Unstable Races?

After the Conquest: Between Demarcation and Acculturation

The English conquest of Ireland in 1169/1171 was by no means the result of a planned invasion, but was due to a complex series of circumstances. A few introductory remarks about this process may therefore be appropriate ^[9]. The intervention was initially encouraged at the instigation of the Irish King of Leinster, Diarmait mac Murchada ( d. 1171 ), who had asked for support against his enemies in Ireland ^[10]. After kidnapping the daughter of the Irish overlord Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair ( d. 1198 ) and being expelled from Leinster as a result, Diarmait travelled to Henry II of England ( d. 1189 ), who did not promise him any help of his own, but gave him permission to seek support among his entourage. He was to find this above all from Anglo-Norman nobles of Wales: initially from Maurice Fitz-Gerald ( d. 1176 ) and Robert Fitz-Stephen ( d. after 1182 ), who followed him to Ireland in 1169, and finally from Richard de Clare ( d. 1176 ), better known as Strongbow, who arrived in Ireland in 1170 ^[11]. After the conquest of Dublin and Waterford by the Anglo-Norman armies, Richard de Clare succeeded in rapidly expanding his power in the east of Ireland.

Due to his marriage to Aoife ( d. 1188 ), the daughter of Diarmait mac Murchada, Strongbow was able to claim his succession as ruler of Leinster after Diarmait’s death in 1171 ^[12]. When Henry II of England went to Ireland on 17 October 1171 in order to counteract Strongbow’s excessive increase in power and to grant him his Irish territories as fiefdoms, the main steps of the conquest had already been taken by other actors. Further Anglo-Norman invaders, such as John de Courcy ( d. 1219 ) or Hugh de Lacy ( d. 1242 ) ( and his father of the same name ), were to continue this work in the coming decades and conquer large areas, mostly in the east and south of Ireland, by the middle of the 13^th century ^[13].

Although only parts of the island were thus effectively conquered in the course of the English invasion of Ireland in 1169/1171, the event was subsequently perceived by contemporaries as a profound turn of events. Irish writers of the 13^th century, for example, referred to the “arrival of the English” ( introitus Anglicorum ) to mark this political turning point in their history ^[14]. The new political map and the new power structures on the island, however, demanded specific interpretative patterns and categories to cope with the changed situation. In the perception of social reality, processes of mutual demarcation and othering took place, which operated with collective identities, through which the complex network of relationships in political practice could be ordered. In the period that followed, contemporary observers made a precise distinction between the “Irish” and the “English”, the hibernici and the anglici, in Ireland, which were profiled against each other as social categories ^[15]. By the former were meant the native Gaelic-speaking families, by the latter the Anglo-Normans, who had settled in Ireland from the 12^th century onwards. In the decades following the conquest, this categorical distinction became perpetuated in the legal status of the groups: in the English dominated areas of Ireland, English law applied, with few exceptions, only to the anglici, not to the native hibernici who lived there ^[16].

In many respects, however, this distinction of legal categories very soon no longer corresponded to the cultural practices of the groups. Although the Anglo-Norman colonists who settled in the conquered lands of Ireland in the 13^th and 14^th centuries defined themselves as a separate group with their own affiliation ^[17], they quickly adapted to local practices and customs, such as speaking the Gaelic language and entering into marriages with local families ^[18]. In particular, Anglo-Norman families increasingly employed native poets and historians to preserve the traditional Gaelic lore of Ireland. In fact, the scribes and poets who wrote works in Gaelic on behalf of their Anglo-Norman patrons drew almost exclusively from the traditional repertoire of the Irish bardic schools ^[19]. Much of the Irish-language tradition of historiography, poetry, hagiography, legal texts, and translational literature of the late Middle Ages is preserved in manuscripts, such as the ‘Book of Fermoy’, which were commissioned by Anglo-Norman families, and did not differ in content from those compiled for native Gaelic patrons ^[20]. As Katharine Simms has argued, however, these “bards did not influence their patrons’ culture and politics, they reflected them.” ^[21]

