Scotch-Irish Americans

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Total population
Scotch-Irish 3,538,444[1] 1.2% of the US population
Regions with significant populations
Southern United States, Western United States, Appalachia
Languages
American English, especially Southern Appalachian and South Midland or Highland Southern dialects of Southern American English
Religion
Predominantly Protestant (Dissenter), Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist
Related ethnic groups
British Americans (Scottish Americans, Cornish Americans, English Americans, Welsh Americans), Irish Americans Ulster Scots, Irish, Scottish, English

Scotch-Irish (or Scots-Irish) Americans are the descendants of Presbyterian and other Protestant dissenters from the Irish province of Ulster who immigrated to North America.^[2] Most of the Scotch-Irish were descended from Scottish and English families who colonized Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century.^[3] While an estimated 36 million Americans (12% of the total population) reported Irish ancestry in 2006, and 6 million (2% of the population) reported Scottish ancestry,^[4] an additional 5.4 million (1.8% of the population) identified more specifically with Scotch-Irish ancestry. People in Great Britain or Ireland that are of a similar ancestry usually refer to themselves as Ulster Scots, with the term Scotch-Irish used only in North America.^[5]

Terminology[link]

The term Scotch-Irish is first known to have been used to refer to people living in north-eastern Ireland. In a letter of April 14, 1573 in reference to Ulster, Elizabeth I of England stated, "We are given to understand that a nobleman named 'Sorley Boy' [MacDonnel] and others, who be of the Scotch-Irish race”^[6]. This term continued in usage for over a century^[7] before the earliest known American reference appeared in a Maryland affidavit in 1689/90.^[8]

Today, Scotch-Irish is an Americanism almost unknown in England, Ireland or Scotland.^[5] The term is somewhat unclear because some of the Scotch-Irish had little or no Scottish ancestry at all, as dissenter families had also been transplanted to Ulster from northern England, Wales and the London area, and some from Flanders, the German Palatinate, and France (such as the French Huguenot ancestors of Davy Crockett).^[9] What united these different national groups was their common Calvinist beliefs,^[10] and their separation from the established church (Church of England and Church of Ireland in this case). Nevertheless, a large Scottish element in the Plantation of Ulster gave the settlements a Scottish character.

Upon arrival in America, the Scotch-Irish at first usually referred to themselves 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 them from the newer, largely destitute and predominantly Roman Catholic immigrants.^[11] The two groups had little interaction in America, as the Scotch-Irish had become settled years earlier primarily in the Appalachian region, while the new wave of Irish American families settled primarily in northern and midwestern port cities such as Boston, New York, or Chicago. However, many Irish migrated to the interior in the 19th century to work on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals and railroads.^[12]

The usage Scots-Irish is a relatively recent version of the term. Two early citations include: 1) "a grave, elderly man of the race known in America as " Scots-Irish" (1870)^[13]; and 2) "Dr. Cochran was of stately presence, of fair and florid complexion, features which testified his Scots-Irish descent" (1884)^[14]

English author Kingsley Amis endorsed the traditional Scotch-Irish usage implicitly in noting that "nobody talks about butterscottish or hopscots,...or Scottish pine", and that while Scots or Scottish is how people of Scots origin refer to themselves in Scotland itself, the traditional English usage Scotch continues to be appropriate in "compounds and set phrases".^[15]

In the Ulster-Scots dialect (or "Ullans"), the Scotch-Irish are referred to as the Scotch Airish (o' Amerikey).^[16]

Migration[link]

From 1710 to 1775, over 200,000 people emigrated from Ulster to the original thirteen American colonies. The largest numbers went to Pennsylvania. From that base some went south into Virginia, the Carolinas and across the South, with a large concentration in the Appalachian region; others headed west to western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and the Midwest.^[17]

Transatlantic flows were halted by the American Revolution, but resumed after 1783, with total of 100,000 arriving in America between 1783 and 1812. By that point few were young servants and more were mature craftsmen and they settled in industrial centers, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York, where many became skilled workers, foremen and entrepreneurs as the Industrial Revolution took off in the U.S. Another half million came to American 1815 to 1845; another 900,000 came in 1851-99. From 1900 to 1930 the average was about 5,000 to 10,000 a year. Relatively few came after 1930. At every stage a majority were Presbyterians, and that religion decisively shaped Scotch-Irish culture.^[18]

According to the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, there were 400,000 U.S. residents of Irish birth or ancestry in 1790 and half of this group was descended from Ulster, and half from the other three provinces of Ireland.^[19]

A separate migration brought many to Canada, where they are most numerous in rural Ontario.

Origins[link]

Because of the close proximity of the islands of Britain and Ireland, migrations in both directions had been occurring since Ireland was first settled after the retreat of the ice sheets. Gaels from Ireland colonised current South-West Scotland as part of the Kingdom of Dál Riata, eventually replacing the native Pictish culture throughout Scotland. These Gaels had previously been named Scoti by the Romans, and eventually the name was applied to the entire Kingdom of Scotland.

The origins of the Scotch-Irish lie primarily in the Lowlands of Scotland and in northern England, particularly in the Border Country on either side of the Anglo-Scottish border, a region that had seen centuries of conflict.^[20] In the near constant state of war between England and Scotland during the Middle Ages, the livelihood of the people on the borders was devastated by the contending armies. Even when the countries were not at war, tension remained high, and royal authority in one or the other kingdom was often weak. The uncertainty of existence led the people of the borders to seek security through a system of family ties, similar to the clan system in the Scottish Highlands. Known as the Border Reivers, these families relied on their own strength and cunning to survive, and a culture of cattle raiding and thievery developed.^[21]

Map of the entire island of Ireland. The counties are indicated by thin black lines, the traditional Province of Ulster by bright green, and the modern territory of Northern Ireland indicated by a heavy black border across the island that separates six of the traditional Ulster counties from the other three.

Scotland and England became unified under a single monarch with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI, King of Scots, succeeded Elizabeth I as ruler of England. In addition to the unstable border region, James also inherited Elizabeth's conflicts in Ireland. Following the end of the Irish Nine Years' War in 1603, and the Flight of the Earls in 1607, James embarked in 1609 on a systematic plantation of English and Scottish Protestant settlers to Ireland's northern province of Ulster.^[22] The Plantation of Ulster was seen as a way to relocate the Border Reiver families to Ireland to bring peace to the Anglo-Scottish border country, and also to provide fighting men who could suppress the native Irish in Ireland.^[23]

The first major influx of Scots and English into Ulster had come in 1606 during the settlement of east Down onto land cleared of native Irish by private landlords chartered by James.^[24] This process was accelerated with James's official plantation in 1609, and further augmented during the subsequent Irish Confederate Wars. The first of the Stuart Kingdoms to collapse into civil war was Ireland where, prompted in part by the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Covenanters, Irish Catholics launched a rebellion in October. In reaction to the proposal by Charles I and Thomas Wentworth to raise an army manned by Irish Catholics to put down the Covenanter movement in Scotland, the Parliament of Scotland had threatened to invade Ireland in order to achieve "the extirpation of Popery out of Ireland" (according to the interpretation of Richard Bellings, a leading Irish politician of the time). The fear this caused in Ireland unleashed a wave of massacres against Protestant English and Scottish settlers, mostly in Ulster, once the rebellion had broken out. All sides displayed extreme cruelty in this phase of the war. Around 4000 settlers were massacred and a further 12,000 may have died of privation after being driven from their homes.^[25][26] In one notorious incident, the Protestant inhabitants of Portadown were taken captive and then massacred on the bridge in the town.^[27] The settlers responded in kind, as did the British-controlled government in Dublin, with attacks on the Irish civilian population. Massacres of native civilians occurred at Rathlin Island and elsewhere.^[28] In early 1642, the Covenanters sent an army to Ulster to defend the Scottish settlers there from the Irish rebels who had attacked them after the outbreak of the rebellion. The original intention of the Scottish army was to re-conquer Ireland, but due to logistical and supply problems, it was never in a position to advance far beyond its base in eastern Ulster. The Covenanter force remained in Ireland until the end of the civil wars but was confined to its garrison around Carrickfergus after its defeat by the native Ulster Army at the Battle of Benburb in 1646. After the war was over, many of the soldiers settled permanently in Ulster. Another major influx of Scots into Ulster occurred in the 1690s, when tens of thousands of people fled a famine in Scotland to come to Ireland.

Just a few generations after arriving in Ireland, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots emigrated to the North American colonies of Great Britain throughout the 18th century (between 1717 and 1770 alone, about 250,000 settled in what would become the United States).^[29] According to Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1988), Protestants were one-third the population of Ireland, but three-quarters of all emigrants leaving from 1700 to 1776; 70% of these Protestants were Presbyterians. Other factors contributing to the mass exodus of Ulster Scots to America during the 18th century were a series of droughts and rising rents imposed by often absentee English and/or Anglo-Irish landlords.

