Thursday, January 27, 2011
Born Fighting
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The term Ulster Scots
Wentworth’s adviser in Ireland was Sir George Radcliffe. He was deeply concerned that the Covenanter Army, under the command of the Earl of Argyle, might come to Ulster. On 8th October 1640 Radcliffe wrote (citing the famous assassination which had caused Robert the Bruce to flee to Rathlin Island over 300 years before):
“...Many thousands in the North never took the oath... they will shortly return, to any that dares question them, such an answer as Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, made to Sir John Comyn, who, charging him with breach of oath, taken at Westminster to King Edward, replies, with cleaving his head in two. None is so dim-sighted, but sees the general inclination of the Ulster Scots to the covenant: and God forbid they should tarry there till the Earl of Argyll brings them arms to cut our throats...”
Radcliffe was the first to use the term “Ulster Scots”.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
From Texas to Carrickfergus
Friday, January 14, 2011
Americans visit Ulster
Dear All,
Please see below, details of a new 3 part documentary following a group of Ulster-Scots from the US as they visit Northern Ireland to trace their roots and discover a little more about their Ulster heritage.
I know this will be of interest to a lot of you - so don’t forget - “We’r Fur Hame” starts Monday 17th January 2011 at 19.00hrs on BBC2 - the series runs for 3 weeks.
Regards,
Iain
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Stonewall Jackson's ancestral home near Belfast, Ulster
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Ulster has powerful enemy in Congressman Peter King
After spending decades canvassing his fellow Irish-American Catholics to raise money for terrorists in Northern Ireland, King has promised to conduct a wide-ranging investigation of American Muslim congregations and cultural organizations in search of people providing "material support" for Islamic terrorism.... King, whose Long Island district has a large and well-organized Irish-American constituency, was one of the group's most effective fundraisers and one of the IRA's staunchest supporters.
"We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry," King declared during a 1982 rally on behalf of the IRA in Nassau County. The "Provos" heartily reciprocated King's affection.
"During his visits to Ireland, Mr. King would often stay with well-known leaders of the IRA, and he socialized in IRA drinking haunts," recalled Irish journalist Ed Moloney, author of the definitive work A Secret History of the IRA, in a 2005 New York Sun profile written after King's tardy and reluctant break with the group. "At one of such clubs, the Felons, membership was limited to IRA veterans who had served time in jail."Granted, many honorable and decent men – from Northern Ireland and elsewhere – have become familiar with the inside of a prison cell. But the ex-convicts with whom King socialized during his visits to Ireland generally weren't innocent political prisoners.
1892 John C.Calhoun speaks
At the 1892 convention of the Scotch-Irish Society of America in Atlanta, Georgia lawyer Patrick Calhoun, grandson of Scotch-Irish-descended John C. Calhoun had the following to say about the Scotch-Irish in Georgia:
The Scotch-Irish have stamped an imperishable impression upon Georgia. For those homely virtues of thrift, industry and economy which have caused the people of this State to be termed the Yankees of the South; for that dauntless and invincible courage which has immortalized the conduct of her soldiers upon the field of battle; for all those splendid qualities which enabled her people to erect the fabric of pure and honest government out of the corrupting chaos of Reconstruction, and to move forward so rapidly and successfully in the march of progress as to justly win for her the proud rank of the "Empire State of the South," Georgia is deeply indebted to that noble race in whose history, traced through their career here and their earlier settlements in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Pennsylvania back to old Ulster, and further still to the lowlands and craggy highlands of Scotland, the electric search light of the nineteenth century discloses not a single page blurred by servile submission to native wrong or foreigh yoke. (Quoted in: "The Georgia Scotch-Irish," Orville A. Park, The Georgia Historical Quarterly, June 1928, pp. 115-135)