Ulster-Scots
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"Ulster-Scots" is a term used to refer to the descendants of Lowland Presbyterian Scottish people who live in Ulster, Ireland. "Scotch-Irish" or increasingly "Scots-Irish" are terms used by most in North America to refer to the same people and in particular their descendants who migrated across the Atlantic. (See Scotch-Irish American.)
The migration of Scots to Ulster occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries (as detailed in the articles History of Scotland and Plantations of Ireland). The first major influx of Scots into Ulster came during the Plantation of Ulster in 1610, when the native Irish landowners were dispossessed en masse and the province settled with English and Scottish "Planters". The Scottish population in Ulster was further augmented during the Irish Confederate Wars, when a Scottish Covenanter army was landed in the province to protect the Scottish settlers from the native Irish Catholic forces. After the war was over, many of the soldiers settled permanently in Ulster. Finally, another major influx of Scots into northern Ireland happened in the 1690s, when tens of thousands of people fled a famine in Scotland to come to Ulster. With each influx, more of the native Irish were dispossessed and forced onto poor land, or to other regions of Ireland. After this point, Scots and their descendants, who were identified primarily by their Presbyterian religion, became the majority in the province. However, along with Roman Catholics, they were legally disadvantaged by the Penal Laws, which gave full rights only to Anglicans, who were mainly the descendants of English settlers. For this reason, up until the 19th century, and despite their common fear of the dispossessed Catholics, there was considerable disharmony between the Ulster-Scots and the Ulster-English population of Ulster. In 1798, many Ulster-Scots joined the United Irishmen and participated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 to "break the connection with England" and found an Irish Republic.
With the enforcement of Queen Anne's 1703 Test Act in Ulster, which caused further discrimination against non-Anglicans, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots migrated to the North American colonies throughout the 18th century (250,000 settled in the USA between 1717 and 1770 alone). Disdaining the heavily English regions on the Atlantic coast, most groups of Ulster-Scot settlers crossed into the "western mountains", where their descendants populated the southern Appalachian regions and the Ohio Valley. Others settled in northern New England and north-central Nova Scotia.
The linguist R. J. Gregg has also used the term "Scotch-Irish" to refer to the contact variety of the Scots language spoken in Ulster, which many linguists now refer to as "Ulster Scots" and activists as Ullans.
See also
- British Americans
- Immigration to the United States
- History of Northern Ireland
- History of Scotland
- Plantation of Ulster
- Ulster
- Ulster Scots language
External links
- BBC Ulster-Scots Voices (http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/learning/voices/ulsterscots/)
- ElectricScotland.com Ulster-Scots (http://www.electricscotland.com/history/ulster_scots/)
- Ulster-Scots Online (http://www.ulser-scots.co.uk/)
- Scotch-Irish.net (http://www.scotchirish.net/)
- The Institute of Ulster-Scots Studies (http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/ulsterscots/)
- The Ulster-Scots Society of America (http://www.ulsterscotssociety.com/)
- Ulster-Scots Agency (http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com)