Julia A. Malia, Ph.D., C.F.L.E.

Associate Professor

Child & Family Studies Department

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

(865) 974-6292 (Office)

When our family first moved to Tennessee from the Midwest in 1991, on several occasions, my husband Jim remarked, "People in Tennessee look different, don’t you think?" Where we came from, most of the people were of German, Scandinavian, or (in pockets) Czech extraction. It was dairy country, with rolling hills and some of the most rich, black soil in the world—and the largest Norwegian American museum in the country, called Vesterheim ("western home"). In moving to Knoxville, we had come to Southern Appalachia, with its mountains and isolated "hollers," orange-red clay soil, poisonous-snake handling in some rural churches to "test one’s faith," a strong tradition of homemade whiskey made in family stills, and Appalachian music, complete with well-preserved old English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh ballads. And the people do look different than Midwesterners—because they come from different stock, as is reflected in their music.

Actually, I think Jim noticed because his people are of 100% Irish derivation, his forebears having come to this country in the late 1800s or early 1990s. Malia is supposed to have been O’Malia originally. For myself, along with my German, Norwegian, and Cree blood flows some Irish and British blood, as well as Lowland Scot blood that arrived in Virginia sometime in the 1700s in the form of two McCammack brothers from the Carrick District. As a result of working on this paper, I have come to suspect that they may have taken a route that included important family time spent in Northern Ireland. I remember my mother using the term Scotch-Irish, although I was unaware of what that meant before conducting this research project. I always thought it meant intermarriage between Scottish and Irish persons.

The theme of the 2008 Groves Conference on Marriage and Family in Ireland has to do with the impact of globalization on families. In this project, I am looking at the flip side of the conference theme by examining the role that Celtic peoples over the centuries have played as influences on the wider world. I will begin with the early Celtic peoples’ travels to what is now the British Isles, then examine the dispersed Irish, Scottish, Scots-Irish (from Ulster), and Welsh peoples who have immigrated throughout the world. Then I will narrow the focus to the New World in the past few centuries (especially the American Colonies and, later, the United States), and continue by zooming in on the Southern Appalachian region, Eastern Tennessee, and ultimately Knoxville.

"History at its simplest is the story of past facts," said Barzun and Graff (1985, 1970, p. 46) in the 4^th edition of their book, The Modern Researcher. They then continued with a discussion of four meanings of the word History that they summed up in the following way: "History-as-Event generates (through History-as-Hard-Work) History-as-Narrative, which in turn produces History-as-Maker-of-Future-History" (p. 49). This paper takes a historical perspective to tell the story (History-as-Event transforming into History-as-Narrative—and it truly is hard but fascinating work) of Celtic families’ journeys to new homes in other lands. The approach that I have taken in this research project is archival (Hill, 1993), a combination strategy of (a) a topical search employing the Internet as a source of data, as well as traditional library research, and (b) a local search employing materials and other data sources in the Knoxville area, such as the East Tennessee Historical Society, the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection of the Knox County Library System, and the Ramsey House Plantation.

The Celts were well established in Ireland a century before Christ, and they dominated the island for nearly a thousand years, resisting challenges and absorbing influences from other cultures for many centuries more. To this day the core of Ireland’s heritage remains unmistakably Celtic. (p. 1)

The Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of western literature, . . . [serving] as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization [that the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire at the beginning of the 5^th century] had overwhelmed (pp. 3-4).

Cahill continued,

Without the Mission of the Irish Monks, who single-handedly refounded European civilization throughout the continent in the bays and valleys of their exile, the world that came after them would have been an entirely different one—a world without books. And our own world would never have come to be. (p. 4)

Over the course of many centuries, great numbers of what the rest of this paper refers to as Celtic families (i.e., families who were originally inhabitants of the territory that is modern-day Ireland, Northern Ireland [Ulster], Scotland, and Wales) immigrated to other areas of the world, particularly into the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I have a list of 26 books and two sets of bound journals on the topic of Celtic families that I found in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University in March of 2006; I would be happy to e-mail the list to people who request it.

I have chosen to investigate the impact that Celtic globalization has made on the lives of millions of Americans, in both the past and the present. Regarding past Americans, I have used the Internet to gather data from Websites such as the East Tennessee Historical Society’s (ETHS) First Families of Tennessee project, and I have begun sorting through information from the 2002 Ulster-American Heritage Symposium held in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and the 2006 Symposium that was held in Knoxville, Tennessee, in collaboration with the ETHS. In addition, I have used Internet resources such as Wikipedia, Yahoo site searching, and traditional library research to gather information about Celtic families in the New World.

In recent centuries, among the waves of immigrants flooding into the ports of the New World were millions of Irish, Scottish, Scots-Irish (also called Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Irish), and Welsh individuals and families seeking opportunities and, in some cases, asylum. The great potato famine of the mid 1840s, for instance, brought thousands of Irish families, including the Kennedys, to the U.S. In a letter to the Duke of Wellington (published in The Times on December 24, 1846; the following excerpts were reprinted in Silverman, 1991, p. 100), Nicholas Cummins, magistrate of Cork, wrote,

My Lord Duke, . . . I went on the 15^th to Skibbereen, [Ireland], and . . . I shall state simply what I there saw. . . . Being aware that I should have to witness scenes of frightful hunger, I provided myself with as much bread as five men could carry, and on reaching the spot I was surprised to find the wretched hamlet deserted. I entered some of the hovels to ascertain the cause, and the scenes which presented themselves were such as no tongue or pen can convey the slightest idea of. In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner. . . . I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive—they were in a fever, four children, a woman and what had once been a man. . . . In a few minutes I was surrounded by at lest 200 such phantoms, such frightful specters as no words can describe, either from famine or from fever.

There are more Irish living in the U.S. today than in Ireland itself. In the 2006 American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau), 35,975,855 Americans, or 12% of the total U.S. population, reported Irish ancestry—and that does not include the additional 5 million Americans who reported Scots-Irish ancestry. The Milwaukee Irish Fest, held each August, boasts that it is "The World’s Largest Irish Cultural Festival."

Celtic Americans have exerted tremendous influence on American government and culture. For instance, 61% of American Presidents are of Scottish or Scots-Irish descent, according to the October 2006 newsletter of the Upper East Tennessee Celtic Society.

In strong contrast, a very different example of Celtic Americans’ influence is their introduction of the practice of making moonshine alcohol in illegal stills in this country. The "Moonshining as a Fine Art" chapter in the first The Foxfire Book (Wigginton,1972) traces the illegal moonshining craft and its accompanying antagonism towards Revenuers back to the Irish, who taught the Scots whom the British had removed from Lowland Scotland to the northern counties of Ireland (now referred to as Scots-Irish) how to make stills and keep them hidden. Many Scots-Irish people left Ulster when they had a falling out with the British in the 1700s, moving first to the western part of Pennsylvania and from there into the mountains of Appalachia—and they brought the practice of moonshining with them (Kephart, 1913, 1984). The old popular song, "Thunder Road," describes the fateful "last run" of a moonshiner on Knoxville’s Kingston Pike that cuts straight through town, according to one of my students.

Political influence. In addition to the political leadership skills that Celtic Americans have demonstrated (mentioned above), members of Celtic cultural groups in America have demonstrated that they are very capable warriors on numerous occasions (e.g., Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by James H. Webb). Ramsey (2004) claimed that "the Scotch-Irish have a genius for war that has been proved on many battlefields around the world" (p. 38) and cited as characteristics of the Lowland Scots being dour, aggressive, free, loyal, independent, proud, argumentative, agile, and educated (pp. 19-20). About 60% of Union soldiers and 30% of Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War were either Irish emigrants or of Irish descent (Silverman, 1991, p. 74). Ed Gleeson’s (1993) Rebel Sons of Erin: A Civil War Unit History of the Tenth Tennessee Infantry Regiment (Irish) Confederate States Volunteers claims that "the muster roll for the Tenth Tennessee at Fort Henry reads like a clan map of Ireland" (p. 21). Gleeson said, "The Tenth Tennessee was young: all in the regiment were under forty except for [Colonel Adolphuse, called "Uncle Dolph"] Heiman, and the youngest of all was the non-registered drummer boy of the all-Clarksville D Company, Daniel McCarthy, just turned fourteen" (p. 25).

