The Norman Question: Conflict, Identity, and Nation-Building in Irish History
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The ‘Year of the Normans’ Debacle
Much furore commenced recently after Fianna Fáil Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage James Browne announced that Ireland in 2027 would participate alongside several other European countries in ‘The Year of the Normans’, essentially a series of celebratory events marking 1000 years since the birth of William the Conqueror. Browne, likely anticipating the controversy, attempted an uncontroversial framing, stating that it would be “carried out in a respectful, sensitive manner as all historical commemorations must be.” The attempt at mitigation was all in vain however, as before the plans were put out to print, Sinn Féin’s Mr Ó Snodaigh accused Fianna Fáil of facilitating an “offensive” plan to commemorate the birth of William, the great Norman bastard —literally— who conquered Anglo-Saxon England and whose successors, Ó Snodaigh stated, subjugated Ireland. Thus, with the entire validity of the project under scrutiny, a national debate was sparked —not quite in the Monty Python fashion— along the lines of ‘what have the Normans ever done for us?’
And so the centuries-old dialectic of Norman and Gael rose its head once more, with debate around the issue breaking into a few different factions. Amongst these are those who have fully imbibed the ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’ idiom, applying it liberally to the saga of the Normans in Ireland and thus see no controversy in a celebration of a people who so readily, after a few admitted speed bumps, assimilated into Irish culture. While plenty take such a position in good faith, there is the less honourable trend of more than a few taking this line with other motives in tow. Ever eager to serve as the priestly caste of our newly minted progressive civilisation, some academics have busied themselves with trawling the depths of Irish history in search of ways to buttress the tenets of the current multicultural regime. Such efforts include, but are not exclusive to, platitudes about Ireland’s medieval multiculturalism, an apparent unfathomable complexity to Irish identity, salivating over the benefits of foreign administration, and, of course, using Hiberno-Norman history to wax poetic about Ireland as a perennial melting pot of nations. This slightly ham-fisted attempt to situate the Normans within a grand pro-immigration narrative, of course, raises a few eyebrows, and the irony of which has not been lost on an opposing faction of Norman-sceptics quick to highlight the incessant conflict, wars of conquest and attempted ethno-cultural overcoding committed by their hands against the Gael. The Norman as historical poster boy for multiculturalism is, to put it mildly, contentious—if not hilarious— and goes to show the divide between the views of the Normans as Machiavellian, militarised murderers, or as sophisticated, civilising continentals.
In truth, the divide over the ‘Year of the Normans’ is only the newest iteration in a long line of arguments on the topic of the Normans in Ireland, and as such we would be better served by placing such disagreements and debates in their proper context, which is within a long-spanning national debate, crucial for Irish historical self-understanding and identity writ large. Far from being new to Irish historical discourse, this issue was rather one of the primary concerns for esteemed figures at the intersection of Irish academia and nationalism, such as Conradh na Gaeilge’s Eoin McNeil. Indeed, the matter of squaring the Norman circle in the development of Irish national identity constitutes a long-standing national debate that we might dub ‘the Norman Question’.
The Norman Nuisance in Britain
Now, to adequately tackle such a vexed question, there are several elements that must be covered satisfactorily; after all, a ‘Norman question’ connotes issues of identity, ethnogenesis, and nation-building. Firstly, a historically thorough overview of Gaelic/Norman relations is in order, so that we may get a solid base in history before any conjectures. If I may indulge, I will lay out some of the significant chapters in the Norman expansion before turning back to different aspects of the ‘Norman Question’.
To begin with somewhat of a truism, each North Western European country's experience with the Normans was different. Significantly different in fact. Let us turn briefly to that first molested Kingdom, for which the year of 1066 remains seared into the national psyche precisely because of its brutally definitive impact on the course of English history. The infamy of 1066 reverberates through the centuries as a uniquely absolute national calamity in medieval Europe, visited upon England by her Norman conquerors who, through one decisive battle in Hastings, saw the double misfortune of Saxon King Harold butchered and William the Bastard placed on the throne. Ensuing laudable but doomed Saxon uprisings served only to reiterate the fact that England’s fate was essentially sealed at Hastings.
So total was the defeat and displacement of the native Anglo-Saxon aristocracy that residual legacies are still evident to the historically minded. Almost 1000 years on, Norman surnames remain highly overrepresented amongst the peerage and significant landholders in England, a direct legacy of the fact that of the 1000 richest landowners two decades after Hastings, only 13 were English. Chroniclers writing in the following century said it was even ‘a disgrace to be called English’. ‘The oft-opined ‘Norman Yoke’ of English literature certainly earned its reputation, operating as a caste-like system set in place to the detriment of the natives, and which goes a long way towards explaining the longstanding tradition of French hatred from Harold Godwinson to Jeremy Clarkson. In many ways, it still remains a sore point, too difficult for the English consciousness to fully assimilate. Hostile de facto colonial governors, speaking for centuries in a foreign tongue, and more interested in the provinces of that country from which they hailed —see Richard the Lionheart— have been transfigured into gallant English heroes in England’s nationalist hagiography, and there is more than a bit of cognitive dissonance and retconning around this period. Moreover, one cannot help but perceive a certain irony to England being touted as the medieval intra-isles aggressor, when the natives of that Kingdom were arguably the most subjugated and colonised people on the entire archipelago. Ireland, England’s first colony? Bah Humbug Engels, England was England’s first colony —It doesn’t help that he skipped Wales either.
