Ulster Scots

Ulster Scots - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scots, mainly Gaelic-speaking, had been settling in Ulster since the 15th ... Scots in Ulster has been influenced by contact with Hiberno-English, Mid Ulster ...
en.wikipedia.org

Ulster Scots people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ulster-Scots are largely descended from Galloway, Ayrshire, and the Scottish ... Ulster-Scots emigrated in significant numbers to the United States and all ...
en.wikipedia.org

About the Ulster-Scots
Ulster Scots is a term used primarily in the United Kingdom and Ireland. ... the Scots who migrated to the northern province of Ireland (Ulster) beginning about 1605. ...
www.ulsterscotssociety.com

The Scots-Irish : The Thirteenth Tribe - Ulster Ancestry (Scots)
Only in North America, where the term Scots Irish invented. ... During the wars the Ulster Scots had played a full part, assisting, amongst ...
www.ulsterancestry.com

Ulster-Scots Society of America
Ulster-Scots Society of America, The Ulster Scots Society of America is a non-profit non-sectarian non- political volunteer organization dedicated to the awareness ...
www.ulsterscotssociety.com

The Ulster Scots - Free Genealogy Pages on Ulster Ancestry.Com [ Page 2 ...
... time went on, the majority of the settlers of the Ulster Plantation were Scots. ... The English Civil War placed the Scots in Ulster in a difficult situation. ...
www.ulsterancestry.com

Irish
Page 2: The Lowland Scots Migrate To Ireland. Page 3: The Ulster Plantation ... Page 5: The Ulster-Scots In Pennsylvania. Map Of The Provinces And Counties Of Ireland ...
www.motherbedford.com

Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Permission denied in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 12

Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: No such file or directory in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 12

Warning: fopen(/home/templatecore2cache//*cluesnet.com/21/21dbfb3d444e7319fc4810b2f47d8acd72a20952.tc2cache) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 130

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 131

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 132

{{Ethnic group||group=Ulster-Scots|poptime= unknown|popplace= Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, [English language, Ulster Scots language,|rels=Protestantism, Catholicism, [Irish people; English people, Welsh people, Huguenots-->

Ulster-Scots are an ethnic group in Ireland descended from mainly Lowland Scottish people who settled in the Province of Ulster in Ireland, first beginning in large numbers during the 17th century. The Ulster-Scottish identification is found throughout Ulster, especially among Protestants, of partial Scottish descent. Ulster-Scots refer to both the Scottish Presbyterian settlers of the 17th century and the earlier Roman Catholic Scottish settlers such as the Gallowglass. "Scots-Irish" is the usual term for these same people who emigrated to the United States; Scotch-Irish is also used to refer to the same people, and is not to be confused with Irish-Scots, i.e., recent Irish emigrants to Scotland.

Ulster Scots are largely descended from Galloway, Ayrshire, and the Scottish Borders, although some descend from further north in the Scottish lowlands and the Highlands as well. Although many would see them as Irish in respect of both their Gaelic and Irish origins, as some Ulster-Scots do, some others may eschew being labeled Irish, to distinguish their identity from that of the Republic of Ireland. The Ulster-Scots emigrated to the United States and all corners of the then-worldwide British Empire: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and to a lesser extent, Argentina and Chile in South America.

History .(see: History of Scotland#The Glorious Revolution and Plantations of Ireland)

Although population movement to and from the north-east of Ireland and the west of Scotland had been on-going since pre-historic times, a concentrated migration of Scots to Ulster occurred mainly during the 17th century and 18th century centuries. Prior to that the major Scottish settlement in the northern part of Ireland was composed of Gallowglass mercenary clans from the Scottish Highlands. The most notable of these were the MacDonalds, who managed to establish themselves in the north of what is now county Antrim over the course of the 16th century.

The first major influx of Lowland Scots into Ulster came in the first two decades of the 17th century. Firstly, starting in 1609, Scots began arriving into state sponsored settlements as part of the Plantation of Ulster. This scheme was intended to confiscate all the lands of the Gaelic Irish nobility in Ulster, as punishment for their rebellion in the Nine Years' War (Ireland), and to settle the province with English and Scottish Protestant colonists. Under this scheme, a substantial number of Scots were settled, mostly in the south and west of Ulster, on confiscated land.

At the same time, there was an independent Scottish settlement in the east of the province, which had not been affected by the terms of the plantation. In east County Down and Antrim, Scottish migration was led by Sir James Hamilton and Sir Hugh Montgomery, two Ayrshire lairds. This started in May 1606 and was followed in 1610.

During the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the native Irish gentry attempted to expel the English people and Scottish settlers, resulting in severe inter-communal violence, massacres and ultimately leading to the death of around 4,000 settlers over the winter of 1641-42 Jane Kenyon, Jane Ohlmeyer, The Civil Wars, A military History of England, Scotland and Ireland 1638-1660, p.74 . The memory of these traumatic episode poisoned the relationship between the Scottish and English settlers and native Irish almost irreparably.

