Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was required in Scotland as of 1 January 1855. Prior to that date, each parish of the established church, the Church of Scotland, recorded these events in the Old Parochial Registers (OPR). The FamilySearch wiki, which is usually very helpful, says this about OPRs: "For an index to these records, see the Scottish Church Records Index on computer at the Family History Library and family history centers." Other FamilySearch wiki explanations refer to a DOS system of records and an alphabetized index on CD, both available at family history centers. After two trips to a family history center and finally a call to their technical help desk, I learned that the wiki instructions are out of date and incorrect. Obviously DOS is obsolete, but why does FamilySearch continue to direct researchers to family history centers? An alternative is the pay-site ScotlandsPeople at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk, which I found to be very user-friendly and a relatively good value. The surname search on the home page is free. You don't have to specify a county or parish. You can query all names/locations and check how many records exist before committing to pay. One can purchase 30 "page-credits" for approximately $11 (US), and the credits are good for one year. Each credit (costing 35-40 cents) is good for a page of index results (approximately 25 search results). The cost to view the actual image - if you're lucky enough to find a good match - is 5 credits. The query feature allows many data gyrations to maximize your chances of finding the name and event you seek. Once you've paid for a page of index results, your "Previous Searches" are retained for future review. While my principal interest was old parish registers, ScotlandsPeople also holds statutory and Catholic BMD registers, census records and valuation rolls. Again, each page of index results will cost 1 credit with additional cost to see the actual image. So did I find what I was looking for? Not yet. The FamilySearch wiki provided possible reasons:

• The name may be spelled differently (although the ScotlandsPeople query feature allows you to specify many variations such as soundex, metaphone, wildcards, name "begins with");
• Your ancestor may not have belonged to the Church of Scotland (i.e., Presbyterian Church);
• The christening or marriage may have been recorded several years after the event - look at later dates.

I haven't taken the time to analyze my ScotlandsPeople OPR results against what I found online at FamilySearch. Perhaps all the indexed OPR names are already included in FamilySearch's database "Scotland Births & Baptisms, 1564-1950." According to the FamilySearch wiki, OPRs "may include as much as 60 percent of the pre-1855 population of Scotland." I fear my Scots-Irish ancestor was among the remaining 40 percent.