0 comment Monday, December 1, 2014 | admin
From the movie Gods and Generals, the opening titles and the beautiful song 'Going Home', sung by Mary Fahl.
Labels: American History, Home And Hearth, Music, Southron Heritage
0 comment Friday, October 31, 2014 | admin
I somehow missed commemorating the birthday of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose birthday was July 13.
FORREST, Nathan Bedford (1821-1877) was a Confederate general who served in the cavalry during the War Between the States. When asked of the secret of victory, it is said that he made his famous reply "To git thar the fustest with the mostest men," although some biographies say Forrest phrased this in perfectly good English. He won fame by his brilliant raids, and took part in such noted battles as Shiloh and Chickamauga. Forrest was born in Bedford Country, Tennessee, and moved to Mississippi when a boy. He had little schooling, but became a successful trader and cotton planter." World Book Encyclopedia, 1956
The above is the simple entry about General Nathan Bedford Forrest in the old World Book Encyclopedia from decades ago, as noted.
If you knew nothing about General Forrest, would you consider him 'controversial' based on the biographical entry above? Well, it seems the gentlemen who wrote that entry were not as informed or enlightened as today's Washington Post and Associated Press writers, who pointedly cite Forrest's detractors who say he was a 'virulent racist' and a 'polarizing figure.'
I say that if he is a polarizing figure, it is only due to the fact that the media hacks have diligently done their assignment over the past few decades, that assignment being to re-frame General Forrest as an evil man. The NAACP and all the usual anti-South, anti-White forces have captured the dialogue and made sure that all the 'dead White males' who were once respected are now denounced as 'bigots'. Note that the WaPo piece concludes by quoting Union General William Sherman as saying that Forrest was a 'devil' who should be hunted down and killed.
Quoting Sherman here is quite ironic, as he is considered a 'demon' by many in the South because of his brutality, as noted in the following:
''Here is a more accurate summary of events, taken from Brian Cisco�s new book new book War Crimes Against Southern Civilians:
Women and children, black and white, were robbed, brutalized, and left homeless in Sherman�s infamous raid through Georgia. Torture and rape were not uncommon. In South Carolina, homes, farms, churches, and whole towns disappeared in flames. Civilians received no mercy at the hands of the Union invaders. Earrings were ripped from bleeding ears, graves were robbed, and towns were pillaged. Wherever Federal troops encountered Southern Blacks, whether free or slave, they were robbed, brutalized, belittled, kidnapped, threatened, tortured, and sometimes raped or killed by their blue-clad "liberators."
The WaPo article does quote some admirers of Forrest who praise him, though obviously the fact that they give bitter critics the last word shows their anti-Forrest, anti-Confederate, anti-White prejudice.
As always only one side of the picture is given, and thus each generation since the 1960s understands less and less of the context of the War Between the States, and the complicated period called Reconstruction that ensued once the South was defeated and degraded.
It's good that General Forrest is still honored even if only by a remnant of Southron people who have not been politically corrected and 'reconstructed.' But we need to find a way to get the truth out. A while back, a reader here asked me about Jim Crow, and I was at a loss for a source to which to direct him for accurate information. There is so little available today to give the other side of the story, so the NAACP, the far-left SPLC and their ilk are left to shape 'history' to their ends. This needs to be changed. If anyone out there knows of sources online or elswhere that can help to balance out the lies, please share such resources with us.
H/T: Michael at Southern Nationalist Network
Labels: American History, Confederate States Of America, Southron Heritage, War Between The States
0 comment Thursday, October 2, 2014 | admin
Sir Walter Scott's most-often quoted words may be these:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!'
He also wrote:
Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.''
I think those are true words.
Sir Walter Scott, novelist and poet, had a wide-ranging influence as may be gathered from the links gathered on this site.
He was especially revered in the American South, as Carl N. Degler in Out of Our Past tells us:
Where the ideas of the nineteenth century were congenial to southern antebellum values, they spread extravagantly. Though the novels of a romantic like Sir Walter Scott were popular in North and South alike, it was in the latter that he became a literary idol. Upon his death, Richmond newspapers were edged in black. Only in the South were knightly joustings held in full pseudo-mediaeval armor and regalia. It was from Scott's books that Southerners lifted the word ''southron,'' which they self-consciously applied to themselves. The romantic picture of the organic, status society of the Middle Ages, which Scott dwelt on in several of his novels, seemed to shore up southern and conservative ideas on society and slavery. Hence, south of the Ohio, Scott found a welcome place denied to contemporaries like Dickens and Shelley, who mixed their romanticism with urban, humanitarian, and irreligious beliefs largely foreign to the South."
This is interesting; I had not been aware of the extent to which Scott was revered in the old South, nor that he was not as highly regarded in the North.
As to the word 'southron', I am not convinced that Scott was THE source for this term nor the use thereof in the South. It is an archaic term for Southern, used mainly in Scotland as I understand, and it was used by J.R.R. Tolkien in his writings. I suppose Tolkien may have picked it up likewise from Scott, but he was not the ultimate originator of it. I use the word, as do others, because it specifically refers to the people, history, and way of life of the American South, unlike the general word 'Southern'which simply designates a direction or a geographical region.
The Walter Scott Digital Archive contains a treasure trove of information about him, and links to his works.
Update: Please see the wonderful tribute to Scott at Cambria Will Not Yield.
Labels: American Heritage, American History, Birthdays, English Literature, Scotland, Southron Heritage
0 comment Sunday, September 21, 2014 | admin
Our symbols and our heritage are under attack.
And who speaks up for them, or for us?
Don't count on this man to defend us. Hear what he has to say in the short video at the link.
Is there any politician who is able to speak forthrightly, without trying to play coy and have it both ways?
This AP story gives us the PC revisionist line about General Forrest, but they don't tell you the background of the 'society' which is the focus of all the controversy. I would like to ask somebody who is ritualistically denouncing that group if they can tell me just how and why it began. I would like to hear their version of the conditions that existed in the occupied South after the "Late Unpleasantness". I suspect they would be speechless because they know next to nothing about that era, about that time and place.
Schools do not teach about that part of our history, the Reconstruction Era, a euphemism if there ever was one. And whatever little is taught is selectively biased in the usual way. Add to that the Hollywood movies and pseudo-documentaries that present a dishonest account, and people know less than nothing. What they think they know is false.
As if Barbour's evasiveness and spinelessness on the Forrest issue weren't enough, we recently learned that he was involved in lobbying on behalf of Mexico.
''Though Barbour is currently considering whether to sign an Arizona-style immigration bill that passed in the Mississippi House in January, he took a softer stance last September on what to do about immigrants illegally in the country. Barbour told Human Events that though the United States must secure its border: "Common sense tells us we're not gonna take ten or twelve or fourteen million people and put them in jail and deport them. We're not gonna do it, and we need to quit--some of the people need to quit acting like we are, and let's talk about real solutions."
Barbour also praised "the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild" the state after Hurricane Katrina. "There's no doubt in my mind some of them weren't here legally. Some of them were, some of them weren't. But they came in, they looked for the work--if they hadn't been there, if they hadn't come and stayed for a few months or a couple of years, we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
I guess Barbour does not remember the stories that appeared after Katrina, in which American workers were hired for jobs rebuilding New Orleans, and were then turned away after they traveled there, being told that Mexican workers had been given the jobs. The reports said many of the men were devastated, because they needed the work. Cheap labor and capitalist greed work well together.
Anybody who says that Americans won't work or can't work as hard as the sainted immigrant is ignorant or dishonest.
So Barbour, like most of our politicians, fails the test of loyalty to his own.
That's what I am looking for first and foremost in everybody these days: loyalty. It's getting pretty scarce.
And who speaks up for them, or for us?
Don't count on this man to defend us. Hear what he has to say in the short video at the link.
Is there any politician who is able to speak forthrightly, without trying to play coy and have it both ways?
This AP story gives us the PC revisionist line about General Forrest, but they don't tell you the background of the 'society' which is the focus of all the controversy. I would like to ask somebody who is ritualistically denouncing that group if they can tell me just how and why it began. I would like to hear their version of the conditions that existed in the occupied South after the "Late Unpleasantness". I suspect they would be speechless because they know next to nothing about that era, about that time and place.
Schools do not teach about that part of our history, the Reconstruction Era, a euphemism if there ever was one. And whatever little is taught is selectively biased in the usual way. Add to that the Hollywood movies and pseudo-documentaries that present a dishonest account, and people know less than nothing. What they think they know is false.
As if Barbour's evasiveness and spinelessness on the Forrest issue weren't enough, we recently learned that he was involved in lobbying on behalf of Mexico.
''Though Barbour is currently considering whether to sign an Arizona-style immigration bill that passed in the Mississippi House in January, he took a softer stance last September on what to do about immigrants illegally in the country. Barbour told Human Events that though the United States must secure its border: "Common sense tells us we're not gonna take ten or twelve or fourteen million people and put them in jail and deport them. We're not gonna do it, and we need to quit--some of the people need to quit acting like we are, and let's talk about real solutions."
Barbour also praised "the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild" the state after Hurricane Katrina. "There's no doubt in my mind some of them weren't here legally. Some of them were, some of them weren't. But they came in, they looked for the work--if they hadn't been there, if they hadn't come and stayed for a few months or a couple of years, we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
I guess Barbour does not remember the stories that appeared after Katrina, in which American workers were hired for jobs rebuilding New Orleans, and were then turned away after they traveled there, being told that Mexican workers had been given the jobs. The reports said many of the men were devastated, because they needed the work. Cheap labor and capitalist greed work well together.
Anybody who says that Americans won't work or can't work as hard as the sainted immigrant is ignorant or dishonest.
So Barbour, like most of our politicians, fails the test of loyalty to his own.
That's what I am looking for first and foremost in everybody these days: loyalty. It's getting pretty scarce.
Labels: Confederacy, Ethno-Loyalty, Ethnopatriotism, Political Classes, Political Correctness, Southron Heritage
0 comment Tuesday, September 9, 2014 | admin
Recently I read this Daily Mail article on the decline of the Southern American dialect, and of course this is a subject that is close to my heart.