During the course of the 17th century, the number of settlers belonging to Calvinist dissenting sects, including Scottish and Northumbrian Presbyterians, English Baptists, French and Flemish Huguenots, and German Palatines, became the majority among the Protestant settlers in the province of Ulster. However, the Presbyterians and other dissenters, along with Catholics, were not members of the established church and were consequently legally disadvantaged by the Penal Laws, which gave full rights only to members of the Church of England/Church of Ireland. Those members of the state church were often absentee landlords and the descendants of the British aristocracy who had been given land by the monarchy. For this reason, up until the 19th century, and despite their common fear of the dispossessed Catholic native Irish, there was considerable disharmony between the Presbyterians and the Protestant Ascendancy in Ulster. As a result of this many Ulster-Scots, along with Catholic native Irish, ignored religious differences to join the United Irishmen and participate in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, in support of Age of Enlightenment-inspired egalitarian and republican goals.

American settlement[link]

Scholarly estimate is that over 200,000 Scotch-Irish migrated to the Americas between 1717 and 1775.^[30] As a late arriving group, they found that land in the coastal areas of the British colonies was either already owned or too expensive, so they quickly left for the hill country where land could be had cheaply. Here they lived on the frontiers of America. Early frontier life was extremely challenging, but poverty and hardship were familiar to them. The term hillbilly has often been applied to their descendants in the mountains, carrying connotations of poverty, backwardness and violence; this word having its origins in Scotland and Ireland.

The first trickle of Scotch-Irish settlers arrived in New England. Valued for their fighting prowess as well as for their Protestant dogma, they were invited by Cotton Mather and other leaders to come over to help settle and secure the frontier. In this capacity, many of the first permanent settlements in Maine and New Hampshire, especially after 1718, were Scotch-Irish and many place names as well as the character of Northern New Englanders reflect this fact. The Scotch-Irish brought the potato with them from Ireland (although the potato originated in South America, it was not known in North America until brought over from Europe). In Maine it became a staple crop as well as an economic base.^[31]

From 1717 to the next thirty or so years, the primary points of entry for the Ulster immigrants were Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New Castle, Delaware.^{[citation needed]} The Scotch-Irish radiated westward across the Alleghenies, as well as into Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.^[32] The typical migration involved small networks of related families who settled together, worshipped together, and intermarried, avoiding outsiders.^[33]

Pennsylvania and Virginia[link]

Most Scotch-Irish headed for Pennsylvania, with its good lands, moderate climate, and liberal laws.^{[citation needed]} By 1750, the Scotch-Irish were about a fourth of the population, rising to about a third by the 1770s.^{[citation needed]} Without much cash, they moved to free lands on the frontier, becoming the typical western "squatters", the frontier guard of the colony, and what the historian Frederick Jackson Turner described as "the cutting-edge of the frontier."^[34]

The Scotch-Irish moved up the Delaware River to Bucks County, and then up the Susquehanna and Cumberland valleys, finding flat lands along the rivers and creeks to set up their log cabins, their grist mills, and their Presbyterian churches.^{[citation needed]} Chester, Lancaster, and Dauphin counties became their strongholds, and they built towns such as Chambersburg, Gettysburg, Carlisle, and York; the next generation moved into western Pennsylvania.^[35] With large numbers of children who needed their own inexpensive farms, the Scotch-Irish avoided areas already settled by Germans and Quakers and moved south, down the Shenandoah Valley, and through the Blue Ridge Mountains into Virginia.^{[citation needed]} These migrants followed the Great Wagon Road from Lancaster, through Gettysburg, and down through Staunton, Virginia, to Big Lick (now Roanoke), Virginia. Here the pathway split, with the Wilderness Road taking settlers west into Tennessee and Kentucky, while the main road continued south into the Carolinas.^[36][37]

Conflict with Native Americans[link]

Because the Scotch-Irish settled the frontier of Pennsylvania and western Virginia, they were in the midst of the French and Indian War and Pontiac’s Rebellion that followed.^[38] The Scotch-Irish were frequently in conflict with the Indian tribes who lived on the other side of the frontier; indeed, they did most of the Indian fighting on the American frontier from New Hampshire to the Carolinas.^[39][40] The Irish and Scots also became the middlemen who handled trade and negotiations between the Indian tribes and the colonial governments.^[41]

Especially in Pennsylvania, whose pacifist Quaker leaders had made no provision for a militia, Scotch-Irish settlements were frequently destroyed and the settlers killed, captured or forced to flee after attacks by Native Americans from tribes of the Delaware (Lenape), Shawnee, Seneca, and others of western Pennsylvania and the Ohio country.^{[citation needed]} Indian attacks were taking place within 60 miles of Philadelphia, and in July 1763, the Pennsylvania Assembly authorized a 700-strong militia to be raised, to be used only for defensive actions. Formed into two units of rangers, the Cumberland Boys and the Paxton Boys, the militia soon exceeded their defensive mandate and began offensive forays against Lenape villages in western Pennsylvania.^[42] After attacking Delaware villages in the upper Susquehanna valley, the militia leaders received information, which they believed credible, that “hostile” tribes were receiving weapons and ammunition from the “friendly” tribe of Conestogas settled in Lancaster County, who were under the protection of the Pennsylvania Assembly. On 14 December 1763, about fifty Paxton Boys rode to Conestogatown, near Millersville, PA, and murdered six Conestogas. Governor John Penn placed the remaining fourteen Conestogas in protective custody in the Lancaster workhouse, but the Paxton Boys broke in, killing and mutilating all fourteen on 27 December 1763.^[43] Following this, about 400 backcountry settlers, primarily Scotch-Irish, marched on Philadelphia demanding better military protection for their settlements, and pardons for the Paxton Boys. Benjamin Franklin led the politicians who negotiated a settlement with the Paxton leaders, after which they returned home.^[44]

American Revolution[link]

The United States Declaration of Independence contained fifty-six delegate signatures. Of the signers, eight were of Irish descent.^{[citation needed]} Three signers, Matthew Thornton, George Taylor and James Smith were born in Ulster, the remaining five Irish Americans were the sons or grandsons of Irish immigrants: George Read, Thomas McKean, Thomas Lynch, Jr., Edward Rutledge and Charles Carroll, and at least McKean had Ulster heritage.^{[citation needed]}

The Scotch-Irish were generally ardent supporters of American Independence from Britain in the 1770s. In Pennsylvania, Virginia, and most of the Carolinas, support for the revolution was "practically unanimous."^[36] One Hessian officer said, "Call this war by whatever name you may, only call it not an American rebellion; it is nothing more or less than a Scotch Irish Presbyterian rebellion."^[36] A British major general testified to the House of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland".^[45] Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, with its large Scotch-Irish population, was to make the first declaration for independence from Britain in the Mecklenburg Declaration of 1775.

The Scotch-Irish "Overmountain Men" of Virginia and North Carolina formed a militia which won the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780, resulting in the British abandonment of a southern campaign, and for some historians "marked the turning point of the American Revolution".^[46][47]

Loyalists[link]

One exception to the high level of patriotism was the Waxhaw settlement on the lower Catawba River along the North Carolina-South Carolina boundary, where Loyalism was strong. The area experienced two main settlement periods of Scotch Irish. During the 1750s-1760s, second- and third-generation Scotch Irish Americans moved from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. This particular group had large families, and as a group they produced goods for themselves and for others. They generally were patriots.

Just prior to the Revolution, a second stream of immigrants came directly from Ireland via Charleston. This group was forced to move into an underdeveloped area because they could not afford expensive land. Most of this group remained loyal to the crown or neutral when the war began. Prior to Charles Cornwallis's march into the backcountry in 1780, two-thirds of the men among the Waxhaw settlement had declined to serve in the army. British victory at the Battle of the Waxhaws resulted in anti-British sentiment in a bitterly divided region. While many individuals chose to take up arms against the British, the British themselves forced the people to choose sides.^[48]

Whiskey rebellion[link]

In the 1790s, the new American government assumed the debts the individual states had amassed during the American Revolutionary War, and the Congress placed a tax on whiskey (among other things) to help repay those debts. Large producers were assessed a tax of six cents a gallon. Smaller producers, many of whom were Scottish (often Ulster-Scots) descent and located in the more remote areas, were taxed at a higher rate of nine cents a gallon. These rural settlers were short of cash to begin with, and lacked any practical means to get their grain to market, other than fermenting and distilling it into relatively portable spirits. From Pennsylvania to Georgia, the western counties engaged in a campaign of harassment of the federal tax collectors. "Whiskey Boys" also conducted violent protests in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, and Georgia. This civil disobedience eventually culminated in armed conflict in the Whiskey Rebellion. President George Washington marched at the head of 13,000 soldiers to suppress the insurrection.

Influence on American culture and identity[link]

Author (and U.S. Senator) Jim Webb puts forth a thesis in his book Born Fighting to suggest that the character traits he ascribes to the Scotch-Irish such as loyalty to kin, extreme mistrust of governmental authority and legal strictures, and a propensity to bear arms and to use them, helped shape the American identity. In the same year that Webb's book was released, Barry Vann published his second book entitled Rediscovering the South's Celtic Heritage. Like his earlier book, From Whence They Came (1998), Vann argues that these traits have left their imprint on the Upland South. In 2008, Vann followed up his earlier work with a book entitled In Search of Ulster Scots Land: The Birth and Geotheological Imagings of a Transatlantic People which professes how these traits may manifest themselves in conservative voting patterns and religious affiliation that characterizes the Bible Belt.

