Celtic connection lies deep in Kiwi culture

Dr Angela McCarthy is seeking personal testimonies such as letters and shipboard journals. Picture / Getty Images

Jokes have long portrayed the Irish as "slow" and the Scots as "tight". Now academics are asking where those stereotypes came from.

A research project at Victoria University, looking into migration from Scotland and Ireland, is being led by international scholar Dr Angela McCarthy of Auckland, a research fellow in New Zealand studies whose career embraces work in Dublin, Aberdeen and Wellington.

It's a major undertaking. Irish and Scottish migrants supplied around 40 per cent of New Zealand's foreign-born population in the late 19th century and up to 30 per cent in the 20th, yet there is little research into how society perceived their national and cultural identities.

Dr McCarthy has the Orange Order and Hibernians, St Andrew Societies and Burns Clubs in her sights but she is also seeking personal testimonies such as letters, shipboard journals and diaries.

"These will then be compared with official and public sources including asylum registers, migration files and cartoons," she explains.

The research connects with another project focused solely on Scottish migration, funded by a $510,000 grant from the Marsden Fund and led by Dr Brad Patterson of Victoria's Irish-Scottish Studies Programme. A high-powered team has been brought together from other universities, including Aberdeen, who will work with local genealogical societies and clan associations on case studies of Scottish settlements around the country.

"We'll consider which cultural elements have been preserved. There's a pipe band in most New Zealand towns and our universities follow the Scottish model but little is known about the effects Scotland has had on today's society," he said.

Details on who takes the high road to Scottish settlements such as Waipu in Northland and the low road to Otago and Southland are now being finalised.

For researchers, it won't be an easy stroll in the heather. They'll meet frustration which can partly be blamed on well-intended bureaucracy. For example, 20th century New Zealand shipping records won't be a great help as many Scots were lumped under the heading "British".

Scotland has long been in the shadow of Ireland's well-documented diaspora after the potato famine, but between 1825 and the start of the First World War, nearly two million Scots packed up and shipped out, the majority from urban industrial areas.

Between 1921 and 1930, Scotland had the highest rate of human outflow of all European countries. As there was also a significant movement of Scots to south of the border, researchers express surprise at the dearth of literature on 20th century Scottish migration.

Of the half-million-strong tartan tide between 1921 and 1950, more than 100,000 came to New Zealand and Australia at a time when the Scottish economy was depressed and, because of its industrial structure, it suffered disproportionately compared with the British Isles as a whole.

The annual New Zealand migration report for 1922 said that because New Zealand was so far away it was essential "that none but the best be despatched to our shores". A lack of shipping and housing in the mid-1900s forced the Government to choose new settlers carefully.

In the Scottish swoop, 10 case studies will include areas such as the Highland-settled Turakina near Wanganui and the Shetlands' Karamea on the West Coast. It's all part of academics' effort to reveal the language, food, place names, plants and dance brought to the other side of the world by the Celts.

Irish/Scottish Studies, Stout Research Centre, Victoria University, Box 600, Wellington

Gaelic ancestry

Famous NZers of Scots descent:

John Logan Campbell, businessman
Ernest Rutherford, scientist
James Fletcher, builder
James Wattie, businessman
Norman Kirk, Prime Minister ... and Irish William Hobson, Governor of NZ
James Dilworth, businessman & philanthropist
William Massey, Prime Minister
Jim Bolger, Prime Minister
Sean Fitzpatrick, All Black captain