I think that it was Kaywoodie who recommended the book “Born Fighting; How the Scots-Irish Shaped America” by Jim Webb.

I’m half way through the book and it’s well worth the read. If you are from Scots-Irish stock, enjoy the history of our national development or simply want to be encouraged by a mentality that will not bend this book is for you.

If you have these roots but find that you have culturally been taught to sit down when you pizz this book may start you on the journey back to manhood.

A group singled out & discriminated against as most. Thinking the nation owes us reparations.

Only reparations I need is 8# of H322

Those Irish will vote for Us for the Next Two Hundred Years ..

Correct Me if I’m Wrong about LBJ ..

I believe that's the Norwegian-Irish.

The book has nothing at all to do with that kind of thinking.

You guys must be sitters.

A common error among Americans to put Irish and Scots-Irish in the same category. Oil and water. Papist and Prod. Harp vs. Union Jack.

For a book on the Scots-Irish before they were planted in Ulster I highly recommend The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers by George McDonald Fraser. Born fighting? Heck their sperms were prob’ly fighting on the trip to the uterus.

LOL. Damn Norwegians. 😜

And then there are the border Irish.

Nope, not at all. I read this book years ago and it’s a great read. It’s all about the stubborn determination of a group of people who came from nothing and helped build a nation.

funny part is when they asked me about blood pressure issues if I got the fight or flight instinct.. that didn't have to ask me very long which one I had they checked the box. . peoples nowadays are so [bleep] stupid.. my granddaughter gets a hint for me at least the two oldest ones I do not take nor put up with much BS

Well, all I have to go on is from family searches that go back to before the Mayflower. A Scotsman married an Irish or vice versa. They sailed her & had kids.
That's good to know as my Scotts/Irish forefathers came here pre 1776. My family tree should have me rich & famous, But this clan slipped away some how.

Finally finished the book. It seems that slow reads are more my way lately.

I highly recommend this book. Mr Webb goes a long way into describing the common thread of this great nation, that which makes us what we are at heart.

There is encouragement to be found in what he writes, even in days that seem to be a bit darker than those past.

One would think that our Scots-Irish roots would motivate us to get off our azz and stop the destruction of our Nation.

Sounds interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

Agreed. I can’t do justice to what he brings out in the book. It’s pretty much bred into us to persevere but live on the margins independently and defiantly. That is both a blessing and a curse. However, that mentality is that which is the common thread.

He unpacks the message well.

Lowland Scot in the 1400s
Ireland, sometime afterwards
South Carolina, 1763
Middle Tennessee, 1820

I have a Revolutionary War officer as an ancestor buried in a little churchyard in South Carolina- - - -may, or may not have been at the battle of King's Mountain- - - -Confederate cousins who walked 40 miles from Dickson Tennessee to Nashville to enlist in the Army of Tennessee- - - -an uncle who swam through burning oil to Omaha Beach- - - -father flew B-17s. I'm a Southeast Asia vet. Grandson was combat wounded and PTSD problems from the sandbox- - - -still works 6 days a week or more. Yep, we're scrappers, and proud of it!

Former Secretary of the Navy, Jim Webb?

Tag

Scots - Irish is the civilized side of my lineage.
McKillips. Is that Irish, Scottish, or Scots - Irish?
A quick lesson would be helpful, as I haven't studied the nuances at all.

I recommended this book a couple of years ago. A great read. Yes James Webb was Secretary of the Navy. RZ.

I think National Lampoon published an excellent peice on the nature of various cultures or the world a few decades ago.....

Doubt you'll find it at the public library.....

Nice chapter on a group commonly referred to as Desert Irish......also known as Arabs....

Glad to be of service.
Get off yer ass and do something, laddie buck!

Hey! Leave my phookin clan out of this!!

I was more impressed by the Steel Bonnets than I was Webb's book. But by the end of the Steel Bonnets I figured out I could've just read the first five pages, any seven in the middle, and the last five and gleaned the same information. Those people (my people) were a bunch of murderous, thieving scum!

Webb's book is part history, but more personal reflection on his own genealogy. It has a shade of airy romanticism that's unnecessary, and his treatment of the civil war is just lost cause revisionism. Come to find out he's a democrat, so that makes sense.

I felt that the book was much more historical. His personal connection seems to be the common thread that would connect those from outside that culture to history and help them find their place in that story.

Being from that culture both the corporate and personal history resonated with me. I can see much of what he referenced in my dad’s family but know that it’s strong on both sides.

This thread, like many others, has descended to garbage.

I’m fighting. Every day I wake up, I’m fighting for

It helps if you are of Irish Catholic heritage and grew up in England when you visit Lowland Scotland in 2016 and see the ancestral roots of Redneck, in this case an apparently unsanctioned or unapproved car race of some kind, partly on road, partly off-road, no police or EMS apparent, roadside spectators not willing to talk much.





To move a bit further down the Redneck family tree, you can take the ferry to Ulster in time for marching season, angry Scots-Irish Orange Order parades marching through Republican Catholic neighborhoods under heavy police guards. Said parades marching in perfect cadence past hostile people ignoring it or cursing quietly.



We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord. See this? This is a Scots-Irish Presbyterian Church, in Ulster. Switch out that Union Jack for a Star-Spangled Banner and you could transplant that church most anywhere into the American South and it would fit right in.



Most people are aware that fumbduck Irish in Boston were moronic enough to contribute funds to the IRA. Fewer people know that Ian Paisley, the Uber Prod of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, closely associated with the terrorist Ulster Protestant Volunteers, toured Protestant churches across the American South raising funds.

I’ve read Born Fighting and The Steel Bonnets. I agree that Steel Bonnets can be a tedious read. One thing that surprised me tho was the numbers that could be involved in those endless Border raids, sometimes more than 1,000 men. In these parts we would call those battles.

I do have tremendous admiration for the Scots-Irish, they made America what it is, or was. Much more so than Irish Catholics did. I suppose if I wanted to wax all historical I could point out, as an Irish Catholic, the Scots-Irish are among my traditional blood-enemies. On that score a Belfast Scots-Irish once asked me if I supported Glasgow Celtic (Catholic), or Glasgow Rangers (Protestant).

I told him I supported the Dallas Cowboys.

Thanks for the pics and perspective Birdwatcher!