ABSTRACT
Whether it be through music, football, flute bands, dance, poetry, folklore, language, St Patrick’s day celebrations, cooking, place and people naming, religion, family life or kin networks, the Irish Catholic community in Scotland has often rendered itself visible and distinctive as a consequence of its cultural practices. Although sometimes welcomed, courted and celebrated by Scottish society, some of these cultural practices have attracted an unwarranted amount of critical scrutiny. It is perhaps with respect to religion that cultural alterity has been at its greatest. Irish migration brought to Scotland in particular a fresh injection of Roman Catholicism and it is arguably the case that some Scottish constituencies who revere Protestantism as central to Scottish and British national identity have never been able to accommodate this cultural intrusion. Much of the debate over sectarianism and bigotry in Scottish society pivots around the question of indigenous hostility and intolerance towards Roman Catholicism. And it is arguably with regard to the question of denominational schooling, and in particular the virtues and vices of Catholic Schools and their educational and hiring practices, that the debate over Scotland’s shame has drawn its energy.