According to a recent study, the upper and middle classes in the South are especially prone to lose their Southern accent or speech pattern.
The article quotes a Robin Dodsworth, the linguistics professor who collected recordings of Southern speech for the study. At the conclusion of the article, Dodsworth says that
''It's not realistic to talk about "saving" a dialect or accent,' she said, 'because the fact of life is that dialects change.
'The Southern accent the way we think of it now is different than the way people in the South talked 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and so forth.'
Oh yes, this is the politically correct 'descriptive-not-prescriptive' approach to linguistics, which I learned at the feet of my lefty linguistics teacher in college in the late 70s.
The thinking behind it is that standards are elitist, and that language is organic; it just grows, and nobody should try to control the growth in any direction; just let it follow its natural course like a meandering river. Grammar rules should not be emphasized, says this school of thought, because it stifles natural growth and change. Ebonics should be allowed to flourish, of course, because it is a natural outgrowth from vibrant black culture. Now, I wonder what Dodsworth would say if someone said they wanted to 'save' the black American dialect? I have a feeling the answer would be very different.
I didn't buy the PC view of linguistics back in college and I don't now. I think that 'change' in language, just as in culture generally, should be kept within limits, and that's done by not giving way to every change that comes along, such as ephemeral slang, (as the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary recently did) and by not letting things like social change and mass media influence change the regional dialects willy-nilly. Language would change in a chaotic way if we did not make efforts to preserve existing speech habits.
I've written before about how the Southern American dialect has been declining in recent decades, and how I noticed that the younger generations often speak a kind of generic media English and not the Southron dialect that their parents and grandparents speak. It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why I think that is a shame.
Michael at the Southern Nationalist Network blog writes about the Daily Mail article here. He notes that the media and the schools promote a negative view of our culture and Southron people, and that the message being received by young people about their heritage, including their dialect, is a negative one.
Just as most nationalists from around the world emphasize the importance of language in preserving a sense of identity and heritage, those with roots in the South should recognize that language is vital to a healthy sense of identity and heritage. The erosion of the dialect weakens the culture and the people of the South.
There's little doubt that many Americans outside the South tend to have a negative perception of Southern people, based on their speech patterns. I recently had someone tell me that she thought a certain new neighbor from the South was 'stupid' when she first met him, ''because of his accent.'' I am not sure why many Northerners think that people from the South sound 'ignorant' or dull-witted. Is it because of the comparatively slow way of speaking, the fabled 'drawl'? Or is it because of different locutions, syntax and grammar among real Southern speakers? Of course these critics take it for granted that their way of speaking is the 'right' way, without realizing that there are actually different dialects that have their own conventions and habits? This same acquaintance tends to think that any deviations from the dialect she speaks are absurd or wrong. That, my friends, is ignorance.
I think it's a shame that many young people think they need to conform to mass media English, as spoken on TV and in movies. They perceive the dialect their forefathers spoke as 'backward' or embarrassing. I understand the desire for peer approval at that age. When I first came up North as a teenager, I succumbed to the pressure to talk like those around me, because of the teasing and giggles that my accent elicited from my classmates. However pride in my heritage eventually overcame the desire to 'fit in'. I can speak 'standard' English if I choose, or I can revert to what is comfortable and speak Southron. It is true, also, that we tend to be influenced unconsciously by the way people speak around us, and being surrounded by 'standard' American English affects everybody, I suspect. And then there is the growing influence of black idioms: words like 'ho' and bling and other such ''enrichments.''
But what can we do? In the Daily Mail article, Dodsworth says that we can just 'keep speaking that way' and thus preserve our ways. It may not be that easy, especially with the societal change going on around us. I think there should be some effort to hold onto our linguistic heritage, and again, Michael at SNN speaks about such efforts in the video here.
He puts forth some good ideas on how this might be done. One of the projects mentioned is a Southern lexicon or dictionary. I had thought of doing that as a personal project over the last few years, but I think it needs to be a collaborative project with a number of people involved. There are a lot of different variations of the Southern dialect, and input from many different people would be ideal. Michael says contributions to a dictionary are welcome, and I think it's a worthwhile project.
I expect to have more to say about this in another post.
What say you all?
According to a recent study, the upper and middle classes in the South are especially prone to lose their Southern accent or speech pattern.
The article quotes a Robin Dodsworth, the linguistics professor who collected recordings of Southern speech for the study. At the conclusion of the article, Dodsworth says that
''It's not realistic to talk about "saving" a dialect or accent,' she said, 'because the fact of life is that dialects change.
'The Southern accent the way we think of it now is different than the way people in the South talked 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and so forth.'
Oh yes, this is the politically correct 'descriptive-not-prescriptive' approach to linguistics, which I learned at the feet of my lefty linguistics teacher in college in the late 70s.
The thinking behind it is that standards are elitist, and that language is organic; it just grows, and nobody should try to control the growth in any direction; just let it follow its natural course like a meandering river. Grammar rules should not be emphasized, says this school of thought, because it stifles natural growth and change. Ebonics should be allowed to flourish, of course, because it is a natural outgrowth from vibrant black culture. Now, I wonder what Dodsworth would say if someone said they wanted to 'save' the black American dialect? I have a feeling the answer would be very different.
I didn't buy the PC view of linguistics back in college and I don't now. I think that 'change' in language, just as in culture generally, should be kept within limits, and that's done by not giving way to every change that comes along, such as ephemeral slang, (as the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary recently did) and by not letting things like social change and mass media influence change the regional dialects willy-nilly. Language would change in a chaotic way if we did not make efforts to preserve existing speech habits.
I've written before about how the Southern American dialect has been declining in recent decades, and how I noticed that the younger generations often speak a kind of generic media English and not the Southron dialect that their parents and grandparents speak. It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why I think that is a shame.
Michael at the Southern Nationalist Network blog writes about the Daily Mail article here. He notes that the media and the schools promote a negative view of our culture and Southron people, and that the message being received by young people about their heritage, including their dialect, is a negative one.
Just as most nationalists from around the world emphasize the importance of language in preserving a sense of identity and heritage, those with roots in the South should recognize that language is vital to a healthy sense of identity and heritage. The erosion of the dialect weakens the culture and the people of the South.
There's little doubt that many Americans outside the South tend to have a negative perception of Southern people, based on their speech patterns. I recently had someone tell me that she thought a certain new neighbor from the South was 'stupid' when she first met him, ''because of his accent.'' I am not sure why many Northerners think that people from the South sound 'ignorant' or dull-witted. Is it because of the comparatively slow way of speaking, the fabled 'drawl'? Or is it because of different locutions, syntax and grammar among real Southern speakers? Of course these critics take it for granted that their way of speaking is the 'right' way, without realizing that there are actually different dialects that have their own conventions and habits? This same acquaintance tends to think that any deviations from the dialect she speaks are absurd or wrong. That, my friends, is ignorance.
I think it's a shame that many young people think they need to conform to mass media English, as spoken on TV and in movies. They perceive the dialect their forefathers spoke as 'backward' or embarrassing. I understand the desire for peer approval at that age. When I first came up North as a teenager, I succumbed to the pressure to talk like those around me, because of the teasing and giggles that my accent elicited from my classmates. However pride in my heritage eventually overcame the desire to 'fit in'. I can speak 'standard' English if I choose, or I can revert to what is comfortable and speak Southron. It is true, also, that we tend to be influenced unconsciously by the way people speak around us, and being surrounded by 'standard' American English affects everybody, I suspect. And then there is the growing influence of black idioms: words like 'ho' and bling and other such ''enrichments.''
But what can we do? In the Daily Mail article, Dodsworth says that we can just 'keep speaking that way' and thus preserve our ways. It may not be that easy, especially with the societal change going on around us. I think there should be some effort to hold onto our linguistic heritage, and again, Michael at SNN speaks about such efforts in the video here.
He puts forth some good ideas on how this might be done. One of the projects mentioned is a Southern lexicon or dictionary. I had thought of doing that as a personal project over the last few years, but I think it needs to be a collaborative project with a number of people involved. There are a lot of different variations of the Southern dialect, and input from many different people would be ideal. Michael says contributions to a dictionary are welcome, and I think it's a worthwhile project.
I expect to have more to say about this in another post.
What say you all?
Labels: American Diversity, English Language, Southern Dialect, Southron Heritage
0 comment Monday, July 21, 2014 | admin
David Yeagley over at BadEagle.com has been writing something of a series on the South and the War Between the States. Recently he offered a piece, Home of the Patriots, in which he stresses the importance of the traditions of the South, and their distinctive place in the American story, and the American nation.
Those who are not of Southron origin may feel this is irrelevant to them, but I am increasingly convinced that this North-South issue is crucial to understanding how we got where we are today. The obvious area in which the history of the North-South division is relevant is that of the perennial race question. Race, whether people are willing to acknowledge it or not, is at the heart of much of what is threatening not only our country but the entire Western world. In essence, our great fear of addressing the race issue directly, and our guilt about it, and the strong taboos surrounding it, are paralyzing us at the very moment when we stand in danger of being displaced or replaced, blended out of existence as a people.
Most people, in our maleducated age, know little about the War Between the States, more commonly called the Civil War. The very name of the conflict is dependent on one's viewpoint; many unreconstructed Southerners call it the War of Northern Aggression, or, less pugnaciously, The War for Southern Independence. To Northerners, it's the Civil War, usually viewed as an act of treason by rebellious and disloyal Southerners who fought to retain possession of slaves.
But whatever the conflict is called, it is a terrible wound to our nation, which has never really healed, and possibly cannot be healed.
And without some knowledge and understanding of what really happened, and why, we cannot really resolve anything and come to terms with it.
The issue of race and slavery are issues that we never cease hearing about, in this liberal age in which we are expected to castigate ourselves because of our 'original sin', as Obama referred to it, or our 'birth defect', as Condoleezza Rice called it. Lately various states have issued apologies for slavery, even though no American today owns slaves or has been a slave. Next on the agenda: reparations. There will likely be a reparations payment in my lifetime, but count on it: reparations will not resolve the issue. Reparations would only create further demands.
