THE SCOT IN ULSTER
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and thinks, big drops of rain; and before him is spread out, north, south, and east, the sullen sea, whose moan fills all his sense of hearing. It is not the spot which a man would love to picture to himself as his last resting-place. Read the names on the stones, and you discover why here in Ireland there is to be found nothing of tender grace to mark the higher side, nothing of tinsel to show the lower, of Irish character. The names are very Scottish--such as Andrew Byers, John Shaw, Thomas M'Millan, Robert Angus; it is a burying-place of the simple peasants of County Down, who are still, in the end of the nineteenth century, as Scottish as they were when they landed here nearly three centuries ago.
These graveyards of the Scots are now on every shore,--among the great forests of Canada, as well as here by the side of the Irish Sea; where the new Dunedin rises out of the Southern Ocean, as well as in the old Dunedin, under the shadow of its Castle rock. Thus enter into a common rest those who shared a common toil, whether in the old motherland, or far away scattered over the wide world. Why should they indulge in sentiment in death who have known only stern toil in life?--for them is more fitting some expression of that high faith which they have kept, even though they may in holding it have made it somewhat unlovely. And what recks it, after all, to the Scot whether he sleep in an unknown grave, as sleeps John Knox, beside the "great kirk" ...continue reading »
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Page 14
The Scot in Ulster:
Sketch of the History of the Scottish Population of Ulster
by John Harrison
1888