Cultural influence. In May of 1889, the Reverend John S. MacIntosh presented a paper entitled "John Knox in Independence Hall" at the First Congress of the Scotch Irish Society of America, which was held in Columbia, Tennessee. He stated,

I have often heard of the lads who went out to bleed at Valley Forge—to die as victors on King’s Mountain,—and stand in the silent triumph of Yorktown. [However,] we have more to thank [John] Knox for than is commonly told to-day. Here we reach our Welshes and Witherspoons, our Tennents and Taylors, our Calhouns and Clarks, our Cunninghams and Caldwells, our Pollocks, Polks, and Pattersons, our Scotts and Grays and Kennedys, our Reynolds and Robinsons, our McCooks, McHenrys, McPhersons and McDowells. But the man behind is Knox (MacIntosh, 1889, p. 200).

About 20% of Tennesseans trace their ancestry back to Scots-Irish families who emigrated into the Southern Appalachian region 200 to 300 years ago (Kennedy, 1995). Kennedy cited U.S. Census data from 1990 with a breakdown of 197,942 Tennesseans of Scots-Irish (Ulster) ancestry, 100,800 of Scottish, and 875,771 of Irish descent (p. 17). Kennedy, a well-known author of eight books chronicling the Scots-Irish pioneers in the 18^th century American frontier, stated, "The tale of the Ulster-Scot heritage in America is, in my opinion, ‘the greatest story never told’" (p. 205).

That "never told" story begins with a social policy instituted to bring stability to the northern counties of Ireland (Ulster). What is called the Plantation of Ireland, per Gerard-Sharp and Perry (1995, 2007), was instituted following 150 years of Irish resistance to foreign (British) rule following England’s break with the Catholic Church, the dissolution of the monasteries, and Henry VIII’s claim as King of Ireland.

James I realized that force alone could not stabilize Ireland. The Plantation programme uprooted the native Irish [in most of Northern Ireland and a pocket in the Midlands and one on the southeast coast] and gave their land to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. London livery companies organized many of the new settlements. The policy created loyal garrisons who supported the Crown. (Gerard-Sharp & Perry, p. 39)

However, the Plantation policy proved to be more disruptive than it was successful, sowing seeds of discontent that have flowered time and again in Ireland during the past few hundred years.

According to the Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Abramson & Haskell, 2006, pp. 274-275),

Most Scots-Irish settlers in Appalachia were of Lowland Scots background, their ancestors having moved to Ulster during the seventeenth century as part of a social project in Ireland [the Plantation] sponsored by the English government. In the eighteenth century, Scots-Irish settlers—many traveling into southern Appalachia from Pennsylvania by way of the Great Valley of Virginia—transported Lowland Scots traditions to Appalachia, significantly influencing the region’s evolving culture, particularly its verbal folklore. For instance, one-third of approximately one hundred traditional British ballads sung historically in Appalachia—including such widely disseminated ballads as "Gypsy Laddie" and "Lord Randal"—originated in (or were most common in) the Scottish Lowlands rather than in England.

One additional indication of Celtic influence through the Scots-Irish settlers in the Southern Appalachian area is the uniquely American musical instrument that was developed, the mountain dulcimer. This three-string instrument most often is tuned in such a way that one string is the melody carrier and the remaining two are left open to act as drones, tuned to an open fifth chord. Persistent conjecture is that, even though this is a stringed instrument, it is related to the bagpipes (with their drones) that are common to both Scottish and Irish music production.

Billy Kennedy’s book entitled Women of the Frontier (2004) presents biographies of 30 plucky women, two of whom were immediate family to the seventh U.S. President, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee: his mother, Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, and his wife, Rachel Donelson Jackson. President Jackson’s parents were "both of lowland Scottish Presbyterian families who had settled in Ulster in the 17^th century" (Kennedy, p. 57). His wife Rachel had been "only twelve when she and members of her family and [other] Scots-Irish associates embarked on one of the most daunting and perilous journeys in America’s early history" (Kennedy, p. 19): a voyage on the Holston River (which flows a few blocks from our home in Knoxville) to the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee. Kennedy noted,

The success of the Scotch-Irish settlement in the back country of America is the silent, but eloquent tribute to the hardiness of the Ulster women. It is worth noting that in all the contemporary accounts of the Ulster Plantation, the troubles with the Irish, and the establishment of the Presbyterian Church in the north of Ireland, the life and character of the women are never mentioned. (p. 63)