The ‘Book of Fermoy’, for instance, was composed mostly in the 15^th century for the family of the Roche, who held one of the great lordships of Munster, in the south of Ireland, since the 13^th century ^[22]. The main patron who commissioned central parts of the manuscript is Lord David Roche ^[23], who is called “Dábhidh Mór” ( David the Great ) in the text ^[24]. In the early modern period, the book was probably known as ‘Leabhar na Róisteach’ ( Book of the Roche ) ^[25]. The manuscript contains a collection of poems and prose material dedicated to the Roche family, as well as saints’ lives, historical tracts, genealogies and mythological prose tales, beginning, significantly, with the famous ‘Leabhar Gabhála Érenn’, the mythological origin tale of the Irish ^[26]. This book tells the story of how the Gaels once took possession of the island ^[27]. The compilation of the manuscript clearly shows an antiquarian interest in the history and literature of Ireland. For Cathinka Hambro, the ‘Book of Fermoy’ is a pertinent example that demonstrates “how a family of Anglo-Norman descent were assimilated in Irish society and had absorbed Irish cultural memory.” ^[28]

While this assessment of the degree to which the Anglo-Irish had acculturated and appropriated local practices and traditions is made from today’s observational perspective, however, it is of course an entirely different question whether this practice of appropriation was also observed and described as such by contemporaries. Notably, such contemporary observations were expressed very early after the English conquest of Ireland and reached a particular intensity from the 14^th century onwards. These observations will be the focus of my paper. As a historian of knowledge, I am less interested in the question of whether or to what extent the actors were ‘really’ culturally assimilated, but rather in how practices of adaptation were observed, interpreted, and communicated by contemporaries. In this way, we can avoid some of the epistemological pitfalls that inevitably arise when we claim to be the registering authority that establishes that a cultural object has been appropriated and adopted from a ‘foreign’ side, i. e. across a postulated cultural boundary that is sometimes only produced as such in the act of our observation. The focus on contemporary perceptions of such adoptions, on the other hand, allows for an examination of the cultural boundaries ( and their transgression ) constructed in the discursive orders of the time ^[29].

Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Contemporary Observations

The perception that the settlers of Anglo-Norman descent in Ireland were, in terms of their belonging and affiliation, actually not perfectly or entirely English, but rather somewhere between the Irish and the English, emerged immediately after the conquest of Ireland in 1169. Already Gerald of Wales, in his contemporary account of the conquest of the late 12^th century, had put into the mouth of one of the first colonists on the island, namely Maurice Fitz-Gerald, the words that “to the Irish we are English, but to the English we are Irish.” ^[30]

Such an intermediate status was, in fact, attributed to the Anglo-Irish several times in the following period and seems to reflect, at least in part, also their own self-perception ^[31]. An Irish document from 1317, for example, known as the ‘Remonstrance of the Irish Princes’ ^[32], speaks of the English in Ireland as a “middle nation” ( natio media ) and indicates that this group would call itself such. Since this source comes from the circle of the Irish king Domnall Uí Néill, however, who complained to Pope John XXII about the misbehaviour of the English in Ireland, this attribution of the status of a “middle nation” is framed in a highly negative way. Nevertheless, the passage is significant for the way in which the native Irish saw the English settlers:

For the English inhabiting our land, who call themselves of the middle nation [ qui se vocant mediae nationis ], are so different in character from the English of England and from other nations that with the greatest propriety they should not be called a nation of the ‘middle’, but rather a nation of the utmost perfidy ^[33].

While this attribution is polemical in nature and remains rather vague, other sources were much more explicit. Significant for the contexts discussed here is the fact that the appropriation of local practices by English settlers in Ireland was viewed with disfavour by the English crown. In particular, the adoption of Gaelic language and tradition was observed with suspicion. In 1366, therefore, the Irish Parliament, chaired by the son of King Edward III, namely Lionel, Duke of Clarence, passed a series of ordinances known as the ‘Statutes of Kilkenny’ ^[34]. These statutes begin with a very explicit reflection on the change in behaviour of the English in Ireland, which they describe as an adaptation of native cultural practices:

Whereas at the conquest of the land of Ireland, and for a long time after, the English of the said land used the English language, mode of riding and apparel, and were governed and ruled, and their subjects called Betaghes, by the English law, in which time God and Holy Church, and their franchises according to their conditions were maintained [ and themselves lived ] in subjection; but now many English of the said land forsaking the English language, fashion, mode of riding, laws and usages, live and govern themselves according to the manners, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies ( lang des Irrois enemies ); and also have made divers marriages and alliances between themselves and the Irish enemies aforesaid; whereby the said land and the liege people thereof, the English language, the allegiance due to our lord the King, and the English laws there, are put in subjection and decayed, and the Irish enemies exalted and raised up, contrary to right ( encontre reson ) ^[35].

