I’m 63 years old this year and when I was very young (less than 10) I asked my grandmother what I was. She said I was Scotch Irish, Dutch & the Devil. I recently learned that years ago, the Scottish working class was persecuted by the elite in Scotland. So, they left Scotland and landed in Ireland looking for equality. When they got to Ireland, lo and behold, they were treated the same as in their homeland. They became known as Scotch Irish. They got tired of their persecution in Ireland and so decided to leave and come to America. Their departure from Ireland was about the same time as the Irish Potato Famine. When they got to America, almost all of them settled in the Appalachian Mountains of the east central part of the United States. Guess what; when they got here they were persecuted again as being foreigners. They finally got tired of their persecution wherever they went and became defensively belligerent. To mark their identity as a culture that wouldn’t deal with persecution any more, they became united and identified themselves to each other by wearing a red neckerchief around their necks. Hence the term “Redneck” was coined. So, am I a redneck? Probably a little. Am I Irish? Yeah but with Scottish heritage. Do I drink green beer? NO WAY! Do I ever wear a Kilt? NO!! Do I wear the GREEN on St. Patrick’s Day. You betcha by Golly. I favor my heritage and would love to fish the Chalk Streams of The Northern Isles. Perhaps one day in Paradise.
When your time comes, May you be a half hour in Heaven before the Devil knows you’re dead.
Today I am Irish. The rest of the year I am a Heinz 57, and I really like it that way. Makes me an American!
Me too DUB. I used to use 57 as a code # ID for security entry to work.
I have a wee bit of “Murphy” in my lineage, the rest is Danish, German, Lithuanian, Northumbrian & Polish
On “Saint Patrick’s Day”, we are all Irish!
An Irish Prayer
"May we learn to love those who love us.
Those who do not love us, may GOD turn their hearts.
If GOD is unable to turn their hearts, may GOD turn their ankle.
So we may know them by their limping!"
~Panelli
I’m German through and through, Grandparents came over from Bavaria just before WW1 on one side and Pennsylvania Duch from WAY back on the other :)…BUT!..I love the Irish. Any culture that can brew the best beer in the world has my respect. Praise be to Guiness B’golly! 
I hear the Germans do pretty good beer too. Bavarian brews have been top of the line for lots of years. And now I understand they own the world’s biggest brewery. Budweiser.
Aye, me laddies! I be Irish. The wee missus has me family traced back to aboot 1170 in Dublin. We came west in 1870 through Dundee as they weren’t letting we Irish board a ship for the States in Ireland. The line stayed pure until me Pap married a German girl.
I have been wearin’ of the green this fine eve and quaffing a bit o’ the green beer to celebrate dear ole’ St. Pat an’ his runnin’ the snakes out of the homeland, an’ them slitherin things, too!
Lotech…yes they do! Love the Dunkel too. Which is why we can appreciate a good brew when we find it! LOL
How quickly we all forget that yinz want famous fer brewin suds here. Yinz waz famous fer yer white lightnin moonshine boot leg whiskey. Ol’ George Washington hisself hada come up here and have abit of a talk wit yinz in the Pennsyltucky mountains yinz occupy to this here day.
My wife’s father is one generation from Ireland and was born on St. Patrick’s day. We all be Irish on his birthday.
On a different note. My wife’s second cousin owns a B&B in Ireland and we have a standing invitation to come and stay. He has also told me the fishing is fine and he would be more than happy to show me some of his favorite fishing holes. You can bet I will be heading to Ireland in the near future armed with a five.
Ummm, I think you’re history is a little screwed up here. I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently on this time period in British History.
The people you descend from were more of less transplanted to Northern Ireland once James IV King of Scots united England (which then ruled Ireland) and Scotland after he ascended to the English crown following the death of his mother’s cousin - Elizabeth I.