According to Leyburn (1962), Ulster women received no property in the Plantation, and no law suits were filed for or against them. They lived out their day-to-day lives anonymously in a patriarchal society, working in both home and fields. Ramsey (2004) stated that, within Ulster Presbyterian culture, women

had no vote, no property, and no rights. . . . Their lot was, as it had always been, to provide companionship and support to a strong man who could take care of their needs. They remained in the shadows, strong, silent and resourceful, as confident and as capable as the men they supported. (p. 27)

Kennedy (2004) included the biography of Scots-Irish Margaret Cochran Corbin, who became "Captain Molly" in the American Revolution when her husband was killed during the battle of Harem Heights and she took over his position on a small cannon. She was recognized by the Continental Congress, was given half-pay for life, and is buried in the West Point Cemetery.

When, during the 1700s, many Scots-Irish people left Ulster to find a new life in America, many settled in the western part of Pennsylvania or down among the mountains of Southern Appalachia (Kephart, 1913, 1984). Among them was the family of a man who would find his home just east of Knoxville, Tennessee. Faulkner (2008) gave an account of how, in 1783, Colonel Francis Alexander Ramsey, a first-generation Scots-Irish American, explored the upper Tennessee River valley, along with the Scots-Irish man who in 1791 would found Knoxville, James White (Brown, 1990), and another man named Robert Love. During the trip, both White and Ramsey chose sites for building their future homes, and in 1797, the Ramsey House was built east of White’s holdings (Faulkner, 2008). The jacket cover of Faulkner’s new book, The Ramseys at Swan Pond—The Archaeology and History of an East Tennessee Farm, describes Ramsey as "a prominent early settler of East Tennessee who, along with his two sons, J. G. M. Ramsey and William B. A. Ramsey, shaped the physical and cultural landscape of what would become Knox County and Knoxville, TN." Frederick Ramsey, a contemporary descendent, in his 2004 book chronicling the Ramsey family, entitled Ramsey of Swan Pond: The descendants of William Ramsay, pointed out that Francis’ father, William, signed his last will and testament as Ramsay, the Scottish spelling of the name.

On March 30, 2008, I attended a presentation by Dr. Charles H. Faulkner about the excavations of the Ramsey house and farm just east of Knoxville. The house and farm, one of the finest in the frontier, remained in the Ramsey family until sometime around the end of the Civil War. The Ramseys favored the Southern Cause, and their neighbors were largely Unionists.

In the 1800s, Welsh ironmasters and Irish laborers were brought to Knoxville to work on building the railroads that helped connect the city to the outside world (Deaderick, 1976). There is a plaque in the Mechanicsville section of Knoxville (just north of the University of Tennessee) commemorating the Welsh immigrants (and also the African Americans) who helped build the city’s railroad system. However, "not all the immigrants [coming to Knoxville] . . . were cordially welcomed or at first were easily assimilated" (Deaderick, p. 21). The Irish Catholics who moved into Knoxville at first were viewed with particular suspicion and hostility: "The staunchly Methodist William G. Brownlow bemoaned the appearance of this new element: ‘In all communities, Catholics are to be found who are good citizens, but in the general, they are a dangerous population, much to be dreaded’" (Deaderick, p. 21). Assimilation eroded such views over time, and today, Patrick Sullivan’s, a historic bar and restaurant in the heart of Knoxville’s Old City, holds an Irish music session (informal get together of musicians playing Irish tunes on traditional Celtic instruments) every Thursday evening.

William Jackson, an emissary, then immigrant from Scotland to Asheville, North Carolina, is a recent transplant from Scotland to Southern Appalachia. For years, he has taught harp classes at the Swannanoa Gathering’s Celtic Week, and I was privileged to be his student during the two Gatherings I attended. I was surprised when I heard him claim on one occasion that there really is no such thing as Celtic music. Rather, he said, there is Scottish music, Irish music, Welsh music, Cape Breton music, etc. Each is a separate stream of music, and the current popularity of "Celtic" music is really just a marketing device. However, I have noted that he has made good use of bodhrans (Irish handheld drums) in his several of his own musical creations. And, in an interview on the Celtic music radio show, The Thistle and Shamrock, that was aired on our National Public Radio station WUOT on January 12, 2008 (the show’s website lists it as January 10 / Week 2 / Show #1285), he described his recent collaborations with Irish harper, Grainne Hambly. The two of them appeared in concert in Knoxville a couple of years ago, and my husband, our daughter, and I attended. For being from two distinct streams of music, I thought they blended extraordinarily well!