Consistent with this assessment, the statues’ ordinances hereafter set out to prohibit the use of the Irish language, the employment of Irish bards, and the adoption of other cultural practices, such as sports, under penalty of law. About the language it says, for example:

Also, it is ordained and established, that every Englishman use the English language, and be named by an English name, leaving off entirely the manner of naming used by the Irish; and that every Englishman use the English custom, fashion, mode of riding and apparel, according to his estate; and if any English, or Irish living amongst the English, use the Irish language amongst themselves, contrary to this ordinance, and thereof be attaint, that his lands and tenements, if he have any, be seized into the hands of his immediate lord ^[36].

The statutes are very clear in their prohibition of specific individual practices perceived as ‘Irish’ and inappropriate for the English. Anyone who does not ride in the saddle in the specifically English fashion may henceforth expect imprisonment:

And that no Englishman [ … ] ride otherwise than on a saddle in the English fashion, and he that shall do the contrary and be thereof attaint, that his horse be forfeited to our lord the King, and his body committed to prison ^[37].

The specific way of riding or ‘sitting in the saddle’ is obviously perceived here as a distinctive cultural practice that marks a decisive difference in belonging. Equally, the Irish sport of hurling, which is portrayed as specifically dangerous, is forbidden under penalty of imprisonment:

[ It is forbidden ] to use the plays which men call hurlings, with great sticks and a ball upon the ground, from which great evils and maims have arisen ( dont graundes males et maymes sont auenuz ) [ … ]. And if any do or practice the contrary, and of this be attaint, that he be taken and imprisoned ( soit pris et enprison ), and fined at the will of our lord the King ^[38].

Language in particular, but also cultural practices such as horse riding and sport, were seen here as markers of difference that constituted a boundary, the crossing of which appeared undesirable. The adoption of cultural phenomena that were considered specifically ‘Irish’ was obviously perceived as a threat by the English crown. There are several explanations for these sometimes drastic measures taken by the English crown to prevent the appropriation of Irish cultural practices. On the one hand, there was a manifest concern on the English side for the loyalty of the English colonists in Ireland. The largely acculturated ‘Anglo-Irish’, who had adopted the Irish language and were related to native Gaelic families, had sometimes aroused the suspicion from the crown’s point of view that they had lost their ‘Englishness’ and thus also their loyalty. With regard to the occasional alliances between Anglo-Norman and Gaelic rulers in Ireland, this suspicion was not even unfounded ^[39]. In fact, in the 14^th century, anglici from Ireland were repeatedly suspected of being accomplices of the hibernici inimici domini regis. In the context of Irish rebellions, it could therefore happen that an anglicus proditor was also accused of treason ^[40].

In addition, however, there was the fear that Anglo-Irish families were being spied on by the Irish enemies of the English crown. The employment of Irish bards, as seen with the Roche family in Munster in the 15^th century, was therefore perceived as a direct threat. Consequently, the statutes prohibited these employments of Irish bards as well:

Also, whereas the Irish minstrels, coming among the English, spy out the secrets ( espient lez priuetz ), customs and policies of the English, whereby great evils have often happened, it is agreed and forbidden that any Irish minstrels, that is to say, tympanours, pipers, story tellers, babblers, rhymers, harpers, or any other Irish minstrels, come amongst the English; and that no English receive them or make gifts to them. And that he who does so, and thereof be attaint, be taken and imprisoned, as well the Irish minstrels as the English that receive them or give them anything, and that afterwards they be fined at the King’s will, and the instruments of their minstrelsy be forfeited to our lord the King ^[41].

Nevertheless, despite the understandable concern about guarding state secrets, the question arises whether it was not other factors that also motivated the suppression of Gaelicisation of the English colonists in Ireland. Why, for example, was it so important to ban the sport of hurling, or to insist, under threat of punishment, that Englishmen ride in the English style? These measures can only be explained by looking at the larger context of how Irish practices were perceived from the English side. The background of these circumstances is a discourse about the cultural inferiority of the Irish, who had been portrayed as barbaric and wild by the English since the 12^th century in order to legitimise the conquest of Ireland. From the outset, the conquest of the island was framed by the English as a kind of ‘civilising mission’, through which the customs and laws in Ireland were to be improved and the church promoted.

