Quite a few Englishmen wrote long, passionate descriptions of Ireland in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. There was Spenser the poet, of course, and world-traveler Fynes Moryson: Stanyhurst of Dubli: the Catholic priest William Good: Barnaby Rich: Harrington: Bodley:Dunton and so on.
Descriptions of Ireland…a reader would expect to learn a good bit about Ireland from them, or at least about the writer. Information about Irish society would be very useful because no Irishman or woman wrote a description of their own society or any aspects of it. Irish literature is helpful, of course, but limited.
The descriptions and essays in fact tell us probably more about English society than Irish society because most of the writers were absolutely horrified by the Irish and their ways. What was it in contemporary English society and the English psyche produced that reaction?
To begin why were they even in Ireland?
Well, the Queen was supposedly Queen of Ireland as well as of England and Wales, though most of the Irish did not recognize her or her government as having any authority there. That had been the situation for many generations, though. Irish unwillingness to recognize their authority tended to upset English officials when the fact was brought to their attention, mostly they were not looking west at all.
A lot happened in English society in the early 16th century, though, and the end result was (as I wrote somewhere else) an extremely manic, aggressive and efficient expanding economy and state. Ireland’s bad luck was that it was right there and not only was it not a competitor like France or Spain, it was easy pickings.
English society in the late 16th century was characterized by, for the first time in its history:
A landowning class, many of them newly ascended to that position and beholden to the government for their wealth. Wealth was now gained through business, law and government position.
Very few great lords were in any position to challenge the Crown or had any interest in doing so.
A new Church whose property was at the disposal of the government and whose clergy were willing to act as agents of the state.
A social structure based on an absolute right to property precluding all other previous hereditary rights of access or claims on resources of land.
For ordinary people, individual and family survival was dependent on adherence to practices that certified one was a good and remunerative farm tenant.
Every man has a master/superior responsible for his good behavior.
There was a network of officials resident throughout the country charged with enforcing the law. They were backed by force. Many of them were also the local landlords.
English was sole official language,
Most of the men who wrote about Ireland were not there on holiday. They were government officials, soldiers or entrepreneurs there because they wanted the Irish to do what they were supposed to do: or there were there to get rich on the wild frontier.
The same things tended to horrify them, and they can be summed up under a few headings.
Ireland was: disorganized: messy: confusing: different: they didn’t speak English and didn’t want to: they liked butter, milk, oatmeal, plants and spiced whiskey (actually the whiskey was about the only thing the writers were enthusiastic about because herbs and spices made it soothing and pleasant.): they didn’t live the way we do, the way they should too.
It’s normal to think that people whose land or service or resources you want are stupid, primitive and are wasting the land and its resources and that it’s simply a natural law that people who will use the land more efficiently and productively should push them aside. The intensity of the English reaction to the Irish partly arises from that, but was mainly the reaction of a newly anal society to a society that was still pretty relaxed. I won’t go into the specifics of practices that induced horror, disgust and disapproval here. Some of them tell us something about the Irish, some tell us about the English writers, and others just tell us about a repetoire of stock European travelers’ tales meant to disgust.
If you are interested, I will point you toward the sources.
Many of these writings have been printed in various journals, but the only place I know of where some of them are collected in in:
1) Quinn, David Beers, The Elizabethans and The Irish, Folger Shakespeare Library. Cornell University Press, (about 1965)
2) Myers, James (editor), Elizabethan Ireland: A Selection of Writings by Writers on Ireland Archon Books, 1983
Quin was a Shakespeare scholar and didn’t know much about Ireland. He tries to compare what the writers said and put it in context but doesn’t supply texts. He has a chapter comparing contemporary English writers on Native Americans.
Myers has a limited selection but prints the texts.
Some of the writers summarized the Irish character, and I will finish with that. Some of what they describe is still accurate about the Irish, but a lot of it is not
William Good: “And to speak in general of them all, the nation is strong of body, and passing (fairly) nimble, stout and haughty in heart: for wit, quick: martial, prodigal and careless of their lives: enduring travail, cold and hunger: given to fleshly lust: kind and courteous to strangers: constant in love: in enmity implacable: light of belief (i.e. they are gullible), greedy of glory, impatient of abuse and injury, and as (Gerald of Wales) said in old times, in all affections vehement and passionate. If they be bad, you shall nowhere meet with worse: if they be good, you can hardly find better.”
Stanyhurst: “The people are thus inclined: religious, frank, amorous, ireful, sufferable of infinite pains, very (vain)glorious; many sorcerers, excellent horsemen, delighted with wars, great almsgivers, passing in hospitality. The lewder (i.e. common) sort both clerks and laymen, are sensual and overloose in living. The same, being virtuously bred up or reformed, are such mirrors of holiness and austerity that other nations retain but a shadow of devotion in comparison to them…Greedy of praise they be and fearful of dishonor.”
The Irish society that resulted from the success of the English project was very different from what preceded it, and the Irish people that society produced are very different. The Gaelic Revival of the 1890s etc. was very consciously a project to reclaim a lot of the old stuff and to reconnect with what was before. For a while, it looked like it might succeed, but by 1920, it was clear that they would not.
It is a shame.
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