The English had long held views on the Irish as being a ‘barbaric’ people before the rebellion of 1641, but this rebellion served to intensify and bring to the fore these opinions. In order to fully comprehend the enhancing of these views from after the rebellion, one must fully understand what the pre-existing views were.
The first and most prudent place to start when discussing these misconceptions of the Irish people and society is from the writings of Gerald of Wales. His descriptions of the native Irish was first published in the twelfth-century and were not even close to being objective. He describes the Irish as barbarous, rude, of living like beasts, amongst other things, all of which point to a wholly uncivilised society, which was inherently inferior to the English. “Irish ‘barbarism’, which ‘clung to them like a second nature’, was the product of the islands geographical isolation from the more advanced societies; and it manifested itself in both material poverty and moral depravity: ‘Thus, this people is a barbarous race, and true barbarous…..and all of their customs are barbarisms.’”
Gerald’s writings were used by English historians, such as Edmund Spenser and John Davies, for centuries to come as the authoritative work on Irish society and history and supported their views on the ‘uncivilised Irish’. “As late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Giraldus defined the tradition of English writing on Ireland, being the most widely read authority on Irish customs as well as Irish history.” Spenser discusses certain characteristics of the Irish, which in his mind places them in an uncivilised category. His views on the appearances of the Irish are unfavourable. “They have another custome from the Scythians, that is the wearing of manteles and longe glebbes, which is a thicke curled bushe of heare, hanging downe over their eyes, and monstrously disguysinge them, which are both very badd and hurtfull.” An area of Irish custom which both Spenser and Davies found to be an issue in the advancement of the Irish civilisation was the practice of gavelkind and tanistry. These were practices which affected inheritance and the passing on of land back to the clan, rather than the family heir after death. “In this course went all theyr possessions, the chainge and translaccion whereof by soe manie elections and partitions was the cause that there were noe howses built nor townes erected among the Irish, And the not building of howses and townes was the cause of their Barbarisme and incivility”
The Term Paper on English Society Gulliver Swift Lilliputians
To generations of schoolchildren, Gulliver s Travels has been a delightful visit to a faraway fantasy kingdom. Upon a closer look, Gulliver s Travels is found to be a potentially critical and very insightful piece, satirizing the political and social systems of eighteenth-century England. During the eighteenth-century there was an upheaval of commercialization in London, England, resulting in a ...
These are some examples of negative opinions on the Irish which were widely held by English writers leading up to the rebellion on 1641. It is worth mentioning that various Irish historians fought against these stereotypes of the Irish before the rebellion most notably Geoffrey Keating who wrote “For it is the fashion of the beetle, when it lifts its head in the summertime, to go about fluttering, and not stoop towards any delicate flower that may be in the field, or any blossom in the garden, though they be all roses or lilies, but it keeps bustling about until it meets with dung of horse or cow, and proceeds to roll itself therein.” These Irish writers had little impact in changing the views of the English, whose writers on Ireland continued to adhere to English rhetoric and propaganda.
An interesting aspect of English writing was the change in views after the rebellion about the church and Catholic involvement. While Gerald had been very critical of the church in Ireland, “I find it especially worthy of reproach in the bishops and prelates, that they are very slothful and negligent in their duty of correcting a people guilty of such enormous delinquencies” , the view from Spenser shows a church which does not hold a threat, thinking them too ignorant. “They neither read scriptures, nor preach to the people, nor administer the communion, but baptisme they doe, for they christen yet after the popish fashion, onely they take the tithes and offerings” This view of a lazy, incompetent clergy had totally been replaced by a view of the Catholic church as being very influential in the planning of the 1641 rebellion. John Temple’s ‘Irish Rebellion’ was published in 1646, and in it he clearly accuses the Catholic church of being proactive in the rebellion. “He contended that the massacre of Protestants had been planned as part of the insurrection by the Catholic leadership, with the encouragement of the Catholic clergy, in order to recover Ireland for the pope’s interest.” Works like Temple’s ‘Irish Rebellion’ were exercises in extreme propaganda which served to heighten the differences between the two countries.
The Essay on Irish History Catholic Catholics Lands
Sources: 1. ) Whelan, Kevin. The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism, and the Construction of Irish Identity. 1760-1830. United States: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. Irish History Tree of Liberty Paper The Protestant Landowners in the 1690's grew tired of attempting to collect taxes from a relatively poor Irish population. Middlemen were therefore appointed to manage the lands, ...
He portrayed the Irish Catholics as savages who would do ungodly acts to the innocent Protestants in Ireland, even to their dead bodies and the book “played a powerful role in fixing an image of the Irish in the minds of the English.” His exaggerated descriptions of the events in Ireland painted a vivid and haunting image. “they loudly in all places declaimed against the protestants, telling the people that they were hereticks, and not to be suffered any longer to live among them; that it was no more sin to kill an Englishman, than to kill a dog; and that it was a most moral and unpardonable sin to relieve or protect any of them.”
The portrayal of the Catholic church in ‘The Rebellion’ shows a group who were declaring a bloody war on Protestants and the ungodly methods used by even the clergy in Ireland shows the absolute savagery and barbarism of the Irish. However, these claims against the church and people were refuted by a number of Irish historians, most notably Charles O’ Conor, who shone a different light upon the ‘savage’, ‘barbarous’ Catholic church in Ireland. “They sent their Missionaries in Shoals into the Continent, converting its heathen, and confirming its Christian inhabitants; set up Schools in those Parts; and laid the Foundations of the most flourishing Universities in Europe.” This representation of the Catholic church shows that they were in fact great teachers and not the savages they were portrayed to be.
The Term Paper on Yeats Life Irish Ireland
Born in Dublin in the year 1865, William Butler Yeats would go on to become universally recognized by his peers as the greatest poet of this century writing in the English language. This recognition would come as early as 1828, a decade before his death with the publication of arguably his finest volume, The Tower (Fraser, 207). The son of one time attorney and later well known painter John Butler ...
O’ Conor was not the only historian trying to redress the imbalance of the written history of the 1641 rebellion. It was accepted for almost a century that the biased English accounts of the rebellion were true and that the Catholics in Ireland posed a political threat. While O’ Conor and John Curry wrote revised histories on the rebellion, they knew that an unbiased Protestant history of the period would be more powerful in correcting the views held about the Irish. While Thomas Leland did write a more balanced account, it did not suit the Catholic views as much as they wanted. As Curry wrote to O’ Conor, Leland wrote “like a Protestant, which you know he must do” This brings up an interesting point about the English portrayal of the Irish, although it would be harsh to put Leland into this bracket. Their writing of Ireland was not necessarily their own points of view on the country or the people, but rather it gave the view of what the powers that be in England wanted. An example of this would be Spenser, who was a clerk of the faculties and also Davies who was attorney general. They simply had to toe the official line; however this also does not mean that they didn’t believe some of their representations of the Irish. “Spenser was, it should be remembered, an Englishman with a subservient official position and in view of the meagre rewards reaped by such loyal followers of Queen, Church and Country as Sir John Sidney and Lord Author Grey for voicing an opinion of their own or acting at their own initiative, it is small wonder that by and large Spenser toed the official line.”
While the beliefs of the Irish as being a barbarous and uncivilised people existed long before the rebellion of 1641, these beliefs were indeed intensified and went uncontested for the best part of a century. Despite the vast amount of history claiming the Irish as uncivilised during these times, it would seem that the English definition of an uncivilised culture would be those who differ from their own.
Bibliography
Gerald of Wales, Topography of Ireland, 31, HI 3001 Class Handout.
Hadfield, Andrew, Briton and Scythian: Tudor Representation of Irish Origins, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 28, No. 112, (Nov., 1993), pp. 390-408.
Jones, W.R., ‘Giraldus Redivivus-English Historians, Irish Apologists, and the Works of Gerald of Wales’, Eire-Ireland, Vol.8, No. 4, 1973.
The Essay on Evan views of history
Mike Prochaska US History Seminar September 23, 1999 In Defense of History, was written in 1997 by Richard J. Evans, a history professor at Cambridge University, that defends history from the postmodernist theories that believe that historical truth can not be found. In this book he also attacks other historians like E. H. Carr to show why he believes the postmodern view is wrong. Richard Evans ...
Leerssen, Joep, Mere Irish and Fior-Ghael, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1986.
Noonan, Kathleen, The Cruell Pressure of an Enraged, Barbarous People, The Historical Journal, Vol. 41, No.1, (March 1998), p151-177.
O’ Halloran, Clare, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations, Cork: Cork University Press, 2004.
Spenser, Edmund, A view of the state of Ireland: from the first printed edition (1633), Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997.
Temple, Sir John, the History of the General Rebellion in Ireland, ([1646] Cork, 1766), HI 3001 Class Handout.
Westerweel, Bart, Forging in the Smithy, Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA, 1995.