Iron and steel industry[link]

The Iron and steel industry developed rapidly after 1830 and became one of the dominant factors in industrial America by the 1860s. Ingham (1978) examined the leadership of the industry in its most important center, Pittsburgh, as well as smaller cities. He concludes that the leadership of the iron and steel industry nationwide was "largely Scotch Irish". Ingham finds that the Scotch Irish held together cohesively throughout the 19th century and "developed their own sense of uniqueness."^[49]

Indeed new immigrants after 1800 made Pittsburgh a major Scotch Irish stronghold. For example, Thomas Mellon (b. Ulster 1813-1908) left Ireland in 1823 and became the founder of the famous Mellon clan, which played a central role in banking and industries such as aluminum and oil. As Barnhisel (2005) finds, industrialists such as James H. Laughlin (b. Ulster 1806-1882) of Jones and Laughlin Steel Company constituted the "Scots-Irish Presbyterian ruling stratum of Pittsburgh society."^[50]

Customs[link]

Archeologists and folklorists have examined the folk culture of the Scotch Irish in terms of material goods—such as housing—as well as speech patterns and folk songs. Much of the research has been done in Appalachia.^[51]

The border origin of the Scotch-Irish is supported by study of the traditional music and folklore of the Appalachian Mountains, settled primarily by the Scotch-Irish in the 18th century. Musicologist Cecil Sharp collected hundreds of folk songs in the region, and observed that the musical tradition of the people "seems to point to the North of England, or to the Lowlands, rather than the Highlands, of Scotland, as the country from which they originally migrated. For the Appalachian tunes...have far more affinity with the normal English folk-tune than with that of the Gaelic-speaking Highlander."^[52] Similarly, elements of mountain folklore trace back to events in the Lowlands of Scotland. As an example, it was recorded in the early 20th century that Appalachian children were frequently warned, "You must be good or Clavers will get you." To the mountain residents, "Clavers" was simply a bogeyman used to keep children in line, yet unknown to them the phrase derives from the 17th century Scotsman John Graham of Claverhouse, called "Bloody Clavers" by the Presbyterian Scottish Lowlanders whose religion he tried to suppress.^[53]

Housing[link]

In terms of the stone houses they built, the 'hall-parlor' floor plan (two rooms per floor with chimneys on both ends), was common among the gentry in Ulster. Scotch Irish immigrants brought it over in the 18th century and it became a common floor plan in Tennessee, Kentucky and elsewhere. Stone houses were difficult to build, and most pioneers relied on simpler log-cabins.^[54]

Quilts[link]

Scotch-Irish quilters in West Virginia developed a unique interpretation of pieced-block quilt construction. Their quilts embody an aesthetic reflecting Scotch-Irish social history - the perennial condition of living on the periphery of mainstream society both geographically and philosophically. Cultural values espousing individual autonomy and self-reliance within a strong kinship structure are related to Scotch-Irish quilting techniques. Prominent features of these quilts include: 1) blocks pieced in a repeating pattern but varied by changing figure-ground relationships and, at times, obscured by the use of same-value colors and adjacent print fabrics, 2) lack of contrasting borders, and 3) unified all over quilting pattern, typically the fans design or rows of concentric arcs.^[55]

Language use[link]

Montgomery (2006) analyzes the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical distinctions of today's residents of the mountain South and traces patterns back to their Scotch Irish ancestors.^[56] However, Crozier (1984) suggests that only a few lexical characteristics survived Scotch-Irish assimilation into American culture.^[57]

Number of Scotch-Irish Americans[link]

Population in 1790[link]

According to The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, by Kory L. Meyerink and Loretto Dennis Szucs, the following were the countries of origin for new arrivals coming to the United States before 1790. The regions marked * were part of, or ruled by, the Kingdom of Great Britain. (The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after 1801) The ancestry of the 3,929,326 million population in 1790 has been estimated by various sources by sampling last names in the 1790 census and assigning them a country of origin. According to the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Thernstrom, S 1980, 'Irish,' p. 528), there were 400,000 Americans of Irish birth or ancestry in 1790; half of these were descended from Ulster, and half were descended from the other provinces of Ireland. The French were mostly Huguenots and French Canadians. The total U.S. Catholic population in 1790 was probably less than 5%,^{[citation needed]} although only 17% of all Americans had any religious affiliation.^{[citation needed]} The Indian population inside territorial U.S. 1790 boundaries was less than 100,000.^{[citation needed]}

Ulster-Scottish Canadians[link]

After the creation of British North America in 1763, Protestant Irish, both Irish Anglicans and Ulster-Scottish Presbyterians, migrated over the decades to Upper Canada, some as United Empire Loyalists or directly from Ulster.

The first significant number of Canadian settlers to arrive from Ireland were Protestants from predominantly Ulster and largely of Scottish descent who settled in the mainly central Nova Scotia in the 1760s. Many came through the efforts of colonizer Alexander McNutt. Some came directly from Ulster whilst others arrived after via New England.

Ulster-Scottish migration to Western Canada has two distinct components, those who came via eastern Canada or the US, and those who came directly from Ireland. Many who came West were fairly well assimilated, in that they spoke English and understood British customs and law, and tended to be regarded as just a part of English Canada. However, this picture was complicated by the religious division. Many of the original "English" Canadian settlers in the Red River Colony were fervent Irish loyalist Protestants, and members of the Orange Order.

In 1806, The Benevolent Irish Society (BIS) was founded as a philanthropic organization in St. John's, Newfoundland. Membership was open to adult residents of Newfoundland who were of Irish birth or ancestry, regardless of religious persuasion. The BIS was founded as a charitable, fraternal, middle-class social organization, on the principles of "benevolence and philanthropy", and had as its original objective to provide the necessary skills which would enable the poor to better themselves. Today the society is still active in Newfoundland and is the oldest philanthropic organization in North America.^{[citation needed]}

In 1877, a breakthrough in Irish Canadian Protestant-Catholic relations occurred in London, Ontario. This was the founding of the Irish Benevolent Society, a brotherhood of Irishmen and women of both Catholic and Protestant faiths. The society promoted Irish Canadian culture, but it was forbidden for members to speak of Irish politics when meeting. This companionship of Irish people of all faiths quickly tore down the walls of sectarianism in Ontario. Today, the Society is still operating.

For years, Prince Edward Island had been divided between Catholics and Protestants. In the latter half of the 20th century, this sectarianism diminished and was ultimately destroyed recently after two events occurred. Firstly, the Catholic and Protestant school boards were merged into one secular institution, and secondly, the practice of electing two MLAs for each provincial riding (one Catholic and one Protestant) was ended.

[edit] History of the term Scotch-Irish

Although referenced by Merriam-Webster dictionaries as having first appeared in 1744, the American term Scotch-Irish is undoubtedly older.

An affidavit of William Patent, dated March 15, 1689, in a case against a Mr. Matthew Scarbrough in Somerset County, Maryland, quotes Mr. Patent as saying he was told by Scarbrough that "...it was no more sin to kill me then to kill a dogg, or any Scotch Irish dogg..."^[61]

Leyburn cites several early American uses of the term.^[62]

• The earliest is a report in June 1695, by Sir Thomas Laurence, Secretary of Maryland, that "In the two counties of Dorchester and Somerset, where the Scotch-Irish are numerous, they clothe themselves by their linen and woolen manufactures."
• In September 1723, Rev. George Ross, Rector of Immanuel Church in New Castle, Delaware, wrote in reference to their anti-Church of England stance that, "They call themselves Scotch-Irish,...and the bitterest railers against the church that ever trod upon American ground."
• Another Church of England clergyman from Lewes, Delaware, commented in 1723 that "...great numbers of Irish (who usually call themselves Scotch-Irish) have transplanted themselves and their families from the north of Ireland."
• During the 1740s, a Marylander was accused of having murdered the sheriff of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, after calling the sheriff and his assistants "damned Scotch-Irish sons of bitches."^[63]

The Oxford English Dictionary says the first use of the term Scotch-Irish came in Pennsylvania in 1744. Its citations are:

• 1744 W. MARSHE Jrnl. 21 June in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. (1801) 1st Ser. VII. 177: 'The inhabitants [of Lancaster, Pa.] are chiefly High-Dutch, Scotch-Irish, some few English families, and unbelieving Israelites."
• 1789 J. MORSE Amer. Geogr. 313: "[The Irish of Pennsylvania] have sometimes been called Scotch-Irish, to denote their double descent."
• 1876 BANCROFT Hist. U.S. IV. iii. 333: "But its convenient proximity to the border counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia had been observed by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and other bold and industrious men."
• 1883 Harper's Mag. Feb. 421/2: "The so-called Scotch-Irish are the descendants of the Englishmen and Lowland Scotch who began to move over to Ulster in 1611."

In Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history), historian David Hackett Fischer asserts:

Some historians describe these immigrants as "Ulster Irish" or "Northern Irish". It is true that many sailed from the province of Ulster... part of much larger flow which drew from the lowlands of Scotland, the north of England, and every side of the Irish Sea. Many scholars call these people Scotch-Irish. That expression is an Americanism, rarely used in Britain and much resented by the people to whom it was attached.