But what of her bonnie northern neighbour? In the decades and centuries after the Norman conquest, England would be the new womb of Norman nations, as the next generations of belligerent, adventurous knights sought to expand their reach and attain personal glory. Being merely a few days’ ride north, Scotland was not long out of the view of her southern neighbours’ power-thirsty eyes. But the encroachment here would be of a slightly different manner. David I, whose father King Malcolm was killed in a military defeat to Anglo-Norman forces in the battle of Alnwick, found himself in exile in England and effectively held hostage in a Norman court. The young David was raised in a Norman manner, coming under the influence of King Henry, whose support proved essential in securing David’s eventual accession to the throne of Scotland. The aid of King Henry, however, was not condition-free. In a mobster’s vernacular, David had been made “an offer he can’t refuse”, and so he began the process of settling large numbers of Normans, granting them land and titles. The 12th-century English historical scholar William of Malmesbury was under no illusions as to how Normanised this Scottish monarch was, gloating that David "rubbed off all tarnish of Scottish barbarity through being polished by intercourse and friendship with us". With the backing of Henry’s vast wealth and seasoned mounted knights, the norminisation of the Church, social life, and architecture commenced through the so-called ‘Davidian Revolution’.
The obvious dependence on Anglo-Norman martial and financial support with which David defeated several Scottish Gaelic armies over the course of a decade — in battles such as at Stracathro— does not sit well with the narrative that Scotland was never invaded by the Normans. In truth, this was an invasion in everything but name, and David’s opponents seem to have viewed it in similar terms, as they attempted to oust a Normanised quisling monarch in favour of traditional Gaelic figures with stronger claims, such as Máel Coluim, son of the last King Alexander. Those less convinced by the ‘invasion view’ because of some ostensible invite on the part of David would do well to remember that Strongbow too was ‘invited’ to Leinster by a King, yet we still talk of an invasion in Ireland. Regardless, the consequences for Scotland were profound, as over time, even the patrilineal line of the monarchy would become of Norman descent. Major royal houses such as the Bruces and the Stewarts were all descended from Norman families planted by King David. However, due to their grafting onto the native monarchy and the general resistance to English claims of Overlordship seen in the Scottish Wars of Independence, a class of Normans was fostered in Scotland who were more nationally minded rather than espousing loyalty to distant roots in England or even France, a fact which probably goes some way towards explain why the invasion narrative has not been a popular one.
In sum, we see some of the conceits in the history of Norman Britain. The conceit of the Scottish is that they were never invaded (they were), and of the English that the deeds of their Kings, Princes, and aristocracy in the immediate centuries after Hastings were the deeds of Englishmen (they weren’t, not ethnically at least). We might assume that there is some equivalent in Irish medieval history.
Unstoppable Norman Forces Meet Immovable Gaelic Objects
The Irish, however, were to have a significantly different relationship with the Normans. The Norman invasion of Ireland began in 1169 in the wake of Diarmait Mac Murchada’s invitation to Norman mercenaries. Answering Diarmait’s call, Richard de Clare (Strongbow), after securing funding from the Jews of Gloucester, set out to reclaim the kingship of Leinster for his exiled client, with the promise of intermarriage and inheritance for himself. Following their initial military successes, the Normans rapidly expanded their control, capturing key towns like Wexford, Waterford, and Dublin, and —after an intervention by King Henry II to keep de Clare on a leash— established a feudal presence backed by the English crown. The Normans continued an aggressive expansion into all the provinces over the coming decades, but after initial successes against the native forces under High King Rory O’Connor in the 12th century, the rising tide of French surnames was eventually stemmed by a Gaelic resurgence which halted their territorial gains. Gaelic victories such as at the Battle of Thurles and the Battle of Creadran Cille established the limits of Norman expansion and helped to establish what would be the independent Gaelic Kingdoms of Thomond and Tír Chonaill for nearly 250 years. The McCarthys, O’Neills and O’Connors managed much the same. Intervention by the Scots through the Bruce invasions and the arrival of heavily armoured gallowglass helped to further expand the Gaelic resurgence by damaging the Lordship and reducing its extent from approaching 2/3’s of the island in the 13th century to the area surrounding the Pale in the 15th century.
This level of independence, contra Norman expansion, was essentially unmatched by Ireland’s Albionic neighbours, and it is a sad irony that medieval colonisation in the three kingdoms is today most associated with the kingdom that resisted it most resolutely and effectively.
The military resurgence of the Gaelic Irish ultimately thwarted the Norman conquest in its attempt to secure the island proper, thereby precluding the outright grafting of centralised Norman institutions onto the entirety of Irish society; in consequence, many political idiosyncrasies developed in Ireland’s historical trajectory. It became difficult, if not impossible, for the emergence of a Hiberno-Norman monarchy akin to Bruce in Scotland, as Ireland remained a fractured, frontier society —though it is suggested that some particularly enterprising Normans like Maurice Fitzgerald at least made the attempt— and an ethnogenesis from both groups would be held in abeyance for some four centuries. The frontier nature of Irish society meant that Gael and Gall were set in a violent, centuries-long gridlock, creating a truly dichotomous ethnocultural landscape. ‘Two-nation theory’ of the sort expounded by historian Stephen Ellis is an apt lens for capturing the reality of these two separate worlds, occupying different polities and geographies on the island. It is a framing that runs very much against the Gaelicization notion, which assumes a faster and more total assimilation process than was necessarily the case. One strong point of evidence in favour of the ‘two-nation’ idea is the remarkable persistence of a civilizational gridlock which maintained a Hibernian multipolarity of Gall and Gael well into the 17th century. Many Norman lordships maintained a steadfast loyalty to the English crown through the centuries, to the point where the Cromwellian wars in Ireland are incomprehensible without understanding this fact. There’s even something of that long ethnic ressentiment in the Duke of Ormond’s quip upon his wilful surrender of Dublin to the Parliamentarians that he "preferred English rebels to Irish ones". The divide between the Gael and Sean-Ghall may well even live on in our own times, albeit in a more sublimated fashion, within the political duopoly of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. A 2011 study of the surnames of over 1000 TDs from the state’s founding showed that those of Norman origin were nearly twice as common in Fine Gael than in Fianna Fáil, suggesting that there might have been some residual medieval influence on the fateful pro and anti-treaty split in 20th-century Irish society. Suffice it to say, two-nation theory —though not flawless— does grasp the divisions in Ireland’s past and at least confronts the glaring holes in that oft uncritically accepted idiom massaged into the mind of every Irish schoolboy; ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’. It seems we have found our conceit.
More Irish than the Irish themselves?
Alas, at risk of sounding like an advocate for Norman remigration, I will now defend "Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis" in a more limited capacity. While any rational surveying of the historical sources would deem the expression hyperbolic, there remains a kernel of truth therein, via the very real phenomenon of the Gaelicised Norman. So just how Gaelicised did the Normans get? One often overlooked piece of the puzzle, which might give the notion of Gaelicization some firm footing, is the simple fact that many of the first-wave Normans married into Gaelic dynasties as a strategic means of securing territory and titles. Famous examples include Richard de Clare (Strongbow) marrying Aoife McMurrough, William de Burg marrying the daughter of Domnall Mór Ua Briain, and Hugh de Lacy marrying Rose Ní Conchobair. Thus, given the extent of intermarriage with Gaelic families, there is a very real sense in which the great Norman dynasties of Ireland can be accurately called Hiberno-Norman —in an ethnic sense at least— from the first generation born on Irish soil. Complicating matters further is the tendency within the Norman metropolitan core of Ireland to marry high-born women of Anglo-Norman families, while Hiberno-Norman families in the peripheries tended to marry more into Gaelic dynasties as the geopolitical realities came to bear on dynastic mergers. What might this variance mean? The simple answer is that different Norman dynasties diverged and became part of the Gaelic world, while others, though often adopting the language, remained somewhat culturally indebted to England and loyal to its crown to a significant degree. The Burkes of Connaught are a good example of the former and are a good candidate for the most Gaelicised. Having descended into a familial civil war in the 1330s, the now factionalised family in the far west of Ireland would become increasingly indistinguishable from their Gaelic neighbours, adopting gavelkind, gossiprid, fosterage, Gaelic dress, Brehon law and an Irish mother tongue. A slightly humorous account from Kenneth Nicholls’ book on Gaelicised Ireland depicts one Ulick de Burgo taking women at will and siring many children through several marriages, each of which claimed to be the legitimate wife with the legitimate heir. Gaelicisation, it seems, also extended to the libido for this Connaught Lord.
To some degree, gaelicisation was taking place across the provinces, though the extent varied, of course, existing on a spectrum from the Burkes to Butlers, the latter being the crown loyalists par excellence, though interestingly still fluent in Irish. The Desmond FitzGeralds, on the other hand, were situated with a foot in each world, often ignored royal dictates emanating from Dublin and were enthusiastic patrons and writers of Gaelic poetry. The Burkes were so Gaelicised that accounts of the battle of Knockadoe in the early 16th century go so far as to refer to them as Irish, which they didn’t necessarily do for other Norman branches. In 1518, when an order was given to the men of Galway city to ensure that 'Neither O nor Mac shall strutte nor swaggere thro' the streets of Gallway', it is interesting to note that mentioned in the list of unwelcome Irish rouges to be spurned are ‘Burkes, and McWilliams’, alongside the ‘Kellies’.
We also have evidence that, though the term Gaill continued to be applied by the Gaels to Norman families, there are plenty of conciliatory gestures at cementing an Irish identity that integrated the Norman element. The use of the term Éireannaigh, which encompasses both Gael and Gaill, suggests a broader Irish alliance emerging as the people slowly melded together. But how much melding took place, and where was it concentrated?
