David Adams's maternal grandmother was Scottish. Born at Bridge Street in Glasgow, she came to the north of Ireland (today's Northern Ireland) as a child when her father took up employment in the linen industry.
So what, you ask?
Not much, except to note that this little familial connection fully entitles me to describe myself as a genuine Ulster Scot. That my paternal grandfather was born in India of solid Somerset stock is neither here nor there: I still qualify.
In truth, it wouldn't matter tuppence if all my antecedents to a man and woman hailed from Timbuktu, in today's Northern Ireland I would still be considered suitable for admittance to the Ulster Scots clan. The fact that I'm Protestant and unionist is qualification enough.
Because, in our code-laden lexicon, proudly proclaiming yourself to be an Ulster Scot means something that goes way beyond any real or imagined ancestry. It is also a forceful declaration of what you consider yourself not to be. A declaration that you are not Irish, nationalist or Catholic.
The term itself is a misnomer - but a quite intentional one. Taken literally, it would more accurately describe a Scottish person settled in the province of Ulster, or simply a Scot of Ulster descent. But the preference for "Ulster Scots" over the much more accurate appellation, "Scots Irish", is intended as a deliberate signal of non-Irishness.
In its most recent manifestation, the Ulster Scots tag was adopted by a section of Northern Ireland's population to highlight, and show pride in, their Scottish roots. And, in no small part, to act as something of a counterweight to the renaissance and new profile of a seemingly exclusive Gaelic culture. But, despite the best efforts of honourable and benign advocates like Lord Laird, it has gradually been hijacked.
That the earliest known Scottish settlements in Ireland were in and around the Glens of Antrim and in Donegal, and that today the direct descendants of those original settlers are, almost without exception, Catholic and Irish nationalist is ignored. They obviously didn't, and can't, be fitted within the parameters of what constitutes an Ulster Scot.
A perfect illustration of this came recently when, in front page and editorial pieces, Belfast's morning newspaper, the News Letter, continually used Ulster Scots as a term interchangeable with, and indivisible from, unionist and Protestant.
That Scotland itself, to put it mildly, has never been a hotbed of unionism is another irrelevance. If Ulster Scots is about Scotland at all, it's only in the notional sense of a utopian homeland, that doesn't, and never did, exist.
The term is a conscious appropriation of a (then) wholly accurate description of those original Scottish Protestants who, centuries ago, settled in the north of Ireland.
And therein lies the nub: Ulster Scots has become a declaration of the (nowadays deliberate) outsider, the signalling of community and kinship lying elsewhere and, above all, about creating an impression that attitudes among the Protestant "settlers" remain the same as they were all those centuries ago.
Used in this ethno/religious/political sense, it says to the "native" Irish population: "Yes, we may have been among you for some 400 years, but we still choose to be apart from you."
Hardly a recipe for harmony, or creating a society at ease with itself.
It is somewhat ironic, that all of this should fit so neatly, though probably accidentally, into the world-view of a tiny, but extreme, form of Irish nationalism. Those who still consider unionists as land-grabbing interlopers who have no place in any part of Ireland, must surely enjoy the irony of having most of their prejudices confirmed by the "foreigners" themselves.
And it isn't only on the ethnicity front that a section of unionism is looking to the past to provide inspiration and guidance for the future. In recent times, many unionist politicians have begun to talk in glowing terms of "traditional unionism" and of the need to return to "traditional unionist values".
But what exactly is traditional unionism?
Are they calling for a return to a type of unionism that was exclusive, sectarian, discriminatory and inward looking - where accident of birth and not ability determined who should lead? Where we all knew our place and were kept in it?
If they are, it is the exact opposite of what unionists should be striving to do. The only prerequisite for being a unionist is that you favour Northern Ireland remaining as part of the United Kingdom. Unionism isn't a religious or even a political ideology, but simply a constitutional preference.
And, as such, it should be welcoming of all that share that preference, irrespective of colour, class, creed or ethnicity. It should be forever seeking to broaden its appeal, not narrow it.
I won't be rushing to proclaim myself an Ulster Scot, simply because I am not a Scot, of any type. Yes, I have some Scottish ancestry, and am happy with that, but I also have some English (and God knows what else) ancestry.
But, so what? I belong where I am and, what's more important, I feel that I belong.