Fischer prefers to speak of "borderers" (referring to the historically war-torn England-Scotland border) as the population ancestral to the "backcountry" "cultural stream" (one of the four major and persistent cultural streams he identifies in American history) and notes the borderers were not purely Celtic but also had substantial Anglo-Saxon and Viking or Scandinavian roots, and were quite different from Celtic-speaking groups like the Scottish Highlanders or Irish (that is, Gaelic-speaking and Roman Catholic).

An example of the use of the term is found in A History of Ulster: "Ulster Presbyterians – known as the 'Scotch Irish' – were already accustomed to being on the move, and clearing and defending their land."^[64]

Other terms used to describe the Scotch-Irish include Northern Irish^{[original research?][dubious – discuss][citation needed]} or Irish Presbyterians.^{[original research?][citation needed]}

While Scotch-Irish is the term most used in scholarship to describe these people, the use of the term can draw ire from both Scots and Irish. To the Scots, the term Scotch is derogatory when referring to a person or people, and should be applied only to whisky. Many Irish have claimed that such a distinction should not be used, and that those called Scotch-Irish are simply Irish.^[5] However, as one scholar observed, "...in this country [USA], where they have been called Scotch-Irish for over two hundred years, it would be absurd to give them a name by which they are not known here... Here their name is Scotch-Irish; let us call them by it." ^[65]

A false myth^{[peacock term]} claims that Queen Elizabeth used the term.^{[citation needed]} Another myth is that Shakespeare used the spelling 'Scotch' as a proper noun, but his only use of the word in any of his writings is as a verb, as in scotching a snake, being scotched, etc.^{[citation needed]}

It was also used to differentiate from either the Anglo-Irish, Irish Catholics, or immigrants who came directly from Scotland.^{[citation needed]}

The word "Scotch" was the favoured adjective as a designation — it literally means "... of Scotland". People in Scotland refer to themselves as Scots, or adjectivally/collectively as Scots or as being Scottish, rather than Scotch.

Geographical distribution[link]

Finding the coast already heavily settled, most groups of settlers from the north of Ireland moved into the "western mountains", where they populated the Appalachian regions and the Ohio Valley. Others settled in northern New England, The Carolinas, Georgia and north-central Nova Scotia.^{[citation needed]}

In the United States Census, 2000, 4.3 million Americans (1.5% of the U.S. population) claimed Scotch-Irish ancestry.^{[citation needed]}

Interestingly, the areas where the most Americans reported themselves in the 2000 Census only as "American" with no further qualification (e.g. Kentucky, north-central Texas, and many other areas in the Southern US; overall 7% of Americans reported "American") are largely the areas where many Scotch-Irish settled, and are in complementary distribution with the areas which most heavily report Scotch-Irish ancestry, though still at a lower rate than "American" (e.g. western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, western Pennsylvania, northern New England, south-central and far northern Texas, westernmost Florida Panhandle, many rural areas in the Northwest); see Maps of American ancestries.^{[original research?]} The author Jim Webb suggests that the true number of people with some Scotch-Irish heritage in the United States is in the region of 27 million.^[66]

Religion[link]

Initially the Scotch-Irish immigrants to North America in the 18th century were defined in part by their Presbyterianism.^[67] Many of the settlers in the Plantation of Ulster had been from dissenting/non-conformist religious groups which professed a strident Calvinism. These included mainly Lowland Scot Presbyterians, but also English Puritans and Quakers, French Huguenots and German Palatines. These Calvinist groups mingled freely in church matters, and religious belief was more important than nationality, as these groups aligned themselves against both their Catholic Irish and Anglican English neighbors.^[68]

After their arrival in the New World, the predominantly Presbyterian Scotch-Irish began to move further into the mountainous back-country of Virginia and the Carolinas. The establishment of many settlements in the remote back-country put a strain on the ability of the Presbyterian Church to meet the new demand for qualified, college-educated clergy. Religious groups such as the Baptists and Methodists had no higher education requirement for their clergy to be ordained, and these groups readily provided ministers to meet the demand of the growing Scotch-Irish settlements.^[69] By about 1810, Baptist and Methodist churches were in the majority, and the descendants of the Scotch-Irish today remain predominantly Baptist or Methodist.^[70] Vann (2007) shows the Scotch-Irish played a major role in defining the Bible Belt in the Upper South in the 18th century. He emphasizes the high educational standards they sought, their 'geotheological thought worlds' brought from the old country, and their political independence that was transferred to frontier religion.^[71]

Princeton[link]

In 1746 the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians created the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University. The mission was training New Light Presbyterian ministers. The College became educational as well as religious capital of Scotch-Irish America. By 1808 loss of confidence in the College within the Presbyterian Church led to the establishment of the separate Princeton Theological Seminary, but for many decades Presbyterian control over the college continued. Meanwhile Princeton Seminary, under the leadership of Charles Hodge, originated a conservative theology that in large part shaped Fundamentalist Protestantism in the 20th century.^[72]

Associate Reformed Church[link]

While the larger Presbyterian Church was a mix of Scotch Irish and Yankees from New England, several smaller Presbyterian groups were composed almost entirely of Scotch Irish, and they display the process of assimilation into the broader American religious culture. Fisk (1968) traces the history of the Associate Reformed Church in the Old Northwest from its formation by a union of Associate and Reformed Presbyterians in 1782 to the merger of this body with the Seceder Scotch Irish bodies to form the United Presbyterian Church in 1858. It became the Associate Reformed Synod of the West and remain centered in the Midwest. It withdrew from the parent body in 1820 because of the drift of the eastern churches toward assimilation into the larger Presbyterian Church with its Yankee traits. The Associate Reformed Synod of the West maintained the characteristics of an immigrant church with Scotch-Irish roots, emphasized the Westminster standards, used only the psalms in public worship, was Sabbatarian, and was strongly abolitionist and anti-Catholic. In the 1850s it exhibited many evidences of assimilation. It showed greater ecumenical interest, greater interest in evangelization of the West and of the cities, and a declining interest in maintaining the unique characteristics of its Scotch-Irish past.^[73]

Notable Americans of Scotch-Irish descent[link]

• List of Scotch-Irish Americans.

American presidents[link]

Many American presidents have ancestral links to Ulster, including three whose parents were born in Ulster.^{[citation needed]} The Irish Protestant vote in the U.S. has not been studied nearly as much as have the Catholic Irish. (On the Catholic vote see Irish Americans).^{[citation needed]} In the 1820s and 1830s, supporters of Andrew Jackson emphasized his Irish background, as did James Knox Polk, but since the 1840s it has been uncommon for a Protestant politician in America to be identified as Irish, but rather as 'Scotch-Irish'.^{[original research?]} In Canada, by contrast, Irish Protestants remained a cohesive political force well into the 20th century, identified with the then Conservative Party of Canada and especially with the Orange Institution, although this is less evident in today's politics. More than one-third of all U.S. Presidents had substantial ancestral origins in the northern province of Ireland (Ulster). President Bill Clinton spoke proudly of that fact, and his own ancestral links with the province, during his two visits to Ulster. Like most US citizens, most US presidents are the result of a "melting pot" of ancestral origins.

Clinton is one of at least seventeen Chief Executives descended from emigrants to the United States from Ulster. While many of the Presidents have typically Ulster-Scots surnames – Jackson, Johnson, McKinley, Wilson – others, such as Roosevelt and Cleveland, have links which are less obvious.

Andrew Jackson

7th President, 1829-37: He was born in the predominantly Ulster-Scots Waxhaws area of South Carolina two years after his parents left Boneybefore, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim. A heritage centre in the village pays tribute to the legacy of 'Old Hickory', the People's President. Andrew Jackson then moved to Tennessee, where he served as Governor.

James Knox Polk

11th President, 1845-49: His ancestors were among the first Ulster-Scots settlers, emigrating from Coleraine in 1680 to become a powerful political family in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He moved to Tennessee and became its governor before winning the presidency.

James Buchanan

15th President, 1857-61: Born in a log cabin (which has been relocated to his old school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania), 'Old Buck' cherished his origins: "My Ulster blood is a priceless heritage". The Buchanans were originally from Deroran, near Omagh in County Tyrone where the ancestral home still stands.

Andrew Johnson

17th President, 1865-69: His grandfather left Mounthill, near Larne in County Antrim around 1750 and settled in North Carolina. Andrew worked there as a tailor and ran a successful business in Greeneville, Tennessee, before being elected Vice-President. He became President following Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

Ulysses S. Grant^[74]

18th President, 1869-77: The home of his maternal great-grandfather, John Simpson, at Dergenagh, County Tyrone, is the location for an exhibition on the eventful life of the victorious Civil War commander who served two terms as President. Grant visited his ancestral homeland in 1878. The home of John Simpson still stands in County Tyrone.^[75]

Chester A. Arthur

21st President, 1881-85: His succession to the Presidency after the death of Garfield was the start of a quarter-century in which the White House was occupied by men of Ulster-Scots origins. His family left Dreen, near Cullybackey, County Antrim, in 1815. There is now an interpretive centre, alongside the Arthur Ancestral Home, devoted to his life and times.

