the interpretation of medieval irish history

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

The Interpretation of Medieval Irish HistoryAuthor(s): Michael RichterSource: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 24, No. 95 (May, 1985), pp. 289-298Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/60000011 .Accessed: 12/06/2014 14:13

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toIrish Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.204 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 14:13:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ihsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/60000011?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES

Vol. XXIV No. 95 May 1985

The interpretation of medieval Irish history

Of Of course the past is dead. But it is kept alive by thinking and talking about it, and, above all, by making it relevant to the present. The past is

invoked variously, be it on a popular or on the academic level. In many areas, the popular view of the past is far removed from, and apparently uninfluenced by, the academic view, and, within limits, there is nothing wrong with that. Not every layman is expected to share the academic's understanding of the past. The matter becomes rather more serious when the reverse holds: that the view of the professional concurs with that of the lay people. If this is so, then indeed can it be said that those aspects of the past to which this applies are dead.

It is an axiom that each generation has to write history anew, partly, it seems, because understanding of the problems of the past becomes more refined, and partly because important aspects of the past may well appear in a different light to a new generation. This approach has been recently highlighted by the medievalist Frantilek Graus in a book, published a decade ago, with the thought-provoking title 'The living past'.' In it Graus calls upon the professional historian to find out not only 'what happened' (Ranke) but also how the past was perceived at different times.2 This is more than a mere history of historiography, as Graus shows paradigmatically by looking at historical traditions3 in France, Germany and Bohemia. Historical traditions, key developments in the past often associated with outstanding individuals, are shown to have been presented by historians in very different ways according to the political climate of the time of writing and the political views of the individual authors.

The stimulus provided by a major work is instrumental in applying to the Irish past some of the questions raised by Graus. For the medievalist, the greatest challenge is posed by the events which, so it is maintained by academics and lay people alike, have influenced Irish history substantially for more than seven centuries until the present time. At stake is the significance of the year 1169, the so-called Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland and its impact on Irish society, in other words, the interpretation of medieval Irish history.

My point of departure is a book published recently under the title The English in medieval Ireland.4 It Contains the papers read at the historic first joint

'Lebendige Vergangenheit (Wien, 1974). 2'Man k6nnte, in Anlehnung an Ranke, formulieren, daB uns nicht nur interessieren

mut, wie die einzeinen Ereignisse geschehen sind, sondern auch wie sie jeweils gesehen wurden' (ibid., p. viii).

'Defined in ibid., pp 6 ff. 4THE ENGLISH IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND: PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST JOINT MEETING OF THE

ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY AND THE BRITISH ACADEMY. DUBLIN 1982. Edited by James Lydon. Pp viii, 168. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. 1984. IR12.50.

289


http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

290 Irish Historical Studies

meeting of the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy in 1982. It deals principally with the relationship between the Anglo-Irish and the Irish, from the angle of the Anglo-Irish, in three spheres - political (Lydon,5 Phillips,6 Frame,7 Rees Daviess), ecclesiastical (Watt9) and legal (Mac Niocaill'o), while two studies cover related topics, namely language and literature (Bliss") and architecture (Stalleyl2). The interdisciplinary approach is to be applauded. However, the essays show little trace of having been revised in the light of the conference where they were first read, and thus they stand in greater isolation from each other than the subjects would merit. Basically, the English in medieval Ireland are treated as a separate and static entity, rather than in the wider context of the dynamism of the lordship or in the context of Ireland within the framework of English medieval development. Thus this collection of essays, when taken as a whole, falls short of reassessing in a substantial way the role of the English in medieval Ireland."3 Traditional assumptions underlie the treatment of the topic.

But 'it behoves us as historians to examine from time to time the largely unquestioned assumptions upon which our scholarly edifices are built'.'4

There is the unquestioned assumption that the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland marked a turning point in Irish history. This event is emphasised in all the recent scholarly surveys of the period."5 Here the academic view seems to concur with the popular view.16 In this field, it may be said with Graus, the past is dead, but not irrevocably so. The new book offers a challenge to revive it and to open a debate long overdue.

