I know where Ireland is. I know where Scotland is. I know who St. Patrick was (as much as anyone else does at any rate) and why he is held in high regard by the Irish in particular and anyone opposed to tyrannical oppression in general. But…
What is meant by Scotch-Irish?
What is the link between Scots and St. Patrick’s Day festivities? Are they Irish (only bigger)?
“Scotch-Irish” is an Americanism, used to refer to the 18th and 19th century immigrants to America who hailed from (what is now called) Northern Ireland and were Protestants of Scottish ancestry. The term has no currency on this side of the pond.
Some people think St. Patrick was actually born in Scotland, but apart from that he doesn’t really have anything to do with the place.
Wasn’t it Frank Carson who once said “Sure a Scotsman is just an Irishman who can swim”
Scots (Scotch is a drink) and Irish are Celtic, they speak different versions of Gaelic and are (I know cos I lived in Scotland for 20 years) vastly different people - which is strange considering the number of Scots who have Irish ancestry. Also in Ireland the population is “mostly” Catholic, whereas in Scotland it’s “msotly” protestant, not sure what it’s like these days, but when I lived there if you were a Catholic (and all Irish are deemed Catholic by default regardless of their religion) you kept your mouth shut about it … I can’t remember ever seeing a St Patrick’s Day parade when I lived in Scotland.
That was helpful wasn’t it? LOL
Our Irish doper friends have it right, of cuss. King James I of England colonized Ulster with Scottish Presbyterians, known as “Ulster Scots.” Some of their descendants were involved in the opposition to Irish home rule during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the partitioning of Ireland in 1920. Those who moved from Ireland to America came to be called “Scotch-Irish.” I’ve been told that “Scotch” isn’t much used on the other side of the pond except as it pertains to liquor and tape. Some Scotch-Irish people here have taken to calling themselves “Scots-Irish” to avoid irritating the Scottish, but I’m not so sure that’s any less irritating.
Scotland you mean?
Scotland was founded from a territory in the modern west of that country that was settled/founded from Ireland as a satellite of an Irish kingdom in the region of modern day Antrim in Northern Ireland. The state in Ireland was known by the dynastic name of Dal Riata and hence the satellite in Scotland was called Dal Riata/Dalriada as well. Originally it was ruled by a steward ( mormaer ) in the name of the Dal Riata kings, then eventually it broke away to become the independent kingdom of Dalriada. The word ‘Scot’ comes from Scotii, which was the Roman designation for Irish raiders.
The dominant power in Scotland ( called Alba at that time ) was the Pictish kingdom(s) in the modern northeast of Scotland, sometimes unified, sometimes divided between competing northern and southern dynasties, speaking by then a type of Brythonic Celtic language ( with some ancient non-Celtic remnants ). Ultimately they forcibly vassalized the weaker state of Dalriada, though it was always an uneasy relationship. At this point the history gets a bit obscure, but in 858 Kenneth MacAlpin, king of Dalriada/Scotia, became king of the Picts, possibly via a maternal connection to the Pictish dynasty. This was in the period of heavy Viking raiding and it is probable that the ostensibly more powerful Pictish kingdom was either too exhausted to object or else MacAlpin was regarded as a strong leader when such was lacking in Pictland. At any rate the greater importance of the Pictish half of the kingdom is attested to by the fact that the first few Scottish kings are referred to in the annals as rex pictorum ( ‘king of the Picts’ ).
Scotland became largely Galeicized ( though Brythonic speakers persisted in some areas ) until the early 12th century, when Norman influuence at the Scottish court ( King David I, who gained the throne in 1124, was raised in the Anglo-Norman court and married a rich Norman heiress ) led to something of a cultural revolution in the eastern lowlands and southern uplands. Gaelic began a long, slow retreat westwards into the highlands and western isles. Today ( according to a report I just looked up ) it has fallen below just 60,000 native speakers.
So the connections between Ireland and Scotland are quite significant and in fact they go both ways. Gaelic-speaking Scottish mercenaries from the Hebrides and western Highlands became a prominent source of military manpower in medieval Ireland and occasionally were granted or otherwise acquired land and settled to become ‘natives’. For example the various branches of the MacSweeney’s ( MacSuibhne ) in the modern northwest of Ireland or the MacDonnell’s ( MacDonald/MacDomhnail ) in Antrim in the northeast.
A lot of Scotch-Irish immigrants settled in western Pennsylvania. The term arose because in the bad old days, the Presbyterian Irish, descendents of those Ulster Scots, and the Catholic Irish did not wish to be confused for one another. It was a bit of a sore point. My grandfather had a varied ethnic background, but he identified as an Irish Catholic. Pap told me how his father was Scots (he said Scotch) and Irish, but he was always careful to point out that he was notScotch-Irish.
In Western Scotland, religion is a COMPLEX issue. In Glasgow, most things are divided along a crude Protestant/Catholic divide - schooling certainly is, but by by the ‘choice’ of the parents, and housing also. The obvious cliched-yet-relevant example is the Old Firm football rivalry - Celtic supporters adorn themselves with Irish flags, and Rangers with Union Flags.
Certainly you keep quiet about your opinions when making everyday conversation, but that’s a societal necessity otherwise everyone would be arguing the whole time.
In answer to the OP, I suspect the Americanism “Scotch-Irish” refers to somebody of physically-Scottish background, but with strong Irish ancestory.
there has always been a certain amount of population movement between Ulster and Lowland Scotland (just about visible across the Irish Sea at its nearest point on a clear day) and the Protestant-Catholic tribal warfare of Ulster has transferred, in a milder form, to Glasgow (where it usually takes the form of the intermittent Celtic v. Rangers soccer clashes)
Well exactly. Unless we’re talking about the original migrants, who may, or may not call, themselves Scotch-Irish, there are no longer any such persons.