The Ulster-Scottish population in Ireland was further augmented during the subsequent Irish Confederate Wars, when a Scottish Covenanter army was landed in the province to protect the settlers from native Irish forces. After the war was over, many of the of their soldiers settled permanently in eastern Ulster Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, p. 562. The war itself, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, ended in the 1650s, with the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, in which Oliver Cromwell re-conquered Ireland, defeating the Irish Catholic forces on behalf of the English Commonwealth. This outcome meant that the Plantations, which had been destroyed by the rebellion of 1641 were restored. Under the Act of Settlement 1652, all Catholic owned land was confiscated. However due to the Scots' enmity to the English Parliament in the final stages of the English Civil War, English settlers rather than Scots were the main beneficiary of this scheme.

There was a generation of calm in Ireland thereafter until another civil war broke out, again on ethnic and religious lines, in 1689. Williamite war in Ireland (1689-91) was fought between Jacobites who supported the restoration of the Catholic James II to the throne of England and Williamites, who supported the Protestant William of Orange. The Protestant Ulster community, including the Scots, fought on the Williamite side in the war against Irish Catholics and their French allies. The fear of a repeat of the massacres of 1641 and of religious persecution under a Catholic monarch, as well as a wish to hold onto lands that had been confiscated from Catholic landowners were their principle motivating factors.

The Williamite forces, composed of British, Dutch and Danish as well as Ulster troops, ended Jacobite resistance by 1691, confirming the Protestant monopoly on pwer in Ireland. Their victories at siege of Derry, battle of the Boyne and battle of Aughrim are still commemorated by the Orange Order today, because the Irish Protestant mythos maintains they had saved their community from annihilation or exile at the hands of the Jacobites.

Finally, another major influx of Scots into northern Ireland happened in the later 1690s, when tens of thousands of people fled a famine in Scotland to come to Ulster .

It was only after the 1690s that Scottish settlers and their descendants, the majority of whom were Presbyterian, became the majority in the province. Along with Catholic Irish, they were legally disadvantaged by the Penal Laws, which gave full rights only to Anglicans, who were mainly the Protestant Ascendancy. For this reason, up until the 19th century, and despite their common fear of the dispossessed Catholic Irish, there was considerable disharmony between the Presbyterians and the Protestant Ascendancy of Ulster.

With the enforcement of Anne of Great Britain 1703 Test Act, which caused further discrimination against non-Anglicans, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots migrated to the North American colonies throughout the 18th century.

Towards the end of the 18th century many Ulster-Scots Presbyterians joined the United Irishmen and participated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

In the United States Census of 2000, 4.3 million Americans (1.5% of the population of the United States) claimed Scots-Irish American ancestry, the author Jim Webb suggests estimates that the true number of people with some Scotch-Irish heritage in the USA is more in the region of 27 million. Two possible reasons have been suggested for the disparity of the figures of the census and the estimation. Modern Americans with some Scots-Irish heritage may quite often regard themselves as simply having either Irish ancestry (which 10.8% of Americans reported) or Scottish ancestry (reported by 4.9 million or 1.7% of the total population).

In general, while the Scots-Irish in the United States were largely Protestant, most other Irish immigrants were Catholic. The Scots-Irish ability to more easily intermarry with other ethnicities who shared their faith, in a nation where the majority were also Protestant, may have resulted in a greater loss of ethnic identity. In contrast, Irish Catholics had a more limited pool of marriage choices and often chose to marry within their ethnic group to maintain their faith, particularly in urban areas where Irish Catholic neighborhoods would concentrate populations and facilitate matches. In addition, Irish Catholics in the United States were constantly being augmented by a Irish diaspora from the middle of the 19th century until the end of the 20th century, which served to steadily re-invigorate the cultural memory of the Irish Catholics already there. No such regular immigration for Scots-Irish occurred after the 18th century.

Culture Because of the large scale intermingling of the Ulster Scots population with both its native Scotland and acquired Irish, it is difficult to define distinct aspects of Ulster Scots that would distinguish it from either. An example of this being that the Ulster Scots Agency itself points to many of its cultural icons as being from either the Scottish highlands or from Ireland.

Music In music, there is a distinguishable line between the cultures of the native Irish and the Ulster-Scots living in Ireland. In Ireland the traditional music is focused around the 'pub-session'. This is a regular meeting, often weekly, and is marked by informal arrangement of both musicians and audience, although, Irish traditional music is one of the most influential types of music known to the modern world, and can be heard in some of the Ulster Scots music. Protestant Scottish traditional music is usually informal and close-knit. The most obvious example of this type of cultural event is the marching bands. Here a formal and organised structure is more obvious. Although they play less frequently, these bands meet regularly in community halls to tune their skills. The strong Scottish roots of the Ulster Scots musical scene is evidenced by the continuing popularity during the Marching Season.