A Legacy in Blood and Language
Statistically, it could be expected that nearly every member of the modern Irish population with medieval roots will have Norman ancestry. It is at least highly probable, as the number of ancestors one has increases exponentially through the generational cycle. If we assume that the average historical person who survives has two surviving children, even after factoring in pedigree collapse and ancestral overlap, someone like Richard De Clare, who lived somewhere around 30 generations ago, likely has millions of descendants alive today. While everyone on the island almost certainly has Norman ancestry, the amount is going to vary significantly from region to region. For instance, Wexford, Waterford and Kilkenny are going to have far more total Norman ancestry than western counties on account of the dense settlement of those regions; a point which bears out in a surname analysis, as Norman surnames constitute a significant proportion of the county populations in the southeast. Surnames are a great signifier of patrilineal descent while generally not being the best indicator of one’s total ethnic makeup, but the preponderance of Norman surnames in the southeast (though still marginally more Gaelic surnames overall) is such that it suggests not insignificant admixture.
The intensity of settlement in Waterford and Wexford was such that the region was truly an outpost of the Angevin empire in terms of its feudal structure, culture and demographics. Populations from the core territories of the empire, from Normandy to England, and from Wales to Brittany, were enthusiastic settlers of the southeastern seaboard of the Lordship. Thus, Norman surnames can reach beyond 30% in a county like Waterford. While 30% Norman surnames do not necessarily denote 30% Norman ancestry —many factors can complicate this to make such conjectures less certain—tracing patrilineal descent in this manner does give us an intimation that Waterford is the prime candidate for most Norman county (though tellingly, still majority Gaelic). According to the 1901 census, surnames such as Walsh, Power, and Fitzgerald are among the most popular names, with Walsh coming out on top in Waterford. Compare this to Clare, where there isn’t even a single Norman surname in the top 10, and one sees a direct legacy of medieval frontiers, veiled and forgotten by time.
So the southeast of Ireland has a much stronger Norman connection than the rest of the country. Hardly surprising, obvious in fact, but it is interesting to see the legacy of this in tangible things like physical traits and language. There are even some interesting findings from physical anthropology that mirror the census data. Back in the 1930s —those heady days when measuring cranial size with callipers and calculating the preponderance of A10s in a population was par for the course— the most thorough nationwide study we have on hair colour was carried out at the behest of the American academic Ernest Hooton. An interesting finding from his work is that dark hair shades peak in the southeast in Waterford and Wexford, and there is also a slight increase in tanner skin shades. When one looks at his map on this matter, there is an uncanny resemblance between regions with higher rates of dark hair and maps of Ireland showing the medieval outlines of the Norman Lordship of Ireland. It is at least tempting for this armchair anthropologist to place the cause of the correlation at the feet of Norman newcomers some eight centuries ago.
Now, highlighting phenotypic differentiation might be slightly ridiculous here, decadent even, given the relatively minor extent of regional variation in Ireland. We have not, after all, inherited the fraught legacy of Italy’s 19th-century nation-building project, which has yet to overcome a potent north/south divide, in which, in all honesty, ethnic and phenotypic variation is a major factor in the pervasive division. Thankfully, Ireland has been spared the discord of ethnic variation, instead benefiting from the insular homogeneity of the Gaelic founding stock and the similar northwestern European origins of the medieval arrivals. Flemish, Norman, Welsh, Saxon, and Breton, all already close genetic cousins of the Gael, did not profoundly alter the gene pool upon settlement. For instance, despite the arrival of their family progenitor FitzAlan with the Normans, the House of Stuart has been found to possess the haplogroup R1b L21, a quintessential insular Celtic haplogroup derived from Breton heritage.
While some residual physiognomic and genetic impacts may be detectable, they are ultimately negligible when compared to other European nations. It is in the linguistic landscape that we find a more lasting island-wide influence. Without the French connection to the invaders, the countless Séans (Jean), Gearóids (Gérard), Siobháns (Jehane) and Catríonas (Katerine) that we know would go by an entirely different moniker. It is well known that Irish adopted many other old French words, from séomra (chambre) to eaglais (église), a consequence of influence from the continued usage of French by the colonists. McNeil recognised as much:
‘Norman French continued to be used in Ireland for many generations. It was the language in which the colonists petitioned the lord Edward, as they called the king of England, for aid against Edward Bruce in 1315.’
Lasting for centuries within the Lordship, French was the language of major literature from the period, such as the saga of the Norman Invasion known as The Song of Dermot and the Earl or Rithmus facture ville de Rosse, (The Entrenchment of the town of New Ross), a Norman-French Poem/ballad on the erection of the Walls of New Ross, in Wexford, in 1265. Where Irish hadn’t already taken over, Middle English dialects derived from the rank and file settlers came to overtake Norman French over time. Yola and Fingalian —Dialects of Middle English unique to Ireland— became the dominant tongues of South Wexford and Dublin, respectively, with the former even surviving into the 19th century. Though the Normans in all their territories were deft bilingualists, the trend towards Middle English dominance was not entirely organic and required top-down pressure from London. The coronation of Henry IV of England in 1399 was significant in that he was the first King since 1066 whose mother tongue was English, marking the end of nearly three and a half centuries of French language dominance. Protracted conflict with France in the 100 years’ War had ensured that political motives were the main driver behind this newfound interest and forceful championing of the English language, and Ireland was not unaffected by this change. The linguistic Reconquista in England directly affected the Lordship vis-à-vis the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366—also written in French—, as Norman Barons were given an ultimatum to drop Irish and French in favour of English. An astounding measure that highlights an equally astounding fact, that French was still the native tongue for many Hiberno-Norman Lords some 200 years after the invasion.