But with a country populated mostly by people who have been fed only propaganda about the War Between the States and the 'peculiar institution' of slavery, we are destined to go on and on in the endless cycle of recriminations, apologies, demands, and conflicts.
It's time we were able to examine the history behind the Gordian knot of race in our country, and it would be helpful for most of us to go back and re-examine the War Between the States and Reconstruction, in order to give us some context and some background of how we got to the present impasse.
The South and her people are inevitably depicted as the caricatured villains in this piece. Most people, having been fed on Hollywood or other fictional depictions, have images in their minds of evil white slave-hunters as depicted in the fantasy "history" of Roots. We all know the stereotypes of Southern whites as evil and cruel and ignorant.
The real ignorance is exemplified by the persistent stereotypes of the South and of the Civil War era.
Dr. Yeagley, to his credit, examines the culture of the South with a sympathetic eye. I am not sure how much Dr. Yeagley, an Oklahoman, identifies as a Southerner; I surmise that his identity is as a Comanche and an American, but he is sympathetic to the South.
Here he describes the Southron culture, and American identity:
...The South was culture chiefly of gentlemen, men of honor. Men of bravery. Men of war.
And men of a homeland, and a way of life. Never before had America--any portion of America, had to fight for their homes and their way of life. The Southern came out of the war with an unforgettable image of home. And that's really what patriotism is about--the home. Love of home. To the Southerner, his own state was one giant, extended family. The unity and brotherhood they felt was akin to a nationhood. Their state was more important than any political theory or economic congolmerate pawned off as "nationhood." To the Southerner, home wasn't an idea. It was a place, a real place, with real houses and land, that grew real food and had real people--family, living on it. Those stars and bars stand for home. The "idea," or we should say, the reality, of home, is expressed in that Confederate battle flag. In a way, the Stars and Stripes were never the same. Home came with the victory. The South was held as part of the Union. The North bought a home, really. At least a sense of it, as never before.
The Union should remember the South for that mighty lovely cause. Home. Otherwise, the idea of the United States is little more than a giant business. Without the South, there is no sentiment of home in the United States. (I wouldn't expect most American people to understand how the Indians feel about the homeland, but, they should be able to grasp how Southerners feel. But, in a way, Southerners are like Indians. Indians still today enlist in the armed services from sheer intuition of valor, or warriorhood. Our home is still here, our land is still here, despite what has happened to us. The same is true for true Southerners. After the Civil War, their reservation was a bit larger, I must say, but, they were never trying to rule the world either. Like Indians, they just wanted to be left alone.)
[...] In a sense, the Civil War will never be over. It was the expression of an ever-occurring battle of ideas. Who shall rule, and to what extend. The nature of the country is under perpetual examination. With the trend toward globalism, the abolition of nationhood, and the delusion of global financial imperialism, we do well to raise the Confederate flag, and fly it high--above every other issue. The nature of our country, the meaning of our nationhood, the idenity of the United States of America is under seige--the enemy being Washington, DC. The challenge is from traitorous, avaricious failures who are unable to understand America, and behave like angry opportunists, like children fighting over the biggest piece of pie. At least the Confederate flag reminds us of something in the way of origins, something of how that pie came about. The Confederate flag calls our attention to the true identity of the United States. Obviously, we need to reconsider--when we see the kind of people running for the highest office in the country today.''
Dr. Yeagley has also written about the women of the South, who are often caricatured as vacuous and vain 'Southern belles', and he presents a much fairer picture, recommending some primary sources: the writings of Southern women themselves. I highly recommend reading some of these sources for another view of life in the Old South. He cites Mary Boykin Chesnut; she wrote A Diary from Dixie which is a very interesting account of her life during the War. She was the wife of a Confederate general, so she knew many of the principal figures in the Confederacy, and gives a good description of the times and the people. She was obviously very well-educated and articulate, and does not fit at all the shallow stereotype of the Hollywood Southern belle, who was always an empty-headed and manipulative creature. Mary Boykin Chesnut is nothing at all like Scarlett O'Hara or other such fictional creations.
Read some of the excerpts from her diary, describing daily life before,during, and after the War, and the interactions between the races, and between Southron and Yankee during that same era. We have heard one side of the story relentlessly in the years since the War, and the propaganda is the fiction on which our present politically correct house of lies is founded.
Are there not two sides to every story?
I think we need to go back to that era and read the whole story, from original sources as much as possible, not from some modern-day revisionist with a liberal agenda. Some perspective and some balance is desperately needed. The whole story of the War Between the States and Reconstruction is the background of our current situation. We can never really see our way out of this maze we are in until we get the whole truth and look at it through the eyes of those who were there, who participated in the events of the time.
There are still old sources to be found; read the old books and reference sources. As much as possible, avoid more recent sources, which are tainted with the PC agenda.
There are many sources to be found out there on the Internet; you can find Mary Boykin Chesnut's Diary from Dixie here.
The same collection has many works of Southern literature online.
It's vital to be able to understand and freely examine what happened in the past to have a correct and full perspective on what is besetting us now. As it is, we are crippled by a lack of knowledge and information; we are like amnesiacs, having only fragmentary or false memories of our past.
In our present presidential campaign, the issue of race will be front and center, and so far, the usual politically correct falsehoods go unchallenged and unquestioned. We need to be armed with real knowledge. The truth will set us free.
Those who are not of Southron origin may feel this is irrelevant to them, but I am increasingly convinced that this North-South issue is crucial to understanding how we got where we are today. The obvious area in which the history of the North-South division is relevant is that of the perennial race question. Race, whether people are willing to acknowledge it or not, is at the heart of much of what is threatening not only our country but the entire Western world. In essence, our great fear of addressing the race issue directly, and our guilt about it, and the strong taboos surrounding it, are paralyzing us at the very moment when we stand in danger of being displaced or replaced, blended out of existence as a people.
Most people, in our maleducated age, know little about the War Between the States, more commonly called the Civil War. The very name of the conflict is dependent on one's viewpoint; many unreconstructed Southerners call it the War of Northern Aggression, or, less pugnaciously, The War for Southern Independence. To Northerners, it's the Civil War, usually viewed as an act of treason by rebellious and disloyal Southerners who fought to retain possession of slaves.
But whatever the conflict is called, it is a terrible wound to our nation, which has never really healed, and possibly cannot be healed.
And without some knowledge and understanding of what really happened, and why, we cannot really resolve anything and come to terms with it.
The issue of race and slavery are issues that we never cease hearing about, in this liberal age in which we are expected to castigate ourselves because of our 'original sin', as Obama referred to it, or our 'birth defect', as Condoleezza Rice called it. Lately various states have issued apologies for slavery, even though no American today owns slaves or has been a slave. Next on the agenda: reparations. There will likely be a reparations payment in my lifetime, but count on it: reparations will not resolve the issue. Reparations would only create further demands.
But with a country populated mostly by people who have been fed only propaganda about the War Between the States and the 'peculiar institution' of slavery, we are destined to go on and on in the endless cycle of recriminations, apologies, demands, and conflicts.
It's time we were able to examine the history behind the Gordian knot of race in our country, and it would be helpful for most of us to go back and re-examine the War Between the States and Reconstruction, in order to give us some context and some background of how we got to the present impasse.
The South and her people are inevitably depicted as the caricatured villains in this piece. Most people, having been fed on Hollywood or other fictional depictions, have images in their minds of evil white slave-hunters as depicted in the fantasy "history" of Roots. We all know the stereotypes of Southern whites as evil and cruel and ignorant.
The real ignorance is exemplified by the persistent stereotypes of the South and of the Civil War era.
Dr. Yeagley, to his credit, examines the culture of the South with a sympathetic eye. I am not sure how much Dr. Yeagley, an Oklahoman, identifies as a Southerner; I surmise that his identity is as a Comanche and an American, but he is sympathetic to the South.
Here he describes the Southron culture, and American identity:
...The South was culture chiefly of gentlemen, men of honor. Men of bravery. Men of war.
And men of a homeland, and a way of life. Never before had America--any portion of America, had to fight for their homes and their way of life. The Southern came out of the war with an unforgettable image of home. And that's really what patriotism is about--the home. Love of home. To the Southerner, his own state was one giant, extended family. The unity and brotherhood they felt was akin to a nationhood. Their state was more important than any political theory or economic congolmerate pawned off as "nationhood." To the Southerner, home wasn't an idea. It was a place, a real place, with real houses and land, that grew real food and had real people--family, living on it. Those stars and bars stand for home. The "idea," or we should say, the reality, of home, is expressed in that Confederate battle flag. In a way, the Stars and Stripes were never the same. Home came with the victory. The South was held as part of the Union. The North bought a home, really. At least a sense of it, as never before.
The Union should remember the South for that mighty lovely cause. Home. Otherwise, the idea of the United States is little more than a giant business. Without the South, there is no sentiment of home in the United States. (I wouldn't expect most American people to understand how the Indians feel about the homeland, but, they should be able to grasp how Southerners feel. But, in a way, Southerners are like Indians. Indians still today enlist in the armed services from sheer intuition of valor, or warriorhood. Our home is still here, our land is still here, despite what has happened to us. The same is true for true Southerners. After the Civil War, their reservation was a bit larger, I must say, but, they were never trying to rule the world either. Like Indians, they just wanted to be left alone.)
[...] In a sense, the Civil War will never be over. It was the expression of an ever-occurring battle of ideas. Who shall rule, and to what extend. The nature of the country is under perpetual examination. With the trend toward globalism, the abolition of nationhood, and the delusion of global financial imperialism, we do well to raise the Confederate flag, and fly it high--above every other issue. The nature of our country, the meaning of our nationhood, the idenity of the United States of America is under seige--the enemy being Washington, DC. The challenge is from traitorous, avaricious failures who are unable to understand America, and behave like angry opportunists, like children fighting over the biggest piece of pie. At least the Confederate flag reminds us of something in the way of origins, something of how that pie came about. The Confederate flag calls our attention to the true identity of the United States. Obviously, we need to reconsider--when we see the kind of people running for the highest office in the country today.''
