Many of these Scots, particularly those who came from areas in Scotland which in previous centuries had been populated by immigrants from Ulster, may be justly considered as returning to the home of their ancestors. Thus F.J. Bigger has written that “When the Galloway planters came to Ulster they were only returning to their own lands like emigrants returning home again.” These common origins were well known to the settlers themselves as the speech made by Sir James Hamilton in the Irish House of Commons on 1 May 1615 clearly demonstrates. However, there was to be one fundamental characteristic which would stamp these new arrivals as different from all those who had preceded them — the Reformation had swept Scotland and most of the new arrivals were to be Protestants.

The Reformation in Scotland had brought a social as well as a religious transformation. The development of a strong peasant movement against the feudal lords was expressed politically in democratic ideals as well as culturally in the form of Presbyterianism. When these Lowland Scots came to Ulster they were determined to leave feudalism behind them in Scotland. The new settlers rapidly transformed the Ulster countryside, draining in particular the drumlin country which had stood as a barrier to communication between Ulster and the rest of Ireland since prehistoric times. In extending the Scottish Lowland way of life into Ulster they were soon to see themselves as founders of a new society based on the fundamental rights of liberty, equality and fraternity.

It is wrong to assume, however, that all the settlers were Protestants, since there were Scottish Catholics as well, some of whom were ultimately of English origin. Thus a letter written by the Bishop of Derry to the Lord Chancellor in the year 1692 says, “Sir George Hamilton since he got part of the Earl of Abercorn’s grant of the Barony of Strabane has done his best to plant Popery there, and has brought over priests and Jesuits from Scotland.” It further laments that “all the Hamiliton lands are now in the hands of Papists”. A. Perceval-Maxwell has confirmed that, since both Abercorn’s and Sir Claud Hamilton’s children were converted to Roman Catholicism through Sir George’s influence, within a generation one of the most successful parts of the Scottish Plantation was led by Roman Catholics. Most other immigrants were probably at least nominally Protestant although initially their religious affiliations were not strong and the development of their ideals took place in Ulster itself, depending more on local religious leaders than on previous sentiment.

The new Scots settlers differed from the English in language on two counts. Firstly there was a significant group who spoke Gaelic and it seems that Scottish Gaelic speakers were intelligible to the Irish at this period. (Indeed, the first book ever to be printed in Irish Gaelic was a translation of the Calvinist Book of Common Order, commonly called John Knox’s Liturgy, published in Edinburgh in 1567 for the use of Presbyterians.) Secondly, the language of the others was not the standard English of today but Lallans, which is derived from the Central Scots language, known in Scotland as ‘Inglis’. This Ulster Lallans (Ullans) language is still spoken in the north-east of Ulster and in Donegal, where contact with Scotland through settlement and commerce has been close. The Scottish speech is in some ways an older form of the English language grouping than standard English and R. de Bruce Trotter in his Galloway Gossip has listed the chief points of difference between the two grammars. Church and state have been just as antagonistic to Lallans as they have been to Gaelic itself, leading to as great a contraction of the Scots-speaking districts as the Gaelic-speaking districts of Ulster.

To be continued