Who are the Scotch-Irish?

When we go back and look at the various definitions as a group, what do we have?  Everything and nothing.  One writer says that the Scotch-Irish are actually English.  Another writer says that they are just about everything but Scotch.  (Note:  The original Scots were actually a tribe that invaded what was later known as Scotland from - guess where - Ireland.)  Hanna states that a 'Scotch-Irishman' could actually have both Scotch and old-Irish ancestors, although most writers would definitely not agree with that statement.  Shirk indicates that a person could qualify for the Scotch-Irish label even though his ancestors may never have lived in Ireland (but Dunaway disagrees).  Both Fisher and Shirk imply that, although one's ancestors may have never have set foot in Scotland, they may qualify for the Scotch-Irish designation.

So, what can we say about any person's motivation or correctness in applying the term Scotch-Irish to his ancestors?  Very little . . . except that they wish to be disassociated from the old-Irish, in particular the Roman Catholic potato-famine Irish immigrants.

Who is Not Scotch-Irish?

Having failed to consolidate the various definitions into a rational unit, we will attack the problem from the rear.  We will eliminate those classifications that do not logically or semantically fall into the Scotch-Irish category.  Using this approach, descendants of the following groups are out:
 
êOld-Irish or Gaelic Irish, living in Ireland before 1600 (before the advent of the "Great Plantation").  To be sure, there were other elements represented in the Irish population before 1600.  They included Normans, Vikings, Scot gallowglasses, and Danes.  However, all of these "foreigners" (with the exception of the "old-English") had been absorbed into the native Irish population by 1600.  I consider it safe to assume that there is no one out there claiming to be Norman-Irish or Danish-Irish.

êScots who immigrated directly to America.  It is a mystery to me why the descendants of anyone who had not taken the Scotland-Ireland-America migration route should claim to be Scotch-Irish.  We do know that many of the immigrants from Scotland were Loyalists (Tories, loyal to the Crown) during the Revolutionary War, so it may have been advantageous, after the war, for a Scot to become Scotch-Irish, the majority of which were American patriots.  In like manner, some of my German ancestors retroactively became Swiss after World War II.

êHighland Scots.  Most Scotch-Irish writers agree that the Scotch-Irish designation applies only to Lowland Scots.  Leyburn writes:  "A few Highlanders drifted over into Northern Ireland, for the Western Isles and portions of Argyll are very near to Ulster.  Their Gaelic language and sometimes their Catholicism made them more welcome than Lowland Scots to the native Irish.  King James, however, had specifically excluded Highlanders from his design for the Plantation of Ulster:  he wanted to civilize Ireland by settlers with British ways, not to confirm Irishmen in their intransigence.  Highlanders, therefore, have no real place in the ancestry of the Scotch-Irish."  Further on, Leyburn states:  "Lowlanders who left Scotland for Ireland between 1610 and 1690 were biologically compounded of many ancestral strains.  While the Gaelic Highlanders of that time were (as they are probably still) overwhelmingly Celtic in ancestry, this was not true of the Lowlanders.  Even if the theory of 'racial' inheritance of character were sound, the Lowlander had long since become a biological mixture, in which at least nine strains had met and mingled in different proportions."

êEnglish.  According to Leyburn:  "Many Americans who consider their ancestors to have been Scotch-Irish are actually descendants of English settlers, especially from the counties between London and Wales and from the northern counties of England, who migrated to Ulster and there became members of communities where the Scottish influence was predominant.  When the movement to America began after 1717, many of these English Ulstermen joined their Scottish friends and neighbors in their removal to