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ENGLISH OR NORMANS?

Sir,—History Ireland is up to its old tricks again. In the article on Sefraid Ó Fearghaill (HI 31.1, Jan./Feb. 2023, pp 14–17) by Stephen Hewer it is stated that ‘by 1270 the English had been colonising parts of Ireland for over 100 years’. In the same article there are several other references to the ‘English’. However, as previous letter-writers have pointed out, the invaders of 1169 were French-speaking Normans. To quote Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe:

‘Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons, or to unite by common language and mutual interest two hostile races, one of which still felt the elevation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the consequences of defeat’.

The assimilation of the ‘two hostile races’ was only completed in the fourteenth century (English became the official language of Parliament in 1362). Only at that stage did the first ‘English’ settlers start arriving in Ireland.—Yours etc.,

GERARD MURPHY
Kells, Co. Meath

In the introduction to our special issue marking the 850th anniversary of the arrival of Strongbow (HI 27.3, May/June 2019, Platform, pp 16–17), commissioning editor Seán Duffy, Professor of Medieval Irish and Insular History at Trinity College, Dublin, explains that the invaders, ‘whatever their mixed ancestry—Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Flemish—all defined themselves [my emphasis] as English because they were subjects of the king of England’. He also points out that the term ‘Norman’ only became fashionable in the nineteenth century, largely through the popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, a work of fiction written over two centuries ago.—Ed.