While I’m inclined to call upon everyone to just let the whole thing rest, period, I can’t resist first pointing out what (to me, at least) is a very pertinent detail in this turn of the discussion: that the hefty majority of slaveowners in the American South were, to be specific, Scots Irish. It’s personal to me, because in this discussion it’s really not enough to just say “Irish”. Ask any Irishman of any stripe; the distinction has its weight, and I think it’s fair to apply it here. I certainly apply it. Of course apologists will argue that such statistics are simply an accident of overwhelming regional demographics - but the fact remains, and it’s a fact driven home to me all too often for my comfort. It’s nice that I’m able to console myself that my own Scots Irish forebears had no part in that deplorable practice, but in terms of the bigger picture, that’s as far as it goes, isn’t it. And in the smaller picture, I’m still branded even if only by association. You can trust me on that one, because I’ve had it pointed out to me more than once. But enough of that. Suffice it to say there should be no mystery whatsoever as to why modern African Americans should so often have surnames of Gaelic origin; those names are a direct inheritance from the very people who kept Africans as property, and thus the names continued on. That’s history staring us in the face, folks. There’s at least one documented case of one plantation’s African slaves having no English at all: they spoke Scots Gaelic instead. But you can bet your boots the owner spoke at least enough English to do business, and very likely much more than that. On a practical level it makes sense; if you want an even tighter rein on your property, isolate them through language.
Now since this seems to be quickly slipping into an unfortunate mess, maybe we should stop to ponder the better lessons available to us in this thread, and return if we can to the musical end of things.
Now since this seems to be quickly slipping into an unfortunate mess, maybe we should stop to ponder the better lessons available to us in this thread, and return if we can to the musical end of things.
Interesting. I’ve just PM’d Nano. Sorry for any further digression, but I had never come across that term or that distinction before. It turns out - see this Wiki article - that the term is exclusively American and has nothing to do with Irish people, Scottish people or Ireland or Scotland as it is today, or has been for hundreds of years. I wondered why I hadn’t come across it. I’m convinced that my Irish friends in particular would be most perplexed by it.
Not as far as I can see. It seems to be a different thing. It’s certainly a different phrase, and one which appears to have originated in the States. I think the Ulster Scots thing, whilst coming from the same basic historical origin, is something different.
First, I originally posted this as what I saw as an amusing mash-up of two differing musical styles (and besides, it’s all Torrin Riáin’s fault anyway), not to instigate clashes on human rights, copy-right infringement, or socio-economic interactions between Scots, Irish, and/or Americans. Apologies for opening those worm-cans.
I don’t really fancy spending more time or energy on this but FWIW, Wiki says:
The Ulster Scots (Ulster-Scots: Ulstèr-Scotch), also called Ulster-Scots people (Ulstèr-Scotch fowk[2]) or, outside the British Isles, Scots-Irish (Scotch-Airisch[3]),
And you know, everything and anything here is a potential can of worms.
In US history (what I do for a living) “scots-irish” or “Scotch Irish” is taken to mean Protestants who left Scotland, settled in ireland, and then left Ireland for the US.
The Scotch-Irish get a bit of a black eye–there’s a famous book that argues that the peaceful, tolerant quakers who initially settled philadelphia (my home town) were displaced by the more rapacious scotch-irish, who right away started abrogating treaties with the indians (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CFBSQC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). The Scotch-Irish here in the US are said to have settled mostly in Appalachia; people who do the history of the US south are often concerned with the tension between upcountry (hillbillies, few slaves) and Low Country (rhett and scarlett, large plantations etc.). Slavery wasn’t viable in the mountains, and by the time the Scotch Irish came here most of the low country land, suitable for plantation agriculture, had been claimed. Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom is wonderful on this.
Where I grew up, outside philly, you could find welsh place names like Gwynedd and North Wales and there were still numerous Quaker meeting houses and towns with Quaker names (Plymouth Meeting) and then a sharp line were the names were all german. My high school was full of Aldefers, Diffendurfers, Schwenkfelders, Shankweilers, Krups, Kriebles, Kratzes.
My favorite moment of any class is calling the roll. In the US it’s like a mini review of world history. If I’m teaching the history of Vietnam I’m likely to have people whose grandparents fled in 1972 and people whose families came well after the war. At the local Vietnamese commercial center, they still fly the flag of South Vietnam.
We are going to Ireland on Tuesday–my late father in law is being inducted into the “Irish American hall of fame” at the emigration and Famine museum in New Ross. I have to “say a few words” on his behalf and am trying to cope with the way the history of immigration is both local and familial and also epic and world-historical
Since we’re still on the topic, yes: Scots Irish = Ulster Scots. Sorry about any confusion; I was unaware that this might be a solely US term; here it’s the commonplace name for Americans of Ulster Scots ancestry. It is incorrect (and uninformed, but that’s why I’m here to help ) to suggest that one has nothing to do with the other; ethnically, they are exactly one and the same. Unfortunately in the States these terms can be freighted with political implications even beyond those one might find across the Pond (notice I said “can be”, not “are”); here, “Scots Irish” tends to be favored as a relatively neutral, anthropological term, whereas “Ulster Scots” - a perfectly good term in its own right - has instead two primary applications: in reference to the ethnicity’s Irish population in contrast to its US population (should the distinction need to be made, although most of the time we tend not to), or - unfortunately - where the identity has been hijacked by certain unsavory fringe groups in the name of White Supremacy, as a political stance of festering the Troubles (in America, of all places), or both, if you might want a more encompassing bigotry. Of course not all apply it to such ends - far from it - but given that more regrettable development, when speaking as an American to Americans I reflexively lean away from using “Ulster Scots” self-referentially lest I be mistaken for what I am not, and even then it doesn’t always succeed; and more generally, “Scots Irish” is simply just a timeworn habit of my language as well. Fat lot of good all that did me on an international forum, eh?
Part of that black eye was well deserved.
If they were born in Ireland they were listed
as Irish. Once the famine Irish were shipped
to the U.S. the tune changed.
From wikiworld:
“Upon arrival in North America, these migrants at first usually identified simply as Irish, without the qualifier Scotch. It was not until a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that the descendants of the earlier arrivals began to commonly call themselves Scotch-Irish to distinguish themselves from the newer, predominantly Catholic and poor immigrants; these largely had no Scottish ancestry.”
) to suggest that one has nothing to do with the other; ethnically, they are exactly one and the same. Unfortunately in the States these terms can be freighted with political implications even beyond those one might find across the Pond (notice I said “can be”, not “are”); here, “Scots Irish” tends to be favored as a relatively neutral, anthropological term, whereas “Ulster Scots” - a perfectly good term in its own right - has instead two primary applications: in reference to the ethnicity’s Irish population in contrast to its US population (should the distinction need to be made, although most of the time we tend not to), or - unfortunately - where the identity has been hijacked by certain unsavory fringe groups in the name of White Supremacy, as a political stance of festering the Troubles (in America, of all places), or both, if you might want a more encompassing bigotry. Of course not all apply it to such ends - far from it - but given that more regrettable development, when speaking as an American to Americans I reflexively lean away from using “Ulster Scots” self-referentially lest I be mistaken for what I am not, and even then it doesn’t always succeed; and more generally, “Scots Irish” is simply just a timeworn habit of my language as well. Fat lot of good all that did me on an international forum, eh?