SJames Lydon, 'The middle nation' in ibid., pp 1-26. 6J. R. S. Phillips, 'The Anglo-Norman nobility' in ibid., pp 87-104. 7Robin Frame, 'War and peace in the medieval lordship of Ireland' in ibid., pp

118-41. 8R. R. Davies, 'Lordship or colony?' in ibid., pp 142-60. 9John Watt, 'Ecclesia inter Anglicos et inter Hibernicos: confrontation and

coexistence in the medieval diocese and province of Armagh' in ibid., pp 46-64. '0G. Mac Niocaill, 'The interaction of laws' in ibid., pp 105-17. "Alan Bliss, 'Language and literature' in ibid., pp 27-45. '2Roger Stalley, 'Irish Gothic and English fashion' in ibid., pp 65-86. '3This does not mean that there are not occasional new insights. Thus Stalley argues

for a substantial uprise in building activity in the west of Ireland in the later fifteenth century - a period and an area where the English influence was no longer prevalent.

"Rees Davies (English in med. Ire., p. 142). "Chiefly the Gill History of Ireland, ed. James Lydon and Margaret MacCurtain

(1972-4); A New History of Ireland, ed. T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (Oxford, 1976- ): Helicon History of Ireland, ed. Art Cosgrove and Elma Collins (1981- ). The second of these, with its wide potential readership, will presumably remain seminal for the next generation. The importance of the Anglo-Norman invasion is also implied in the periodisation of Irish history into the early Christian period and the medieval period (which is the period from 1169 to the sixteenth century). I have attempted recently to place the emphasis somewhat differently and to regard the whole of the twelfth century as a period of transition in Ireland from what I call (following French and Italian usage) 'the first middle ages' to 'the second middle ages'. See Michael Richter, rland im Mittelalter: Kultur und Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1983).

'6Whether the series of Thomas Davis lectures given in 1969 to commemorate 1169 challenged this view cannot be determined because it remains unpublished.



RICHTER - Interpretation of medieval Irish history 291

There is, first, the wider historical context. Insofar as comparative studies are useful (and I think they are essential in order to see particular events in proportion), the closest parallel to the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland is provided by the German expansion into Western Slav territories.'7 This event, for a long time hailed by German historians as a great civilising act and, equally uncritically, maligned by Slavs as an early manifestation of an alleged innate German 'Drang nach Osten'," has had far greater consequences. From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries the area of German rule was extended eastwards beyond the River Elbe as far as Pomerania, Prussia and Silesia; it was reduced only as a result of the first and second world wars. In the German Democratic Republic, there now remains only a small group of Slav speakers, the Lusatians or Sorbs, except for whom the earlier, completely Slav settlement of the territory is noticeable to the lay observer mainly in place-names."9 The general assessment of the colonisation of the Western Slavs by the Germans (and others20) was subjected to academic scrutiny with an intention to overcome anachronistic national prejudices only recently21 when this historical event was placed in the wider context of the period. It is unfortunate that in that reassessment no contribution was included on the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.22

What can such a comparative view contribute to Irish history?In addition to the simple, though by no means negligible, point that the case of medieval Ireland is not unique, that other peoples were subjected to colonisation as much and more, there is the important contribution that is offered by scholarly work internationally. Rees Davies raises the discussion of the English in Ireland to the general level of lordship in the middle ages. He shows that there are general as well as specific issues at stake. In addition it should be noted that the language of most administrative and governmental sources, in Ireland as well as in central Europe, was Latin. The historian of medieval Ireland can benefit from research done elsewhere on key terminology of what has been

"This may be a more useful case for comparison than the Norman expansion into Italy in the eleventh century, which is referred to by Phillips (English in med. Ire., p. 96).

"See for example Francis Dvornik, 'The first wave of the Drang nach Osten' in Cambridge Historical Journal, vii (1941-3), pp 129-45, writing, as a Czech patriot during the Second World War, about the tenth century.

