Scotch-Irish-L Archives
Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1999-08 > 0933702079
From: <>
Subject: Re: Scotch-Irish question
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 10:41:19 PDT
Hi Alice,
I don't see how something could run in Scotch IRish families
any more than they can run in American. Neither is a race. Both
are composites of other "races". In the case of Ulster Scots :
Scots, Irish, Welsh, English, German, Dutch, French, Norse.
There is no "racial purity" here because there is no race to be
pure or impure. So how coud something run in them? You might
look for a specific locale where the gene pool is less....eh....
like European soup. Ie, back in a remote fishing village in
Scotland you might find such a thing, but even in Ireland your
ancestors moved about looking for a better lease with better
ground. They were not like corn plants -- planted in the soil,
immovable. The IRish are a bit more like corn plants, though
they are more Scots, English, Welsh, Norse, German, French than
they like to admit to. Fear of being such is one reason the
Irish avoid genealogy (or so I was told by a friend in Donegal):
they're afraid of finding out they is we.
Back to main topic -- often we think once we've found "where"
it is our ancestors split for Amerikay from, we are "home". Nope,
maybe they moved every generation between then and some hypo-
thetical arrival from Scotland. OR so the books tell me. This
trait the "race" retained in America, pushing westward con-
stantly.
So its' a little hard to say about the SI, a people formed
by circumstance, mythology and centuries of shared experience
rather than a common gene pool.
Even The Scots are an amalgam of four poeples: Gaels (from
Ireland), Picts, Britons (P-Celtic speaking Celtic folk),
and Norse, so their genetic backgrounds are diverse.
I've never heard of this horrible illness and I hope we find a cure.
Linda Merle
This thread: