The British Isles Single-Cell House in the American Cultural Landscape

Abstract

The citizens of the United States of America have a hobby which is becoming more and more evident and widespread. We like to look for connexions, imaginary or real, between our place and the Old Country—that mist-enshrouded, magical landscape of castles and bagpipes across the Atlantic from whence our noble progenitors came. Roughly twenty per cent of Americans trace their roots to England and sixteen per cent to Ireland. But most Americans today know little of why the emigrants left or how they got here, by hook or crook, expulsion or invitation.N or do we know much about the precise brand of European or British or Irish community, ethnic group, region, occupational group, or religion from which the ancestor sprang.