Playlist of over 70 videos relating to Scots-Irish / Ulster-Scots on YouTube...

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Forged In Ulster's YouTube playlist of over 70 videos relating to Scots-Irish / Ulster-Scots on . History, music & culture from Ulster, America & beyond.

Stephen Colbert: The Scots-Irish are not Irish!

In an interview with author Nell Irving Painter, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert puts his opinion across albeit with tongue planted firmly in cheek:

“Scots-Irish are not Irish. There’s no Irish blood in Scots-Irish people.  They are Scots Presbyterians who were given land in Ireland. They took our land, and drove my people across the River Shannon, where we were forced to farm rocks by Oliver Cromwell, and I will see him rot in hell before you call Scots-Irish people Irish!”

Stephen Tyrone Colbert is of Irish Catholic heritage. He grew up in South Carolina, his wife is of Scots-Irish heritage. He once quipped; "I am in a mixed-race marriage. I’m Irish, and my wife is Scots-Irish. Somehow we make it work.”

So was Stephen's tongue in cheek statment correct?... I guess it all depends on your point of view. Certainly the early Scots-Irish families that settled in colonial America had only lived in Ireland for a couple of generations before moving on, and still today in Northern Ireland many Ulster-Scots don't regard themselves as Irish.... But, Scots have been migrating to-and-fro between Ulster and south western Scotland for thousands of years. In fact the first human settlers in Ulster were from the land now known as Scotland so these people of northern Britain were indigenous to Ulster. The inhabitants of both lands shared the same ancestors. The Y-DNA gene pattern called M222, the so called 'Niall of the Nine Hostages' marker is most common in Northern Ireland and Lowland Scotland. It can be found in many Ulster-Scots and is proof of the close genetic similarities of the people of  Ulster and the Lowlands of Scotland.

Many of the early Scots-Irish / Ulster-Scots settlers in America did indeed regard themselves as Irish. Having been born in Ireland their nationality was certainly Irish even though they were ethnically & culturally Scottish. These Scots-Irish even created the tradition of St. Patrick's day parades in America. This was in a time before the emergence of Irish Nationalism deemed  that one had to be a Catholic and a Gael to be considered Irish.

So were the Scots-Irish actually Irish? Well, what do you mean by Irish? Are you talking nationality? ethnicity? culture? citizenship? In my opinion it's all down to interpretation. Of the many ethnic groups, tribes or cultures which have existed on the island of Ireland over the millennia, not one has exclusivity on the term 'Irish'.

Border Reivers; The ancestors of many Ulster Scots

Anyone who lives in Ulster will be very familiar with surnames such as Armstrong, Irving, Murray, Kerr, Maxwell, Johnstone, Carruthers, Potts, Elliott, Burns, Douglas, Bell, Crozier, Scott & Graham. These are all Border Reiver family names.

Many Ulster-Scots (Scots-Irish) are descended from these Border Reivers;  lawless clans from the border between Scotland & England, where a lifestyle of raiding and marauding was the only way to survive. They started off as subsistence farmers but owing to their geographical position they were frequently harassed by passing armies who, at the very least, would require provisioning, often without payment,  but who were more often hell bent on destroying everything before them and causing as much damage and misery as they could. Crops were destroyed, homesteads burnt and the people murdered or dispersed.

It is no coincidence that these people, having had their crops regularly destroyed and their livestock stolen, looked for other means of sustaining themselves and their families... They took to reiving.

Raiding parties in battle

a short excerpt from Born Fighting on the Reivers 

For over 400 years between the 13th & 17th centuries, warring families from both sides of the lawless border valleys would carry out deadly raids on each other. These skilled warrior horsemen would live a life of looting, arson, murder & rustling.  The life of the Border Reiver was not necessarily ruled by his allegiance to the English or Scottish Crowns, but more likely by his allegiance to a family surname. The history of the Border Reivers has many similarities to that of  the American Wild West. It produced its share of outlaws and broken men, corrupt officials, greed, misery and struggle for survival.