19An example in the Federal Republic of Germany is Wendland, i.e. land of the Slavs (or Veneti, as they were known in the west as early as the time of Columbanus, cf. Jonas of Bobbio, Vitae Columbanilibri ii, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hannoveri & Lipsiae, 1905), Lib. I, 27, p. 217), situated in the north-east corner of Lower Saxony.

2OSee two recent studies, Benedykt Zientara, 'Walloons in Silesia in the 12th and 13th centuries' in Quaestiones Medii Aevi, ii (Varsovie, 1981), pp 127-50, and H. K. Schulze, 'Der Anteil der Slawen an der mittelalterlichen Siedlung nach deutschem Recht in Ostmitteldeutschland' in Zeitschriftfir Ostforschung, xxxi (1982), pp 321-36.

"2The debate between German and Slav scholars was in fact positively encouraged by the German government that took office in 1969 under the leadership of Chancellor Willy Brandt who made reconciliation with the eastern neighbours a priority.

22See Die deutsche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters als Problem der europiiischen Geschichte, ed. Walter Schlesinger (Sigmaringen, 1974). For a wider perspective, see A. R. Lewis, 'The closing of the mediaeval frontier' in Speculum, xxxiii (1958), pp 475-83. See also Michael Richter, 'Die inselkeltischen Vblker im europiischen Rahmen des Mittelalters' in Saeculum, xxxii (1981), pp 273-86.




called the 'adelige Staatssprache'.23 Colonisation not only took similar forms in different areas, it was also expressed in general and in detail in similar terms.

So the first point that emerges is that the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland may be profitably studied in a wider context, both as an aspect of a more widely noticeable European phenomenon in a period of economic and demographic growth (both necessary preconditions for colonisation - the decline of the English lordship of Ireland coincided, after all, with a period of economic depression and sharp demographic decline throughout Europe) and as an aspect of lordship.24

The second point that may be raised at this stage is that of the 'nationality' of the invaders of Ireland in the later twelfth century. The term used in the title of the book, 'English', is not the only one used by the contributors. The editor freely admits in his introduction that no attempt has been made to standardise the nomenclature. (It must be added that there is generally a lack of cross- references in contributions where the same issues are dealt with.)25 Instead of 'English', terms such as 'Anglo-Normans' (Phillips, Frame), 'Anglo-Irish' (Lydon, Watt, Mac Niocaill) and 'English of Ireland' occur. (Noticeable is the absence of the term 'Cambro-Norman' coined by F. X. Martin.) Is there justification for such variety? To the reader it is confusing, particularly since - at some undisclosed time - 'Norman' is generally replaced by 'English'.26 Is it possible to find historical reasons for preferring one terminology to others? I think there is.

While the geographical27 origins of individuals or families can be relevant, the 'national' label preferred in the middle ages was lingua.28 What requires attention, then, is the linguistic scene in Ireland at the time, as regards both written and spoken language. Research in the latter field is not yet far advanced, and what has been done has not been fully absorbed by historians. Thus two contributors to The English in medieval Ireland maintain that the language of the 'invaders' (if one may use this blanket term, though it is an over-simplication) was French.29 One should distinguish, however, mother

23Herwig Wolfram, 'Mittelalterliche Politik und adelige Staatssprache' in Mitteilun- gen des Institutsfiir Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, lxxvi (1968), pp 1 ff.

24It is well brought out by Rees Davies (though it is not new) that absenteeism of the lords was largely instrumental in the decline 'and the greatest defaulter of all was the lord of Ireland himself (English in med. Ire., p. 146). See also Richter, Irland im Mittelalter, pp 121-32.

25For an exception, see English in med. Ire., p. 37, n. 2. The lack of cross-references is to some extent alleviated by the index.

