Ulster Scots People - Intermingling and Intermarriage in Ulster

Intermingling and Intermarriage in Ulster

A question that has been raised by many historians about the Ulster-Scots is the question of intermingling and more importantly, intermarriage between the native Irish and the incoming Scots. However others contest such claims.

Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, author of the book Hidden Ulster, Protestants and the Irish language, states that many of the settlers came from Gaelic speaking areas in Scotland and thus would have culturally meshed well with their new neighbours. Also he states that church records show that by 1716 close to ten percent of ministers in Ulster preached in Gaelic. He claims that such cultural and geographic affinity would have produced numerous conversions and also marriages. In addition James G. Leyburn, author of The Scotch-Irish: A social history, quotes James Reid, a historian of the Irish Presbyterian Church in 1853, that when the marriage ban was lifted in 1610 that it was a "great joy to all parties". However Professor Leyburn examines both sides of the intermixture debate in Chapter 10 "Intermarriage with the Irish" where after examination of both viewpoints, ends the chapter by giving his own view of the matter:

"If one must give his verdict, the weight of evidence seems to be on the side of little intermixture. The Scotch-Irish, as they came to be known in America, were overwhelmingly Scottish in ancestry and Presbyterian in faith. To the extent that occasional intermarriage occurred, the Irish partner seems almost invariably to have been absorbed into the Presbyterian element."

James Woodburn holds that the Scots and Irish "commonly intermarried". In 1923, The Handbook of the Ulster Question published by the Free State government, stated that English politicians were quite perturbed how the Scots were ready enough to intermarry with the Irish.