286 Singing Valleys 



found, too, another good in Ireland which they had lost in 

 Scotland. The Crown's exciseman was not so diligent. For 

 years a whiskey rebellion had been grumbling under the sur- 

 face of political life in Scotland. The farmers resented the gov- 

 ernment's tax on the grain which they chose to distill and not 

 to grind. "The gauger," they called the unwelcome collector 

 of excise. They were not above taking a shot at him from the 

 heather. 



But the Crown was lenient toward the Scotch who were 

 helping in the conquest of Ireland. If having their own stills 

 and making their own whiskey would encourage them to 

 stand against the Catholic Irish, why the loss in excise was 

 less than the cost of keeping British regiments in the Pale. 

 For a century the Ulstermen made whiskey and smuggled 

 quantities of it into England. There were connoisseurs in 

 London who preferred the smoky flavor of Bushmills to the 

 "King's whiskey" made in licensed distilleries at home. 



Before their one-hundred-year leaseholds had run out, some- 

 thing happened to the Scotch in Ulster. It may have been the 

 whiskey distilled out of Irish water and Irish grain which 

 effected a metabolic change. Those transplanted Scots took 

 on certain distinctly Irish characteristics which turned them 

 into a problem to the Crown and the Parliament. They even 

 expected the government to keep its word about protecting 

 the Irish linen industry. When it did not, with really Irish 

 effrontery they proceeded to make trouble. And when that 

 trouble did not bring the relief they wanted, and their lease- 

 holds ran out, they set sail for the colonies in America. 



Froude estimates that "in the two years that followed the 

 Antrim evictions, thirty thousand Protestants left Ulster for a 

 land where those who sowed the seed could reap the harvest." 



Few of those who came remained in the cities. They wanted 

 freedom and they wanted land. They pushed on to the fron- 

 tiers in the Berkshires, to western Pennsylvania and down 

 through the Cumberland valley into the Back Woods of Vir- 

 ginia, the Carolinas and Kentucky. How much of the spirit 



