Question about Protestant Landlords

Fratton Fred

Morlar wrote: »

Latin origins aside I think it's plain what was meant by the use of the word 'mere' (in relation to 'the mere irish') and purity has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

believe what you like. just try a quick google on Mere Irish and draw your own conclusions.

Morlar

Fratton Fred wrote: »

believe what you like. just try a quick google on Mere Irish and draw your own conclusions.

You could be right actually - ahem. I suppose it depends on when exactly it was used really & in what context.

http://books.google.ie/books?q=&btnG=Search+Books

search for

a history of ireland peter and summerset fry

then search that book for

mere irish

p373

4. Although 'degenerate' was not originally any more derogatory than 'mere' - it simply referred to people who lives outside the culture of their race (de generis) - it soon became so.

p 343

The phrase merus hibernicus 'mere Irish' has commonly been taken as an insult. This is a misunderstanding of the medieval meaning of the word 'mere' which at that time meant 'pure' or 'only'. Later when Elizabeth I of england was crowned in 1558 she described herself to her people as 'mere english'. She would never have used the phrase in such a context if it had a derogatory meaning.

Fratton Fred

Morlar wrote: »

You could be right actually - ahem. I suppose it depends on when exactly it was used really & in what context.

And that, my friend, is how wars start

Morlar

Fratton Fred wrote: »

And that, my friend, is how wars start

True I suppose. Invading other peoples' countries doesn't tend to help either


/shakes fist !

MarchDub

I am aware of the discussion surrounding the word "mere" - it has become a topic especially amongst those who want to negate the word and maybe distract from the reality of what the Plantation laws actually meant to the native population. And the discussion IS nothing more than a distraction. But there is also the reality that Shakespeare uses it in our sense - of superlative and comparative value - and Milton in 1642 uses the phrase "the merest, the falsest figure, the most unfortunate gift of fortune".

Staneyhurst [who else?] uses the phrase like this - "The disposition and manners of the mere Irish, commonly called the Wild Irish".

One way or another - the articles of Plantation pertaining to the Ulster Catholic Irish [mere or otherwise] were purposely set up to establish a segregated region in which the natives would have no economic position at all. The initial plan - hope - was to drive them out but this proved to be wishful thinking on the part of the planners.

MarchDub

Found another reference to "mere Irish" used in less than complimentary way in my copy of "Ireland under Elizabeth and James I" by Edmund Spencer.

He is here describing the Norman settlers who assimilated with the native Irish...you really have to just laugh at this IMO. The "better sort" left Ireland folks! How about that for a fair and balanced view?


"Besides, the English lords, to strengthen their parties, did ally themselves with the Irish, and drew them in to dwell among them, gave their children to be fostered by them, and having no other means to pay or reward them, suffered them to take coigny and livery upon the English freeholders; which oppression was so intolerable as that the better sort were enforced to quit their freeholds and fly into England, and never returned, though many laws were made in both realms to remand them back again; and the rest which remained became degenerate and mere Irish, as is before declared."

focus_mad

*the tenants were unhappy having landlords ?

Some landlords actually did alot of good for their tenants. During the famine, a number of landlords in the West of Ireland gave their tenants food from their own country homes which was unheard of at the time.

(I don'y know if this question has already been answered!!)