All the rest are American.
To expand on Tamerlane’s history of Scotland:
The formation of Scotland was a complex affair. Basically for centuries there were four different groups competing among themselves in the area:The Picts, the Scots (i.e. the Dalriadans/Godolic Celts), the British (i.e. the Brythonic Celts) and the Anglo-Saxons (i.e. Germanic tribes), adding to these four groups, late in the day arrived the Vikings (i.e. Norsemen).
The British and Anglo Saxon groups were by no means in any way united among themselves and if two kingdoms belonged to the same group it made very little differnce to whther or not they went to war . The principle British kingdoms in the area were Strathclyde, Gododdin and Rheged and the pinciple Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms were Bernicia and Northrumbia. Rheged (which fractured into a Northern and Southern kingdom)and Northumbria had their main territorial bases in what later became Northern England, but at various times had territory in what became Scotland (this is especially true of the Northumbrians). These two groupings dominated the lowlands of what became Scotland (which includes modern Scotland’s capital Edinburgh which then known as Dunedin and was the captial of Gododdin before falling to Northumbria) fighting among themselves for control of this area. The Kingdoms of Rheged and Gododdin eventualy fell, mainly due to the efforts of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms leaving the ‘borders’ a Germanic stronghold and cleaving the remaining British Caledonian territory into two. Strathclyde (whose territory was mainly based in what became Scotland and whichincluded the city founded by St. Mungo which went onto to become Scotlands most populace city: Glasgow)was genreally speaking the strongest of the British kingdoms in what became Scotland still fully independent until several decades after Kenneth MacAplin founded the Kingdom of Scotland and not fully subsumed into the kingdom until 1018.
The Picts and the Scots dominated the geographically larger highlands, again not necessarily united among their groupings with Pictland at various times being split into North and South kingdoms and various sub-kingdoms and Dalriada at times divided into warring septs. The Scots settled in Great Britian in the same manner that the Anglo-Saxons and later the Vikings, initially as raiders, before settling down and consolidating territory. The kingdom of Dalriada started life ironically in Ulster, then strecthing across the Irish sea and taking in mid-west Scotland and the neraby Irelands, before it lost it’s orginal territoral base in Ireland. Militarily throughout this period of competing kingdoms the Picts dominated (as well as dominating the Scots, they later managed to dominate Strathclyde and halted the adavance of the Anglo-Saxons) managing to completely overrun Dalriada twice reducing it to their overlordship. However Scots culture managed to do what Dalriada could not and despite the fact that at the time it was the Picts who ruled the Scots, completely supplanted Pictish culture. This was primarily due to evangelisation of the Picts which was carried out by among others Irish monks, also playing a role was undoubted Irish immigration into western Pictland (Atholl). Kenneth MacAplin (who was actually not the first Scot to rule the Picts, all of them gaining control partly via the same method of strategic marriage), in the ninth century frimly united the two kingdoms into a single kingdom in the ninth century.
In the century preceding the founding of the Kingdom of Scotland, a new foce appeared on the scene - the Vikings. They did not have a significant role to play at this stage (though later, IIRC, interstingly the first King of England to get the King of Scotland to pay homage to him was none other than the Viking Cnut the Great (most famous for veinly commanding the tide to go out to illustrate the temporal limits of kingly power), but what they did do was to take control of the outer isles.
Finally, set up, getting onto the OP: St. Patrick may well of been born in Scotland before being taken as a slave by Irish raiders, also another connection is that St. Patrick was in correspondance with the King of Strathclyde. Apart from that I cannot think of many other connections with Scotland (though I imagine that the descendants of the large numbers of Irish people who moved to Scotlands’s largets city Galsgow during the potato famine may celebrate St. Patrick’s day). Though one thing, why would St. Patrick in particular be held in high regard by anyone opposed to tyrannical oppression?
What, you can’t be both? An Irish man and woman give birth to a child in the U.S., and the child can’t call himself Irish? A Latino born here can’t validly call himself a Mexican?
[Hijack] Actualy, I believe, according to Irish Citizenship laws, the kid IS Irish irrespective of birthplace…why won’t these worms get back into this little can…[/Hijack]
To be eligible for Irish citizenship, you must be either born in Ireland or born to an Ireland-born parent…in my case, I have an Irish mother so I have an Irish passport and Irish citizenship, but a child born with an English mother would have no such claim.
Sorry…"…a child born WITH ME and an english mother…"
Actually, you’re eligible for Irish citizenship if you have an Irish born grandparent.
[Highjack of a highjack]Irish dopers , whats need to gain entry into Eire or NI papers wise if I want to come over with out a passport. As I was born in Belfast , would just the birth certificate do ?[/Highjack of a highjack]
Declan
Um, a Canadian passport should be enough to get you into Ireland. The birth certificate on its own will do you no good whatsoever.
[continuing hijack]BTW, none of this “Éire or NI” stuff please. Éire is simply the Irish word for Ireland. If you wouldn’t say “Ireland or NI” (and why would you?) there’s no reason to say “Éire or NI”.[/hijack]
Almost - also having to have an Irish parent:
“If you were born outside Ireland to an Irish citizen who was himself or herself born outside Ireland, and any of your grandparents was born in Ireland, then you are entitled to become an Irish citizen, and can do so by having your birth registered in the Foreign Births Register maintained by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.”
Well, that’s redundant. If you have an Irish born grandparent, you have an Irish citizen parent. Because the child of the Irish born grandparent would automatically be an Irish citizen.