Boston Public Library - Electric Scotland

CHAPTEK II.
THE SCOTCH-IRISH—WHO WERE THEY?1
Many centuries had passed in the building of the Scottish
as in the building of the English nation ; in each, different
peoples helped to make the completed nation, and in blood
they were substantially the same. The blending of these
races in Scotland, and the sharp stamping of religious and
political ideas, had developed and made the Scotch race a
distinctive and sharply defined people ; in their intellectual,
mental, and moral characteristics different from all others a
century before, and as we find them at the time of their set-
tlement in the Emerald Isle. Thus they have still remained
since their settlement in Ireland. They were Scotch in all
their characteristics, though dwelling upon Irish soil. This
fact has given rise to the supposition by some and the assertion
by others— to whom the wish was father to the statement—
that in the veins of the Scotch-Irish flowed com-
the blood of the stalwart Scotch and the blood of
mingled
the Celtic-Irish. Never was mistake greater.
Hon. Charles H. Bell, ex-governor of New Hampshire, in
his eloquent address at the celebration of the one hundred
and fiftieth anniversarv of the settlement of the Londonderry
(N. H.) Colony, in 1869, said of the term " Scotch-Irish " :
" It is not inappropriate, as descriptive of their origin and
prior abode, though it has given rise to not a little misapprehension.
It has been supposed by some WTiters that the
name denotes a mixed nationality of Scotch and Irish descent;
and in order to adapt the facts to their theory, they have
fancied that they could detect in the Londonderry settlers
tbe traits derived from each ancestry. But history fails to
bear out the ingenious hypothesis ; for it is certain that there
was no mixture of blood in the little band who cast their
fortunes here ; they were of Scottish lineage, pure and sim-
ple."
»From Among the Scotch-Irish; and A Tour in Seven Countries, with
History of Dinsmoor Family, by Leonard Allison Morrison, A. M. Published
1891: Damrell, Upham & Co., Boston, Mass.