Volume 13 , Issue 11

The Scotch-Irish: The Thirteenth Tribe

The term Scotch-Irish in Britain is virtually unknown. Only the Protestant communities of Northern Ireland would generally recognize what is meant, though few would accept the designation for themselves, preferring to be described as British or Ulstermen. It was in NOrth America, where the term was invented, that one would be likely to encounter an immediate recognition. many of the descendants of the original Scots-Irish settlers would happily wear kilts and tartan on commemorative days, though this would have been a shock to their ancestors, who took particular trouble to distance themselves from all things Celtic and Gaelic. In 1603, the same month that James VI of Scotland began james I of England and Ireland, the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, chiefs of the O'Neills and the O'Donnells, the leading families of the ancient province of Ulster, surrender to the English.

The Nine Years War, the latest in a long line of struggles to arrest the steady expansion of English power in Ireland. It was in Ulster that Celtic Ireland had made its last stand against a foreign invader, all the more unwelcome because he now came garbed in a cloak of militant Protestantism, a direct challenge to an ancient Catholic tradition. It was a bitter struggle, and Ulster had been devastated.

The Ulster Presbyterians had endured-and survived-past waves of religious discrimination, and would most likely have continued to thrive in the face of official hostility.

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