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One example would be my McSweeney ancestors who apparently left Ireland for Scotland very early and stayed there for generations as Scots before being sent packing back to Ireland because they supported the English at Bannockburn. They were then landless gallowglasses until they were able to gain possession of some land and gain some position in Ireland. They are not remembered fondly in Scotland and those that remained use a different name.
One example would be my McSweeney ancestors who apparently left Ireland for Scotland very early and stayed there for generations as Scots before being sent packing back to Ireland because they supported the English at Bannockburn. They were then landless gallowglasses until they were able to gain possession of some land and gain some position in Ireland. They are not remembered fondly in Scotland and those that remained use a different name.
That post of mine was about that old joke where an American woman meets an Irishman and asks if he has any Scotch (Scots) in him and he replies, " Not yet."
One example would be my McSweeney ancestors who apparently left Ireland for Scotland very early and stayed there for generations as Scots before being sent packing back to Ireland because they supported the English at Bannockburn. They were then landless gallowglasses until they were able to gain possession of some land and gain some position in Ireland. They are not remembered fondly in Scotland and those that remained use a different name.
How did you get so much information about your ancestors ?
It is not so easy to separate Irish from Scots. A group of Irish from NE of Ulster, the Dal Riada, extended their kingdom in Ireland across to western Scotland, and this is presumed to have introduced Gaelic culture into the land of the Picts. In later times the Irish provincial kings and clan heads began importing mercenaries from Scotland, usually called by the general term galloglasses.
Thus, sorting out who is Irish and who is "Scots"-Irish is not a simple matter of sorting by religion, or whether a family was imported from Scotland as part of the Plantation of Ulster. Some of these imported colonists probably have as much Irish DNA as the people they displaced.
My mother's paternal family had the rather bland name of Woods, but they were married to the McGee/McGhees. My grt grt grandparents in this line arrived in Canada about 1852 and settled in Hastings Co., Ont. They came from Tievenny townland near Strabane, and according to their family tradition they came as they were tired of the "exactions" of their landlord. The husband died in sight of land or maybe even on land, leaving his wife, a Mary McGee to carry on with resettling the family. Her family claimed to be of Irish origin originally, to have moved to Scotland, and despite being quietly Catholic managed through finagling with one Hamilton high and mighty or the other to get included in one of the Plantation of Ulster scheme. The second generation in Irish - supposedly - converted to Presbyterianism.
The Scots-Irish reproduced their life in Ireland (minus the landlords) in Ontario - Prebyterian churches of their own, a thriving anti-Catholic Orange Order, stick-to-your-own-kind marriage for several generations. Eventually, I have read, they achieved very strong political influence in the province and became a virtual political machine. Every male in my grt grandfather's generation in the family belonged to the Orange Order in Ontario and held an office of one sort or another, and this carried down to my grandfather's generation, though he came to the U.S. in his youth and when he returned to Canada he went out to Saskatchewan instead of back to Ontario.
Certainly the Ontario that I saw in the 1950's was straitjacketed with Blue Laws of all sorts, which was said to be a heritage of their influence in the government.
A DNA study comparing Scots, Scots- Irish and Catholic Irish from Ulster would be interesting....perhaps it has already been done.
A personal footnote: My mother's father was, of course, brought up in the Orange anti-Catholic tradition, and even though he eventually raised his family in western NY state, that influence was not discarded. When my mother met my Irish Catholic descended father, he needed his mother's permission to marry because of his age - my mother did not. So, armed with his permission they sneaked off and were married in secret by a Presbyterian minister...as a token appeasement to offer her father when the day would come that he would have to be told. However, this would have leveled my father's entire family with cardiac arrest, so they shut their mouths and had the Roman Catholic wedding about ten days latter for which my father's mother had thought she was giving her permission. So, the religious and ethnic tangle that is Irish history was literally and truly given to me in the sperm and the egg.
One example would be my McSweeney ancestors who apparently left Ireland for Scotland very early and stayed there for generations as Scots before being sent packing back to Ireland because they supported the English at Bannockburn. They were then landless gallowglasses until they were able to gain possession of some land and gain some position in Ireland. They are not remembered fondly in Scotland and those that remained use a different name.
This is another example of the type of back-and-forth that I was referring to in my first posting. Interesting about the McSweeneys being Galloglasses. I have read in the past that some galloglasses were strong enough that they were able to put the pinch on their Irish employers to fork over some of their clans' lands for them to settle on. Perhaps they were among these.
Someone should enlighten the Americans its Scots Irish not scotCH Irish lmfao
Historically, both forms have been used, but 'Scots' has become the preferred form on both sides of the Atlantic. I could see how someone who does a lot of historical research might get used to 'Scotch' since that spelling crops up so often in older scholarship.
At any rate, I defer to the saying, "Scotch refers to whiskey and eggs."
Historically Scotch-Irish was used exclusively. The idea that Scotch is incorrect when referring to nationality is a fairly new thing. Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, used the word. Also, in his travel writings he referred to himself as English and to the world power as England rather than Great Britain or the United Kingdom, which must infuriate modern Scottish nationalists.
Someone should enlighten the Americans its Scots Irish not scotCH Irish lmfao
I am pretty sure "Scotch-Irish" was the original term, while "Scots-Irish" is a more recent one.
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