The early Ulster immigrants and their descendants at first usually referred to themselves simply as "Irish," without the qualifier "Scotch." It was not until more than a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s. Because of the decrease in marriages in Ireland, single Irish women, called “unprovided-for ‘girls’”, traveled to the United States to find employment and/or start families of their own.[38] Frustrated by the hardships of Irish farm life and alone in a new country without the help of other family members.The fate of the language was influenced by the increasing power of the English state in Ireland. Elizabethan officials viewed the use of Irish unfavourably, as being a threat to all things English in Ireland.
