the master in such studies did not prevent me from feeling that the
suggestion was a little absurd. But at a later period I became aware
that North Irishmen used many of the pronunciations and idioms that
distinctly characterized the language of old-fashioned people on the
Ohio. Many Ulster men say "wair" for were and "air" for are, for
example. Connecting this with the existence of a considerable element of
Scotch-Irish names in the Ohio River region, I could not doubt that here
was one of the keys the master had bidden me look for. While pursuing at
a later period a series of investigations into the culture-history of
the American people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I
became much interested in the emigration to America from the north of
Ireland, a movement that waxed and waned as the great Irish-linen
industry of the last century declined or prospered. The first American
home of these Irish was Pennsylvania. A portion of them were
steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time
made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of
the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from
those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of
the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this
rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that
came from the wild Irish women whom the first Scotch settlers in Ulster
made the mothers of their progeny. Arrived in the wilds of Pennsylvania,
these Irishmen built rude cabins, planted little patches of corn and
potatoes, and distilled a whiskey that was never suffered to grow
mellow. The forest was congenial to men who spent much the larger part
of their time in boisterous sport of one sort or another. The
manufacture of the rifle was early brought to Lancaster, in
Pennsylvania, direct from the land of its invention by Swiss emigrants,
and in the adventurous Scotch-Irishman of the Pennsylvania frontier the
rifle found its fellow. Irish settlers became hunters of wild beasts,