Dr. Yeagley has also written about the women of the South, who are often caricatured as vacuous and vain 'Southern belles', and he presents a much fairer picture, recommending some primary sources: the writings of Southern women themselves. I highly recommend reading some of these sources for another view of life in the Old South. He cites Mary Boykin Chesnut; she wrote A Diary from Dixie which is a very interesting account of her life during the War. She was the wife of a Confederate general, so she knew many of the principal figures in the Confederacy, and gives a good description of the times and the people. She was obviously very well-educated and articulate, and does not fit at all the shallow stereotype of the Hollywood Southern belle, who was always an empty-headed and manipulative creature. Mary Boykin Chesnut is nothing at all like Scarlett O'Hara or other such fictional creations.
Read some of the excerpts from her diary, describing daily life before,during, and after the War, and the interactions between the races, and between Southron and Yankee during that same era. We have heard one side of the story relentlessly in the years since the War, and the propaganda is the fiction on which our present politically correct house of lies is founded.
Are there not two sides to every story?
I think we need to go back to that era and read the whole story, from original sources as much as possible, not from some modern-day revisionist with a liberal agenda. Some perspective and some balance is desperately needed. The whole story of the War Between the States and Reconstruction is the background of our current situation. We can never really see our way out of this maze we are in until we get the whole truth and look at it through the eyes of those who were there, who participated in the events of the time.
There are still old sources to be found; read the old books and reference sources. As much as possible, avoid more recent sources, which are tainted with the PC agenda.
There are many sources to be found out there on the Internet; you can find Mary Boykin Chesnut's Diary from Dixie here.
The same collection has many works of Southern literature online.
It's vital to be able to understand and freely examine what happened in the past to have a correct and full perspective on what is besetting us now. As it is, we are crippled by a lack of knowledge and information; we are like amnesiacs, having only fragmentary or false memories of our past.
In our present presidential campaign, the issue of race will be front and center, and so far, the usual politically correct falsehoods go unchallenged and unquestioned. We need to be armed with real knowledge. The truth will set us free.
Labels: American History, Historical Revisionism, Political Correctness, South, Southron Heritage, War Between The States
0 comment Monday, July 7, 2014 | admin
The Scots-Irish, that group of people which is popularly held to make up most of the population (or at least the old-stock, pre-invasion population) of the South, are in the news again, thanks to the recent overblown anti-South piece by Michael Hirsh from Newsweek.
Daniel Larison dissects the absurd Michael Hirsh piece here, which laments the supposed Southern domination of our culture, particularly our politics. Larison disagrees; read the whole article for his take.
He then obliquely discusses the candidacy of John McCain, who is partially of Scots or Scots-Irish descent:
No one can look at American politics today, seeing the main presidential candidates who are now running for the White House, and conclude that the South has triumphed in any meaningful way: we have two out-and-out Northerners and a transplant whose ancestors may be Scots-Irish but whose loyalties are to the central state and the status quo and who has immersed himself fully in the culture of the capital. The South has become the most populous region, and yet it still wields vastly less cultural power than the major urban centers of the East Coast and California. Hirsh is free to prefer the urban, Eastern liberals, but he should give up on the idea that the power and influence of Easterners are meaningfully in decline.''
I agree with his conclusions.
The ancestry of John McCain, however, is often brought up in internet discussions, with some people using his supposed Scots-Irish ancestry against him, for example, in claiming that his genes make him volatile and bellicose. Most of the people who discuss the Scots-Irish seem to be content to generalize about that group as being 'warlike', despite the fact that otherwise, many of the same people disclaim any belief that race or ethnicity affects behavior at all.
Are the 'Scots-Irish' or Ulster Scots, as they are sometimes known, are described thus:
The Scots-Irish settlers made superb frontiersmen in early Colonial America. Their experiences over the previous few centuries, first in the Scottish Borders and then fighting the Irish Catholics in the north of Ireland had created a race of hardy unyielding people who were ideally suited to clearing the forests to build farms and pushing the borders further and further west.
[...]
Their experience of religious discrimination in Ulster by their Episcopal English landlords meant the Scots-Irish had no hesitation in taking the side of the rebels in the War of Independence. In the words of Professor James G. Leyburn "They provided some of the best fighters in the American army. Indeed there were those who held the Scots-Irish responsible for the war itself".
No less a figure than George Washington once said "If defeated everywhere else I will make my last stand for liberty among the Scots-Irish of my native Virginia".
The Scots-Irish provided 25 Generals and about a third of the revolutionary army. The Pennsylvania Line was made up entirely of Ulster-Scots emigrants and their sons. The Battle of Kings Mountain was a Scots-Irish battle where a militia of mainly Scots-Irish Presbyterians defeated an English army twice its size.
President Theodore Roosevelt said of the Scots-Irish "in the Revolutionary war, the fiercest and most ardent Americans of all were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and their descendants"
However, according to the same web page,
"The Scots-Irish embraced America and gradually lost their distinct Scotch-Irish identity to be Americans period.''
I would agree with that last statement. During my growing-up years, I was aware that some of my paternal ancestry was Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots, and yet this was not something that was made much of. I knew nobody in our environs, among a lot of old-stock Southrons, whose identity was tied to their Scots ancestry; there were no hyphenated Americans there. They had no ties to the 'old country,' their ancestors having left there centuries ago. Unlike Irish-Americans of more recent immigrant stock they have little or no identification with the 'old country'. To my mind, it seems that this emphasis on Ulster Scots ancestry in the South is a fairly recent development, fostered in part by the general trend, after the 1970s or so, to look to old-country roots among many Americans. Irish-Americans became more Hibernocentric, and made trips to Ireland and incorporated more genuine Irish culture into their lives; similarly with other ethnic groups in America, with the exception of those with English or Scottish or Welsh origins. The latter groups tended to identify simply as American, and in the case of those in the South, as Southron (or Southern, if you insist).
There are no 'Scots-Irish' enclaves or organized activities on a large scale. Yes, some areas have 'Highland Games' and Burns Nights, but I think these are more recent developments. I don't remember them from my childhood years.
So is Scots-Irish ancestry truly as significant as the Dixie-phobes make it out to be? Can we blame Scots-Irish genes for the warrior culture or the culture of honor (which does exist) in the South? Can we blame McCain's hair-trigger temper and bellicosity on his supposed Scots-Irish origins? And by the way: a recent article on the candidates' genealogies which I linked to here claimed that Hillary Rodham Clinton is also Scots-Irish, as is Barack Hussein Obama. Are they, too, irascible and temperamental by virtue of that ancestry? Or does it count only among those with Scots surnames, like McCain?
And speaking of surnames, McCain is only ONE of the names in John McCain's family tree. A look at his genealogy as displayed here
shows, by my reckoning, that he has probably more English and a little Welsh ancestry than he has Scots ancestry. Surnames like Wright, Fletcher, Kidwell, Atkins, Young, Small, Dickens, Higgins, White, Young, Howard, Clements, outnumber the identifiably Scots names like McAllister or possibly Garside.
Granted, the Youngs and the Whites seem to have come here from County Antrim -- but their names suggest their ancestors were English colonists in Northern Ireland, probably settled there in the 1600s as a few of my ancestors were.
My family name is Celtic-sounding, although I have relatively few Scots ancestors, so obviously to consider McCain as Scots because he has a Scottish surname is rather careless.
I just don't see all the Scots ancestry there in McCain's family tree. It looks to me as though McCain has more Sassenach blood than Scots, but it seems nobody wants to claim their English ancestors; so dull and whitebread, you see. And so oppressive, those Anglo-Saxon males. How much better to claim to be a descendant of Braveheart or Robert the Bruce (the latter is claimed as an ancestor by McCain.)
But if we decide that a candidate's ancestry is fair game for examination in deciding whether or not to vote for him, let's examine everybody's, including Obama's. Or would that be 'racist'? Of course it would.
This blog has a rather heated discussion of McCain's ancestry, with various voices (including the genealogist who was quoted in the article the blogger is discussing) claiming various nonsensical things about genealogy in general. See for yourself.
There are several genealogical bugbears contained in that discussion. The first: a number of commenters claim to be descendants of crowned heads of Europe, including Charlemagne. Someone counterclaims, in response to these rather extravagant claims, that ''nobody can trace their ancestry back to medieval times.' If that's the case, the remaining royalty in the world should be deposed from their respective thrones. But of course it's not true; it is possible though rather difficult. In the past, many of the privileged classes kept meticulous records of their family lineage; everything hinged on that. So it's absurd to say that none of us can know our ancestry further than a few generations.
The opposite extreme is expressed by the genealogist, who repeats a popular bit of nonsense. He says ''we are all descendants of Robert the Bruce and Charlemagne.'' Really? Any proof for that? I think it's based on a mathematical calculation that, given random mating among all members of a population, we would all be descendants of, say, George Washington or William the Conqueror or whoever. This presumes that people do mate randomly, ignoring the fact that in the past, particularly, social classes divided people considerably, not to mention geography and the relative difficulty of travel in past eras, as well as factors like religion and race being barriers to intermarriage or casual mating.
The idea that genes of past generations are all randomly, evenly distributed among all living people of today is just silly. People do not mate and reproduce randomly and genes are not distributed evenly.
If it's true that none of us can know who we are descended from, then there's no need for genealogical research at all. If it's true that 'we're all descended from Robert the Bruce' and that ''we are all connected'' as the genealogist claims, then there's also no point to genealogical study.
In the meantime, though, absent any proof of either of these wild assertions, I will continue to believe, based on the evidence of my eyes and my common sense and my life experience, that there are differing groups of people, and that our behavior is somewhat related to our genetics.
But I have a problem with not only the South being made the perpetual whipping boy, but now it seems this newly-discovered 'Scots-Irish' population of the South.
I've said before: look in the phone directory of most cities or towns in the South (before the current invasion) and you would see a preponderance of English surnames. The Scottish surnames in certain areas might be more numerous; I don't have as much knowledge of Appalachia, the supposed stronghold of the Scots-Irish people, but in the rest of the South, English and Welsh surnames combined far outnumber the Scottish names. Yet there is this popular notion that the old-stock Southron people are homogeneously 'Celtic' or Scots-Irish. I would like to see some documentation of this, and I don't think any is forthcoming. After centuries, I think most old-stock people in the South are a mix of Anglo-Saxon with Scots and Welsh and a dash of French (via the Huguenots in some areas) and a little German.