Parsing a Thorny Identity: Normans, English, French?
The complexity of the language is a significant issue as it belies the supposed surety of the colonists’ English national identity. Constant debate about what we should even call the Normans in Ireland has raged for a century now, with a wide spectrum of labels emerging. Some are adamant that they be referred to simply as ‘English’, not even ‘Anglo-Norman’, as per the self-identification in the primary sources of the Lordship itself. Take Thomas Bartlett’s explanation:
“All talk of the ‘Normans’ or the Anglo‑Normans’ … is simply ahistorical. The invaders called themselves English (Engleis, Angli)… only in the late nineteenth century … was the identity of the English invaders fudged by these non‑historical terms”
Bartlett’s position here is not uncommon today and effectively tries to rubbish the use of the Norman label altogether in favour of a solitary ‘English’ signifier. While the argument may indeed stand on the grounds that many of the principal figures of the invasion were not Normans in an absolute and strict sense, the use of English alone seems reductive for this period. It bears reminding that there are several complicating factors. Firstly, a substantial portion of the forces in 12th-century Ireland originated from the upper echelons of Anglo-Norman aristocracy, of which William of Malmesbury, writing a few decades prior to intervention in Ireland, said that “…there was scarcely a noble of English descent in England … it was even disgraceful to be called English.” Are these the English of whom Bartlett speaks? These ‘English’ who hated the English? These English who set up a caste system at their expense, and many of whom had not a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins? Secondly, a significant proportion of arrivals to Ireland were recruited from Cambro-Norman families and their allied Welsh communities. It remains a rather inconvenient fact that not all of these adventurers thought of themselves as English—at least, not without qualification. Gerald of Wales stands as a particularly illustrative case: his hybrid identity, part-Welsh and part-Norman, is no minor footnote in his work but a theme he revisits with some insistence. While he broadly aligns himself with the English cause when it suits him, he nevertheless reiterates his Welshness with pride, styling himself “Gerald the Welshman” in the prefaces to both the Descriptio Cambriae and Itinerarium Cambriae. The existence of dual identities across some of the wider Cambro-Norman contingent, alongside a still existing animous between Saxon and his Norman overlords, does ultimately complicate the notion of a unified ‘English’ incursion.
These trends lend a certain validity to the use among other scholars of terms such as ‘Hiberno-Norman’, or even ‘Cambro-Norman’, the latter reflecting the Welsh aspect of the marcher lords of Strongbow’s arrival. In many Gaelic Irish sources, they are simply referred to as Gall, a label which might suggest the Gaelic Irish saw all non-Gaels as an amorphous blob of foreigner. But as Kenneth Nicholls points out, a Gall, the term applied liberally to newcomers as it was to the Vikings centuries earlier, is in essence anyone not Gaelic by patrilineal descent. This fits the Normans, but hardly imparts to them a definitive identity. English, then, might be the obvious imperfect term, but some are not convinced. Those who reject the solely English nature of the Normans in Ireland highlight that the conquest of England had taken place merely a century earlier, and the subsequent three generations of Norman knights had not engaged in significant intermarriage with the Saxons at this point. Even in the Remonstrance of 1317, we see Domhnall O’Neill making qualifications about the Englishness of his foes in the Lordship. He describes ‘the constant treachery of the English of mixed race’ and elsewhere derides those ‘who call themselves of the middle nation’ who are ‘so different in character from the English of England’. The implication here is that there was an acknowledgement on both sides of the miscegenated identity of the colonists.
McNeil, seemingly sharing a similar sentiment to the old Ulster king, also believed in a certain un-English nature to the Norman cadre:
‘The Normans so-called, when they came to Ireland, had ceased to be Northmen. The contemporary Anglo-Saxon, Welsh and Irish chronicles call them by the same name, Franks. Franks they were in language, customs and institutions. If they sometimes called themselves Angli, this meant no more than that they were subjects of the rex Anglorum, the king of the English, and not of the king of the French. Their ordinary language was French. When Giraldus Cambrensis expresses the wish that his works should be translated into the vulgar tongue, he makes it clear that he means French.’
Here, in McNeill, we see the suggestion that the use of an English self-identifier was not initially, at least, inherently ethnic, but was more about the realities of their feudal obligations. The immediate counterpoint, however, is that if it was not inherently an ethnic marker to begin with, it no doubt became one over time for those who retained steadfast ties with England while the French connection became less relevant and esoteric.
In effect, the Normans were new wine everywhere they went. The initial blending of Norse and Frankish had merged raiding and feudalism, and continued to intermix (eventually) with those of the lands they expanded into. In this sense, the patchwork of signifiers that follows the Normans, from Old Foreigner, to Anglo-Norman, Cambro-Norman, Hiberno-Norman or English, is a suitable tribute to these ethnic chameleons who so often seemed to derive their identity via negativa. ‘Gall’ or ‘Sean-Ghall’ is at least nondescript enough to capture this.