Perceptions of Inferiority: Justifying a ‘Civilising Mission’

The aims of this undertaking had already been defined accordingly in the bull ‘Laudabiliter’, in which Pope Hadrian IV ( d. 1159 ) authorised King Henry II of England to intervene in Ireland ^[42]. The enterprise was to be carried out, as it says, “to extend the boundaries of the Church and curb the spread of vices, to improve morals and promote virtue, to increase the Christian faith”. To this end, Henry II was to go to Ireland and do everything there that would contribute “to the honour of God and the welfare of this land” ( ad honorem Dei et salutem illius terrae ) ^[43]. Significantly, in the immediate aftermath of the conquest, depictions emerged that illustrated the barbarism and depravity of the Irish, making the English mission seem all the more justified. Against the background of this discourse, the use of the Gaelic language and other cultural practices that were considered specifically Irish were not only understood as markers of identity that characterised the Irish as a ‘foreign’ ethnic group. Rather, since Irish cultural practices were portrayed as decidedly barbaric, the adoption of Irish cultural phenomena by the Anglo-Irish following the conquest, had to appear all the more problematic from the English point of view.

Among the most pertinent sources testifying to this perception of Irish cultural inferiority and ‘barbarism’ are the writings of Gerald of Wales, written shortly after the conquest in the late 12^th century ^[44]. Especially in his ‘Topography of Ireland’ ( ‘Topographia Hibernica’ ) from 1188, Gerald, who was a nephew of Maurice Fitz-Gerald, one of the first colonists of Ireland, comes to speak of the cultural practices of the Irish ^[45]. Only some particularly significant examples are given here, where Gerald is especially horrified and enraged by the behaviour of the Irish. Some of these passages are well known, but are suitable for emphasising certain aspects that are relevant to the questions pursued in later parts of this paper. All of them concern, among other things, violence and deviant sexual practices. Thus it is said in one passage, where Gerald describes the ‘usual Irish way of doing things’:

From an ancient and wicked custom, they always carry an axe in their hands instead of a staff, that they may be ready promptly to execute whatever iniquity their minds suggest. Wherever they go they carry this weapon with them, and watching their opportunity as occasion offers, it has not to be unsheathed like a sword, nor bent like a bow, or thrust out like a spear. Raised a little, without any preparation, it deals a deadly wound. They have, therefore, always at hand, nay, in their hands, that which is sufficient to inflict death. From these axes there is no security: While you fancy yourself secure, you will feel the axe. You put yourself heedlessly in danger, if you permit the axe, and omit to take precautions for your security. This race is inconstant, changeable, wily, and cunning. It is an unstable race, stable only in its instability, faithful only in its unfaithfulness ^[46].

While these remarks already reference the unbridled savagery and brutality of the Irish, linking these traits to a propensity for violence, Gerald elsewhere associates the cultural inferiority of the Irish more strongly with other practices. Here, in particular, the relation to animals comes into play. This already becomes clear in the description of a ritual for consecrating the king, allegedly practiced in the north of Ireland. The scene that Gerald describes not only contains an interaction with animals, but brings about an approximation of human actors to animal behaviour, thereby animalising the Irish. Gerald relates:

There is, then, in the northern and most remote part of Ulster, namely, at Kenel Cunil, a nation which practices a most barbarous and abominable rite in creating their king. The whole people of that country being gathered in one place, a white mare is led into the midst of them, and he who is to be inaugurated, not as a prince but as a brute, not as a king but as an outlaw, comes before the people on all fours, confessing himself a beast with no less impudence than imprudence. The mare being immediately killed, and cut in pieces and boiled, a bath is prepared for him from the broth. Sitting in this, he eats of the flesh which is brought to him, the people standing round and partaking of it also. He is also required to drink of the broth in which he is bathed, not drawing it in any vessel, nor even in his hand, but lapping it with his mouth. These unrighteous rites being duly accomplished, his royal authority and dominion are ratified ^[47].