Grover Cleveland

22nd and 24th President, 1885-89 and 1893-97: Born in New Jersey, he was the maternal grandson of merchant Abner Neal, who emigrated from County Antrim in the 1790s. He is the only president to have served non-consecutive terms.

Benjamin Harrison

23rd President, 1889-93: His mother, Elizabeth Irwin, had Ulster-Scots roots through her two great-grandfathers, James Irwin and William McDowell. Harrison was born in Ohio and served as a brigadier general in the Union Army before embarking on a career in Indiana politics which led to the White House.

William McKinley

25th President, 1897-1901: Born in Ohio, the descendant of a farmer from Conagher, near Ballymoney, County Antrim, he was proud of his ancestry and addressed one of the national Scotch-Irish congresses held in the late 19th century. His second term as president was cut short by an assassin's bullet.

Theodore Roosevelt

26th President, 1901-09: His mother, Mittie Bulloch, had Ulster Scots ancestors who emigrated from Glenoe, County Antrim, in May 1729. Roosevelt praised "Irish Presbyterians" as "a bold and hardy race."^[76] However, he is also the man who said: "But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native"* before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen." [2] (*Roosevelt was referring to "nativists", not American Indians, in this context)

Woodrow Wilson

28th President, 1913-21: Of Ulster-Scot descent on both sides of the family, his roots were very strong and dear to him. He was grandson of a printer from Dergalt, near Strabane, County Tyrone, whose former home is open to visitors.

Richard Nixon

37th President, 1969-74: The Nixon ancestors left Ulster in the mid-18th century; the Quaker Milhous family ties were with County Antrim and County Kildare.

See also[link]

	United States portal
	Scotland portal
32x28px	Northern Ireland portal
	Ireland portal
	England portal

• Irish American
• List of Scotch-Irish Americans
• Appalachia
• Battle of Kings Mountain
• Celt
• English American
• Hatfield-McCoy feud
• Hillbilly
• Redneck
• Scottish American
• Ulster American Folk Park
• Whiskey Rebellion

References[link]

Secondary sources[link]

• Bailyn, Bernard and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (1991), scholars analyze colonial migrations. excerpts online
• Blethen, Tyler. ed. Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Scotch-Irish (1997; ISBN 0-8173-0823-7), scholarly essays.
• Carroll, Michael P. "How the Irish Became Protestant in America", Religion and American Culture Winter 2006, Vol. 16, No. 1, Pages 25–54
• Drymon, M. M.Scotch-Irish Foodways in America(2009;ISBN 978-1-4495-8842-7)
• Dunaway, Wayland F. The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (1944; reprinted 1997; ISBN 0-8063-0850-8), solid older scholarly history.
• Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1991), major scholarly study tracing colonial roots of four groups of immigrants, Irish, English Puritans, English Cavaliers, and Quakers.
• Glazier, Michael, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, (1999), the best place to start—the most authoritative source, with essays by over 200 experts, covering both Catholic and Protestants.
• Griffin, Patrick. The People with No Name: Ireland's Ulster Scots, America's Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World: 1689-1764 (2001; ISBN 0-691-07462-3) solid academic monograph.
• Leyburn, James G. Scotch-Irish: A Social History (1999; ISBN 0-8078-4259-1) written by academic but out of touch with scholarly literature after 1940
• McDonald, Forrest, and Grady McWhiney, "The Antebellum Southern Herdsman: A Reinterpretation", Journal of Southern History 41 (1975) 147-66; highly influential economic interpretation; online at JSTOR through most academic libraries. Their Celtic interpretation says Scots-Irish resembled all other Celtic groups; they were warlike herders (as opposed to peaceful farmers in England), and brought this tradition to America. James Webb has popularized this thesis.
  • Berthoff, Rowland. "Celtic Mist over the South", Journal of Southern History 52 (1986): 523-46 is a strong attack; rejoinder on 547-50
• McWhiney, Grady. Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (1984).
• McWhiney, Grady. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (1988). Major exploration of cultural folkways.
• Meagher, Timothy J. The Columbia Guide to Irish American History. (2005), overview and bibliographies; includes the Catholics.
• Miller, Kerby. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1988). Highly influential study.
• Miller, Kerby, et al. eds. Journey of Hope: The Story of Irish Immigration to America (2001), major source of primary documents.
• Porter, Lorle. A People Set Apart: The Scotch-Irish in Eastern Ohio (1999; ISBN 1-887932-75-5) highly detailed chronicle.
• Quinlan, Kieran. Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South (2004), critical analysis of Celtic thesis.
• Sletcher, Michael, ‘Scotch-Irish’, in Stanley I. Kutler, ed., Dictionary of American History, (10 vols., New York, 2002).
• Temple, Oliver P., The Covenanter, the Cavalier, and the Puritan (1897), discusses the origins of the Scotch-Irish and argues that their contributions in American history had been vastly overlooked

Popular history and literature[link]

• Bageant, Joseph L. Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War (2007; ISBN 978-1-921215-78-0) Cultural discussion and commentary of Scots-Irish descendants in the USA.
• Baxter, Nancy M. Movers: A Saga of the Scotch-Irish (The Heartland Chronicles) (1986; ISBN 0-9617367-1-2) Novelistic.
• Chepesiuk, Ron. The Scotch-Irish: From the North of Ireland to the Making of America (ISBN 0-7864-0614-3)
• Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. "Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie" (2006; ISBN 0-8061-3775-4) literary/historical family memoir of Scotch-Irish Missouri/Oklahoma family.
• Glasgow, Maude. The Scotch-Irish in Northern Ireland and in the American Colonies (1998; ISBN 0-7884-0945-X)
• Greeley, Andrew. Encyclopedia of the Irish in America
• Johnson, James E. Scots and Scotch-Irish in America (1985, ISBN 0-8225-1022-7) short overview for middle schools
• Kennedy, Billy. Faith & Freedom: The Scots-Irish in America (1999; ISBN 1-84030-061-2) Short, popular chronicle; he has several similar books on geographical regions
• Kennedy, Billy. The Scots-Irish in the Carolinas (1997; ISBN 1-84030-011-6)
• Kennedy, Billy. The Scots-Irish in the Shenandoah Valley (1996; ISBN 1-898787-79-4)
• Lewis, Thomas A. West From Shenandoah: A Scotch-Irish Family Fights for America, 1729–1781, A Journal of Discovery (2003; ISBN 0-471-31578-8)
• Vann, Barry. Rediscovering the South's Celtic Heritage (2004; ISBN 1-57072-269-2)
• Vann, Barry. In Search of Ulster Scots Land: The Birth and Geotheological Imagings of a Transatlantic People (2008; ISBN 1-57003-708-6)
• Webb, James. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004; ISBN 0-7679-1688-3) novelistic approach; special attention to his people's war with English in America.
• Webb, James. Why You Need to Know the Scots-Irish (10-3-2004; Parade magazine). Article recognizes the great Scots-Irish people and their accomplishments.

External links[link]

• The Ulster-Scots Society of America
• Scotch-Irish Society of the USA
• Ulster-Scots Language Society
• Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish: What's in a Name?
• Ulster-Scots Agency
• Ulster-Scots Online
• Institute of Ulster-Scots
• Scotch Irish.Net
• Theodore Roosevelt's genealogy
• The Scotch-Irish in America (by Henry Jones Ford)
• Origin of the Scotch-Irish, Ch. 5 in Sketches of North Carolina by William Henry Foote (1846) - full-text history
• Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia - Extracted from the Original Court Records of Augusta County 1745-1800 by Lyman Chalkley
• Peyton's History of Augusta County, Virginia (1882) - full-text history with many mentions of Scotch-Irish
• Waddell's Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, from 1726 to 1871, Second Ed. (1902) - full-text history with many mentions of Scotch-Irish
• "Ideas & Trends: Southern Curse; Why America's Murder Rate Is So High", New York Times, July 26, 1998

v t e Scottish diaspora Americas Argentina · Brazil · Canada (Quebec) · Chile · Jamaica · United States (Scotch-Irish) Asia India Europe Ireland Oceania Australia · New Zealand

v t e British diaspora Europe Ireland (Anglo-Irish · Ulster Scots) · Spain · Turkey North America Canada (Anglo-Indian · English · Scottish (Quebec) · Welsh) · Jamaica (English · Irish · Scottish · Welsh) · United States (Cornish · English · Scottish · Scotch-Irish · Welsh) South America Argentina (English · Irish · Scottish · Welsh) · Brazil (English · Scottish) · Chile (English · Scottish · Welsh) · Paraguay · Peru Asia Burma · Hong Kong · India (English · Scottish) · Pakistan · Sri Lanka · United Arab Emirates Africa Egypt · Kenya · South Africa · Zimbabwe Oceania Australia (Cornish · English · Scottish · Welsh) · New Zealand (Pākehā · Scottish)

For other uses, see: Irish (disambiguation) and Irishman (disambiguation).