Another complicating factor was that while there was certainly a strong tendency to identify as English in official settings, and some of the Norman Lords did so as a means to secure their titles vis-à-vis the English Crown, there was also an interesting counter-tendency on the part of the Normans, mostly beyond the pale, to offset the English identity with some particularly exotic genealogical claims that skipped over the neighbouring isle completely, boasting instead of prodigious continental origin. For instance, the Burkes in Connaught claimed descent from Charlemagne and Crusader kings in Jerusalem, whereas the Geraldines had disparate claims, both Mediterranean, of either Florentine Italian or Grecian origins.
Furthermore, a similar inverse phenomenon was carried out by other Norman dynasties, who sought a more localised pedigree to boost their credentials in the Gaelic world. As Seán Duffy explains:
“Irish genealogical manuscripts from the early sixteenth century onwards began to recognize new political realities, by including the pedigrees of some of the leading Anglo-Irish families. This often reflects the degree of gaelicization undergone by such families. Some Norman families (such as the Plunkets, Powers, Bennetts and Dillon) went further and had themselves assigned a pseudo-Gaelic ancestry.”
How ‘pseudo’ such ancestry could truly be given the evidence of intermarriage through the centuries is another matter. Moreover, despite such gestures towards departing from an England-tethered identity, there is still the fact that Norman absorption was orders of magnitude slower in Ireland than in England and Scotland. This was not without good reason.
From Breaking Bad to Breaking Good: A Norman Redemption?
Norman arrival was the vector through which many tropes emerged about Irish civilisation. From the pen of Gerald of Wales in his Topographia Hibernica, it was the Normans who first declared the backwardness of the Irish, all in an attempt to justify their presence in the country as a civilising force. With their Papal Laudabiliter—whose authenticity has been questioned by scholars since at least the 1600s—in hand, the Normans took ecclesiastical oversight to mean divine right to conquer, and the pages of the Topographia reflect this sentiment, full of anti-Irish defamation as they are. The Irish are chastised therein, called idle for preferring pastoral living to agriculture and are even accused of paganism due to the nature of some of their rites. Amongst the seething, some backhanded compliments are dished out, wherein Gerald displays anxieties over the Irish deft use of the axe, alongside equal fears that ‘this race is inconstant, changeable, wily, and cunning’. Irish physical superiority is one of the few domains (musical skill too) in which he admits the Normans are beaten:
‘As if to prove that what she is able to form, she does not cease to shape also, she gives growth and proportions to these people, until they arrive at perfect vigour, tall and handsome in person, and with agreeable and ruddy countenances. But although they are richly endowed with the gifts of nature, their want of civilisation, shown both in their dress and mental culture makes them a barbarous people.’
It seems we have the Normans to thank for beginning the fighting Irish stereotype, but more importantly, the seed of a begrudging respect might be seen in Gerald’s assessment.
The insults found in the Topographia were to be the first instalments in a long tradition of anti-Irish agit-prop in the interests of the English crown, but Norman duplicity was well capable of extending into every facet of Irish dealings. One such foundational sin is over the Laudabiliter itself. There is a long-standing tradition carried on by many modern academics, which states that the Laudabiliter itself is either a forgery (not uncommon at the time) or a severe misrepresentation of Pope Adrian’s intentions for reform in Ireland. This is the view of Historian Anne Duggan, who shows that Gerald of Wales’ version of what the document is was rendered for his own interests and cannot be taken as a true reflection of whatever Adrian said, if indeed he did write it at all. Gaelic redressing of further perfidy can be seen in Domhnall O’Neill’s 1317 Remonstrance of the Irish Princes, in which he denies that “neither we(O’Neill kings at least, possibly Irish kings more broadly) nor our fathers have ever done homage or taken any other oath of fealty to him [Edward II] or his fathers”, and thus rebuking the claims of the English crown on Ireland founded on submissions.
Hot on the tail of such legalistic perfidy was wanton violence. From the breaking of the Treaty of Windsor via continued incursions into Gaelic territory, to the treasonous Red Wedding-like butchery of the O’Connors at John de Bermingham’s castle banquet, Norman will-to-power often cast aside the moral restraints of Medieval Christendom —a deeply ironic element to their attempted Irish conquest, considering their self-image as Godly civilisers. In truth, the unbridled force that burst forth from the Normandy peninsula to the shores of Ireland was often more Hun than Holy.
Such historical wounds and grievances are largely responsible for beginning the Irish wariness of a ‘perfidious Albion’, and the fact that these same events resurface rhetorically in explanations of modern Anglo-Irish relations should restrain the more optimistic purveyors of Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis. As an idiom, it may well reflect the experience of the rebel Burkes and some other Norman dynasties outside of the metropolitan core of the Pale and its hinterlands in the Norman east, but extending it to a universal truth of the Norman presence in Ireland is simply false. It is generally not true —for the medieval period at least— of the Palesmen, Butlers and Kildare FitzGeralds who retained cultural and political allegiance to England. The Desmond FitzGeralds, on the other hand, could rightfully be situated somewhere in the middle of this identitarian cline. This bifurcation of identity in medieval Hiberno-Normans is partly reducible to the desire of mixed-identity individuals to go ‘all in’ on one half of the equation to avoid any identity crisis. The tendency of children from mixed racial marriages to identify almost wholly with the heritage of one parent over the other resurfaces in the blending of nations, and as a psychological tendency, is a skeleton key for understanding the divergence in the Palesmen and the Normans on the Gaelic frontiers.