The resolution expressed by Gerald at the beginning of this passage, not to keep quiet about the heinous acts he had allegedly witnessed in Ireland, he apparently took very seriously. Less seriously, however, he took the requirement to always express himself in discreet words, as he had claimed in the same breath ^[48]. Elsewhere, Gerald is even more explicit about what supposedly went on in Ireland and what one has to think about it. Once again, he is particularly concerned with ‘inappropriate’ contacts between humans and animals. At the core of Gerald’s concerns are therefore again human-animal relations. The author refers to an alleged sexual relationship between an Irish woman and a goat that belonged to the King of Connacht and had been entrusted to the woman’s care. While the passage denounces the animalistic behaviour of the woman, who has subordinated her rationality to sensuality ( O quam enormiter sensualitati succumbit ratio ), Gerald’s indignation is directed at the fact that a human being, who is actually the ruler of the animals ( bestiarum dominator ), disregards his natural privilege ( degenerante naturae privilegio ) and engages in such shameful dealings with a wild animal ^[49]. The discrediting of the Irish woman, who is paling towards animalistic behaviour, declares the woman’s misstep to be an act unworthy of a rational being that should actually dominate the animals due to its natural privilege. The Irish woman thus appears as an only partially rational creature and is thus brought closer to the domain of animals.

There are significant analogies to this form of defamation in other contexts of the 12^th century. Peter the Venerable, for instance, denied the humanity of Jews by arguing that they did not possess human reason ( ratio ), as they did not understand the truth of Christ ^[50]. Consequently, according to Peter, they were devoid of what distinguishes humans from animals and beasts. Therefore, there would be no reason, in his view, why a Jew should not be called animal brutum, bestia or iumentum ^[51]. In principle, at least, the polemical stance of Gerald of Wales adopts a similar polemic, as he diminishes the humanity of the Irish in a comparable fashion by questioning their rationality and thus approximating them to wild animals ^[52].

At first glance, this appears to be a striking parallel to the racist discourses of the 19^th century, in which the Irish were discredited as apes and characterised by animalistic behaviour. At second glance, however, there is a significant difference insofar as the particular ‘biologisation’ that characterised many of the racist attributions to the Irish in the 19^th century is absent in Gerald of Wales. The phrenological or craniological discourse, as manifest in ‘The Races of Britain’ by John Beddoe, sought to prove the supposed animal resemblance of certain human races through the shape of their skulls. For Beddoe, the ‘Africanoid’ type, which he claimed could be identified in Ireland based on skull shape and other physical characteristics, was a biologically determined, and therefore immutable, trait passed down through heredity. Consequently, he assumed that the ‘Africanoid’ features of the Irish of his own time must have an equivalent in the earliest skeletal finds from Ireland.

Gerald of Wales, on the other hand, attributes the animalisation of the Irish exclusively to cultural phenomena, to forms of behaviour, and practices. In his view, the Irish are animal-like because they perform bestial rites and display forms of behaviour unworthy of rational creatures. By having sex with a goat, the Irish woman in question subjugates her reason ( ratio ) to sensuality, as Gerald stated. In doing so, she condescends to animalistic behaviour that calls her humanity into question. However, if the animalisation of the Irish, which at first glance is reminiscent of the racialisation in modern discourses, is based entirely on cultural practices, and not on physical characteristics, it suggests that Gerald’s supposed ‘racial’ attributions are not biologically determined, but are in principle changeable. Given that these ‘racial’ characteristics are ‘unstable’ and therefore changeable, the question arises under what specific circumstances racial dispositions emerge and how it is possible to change them. We will come back to this point at the end of the paper.

With his detailed account of the catastrophic conditions that are said to have prevailed in Ireland, Gerald of Wales provided the enterprise of English conquest with a profound basis of legitimacy, which centuries later was still being used to support the English rule over the island ^[53]. As late as the 15^th century, the Dublin author James Yonge drew his justification for the rule of the English king in Ireland from Gerald of Wales ^[54], whose ‘Expugnatio Hibernica’ was widely read in the late Middle Ages and had also been translated into Irish ^[55]. In the 14^th century, the English monk Ranulf Higden cited Gerald’s ‘Topography’ repeatedly in the passages on Ireland of his ‘Polychronicon’. There he not only states that Ireland had been incorporated into the lordship of Britain since ancient times ^[56], but also pictured the Irish as backward, brutal, treacherous, and wicked in their manners, relying heavily on Gerald or citing him explicitly. Thus, Ranulf references Gerald’s description that the Irish always carried an axe instead of a staff in order to illustrate their violent behaviour. And in very similar wording to Gerald, Ranulf emphasises the volatility and inconstancy of the Irish people ( Gens ista versipellis et inconstans ) ^[57].

