In May 1606, one year before the British established Jamestown in Virginia, the Hamilton and Montgomery Settlement became the first permanent Scottish settlement in Ireland. The Ulster Plantation was not the first contact between Ulster and Scotland, but it marked the beginning of a century of large-scale Protestant migration that led to a shared Catholic-Protestant heritage in Northern Ireland.

Among the many traditions that the Scots brought to Ulster was their language, which shared the same ancient Germanic roots as English but developed independently to become the internationally recognized "language of Robert Burns." Ulster-Scots, the ...