26See especially the contributions by Frame and Bliss. 27Referred to several times in English in med. Ire. by the unfortunate epithet 'racial', a

term particularly inappropriate to the Normans (see ibid., p. 83) who, as their name implies, were of Norse or Scandinavian origin though by the tenth century they had adopted Romance speech (Ademari de Chabannes Historiarum Lib. III, in J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (221 vols, Paris, 1840-80), cxli, col. 41).

28See Regino of Priim, Libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis, ed. F. G. A. Wasserschleben (Lipsiae, 1840), praefatio, p. 2: 'diversae nationes populorum inter se discrepaht genere, moribus, lingua, legibus; Nationes, i, ed. Helmut Beumann and Werner Schrdder (Sigmaringen, 1978), pp 351,467. Cf. Lydon, English in med. Ire., passim.

29Bliss and Phillips (English in med. Ire., pp 27, 88).




tongue from acquired second or third language. Information on this topic has to be obtained from the sources at our

disposal. It may be stated initially that the main languages of the sources from the period under discussion are Latin, Irish, French (Anglo-Norman) and English. Public and administrative documents relating to the lordship are invariably in Latin or French. What conclusion, if any, can be drawn from the evidence concerning the languages of the invaders?

Latin in the sources reflects the acquisition of a second language in accordance with international practice ('adelige Staatssprache'), while French in administrative sources is best explained by the mother tongue of the English royal house, which imposed French (often in the form of a secondary, acquired language) on the court aristocracy. There are, however, reasons to believe that the mother tongue (lingua materna) of the aristocracy in the second half of the twelfth century, the time of the invasion of Ireland, was English.30 It is clear that many members of the aristocracy and indeed of lower ranks acquired other languages, especially French,"3' but if the lingua materna can be taken as a criterion of 'nationality' in the later twelfth century,32 the higher ranks of the invaders of Ireland may quite confidently be classified as 'English'."33 It has not been, in my view, fully appreciated that this is also reflected in the terminology of the sources when the newcomers to Ireland are called, in most sources emanating from the lordship, generally Angli.34 If the term 'English' can be applied to the nobles among the invaders, it is all the

30This view is put forward in several places in the book, e.g. by Bliss (pp 39, 45), but cf. his somewhat confusing assertions (pp 30-31). I suggested the same first in my Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter (Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, xviii, Stuttgart, 1979), p. 102; and have elaborated further in 'Towards a methodology of historical sociolinguistics' in Folia Linguistica Historica, vi (1985), forthcoming. See also William Rothwell,'Glimpses into our ignorance of the Anglo-Norman lexis' in Ian Short (ed.), Medieval French studies in memory of T. B. W. Reid (Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Publications no. 1, London, 1984), pp 167-79, esp. p. 178: 'it is evident that the upward thrust of English into the ranks of the literate must have been very strong not much more than a century after the Conqueror landed and gallicised the upper strata of the society of this island. By this time England must have been well on the way to reverting to its Germanic language, but with the happy enrichment of the all-important Romance element that has determined its character in modern times.'

3For an insight into the situation in the early fourteenth century in the Hereford area and in parts of Wales, see Richter, Sprache und Gesellschaft, pt IV.

32Lydon (English in med. Ire., p. 5) questions whether there was any sense of nationality evident in the middle ages at all; such doubt would put into jeopardy much of the discussion in the book itself. For the topic see, however, Nationes, i (as above, n. 28).

"It has been clearly brought out in the book under review that some of the nobles who came to Ireland, especially in the fourteenth century, came directly from France (Phillips in English in med. Ire., p.94) and their lingua materna would have been a variety of French.

"References are widely given in English in med. Ire., e.g. pp 1, 11, 13, 47, 48, 118, 121, 133. The foreigners are consistently called 'English' in The Song ofDermot and the Earl, ed. G. H. Orpen (Oxford, 1892). The term used in the Irish sources shifts from 'Saxon' (on which see Michael Richter, 'Bede's Angli: Angles or English?' in Peritia, iii (1984), pp 99-114, as well as 'Towards a methodology of historical sociolinguistics') to "Gall', on which see below, p. 295.




more appropriate for the settlers of lower rank who followed the nobles. They appear less prominently in the administrative sources but were just as essential for the successful establishment of the lordship as were the leaders. Bliss shows that in the Waterford and Wexford areas, the first strongholds of the invaders in Ireland, English was more firmly entrenched after 1300 than elsewhere, perhaps evidence that these areas were particularly strongly peopled by settlers from England."35 Bliss further points out that the English language of south- east Ireland shows very few Hiberno-English features, arguing for a long-term lack of cultural contacts with the Irish there.

It is suggested here that the 'nationality' tag to be used for the invaders should be 'English', since this is the term used most widely in the contemporary sources and also reflects the lingua materna of the vast majority of the invaders, be they of aristocratic or of more humble rank.36

On this basis it is easier to say something about the language of the sources connected with the English and their 'public'."37 The non-administrative, non- Latin major sources are the following, in chronological order: the Song of Dermot and the Earl, in French; the Kildare poems, in English; the poem on the walling of New Ross, in French;3" as well as the English versions of Giraldus's Expugnatio.39 Most of these can be regarded as products of aristocratic patronage. One should keep in mind, however, that the aristocracy represents only a tiny minority of the new settlers in Ireland. Others, rural as well as urban people from the neighbouring island and elsewhere, contributed substantially to the new outlines of the linguistic map of medieval Ireland, and it is most likely that English was their mother tongue.40 Bliss showed, many years ago, that Latin occurred as a second language in early fifteenth-century Ireland among artisan apprentices.41 These are small but valuable additions to our knowledge of the linguistic scene among the newcomers to Ireland. It can be argued that in cultural terms Ireland as a whole was enriched in that this was also the time of large-scale translations and adaptations of continental works into the Irish language, which had started two centuries earlier and from the twelfth century onwards apparently gained momentum.

3"5Bliss (English in med. Ire., p. 31). This surely implies that English was the lingua materna of the settlers.

36There is more on this in Michael Richter, 'The Norman invasion' in the Thomas Davis lectures given in 1983 ('Milestones in Irish history'), publication of which is expected.

3"The term is used here as first elaborated by Erich Auerbach, Literatursprache und Publikum in der lateinischen Spdtantike und im Mittelalter (Bern, 1958), and widened by Michael Richter,'A quelle 6poque a-t-on cesst de parler latin en Gaule?: A propos d'une question mal poste' in Annales: Economies, Socihtis, Civilisations, xxxviii (1983), pp 339-48.

3~See Hugh Shields.'The walling of New Ross: a thirteenth-century poem in French' in Long Room, nos 12-13 (1975-6), pp 24-33.

39Listed in Angus Macintosh and M. L. Samuels, 'Prolegomena to a study of mediaeval Anglo-Irish' in Medium Aevum, xxxvii (1968), pp 1-11.

401 have shown in Sprache und Gesellschaft, pt IV, that French as the second language was not uncommon among the non-aristocratic population in early fourteenth-century England though it was more frequent in the urban milieu than in rural areas.

4q'Alan Bliss,'The inscribed slates at Smarmore' in R.IA. Proc., lxiv, sect. C (1965), pp 33-60.




What can be said with some confidence about the literary field has its equivalents in the political and social scene. In the past, much emphasis has been laid on the confrontation between Irish and English in later medieval Ireland. That there was confrontation at times would be foolish to deny. But that such confrontation would a priori last for centuries, a view widely held, may be challenged. Two points in The English in medieval Ireland may be taken up here. One is the ambivalent and complex term natio which does sometimes, but not always, have the meaning of 'nationality'. It was part of the international vocabulary of the language of state and as such it has also been studied outside Ireland. Irish scholars could benefit from drawing on these earlier researches.42 Closely linked in subject matter is the existence in the Irish sources of a term for the non-Irish, the Gall. The term was of course known in Irish long before the arrival of the English and, taken by itself, it does show a sense of 'otherness', setting the Irish apart from the rest. But terms should never be taken in isolation. Note should be taken that the Galls were referred to in Irish sources in positive ways,43 which takes away from the pejorative impression conveyed by the term taken by itself and thereby from the alleged sense of confrontation. There is good evidence for the view that many of the people of English descent in Ireland went over to the Irish way of life within the first century of the invasion. It is an important aspect of the English in Ireland, but it is treated only briefly in the book,44 presumably because the administrative records present such moves in a negative light. Yet to receive these at face value is to accept the Westminster view as the norm. Why should it surprise us that a supra-national institution such as the church should apparently find it quite easy to co-operate equally with the 'two nations' in medieval Ireland" in the fifteenth century? More than a century earlier, the Bruce invasion, advertised as a 'Celtic alliance' against the English,46 found most of the Irish as appalled by the threat to their survival as were the English in the lordship.

The time of the Bruce invasion was also, as is well known, the time when the lordship began to shrink fast. This fact itself is never elaborated in the book,

42See especially Nationes, i (as above, n. 28), and R. C. Schwinges, "'Primlire" und "sekundiire" Nationen: Nationalbewuftsein und sozialer Wandel im mittelalterlichen Bbhmen' in K. D. Grothusen and Klaus Zernack (eds), Europa Slavica: Europa Orientalis (= Festschrift Herbert Ludat) (Berlin, 1980), pp 490-532.

43E.g. Annals of Loch C6 from 1233; see also Richter, Irland im Mittelalter, p. 138. Lydon first mentions it explicitly with reference to 1468 (English in med Ire., p. 17), but it is implied already earlier (ibid., p. 8).

44Lydon (English in med. Ire., pp 13-15). 4SSuch co-operation is treated of by Watt (ibid., pp 50-55), who points to unexpected

tolerance for the rule by English or Anglo-Irish prelates (ibid., p. 53); it is taken for granted by Mac Niocaill (ibid., pp 108 ff); a different view is put over by Rees Davies (ibid., p. 153).

"See Richter 'Inselkelten', for further references. A feeling of fellowship between Irish and Welsh in the late thirteenth century (which I doubt) is alluded to by Rees Davies (English in med Ire., p. 158). It should be noted that subsequent to the publication of my article the enigmatic letter of Donal O'Neill to Fineen MacCarthy has been shown to be, most likely, a post-medieval forgery (Diarmuid 0 Murchadha, 'Is the O'Neill-MacCarthy letter of 1317 a forgery?' in I.HSS, xxiii, no. 89 (May 1982), pp 61-7). This is not noted by Lydon when he refers to that document (English in med. Ire., p. 6, n. 1).




but it is of course important. For, if one accepts Rees Davies's argument that the colonial attitudes of the English in Ireland, though not there from the very beginning, gradually became evident,47 it is surely relevant that the area in which these could perhaps be implemented became progressively smaller, in which case much of the bitterness associated with such attitudes must have become proportionately less. Colonial mentality, if restricted to parchment, hurts little,48 and it may be that in many areas such an attitude could not be implemented.

This leads to some reflections on the overall assessment of the English in medieval Ireland. While such reflections lead beyond the scope of The English in medieval Ireland, they prompt discussion of the assumption that 1169 was a turning point in Irish history. It is not easy to see the period of medieval Ireland in its proper perspective, especially from a twentieth-century vantage-point where one knows what happened in the post-medieval centuries. But this much is clear in any case: Tudor and Stuart policies towards Ireland - massive military enterprises from England and plantation of Ireland - marked a new departure. There was little continuity from the time of the battered Pale.

