times spread over the Hebrides and western Highlands, and carried their settlements and speech over the Lowlands of the Picts and Britons to the very borders of the little English colony of the Lothians, leaving the western and middle Lowlands the most Celtic region in Scotland. Irish folk settled freely in Scotland until the confiscation of Ulster ”

“ CONTENTS
"No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world's history as the Scots have done. No people have a greater right to be proud of their blood."—James Anthony Froude.
SCOTTISH EMIGRATION TO THE AMERICAN COLONIES
Scottish emigration to America came in two streams—one direct from the motherland and the other through the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Those who came by this second route are usually known as "Ulster Scots," or more commonly as "Scotch-Irish," and they have been claimed as Irishmen by Irish writers in the United States. ”

“ Again many Irish-American writers on the Scots Plantation of Ulster have assumed that the Scots settlers were entirely or almost of Gaelic origin, ignoring the fact, if they were aware of it, that the people of the Scottish lowlands were "almost as English in racial derivation as if they had come from the North of England." ”

“ Jeremy Taylor in 1667 describes the Scots and Irish of north-east Ulster as “populus unius labii and unmingled with others.” Over whole districts, where half the population at least were Presbyterian descendants of Scottish immigrants, the speech of the people even in the eighteenth century was Gaelic. For some fourteen centuries indeed common schools of learning, a common literature, common national festivals, maintained the unbroken tradition of unity of race; it was from Ireland, in an Irish translation, [51] that the Bible reached the Highlands. ”

“ For the most part the settlers appear to have been selected from the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, and Dumfries. Emigration from Scotland to Ireland appears to have continued steadily and the English historian Carte estimated, after diligent documentary study, that by 1641 there were in Ulster 100,000 Scots and 20,000 English settlers. In 1656 it was proposed by the Irish government that persons "of the Scottish nation desiring to come into Ireland" should be prohibited from settling in Ulster or County Louth, but the scheme was not put into effect. ”

“ They had won themselves renown as soldiers or traders in nearly all the countries of the Old world, but they had not as yet any colony of their own in the New one. Hitherto these emigrants, though they were called Scots, had been chiefly Saxons from the Lowlands, but in the beginning of this reign bodies of Celts had gone back to the original Scotia, and in Ulster, their old home, they won back settlements from the kindred Celtic race who now looked on them as intruders. But while some of the wanderers thus went back to the old country, others were founding a New Scotland beyond the sea. ”

“ The Isles of Orkney and Shetland and the whole of the Sudreyar or Hebrides, however, owed allegiance, whether their jarls admitted it or not, to the Crown of Norway, and the Scottish kings had no authority over them.40 Moreover, the Northmen—Danes and Norsemen and Gallgaels—held the western seas from the Butt of Lewis to the Isle of Man, and they had severed the connection between the Scots of Ulster and the Scots of Argyll. ”

“ The Scottish philosophy of realism and common sense dominated largely our infant colleges. It swayed the thinking and shaped the conduct of our public men in bar and pulpit. It was translated into action by the leaders of the Revolution.
So long as the Scots were able to hold their own against the tyrannical Stuart kings of England, and even while they were pouring by the tens of thousands into Ulster, making a new272 nation in northern Ireland,—the old land of the Scots,—there were but few emigrants, from Scotland direct, to the Atlantic Coast colonies. ”

“ The English colonies were totally annihilated in the open country of Ulster: the Scots at first met with more favorable treatment. In order to engage them to a passive neutrality, the Irish pretended to distinguish between the British nations; and, claiming friendship and consanguinity with the Scots, extended not over them the fury of their massacres. ”

“ The figures, as given in [ [author: William Henry Hardinge|Hardinge] ] 's printed account of it, show for Munster out of 153,000 inhabitants only 14,000 English and for Leinster only 24,000 out of a total of 155,000. Even in Ulster out of a total of 104,000 the English and Scots combined only numbered 40,600. These figures are perhaps not altogether to be trusted, for it seems impossible to believe that the total population of Ulster in 1659 was so small, and that the total British population was only 86,000 out of a total for the whole island of but little over 500,000. ”

“ But I do desire to assert that, in my humble opinion, it is the Scotch, or alien population of Ireland, which has been at the root of Ireland’s principal troubles throughout the past century. Ulster may be a fine kingdom, the wealthiest, most industrious, and the wisest and happiest in the country, if you like. Yet it is Ulster that bars the way in all matters that make for the real good of Ireland. ”

“ There would be no Ireland at all if it were not for themselves. They rule Ireland. What Ireland wants she may have, if it pleases Ulster. What Ireland does not want she must have, if Ulster so much as nod. That, at any rate, is the view of Ulster, the view of the thrifty, douce Scotch bodies whose fathers got gifts of other people’s lands from James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, and whose sons go up and down and to and fro upon the earth, calling themselves “Irishmen of Scotch descent.” There are no Irishmen of Scotch descent. And Ulstermen are not Irishmen unless their descent be Irish. ”

“ What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland proper consists, then, of the eastern province or Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the western or Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature of its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of its inhabitants, an annex and dependency of Scotland. The three other provinces, on the contrary, form a whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different by the race, genius, the traditions and beliefs of the population. ”