It was to be the incursions of an aggressive, increasingly paranoid Protestant English state under the Tudors that would force a collapse in the medieval distinctions and commence the final stages of the absorption of old Norman dynasties into a more recognisable modern Irish identity. This was enabled by the Religious anchoring of identity becoming more dominant and the inclusion of Normans within an Irish ethnic identity. The bloodshed and dispossession endured in the wars against the Tudors served to galvanise a more island-wide Irish identity with a strong connection to Catholicism. Old English families were at the forefront of the resistance, such as the Desmond Rebellions, Kildare Rebellion, and even the ever-loyal Butlers briefly got in on the action during the Butler Revolt. And the change was stark. The 8th Earl of Kildare, decrying the causes of a pardon for his role in a Yorkist invasion of England, threatened that he and his allies would “sooner turn Irish every one” than accept such terms. By the time of his grandson’s tenure, Silken Thomas, the young 10th Earl, had risen in rebellion, deporting his English wife, declaring that he would ‘have nothing to do with English blood’.
To be fair to the old Norman dynasties, they were recalcitrant enough towards the newcomer Tudors to acquire the scorn of that administration. Edmund Spenser's infamous complaint that "They are degenerate and grown almost mere Irish, yes, and more malicious to the English than the very Irish themselves" might be true enough when obstinacy and suffering destruction for justice rather than bending the knee are taken as the mark of a truly Irish mind. Add to this another complicating factor in the story of national struggle: that the venerable Irish clans like the O'Briens, Fitzpatricks, and MacMurrough-Kavanaghs all converted to Protestantism for Tudor favour; whereas the FitzGeralds, Talbots, and Walshes —to name but a few Sean Ghall dynasties— remained steadfastly Catholic, acting as the backbone and progenitors of an emergent Jacobitism, which itself was a crucial step in the dialectic toward modern Irish nationalism. While Jacobitism was royalist, it was the first major political movement in Ireland where Catholic loyalty to a regime stood in direct opposition to the Protestant-controlled British state. Moreover, its ultimate failure disillusioned many Irish Catholics about the prospects of restoration through dynastic loyalty, and gradually shifted the political imagination toward more secular, national goals. We owe it to many men with Norman names from that era for keeping the fire of Irish Catholic identity lit, and for providing the nation with aristocratic guidance under duress.
That guidance reaches its cultural crescendo in Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa na hÉirinn, which was a coming full circle moment in Irish historiographical literature. The two great chroniclers who bookmark the beginning and end of the Norman era, through time and historical process, had come to possess diametrically opposed views. If Gerald had started the trend of alienation and antagonism between the two races, Keating brought reconciliation and unity. Brendan Bradshaw summarised Keating’s project thus:
“Having conformed to the pattern of a Christian conquest in all its phases – having been authorised by a papal grant and inaugurated with Christian moderation by Henry II, and, finally, having issued in the due consummation of inculturation – the effect of the Anglo-Norman Settlement, as Keating envisaged the situation, was to bring about a socio-political transformation whereby the colonists were constituted naturalised denizens and, as such, joint legatees with the Gaelic natives of the ancient Irish kingdom. In short, by reason of the process of Gaelicisation to which the Old English succumbed, the Anglo-Norman Conquest represented the culminating episode in the history of the origins of the Irish nation.”
That Keating takes the papal bull and the submissions of all Irish kings at face value and as legitimate —a contentious stance— is irrelevant. What is germane is his nation-building project of welding the Normans onto a Gaelic chassis and his legitimising of the presence of those Normans who Gaelicised and ‘who did much good in Ireland’, while decrying those Normans who did ‘bloody deeds of treachery and violent tyranny’.
The transition in thought from Gerald’s verbal caustic soda to Keating’s narrative buttressing and nation-building can be seen in retrospect as the final chapter in the saga of ethnogenesis, perhaps better conceived as a successful integration into the Irish genos rather than the emergence of a new ethnicity implied in ‘ethnogenesis’. If, as Pearse stated, ‘the nation is the family in large’, then the Norman absorption can be seen in the light of a clan merger, a marriage of blood made possible through a shared strife and spiritual allegiance. This baptism by fire, circa 16th and 17th century religious conflict, has added a sturdy new branch to the family tree and, in effect, an additional chapter to the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann, but as a wave of invaders that have met their match in the sons of Míl and have come to common cause with them.
The Loss of Pan-Gaelicism in Island-wide Irish Identity
If there is a conceptual deficiency in Keating, it is that in the formation of this island-wide Irish nationalism that would prefigure the later Republicans of the 18th and 19th century, there is a loss of emphasis on the broad spanning Gaelicism of the medieval period, which was even archipelagic in its inclusion of the Scottish Gaelic world.