One way to get the importance of the English in medieval Ireland into perspective is to compare this period to the three centuries preceding it, to the Scandinavian impact on Ireland. We have here an interesting model (with all the shortcomings inherent in model comparison). From the mid-ninth century the Scandinavians established kingdoms of some importance in the coastal areas in the southern half of Ireland, gradually merging with the Irish, politically, culturally, economically and linguistically. The Irish polity was affected considerably by their presence, and the Scandinavians contributed, in part at least, to the emergence of new Irish dynasties competing for the high-kingship. There is ground for believing that the Scandinavian impact on Ireland contributed towards opening Irish society to other western European influences.49

There can be no doubt about the initial massive impact of the Scandinavians and their gradual, though not complete, absorption by the native Irish before the English came. Put in such, admittedly stark and simple, terms the parallel is viable.

Differences, however, must be pointed out as well. The greatest difference of all, and one which has led to much imbalance in the discussion of the respective periods, is that of source-material. The Scandinavian impact on Ireland is perceptible through the Irish sources, mainly the Irish annals, and, at some remove, through Norse literature.'0 The invaders and settlers themselves, on the other hand, have left little direct written information. And, equally important, they did not have the equivalent of the English monarchy and its administration as a partner which, as we have seen, has provided plenty of

47English in med. Ire., pp 154 ff. 48Its importance seems to be overestimated by Rees Davies (ibid.). 49This I have recently argued in the Gwynn lecture for 1983, 'The European

dimension of Irish history in the eleventh and twelfth centuries', publication of which is expected.

SoThis has been most fully developed by Dr Alfred P. Smyth, e.g. in his Scandinavian kings in the British Isles, 850-880 (Oxford, 1977).




information."5 It can be argued that this difference affects the historian's view considerably, and perhaps too much so.

As for the late Scandinavian period in Ireland, for which we are on the whole dependent on the Irish annals, a general assessment of the strength or weakness of the Norse kingdoms in Ireland, and especially the kingdom of Dublin, is greatly hampered by the lacuna in the major Irish annals between the 1120s and the I160s. There can be no doubt, however, that at the time Mac Murrough introduced his allies from across the water52 the city of Dublin was not in Irish hands, the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin surviving as a separate entity until 1170. This kingdom in the twelfth century deserves more attention from the historians than it has received in the past.

The continued existence of the Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin to the later twelfth century has important consequences for the general impact of the English in medieval Ireland. For if we view it from the angle of the Irish dynasties, it indicates that there was little difference whether Dublin and its hinterland were in the hands of the Hiberno-Norse or the English."3 More important was the fact that it was beyond the reach of the major Irish dynasties. There can be no doubt that Dublin was an important area, especially in economic terms, as has been clearly revealed by the recent excavations at Winetavern Street and Wood Quay. Dublin and its hinterland had risen to national importance owing to the Scandinavian settlement there and the consequent trade links with the north-west of Europe. This was one of the reasons why possession of the area became such a desirable objective for all Irish dynasties. But it was never taken over by them completely. There was co-operation, there were alliances, especially with the kingdom of Leinster (which may directly account for the phenomenal rise of Leinster in the early twelfth century), but that was all.

Viewed from this angle, the taking of Dublin by Strongbow in 1170 loses much of its character as a turning-point. It then matters little that Dublin eventually became a royal city and the administrative centre of the lordship with yet different lords.

The fact that the administrative material for the lordship is so plentiful compared to the dearth of material from the Scandinavian period can overwhelm the observer into believing that there was a qualitative difference between the two periods. Admittedly, more detailed research must be done, especially on the twelfth century as a whole, but there is the inherent danger, due to the imbalance of the source-material, of not seeing the wood for the trees. Note must be taken of the fact that many of the commands emanating

5One should take into account the fact that from the twelfth century source-material becomes much more plentiful all over Europe, but it has also to be taken into consideration that the Scandinavians on their arrival in Ireland were as yet an oral society producing little administrative documentation.

52See now M. T. Flanagan, 'Strongbow, Henry II and the Anglo-Norman intervention in Ireland' in John Gillingham and J. C. Holt (eds), War and government in the middle ages (London, 1984), pp 62-77.