Cultural Appropriation and the Transformation of Nature: The Emergence of an “Evil Race”

Although Gerald’s writings thus consistently remained topical in the discourse on Irish inferiority, they gained a new and intensified relevance especially in the context of the Tudor conquest of Ireland in the 16^th century ^[58]. English influence in Ireland had declined noticeably in the course of the 14^th and 15^th centuries, partly due to the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Under King Henry VIII, however, the English crown set about strengthening its authority on the island again ^[59]. In 1542, Ireland was declared a kingdom and Henry VIII was crowned King of Ireland. From then on, attempts were made to enforce English rule not only through military subjugation of the native princes, but also, since the reigns of Mary I ( d. 1558 ) and Elizabeth I ( d. 1603 ), through a renewed policy of settlement, the so-called plantations ^[60]. In contrast to the colonisation of Ireland in the 12^th and 13t^h centuries, this process increasingly assumed a confessional dimension. It was in this 16^th century context that the distinction between the predominantly Catholic ‘Old English’, as descendants of the earlier Anglo-Norman colonists, and the Protestant ‘New English’, who now came to the island, emerged ^[61]. In any case, the changed situation created both a renewed focus on the political and social situation in Ireland and a renewed need for the English to legitimise the conquest.

Protestant authors like Edmund Spenser ( d. 1599 ) and John Hooker ( d. 1601 ) not only extensively read the writings of Gerald of Wales, but also drew on his ideas. In his ‘A View of the Present State of Ireland’ of 1596, Spenser attributed the alleged evils of the Irish to their wicked laws, customs and religion ^[62]. In particular, he saw the use of the Irish language as dangerous, as the Statutes of Kilkenny had done in the 14^th century. Edmund Spenser, known not least as the poet of ‘The Faerie Queene’, in which Elizabeth I is praised, had grown up in England but moved to Ireland in 1580 to serve the royal Lord Deputy of Ireland Arthur Grey ( d. 1593 ). In Ireland, Spenser was involved in the plantations in the south of the island, in the course of which he himself acquired land near Cork ^[63].

In addition to the conventional polemics against the native Irish population, which Spenser reproduced in the tradition of Gerald of Wales and Ranulf Higden, he as well as John Hooker went even one step further. In ‘A View on the Present State of Ireland’ Spenser now attributed the disturbed condition of the country in the first place to the recalcitrance of the ( mainly Catholic ) Old English lords in Ireland. For Spenser, as well as for Hooker, it was the Irish population of English descent that was primarily in need of reform ^[64]. This view was, in any case, not least a reflection of the Desmond Rebellions of the 1570s and 1580s in which the Catholic ( and to large degree Gaelic speaking ) dynasty of the FitzGeralds had taken up arms against the extension of the English government over their province. In 1569–1573 and again in 1579–1583, when Spenser lived in Ireland, the FitzGerald dynasty, whose head was the Earl of Desmond in southern Ireland, rose up against the expansion of English rule on the island, as it was being promoted under Elizabeth I ^[65]. The aim of the FitzGeralds, who, like other Old English families, had acculturated to their Gaelic environment in a paradigmatic way ^[66], was to defend their independence from the English crown. It was in the course of the suppression of this rebellion, however, that the plantations in the south of Ireland, in which Spenser participated, were significantly advanced.

It might be seen in this context that Spenser and other Protestant English authors effectively turned the old criticism of the native Gaelic population, inaugurated to a large degree by Gerald of Wales, against the communities of the ‘Old English’ in Ireland, stating, for example, that the descendants of the original Anglo-Norman conquerors of the island had become much more lawless and licentious than the very wild Irish. The motifs and topoi of ‘barbarism’ that Gerald of Wales had used to illustrate the inferiority of the native Irish are recalled by Spenser and applied to the ‘English’ of 16^th-century Ireland, from whom the cheifest abuses which are nowe in that realme emanated ^[67]. It was they who now made reform in Ireland necessary through English intervention ^[68].

