13 - English in eighteenth-century Ireland

Summary

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to look at the development of the English language in eighteenth-century Ireland. By the eighteenth century English had been in the country for over 500 years, but its distribution was nothing like what it was to become in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although English established itself in the late twelfth century on the east coast of Ireland, the language played, and was to play, a minor role beside the two further languages of late medieval Ireland, Irish and Anglo-Norman (Hickey 1997). The invasion of Ireland from west Wales in 1169 was orchestrated by the Anglo-Norman lords of the Welsh marches in Pembrokeshire in south-west Wales. The English speakers who came in their retinue were not on the same social level as the Anglo-Normans, who quickly became the military leaders in Ireland. English in late medieval Ireland was confined to towns along the east coast, among tradesmen and artisans, while power resided with the Anglo-Normans. Despite this situation, English never died out in Ireland as Anglo-Norman was to do in the centuries following the initial invasion. The Normans assimilated linguistically and socially to the Irish in the countryside and their language had disappeared by the sixteenth century. The English showed less inclination to assimilate and the support they got from the fact that Ireland was an English colony further bolstered the position of English.

Nonetheless, the story of English in Ireland is not one of a continuous replacement of Irish by English.