3"One difference is, of course, that the Hiberno-Norse rulers allied much more easily with Irish dynasties than the lordship was to do. I have pointed this out briefly in the Thomas Davis lecture on the Norman invasion (as above, n. 36).




from the English government remained ineffective, while the warning against integration of the settlers with the Irish shows a lack of realism on the part of the lord of Ireland. As long as he neglected his duties of protection, it was unrealistic to expect loyalty in return. This was the great difference between the settlers and the administrative officers of the crown. The latter were sent over for a few years, the former had decided to stay for good. Therefore it was natural that the settlers would accommodate themselves with the Irish, and it is obvious that the Irish took from the settlers whatever was useful for them.54

So, as with the Scandinavian invasions, one observes over the whole period a mutual integration of two or more cultures. Seen from the time of the end of the lordship, the map of Ireland must have looked not very dissimilar to that prior to the coming of the English. Most of the island was again outside the control of the English crown.

Of course there are differences in detail, and especially in the composition of the dynasties that had emerged or re-emerged outside the Pale. There had been the Gaelic revival,55 exemplifying the vitality of Irish civilisation in the face of the English settlement. The Irish learned orders were taken into the service as much by the English settlers as they continued to be patronised by Irish lords.56 But could not something comparable be said about the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Ireland? If change there was, this was a constant feature in the history of Ireland. But, unlike other societies in the middle ages, Irish society was remarkably vital in its culture inherited from pre-historic times and absorbed successfully two major invasions from outside.

Ireland is exceptional and is for this reason all the more important in comparative studies in that its pre-Christian culture at a very early stage came to be written down and was not pushed underground and largely destroyed as happened in most other European societies when they became Christian. It seems to be also important that the geographical position of Ireland in Europe saved the island from much turmoil and from many invasions. With only two major encroachments on Irish society in the course of one millennium, and both of them haphazard rather than systematic, Irish society was able to save her own traditions to a remarkable degree. The two major encroachments, that of the Scandinavians and that of the English, left their traces without, however, crushing the core of Irish life and culture.

MICHAEL RICHTER

University College, Dublin

54See especially the contribution by Mac Niocaill (English in med. Ire., pp 105-17) and less clearly, but implicitly, Frame (ibid., pp 118-41).

55Perhaps 'Gaelic renaissance' is a better term. See Richter, Irland im Mittelalter, p. 151.

56T. J. Dunne,'The Gaelic response to conquest and colonisation: the evidence of the poetry' in Studia Hibernica, xx (1980), pp 7-30.



Article Contentsp. 289p. 290p. 291p. 292p. 293p. 294p. 295p. 296p. 297p. 298

Issue Table of ContentsIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 24, No. 95 (May, 1985), pp. 289-416The Interpretation of Medieval Irish History [pp. 289-298]The Irish Admiralty: Its Organisation and Development, c. 1570-1640 [pp. 299-326]Attitudes to Reform: Political Parties in Ulster and the Irish Land Bill of 1881 [pp. 327-340]The Irish Protestant Home Rule Association and Nationalist Politics, 1886-93 [pp. 341-360]Select DocumentsSelect Documents XXXVII: The Campaign against the Scots in Munster, 1317 [pp. 361-372]Select Documents XXXVIII: Defenders and Defenderism in 1795 [pp. 373-394]

Reviews and Short NoticesReview: untitled [pp. 395-396]Review: untitled [pp. 396-398]Review: untitled [pp. 398-399]Review: untitled [pp. 400-401]Review: untitled [pp. 401-403]Review: untitled [pp. 403-404]Review: untitled [pp. 404-405]Review: untitled [pp. 405-406]Review: untitled [pp. 406-407]Review: untitled [pp. 407-408]Review: untitled [pp. 408-409]Review: untitled [pp. 409-410]Review: untitled [pp. 410-411]Review: untitled [pp. 411-413]Review: untitled [pp. 413-414]Review: untitled [p. 414-414]Review: untitled [pp. 414-415]

Back Matter