h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is fascinating stuff. English and Irish, Prods and Taigs - we're all basically of the same genetic origins. It's a timely hammer blow against the myth of an Irish / Ulster Race.

The 6000 year old "invasion" of the Celts seems wrong. Frank Mitchell, in "Reading the Irish Landscape", indicates that the country went fallow for a couple of hundred years between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, presumably the beginning of Celtic times. Also, wasn't there distinct cultural differences between the Bronzies and the Ironies, ie. the Bronzies being sun-worshippers etc.?

"This is fascinating stuff. English and Irish, Prods and Taigs - we're all basically of the same genetic origins. It's a timely hammer blow against the myth of an Irish / Ulster Race."

I don't think it is that much of a hammer blow, to be honest. The reason is that I don't think there are many racial underpinnings for the Prod/Taig business, and I don't think anyone really thinks there are.

If race or genetics (or eugenics) were the main justifications, as with Apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany, then it really would be a demolition job. It isn't like that at all though. Not all conflicts need involve different races - just different groups with different views.

Yes - I would agree in general with this, although there was certainly was a mythology there on both sides, the aim being to create some sort of historical distinctiveness between the tribes. The extent to which it influenced people was probably quite low.

Many years ago, I remember seeing a mural up the Newtonards Road with language to the effect that "Cúchulainn was the noble defender of Ulster against the Irish, 2000 years ago".

>>the Bronzies being sun-worshippers

. . . makes sense.

Aha! New blood enters the drama! David McWilliams has coined a term for the second- or third-generation Irish living in Britain, and making a disproportionate impact on British media (Ant & Dec, Jimmy Carr, many musicians . . .)

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9602

You have to pay to read that; it will be reported elsewhere I expect, I heard him on the radio. I think it was the Tubridy show, it hasn't turned up on their podcasts yet, but I'll keep an eye out for it.

Ah! Now would they be Anglo-Irish, or Hiberno-English?

Well that's just the question! Why does Anglo-Irish only go one way?

That is a good question. Was it that it is a more recent phenomenon for there to be large Irish communities in England than vice versa so the term never really developed, or that they were more a dispersed community of immigrants rather than a social class with power? Or maybe that English settlers in Ireland felt themselves seperated from the 'motherland' more than Irish settlers in England did?

(If any of that sounds like I'm pushing a political agenda, I'm honestly not. I'm interested in the question, since we have had to-ing and fro-ing from both countries for quite some time it's interesting that it goes one way, as you say).

Of course, we've always had toing and froing in both directions. It is surprising to learn that the Irish colonised bits of Britain, shortly after the Romans left; but that is only surprising because the whole agenda of Irish nationalists for 150 years has been "Brits = oppressors". The term Anglo-Irish was coined to denote those who were agents of oppression. At least that's the way it looks.

Was Yeats (my favourite poet) Anglo-Irish? Maud Gonne didn't approve of him not converting to Catholicism and not being radical enough, I seem to remember. Having a foot in both camps would go some way to explaining his mabivalence.

I'm Anglo-Welsh, by the way: English father, Welsh mother.

The reason I used the phrase "to-ing and fro-ing" was precisely because we've had it in both directions. It's not surprising that the Irish colonised parts of Britain at all.

Was the phrase "Anglo-Irish" coined in Ireland or England? I don't know. If it was coined by separatist nationalists to denote "English/British oppressors" , presumably they would have used "English" without acknowledging that they were in any way "Irish".

The "Anglo-Irish" were often a thorn in the side of the "Anglo-English" - it's possible that the term was coined to refer to the troublesome lot over the sea.

These are the reasons the entry is not progressing. Too much history. Too many bad feelings.

O Irishmen, forget the past
And think of the time that's coming fast
When we shall all be civilized
Neat and clean and well-advised
And won't Mother England be surprised?
Whack fol the diddle fol the die doe day.

Felonious~

Yeats was Anglo-Irish on several counts:

He had ancestors from England
They were Protestant
He lived in Ireland but wrote in English

On these criteria, I'd guess there are few enough Irish people who are not a teeny bit Anglo.

Recumbentman, it might seem otherwise, but everything I wrote was written with anything *but* bad feeling - I mean that sincerely.

I'm sorry to have sounded that way: I really wasn't referring to you.

I suppose I refer to my rotten childhood, in a protestant school in Dublin, where we studied the same history books as everyone else -- books which went into long detail about basically what lousers our particular forefathers were.