Boston Public Library - Electric Scotland

10 THE SCOTCH-IBISH—WHO WERE THEY?
The Scotch-Irish were people of Scottish lineage who
dwelt upon Irish soil.
The locality about Coleraine, Aghadowey, and Crocken-
dolge, and in fact in many places in the province of Ulster,
Ireland, is inhabited by people almost wholly of Scotch origin.
They are the " Scotch-Irish," i. e., Scotch people living upon
or born upon Irish soil, but not mixed with the native people.
Their ancestors, some of them, came to Ireland nearly two
hundred and fifty years ago. They came in a body, they
kept in a body, and they remain in a body, or class by themselves,
largely to-day. The Scotch are called clannish, and
ivere clannish ; and the Scotch who settled in Ireland, and
their descendants, were clannish. They stuck together, and
kept aloof from the native Celtic-Irish. They were sundered
by the sharp dividing lines of religious faith and by keen
differences of race.
Macaulay says : " They sprang from different stocks. They
spoke different languages. They had different national characters,
as strongly opposed as any two national characters in
Europe. They were in widely different stages of civilization.
Between two such populations there could be little
sympathy, and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated
a strong antipathy. The relation in which the minority
stood to the majority resembled the relation in which the
followers of William the Conqueror stood to the Saxon
churls, or the relation in which the followers of Cortez stood
to the Indians of Mexico. The appellation of Irish was then
given exclusively to the Celts, and to those families which,
though not of Celtic origin, had in the course of ages degenerated
into Celtic manners. These people, probably about a
million in number, had, with few exceptions, adhered to the
Church of Rome. Among them resided about two hundred
thousand colonists, proud of their Saxon blood and of their
Protestant faith."!
And again, in speaking of the early Scotch and English
settlers, he says :
" One half of the settlers belonged to the
Established Church and the other half were Dissenters. But
in Ireland Scot and Southron were strongly bound together
by their common Saxon origin ;
Churchman and Presbyterian
were strongly bound together by their common Protestantism.
All the colonists had a common language and a common
pecuniar}' interest. They were surrounded by common enemies,
and could be safe only by means of common precautions
and exertions." ^
1
Macaulay' s History of England.