Scottish poet Robbie Burns pleaded for the gift “to see oursels as ithers see us!” [to see ourselves as others see us]. On this island, we have always been keen to know what others think of us.
Londoner Dr Samuel Johnson just might have been impressed when he said: “the Irish are a fair people; – they never speak well of one another.”
It is certainly a more elegant phrase than Donald Trump’s in Dublin last month when he said certain of us were “vicious bastards”. It was meant as a Maga USA compliment.
For Winston Churchill, it was simpler: “We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English”, while we just bewildered Sigmund Freud, who said the Irish were “one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever”.
RM Block
But, for a comprehensive analysis of who we were – and still may be – we must go back to the 12th century and Welshman Giraldus Cambrensis. He was not impressed.
He found us “a rude [primitive] people, subsisting on the produce of their cattle only, and living themselves like beasts - a people that has not yet departed from the primitive habits of pastoral life.” We held “agricultural labour in contempt” with “little coveting the wealth of towns, as well as being exceedingly averse to civil institutions”.
We did not bother with “any kind of trade or mechanical art”, instead abandoning ourselves “to idleness, and immersed in sloth”, while our “greatest delight is to be exempt from toil”, and our “richest possession the enjoyment of liberty”.
But there was a compliment. “The only thing to which I find that this people apply a commendable industry is playing upon musical instruments, in which they are incomparably more skilful than any other nation I have ever seen. For their modulation on these instruments, unlike that of the Britons to which I am accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the harmony is both sweet and gay.” How awful!
[ Let’s have a competition for a new national anthemOpens in new window ]
“Averse to civil institutions”, their “richest possession [was] the enjoyment of liberty” while “incomparably more skilful than any other nation” at playing musical instruments.
Sounds like the very definition of craic.
Let’s be grateful we’re not like that any more.
The Irish, from Old English Iras, for “inhabitant of Ireland”, itself from Old Irish Eriu.