Significantly, Spenser leaves no doubt as to the specific reasons why the Old English, who are repeatedly described as very brute and uncivill ^[69] or very badd and barbarous ^[70], have themselves become savage and barbaric over time. Spenser explicitly raises this question as a problem in need of explanation in order to formulate a definite answer to it. In his treatise, which is conceived as a dialogue between a certain Eudoxus and an Irenaeus, Eudoxus wonders with regard to the Old English in Ireland how it is possible that people could change their ‘nature’ so much: That seemeth very straunge which you say, that men should soe much degenerate from theyr first natures as to growe wilde ^[71]. Irenaeus then explains how this change in nature came about: This process is due to the fact that the once honourable English, who came to Ireland, have over time adopted the language, customs and manners of their Irish environment. The noble families from England had, as is stated, lost their ancient dignity through licentious conversing with the Irish. As a result of this cultural adoption, the Old English, who are henceforth born in Ireland, were somehow nurtured ‘as Irish’:

Other greate howses there be of the old English in Ireland, which through licentious conversing with the Irish, or marrying, or fostering them, or lacke of good nurture, or other such unhappye occasions, have degenerated from theyr auncient dignitye, and are nowe growen as Irish [ … ] ^[72].

Thus, Spenser makes it abundantly clear that he sees the change in the nature of the Old English as a direct result of the fact that the descendants of the former conquerors had appropriated the cultural practices of the Irish. The evill customs which he regards as very badd and barbarous had been, as he explicitly states, borrowed from the Irish. Among these cultural phenomena he counts, similar to the observations of the ‘Statutes of Kilkenny’, particularly theyr apparel, theyr language, theyr riding, and many other the like ^[73]. However, while Spenser also considers the way of riding as a culturally distinctive practice specifically associated to be ‘Irish’, he emphasises that it is above all the adoption of the Irish language that is responsible for the colonists’ transformation. Spenser speaks of the abuse of language and condemns the fact that the Old English would love a foreign language more than theyr owne ^[74]. In a significant passage, which he puts into Irenaeus’ mouth, Spenser explains that it was the adoption of the Irish language by the conquerors which primarily brought about the changes in their character.

He begins by explaining that the adoption of the Irish language was brought about by marriage to the Irish and the children growing up under the supervision of Irish nurses. As a result, the children would inevitably learn their first language from the nursemaid. At the same time, however, this would entail the adoption of customs and attitudes. Because, along with the milk and the language the children receive from the nurses, they would also absorb their nature and disposition ^[75]. Spenser then explains in more detail how this process of ‘internalisation’ of nature and disposition takes place. This has something to do with the relationship between language and mind. Words, it is said, are images of the mind. Therefore, the mind is shaped by words. This, however, is the reason why the adoption of the Irish language simultaneously moulds the entire character of the children. For if the language is Irish, then the heart must also become Irish. The tongue, it is said, speaks from the fullness of the heart ^[76].

If a child receives most of his nature from its mother through the adoption of language, behaviour and inclinations, by which it is framed and fashioned, Spenser asks, how could anything other than an evill race emerge from this? ^[77] The model Spenser creates here to explain the colonists’ change of character towards an “evil race” has far-reaching implications. Spenser explicitly rejects the idea of innate characteristics of an ethnic group, but sees children as creatures who receive their ‘nature’ in the course of socialisation and education. Children are regarded as little apes who imitate everything they see before them. Above all, however, it is the acquisition of a specific language that shapes the mind and the heart of the child. If the language is Irish, then, according to this explanatory model, the nature and disposition also become Irish. Consequently, in the logic of Spenser’s explanation of the emergence of an evill race, it is the appropriation of foreign cultural practices that brings about a fundamental change in racial dispositions.

Against this background, it is only consistent that Spenser also assumes that the racial transformation of the Old English through which they lost their auncient dignitye could be reversed again. By identifying the main causes of the problem, namely the nurturing of the children in an Irish speaking environment, he can finally also propose solutions, calling for these procedures to be carefully forbidden under threat of penalty ^[78]. If this would be accomplished, Spenser presupposes, the Old English of Ireland could change their nature again and regain their ancient dignity. The evill race of Spenser, therefore, is also an “unstable race”.