Irish people
(Muintir na hÉireann)

1st row: Oscar Wilde • Maureen O'Hara • Red Hugh O'Donnell • Bono • Bram Stoker • Francis Beaufort • George Best 2nd row: Mary McAleese • Ernest Shackleton • Pierce Brosnan • Enya • Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone • Robert Boyle • Saint Brigid 3rd row: Jonathan Rhys Meyers • Daniel O'Connell • James Joyce • Countess Markievicz • Sharon Corr • Patrick Pearse • General Michael Collins
Total population
Estimated 80,000,000 people who claim Irish ancestry[1]
Regions with significant populations
Ireland 4,500,000  United States 40,000,000+ [2]  United Kingdom 6,000,000 [3]  Canada 4,354,155 [4]  Australia 5,900,000 [5]  Argentina 1,000,000 [6]  Mexico 600,000 [7] Other Regions
Languages
Irish, Ulster-Scots, Shelta, Hiberno-English
Religion
Roman Catholicism (majority), Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Methodism, (see also Religion in Ireland)
Related ethnic groups
Bretons, Cornish, Manx, Scottish, Ulster Scots, Welsh, Anglo-Irish, (see also Celts and Irish diaspora)
Footnotes
* Around 800,000 Irish born people reside in Britain, with around 14,000,000 people claiming Irish ancestry.[8]

The Irish people (Irish: Muintir na hÉireann or na hÉireannaigh; Ulster-Scots: Airisch or Airish fowk)^[9][10] are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years (according to archaeological studies, see Prehistoric Ireland). The Irish people's earliest ancestors are recorded in legends – they are claimed to be descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians.^[11] Lebor Gabála Érenn, a book of Irish mythology tells that Tuatha Dé Dananns were Scythian descendants.^[12]

The main groups that interacted with the Irish in the Middle Ages include the Picts, Scots, and the Vikings. Due to this contact, Icelanders are noted for having some Irish descent. The Anglo-Norman invasion of the High Middle Ages, the English plantations and the subsequent English rule of the country introduced the Normans and Flemish into Ireland. Welsh, Picts, Bretons, and small parties of Gauls and even Anglo-Saxons are known in Ireland from much earlier times.

There have been many notable Irish people throughout history. The 6th century Irish monk and missionary Columbanus is regarded as one of the "fathers of Europe",^[13] followed by Kilian of Würzburg and Vergilius of Salzburg. The scientist Robert Boyle is considered the "father of chemistry". Famous Irish explorers include Brendan the Navigator, Robert McClure, Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean. By some accounts, the first European child born in North America had Irish descent on both sides;^[14] and an Irishman was the first European to set foot on American soil in Columbus' expedition of 1492.^[15]

Large populations of people of Irish ethnicity live in many western countries, particularly in English-speaking countries. Historically, emigration has been caused by politics, famine and economic issues. An estimated 50 to 80 million people make up the Irish diaspora today, which includes Great Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Jamaica, Trinidad, South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico, France, Germany and Brazil. The largest number of people of Irish descent live in the United States – about ten times more than in Ireland itself.

Origins and antecedents[link]

In its summary of their article 'Who were the Celts?' the National Museum Wales note "It is possible that future genetic studies of ancient and modern human DNA may help to inform our understanding of the subject. However, early studies have, so far, tended to produce implausible conclusions from very small numbers of people and using outdated assumptions about linguistics and archaeology."^[16] Nineteenth century anthropology studied the physical characteristics of Irish people in minute detail^[17]

Prehistoric and legendary ancestors[link]

Carrowmore tomb, 6000 BC

During the past 8,000 years of inhabitation, Ireland has witnessed many different peoples arrive on its shores. The ancient peoples of Ireland—such as the creators of the Céide Fields and Newgrange—are almost unknown. Neither their languages nor terms they used to describe themselves have survived. As late as the middle centuries of the 1st millennium the inhabitants of Ireland did not appear to have a collective name for themselves. Ireland itself was known by a number of different names, including Banba, Scotia, Fódla, Ériu by the islanders, Hibernia and Scotia to the Romans, and Ierne to the Greeks.

Scotland takes its name from Scotus which in Latin translates into Irishman (masculine form of Scoti.^[18] This is in reference to the Gaelic settlers from Ireland which was named Scotia (feminine form of Scoti) during this Epoch.^[18] The settlers from Ireland in present-day Scotland were known as Scoti. The Romans in the Middle Ages^{[clarification needed]} knew Scotland as Caledonia.^[18]

Likewise, the terms for people from Ireland—all from Roman sources—in the late Roman era were varied. They included Attacotti, Scoti, and Gael. This last word, derived from the Welsh gwyddel (meaning raiders), was eventually adopted by the Irish for themselves. However, as a term it is on a par with Viking, as it describes an activity (raiding, piracy) and its proponents, not their actual ethnic affiliations.

The term Irish and Ireland is derived^{[citation needed]} from the goddess Ériu.^[19] A variety of historical ethnic groups have inhabited the island, including the Airgialla, Fir Ol nEchmacht, Delbhna, Fir Bolg, Érainn, Eóganachta, Mairtine, Conmaicne, Soghain, and Ulaid. In the cases of the Conmaicne, Delbhna, and perhaps Érainn, it can be demonstrated that the tribe took their name from their chief deity, or in the case of the Ciannachta, Eóganachta, and possibly the Soghain, a deified ancestor. This practise is paralled by the Anglo-Saxon dynasties claims of descent from Woden, via his sons Wecta, Baeldaeg, Casere and Wihtlaeg.

The Greek mythographer, Euhemerus, originated the concept of Euhemerism, which treats mythological accounts as a reflection of actual historical events shaped by retelling and traditional mores. In the 12th-century, Icelandic bard and historian Snorri Sturluson proposed that the Norse gods were originally historical war leaders and kings, who later became cult figures, eventually set into society as gods. This view is in agreement with Irish historians such T. F. O'Rahilly and Francis John Byrne; the early chapters of their respective books, Early Irish history and mythology (reprinted 2004) and Irish Kings and High-Kings (3rd revised edition, 2001), deal in depth with the origins and status of many Irish ancestral deities.

One legend states that the Irish were descended from one Míl Espáine, whose sons supposedly conquered Ireland around 1000 BC or later.^[20] The character is almost certainly a mere personification of a supposed migration by a group or groups from Iberia to Ireland. It is from this that the Irish were, as late as the 1800s, popularly known as "Milesian".^[21] Medieval Irish historians, over the course of several centuries, created the genealogical dogma that all Irish were descendants of Míl, ignoring the fact that their own works demonstrated inhabitants in Ireland prior to his supposed arrival.

This doctrine was adapted between the 10th and 12th centuries, as demonstrated in the works of Eochaidh Ua Floinn (936-1004); Flann Mainistrech (died 25 November 1056); Tanaide (died c. 1075) and Gilla Cómáin mac Gilla Samthainde (fl. 1072). Many of their compositions were incorporated into the compendium Lebor Gabála Érenn.

This tradition was enhanced and embedded in the tradition by successive historians such as Dubsúilech Ó Maolconaire (died 1270); Seán Mór Ó Dubhagáin (d.1372); Giolla Íosa Mór Mac Fir Bhisigh (fl. 1390–1418); Pilip Ballach Ó Duibhgeannáin (fl. 1579–1590) and Flann Mac Aodhagáin (alive 1640). The first Irish historian who questioned the reliability of such accounts was Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (murdered 1671).

Genetics[link]

The frequency of Y-DNA haplogroup R1b (the most common haplogroup in Europe) is highest in the populations of Atlantic Europe and, due to European emigration, in North America, South America, and Australia. In Ireland and the Basque Country its frequency exceeds 90% and approaches 100% in Western Ireland.^[22] The incidence of R1b is 70% or more in Celtic regions - Cumbria and Cornwall in England, northern Iberia (Celtic - Galicia (Spain) and Basque Country ), western France (Celtic - Brittany), and Celtic Countries - Wales and Scotland in Britain. R1b's incidence declines gradually with distance from these areas but it is still common across the central areas of Europe. R1b is the most frequent haplogroup in Germany, and is common in southern Scandinavia and in Italy. This led to writers, such as Stephen Oppenheimer and Bryan Sykes, to conclude that the majority of Irish people (and indeed all natives of the British Isles) primarily descend from an "Iberian refugium" population bottleneck dating back to the last ice age.^[23][24]

However, this haplogroup is now believed by some to have originated over 12,000 years more recently than previously thought.^[25] It thus follows that Irish and many other R1b subclades will be considerably younger than the maximum age of 18,000 years. The previous estimates, based on inaccurate dating methods (30,000+ years BP), made R1b and its subclades seem to be more useful indicators of the paleolithic era populations of western Europe than they actually are. According to recent 2009 studies by Bramanti et al. and Malmström et al. on mtDNA,^[26][27] related western European populations appear to be largely from the neolithic and not paleolithic era, as previously thought. There was discontinuity between mesolithic central Europe and modern European populations mainly due to a extremely high frequency of haplogroup U (particularly U5) types in mesolithic central European sites.

