“I didn’t think the “Scots” in Scots-Irish were necessarily of full Celtic stock (e.g. Highlanders). More an amalgamation of the Angle, Saxon, Norman, Romano-British and Celtic blood lines that mixed and mingled for hundreds of years in the Midlands of England. Plus, was not even the “Irish” side more Anglo-Irish in culture than Celtic?”
The term “scots-irish” was coined in America, in the mid 1800s, once the “potato famine” Irish began immigrating here.
Until then, the “scots-irish” in America called themselves “Irish” for that was their classification, when they came to the colonies during the 1700s.
The potato famine Irish of the mid 1800s were of low education, low economic class, and generally looked down on.
In order to distinguish themselves from these Irish newcomers, the earlier settlers called themselves “Scots-Irish” as a mark of superior class.
In Canada and the UK, the term “scots-irish” is NOT used. They are called mainly “Ulters-Scots.”
As far as celtic-purity, it is easy to prove the Ulster-Scots have many claims to celtic heretige.
I will leave defending this claim to those better qualified than I am.
Racially the people of Ireland and Scotland mix Celt, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Norman blood with several others. To say one is “pure” or “more pure” is a hard claim to support.
“The term “scots-irish” was coined in America, in the mid 1800s, once the “potato famine” Irish began immigrating here.”
My Mississippi grandmother, born in 1876, used the phrase to describe the family but I rather doubt that she had any contact with the potato-famine crowd. Her family were Presbyterian Scots who settled in Ulster and then left for the Colonies when they were double-crossed by the English, whom they had assisted in war.
These Presbyterian Scots-Irish harbored a grudge against the English, so when the Redcoats and their Loyalist lackeys decided to lay waste to the backcountry South it was payback time. King’s Mountain, Cowpens, Williamson’s Plantation; these were fought largely by Patriot Militia of Scots Irish blood.