THE SCOT IN ULSTER
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tomed to walk through the southern districts of Scotland, and to meet the country people going about their daily work in their everyday clothes and everyday manner, to cross into Ireland and wander through the country roads of Down or Antrim. He is in a country which is supposed to be passionately anxious to set up a separate nationality, and yet he cannot feel as if he were away from his own kith and kin. The men who are driving the carts are like the men at home; the women at the cottage doors are in build and carriage like the mothers of our southern Highlands; the signs of the little shops in the villages bear well-known names--Paterson, perhaps, or Johnstone, or Sloan; the boy sitting on the "dyke" with nothing to do, is whistling "A man's a man for a' that." He goes into a village inn, and is served by a six-foot, loosely-hung Scottish Borderer, worthy to have served "drams" to "the Shepherd and Christopher North"; and when he leaves the little inn he sees by the sign that his host bears the name of "James Hay," and his wonder ceases. The want of strangeness in the men and women is what strikes him as so strange. Then he crosses the Bann, and gets into a different region. He leaves behind him the pleasant green hills which shut in Belfast Lough, the great sweep of rich plain which Lough Neagh may well ask to show cause why it should not be annexed to its inland sea; he gets within sight of the South Derry hills, and the actors in the scene partly change. Some are very familiar; the...continue reading »
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Page 98
The Scot in Ulster:
Sketch of the History of the Scottish Population of Ulster
by John Harrison
1888