Ireland was always problematic for the Tudors and remained so for the Stuarts. In order to subdue the country, James hit upon the Ulster Plantation. He basically moved out wealthy Northern Ireland landowners and resettled the lands with the Border Reivers families. These clans, which were on both sides of the English-Scottish border, weren’t working class; your ancestors were predators, raiders and the best fighting men in Europe (which seems to still be in the Scotch-Irish DNA). For centuries these clans had been used by either the Scottish or English royal families against each other. With nobody to fight for following unification, James moved the families to Ulster and its surroundings.
The pre-Revolution flight to the American colonies occured for two reasons: 1) The Scotch-Irish were constantly battling Irish rebels and simply got tired of it; and 2) The Scotch-Irish were primarily Presbyterians and other Protestant dissenters and not members of the Church of England. Not a good thing, back in the day. So off to America you’re ancestors came.
More did come with the famine.
Which leads me to say (and I’m just trying to be informative here, not tick you off), that you’re probably not Irish, and may not even be Scottish. At the least, you should probably wear orange!
Redneck does come from the Scotch-Irish, but from even before the Scotch-Irish emigration. The red neckerchief was worn in protest by the Scotch-Irish to protest changes that James made to make the Church of Scotland more like the Church of England. I guess your people took it with them.
Maybe not so cuddly as you thought, but an ancestry to be proud of I think.
My Dad (step-dad) always wore orange on St. Patricks Day.
Me, my heritage is Swedish…my ancestors didn’t live in Ireland, but they travelled there often for a century or three. 
Of course, the Irish gave the world some excellent drinking, while my people came up with Lutefisk. It tempers my pride.
Well…I am always trying to educate myself further. My problem now is which educator do I believe. Steven, it sounds like you really know what you’re talking about. So in the interest of letting you know that my feather are not ruffled, I realize I am basically a mutt. My father was adopted so I have absolutely no idea about that side of my family. Maybe some Russian. On my mother’s side of the family, we can only trace our lineage back as far as one ancestor who enlisted in the Union Army in Ohio during the Civil War. Another ancestor was a frontiersman and Indian Fighter. Knowing as little as I do about my roots I do have to say that I will never wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day, but I’ll never wear a kilt either. I like beer but not green beer. I like whiskey but it’s usually a Canadian Blend, and not Irish Whiskey.
Cheers,
I wear orange on St. Pattie’s Day as well.
If as some say, “We are all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day”, are we all Mexican on Cinco de Mayo, and African American on MLK Jr. Day? I am! I will celebrate almost any holiday.
you know a lot more about your direct roots, than I know about mine. Being Jewish, I basically know who got off the boat and then nothing til Aaron and Moses. I think we’re all from Poland, but it might have been Russia at the time or it might have been Germany. Nobody knows.
I got interested in this because of The Tudors on Show Time. So I read about Henry Tudor (Henry VII) - who married into the House of Lancaster but had a royal pedigree of his own. Of course, the House of Lancaster battled it out with their cousins, the House of York, for 30 some-odd years, in the War of the Roses with Henry finally beating his York cousin, Richard the Usurper, at Bosworth Field. And then I had to read about Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary Queen of Scots. Mary had James IV (James I of England) and here I am.
My initial ancestors go back to Adam, and then the boat. We grew up on different tracts in seems. I’m just glad that the sons of Abraham through Paul, found my ancients.
God blessed us both,
I thought I had found a crack in my German ancestry when I found out my Grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch. Then I learned that that “Dutch” was a bastardization of “Deutsch”. Both branches of my family tree lean towards Germany but at least there is a fork in it.
I suppose my ancestors could have passed by Ireland on their way out. Thats as close as I can come to being Irish.
Dave, I’ve known some thoroughly decent Swedes, and I don’t mean what the English call a rutabaga,either. Some of my ancestors were fond of haggis, others of “smalahove”. (Yeah, cooked sheep’s head, with eyeballs. Yummie… <blech> )
On the other hand, the Pennsylvania breakfast food known as “scrapple” is not to my liking.
Ed
Ed, living in the center of the scrapple universe as I do, I have to agree on that one. 