THE SCOT IN ULSTER
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wife and baby, Chichester looks a capable, many-sided man, in whom there must have been the play of light and shade. But what the Irish chiefs were who made so strange an exit from their own land we know not, unless we are able to believe the theory that they were innocent lambs, who always wore pretty bows of pink ribbon. It is unfortunate that no Irishman has arisen with the deep historical knowledge, the strong sympathy with the past, the sunny humour, and the splendid imagination of Sir Walter Scott, to throw the clear noonday light of genius on the dark places of the path--to illumine the Ireland of Chichester, as Scott has made bright the England of James I. and Salisbury.
There is much material recently made available, by the publication of the Irish State Papers, for forming some conception of Ireland in the beginning of the seventeenth century. One thing is very evident--that the English and Scots of the time looked on the Irish just as the white settlers regard Kaffirs in Cape Colony. In the official documents they are invariably termed the "mere Irish." They were treated as an inferior and subject race, who would do a graceful act if they would only disappear from history. The official reports by Government servants made in the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, also give clear and vivid pictures of the state of Ulster. They may be taken as essentially correct, as the writers had means of observing, and no reasons for writing anything that...continue reading »
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Page 30
The Scot in Ulster:
Sketch of the History of the Scottish Population of Ulster
by John Harrison
1888