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(Note: the following essay is based on research that is shown in detail in the book, We're Indians Sure Enough: The Legacy of the Scottish Highlanders in the United States.)
Anglo-America, for a number of reasons, has been rediscovering and reinventing its ethnic roots in recent years and Celtic heritage seems to be particularly popular. Modern interpretations of folk music and dance seem to have a particularly strong following. While the Irish have managed to make the most of this trend, the Scots are also featuring in popular forms of Celtic ethnicity in America. [...]
It has been well documented by scholars in recent decades that Scotland was one of few nations in Europe not to have benefited widely from the nation-building movements of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scottish institutions were left underdeveloped, especially where serious scholarship on Scottish subjects was concerned (HSGW pp. 28, 69-72, 283-4). The lack of support and patronage made Scotland susceptible to myth-making and romanticism, and this is obvious in the popular mythology about emigration.
The history of Scotland is no less complicated than other nations in Europe, or the rest of the world. Early Scotland was a Celtic kingdom, compromised of Gaelic, Pictish, and Brythonic peoples, unified by Gaelic nation-builders and ruled by a dynasty of Gaelic kings. The adoption of feudal institutions and the introduction of Anglo-Normans, however, especially during the twelfth century, began a process which was to polarize Scotland into Lowland and Highland culture regions. In time, the Lowlands were drawn inexorably by the gravity of England and became estranged from the Highlanders who in turn increasingly saw their society under threat and developed a siege mentality (HSGW Chapter Two). [...]
As Lowland Scotland was attempting to join the European rush to exploit the 'New World' in the seventeenth century, one can find many Lowland Scots immigrating to North America on often ill-fated commercial schemes. Only a small number of Highlanders were part of these ventures, often sent forcibly as prisoners of war.
Also present in large numbers in America, especially in the southern regions, were the Protestant planters who left Northern Ireland, now commonly called 'Scots-Irish'. Every aspect of this important group has caused a great deal of confusion about Scottish-American history. The term 'Scots-Irish' first appears in the early sixteenth century to describe soldiers of Scottish Gaelic origin or descent who were engaged in Northern Ireland. However, this group of Gaelic mercenaries is very different from the soldier-colonists sent from 1609 onwards by the British Crown to conquer Ulster by force and displace its native Gaelic inhabitants. These colonists were from many different places, especially Northern England, the Scottish Borders, Lowland Scotland, and France, and some Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were also in their number. [...]
They were sent specifically as loyal Protestant subjects of the British Crown.
They arrived as colonists of a powerful empire whose might they could choose to wield for their own benefit. It is a testimony to the integrity and compassion of those who chose to ally themselves with native peoples that this did not always happen. However, we must see that Highlanders were individuals with a long history of forced cultural assimilation who were not racially predetermined to live like indigenous peoples. They had rather strong incentives to adapt to Anglo-centric norms, to advance the cause of empire and commerce, and to continue the marginalization of indigenous peoples, and few reasons to prolong their own disadvantages as rebels against an Empire that had nearly wiped them out. [...]
Music has been the most attractive aspect of Celtic heritage recently and it is little surprise that people are looking for connections between American folk music (especially country-western) and Celtic musics. Many have heard this siren call, for there are frequent claims that there is a similarity between western songs and the classic ballad, such as 'Barbara Allan' or 'Lord Ronald'. What is often not realized is that although the classic ballad was highly popular throughout Europe, one of the only places where it did not catch on was the Gaelic-speaking world (HSGW p. 263). Although there are a handful of late examples of ballads adopted into the Highland repertoire, Gaelic song and narrative appears to have been so robust and well developed that the ballad was not seen as an attractive option at the period of its height in Europe. This is an example of how much Lowland and Highland Scotland can differ, for Lowland Scotland shared England's love of the classic ballad.