XVIII 



Old Daddy Flicker Likes 

 Corn Likker 



IN THE first half of the eighteenth century this country 

 received a sudden transfusion of new blood. Half a million 

 Ulster folk poured into the ports of Philadelphia, Baltimore 

 and Charleston and took the roads to the western frontier. 

 They were by nature hardy and hot-headed, invincible in pur- 

 pose and unrestrained in passion. Their generosity to a friend 

 was only equaled by their zest in hating an enemy. They had, 

 according to Justin Winsor, "that excitable character which 

 goes with a keen-minded adherence to original sin, total de- 

 pravity, predestination and election." 



They were whiskey drinkers and whiskey makers. In Scot- 

 land they had distilled their liquor from barley. Transplanted 

 to northern Ireland, they had carried their pot-stills with them. 



The wild Irish who watched them come in to possess the 

 good farmlands from which the Sassenach had driven them 

 into the bogs of Connaught, grinned at the sight. Was it the 

 way it was these Scotchmen thought they could teach an 

 Irishman to make poteen? Hadn't they, themselves, been at 

 it since before ever time began? And wasn't it an Irish saint, 

 no less, who sailed his coracle up the Firth of Forth and 

 generously instructed the poor heathen Scots in the civilizing 

 art of distilling barley into usquebaugh? 



The newly-planted Scots found to their delight that the 

 glen waters of Antrim and the springs which fed? the Liffey 

 were as potent in drawing the spirit out of the fermented 

 barley and oats as the burn waters of their native land. They 



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