Reiver map of the Scottish - English border

Reiver re-enactors

In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. He immediately set about unifying the two countries and started by bringing the Reivers under control. Many Reiver families were faced with the choice of hanging or accept exile across the Irish sea to the wild badlands of Ulster as part of James' Plantation project to bring the Irish natives under control.

ballads of the Border Reivers

In Ulster the Border Reiver family names were found in particularly concentrated numbers in county Fermanagh. Are you descended from the Border Reivers? Have a look a this list of the major family names from the Border Reivers website.

The antiquity of the Scots In Ulster

A lot of people like to make the point that the Scottish are in fact ancestrally Irish, which is only partly true. They are usually referring of course to the Scoti, a Latin name given by the Romans to describe Irish raiders, who would loot & plunder parts of northern Britain in the 4th century before later going on to carve out the kingdom of Dalriada. Of course there was already a large population of  indigenous Picts & Britons living in Caledonia (Scotland) long before the arrival of the Scoti. The kingdom of Dalriada and the greater Highlands area has always been sparsely populated and the vast majority of the Scottish people have always lived in the Lowlands. If the Scoti were indeed Irish settlers/invaders of the western Highlands (some academics now doubt this) then it's estimated there would have been only a few thousand souls that settled there during that time.  Today the population of the entire Highlands is less than 5% of the total population of Scotland, even though it covers a third of the country's land mass. In fact there is a lot more traceable Ulster genetic heritage in the Lowlands than there is in the Highlands. So while a portion of Scotland's population overall is undoubtedly descended from the Irish, the majority isn't. 

Ulster-Scottish kingdom of Dalriada

Going in the opposite direction, there has always been migration of people from Scotland to Ulster, stretching back to Mesolithic period when the first humans permanently settled in Ireland. Long before the Plantations, before the Hamilton & Montgomery settlement, before the Gallowglass (the Antrim Scots), the Scots had influence in Ulster.

In the summer of 637, the Battle Of Moira was reputed to be the largest battle ever fought on the island of Ireland. King Congal of Ulster and his allies from Dalriada mustered an army of Ulstermen, Cruthin, Scots, Picts & Anglo Saxons (Sassenachs) to fight against the High King of Ireland, Domnall II. The defeat & death of Congal  led to the loss of Ulaid & Dalriada territory to the Ui'Neills and the retreat of many Ulstermen/Cruthin to Scotland. The Cruthin people of Ulster were referred to by the Gaels as Picts. The Irish word Cruithne meaning that they believed the Cruthin originated in Pritani (or Qritani in Goidelic), which was Britain, most likely from modern day Scotland. Perhaps they had originally spoke the same ancient form of the Brythonic (British) celtic language as the Scottish Picts. Noted historian professor T. F. O'Rahilly said of the Cruthin, that they were "the earliest inhabitants of these islands to whom a name can be assigned".

Battle of Moira, Co. Down 673 A.D.

Even before the Ulster-Scottish kingdom of Dalriada and even before the Cruthin  there were 'Scots' (or rather people originating from northern Britain) in Ulster. One of the earliest known human settlements in Ireland is in Mountsandel, Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It's believed these Mesolithic peoples came here from Scotland, first settling in Co Antrim some 9000 years ago.  It is thought they were attracted to the coast of Co. Antrim in the search for flint, which they would have known was to be found in the limestone cliffs they could see distantly glinting in the sun from  the coast of modern day Scotland. Flint was a rare and valuable commodity in northern Britain. These were amongst Ireland's first people. They would have been descendants of Iberian migrants who first settled southern England and over the course of many generations, as the Ice Age receded, moved up through Britain and finally over to Ireland, maybe via a seasonal land-bridge connecting south west Scotland to the Antrim coast. The ancient stone Court Cairn tombs of the British Isles, built around 6000 years ago in the Neolithic period are most highly concentrated in South west Scotland & North East Ireland. This is proof of a common culture and shared beliefs between Scotland and Ulster going back into the midsts of time.

Mountsandel (1) and other prehistoric sites

artists impression of a Court Cairn tomb

So it is perhaps more accurate to say that the Irish are descended from the people of (what is now called) Scotland. We are indigenous peoples of this land and the migration between Ulster & Scotland has been constant throughout the millennia. Ireland, Scotland and the rest of Britain share the same ancient race of ancestors at their core. For anyone to say the Scots are foreigners in Ulster is plainly wrong and  i would suggest they take a long look back into the depths of Irish history!