ABSTRACT
The Irish immigrant was in the almost impossible position of being unable to become Scottish. In the United States he might hope to start as an equal American in the making, but that was a remote prospect in Edinburgh or Glasgow. Irishmen were therefore regarded as incapable of success, especially when measured in terms of material progress, because an obscurantist religion and culture, a sort of inherent national defect, held them down. Irish immigration into Edinburgh began at the turn of the nineteenth century. It became part of an already existing movement of Celts into Scotland’s capital, since migratory Highland workers had long been employed as labourers, servants, porters, sedan carriers and water caddies. An examination of the Irish role in Edinburgh can be instructive, because it allows for a study of their development in that other Scotland so often lost to sight in the vast industrial and commercial expansions of the nineteenth century.