It's claimed that the culture of the South is Celtic but this is based on what? The writings of Flannery O'Connor, who was rather an anomalous Irish Catholic writer from the South? Or possibly the fictional O'Hara family in Gone With the Wind? It's fiction, people.
The usual argument is that the South is a 'vibrant' culture, expressive and high-spirited, and well, everybody knows that Anglo-Saxons are cold, impassive, phlegmatic people.
I would dispute that; I've had enough English friends (I won't say British, because British is a catch-all term these days) to know that they can be expressive, good-humored, jocular, fun-loving, and occasionally 'vibrant.' I think the contention that the South cannot be of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman character is based, simply, on a stereotype of the cool, reserved English. Not all English people fit that description.
So is McCain one of these warrior Scots-Irish we are hearing so much about these days? I think those who hate the South and all it stands for would like to make him so, because they have decided that the South has a 'warlike' Scots-Irish character, which they dislike.
I don't consider McCain a real son of the South, regardless of whether he has much Scots descent or whether he is of mostly English descent. He has condemned the Confederate flag and by extension the Confederate cause for which some of his ancestors fought.
At one point during the 2000 race, McCain called the flag a ''symbol of racism and slavery,'' but the next day described the flag as a ''symbol of heritage."
How can a feisty Celt be wishy-washy, I wonder?
So on the flag issue at least, he has renounced his Southron citizenship and his connection to the people of the South. Sorry, the North is stuck with McCain.
Daniel Larison dissects the absurd Michael Hirsh piece here, which laments the supposed Southern domination of our culture, particularly our politics. Larison disagrees; read the whole article for his take.
He then obliquely discusses the candidacy of John McCain, who is partially of Scots or Scots-Irish descent:
No one can look at American politics today, seeing the main presidential candidates who are now running for the White House, and conclude that the South has triumphed in any meaningful way: we have two out-and-out Northerners and a transplant whose ancestors may be Scots-Irish but whose loyalties are to the central state and the status quo and who has immersed himself fully in the culture of the capital. The South has become the most populous region, and yet it still wields vastly less cultural power than the major urban centers of the East Coast and California. Hirsh is free to prefer the urban, Eastern liberals, but he should give up on the idea that the power and influence of Easterners are meaningfully in decline.''
I agree with his conclusions.
The ancestry of John McCain, however, is often brought up in internet discussions, with some people using his supposed Scots-Irish ancestry against him, for example, in claiming that his genes make him volatile and bellicose. Most of the people who discuss the Scots-Irish seem to be content to generalize about that group as being 'warlike', despite the fact that otherwise, many of the same people disclaim any belief that race or ethnicity affects behavior at all.
Are the 'Scots-Irish' or Ulster Scots, as they are sometimes known, are described thus:
The Scots-Irish settlers made superb frontiersmen in early Colonial America. Their experiences over the previous few centuries, first in the Scottish Borders and then fighting the Irish Catholics in the north of Ireland had created a race of hardy unyielding people who were ideally suited to clearing the forests to build farms and pushing the borders further and further west.
[...]
Their experience of religious discrimination in Ulster by their Episcopal English landlords meant the Scots-Irish had no hesitation in taking the side of the rebels in the War of Independence. In the words of Professor James G. Leyburn "They provided some of the best fighters in the American army. Indeed there were those who held the Scots-Irish responsible for the war itself".
No less a figure than George Washington once said "If defeated everywhere else I will make my last stand for liberty among the Scots-Irish of my native Virginia".
The Scots-Irish provided 25 Generals and about a third of the revolutionary army. The Pennsylvania Line was made up entirely of Ulster-Scots emigrants and their sons. The Battle of Kings Mountain was a Scots-Irish battle where a militia of mainly Scots-Irish Presbyterians defeated an English army twice its size.
President Theodore Roosevelt said of the Scots-Irish "in the Revolutionary war, the fiercest and most ardent Americans of all were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and their descendants"
However, according to the same web page,
"The Scots-Irish embraced America and gradually lost their distinct Scotch-Irish identity to be Americans period.''
I would agree with that last statement. During my growing-up years, I was aware that some of my paternal ancestry was Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots, and yet this was not something that was made much of. I knew nobody in our environs, among a lot of old-stock Southrons, whose identity was tied to their Scots ancestry; there were no hyphenated Americans there. They had no ties to the 'old country,' their ancestors having left there centuries ago. Unlike Irish-Americans of more recent immigrant stock they have little or no identification with the 'old country'. To my mind, it seems that this emphasis on Ulster Scots ancestry in the South is a fairly recent development, fostered in part by the general trend, after the 1970s or so, to look to old-country roots among many Americans. Irish-Americans became more Hibernocentric, and made trips to Ireland and incorporated more genuine Irish culture into their lives; similarly with other ethnic groups in America, with the exception of those with English or Scottish or Welsh origins. The latter groups tended to identify simply as American, and in the case of those in the South, as Southron (or Southern, if you insist).
There are no 'Scots-Irish' enclaves or organized activities on a large scale. Yes, some areas have 'Highland Games' and Burns Nights, but I think these are more recent developments. I don't remember them from my childhood years.
So is Scots-Irish ancestry truly as significant as the Dixie-phobes make it out to be? Can we blame Scots-Irish genes for the warrior culture or the culture of honor (which does exist) in the South? Can we blame McCain's hair-trigger temper and bellicosity on his supposed Scots-Irish origins? And by the way: a recent article on the candidates' genealogies which I linked to here claimed that Hillary Rodham Clinton is also Scots-Irish, as is Barack Hussein Obama. Are they, too, irascible and temperamental by virtue of that ancestry? Or does it count only among those with Scots surnames, like McCain?
And speaking of surnames, McCain is only ONE of the names in John McCain's family tree. A look at his genealogy as displayed here
shows, by my reckoning, that he has probably more English and a little Welsh ancestry than he has Scots ancestry. Surnames like Wright, Fletcher, Kidwell, Atkins, Young, Small, Dickens, Higgins, White, Young, Howard, Clements, outnumber the identifiably Scots names like McAllister or possibly Garside.
Granted, the Youngs and the Whites seem to have come here from County Antrim -- but their names suggest their ancestors were English colonists in Northern Ireland, probably settled there in the 1600s as a few of my ancestors were.
My family name is Celtic-sounding, although I have relatively few Scots ancestors, so obviously to consider McCain as Scots because he has a Scottish surname is rather careless.
I just don't see all the Scots ancestry there in McCain's family tree. It looks to me as though McCain has more Sassenach blood than Scots, but it seems nobody wants to claim their English ancestors; so dull and whitebread, you see. And so oppressive, those Anglo-Saxon males. How much better to claim to be a descendant of Braveheart or Robert the Bruce (the latter is claimed as an ancestor by McCain.)
But if we decide that a candidate's ancestry is fair game for examination in deciding whether or not to vote for him, let's examine everybody's, including Obama's. Or would that be 'racist'? Of course it would.
This blog has a rather heated discussion of McCain's ancestry, with various voices (including the genealogist who was quoted in the article the blogger is discussing) claiming various nonsensical things about genealogy in general. See for yourself.
There are several genealogical bugbears contained in that discussion. The first: a number of commenters claim to be descendants of crowned heads of Europe, including Charlemagne. Someone counterclaims, in response to these rather extravagant claims, that ''nobody can trace their ancestry back to medieval times.' If that's the case, the remaining royalty in the world should be deposed from their respective thrones. But of course it's not true; it is possible though rather difficult. In the past, many of the privileged classes kept meticulous records of their family lineage; everything hinged on that. So it's absurd to say that none of us can know our ancestry further than a few generations.
The opposite extreme is expressed by the genealogist, who repeats a popular bit of nonsense. He says ''we are all descendants of Robert the Bruce and Charlemagne.'' Really? Any proof for that? I think it's based on a mathematical calculation that, given random mating among all members of a population, we would all be descendants of, say, George Washington or William the Conqueror or whoever. This presumes that people do mate randomly, ignoring the fact that in the past, particularly, social classes divided people considerably, not to mention geography and the relative difficulty of travel in past eras, as well as factors like religion and race being barriers to intermarriage or casual mating.
The idea that genes of past generations are all randomly, evenly distributed among all living people of today is just silly. People do not mate and reproduce randomly and genes are not distributed evenly.
If it's true that none of us can know who we are descended from, then there's no need for genealogical research at all. If it's true that 'we're all descended from Robert the Bruce' and that ''we are all connected'' as the genealogist claims, then there's also no point to genealogical study.
In the meantime, though, absent any proof of either of these wild assertions, I will continue to believe, based on the evidence of my eyes and my common sense and my life experience, that there are differing groups of people, and that our behavior is somewhat related to our genetics.
But I have a problem with not only the South being made the perpetual whipping boy, but now it seems this newly-discovered 'Scots-Irish' population of the South.
I've said before: look in the phone directory of most cities or towns in the South (before the current invasion) and you would see a preponderance of English surnames. The Scottish surnames in certain areas might be more numerous; I don't have as much knowledge of Appalachia, the supposed stronghold of the Scots-Irish people, but in the rest of the South, English and Welsh surnames combined far outnumber the Scottish names. Yet there is this popular notion that the old-stock Southron people are homogeneously 'Celtic' or Scots-Irish. I would like to see some documentation of this, and I don't think any is forthcoming. After centuries, I think most old-stock people in the South are a mix of Anglo-Saxon with Scots and Welsh and a dash of French (via the Huguenots in some areas) and a little German.
It's claimed that the culture of the South is Celtic but this is based on what? The writings of Flannery O'Connor, who was rather an anomalous Irish Catholic writer from the South? Or possibly the fictional O'Hara family in Gone With the Wind? It's fiction, people.
The usual argument is that the South is a 'vibrant' culture, expressive and high-spirited, and well, everybody knows that Anglo-Saxons are cold, impassive, phlegmatic people.
I would dispute that; I've had enough English friends (I won't say British, because British is a catch-all term these days) to know that they can be expressive, good-humored, jocular, fun-loving, and occasionally 'vibrant.' I think the contention that the South cannot be of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman character is based, simply, on a stereotype of the cool, reserved English. Not all English people fit that description.
So is McCain one of these warrior Scots-Irish we are hearing so much about these days? I think those who hate the South and all it stands for would like to make him so, because they have decided that the South has a 'warlike' Scots-Irish character, which they dislike.
I don't consider McCain a real son of the South, regardless of whether he has much Scots descent or whether he is of mostly English descent. He has condemned the Confederate flag and by extension the Confederate cause for which some of his ancestors fought.
At one point during the 2000 race, McCain called the flag a ''symbol of racism and slavery,'' but the next day described the flag as a ''symbol of heritage."
How can a feisty Celt be wishy-washy, I wonder?
So on the flag issue at least, he has renounced his Southron citizenship and his connection to the people of the South. Sorry, the North is stuck with McCain.
Labels: American History, Genealogy, South, Southron Heritage
0 comment | admin
...How is it that this man, of all others least accustomed to exercise his own fancy, or address that of others, has stimulated the imagination, not only of his countrymen, but of the civilized world, above all the sons of genius among us? How has he, the most unromantic of great men, become the hero of a living romance, the ideal of an inflamed fancy in every mind, even before his life had passed into history!-- How did that calm eye kindle the fire of so passionate a love and admiration in the heart of his people? He was brave, but not the only brave. He revealed transcendant military talent; but the diadem of his country now glows with a galaxy of such talent. He was successful; but we have more than one captain, whose banner never trailed before an enemy. I will tell you the solution. It was, chiefly the singleness, purity, and elevation of his aims. Every one who observed him was as thoroughly convinced of his unselfish devotion to duty as of his courage; as certain that no thought of personal advancement, of ambition or applause, ever for one instant divided the homage of his heart with his great cause, and that "all the ends he aimed at were his country's, his God's, and truth's," as that he was brave.The love of his countrymen is the spontaneous testimony of the common conscience, to the beauty of holiness. It is the confession of our nature that the virtue of the Sacred Scriptures, which is a virtue purer and loftier than that of philosophy, is the true greatness, grander than knowledge, talent, courage, or success. Here, then, as I believe, is God's chief lesson in his life and death, (and the belief encourages auspicious hopes concerning God's designs towards us.) He would teach us the beauty and power of pure Christianity, as an element of our social life, of our national career. Therefore he took an exemplar of Christian sincerity, as near perfection as the infirmities of our nature would permit, formed and trained in an honorable retirement; he set it in the furnace of trial, at an hour when great events and dangers had awakened the popular heart to most intense action; he illustrated it with that species of distinction which above all others, attracts the popular gaze, military glory; and held it up to the admiring inspection of a country grateful for the deliverances it had wrought for us. Thus he has taught us, how good a thing his fear is. He has made all men see and acknowledge that, in this man, his Christianity was the fountain head of the virtues and talents, which they so rapturously applauded; that it was the fear of God which made him so fearless of all else; that it was the love of God which animated his energies; that it was the singleness of his aims which caused his whole body to be so full of light, that the unerring decisions of his judgement, suggested to the unthinking, the belief in his actual inspiration; and that the lofty chivalry of his nature was but the reflex of the Spirit of Christ. Do not even the profane admit this explanation of his character?
[...] And now, with one more lesson, I leave you to the teachings of the mighty dead. If there was one trait which was eminent in him above the rest, it was determination. This was the power, before whose steady and ardent heat obstacles melted away. This was the force, which caused his battalions to breast the onsets of the enemy like ramparts of stone, or else launched them irresistibly upon their shivered lines; "the unconquerable will, the purpose never to submit or yield!" Every one who was near him felt that defeat was a result wholly excluded from his contemplation. Let us imbibe this spirit. As we visit the soil which drank his blood! or the grave where his body rests in the bosom of his beloved valley, we will adopt them as new seals to our pledge to be free or to die. Let us resolve that as the solemn mountain peaks keep their everlasting watch around the home and the tomb of Jackson, even so immovably will we guard the rights for which he died.''- R.L. Dabney, True Courage: A Discourse Commemorative of Lieut. General Thomas J. Jackson
Labels: American History, Birthdays, Confederacy, Southron Heritage
0 comment Friday, May 2, 2014 | admin
Recently on one of the History channels, in between the obligatory Hitler episodes, was a program about 'hillbillies.' The program, the beginning of which I missed, was titled 'Hillbilly: The Real Story'.
The program was hosted and narrated by country singer Billy Ray Cyrus of all people, and focused on Appalachian history and culture. It did deal with some of the stereotypes: moonshiners, feuding clans, and snake-handling churches, for example. It was fairly interesting; I learned a little about the history of NASCAR, for example. Another segment of the program had to do with the history of violence, and occasionally actual warfare, between coal-miners and mine owners in West Virginia. The 'Battle of Blair Mountain' is apparently covered in depth in this book and it seems worth reading, although the subject matter is grim.
The Battle of Blair Mountain covers a profoundly significant but long-neglected slice of American history - the largest armed uprising on American soil since the Civil War. In 1921, some 10,000 West Virginia coal miners, outraged over years of brutality and lawless exploitation, picked up their Winchesters and marched against their tormentors, the powerful mine owners who ruled their corrupt state. For ten days the miners fought a pitched battle against an opposing legion of deputies, state police, and makeshift militia. Only the intervention of a federal expeditionary force, spearheaded by a bomber squadron commanded by General Billy Mitchell, ended this undeclared civil war and forced the miners to throw down their arms. The significance of this episode reaches beyond the annals of labor history. Indeed, it is a saga of the conflicting political, economic and cultural forces that shaped the power structure of 20th century America.''
These are chapters of history which are not dealt with much in our educational system, although they may be taught more today than they were when I attended school. That era was a troubling time in our national history.
The History Channel documentary seemed to make much of the culture of the West Virginia miners, and the fact that they were largely of Scots-Irish descent. The suggestion overall seemed to be that those of Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots descent are more warlike by nature. Now, isn't that stereotyping? I thought there were no innate differences based on ethnicity or genes. But then again, discussion of innate differences is taboo only in the case of minorities; white people can be stereotyped with impunity.
The documentary states that the term 'redneck' originated with the red scarves or bandanas worn around the necks of the coal miners. I had never heard that explanation given before, and I was somewhat skeptical.
This website, dealing with Scots History, has a different etymology for the terms 'hillbilly' and redneck, tracing the terms to Scotland or Ulster.
HILLBILLY (Hillbillies)
The origin of this American nickname for mountain folk in the Ozarks and in Appalachia comes from Ulster. Ulster-Scottish (The often incorrectly labeled "Scots-Irish") settlers in the hill-country of Appalachia brought their traditional music with them to the new world, and many of their songs and ballads dealt with William, Prince of Orange, who defeated the Catholic King James II of the Stuart family at the Battle of the Boyne, Ireland in 1690.
Supporters of King William were known as "Orangemen" and "Billy Boys" and their North American counterparts were soon referred to as "hillbillies". It is interesting to note that a traditional song of the Glasgow Rangers football club today begins with the line, "Hurrah! Hurrah! We are the Billy Boys!" and shares its tune with the famous American Civil War song, "Marching Through Georgia".
[...]
REDNECKS
The origins of this term Redneck are Scottish and refer to supporters of the National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant, or "Covenanters", largely Lowland Presbyterians, many of whom would flee Scotland for Ulster (Northern Ireland) during persecutions by the British Crown. The Covenanters of 1638 and 1641 signed the documents that stated that Scotland desired the Presbyterian form of church government and would not accept the Church of England as its official state church.
Many Covenanters signed in their own blood and wore red pieces of cloth around their necks as distinctive insignia; hence the term "Red neck", (rednecks) which became slang for a Scottish dissenter*. One Scottish immigrant, interviewed by the author, remembered a Presbyterian minister, one Dr. Coulter, in Glasgow in the 1940's wearing a red clerical collar -- is this symbolic of the "rednecks"?
Since many Ulster-Scottish settlers in America (especially the South) were Presbyterian, the term was applied to them, and then, later, their Southern descendants. One of the earliest examples of its use comes from 1830, when an author noted that "red-neck" was a "name bestowed upon the Presbyterians." It makes you wonder if the originators of the ever-present "redneck" joke are aware of the term�s origins - Rednecks?
*Another term for Presbyterians in Ireland was a "Blackmouth". Members of the Church of Ireland (Anglicans) used this as a slur, referring to the fact that one could tell a Presbyterian by the black stains around his mouth from eating blackberries while at secret, illegal Presbyterian Church Services in the countryside.
CRACKER
Another Ulster-Scot term, a "cracker" was a person who talked and boasted, and "craic" (Crack) is a term still used in Scotland and Ireland to describe "talking", chat or conversation in a social sense ("Let�s go down to the pub and have a craic"; "what's the craic"). The term, first used to describe a southerner of Ulster-Scottish background, later became a nickname for any white southerner, especially those who were uneducated.
And while not an exclusively Southern term, but rather referring in general to all Americans, the origins of this word are related to the other three. ''
Scroll down the page for an explanation of the Mexican term 'gringo.' It's all rather interesting.
As for the origin of the word 'cracker', which is now a widespread epithet applied to whites in general, not just poor Southron whites, this page gives a number of conflicting explanations. Your guess is as good as mine as to which is the true origin of the word; what is not in doubt is that the word is used pejoratively by those with anti-Southern biases, or more broadly, with anti-White feelings.
I am inclined to believe in the Scottish or Ulster origin of some of these terms, given the prevalence of this heritage among Appalachian people.
The 'Hillbilly' program also touched on the traditional music of the Appalachian region, from which developed bluegrass and eventually modern country music, although the latter has strayed considerably from its roots. This web page outlines the development of American country and folk music from Ulster and Scottish origins:
The Appalachian mountain people, where Scots-Irish culture is so strong, have maintained a folk song culture for several centuries. Leading balladeers and folk historian from the early 20th century Cecil Sharpe related how he discovered nearly every one he met in the mountain region, young and old, could either sing or play an instrument.
The ballads which Sharp collected in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Carolinas and North Georgia were in the traditional vein, with Scots-Irish influences a very dominant strain.
Popular Appalachian folk songs and times like The Girl from Knoxville, Barbara Allen, The Irish Washerwoman, Haste to the Wedding, The Virginia Reel, The Green River March and Turkey in the Straw are in that tradition. The music of the American frontier was primarily vocal, through the singing of hymns and folk songs. In the very early settlements in Pennsylvania from the 1720s, the fiddle provided the musical background for the reels and jigs which the Scots-Irish enjoyed.
In the austere, and at times lonely surroundings of the frontier, music was the source which brightened the lives of the settlers.
Fiddle styles varied from state to state, even within states. Individual fiddlers differed in the way they held the instrument, the emphasis which they devoted to noting and the manner in which they bowed.
Some fiddlers stuck resolutely to the melody, while others improvised freely or employed their own prepared techniques -all a very Scots-Irish trait! Richard Nevins, in his Book Old-Time Fiddle Classics, notes that since fiddling was a Celtic art, modern aficionados strain to establish a direct link between Celtic styles and Appalachian in renditions.
Nevins maintained it is likely all the countless variations in southern fiddling are traceable to seven or eight different styles brought over to America by the predominant Celtic-cultured immigrants from various sections of the north of Ireland, southern Scotland and, to a lesser degree, parts of England. While yodelling has its origins in the Swiss mountains, many performers of a Scots-Irish background in states like Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia, were adept at raising the tone to a falsetto head voice.
Gospel music was very dear to the Godfearing Scots-Irish and many colloquial hymns, later adopted in mainstream Christianity had origins in the Appalachian region, Methodist evangelical hymns of Isaac Watts, John Newton and John and Charles Wesley struck a chord with those moving along the Great Wagon Road to the frontier.''
Here I will digress for a minute and note that a few years ago, it was claimed, surprisingly for some people, that Gospel music came from Scottish roots and not from 'African-American' traditions, as has been claimed since the 1960s. The connection to Celtic roots is obvious to anyone familiar with the traditional singing styles of Scotland and Ireland; the free-flowing, ornate style which involves bending and 'worrying' the notes is a prominent feature in Scottish and Irish vocal traditions, whereas it has no counterpart in African music.
This article explains how Yale professor Willie Ruff made the connection between Scottish a cappella hymn singing and black gospel styles.
I believe it; it's obvious to me, although political correctness insists that blacks influence whites, whites copy blacks, but never vice-versa.
But to return to the article on Scots-Irish influences on country and folk music:
Bluegrass music is strongly linked to the Scots-Irish folk of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee and leading Nashville performer Ricky Skaggs is very proud of his roots. "My family on my mother's side were Scots-Irish - they were the Fergusons who left Limavady and East Donegal in the 18th century. They eventually moved to Kentucky, where I grew up with a real taste for bluegrass music, which has its origins in the north of Ireland and Scotland. To me traditional country music had a value in it, a wholesomeness and warmth that some of the other kinds of music don't have. It's our heritage, our roots, it's everything that we're about," says Ricky.''
The above article mentions British ballad collector Cecil Sharpe who traveled the Southeast during the early 20th century collecting folk songs. He noted that many of the centuries-old English ballads which were dying out in England were still preserved in the Appalachian region.
Although it's often claimed that the Appalachian people were mostly Scottish or Ulster Scots, the ballads Sharp collected included many English ballads too, indicating that there was considerable English heritage in the American South.
I tend to be somewhat skeptical of the claims that the culture of the South is mostly 'Celtic'; I think this is an exaggeration, and it downplays the English genetics and culture which also contributed to the American South. I sometimes wonder if the slighting of English heritage is a politically-motivated tendency; the Scots-Irish had an age-old animosity towards the English and there is a grudging attitude toward England that is deep-rooted among Americans of Scots or Irish heritage. In my family tree we have a few Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots ancestral lines, however, little information exists tracing some of these lines back to their origins in Scotland and Ulster. Our English and Welsh roots are far better documented, for many centuries.
Still, there is no separating out the strains of British Isles ancestry in the South; the different cultures have all played a part, and mingled together to make up a rather colorful whole. Unfortunately, the stereotypes still live on. Stereotypes, as I've said, do tend to have a basis in fact, and there is that strain of Southron culture which includes moonshining, and the reckless streak which makes NASCAR popular, and which makes Southern men good warriors. Even now, the South contributes more men (and these days, probably women) to the military than other regions of the country.
The Southern Military Tradition
The South is overrepresented among military recruits. It provided 42.2 percent of 1999 recruits and 41.0 percent of 2003 recruits but contained just 35.6 percent of the population ages 18?24. How�ever, other regions also provide a higher proportion of enlistees. The states with the highest enlistment propor�tional ratings by far are Mon�tana (1.67), Alaska (1.42), Wyoming (1.40), and Maine (1.39). (A proportional rating of 1.00 means that a state?s enlistee and general popula�tions ages 18?24 are exactly proportional to their respec�tive national populations.)
[...]
In addition to confirming the strong Southern military tradition, we also found an exceptional ten�dency for lower than average military participation in New England. The West was underrepresented among 1999 recruits, but its 2003 proportion was equal to the population. For example, the East North Central Census region, conventionally known as the Great Lakes states, had a proportional rating of 0.86, which rose to 0.93 after September 11, 2001. This implies a lower than average interest in joining the military in the region compared to the nation, but it may reflect other variables as well (e.g., relative health and fitness of potential recruits).''
There's no doubt there are regional differences; we have not all been homogenized and blended away yet, although our elites are working night and day to effect that homogenization.
This is something that I've given considerable thought to lately: why is our government seemingly bent on eliminating regional diversity, while preaching to us about the benefits of Holy Diversity on an international, interracial basis? What on earth was wrong with the American diversity we had a few decades ago, in which each region, each state, each little corner of this country, had a recognizable and unique quality? Traveling was then a source of pleasure and the variety which existed made travel fascinating. I vividly remember the first cross-country trip with my family, in the days before freeways existed, when we meandered through many little towns and hamlets and sampled the local color. America was once rich in American diversity. Texas was Texan with its own culture, which was a part of the South; cross the Sabine River into Louisiana and you were in a very different place. Each state had its own history and character. Now it's all freeways, convenience stores (run by Third Worlders), motels run by people named Patel, Mickey D's, and Wal-Marts, from sea to shining sea.
While we are 'celebrating the diversity' of the Iraqis and Burundians and Hmongs who now reside in our little heartland towns, the unique character of those towns becomes monotonously similar all over the country, and in fact, all over the Western world. Small-d diversity, our old American diversity, which included canny down-East Yankees, independent Texans, lively Louisiana Cajuns, laid-back Californians, taciturn Northwesterners, Norwegian bachelor farmers from Minnesota, and hillbillies from Appalachia, has been homogenized and replaced by a disconnected, random collection of strangers, united only by consumer culture.
Still, there is a small remainder of our real American diversity that has not yet been stamped out by the diversity kommissars, so we would do well to savor it and enjoy it and truly celebrate it while we can. Enjoy our NASCAR races and bluegrass festivals and fais-do-dos, and Highland games and rodeos and county fairs before it all vanishes into the one-world memory hole.
Forum comments here.
The program was hosted and narrated by country singer Billy Ray Cyrus of all people, and focused on Appalachian history and culture. It did deal with some of the stereotypes: moonshiners, feuding clans, and snake-handling churches, for example. It was fairly interesting; I learned a little about the history of NASCAR, for example. Another segment of the program had to do with the history of violence, and occasionally actual warfare, between coal-miners and mine owners in West Virginia. The 'Battle of Blair Mountain' is apparently covered in depth in this book and it seems worth reading, although the subject matter is grim.
The Battle of Blair Mountain covers a profoundly significant but long-neglected slice of American history - the largest armed uprising on American soil since the Civil War. In 1921, some 10,000 West Virginia coal miners, outraged over years of brutality and lawless exploitation, picked up their Winchesters and marched against their tormentors, the powerful mine owners who ruled their corrupt state. For ten days the miners fought a pitched battle against an opposing legion of deputies, state police, and makeshift militia. Only the intervention of a federal expeditionary force, spearheaded by a bomber squadron commanded by General Billy Mitchell, ended this undeclared civil war and forced the miners to throw down their arms. The significance of this episode reaches beyond the annals of labor history. Indeed, it is a saga of the conflicting political, economic and cultural forces that shaped the power structure of 20th century America.''
These are chapters of history which are not dealt with much in our educational system, although they may be taught more today than they were when I attended school. That era was a troubling time in our national history.
The History Channel documentary seemed to make much of the culture of the West Virginia miners, and the fact that they were largely of Scots-Irish descent. The suggestion overall seemed to be that those of Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots descent are more warlike by nature. Now, isn't that stereotyping? I thought there were no innate differences based on ethnicity or genes. But then again, discussion of innate differences is taboo only in the case of minorities; white people can be stereotyped with impunity.
The documentary states that the term 'redneck' originated with the red scarves or bandanas worn around the necks of the coal miners. I had never heard that explanation given before, and I was somewhat skeptical.
This website, dealing with Scots History, has a different etymology for the terms 'hillbilly' and redneck, tracing the terms to Scotland or Ulster.
HILLBILLY (Hillbillies)
The origin of this American nickname for mountain folk in the Ozarks and in Appalachia comes from Ulster. Ulster-Scottish (The often incorrectly labeled "Scots-Irish") settlers in the hill-country of Appalachia brought their traditional music with them to the new world, and many of their songs and ballads dealt with William, Prince of Orange, who defeated the Catholic King James II of the Stuart family at the Battle of the Boyne, Ireland in 1690.
Supporters of King William were known as "Orangemen" and "Billy Boys" and their North American counterparts were soon referred to as "hillbillies". It is interesting to note that a traditional song of the Glasgow Rangers football club today begins with the line, "Hurrah! Hurrah! We are the Billy Boys!" and shares its tune with the famous American Civil War song, "Marching Through Georgia".
[...]
REDNECKS
The origins of this term Redneck are Scottish and refer to supporters of the National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant, or "Covenanters", largely Lowland Presbyterians, many of whom would flee Scotland for Ulster (Northern Ireland) during persecutions by the British Crown. The Covenanters of 1638 and 1641 signed the documents that stated that Scotland desired the Presbyterian form of church government and would not accept the Church of England as its official state church.
Many Covenanters signed in their own blood and wore red pieces of cloth around their necks as distinctive insignia; hence the term "Red neck", (rednecks) which became slang for a Scottish dissenter*. One Scottish immigrant, interviewed by the author, remembered a Presbyterian minister, one Dr. Coulter, in Glasgow in the 1940's wearing a red clerical collar -- is this symbolic of the "rednecks"?
Since many Ulster-Scottish settlers in America (especially the South) were Presbyterian, the term was applied to them, and then, later, their Southern descendants. One of the earliest examples of its use comes from 1830, when an author noted that "red-neck" was a "name bestowed upon the Presbyterians." It makes you wonder if the originators of the ever-present "redneck" joke are aware of the term�s origins - Rednecks?
*Another term for Presbyterians in Ireland was a "Blackmouth". Members of the Church of Ireland (Anglicans) used this as a slur, referring to the fact that one could tell a Presbyterian by the black stains around his mouth from eating blackberries while at secret, illegal Presbyterian Church Services in the countryside.
CRACKER
Another Ulster-Scot term, a "cracker" was a person who talked and boasted, and "craic" (Crack) is a term still used in Scotland and Ireland to describe "talking", chat or conversation in a social sense ("Let�s go down to the pub and have a craic"; "what's the craic"). The term, first used to describe a southerner of Ulster-Scottish background, later became a nickname for any white southerner, especially those who were uneducated.
And while not an exclusively Southern term, but rather referring in general to all Americans, the origins of this word are related to the other three. ''
Scroll down the page for an explanation of the Mexican term 'gringo.' It's all rather interesting.
As for the origin of the word 'cracker', which is now a widespread epithet applied to whites in general, not just poor Southron whites, this page gives a number of conflicting explanations. Your guess is as good as mine as to which is the true origin of the word; what is not in doubt is that the word is used pejoratively by those with anti-Southern biases, or more broadly, with anti-White feelings.
I am inclined to believe in the Scottish or Ulster origin of some of these terms, given the prevalence of this heritage among Appalachian people.
The 'Hillbilly' program also touched on the traditional music of the Appalachian region, from which developed bluegrass and eventually modern country music, although the latter has strayed considerably from its roots. This web page outlines the development of American country and folk music from Ulster and Scottish origins:
The Appalachian mountain people, where Scots-Irish culture is so strong, have maintained a folk song culture for several centuries. Leading balladeers and folk historian from the early 20th century Cecil Sharpe related how he discovered nearly every one he met in the mountain region, young and old, could either sing or play an instrument.
The ballads which Sharp collected in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Carolinas and North Georgia were in the traditional vein, with Scots-Irish influences a very dominant strain.
Popular Appalachian folk songs and times like The Girl from Knoxville, Barbara Allen, The Irish Washerwoman, Haste to the Wedding, The Virginia Reel, The Green River March and Turkey in the Straw are in that tradition. The music of the American frontier was primarily vocal, through the singing of hymns and folk songs. In the very early settlements in Pennsylvania from the 1720s, the fiddle provided the musical background for the reels and jigs which the Scots-Irish enjoyed.
In the austere, and at times lonely surroundings of the frontier, music was the source which brightened the lives of the settlers.
Fiddle styles varied from state to state, even within states. Individual fiddlers differed in the way they held the instrument, the emphasis which they devoted to noting and the manner in which they bowed.
Some fiddlers stuck resolutely to the melody, while others improvised freely or employed their own prepared techniques -all a very Scots-Irish trait! Richard Nevins, in his Book Old-Time Fiddle Classics, notes that since fiddling was a Celtic art, modern aficionados strain to establish a direct link between Celtic styles and Appalachian in renditions.
Nevins maintained it is likely all the countless variations in southern fiddling are traceable to seven or eight different styles brought over to America by the predominant Celtic-cultured immigrants from various sections of the north of Ireland, southern Scotland and, to a lesser degree, parts of England. While yodelling has its origins in the Swiss mountains, many performers of a Scots-Irish background in states like Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia, were adept at raising the tone to a falsetto head voice.
Gospel music was very dear to the Godfearing Scots-Irish and many colloquial hymns, later adopted in mainstream Christianity had origins in the Appalachian region, Methodist evangelical hymns of Isaac Watts, John Newton and John and Charles Wesley struck a chord with those moving along the Great Wagon Road to the frontier.''
Here I will digress for a minute and note that a few years ago, it was claimed, surprisingly for some people, that Gospel music came from Scottish roots and not from 'African-American' traditions, as has been claimed since the 1960s. The connection to Celtic roots is obvious to anyone familiar with the traditional singing styles of Scotland and Ireland; the free-flowing, ornate style which involves bending and 'worrying' the notes is a prominent feature in Scottish and Irish vocal traditions, whereas it has no counterpart in African music.
This article explains how Yale professor Willie Ruff made the connection between Scottish a cappella hymn singing and black gospel styles.
I believe it; it's obvious to me, although political correctness insists that blacks influence whites, whites copy blacks, but never vice-versa.
But to return to the article on Scots-Irish influences on country and folk music:
Bluegrass music is strongly linked to the Scots-Irish folk of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee and leading Nashville performer Ricky Skaggs is very proud of his roots. "My family on my mother's side were Scots-Irish - they were the Fergusons who left Limavady and East Donegal in the 18th century. They eventually moved to Kentucky, where I grew up with a real taste for bluegrass music, which has its origins in the north of Ireland and Scotland. To me traditional country music had a value in it, a wholesomeness and warmth that some of the other kinds of music don't have. It's our heritage, our roots, it's everything that we're about," says Ricky.''
The above article mentions British ballad collector Cecil Sharpe who traveled the Southeast during the early 20th century collecting folk songs. He noted that many of the centuries-old English ballads which were dying out in England were still preserved in the Appalachian region.
Although it's often claimed that the Appalachian people were mostly Scottish or Ulster Scots, the ballads Sharp collected included many English ballads too, indicating that there was considerable English heritage in the American South.
I tend to be somewhat skeptical of the claims that the culture of the South is mostly 'Celtic'; I think this is an exaggeration, and it downplays the English genetics and culture which also contributed to the American South. I sometimes wonder if the slighting of English heritage is a politically-motivated tendency; the Scots-Irish had an age-old animosity towards the English and there is a grudging attitude toward England that is deep-rooted among Americans of Scots or Irish heritage. In my family tree we have a few Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots ancestral lines, however, little information exists tracing some of these lines back to their origins in Scotland and Ulster. Our English and Welsh roots are far better documented, for many centuries.
Still, there is no separating out the strains of British Isles ancestry in the South; the different cultures have all played a part, and mingled together to make up a rather colorful whole. Unfortunately, the stereotypes still live on. Stereotypes, as I've said, do tend to have a basis in fact, and there is that strain of Southron culture which includes moonshining, and the reckless streak which makes NASCAR popular, and which makes Southern men good warriors. Even now, the South contributes more men (and these days, probably women) to the military than other regions of the country.
The Southern Military Tradition
The South is overrepresented among military recruits. It provided 42.2 percent of 1999 recruits and 41.0 percent of 2003 recruits but contained just 35.6 percent of the population ages 18?24. How�ever, other regions also provide a higher proportion of enlistees. The states with the highest enlistment propor�tional ratings by far are Mon�tana (1.67), Alaska (1.42), Wyoming (1.40), and Maine (1.39). (A proportional rating of 1.00 means that a state?s enlistee and general popula�tions ages 18?24 are exactly proportional to their respec�tive national populations.)
[...]
In addition to confirming the strong Southern military tradition, we also found an exceptional ten�dency for lower than average military participation in New England. The West was underrepresented among 1999 recruits, but its 2003 proportion was equal to the population. For example, the East North Central Census region, conventionally known as the Great Lakes states, had a proportional rating of 0.86, which rose to 0.93 after September 11, 2001. This implies a lower than average interest in joining the military in the region compared to the nation, but it may reflect other variables as well (e.g., relative health and fitness of potential recruits).''
There's no doubt there are regional differences; we have not all been homogenized and blended away yet, although our elites are working night and day to effect that homogenization.
This is something that I've given considerable thought to lately: why is our government seemingly bent on eliminating regional diversity, while preaching to us about the benefits of Holy Diversity on an international, interracial basis? What on earth was wrong with the American diversity we had a few decades ago, in which each region, each state, each little corner of this country, had a recognizable and unique quality? Traveling was then a source of pleasure and the variety which existed made travel fascinating. I vividly remember the first cross-country trip with my family, in the days before freeways existed, when we meandered through many little towns and hamlets and sampled the local color. America was once rich in American diversity. Texas was Texan with its own culture, which was a part of the South; cross the Sabine River into Louisiana and you were in a very different place. Each state had its own history and character. Now it's all freeways, convenience stores (run by Third Worlders), motels run by people named Patel, Mickey D's, and Wal-Marts, from sea to shining sea.
While we are 'celebrating the diversity' of the Iraqis and Burundians and Hmongs who now reside in our little heartland towns, the unique character of those towns becomes monotonously similar all over the country, and in fact, all over the Western world. Small-d diversity, our old American diversity, which included canny down-East Yankees, independent Texans, lively Louisiana Cajuns, laid-back Californians, taciturn Northwesterners, Norwegian bachelor farmers from Minnesota, and hillbillies from Appalachia, has been homogenized and replaced by a disconnected, random collection of strangers, united only by consumer culture.
Still, there is a small remainder of our real American diversity that has not yet been stamped out by the diversity kommissars, so we would do well to savor it and enjoy it and truly celebrate it while we can. Enjoy our NASCAR races and bluegrass festivals and fais-do-dos, and Highland games and rodeos and county fairs before it all vanishes into the one-world memory hole.
Forum comments here.
Labels: American Culture, American History, American Identity, Diversity, Divisiveness, Ethnic Division, South, Southron Heritage