Conclusions

As is clear from Spenser and others at the latest, the anti-Irish stereotypes that had been shaped by Gerald of Wales and his reception in the late Middle Ages and early modern period also influenced perceptions of the Old English in Ireland, who had adopted local practices. Admittedly, in the 16^th century the religious component played a much larger role in this perception than in the 14^th century. But the fact that the adoption of cultural practices perceived as specifically ‘Irish’ was viewed with great concern and resentment in the Statutes of Kilkenny of 1366 is undoubtedly related to the discourse of Irish cultural inferiority fashioned by Gerald and others.

However, what these thinking patterns above all encouraged was the perception of differences. For the fact that the appropriation, adoption or adaptation ( whichever concept we use ) of particular practices by a certain group could be observed by contemporaries at all presupposes a perception of difference at the time. The discourses presented in this paper were instrumental in the construction of such a difference that makes the observation of cultural practices and their appropriation as such possible in the first place. Whether it is, therefore, appropriate to speak of ‘cultural appropriation’ in this specific context is certainly a different question. The reasons of late medieval and early modern observers to judge the adoption of ‘Irish’ cultural phenomena by the English colonists as illegitimate or inappropriate were very different from the reasons that are brought forward by the critics of ‘cultural appropriation’ in current debates. However, the fact that late medieval and early modern observers regarded specific practices as culturally distinctive markers that originally belonged to a certain group and could be taken over by another group ( with significant effects on their perceived nature ) provides important insights into the discursive orders of contemporary constructions of identities.

The question whether this order of discourse was ‘racist’ depends, finally, on the specific concepts of race and racism on which the analysis is based. Karl Ubl has argued with good reason in favour of choosing a narrow definition of the terms, only speaking of race where physical characteristics based on ancestry are attributed to certain groups ^[79]. In contrast, in her 2018 monograph on ‘The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages’, which Ubl critically examines, Geraldine Heng used a rather broad concept of race that refers to very different forms of cultural essentialisations ^[80]. With regard to Ubl’s definition, the attributions encountered in the context analysed here could only be regarded as ‘racist’ to a very limited extent and at best in rudimentary ways. Stereotyping here referred primarily to cultural practices and behaviour, not to biological features, as claimed in the portrayal of the Irish in the 19^th century. A basic analogy to modern racist discourses could then at most be seen, if at all, in the animalisation of the Irish. Gerald of Wales and his later recipients endeavoured to place the Irish near animals and thus clearly in the lower range of the scale of rational creatures. Even if they were not excluded from the group of rational creatures, they were thus placed on an inferior rank of human beings. A similarity to modern patterns of racial thinking could be found at most in this respect, although this form of animalisation was not justified craniologically or phrenologically, with regard to the skull shape, as in 19^th-century discourses.

Nevertheless, one must take into account that some contemporaries speak explicitly of ‘race’ with regard to specific groups. For Edmund Spenser, the descendants of English colonists in Ireland represented an “evil race”. The reason he gave for this is revealing for the specific concept of race that the contemporary observer himself assumed. In his understanding, this attribution was based on the fact that the Old English in Ireland had turned into an evil race because their nature and disposition had changed over time. For Spenser, the characteristics of this race were not based on innate and hereditary features. The reason for the change in character of the once honourable English colonists was that they had adopted the cultural practices, customs and traditions of their Irish environment. Spenser is actually developing a theory of racial transformation, which is based on the assumption that the adaption of a language has decisive effects on the mind and heart of human beings. As the Old English had adopted the Irish language, which they were taught by their Irish nursemaids, from whom they received most of their nature, their mind and heart had become Irish as well. It is for this reason that their customs and forms of behaviours are judged badd and barbarous in the tradition of Gerald of Wales.

Within the framework of this order of discourse, however, there are in fact clearly distinct ‘races’ which are marked off by well delineated characteristics. But these races are not biologically determined or stable in any way. This concept of race is “stable only in its instability”, as Gerald of Wales had claimed in an entirely different sense, referring to the alleged fickleness and volatility of the Irish ^[81]. For Spenser and others, however, it was possible to change a racial nature by ‘appropriating’ foreign cultural practices. In this sense, he promoted a concept of “unstable races” that was intrinsically connected to a specific notion of cultural appropriation.