 And then he said, to understand me, and this reminded me of Jim Webb and the book that he wrote about being Scots-Irish. Scots-Irish. To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart, he wrote in Hillbilly Elegy. The Scots-Irish legacy entailed many good traits, but also many bad ones. We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the differences lie in how they look, how they act, or more importantly, how they talk.