One story, sent in to the Irish American Story Project by John Duffy on April 1, 2008, said that his parents had left Ireland around 1928 or ’29 to come to the U.S. His father became a U.S. citizen, but his mother "always dreamed of returning to Ireland and maintained her Irish citizenship." Her husband fought in the U.S. Army in the Second World War and died 10 years later. Duffy said, "My mother never returned to Ireland after the death of my father. She died in the Bronx with the dream in her heart" (Archive for April 2008, p. 2). With his mother’s death, Duffy’s family consisted of his brother and his family and himself. Then, in late 2007, an unknown relative had traveled to a famous Irish shrine, and, during this trip, her great-aunt asked her to find out what had happened to her sisters who had gone to America. The relative contacted Duffy’s niece and also some American cousins Duffy had never known about via the Internet. Out of that contact has come a family reunion in County Mayo with family attending from the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland. Duffy concluded,

Six months ago I had no contact with any relatives [outside my immediate family] and because of a trip my cousin made to Ireland and decision she made to find the family I now have family and have been reconnected with cousins in three countries. My daughter’s world has grown and she now has extended family from both parents. In one moment life has changed forever. I guess you can say it’s a story of the power of the human spirit and maybe even some Irish magic thrown in. (pp. 2-3)

Another account (Archive for February 4, 2008, no name given) was about Cornelius Kincheloe.

The earliest record of Cornelius Kincheloe appears in 1693, in Richmond County, Virginia. Oral history passed down through the family speaks of Cornelius as coming from Scotland and, while this may be true, he or his ancestors originated from Hy Kinsella as Kincheloe is a variation of the name Kinsella (during the time he arrived in America there were a multitude of spelling variations on the name Kinsella). By 1695 Cornelius had received a 100 acre parcel of land on which he raised his family. Cornelius’ son John ended up selling this land in 1724 and moved the family. In 1996, after years of painstaking research, John Kincheloe III had identified where the 100 acres of Cornelius Kincheloe, his 8^th generation grandfather, was located. That very year a parcel of the land was auctioned off so John drove from his North Carolina home and managed to buy 3.5 acres of the original tract.

Another account (Archive for January 24, 2008) is entitled "Banshee Story" by a person calling him-/herself "admin."

My grandmother, Mary McGuinness, from Co. Louth, married Phillip Murphy. They lived in NYC. Two of her brothers also emigrated to the US. She hadn’t seen either one form some time. She claimed that one night a banshee came to the door and told her to look for her brother, Lawrence. When she went to his place of employment, they told her that he had died and was to be buried in Potters field. She went ther, and discovered that he was just about to be buried. When they opened his coffin, the sound that came out was exactly the same of the sound that the banchee had made the night she visited my grandmother. She then had him interred in the Murphy grave in Calvary cemetery in Long Island City.

A March 11, 2008, story called "The Unlucky Irish" by Richard Edward Devlin tells about his great-grandfather being "an Irish man ‘with the drink on him’" (p. 1) who abandoned his family of a young wife and eight children, his grandfather being a drinker whose wife threw him out, and his father abandoning his wife and four children to run off with another woman.

So far, the Devlin men were batting three for three. Finally, a silver lining surfaced to salvage this story of unstable Irish immigrant men. My father left four children who all managed to get to college and gave my mother sixteen grandchildren and many dozens of great-grandchildren. As the youngest son, I went back to Ireland in 1999 and found the old family roots back in Tyrone, now own a second home there and visit there twice a year for many weeks at a time. It took a long time (and three generations) but we have completed the long circle back to Altaglushan in Tyrone with pride in our Irish roots intact and with our heads held high.

On February 24, 2008, Victoria Aber told her family story about "The Old Irishman from Louisiana." She wrote,

He came to the bayou of Louisiana, Pointe Coupee Parish, . . . [and] met my great-grandmother and fell in love with her. He married her and had many children. There offspring were mixed raced (African-American) and Irish. . . . Older members of the family remembered his bright red hair and his wonderful songs. He was a great farmer and helped many people in the area. . . . My great grandfather was Johnnie Coleman and he gave us the gift of songs and stories. . . . One of my two daughters shares the semblance of color of the old man’s hair. . . . So goes the story of the old Irishman who came to Pointe Coupee Parish located in the bayous of Louisiana and settled among the people, sang his songs, and told stories of some far away place in the hills of Ireland. May his spirit continue to be reborn in the generations yet unborn.

