Scots-Irish

[Blackrose87]

Many (most?) Ulster Unionists and Ulster Scots describe themselves as Irish and a large proportion of Nationalists do not currently favour a united Ireland. Lots of people here have two passports, me included.
John

Sorry, what's a united Ireland got to do with this discussion?
I cant see where Nationalist politics were mentioned previously. I apologise if I mentioned such politics, but I don't think I did, as I have tried to remain with the forum rules. I understand it is hard to avoid politic labelswhen describing different communities in the north of Ireland , as they are often the easiest to use. But nowhere have I went into my views on the current political situation there, and I would be grateful if you did not either. I would prefer if this thread wasn't closed by the moderators, so please don't bring your political views into this discussion.

Anyway, yes most Ulster-Scots describe themselves as Irish, with Scottish ancestry. Hence the term Ulster-Scot.

[John_Carrick]

I didn't express any views other than observe that identities are complicated and can be paradoxical here.
I will absent myself from your thread.

[Blackrose87]

I didn't express any views other than observe that identities are complicated and can be paradoxical here.
I will absent myself from your thread.

Sorry, reading over my post, it comes off a bit harsh there. Didn't mean it that way, its just that I have found when our politics are discussed, things tend to become heated quite quickly and I wouldn't want the thread to be derailed.
I don't agree with your statement that most nationalists don't want the reunification of Ireland, but I think that's probably best discussed elsewhere.

[John_Carrick]

I shall dig out some opinion poll data and send it privately when I get a chance. It is interesting but agree this is not the place for it.
John

[MacLowlife]

Back to phenotypes for a moment. It might be useful to note that the population of much of the deep south (Va, NC, SC, Ga, Alabama?) remained very stable for a long time.

That is partially true, at least. While families sent second sons and/or went west to Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, etc., many white southerners have remained where they were "planted" for hundreds of years. (The migration of black Americans and Native Americans from the south is a long and different story, but that is not the group we are discussing.) As Jim and David and others have observed, some of this is myth and some is highlighting the (currently) favored ethnic group. And I know before I say so that there are many exceptions, but from the mid 19th century up until WWII, the population of most Southern states had come from the British Isles and pretty much stayed there. (or Africa or Huguenot France...) Sure, many small towns have Greek grocers or restauranteurs (or their grandchildren who are lawyers and doctors,) and there are Jewish communities older than the liberty bell in Savannah and Charleston, but the typical white southerner's physiognomy is completely devoid of slavic or nordic or mediterranean features. That is, when my father went to Ireland in 1985, all he had to do was to put on the flat cap he'd brought with him to blend in with the locals. And a friend's father went to the Shetland Isles (or the Hebrides) and reported the same thing.

Untangling the genealogy a little, I find Swiss Hugeuenots, French Huguenots, Derbyshire English, Anglo Irish from Dundalk, and yes, Scots from East Lothian, all crowding my family tree. Those are the easy-to-identify ones. They all either blend or assimilate into that Southern American type known as Scotch/Scots Irish. By comparison, I have a lady friend who grew up in Buffalo, New York. She has Irish Catholic ancestors on all sides. And she and her siblings live In SC as part of the great Post WWII change, but they do not really look like South Caroliinians of a generation or two ago- and neither do my friends who came here from Poland in the late 50s, or Cuba, or God Save Us, New York City.

So maybe the locals at Knocktopher could spot my father as a Yank, and maybe his small stature wasn't quite enough to let him pass as one of Kilkenny's own, and maybe the locals in the Shetlands know their neighbors well enough to spot a stranger, no matter how familiar his cheekbones, but they all looked like our cousins in the pictures.

[Bugbear]

MacLowlife, I don't have the resources and such to untangle my family's mythology, which happens to keep changing every time I ask a question; a branch of the family is supposed to have lived for a very long time in the area of the South being discussed. I don't know if it is true. The latest debacle is, as I said before, over the term"-Dutch"… I don't know who I am, genetically, anymore; not that I really ever knew…

I looked over T.M. Devine's discussion of colonial Ulster Scots in, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010, (Smithsonian/Penguin, 2011) from chapter 8, "Settlers, Traders and Native Peoples."

He gives a few primary examples of what was being said about Ulster Scots by other colonists, and it's not too pretty. It seems they were shunned off toward the frontiers as buffers. I suspect Devine goes a little too easy on the Quakers treatment of them, which was much the same as the other colonies. Kind of seems like they didn't get along with anyone, at least in Devine's account. This was leading up to the Seven Years War or French and Indian War.

[Blackrose87]

I can't see if anyone answered this before, but has there been any preservation of the Ulster-Scots traditions in their descendants? If they tended not to move around much, or mix with any other ethinicities, then did they retain thier cultural identities?

For example, is Ulster-Scots spoken to any degree among the community today?

[Dale-of-Cedars]

One set of my great-grandparents came to Canada from Glasgow, the others came from Montreal-landed Irish. So I've always thought of my own background as Scots-Irish, regardless of what other definitions that descriptor may have.

[Blackrose87]

One set of my great-grandparents came to Canada from Glasgow, the others came from Montreal-landed Irish. So I've always thought of my own background as Scots-Irish, regardless of what other definitions that descriptor may have.

It seems that a lot of North Americans use the term for your situation rather than its historical meaning.
Although can I ask, if your ancestors from Glasgow instead came from, say Paris, would you describe yourself as French-Irish?

[MacLowlife]

MacBug,

I have not read Devine, but Fischer calls them the Borderers because they were stuck between the "civilized" people and their (Native American) enemies- buffers, indeed.

I understand your frustration with the "Dutch" Problem. The exception to my harangue above was an area in central SC settled by German-Lutherans, called the Dutch Fork- Dutch as in DEUTSCHE.

Blackrose, I do not think you will find people speaking Ulster Scots, per se, but I am willing to bet there will be words or phrases that are cognates in local usage. There are other practices that probably would cause an ethnologist to nod his or her head- barbecuing pork seems to be popular in the same places that are thick with Macs in the phone book. Various meat products ( sausage, liver pudding, etc) are recalled by haggis. Corn grits have replaced oats, but might be considered a cognate food as well. Fischer's book (1989) treats four groups. The borderers are just one and it is difficult to sort out his specific ideas on the Scots-Irish from his more general ideas on the regional persistence of folk ways in a few minutes. The book runs over 700 pages, but he discusses naming conventions, food preparation, educational customs, etc. One quick point comes to hand- Charles Wodmason ( See Matt's article) observes that the backcountry people only ate two meals, instead of three. Sharpshooting is also cited as a regionally favored activity and also as an indication of a regional tendency towards outdoor sport in general.

There is a radio program on my public radio station called THE THISTLE AND THE SHAMROCK, originally produced in North Carolina, but now produced in Scotland, I think, by Fiona Richey, celebrating the Celtic origins of Appalachian music.

Oh, and we all go to a place called McDonald's.