We might assume in retrospect that the medieval frontiers brought about by the Normans were merely a speedbump on the way to a reintegrated island-wide polity, but there is a sense in which the post-Tudor kingdomship —island-wide territorial integrity — was never inevitable after the Norman expeditions fractured post-12th-century Ireland. In reality, the natural boundaries of medieval polities paid little heed to Ireland as an island, as evidenced in the oppositional existence of a Gaedhealtacht and a Galltacht. The former, Gaelic in culture, language and ethnicity, stretched from the western Isles and western highlands of Scotland down the north and the west of Ireland, uniting the Gaels—mostly culturally but often militarily through several long-standing alliances—from the Outer Hebrides to the Beara peninsula. Conversely, there was the Galltacht, which occupied everything else in the archipelago, including, of course, much of Ireland’s eastern seaboard. Stephen Ellis, an advocate for the dichotomy, puts it this way:
The point to be made concerning concepts of nationality in the late medieval Gaedhealtacht is that, despite the unhelpful terminology of modern English usage, it is a mistake simply to view Irish and Scottish Gaeldom separately, focusing on two distinct processes of interaction between Gaedhil and Gaill in Ireland and Scotland, and two composite nations in the making.
A united Galedom is not as crazy a counterfactual as initially it might seem. Ellis is right to point out the intimate ethno-cultural and political connection between the Gaels on either side of the North Channel, connections so strong that they even had the Lords of the Isles harbouring a wish to rule as King of the Gaels in both lands:
“Nevertheless, the evidence concerning the development of wider concepts of power and identity in the late medieval Gaedhealtacht points towards the emergence of a consolidated Gaelic kingdom spanning the North Channel rather than a revived high kingship of Ireland. In the late middle ages the Irishry of western Scotland may be seen as an extension of the Irishry of Ireland. […] The earl of Argyll is described as ‘rí fial uasal Gaodhal’ (the noble, generous king of the Gaedhil}, while an elegy on John of Islay, the MacDonald (1449-93), preserved in the Book of Clanranald, claims for him the sovereignty of the Gaedhil and of Ireland and Scotland.”
An interesting consequence of this framing is that the Tudor expansion in Ireland becomes an essential ingredient in the creation of modern Irish identity. Had it not proved successful, there may not have been the same convergence of interest and identity between the Gaelic Irish and Norman-Irish. In some alternative timeline, with only some minor deviations from historical fact, we can imagine a Gaelic world united through the western half of Scotland and Ireland with a centralised state, while an atrophied Lordship was left outside of the Irish national project, left to be to England what Dail Riata was for the Gaels of Ireland. In the end, this was not the path of history, but it serves as a reminder that even Keating’s laudable grand-narrative weaving and amalgamation of Gael with Gall was no foregone conclusion—and that a reemergent Gaelicism ought not to place the Scottish Gaels beyond its prerogatives.
Irish Ethnogenesis and the Absorption Fallacy
There is a certain trope present in countless historical accounts of Ireland’s history, that she is somehow uniquely equipped to absorb her invaders, as if there is some sort of metaphysical spectre that hangs over the island, waiting to transfigure unwelcome newcomers into the newest rendition of Irishman. To read the more glib accounts of Irish history, one would come away with the impression that no matter the vicissitudes, all was destined to be well, as from Viking to Norman to planter, each wave of foe inevitably undergoes a metamorphosis into Irishmen. This is, of course, an absurdity, and there never was, nor ever shall be, such a quasi-eschatological guarantee for the ultimate integrity and continuity of the Gaelic people on Erin’s isle. From the Protestant winds that drove both Spanish and French allies astray, to the untimely demise of her great sons like Owen Rua O’Neill, it is painfully evident that Fortuna herself has been fickle in her aid to Ireland. A few more strokes of ill-luck, or a slight failure in martial heroics, may very well have sounded the death knell of Gaelic Ireland, a frightful scenario that the absorption fallacy does not countenance, and of which, in truth, "Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis" is one particularly prominent and offending strain. The Gaelic element is the core of the Irish nation. The Gaelic element is the one that has absorbed the Norse and the Norman by triumphing over them, and the Gaelic element is the one that informs our thinking, constitutes our mythology, and anchors Irish identity. If the Norman Question has whittled away to a historical curiosity, it is because there is no distinct Norman identity remaining in Ireland anymore; there are, in effect, only a subset of Gaels with Norman surnames.
And here is the jeopardy of the ‘Year of the Normans’, a moral Trojan horse that would have us celebrate those medieval arrivals with a subtext of integration, multiculturalism, and even a civic notion of Irish nationality. This brash framing of Irish identity formation mostly ignores the four centuries of ethnic strife or the fact that a divided identity in persons and peoples brings a certain uneasiness with it. Tellingly, the media framing thus far centres on cultural enrichment and a broader international basis for Irishness, looking back in presumptuous retrospect that all ‘newcomers’ are rebel Burkes or FitzGeralds in waiting rather than the equivalents of ‘loyal English lieges’. It doesn’t take a genius to perceive what contemporary political orthodoxies this might serve. Using and abusing Norman history to illustrate an inclusive Irish identity is not only a severe distortion of reality, but the glossing over of the blood-soaked path to the emergence of Irish Catholic nationhood will ultimately undermine it. If the public consciousness is planted with the idea of cosy enrichment over Gaelic resilience, then we have only weakened modern Irish identity by becoming ignorant of the nature and cost of its genesis. For it is true enough that those who do not understand history are destined to repeat it. And repeat it, we’d rather not.
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