CDR: Re: Treatment of subjugated people (and bagpipes)

[Jim Dixon]

On Mon, 4 Sep 2000 ocorrain at esatclear.ie wrote:

> >> But do remember that St Patrick 
> >> wasn't Irish at all.  He was an English boy, stolen by Irish pirates
> >> and sold into slavery in Ireland.
> 
> De-lurking briefly to correct this...

Oooooo  Shows what happen when you post casually to the
cypherpunks list ;-)

You are right.  I should have said that he was a British lad.

> St Patrick was a Romano-Briton. There were no English in Britain at the
> time he lauched his Irish mission. There was no English language, and
> certainly no English identity. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes that make
> up the English (an identity that only established itself when the
> Franco-Norman ruling dynasty in England lost its territories in France)
> were spread across Germany and Denmark at the time.
> 
> >> But this is mostly just laziness.  When Patrick didn't do what he
> >> was told, I'm sure that his masters made no effort to learn his
> >> language.  They just shouted at him louder in Gaelic.
> 
> Patrick would have spoken Gaelic or Latin as his first language. The
> Irish would have been no more difficult to understand than a Californian
> to a Noo Yawker. The upper echelons of Irish society may even have
> spoken Latin.

Several authorities, eg the Cathoic Encyclopedia, say that St Patrick
became fluent in the language of the Irish while in slavery.  Some
claim that he was born in Scotland, some say in Wales.  None support
your suggestion that the language of his masters was his native
tongue.  

The real point here is that the Irish, generally portrayed as 
victims of the British, were sometimes victims, sometimes villians --
like most everybody else.  

PS.  I am immensely fond of Ireland; me mother is Irish, in fact ;-)

--
Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015