Lambeg Drum One of the real icons of Protestant Marching bands in Northern Ireland is the Lambeg Drum. While most of the other musical instruments are shared between the Ulster-Scots and the native Irish the Lambeg offers the chance of distinguishing the Protestant Marching Bands.

The Drum has a distinctive sound, with the 'tunes' played on it based on Irish hornpipes style.Although its precise origins are unknown one popular myth is that it is named after the town of Lambeg in County Antrim.

Intermingling and intermarriage in Ulster A question that has been raised by many historians about the Ulster-Scots is the question of intermingling and more importantly, intermarriage between the native Irish and the incoming Scots.

However others contest such claims. Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, author of the book Hidden Ulster, Protestants and the Irish language, states that many of the settlers came from Gaelic speaking areas in Scotland and thus would have culturally meshed well with their new neighbours. Also he states that church records show that by 1716 close to ten percent of ministers in Ulster preached in Irish. He claims that such cultural and geographic affinity would have produced numerous conversions and also marriages. In addition James G. Leyburn, author of The Scotch-Irish: A social history, quotes James Reid, a historian of the Irish Presbyterian Church in 1853, that when the marriage ban was lifted in 1610 that it was a "great joy to all parties". James Woodburn, in his book, The Ulster-Scot: His history and Religion, states that the Scots and Irish "commonly intermarried". The Handbook to the Ulster Question states how the English politicians were quite perturbed how the Scots were ready enough to intermarry with the Irish. Each of these authors have shown sufficient evidence in their claims.

There is a growing ethnic consciousness of Ulster Scot or Scotch-Irish ancestry in Australia, the Falklands Islands, New Zealand and South Africa, where both Scottish and Irish settlement took place in the expansion of British rule in these areas. Despite their descendants, if they knew their Ulster-Scot ancestry, were somewhat incorrectly identified simply as "Irish", "Scottish" or "British" for a long period of time, although it should be noted that in America the Ulster emigrants usually called themselves "Irish" or "Scotch-Irish".

See also

Anglo-Irish
British Americans
History of Northern Ireland
History of Scotland
Immigration to the United States
Plantation of Ulster
Scots-Irish American
Ulster
Ulster Scots language
Unionism (Ireland)
Ulster loyalism
William III of England
Ulster Covenant
Irish Republican Army
Republic of Ireland
Society of United Irishmen

References "Hidden Ulster, Protestants and the Irish language" by Padraigh O'Snodaigh, Lagan Press, Belfast (1995) "The Scotch-Irish, A social history" by James G. Leyburn, University of North Carolina Press, (1962)

External links

BBC Ulster-Scots Voices
The Scot in Ulster: Sketch of the History of the Scottish Population in Ulster (by John Harrison, 1888)
ElectricScotland.com Ulster-Scots
Ulster-Scots Online
The Institute of Ulster-Scots Studies
The Ulster-Scots Society of America
Ulster-Scots Agency
Inconvenient Peripheries Ethnic Identity and the United Kingdom Estate The cases of “Protestant Ulster” and Cornwall’ by prof Philip Payton
Hidden Ulster, Protestants and the Irish language.
Ulster History timeline, Seige of Londonderry Database, Scotch Irish Migration and surname lists

Home Page of the Ulster-Scots Agency
Responsible for promoting and developing the Ulster-Scots language and culture. Includes audio files, event listings and competitions.

Ulster-Scots Agency
Ulster-Scots Contacts. Listed below are a number of Ulster-Scots Groups. Click on any letter below to view the Groups (they are categorised alphabetically).

Ulster-Scots Online
Ulster-Scots news, history, culture and heritage.

Ulster-Scots Online
Ulster-Scots history, culture and heritage ... Forum Topics Posts Last Post ; Ulster-Scots / Scotch-Irish : Language For the discussion of the Ulster-Scots / Scots language.

University of Ulster: Institute of Ulster Scots Studies
You are here: Home

University of Ulster: Institute of Ulster Scots Studies
News/Conference. Atlantic Arc Network Event sponsored by the Institute of Ulster Studies (IUSS), University of Ulster. Ulster American Heritage Symposium

Ulster Scots eXperience

University of Ulster Library - Ulster Scots Resources at Magee Library
Library Services: The Library: Site Map: Library Catalogue: Module Resource Lists

University of Ulster Online
Launch of 'An Anthology of Ulster-Scots Writing', edited by Dr Frank Ferguson & supported by the IUSS. This is the 1st major collection to chart the impact of Scottish influences ...

Gallery :: Ulster Scots Board Aberfoyle House 18 Feb 2006
Ulster Scots Board Aberfoyle House 18 Feb 2006