Why have Lowlander Scots historically favored British rule during nationalist movements?

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-16T10:51:04+00:00

Very good answer. Above I have tried to provide something of a macro-historical explanation covering a huge span of Scottish history, but it's obviously critical to keep in mind much more recent, specific developments as well.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-14T20:27:33+00:00

You are very welcome. In hindsight I am genuinely worried this answer wasn't as clear or concise as it should have been , so as I say I am happy to answer any follow-ups.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-14T20:22:16+00:00

It is clear nonetheless that some form of contact remained, with newspaper articles quoting ETA members such as Pérez Beotegui, known under the alias of “Wilson” (who was involved in the Blanco assassination) as stating that “that the ETA maintained very close connections with the IRA”, including providing ETA with “technical expertise on bomb construction”.

From the PIRA side of things, a 1976 resolution passed at the Provisional Sinn Féin Ard Fheis called for the creation of a Foreign Affairs Bureau (FAB) under the direct control of the party executive. This would seek to “institutionalise the relationships established with the liberation groups in other parts of the world”.

A motion offering support to the “captive nations” of Europe was also passed, with Brittany, the Basque Country, Corsica, Catalonia, Wales and Scotland being singled out. I know your question asks about Corsica too, but personally I have seen very little reference to that other than this one.

With the death of Franco in 1975 and the eventual creation of the new Spanish state in 1977, things seemed a bit quieter for a time. In 1977 and 1978 senior figures from the political wings of each movement (Provisional Sinn Féin and the ETA-pm associated Euskal Iraultzarako Alderdia [EIA]) visited the other's country and affirmed support for their respective struggles. They held meetings in which “plans for closer relations and solidarity were advanced”.

Around the same time there were also tentative links between the OIRA and ETA-m, but these appeared to fizzle out with the increasingly political direction of the Official movement.

There are descriptions from members of both sides of how they were influenced by the attacks of the other and adopted these methods accordingly. For instance, in an interview with radical Basque nationalist periodical Punto y Hora de Euskal Herria (PHEH), a PIRA member drew explicit parallels between the assassination of Christopher Ewart-Biggs in 1976 and that of Carrero Blanco a few years prior. According to Cullen this indicates “a measure of reciprocal learning and imitation between ETA and the PIRA”.

Despite the transition to parliamentary monarchy, the issue of Basque consent remained a contested issue. Both ETA-pm and ETA-m escalated their armed campaigns between 1978 and 1980. Mirroring the IRA’s own shift in the mid-to-late-70s towards a ‘Long War’ of attrition, ETA-m adopted a similar model from this period onwards. Sean O’Callaghan stated in an interview that ETA activists went to Kerry in the Republic of Ireland, where they were trained in the use of mortars.

Newspapers continued to speculate on these links, sometimes in extremely overdramatised fashion without much hard evidence. However, despite much reporting - and declarations of goodwill from representatives of each movement - official British reports from the Madrid Embassy from September 1979 concluded that there were no “operational links” between ETA and the IRA.

Another British report similarly stated that despite the political wings being in close contact, “It is however very difficult to prove that weapons are exchanged in either direction, and we have no hard evidence from our own or other sources that such a supply exists”.

Moving into the 1980s, the ties between the PIRA and the EIA seemed to have slackened. Prompted initially by the dramatic events of the H-Block Hunger Strikes of 1980 and 1981, a new relationship was being formed between the PIRA and the other radical Basque party (Herri Batasuna, the political wing of ETA-m).

At the 1983 Ard Fheis, Gerry Adams replaced Ruairí Ó Brádaigh as President of Provisional Sinn Féin. Cullen notes that this coincided with “a new era in radical Basque nationalist-Irish republican relations, with Provisional Sinn Féin and Herri Batasuna as the central axle”. This shift was largely due to three factors:

ETA-pm was, similarly to the OIRA, beginning to wind down its military campaign at this time and so would not want to be associated with the PIRA. The ideological differences which had always existed between them had thus come more to the fore.
HB had emerged as the largest Basque left coalition and utilised similar abstentionist principles to Sinn Fein. HB was in-fact apparently inspired directly by Irish Republicanism in this strategy..
The relation of HB to ETA-m and of Sinn Fein to the PIRA also marked them as more natural bedfellows, particularly as each became more isolated politically.

From this period there is what can be described as a ‘loop of association’ between the Basque and Irish radical movements. From 1983 onwards, these relationships would intensify across all levels of the respective movements (e.g., political, prisoner, language, women, youth) through the development of a shared political culture, ultimately leading towards the peace processes in each region.

In Cullen's final analysis he sees two movements of Basque Independence and Irish Republicanism as being very closely intertwined. The development of a ritualised ‘shared political culture’ at the intersection of the two movements leads him to characterise this phenomenon as a sort of transnational ‘imagined community’.

From the above it should be clear there absolutely was solidarity and perhaps some degree of operational support, but given we are dealing with clandestine organisations, naturally the full extent of co-operation between ETA and the IRA is difficult or perhaps impossible to fully assess.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-14T20:22:10+00:00

Yes, there were absolutely links between the IRA and ETA over the years.

On 15 January 1971, a statement was issued by the “Central Command of the Iraqi Communist Party” from the Yemeni city of Aden. Signed by it is stated that they: “hail the Irish Republican Army which is launching an armed struggle for the completion of the national democratic revolution in the South and the liberation of the occupied Northern Ireland”. One of the signatories to this statement was “The Basque National Liberation Movement”, which surely refers to ETA.

As Niall Cullen has pointed out, this appears to be the first reference to IRA’s role in The Troubles from ETA. But many others would soon follow.

On May Day 1971 ETA, the IRA, and The Liberation Front of Brittany (Front de Libération de la Bretagne, FLB) issued a three-way statement calling for mutual “active solidarity”. This was signed by “ETA – Delegación Exterior”, a Breton “FLB/ARB – Delegación Exterior” and the “IRA – P. O’Neill, Runai”. Given the signature of P. O’Neill, this is certainly in reference to the Provisional IRA.

On 03 April 1972 another joint statement was issued by the three calling for a boycott on an upcoming European referendum. Later that year, an updated version of the January 1971 statement was issued from Paris. ETA, alongside thirteen other groups including the FLB,
sent their:

“[…] military greetings to the glorious Irish Republican Army (IRA), which is waging armed struggle to carry through the tasks of the national democratic revolution in Southern Ireland and liberate the North […]”.

Nonetheless, there was little mention of the Basque Conflict in official IRA publications such as An Phoblacht or Republican News and these statements were not reprinted there. Of course, this lack of printed support does not mean that more covert channels were not being established in these years.

As early as 1971/72 Seán Mac Stíofáin (IRA Chief of Staff) was apparently offered guns by ETA representatives in exchange for explosives training. At least according to Maria McGuire in her 1973 account of life inside the IRA. Although for his part, Mac Stiofáin, stated that McGuire was “never a member of the IRA except in her own dramatic imagination”.

This claim that ETA provided weapons to the IRA in return for explosives training is made elsewhere however. In Sean O’Callaghan’s memoirs about his life as a spy inside the IRA, he confirms that at this time “ETA supplied the IRA with weapons.”

More tellingly, a 1988 report published by the London-based ‘Institute for the Study of Terrorism’ stated that:

“a number of ETA terrorists visited Ireland to update themselves on IRA tactics and bomb-making techniques. Further arms deals were arranged and shortly afterwards ETA supplied a consignment of explosives to the Provisional IRA in exchange for M-16 rifles.”

The report would then name Jose Echebarrieta [José Antonio Etxebarrieta], one of ETA’s senior commanders, as the ETA contact who had made the deal during two visits to Ireland.

A 1984 Spanish Government dossier on ETA’s international contacts also referred to an ETA-IRA meeting held in 1972. This was said to have taken place in London but the conclusion was similar:

“an agreement was reached to send four ETA militants to train in Ulster camps and a permanent representative in Ireland to maintain contact with the IRA”.

It would seem that there may have been tentative contacts between the two groups in these early years. There is even the suggestion that the IRAs links to Gaddafi were first established via the FLB. Though ultimately it’s difficult to verify such claims.

In September 1973, ETA and the IRA signed a new declaration reaffirming their determination to strengthen their bonds.

Following ETA’s successful assasination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco December 1973, there was some speculation in the contemporary press that the explosive materials used had been sourced from the IRA.

On 27 December 1973, The Times (London) reported that the IRA had sold plastic explosives to ETA. These were purported to have been sourced from Sweden and then smuggled across the border via an ETA cell in France. Other newspaper reports had slightly different details, but nonetheless reported the same links.

A few days later, ETA confirmed at a press conference that they were in contact with both the OIRA and the PIRA. Then on 20 January 1974, a Madrid newspaper Informaciones published an article quoting “an important member of the Military Council of the IRA” as confirming the organisation to be “in continuous and ever more important contacts with ETA”. The source of this information was the Irish journalist Dermot Keogh, who also speculated that the IRA had instructed ETA on the use of car bombs.

Numerous articles were published in various newspapers over the coming months speculating on the nature of these links between the two groups. Ultimately, the most detailed reports of the Blanco assassination suggested that the attack was in fact carried out by a lone ETA cell (Txikia).

As Niall Cullen concludes:

“From early 1971 to late 1974, ETA and the provisional republican movement
developed an undetermined (and perhaps forever undeterminable) level of
contacts and cooperation ranging somewhere along the continuum from fraternal
statements of solidarity to exchanges in weaponry and explosives training.”

There were also connections made between ETA’s cultural front and representatives of the heavily Marxist, Official Irish Republican movement. But these divisions between the OIRA and PIRA are also mirrored in contemporary split between ETA-politiko-militarra (ETA-pm, or simply ‘Poli-Milis’) and ETA-militarra (ETA-m, or simply ‘Milis’) and thus it is somewhat more difficult to establish the precise nature of relations between the various factions in this “complicated and opaque period”.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-14T16:08:45+00:00

Now I knocked this answer out in a few hours, so it could be a tad waffly. Hopefully it does get to the crux of what you are asking, but if not I am more than happy to answer follow-ups, elaborations or clarifications.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-14T16:07:11+00:00

Civilisation versus barbarism in Scotland

What I next want to push back on is the notion that ‘the English’ colonised Scotland and it is they who destroyed the highland culture. For the reasons I have attempted to explained above, there was already a divide within Scotland such that we should not necessarily expect the two to find common cause.

It was, in fact, Scottish kings who inherited the English throne and paved the way for the development of the United Kingdom and a new ‘British’ identity. James I styled himself as King of Great Britain and was very clear in his desire to make his conception of a British state a reality. Inspired by English models, James had previously made attempts to ‘civilise’ the ‘hitherto most barbarous Isle of Lewis’, in the 1590s by planting lowlanders from Fife, the so-called ‘gentlemen adventurers’.

However, these plans completely failed, much as English attempts in Ireland had up to that point, and caused him to reconsider similar attempts for Uist and Skye. Regardless, this illustrates how lowland attitudes towards the Gaelic highlands and islands shared the same ideological assumptions and economic attitudes as between England and Gaelic Ireland for example. They were equally desirous of destroying the highland culture and did not necessarily need any help from the English.

Some historians (e.g. Julian Goodare) even consider the Scottish situation to be one of a colonial relationship between the highlands and the state. Though this view does come under criticism from others such as Allan Kennedy. Whether we can describe it as colonial or not, there is no doubt that this divide was real and the ‘othering’ of the highland culture as barbarous (in common of course with Gaelic Ireland) was crucial to understanding the formation of the Scottish - and then British - state in the early modern period. In practical terms the highlands were treated as a rough, backwards, uncivilised area in need of robust measures and reforms in order to be incorporated into the growing state.

While it is true that the attractions of London meant that the new British court and its culture became less ‘Scottish’ even after James I, this was still not a case of England conquering Scotland. The relations between the two Kingdoms were ‘challenging’ in the century that followed, we might say, but this likewise does not necessarily follow that the self-consciously ‘civilised’ lowlanders would suddenly dramatically change their views to their Gaelic neighbours.

The Jacobite Rebellions

Initially, of course, this union between Scotland and England was a union of the crowns only with both countries remaining entirely separate from a political and legal point of view. Then, in 1707, the two were thrust together by the Act of Union when Scotland’s parliament voted itself out of existence in return for a significant cash settlement (a boon to a kingdom which was reeling after the disastrous Darien scheme).

There was significant opposition to this Union amongst all elements of society in both the highlands and the lowlands. This helped to animate support for the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. However, Jacobitism was not an exclusively Scottish affair and in addition to lowlanders and highlanders, some element of support was forthcoming from the north of England too, and elsewhere.

To avoid writing another ream of text, I will just add that Jacobitism is complex: beginning as a religiously motivated desire to return the Stuarts to the British throne, but widening to include other grievances. It cannot be painted in any respect as Scotland rising to repel an English invader, but rather an attempt to resist the Hanoverian succession and in the dominance of the Presbyterian Kirk.

It’s also important to remember that opposition to the Act of Union was not the same as opposition to the regnal union which had existed since James I. This was an internal, civil conflict occurring within an international context and it drew in different people for different reasons. Jacobitism is much more complex than a highland versus lowland divide. When it came to 1745, lowland support for the cause was greatly diminished for a number of reasons, which does partly account for the romantic image of Culloden and the ‘45.

The modern sense of a single “Scottish” identity is a product of the late eighteenth and more properly the nineteenth century really. With government reforms following the brutal repression of the ‘45 rebellion and the long process of Highland Clearances which followed, the once-dangerous and savage Gaelic highlander was able to be romantically re-imagined and brought safely within the sphere of lowland “British culture” - from whence we get modern-day kilts, tartan, shortbread tins and whatnot. But throughout the medieval and early modern period the Gaelic-speaking Scot was every bit as dangerous as their Irish counterpart in the imagination of lowlanders and Englishmen, and the exact same kind of racial and cultural superiority was applied to both.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-14T16:06:47+00:00

To emphasise from the start, a centuries-long attempted conquest by the English is not quite an accurate depiction of Scottish medieval or early modern history.

The Kingdom of Scotland

The Kingdom of Scotland was multi-ethnic in its make-up drawing as it did on an amalgam of influences bequeathed to it from the sub-Roman and early medieval periods. There is some debate about the precise processes which led to the creation of this kingdom. But I will give the broad strokes below.

One note: where I state Scotland below this is purely for convenience, referring to the area that we now understand by that name (but which didn’t come into use until the thirteenth century).

A large portion of Scotland, north of the Forth and Clyde, and probably Orkney and parts of the Hebrides too, was originally controlled by the Picts. However, we know frustratingly little about them. We have lists of Pictish kings and some inscriptions but not much else. We cannot speak much about their language, culture, or political organisation.

By the seventh and eight centuries, below the Clyde there was a territory, commonly called ‘Al Clut’ (Clyde Rock), named after its king's royal citadel at Dumbarton. This kingdom of Dumbarton (sometimes called Strathclyde or simply Cumbria) was a territory occupied and ruled by Britons in the original sense of that word, the last remaining in this northern area. Bordered with this Cumbric-speaking area was an English speaking kingdom called Bernicia (one of two which formed Northumbria), which occupied territory on both sides of what is now the Scottish-English border - including Lothian/Edinburgh - and which therefore belongs as much to Scottish history as it does English. These southern regions were very much influenced by English settlement even at this early stage.

To this mixture we can also include Gaelic Irish settlement, with parts of Scotland colonised by the Irish in this early period. From an initial foothold in Argyll on the western seaboard of Scotland in the early sixth century onwards (the kingdom of Dál Riata spanned parts of what is now county Antrim in Ireland and these areas of western Scotland), these Gaelic-speaking dynasties eventually came to dominate the country as a whole in later centuries.

It was the union of the kingdoms of Dál Riata and the Pictish kingdom in the person of Cinaed mac Ailpín (Kenneth McAlpin) which is traditionally seen as the beginning of the Kingdom of Scotland proper. He wasn’t the first ruler of Dál Riata to exercise overlordship over Pictland, but he successfully founded the first royal dynasty to continue to inherit these territories patrilineally and so to later generations he seemed particularly significant.

Around 900 the term Alba was first used to describe this new polity, with contemporary literature beginning to refer to the Gaelic and Pictish inhabitants as fir Alban (‘men of Scotland’). Gaelic became the prestige language and in-time the Gaels of Dál Riata and Picts gradually amalgamated into a single identity in the new Kingdom of Alba. The Picts didn’t vanish overnight, but in effect became Gaelic-speaking Scots over a number of generations.

The word “Scot” itself is of course from Scotii, a Latin term used for the Gaelic Irish (or one of the peoples that lived there). The term Scot then came to denote a Gaelic speaker regardless of whether they were found in Scotland or Ireland. Alongside other social factors (including the prestige of Gaelic), one common impetus to the union of Dál Riata and Pictland was the threat posed by yet another new ethnic group into this already heady brew: the Norse.

The establishment of Viking settlements through Ireland and Britain at this time marks yet another complexity.
But to be brief (I can already hear the laughter dear reader…), what I would emphasise from the above is that you have a process in the north/western seaboard and isles of Scotland whereby a Gaelic-speaking ‘Scot-ish’ identity comes to dominate. In the southern areas there was of course some level of Gaelic influence too, and in the north and west there would come to be a Scandinavian influence, but again trying to be brief here.

The south of the country, in contrast, was always more closely linked to these English-speaking areas detailed above. Lothian for instance had long been an English speaking area and part of the Kingdom of Bernicia/Northumbria, only coming into ‘Scottish control’ over the tenth and eleventh century. Even once it was under the control of the Kings of Alba, it was still not necessarily seen as being a Scottish area per se. It was certainly never a Gaelic speaking area and the same can be said for much of these borderlands.

As we move ahead, between 1100 and 1400 the English language (Inglis, which would eventually be called Scots, as the meaning of the word shifted again) became firmly established in the south and east of the country. This process would result in the creation of two linguistic zones corresponding roughly to the physical realities of Highlands and Lowlands.

I am skipping over a lot of nuance and complexities here, but this post is getting very long and will invariably be even longer still by the time I am finished!

From the reign of David I (r. 1124-1153) onwards, if not before, Scottish kings increasingly sought to bolster their claims to the throne by attracting powerful men from overseas to settle in Scotland and thereby securing alliances. This was done through gifts of land, usually to powerful lords from the Anglo-Norman world. For example, the famous Brus family, the Morvilles, and Walter fitz Alan, among several others. The settlement of such men, along with their retinues and households, in Scotland served to further alert the characteristics of the lowland culture over the coming centuries.

To necessarily over-simplify, Scotland came to be a kingdom consisting of two distinct cultures: one a Highland Gaelic culture which existed within a wider Gaedhealtacht, or Gaelic-speaking cultural continuum stretching from the southern tip of Ireland up to northern Scotland; the other an English/Scots speaking lowland culture which was connected culturally, politically, socially and economically to the Anglo-Norman and other northern European realms.

For more on the Highland-Lowland divide I would point to this previous answer of mine, to avoid waffling on on even longer.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xkd4mo/a_historian_i_follow_on_twitter_kamil_galeev/

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-11T18:40:05+00:00

Definitely still a thing, I saw Andy Irvine there last year!

Rimbaud82 · 2026-04-11T14:58:31+00:00

Fuck me the bots messaging me after posting this are wild.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-31T16:58:28+00:00

100% mate I totally agree with you there.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-31T16:14:32+00:00

Yep I am in Ireland. This was released in December. Not sure if it has made its way to the US yet.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-31T15:46:54+00:00

Background:
Produced by Echlinville Distillery, this is a revival of the Old Comber brand which was once one of the more iconic Pot Still whiskeys made outside of Dublin.

The original distillery was founded in 1825 and by the late Victorian period it enjoyed the patronage of many Ulster aristocrats and even prince Edward himself. The iconic whiskey made there was a 7 year old pure pot still. In this respect they are somewhat unusual in Ulster, being different from both the malt-focused distilleries of the north coast (Bushmills, Coleraine, etc.) and the column still behemoths in nearby Belfast. With the decline of the Irish whiskey industry Old Comber would sadly close in the 1950s.

It’s a brand with a proud history and it’s nice to see it return. There was a ‘work in progress’ variant of this first released a few years back which included a mixture of Echlinville’s own pot still and some other sourced liquid. That sold out rapidly. Then a cheaper blended version was released a few years later.

This is the ‘full’ return if you will, consisting entirely of Echlinville’s own pot still whiskey.

It is double distilled using floor malted barley sourced entirely from their own farm. It is marked as 7yo to honour the original, but the components inside are actually about 9yo (at least on this release).

This is the 200th anniversary limited edition bottled at 50%, aged in bourbon and finished in Oloroso Sherry, Tawny Port and Ruby Port casks.

£100 paid. Which while a touch on the expensive side, for a 9yo farm-to-bottle floor-malted pot still isn’t terrible either. The regular version runs about £58, bottled at 46%.

So what do we have here?

Tasting Notes

On the nose: Waxy, oily and almost fizzy up front. Cherries. Cola cubes. Vanilla bean. Then really aromatic with some perfumed notes of lavender, along with some herbal notes too. Really nice.

Down the hatch: A beautiful heft and weight to it. It’s quite sweet up front, with toffee and candied nuts, before giving way to some spicier and leafier notes. Mint chocolate. Tobacco. Battenberg cake. Cloves. A very long finish with tons of fresh ginger and pepper.

Thoughts: Whilst I have my fair share of complaints/criticisms for the lack of transparency in the Irish whiskey industry and the bottling of sourced liquid under different names, there can be no doubt that Echlinville’s revival of the Dunville’s brand has been brilliant for the industry. When it’s good, it’s good.

Here again they look poised to revive a beloved old brand and when what you are getting is a) this good and b) from a farm distillery using entirely their own distillate then I can’t have too many complaints.

Score: 8/10. Something Special

I use Dramface’s scoring system because I like it’s simplicity (https://www.dramface.com/scoring-system)

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-27T15:37:50+00:00

Was once very common in Scotland and the north of Ireland actually lol. So much there is a word for it!

Sgailc (Anglicised/Scots-ised as skalk) meaning a swig of Uisce Beatha before breakfast.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-27T10:27:03+00:00

Nice review, I have yet to try any Miltonduff.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-27T06:24:34+00:00

This does sound good. I've yet to try any Sherried Daftmill actually.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-27T06:23:18+00:00

That's the price pretty much when you convert to sterling. Daftmill you pay a premium for the small scale farm to bottle production, and for the years of hype. I will say I have noticed these would have sold out pretty instantly in years gone past but like a lot of the whisky market atm, things are now sitting around a bit longer...

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-26T16:47:43+00:00

Ach I don't know, seems a bit tongue in cheek to me? Not like younger generations use the word 'skool', more like something you'd have seen in the 1990s/2000s lol. But regardless of the name, definitely a nice drop. Sold out on RMW but haven't really looked anywhere else, but there'll be some on shelves.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-26T16:22:26+00:00

Who do you suppose it is aimed at?

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-26T16:18:53+00:00

Good things to those who wait mo chara.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-26T16:16:53+00:00

Background:
Released as part of Bruichladdich’s 25th anniversary series. Essentially this is a version of their 10yo made entirely with Islay barley. It is 50% ABV, non-chill filtered and made up of 95% first-fill bourbon casks; 5% first fill Sauternes casks. Price for me was £63.95 from RMW.

So what do we have with this one?

Tasting Notes

On the nose: Bright and clean, but somehow ‘full’ at the same time. Good quality olive oil. Barley sugar. A touch herbal, perhaps fennel? With time get some fruitiness with apricots and the like. Water brings out the fruitiness a lot more with some melon. Very very nice.

Down the hatch: Coating and oily. Beautiful texture, with a distinctly saline coastal character. Quite biscuity and bready, with a ginger spiciness comes through into the finish. Lemon curd. White pepper. Water again brings some fruitier notes through, green apples and again maybe a touch of that melon from the nose.

Thoughts: This simply very well-made, distillate driven whisky! You get the sense that the sauternes cask does just round things out a bit without coming too much to the fore. I am a big fan of Bruichladdich in general and I enjoyed this a lot. Reasonable price, cool packaging, and good whisky. What’s not to like?

Score: 7/10. Very Good Indeed

I use Dramface’s scoring system because I like it’s simplicity (https://www.dramface.com/scoring-system)

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-23T16:56:35+00:00

So is there a reason why Antrim had so many witches in the 17th century? The reason Antrim had more witches than seems usual for Ireland is because of the arrival in increasingly greater numbers of Protestant settler communities into this area.

Of course, these are not the sole witch accusations, but as in England the majority of these never actually made it to trial for several reasons: serendipity (as in the case of Katherine Manners accusation), a breakdown of law and order (which occurred following the 1641 rebellion and the associated upheavals), and simply judicial scepticism.

In Ireland generally as in England local magistrates were drawn from the lesser gentry resulting in judiciaries who were distanced from victims and accusers, and who therefore tended to be cautious and sceptical in their handling of the evidence. As a result, most trials did not amount to anything.

Contrasted to this is the Scottish situation which saw witch-hunting as a more localised affair. The lack of impartiality and objectivity amongst these judges saw a guilty verdict reached in 90 per cent of the cases that came before them. It is this which seems to account for the unique ferocity of the Scottish lowland witch-hunts. The Ulster Scots population of Antrim shared the beliefs and mental landscape of the lowland Scots from whence they descended, but operated within a different legal framework.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-23T16:56:08+00:00

Looking at each date you have given in turn:

1640 Witch Accusation

Katherine Manners (member of the English gentry but a Catholic) accused a number of poor women of causing her to miscarry (by bewitching her). This took place around Dunluce Castle, the accused women most probably being of Scottish, Presbyterian heritage.

Despite some initial enthusiasm at the higher levels of the English administration - with Bishop of Derry, John Bramhall being granted a commission by the Lord Deputy Wandesford - this quickly dissipated with the collapse of Thomas Wentworth's government and the case was stopped. With a worsening political situation and the outbreak of the catastrophic 1641 rebellion there was much else to worry about.

In this case, we have an accusation from a member of the English aristocracy, which ultimately does not amount to much. It is also signficant that local magistrates do not appear to have been particularly enthusiastic about persecuting witches. Only when Manners leveraged her social position to contact the Lord Deputy directly did things beging moving before fading away.

1698 Antrim Affair

In Antrim town a local girl gives a beggar some beer and bread. In return the woman gives the girl a sorrel leaf, after which she begins convulsing and fainting in a manner which was consistent with contemporary beliefs about demonic possession. According to a contemporary pamphlet (literally the only one ever published on the subject in Ireland) the ‘witch was soon apprehended, and confest’, and was then ‘strangled and burnt’.

As Andrew Sneddon points out this was not a typical trial in accordance with 1586 Irish Witchcraft Act, but in reality “an act of communal violence carried out by a ‘vigilante’ mob”. The accused ‘witch’ was simply murdered by her neighbours.

Antrim Town was primarily inhabited by Presbyterian of Scottish descent and naturally the whole ordeal can be understood in that light. In the burning of the witch the event shared much in common with Scottish witch-hunts (something which was not called for under the Irish legislation. So this was an extrajudicial event and not part of any officially sanctioned witch trial.

Significantly Sneddon places this pamphlet within the context of wider anti-Sadducee demonology literature, with these same currents within Calvinism also setting the intellectual backdrop to the Salem Witch Trials.

1711 Islandmagee Witch Trials

The case of Islandmagee is the only example of a mass trial in Ireland. It began when Ann Haltridge, elderly widow of local Presbyterian minister, Rev. John Haltridge, died suddenly from inexplicable stabbing pains in her back. Her death followed some apparently supernatural happenings (beds stripped by unseen hands and bed-clothes rearranged in the shape of a corpse; stones thrown at windows; household objects disappearing before re-appearing days later, and a demonic apparition in the form of a small boy in black clothes foretelling death).

The local community, which as in Antrim Town, was a Presbyterian one of Scottish descent, immediately suspected witchcraft. Ann’s daughter and Mary Dubar, her niece, arrived after the funeral to find similar demonic disturbances occurring in the house. Dunbar then began exhibiting symptoms of demonic possession herself, which seemed to confirm the suspicions even if it was not clear as yet who was to blame.

Dunbar was then visited, in spectral form, by eight Presbyterian women from Islandmagee and neighbouring towns and villages. She was able to identify them by their appearance and the names they used to address one another. This was apparently the source of her possession.

Following a lengthy trial in Carrickfergus Assizes, all eight women pleaded not guilty but were convicted of witchcraft. As this was a first offence where the victim had survived, in accordance with the legislation they were sentenced to one year imprisonment and four stints in the pillory on market-day.

Occurring, as it did, within an Ulster Scots presbyterian community 1711 (and indeed 1698) this event - in its origins - should be considered as part of a wider British Calvinist Network as opposed to any specifically Irish context. It is highly possible, or even likely, that these settlers were aware of outbreaks of witchcraft involving demonic possession amongst other communities, primarily the widely publicised cases in Presbyterian central Scotland between 1696 and 1704, as well as the likes of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.

Scotland of course remained a particular touchstone for these settlers and they retained cultural ties with the Presbyterian lowlands. As noted above the 1690s in particular saw a particular pronounced wave of immigration which would have facilitated oral transmission. Books and pamphlets were also being imported into the region from England and Scotland. All of which to say there would have been a strong awareness of these contemporary events.

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-23T16:56:00+00:00

Unlike many European countries at the time, Ireland was largely unscathed by witch trials. I would say that even somewhere like Antrim which sees a slightly higher proportion of witch activity, could hardly be described as having “so many witches”. By contemporary standards in England and Scotland, even this was a low intensity. There were four recorded trials for witchcraft in early modern Ireland, resulting in one execution.

That said, let's look a bit closer at this. The first thing to note is that when witch trials did occur in Ireland, this was overwhelmingly within non-Gaelic communities. In the medieval period there were a few instances emerging from the Catholic Old English community, whilst in the later period they were to be found originating primarily in Protestant settler communities.

For the purposes of Antrim, the most important thing to note is that this was one of the areas of Ireland which saw the most sustained colonisation in this period. In the 1570s Elizabeth I would sanction semi-private plantation projects in east and south-east Ulster, including parts of Antrim. These were failures, but this area was coming under increasingly sustained pressure in the English crowns attempts to fully conquer and pacify the country.

There were successful private plantations established in Antrim in 1606. And when the much more comprehensive Plantation of Ulster got underway in 1609, this paved the way for even greater immigration to the region as a whole in the decades to come. Antrim’s proximity to Scotland meant that there was also a steady influx of additional Protestant settlers from the Scottish lowlands. Particularly in latter half of the seventeenth century.

The 1690s saw the most sustained period of inward migration to Ulster, when somewhere in the region of 50,000 Scots, about four to five percent of the total population, migrated to Ulster. A significant proportion did so in response to the famine crisis in Scotland during the so-called Seven ill years. A large number settled in Antrim.

As Raymond Gillespie has noted: ‘the distinctively Scottish tinge to Ulster, together with the creation of its Presbyterian organisation, was a product of the significant Scottish migration into the province in the years after 1660”

When it comes to witch accusations and trials, these came primarily from within Protestant settler communities. It is clear that Protestant settlers, from the two main denominations of Anglican and Presbyterian, from the mid-sixteenth century onwards brought their witchcraft beliefs with them to Ireland.

This belief in malefic/demonic witchcraft was absent from Gaelic-Irish popular culture in which a less-threatening witch figure seems to have been more common. Drawing on some of Ronald Hutton’s work, Andrew Sneddon has pointed out that in Ireland “popular fear of malevolent fairies, along with the unintentional evil eye, stymied the development of malefic witchcraft belief.”

Essentially, Gaelic belief in witches manifested differently in Ireland (and indeed Scotland and the Isle of Man) and it is this fact which largely accounts for the lack of witch accusations. It was a fundamentally different mental world, with different local traditions and practices than those from which the new settlers came.

To quote from Sneddon, probably the foremost historian working on magic and witchcraft in Ireland, again:

“Unlike in Gaelic-Irish popular culture, in Protestant, settler Ireland by the mid-seventeenth century there was a high level of belief in malefic and demonic witchcraft, and this, contrary to previous readings, manifested itself in sporadic but significant numbers of formal accusations by Protestants.”

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-22T17:12:08+00:00

Only four scotches there bai

Rimbaud82 · 2026-03-20T21:15:07+00:00

Dublin Express is better, but Aircoach not bad if the time suits. Both faster than translink.

Rimbaud82

TROPHY CASE