Irish, The

The Irish, being physically separated from the rest of the British Isles, remaining predominantly Catholic, and speaking Erse , their own variety of Celtic, have consequently been regarded as outsiders and even foreigners by many in the United Kingdom. This separation was accentuated in medieval times by a significant physical and political barrier called the English Pale, a palisade built by the English colonists to demarcate their territory. Those Irish who were outside or “beyond the pale” were termed “the wild Irish” from as far back as William Langland in the fourteenth century. In time this negative characterization was applied stereotypically to the whole people, as in the unflattering comments made by the King in Shakespeare’s Richard II (II ii 155-58). Ania Loomba makes the point that “Various English administrators such as Edmund Spenser, John Davies, or Fynes Morison describe the Irish as wild, thieving, lawless, blood-drinking, savage, barbarous, naked; these are also the terms routinely used to describe New World Indians” (2002, 41). The subsequent protracted history of colonialism, exploitation, hostility, and violence, leading to the partition of the island under Home Rule in 1922, obviously exacerbated an already bitter situation.

The blason populaire or stereotype subsequently applied to the Irish has focused on such negative qualities as backwardness, belligerence, stupidity, idleness, and dirt, mollified by a charming volubility. These perceptions are reinforced by a number of key terms. Although Dr. Johnson defined bogtrotter in 1755 simply as “one who lives in boggy country,” the term had been applied to the Irish specifically as far back as 1682 in a reference to “an idle flam of shabby Irish Bogtrotters” in the anonymous Philanax Misopappas , “Tory Plot” (II, 18). The term implied an Irishman by about 1800, and since then it has come to denote one. (The political label Tory originally referred to Irish outlaws, robbers, or bandits.)

The term blarney , deriving from Blarney Castle near Cork, has had the negative connotations of “soft, wheedling speeches and flattery to gain some end” since at least its appearance in Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785). A quotation from Walter Scott in 1796 indicates that the flattery is transparent: “I hold it … to be all blarney” (September 26). Authorities such as Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable derive the association of the Castle with flattery and deception from an episode in 1602. In American thieves’ slang the verb blarney has meant “to pick locks” for over a century. However, the legendary power of the Irish rhymers, attested to in Elizabethan times, was commented on by Owen Connellan in relation to the rural Irish of the 1820s: “Many a man, who would kindle into rage at the sight of an armed foe, will be found to tremble at the thought of offending a rhymer” (1860, xxx).

The slightly provocative nickname mick (from Michael ) is recorded from 1850 in American sources, interestingly contemporary with both mickey and paddy (from Padraig , the Irish version of Patrick ). Most of the quoted contexts for mick are stereotypical: “The Micks got to throwing stones through the Methodis’ Sunday School windows” (Mark Twain, Roughing It 1871, 253). From about 1924 mick could also refer generally to a Catholic. The religious provenance has maintained Catholic oaths such as Mary and Joseph and Mother of God , which have either died out or never become established in British speech. Begorrah! , recorded from the mid-nineteenth century, had become an Irish cliché oath, variant of by God! , but is “rarely heard in current speech” ( Oxford English Dictionary ).

The epithet Irish is used ironically in many ethnophaulisms or ethnic slurs harping on their alleged backwardness. Some are of surprising antiquity, and include Irish apricots for potatoes (1785); Irish apples , the same (1890s); Irish hurricane , a flat calm sea (1803); Irish pennant , a dangling rope (1840); Irish dividend , a fictitious profit (1867); Irish clubhouse , jail or police station (1904); Irish confetti for bricks and stones (1913); and Irish ambulance for a wheelbarrow (1931). A great number of these are of American origin, including the use of Irish to denote “fighting spirit, especially in an Irish person.” “It raised the Irish in me pretty quick …,” wrote William Caruthers in A Kentuckian in New York in 1834, continuing “for I jumped up and kicked the table over” (I, 63). The phrase “the fighting Irish” is first recorded about 1830. The use of the term Irishism , or the comment " very Irish ," characterizes a statement that is bizarre, paradoxical, illogical, or a nonsequitur.

Whereas opprobrious comments, ethnic slurs, and xenophobic labels are usually generated by outsiders, the Irish themselves participate enthusiastically in their own denigration. “Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow,” wrote James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916, chapter 5). In the same vein the major contemporary novelist Roddy Doyle writes in The Commitments (1987, 13): “The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads. An’ Dubliners are the niggers of Ireland … An’ the northside Dubliners are the niggers of Dublin—Say it loud. I’m black an’ I’m proud” (quoting the song by James Brown in 1968).

In his major study The Language of Ethnic Conflict (1983), Irving Lewis Allen lists fifty-five nicknames for the Irish in the United States, placing them fourth in the table, behind Blacks, Whites, and Jews. Generally speaking, the terms are not especially offensive, many of them, such as emeralder, mulligan, murphy, pat, peat-bogger , and red-shanks even having a tinge of affection. However, The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1997) marked all the ironic uses of Irish , such as Irish wheelbarrow , as “now usually considered offensive.” From a British perspective it is noteworthy that a study of offensive terms in British broadcasting, A Matter of Manners? (1991), reported the audience view that terms like taffy, jock, mick , and paddy were regarded as being the least unacceptable, in comparison, that is, to terms for Asian and European groups (1991, 17).