On February 5, 2008, a story was posted on the Website by an anonymous contributor. The person who posted it said that "Irwin Cobb, the famous American author and humorist, told of Gaelic hospitality" in the following way:

The son of an Irish refugee, Pat Cleburne of Arkansas, one of the most gallant leaders that the Civil War produced . . . died on one of the bloodiest battlefields of Christendom in his stocking feet because as he rode into battle that morning he saw one of his Irish boys from Little Rock tramping barefooted over the frozen furrows of a wintry cornfield and leaving tracts of blood behind him. So he drew off his boots and bade the soldier put them on, and fifteen minutes later he went to his God in his stocking feet. Raleigh laid down his coat before Good Queen Bess, and has been immortalized for his chivalry, but I think a more courtly deed was that of the gallant Irishman Pat Cleburne.

Now I will share some relevant personal accounts that I found in the I Am Scottish Personal Stories Website. This Website indicates the you can "chat and share stories with 4309 people who all say ‘I Am Scottish’." Here are a few of them.

Alicia4rmFHS wrote, "I went to a reunion, Scotish type and each family wore their family plaid if they had 1. I really got into it. Yeah Being scottishs is pretty tight.. L maybe someday I can go their. My granddad lived their." Then Raibeart (who also gave a link to "My Favorite Robert Burns Poem by Raibeart", commented on Alicia4rmFHS ‘s story as follows: "Tis grand tae be Scottish indeed. I try to go to as many Scottish festivals as I can each year. But then I am the US Representative for the Clan Cathcart so it is important for me to promote the Clan." In an earlier entry, Raibeart had said, "’I Hope to Speed’: That is the Clan Motto of the Clan Cathcart. My Paternal Grandmother was a Cathcart, and I am now the Chieftain of the Clan Cathcart-USA. I am also a practicing Druid, and very active in all things Scottiwsh, including Scottish Freedom Movement."

Tzech wrote,

"Who Dares Meddle With Me": I think that is a close translation of the clan motto of the Clan Elliott. While my family,on three sides (paternal and half maternal) is of scots decent that is the only family I actually know anything about. I have always proudly claimed that heritage. Since none of my family was here until 1900 after my grandmother was born. I remember my great grandmother nearing her passing stoped speaking English entirely and reverted to gaelic. A staunch and strict woman. But then all the women in my family are strong. I was told once the clan was border fighters. And the women had to be strong as they stayed behind and literally "kept" the homes. Is that tradition born in the blood? I certainly hope so. And hope I keep faith with those who came before. While I can not claim to be ‘in the clan’ because of generations removed. (daughter of a daughter..etc) I am certainly from that clan. And holdmy head high when I say it. J

VisforVegan wrote about a series of aggravations that have come from being a minority member and misunderstood.

Americans have a tendency to declare their ethnic backgrounds as their nationalities. The reality, of course, is that I am an American, but one of Scottish descent. Scottish. Not Irish. Nothing wrong with being Irish, I’m just not, and I hate hearing the words "Oh, so you’re Irish" or "Campbell. That’s Irish, right?". No. It’s not. Saint Patrick’s day was a nightmare at my [catholic] school—"Oh, it’s your day!"; "Are you and your family going to eat corned beef and cabbage tonight?" Even if one ignores that the previous statement is most likely somewhat offensive to the Irish population, this fact still remains: I’m not Catholic, I’m a vegan, and I’m Scottish."

VisforVegan then went on to say, "I am fiercely proud of my cultural heritage. . . . A little acknowledgement is all I ask."