That there exists an especially strong genetic association between the Irish and the Basques, one even closer than the relationship between other west Europeans, was first challenged in 2005,^[28] and in 2007 scientists began looking at the possibility of a more recent Mesolithic- or even Neolithic-era entrance of R1b into Europe.^[29] A new study published in 2010 by Balaresque et al. implies either a Mesolithic- or Neolithic- (not Paleolithic) era entrance of R1b into Europe.^[30] However, all these genetic studies are in agreement that the Irish and Basque (along with the Welsh) share the highest percentage of R1b populations. Although the Welsh have a greater presumed Neolithic input than both the Irish and the Basques.[25] Genetic marker R1b averages from 83-89% amongst the Welsh.

History[link]

Early expansion and the coming of Christianity[link]

Finnian of Clonard imparting his blessing to the "Twelve Apostles of Ireland"

One Roman historian records that the Irish people were divided into "sixteen different nations" or tribes.^[31] Traditional histories assert that the Romans never attempted to conquer Ireland, although it may have been considered.^[31] The Irish were not, however, cut off from Europe; they frequently raided the Roman territories,^[31] and also maintained trade links.^[32]

Among the most famous people of ancient Irish history are the High Kings of Ireland, such as Cormac mac Airt and Niall of the Nine Hostages, and the semi-legendary Fianna. The 20th century writer Seumas MacManus wrote that even if the Fianna and the Fenian Cycle were purely fictional, it would still be representative of the character of the Irish people:

...such beautiful fictions of such beautiful ideals, by themselves presume and prove beautiful-souled people, capable of appreciating lofty ideals.^[33]

The introduction of Christianity to the Irish people during the 5th century brought a radical change to the Irish people's foreign relations.^[34] The only military raid abroad recorded after that century is a presumed invasion of Wales, which according to a Welsh manuscript may have taken place around the 7th century.^[34] In the words of Seumas MacManus:

If we compare the history of Ireland in the 6th century, after Christianity was received, with that of the 4th century, before the coming of Christianity, the wonderful change and contrast is probably more striking than any other such change in any other nation known to history.^[34]

Following the conversion of the Irish to Christianity, Irish secular laws and social institutions remained in place.^[35]

Migration and invasion in the Middle Ages[link]

The approximate area of the Dál Riata (shaded)

Around the 5th century, Gaelic language and culture spread from Ireland to what is now the west of Scotland via the Dál Riata. These Gaels soon spread out to most of the rest of the country. "Scoti" is the name given by the Romans earlier in the millennium who encountered the inhabitants of Ireland. The Gaelic cultural and linguistic dominance of northern Britain is the origin of the name "Scotland". The territories of the Gaels and the Picts merged to form the Kingdom of Alba. The modern Scottish people have therefore been influenced historically by both the Irish people and the English people to the south. The Isle of Man and the Manx people also came under massive Gaelic influence in their history.

Irish missionaries such as Saint Columba brought Christianity to Pictish Scotland. The Irishmen of this time were also "aware of the cultural unity of Europe", and it was the 6th century Irish monk Columbanus who is regarded as "one of the fathers of Europe".^[13] Another Irish saint, Aidan of Lindisfarne, has been proposed as a possible patron saint of the United Kingdom,^[36] while Saints Kilian and Vergilius became the patron saints of Würzburg in Germany and Salzburg in Austria, respectively. Irish missionaries founded monasteries outside Ireland, such as Iona Abbey, the Abbey of St Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio Abbey in Italy.

Common to both the monastic and the secular bardic schools were Irish and Latin. With Latin, the early Irish scholars "show almost a like familiarity that they do with their own Gaelic".^[37] There is evidence also that Hebrew and Greek were studied, the latter probably being taught at Iona.^[38]

"The knowledge of Greek", says Professor Sandys in his History of Classical Scholarship, "which had almost vanished in the west was so widely dispersed in the schools of Ireland that if anyone knew Greek it was assumed he must have come from that country."'^[39]

Since the time of Charlemagne, Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their learning.^[40] The most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period was the 9th century Johannes Scotus Eriugena, an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality.^[40] He was the earliest of the founders of scholasticism, the dominant school of medieval philosophy.^[41] He had considerable familiarity with the Greek language, and translated many works into Latin, affording access to the Cappadocian Fathers and the Greek theological tradition, previously almost unknown in the Latin West.^[40]

The influx of Viking raiders and traders in the 9th and 10th centuries resulted in the founding of many of Ireland's most important towns, including Cork, Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford (earlier Gaelic settlements on these sites did not approach the urban nature of the subsequent Norse trading ports). The Vikings left little impact on Ireland other than towns and certain words added to the Irish language, but many Irish taken as slaves inter-married with the Scandinavians, hence forming a close link with the Icelandic people. In the Icelandic Laxdœla saga, for example, "even slaves are highborn, descended from the kings of Ireland."^[42] The first name of Njáll Þorgeirsson, the chief protagonist of Njáls saga, is a variation of the Irish name Neil. According to Eirik the Red's Saga, the first European couple to have a child born in North America was descended from the Viking Queen of Dublin, Aud the Deep-minded, and a Gaelic slave brought to Iceland.^[14]

The arrival of the Anglo-Normans brought also the Welsh, Flemish, Anglo-Saxons, and Bretons. Most of these were assimilated into Irish culture and polity by the 15th century, with the exception of some of the walled towns and the Pale areas.^[35] The Late Middle Ages also saw the settlement of Scottish gallowglass families of mixed Gaelic-Norse -Pict descent, mainly in the north; due to similarities of language and culture they too were assimilated.

Surnames[link]

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The Irish were among the first people in Europe to use surnames as we know them today.^[43] It is very common for people of Gaelic origin to have the English versions of their surnames beginning with "O'" or "Mc" (less frequently "Mac" and occasionally shortened to just "Ma" at the beginning of the name).

"O'" comes from the Gaelic Ó which in turn came from Ua, which means "grandson", or "descendant" of a named person. Names that begin with "O'" include Ó Briain (O'Brien), Ó Cheallaigh (O'Kelly), Ó Conchobhair (O'Connor), Ó Domhnaill (O'Donnell), Ó Cuilinn (Cullen), Ó Máille (O'Malley), Ó Néill (O'Neill), Ó Sé (O'Shea), Ó Súilleabháin (O'Sullivan), and Ó Tuathail (O'Toole).

"Mac" or "Mc" means "son". Names that begin with Mac or Mc include Mac Diarmada (MacDermott), Mac Cárthaigh (MacCarthy), Mac Domhnaill (MacDonnell), and Mac Mathghamhna (MacMahon, MacMahony, etc.). Mac is commonly anglicised Mc. However, "Mac" and "Mc" are not mutually exclusive, so, for example, both "MacCarthy" and "McCarthy" are used. While both "Mac" and "O'" prefixes are Gaelic in origin, "Mac" is more common in Scotland and in Ulster than in the rest of Ireland; furthermore, "Ó" is far less common in Scotland than it is in Ireland. The proper surname for a woman in Irish uses the feminine prefix nic (meaning daughter) in place of mac. Thus a boy may be called Mac Domhnaill whereas his sister would be called Nic Dhomhnaill or Ní Dhomhnaill - the insertion of 'h' follows the female prefix in the case of most consonants (bar H, L, N, R, & T).

A son has the same surname as his father. A female's surname replaces Ó with Ní (reduced from Iníon Uí - "daughter of the grandson of") and Mac with Nic (reduced from Iníon Mhic - "daughter of the son of"); in both cases the following name undergoes lenition. However, if the second part of the surname begins with the letter C or G, it is not lenited after Nic[citation needed]. Thus the daughter of a man named Ó Maolagáin has the surname Ní Mhaolagáin and the daughter of a man named Mac Gearailt has the surname Nic Gearailt. When anglicised, the name can remain O' or Mac, regardless of gender.

There are a number of Irish surnames derived from Norse personal names, including Mac Suibhne (Sweeney) from Swein and McAuliffe from "Olaf". The name Cotter, local to County Cork, derives from the Norse personal name Ottir. The name Reynolds is an Anglicization of the Gaelic Mac Raghnaill, itself originating from the Norse names Randal or Reginald. Though these names were of Viking derivation some of the families who bear them appear to have had Gaelic origins.

"Fitz" is an old Norman French variant of the Old French word fils (variant spellings filz, fiuz, fiz, etc.), used by the Normans, meaning son. The Normans themselves were descendants of Vikings, who had settled in Normandy and thoroughly adopted the French language and culture.^[44] With the exception of the Gaelic-Irish Fitzpatrick (Mac Giolla Phádraig) surname, all names that begin with Fitz – including FitzGerald (Mac Gearailt), Fitzsimons (Mac Síomóin/Mac an Ridire) and FitzHenry (Mac Anraí) – are descended from the initial Norman settlers. A small number of Irish families of Gaelic origin came to use a Norman form of their original surname—so that Mac Giolla Phádraig became Fitzpatrick – while some assimilated so well that the Gaelic name was dropped in favor of a new, Hiberno-Norman form. Another common Irish surname of Norman Irish origin is the 'de' habitational prefix, meaning 'of' and originally signifying prestige and land ownership. Examples include de Búrca (Burke), de Brún, de Barra (Barry), de Stac (Stack), de Tiúit, de Faoite (White), de Londras (Landers), de Paor (Power). The Irish surname "Walsh" (in Gaelic Breathnach) was routinely given to settlers of Welsh origin, who had come during and after the Norman invasion. The Joyce and Griffin/Griffith (Gruffydd) families are also of Welsh origin.

