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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1997-11 > 0880429436


From: linda Merle <>
Subject: Re: The Hamely Tongue
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 19:43:56 -0800


Hi Diane,

> No wonder I couldn't understand anyone in Scotland!
> If I'd started in Western PA, I wouldn't have been so surprised.

Hehe...when I was in Belfast my friends kept saying: "I didn't know
anyone said that but us!"

> BTW, I thought all those folks living in the hoots and hollers of the
> Appalachias, singing the old songs and speaking middle English - were
> English? A recent thread made me think that *we* were claiming them
> (*discounting, for the moment, my English blood, which keeps turning out
> to be something else anyway).

Yer lucky! My something else keeps turning into English.... I'm not sure
anyone knows for sure what they were though lets not let a thing like
that keep us from fighting about it <grin>. "Albion's Seed" author
Fischer claims that they came from the borders of Scotland and England,
and some from Ulster. He claims there was one culture on both borders,
not only because they were both borders (which means they had to endure
a lot of conflict) but also because a lot of Ulsterfolk were orginally
Borderfolk.

Not too many people have proved him right. I'm not convinced the two are
one culture, or rather were. My father's grandparents came from both
sides of the English/Scots borders. They were somewhat alike --
peaceful,
quiet folk who tried to avoid fights. On the other hand my mother's
ancestors
came from Ulster and all they did was look for fights. I never saw all
four
grandparents in one room. They hated one another, I suspect. Though this
may
not have anything to do with 300 years ago.

In any case, as Fraser in "The Steele Bonnets" says, the folk on the
borders were one border culture. They were always marrying across the
border
so how could it be otherwise? They differed from the southern English
and
the lowlanders. That I beleive.

So who knows where those Appalachians came from? Probably some from the
borders and some from Ulster. Since a few truckloads of banjo-playing
Andersons
and Blacks used to show up at our reunions from down in West Virginia,
I know some of them are Ulster Scots with a little English. <grin>.

Linda Merle

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