Seasplash wrote,

MacGregor Clan! I am extremely proud of my Scottish heritage (and my natural red hair!) We can be traced back to King Alpin, the ‘Father of the Dynasty of Scotland’, who reigned from 843-858. Blessings to all of my Scottish brothers and sisters! J

Finally, in the personal story entitled "Scottish and That’s Not Crap!!", Okcelticmaid wrote,

My observation about these personal stories shared by persons who identify with Irish and Scottish heritages is that the writers feel strongly enough about their family’s Celtic roots to post their anecdotes and opinions for all to see on the Worldwide Web. My conclusion is that there is a vast and rich array of testimonies about personal and family experiences—from happy and sad, angry and proud persons—to tap into on the Web. The hardest part seems to be figuring out where to go to find it. And this is without even starting to look at YouTube, with its visual and auditory data.

Discussion About Symbolic Celtic Ethnicity

A student in our Child and Family Studies program, writing about an assigned reading for a course I teach, said,

As a third generation Scot, I have always felt like a bit of a phony at Scottish ceremonies and games. So I was particularly interested to read about symbolic ethnicity knowing that I would probably be horrified by many of the acts of my heroic Scottish ancestors. [Used with his permission]

This statement got me thinking about symbolic ethnicity (Strong, DeVault, & Sayad, 1998) and its power to shape one’s identity at the paradigmatic level (Day, 1995). The word paradigm is a Greek word meaning pattern. Doesn’t any ethnic group identity that I as a person, as part of a family, tap into determine some kind of pattern in my life?

Mary Robinson served as the first female President of the Republic of Ireland from 1990 to 1997 (Gerard-Sharp & Perry, 1995, 2007). In a speech she made to both Houses of the Oireachtas on February 2, 1995, she stated,

Of course, that notion offends many of Irish descent who live throughout the Diaspora. Though they might never have seen the island in person, they feel a bond that’s hard to explain, passed down from generation to generation, in families and communities that cherish what they consider to be their Irish heritage. Americans, Canadians, and Australians, yes, but a piece of them feels "Irish", too. (p. 2)

After expanding on the work that this paper has only begun to scratch the surface of (e.g., on Yahoo.com, there are approximately 24,300,000 links for the term Irish families; and I have not really explored the Welsh American families at all), as future research, I am interested in seeing what parallels might be drawn between Scotland following the battle of Culloden on April 16, 1746; Ireland (especially Northern Ireland) following their defeat by the British; and the American South (heavily Scots-Irish, Scots, and Irish, especially in the mountains) following the Civil War. This line of research would compare the policies of Enclosure in Scotland, the Plantation of Northern and Midlands Ireland, and any similar policies carried out in Wales as counterparts to Reconstruction policies in the U.S. South. See pp. 59-73 in Richard Brown’s Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850 (it’s a read-only file on Google by doing a search for "Scotland enclosure").

A second line of research I am interested in exploring in the future is the Travellers of Ireland and the Roma of Scotland. The origins of these two groups apparently are very distinct from each other, the Irish Travellers being "an indigenous nomadic minority group" (Power, 2006, p. 29; see also Helleiner, 2000, & Oppersdorff, 1997) and the Scottish Roma being descendants of a military society that originated in India according to Lucas (1882) and MacRitchie (1894), who make convincing arguments based on linguistic research they conducted; however, Abramson and Haskell (2006) state that that is not the case and that "neither group [the Irish or Scottish Travelers] shares the Indic origins of Gypsies nor identifies itself as such" (p. 259). Families from both groups have emigrated into the U.S. (Abramson & Haskell, 2006; Power, 2006),

A third area that I want to delve further into in the future has to do with resolution of very challenging conflicts, such as The Troubles in Northern Ireland that in many ways have gone on for centuries. In the U.S., we have generations of the Hatfields and the McCoys who took grudge wars to the extreme (Abramson & Haskell, 2006). (I had a Hatfield descendent in one of my classes a few years ago.) Their longstanding feud was reminiscent of the narrative in Robert Coles’ article about a young guide describing a British insult to Ulster as if it were yesterday (I am still trying to find a copy of this article, which I read years ago, so I cannot list the citation at this time). The book, Intractable Conflicts and Their Transformation (Kriesberg, Northrup, & Thorson, 1989), is a good jumping off place for this research topic.

Finally, my fourth ongoing passion for Celtic studies is music. I have pretty much given up hope for learning Gaelic—at least the written versions of Irish or Scottish or Welsh. The spellings dumbfound me. But the music of these groups calls to me. I was amazed to discover how many Irish and Scottish songs in particular I learned as a child or adolescent. I was attracted to it even then, living in the heart of Scandinavian- and German-American country.