The Mac Lochlainn, Ó Maol Seachlainn, Ó Maol Seachnaill, Ó Conchobhair Mac Loughlin and Mac Diarmada Mac Loughlin families, all distinct, are now all subsumed together as MacLoughlin. The full surname usually indicated which family was in question, something that has being diminished with the loss of prefixes such as Ó and Mac. Different branches of a family with the same surname sometimes used distinguishing epithets, which sometimes became surnames in their own right. Hence the chief of the clan Ó Cearnaigh (Kearney) was referred to as An Sionnach (Fox), which his descendants use to this day. Similar surnames are often found in Scotland for many reasons, such as the use of a common language and mass Irish migration to Scotland in the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries.

Late Medieval and Tudor Ireland[link]

Gaelic Irish soldiers in the Low Countries, from a drawing of 1521 by Albrecht Dürer

The Irish people of the Late Middle Ages were active as traders on the European continent.^[15] They were distinguished from the English (who only used their own language or French) in that they only used Latin abroad—a language "spoken by all educated people throughout Gaeldom".^[45] According to the writer Seumas MacManus, the explorer Christopher Columbus visited Ireland to gather information about the lands to the west,^[15] a number of Irish names are recorded on Columbus' crew roster preserved in the archives of Madrid and it was an Irishman named Patrick Maguire who was the first to set foot in the Americas in 1492;^[15] however, according to Morison and Miss Gould, who made a detailed study of the crew list of 1492, no Irish or English sailors were involved in the voyage.^[46]

An English report of 1515 states that the Irish people were divided into over sixty Gaelic lordships and thirty Anglo-Irish lordships.^[35] The English term for these lordships was "nation" or "country".^[35] The Irish term "oireacht" referred to both the territory and the people ruled by the lord.^[35] Literally, it meant an "assembly", where the Brehons would hold their courts upon hills to arbitrate the matters of the lordship.^[35] Indeed, the Tudor lawyer John Davies described the Irish people with respect to their laws:

There is no people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent (impartial) justice better than the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it be against themselves, as they may have the protection and benefit of the law upon which just cause they do desire it.^[47]

The Gaelic scribes and poets reflected the broad education of the Irish learned classes

Another English commentator records that the assemblies were attended by "all the scum of the country"—the labouring population as well as the landowners.^[35] While the distinction between "free" and "unfree" elements of the Irish people was unreal in legal terms, it was a social and economic reality.^[35] Social mobility was usually downwards, due to social and economic pressures.^[35] The ruling clan's "expansion from the top downwards" was constantly displacing commoners and forcing them into the margins of society.^[35]

As a clan-based society, genealogy was all important.^[35] Ireland 'was justly styled a "Nation of Annalists"'.^[48] The various branches of Irish learning—including law, poetry, history and genealogy, and medicine—were associated with hereditary learned families.^[49] The poetic families included the Uí Dhálaigh (Daly) and the MacGrath.^[35] Irish physicians, such as the O'Briens in Munster or the MacCailim Mor in the Western Isles, were renowned in the courts of England, Spain, Portugal and the Low Countries.^[47] Learning was not exclusive to the hereditary learned families, however; one such example is Cathal Mac Manus, the 15th century diocesan priest who wrote the Annals of Ulster.^[49] Other learned families included the Mic Aodhagáin and Clann Fhir Bhisigh.^[49] It was this latter family which produced Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh, the 17th century genealogist and compiler of the Leabhar na nGenealach. (see also Irish medical families).

Plantations[link]

Robert Boyle, Anglo-Irish scientist and father of chemistry, whose family obtained land in the plantations

After Ireland was subdued by England, the English—under James I of England (reigned 1603–1625), the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658), William III of England (reigned 1689–1702) and their successors—began the settling of Protestant Scottish and English colonists into Ireland, where they settled most heavily in the northern province of Ulster. The Plantations of Ireland, and in particular the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, introduced great numbers of Scottish, English as well as French Huguenots as colonists.

Many Gaelic Irish were displaced during the 17th century plantations. Only in the major part of Ulster did the plantations of mostly Scottish prove long-lived; the other three provinces (Connacht, Leinster, and Munster) remained heavily Gaelic Irish. Eventually, the Anglo-Irish and Protestant populations of those three provinces decreased drastically as a result of the political developments in the early 20th century in Ireland, as well as the Catholic Church's Ne Temere decree for mixed marriages, which obliged the non-Catholic partner to have the children raised as Catholics^{[citation needed]}.

Enlightenment Ireland[link]

This section requires expansion.

There have been notable Irish scientists. The Anglo-Irish scientist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) is considered the father of chemistry for his book The Sceptical Chymist, written in 1661.^[50] Boyle was an atomist, and is best known for Boyle's Law. The hydrographer Rear Admiral Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), an Irish naval officer of Huguenot descent, was the creator of the Beaufort scale for indicating wind force. George Boole (1815–1864), the mathematician who invented Boolean algebra, spent the latter part of his life in Cork. The 19th century physicist George Stoney introduced the idea and the name of the electron. He was the uncle of another notable physicist, George FitzGerald.

Jonathan Swift, one of the foremost prose satirists in the English language

The Irish bardic system, along with the Gaelic culture and learned classes, were upset by the plantations, and went into decline. Among the last of the true bardic poets were Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig (c. 1580–1652) and Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (1625–1698). The Irish poets of the late 17th and 18th centuries moved toward more modern dialects. Among the most prominent of this period were Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta, Peadar Ó Doirnín, Art Mac Cumhaigh, Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna, and Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill. Irish Catholics continued to receive an education in secret "hedgeschools", in spite of the Penal laws.^[51] A knowledge of Latin was common among the poor Irish mountaineers in the 17th century, who spoke it on special occasions, while cattle were bought and sold in Greek in the mountain market-places of Kerry.^[52]

For a comparatively small population of about 6 million people, Ireland has made an enormous contribution to literature. Irish literature encompasses the Irish and English languages. Notable Irish writers include Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Bram Stoker, James Joyce. Among the famous Irish poets are William Butler Yeats, Francis Ledwidge, "A.E." Russell and Seamus Heaney. Irish playwrights include Oscar Wilde, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, Lord Dunsany, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan and Brian Friel. Some of the 20th century writers in the Irish language include Brian O'Nolan, Peig Sayers, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, and Máirtín Ó Direáin.

19th century[link]

This section requires expansion.

The Great Hunger[link]

This section requires expansion.

20th century[link]

In 1921, with the formation of the Irish Free State, six counties in the northeast remained in the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. It is predominately religion, historical, and political differences that divide the two communities of (nationalism and unionism). Four polls taken between 1989 and 1994 revealed that when asked to state their national identity, over 79% of Northern Irish Protestants replied "British" or "Ulster" with 3% or less replying "Irish", while over 60% of Northern Irish Catholics replied "Irish" with 13% or less replying "British" or "Ulster".^[53] A survey in 1999 showed that 72% of Northern Irish Protestants considered themselves "British" and 2% "Irish", with 68% of Northern Irish Catholics considering themselves "Irish" and 9% "British".^[54] The survey also revealed that 78% of Protestants and 48% of all respondents felt "Strongly British", while 77% of Catholics and 35% of all respondents felt "Strongly Irish". 51% of Protestants and 33% of all respondents felt "Not at all Irish", while 62% of Catholics and 28% of all respondents felt "Not at all British".^[55][56]

Surnames in the nine-county Province of Ulster tend to differ based on which community families originate from. Ulster Protestants tend to have either English or Scottish surnames while Catholics tend to have Irish surnames, although this is not always the case.^{[citation needed]} There are many Catholics in nine-county Ulster with surnames such as Adams, Emerson, Whitson, Livingstone, Hardy, Tennyson, Galbraith, McCausland, MacDonald (this surname is also common with Highland Roman Catholics in Scotland), Dunbar, Groves, Legge, Scott, Gray, Page, Stewart, Roberts, Rowntree, Henderson, et al., due to intermarriage.^{[citation needed]}

Recent history[link]

Religions[link]

In the Republic of Ireland, as of 2006, 3,681,446 people or about 86.83% of the population claim to be Roman Catholic.^[57] In Northern Ireland about 53.1% of the population are Protestant (21.1% Presbyterian, 15.5% Church of Ireland, 3.6% Methodist, 6.1% Other Christian) whilst a large minority are Catholic at approximately 43.8%, as of 2001.

The 31st International Eucharistic Congress was held in Dublin in 1932, that year being the supposed 1,500th anniversary of Saint Patrick's arrival. Ireland was then home to 3,171,697 Catholics, about a third of whom attended the Congress.^[58][59] It was noted in Time Magazine that the Congress' special theme would be "the Faith of the Irish."^[58] The massive crowds were repeated at Pope John Paul II's Mass in Phoenix Park in 1979.^[60] The idea of faith has affected the question of Irish identity even in relatively recent times, apparently more so for Catholics and Irish-Americans: