Author: Dr. Patrick Devine-Wright
Being Gael has over centuries come to stand for cultural and emotional solidarity but also for an isolated and very localised identity. It has come to represent a lack of the prestige and power associated with overlords in earlier centuries and incomers in more recent times. Many Gaels have come to see themselves as a marginalized community who were relatively powerless in the face of sweeping and imposed change. Many of the aspects of distinctiveness of being Gael have come from the use of Gaelic as a language but also from the kinship system, expressed in patronymics; distinctive religious practices, such as the reading of the scriptures and the singing of psalms in Gaelic; and a shared awareness and attitude towards an encircling and different social world. Islanders and Ulster folk have come to internalise the British mainland view of themselves as a peripheral people with a negatively-valued rural way of life. Out-migration of islanders and Ulster folk in large numbers has perpetuated the feeling that it was necessary to leave in order to succeed in life or in earlier times to survive. This chapter looks at which factors caused out-migrants to leave but for the remaining Islanders and Ulster folk to stay on during the Clearances and Improvements.