“ But all that mountainous headland is inhabited by folk who still keep the Gaelic speech alive among them, and whose remote forbears owned in far distant times the overlordship of Ireland's most famous champion, when Ulster had a pagan chivalry, the Red Branch Circle, which is to Irish legend what the story of Arthur's knighthood is to British romance, or the tale of the Nibelungs to Germany. ”

“ The emigration of the Scotch and North English who had been in Ulster for a generation or two or at the most for three generations, was due to discontent with their situation there. They had built up an important manufacture of woollens and linens which has ever since been famous throughout the world; but in 1698 the jealousy of rival industrialists in England led to Parliamentary legislation which crippled the industries in Ulster and threw many men out of employment. In 1704 and the following years a religious persecution of these Presbyterians was also carried on. ”

“ Indeed, to those who set out to judge Irish political conditions without troubling themselves about anything more ancient than their own memory can recall, the most fundamental factor of all—the line of cleavage between Ulster and the rest of the island—- is more than unintelligible. ”

“ Relative to Ulster settlement he says: “The settlers were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 300,000 of them in Ulster. The province was a wilderness of bogs and fens; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woolens and linens; ... they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans.”
These extracts are the amusing myths of the Scotch-Irish Society. ”

“ Another influence not less powerful than religion had at the same time come into play. It had become the English policy to place great bodies of English and Scotch settlers on the land that was confiscated in consequence of rebellion, and under the impulse of the strong spirit of adventure which grew up in the generation that followed the Reformation, streams of English and Scotch adventurers poured over. The great settlement of Ulster under James I. proved ultimately a success, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of that province. ”

“ These lands were allotted to private individuals in sections of one thousand, fifteen hundred, and two thousand acres, each being required to support an adequate number of English or Scottish tenantry. Protestant colonies were transplanted from England and Scotland, but chiefly from the latter, with the intent that the principles of the Reformation should subdue the turbulent natives. The proclamation inviting settlers for Ulster was dated at Edinburgh, March 28, 1609. Great care was taken in selecting the emigrants, to which the king gave his personal attention. ”

“ Among chariot-chiefs and champions, among poets and learned men, among the lords and nobles of Ulster, have I been reared, and they have taught me courage and skill and manly gifts. In birth and bravery I am a match for any chariot-chief; I direct the counsels of Ulster, and at my own fort at Dun Dalgan they come to me for entertainment. Not as one of the common herd do I stand before thee here to-day, but as the favourite of the King and the darling of all the warriors of Ulster. ”

“ And at the last the King stood up and cried, “True is the message that the head has brought. Ulster lies bound before her enemies, while we rust here in sleep. By all the gods my nation loves, I swear, unless the stars of heaven shall fall upon our heads, or the strong solid earth give way beneath our feet, I and my chiefs will restore each captive woman to her child [150] and home, each cow to her own meadow, and each stolen piece of land to its own lords, so that in shame with heavy loss the foes of Ulster shall return to their own country.” ”

“ Of Ireland's luck and leave the shamrock broken
Of one green leaf, when four brought joy upon it,
As Ulster lost—from Munster, Leinster, Connacht.
But Ulster lost with each green sod still crying
For those dear dead who left us dreams undying
Of Ireland's needs, O'Neill whose heart took fire
And joined the sacred flames of Hugh Maguire.
Shall we not cry “Lamh Dearg abu” and glory
In Cromwell's fall, in reading Clonmel's story,
Or by the “Yellow Ford” who cheered most loudly
As hand from hand we passed the same flag proudly? ”

“ Give us a kingdom for ourselves and our posterity. It shall be so, said the king. What part of Ireland will you give us? said they. The Ulstermen, said the king, have ever been hostile towards me and towards our fathers. Go and conquer their kingdom, and it shall be yours.
The Collas then went to Connacht, which was still the homeland of the new Tara dynasty, raised an army there, invaded Ulster, were victorious, and captured the Ulster capital. The conquered territory comprised the present counties of Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, and the greater part of Fermanagh and Derry. ”

“ The most important and influential influx of non-English stock into the colonies was the copious stream of Scotch-Irish. Frontier life was not a new experience to these hardy and remarkable people. Ulster, when they migrated thither from Scotland in the early part of the seventeenth century, was a wild moorland, and the Irish were more than unfriendly neighbors. ”

“ The whole country was divided as usual into North and South, or Leth Cuin and Leth Mogh, the latter containing Muimhean and Laighean—Munster and Leinster—each again subdivided into North and South, or Thomond and Desmond, Tuath-Laighean and Deas-gabhar. Ulster and Connaught were the two historical provinces of the north of Ireland, two kingdoms are traceable in legendary Ulster, and after Uladh had ceased to share in the sovereignty of the North, two families, the Dalaraide and Dal-fiatach, long contested the supremacy within the circumscribed boundaries of the province. ”

“ Three-fourths of the people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant fourth sub-divided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many English families have settled here and there through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather English than Irish. ”

“ During the Celtic period of her history we find Scotland exhibiting a distribution of her population in separate districts, which is very analogous to what existed in Ireland at the same period. The latter country appears from a very early period to have been divided into five provinces, and these provinces of Udlah or Ulster, Laighean or Leinster, Mumhan or Munster, and Connacht or Connaught, with Midhe or Meath, were ruled by provincial kings under the Ardri, or supreme king of Ireland, who had his royal seat at Teamhar or Tara in Meath. ”