My dear, I'm half Irish of the Feinian variety. On my mother's side I count relatives in Crossmaglen and Teer, both in Co. Armagh. It is in the nature of all English folk to be many parts of some other culture, and it has been, on and off, since before Roman times. We are, after all, a bastard mongrel people, with all the genetic advantages that accrue to such - health; genetic dispersion for advantage (as the Blessed Richard Dawkins tells in his missal 'On the Selfishness of Genes'); an hybrid culture which gave us an hybrid language, wherein (to use Eliot's phrase) it can move from the Romance to the High Gothic in the span of a single sentence. Nasty, Piratical, and Ingenious is where we started....add charm and a classical education and you would tend to get what used to be regarded as the better bits of Englishness. Until our ship comes in that is: when we retire to the country, wear tweeds, and breed, hopefully with another bastard mongrel person that speaks our language and knows our codes. That's all it takes to be an English person: Speak our language, Know and respect our codes. To which I might add another, that pisses off the rest of the world: effortless superiority. Quod erat demonstrandum: of course God is an Englishman. However, it ain't made easy by the fact that England has been around for a long time, and its codes are remarkably recondite, and to the outside observer, quite abstruse. Also there has been, over the years, precedent for just about any action one can think of. Cut your wife's head off for you, sire? Smother some poor innocent little princes in the Tower for you, Crookback, oh it's you in disguise, Bolingbroke, but the question still stands. Abolish slavery for you sir?
To use the modern argot: we done lots of bad things man, but we're not quite the same folk we were then. But we will compete....lots of Irish Republican legend is now being seen for what it was really. Sometimes you have to build a nation, and sometimes you do better by concentrating on your opponents mistakes: but I feel such thinking is old and worn out now between Ireland and England, but perhaps not to the Irish-Americans....I have a cousin who was an organiser for Noraid: even in '94 he was talking about the need to reconcile both traditions in the North. There's hope yet.
no subject
On my mother's side I count relatives in Crossmaglen and Teer, both in Co. Armagh.
It is in the nature of all English folk to be many parts of some other culture, and it has been, on and off, since before Roman times. We are, after all, a bastard mongrel people, with all the genetic advantages that accrue to such - health; genetic dispersion for advantage (as the Blessed Richard Dawkins tells in his missal 'On the Selfishness of Genes'); an hybrid culture which gave us an hybrid language, wherein (to use Eliot's phrase) it can move from the Romance to the High Gothic in the span of a single sentence.
Nasty, Piratical, and Ingenious is where we started....add charm and a classical education and you would tend to get what used to be regarded as the better bits of Englishness. Until our ship comes in that is: when we retire to the country, wear tweeds, and breed, hopefully with another bastard mongrel person that speaks our language and knows our codes.
That's all it takes to be an English person:
Speak our language,
Know and respect our codes.
To which I might add another, that pisses off the rest of the world: effortless superiority.
Quod erat demonstrandum: of course God is an Englishman. However, it ain't made easy by the fact that England has been around for a long time, and its codes are remarkably recondite, and to the outside observer, quite abstruse. Also there has been, over the years, precedent for just about any action one can think of.
Cut your wife's head off for you, sire?
Smother some poor innocent little princes in the Tower for you, Crookback, oh it's you in disguise, Bolingbroke, but the question still stands.
Abolish slavery for you sir?
To use the modern argot: we done lots of bad things man, but we're not quite the same folk we were then. But we will compete....lots of Irish Republican legend is now being seen for what it was really. Sometimes you have to build a nation, and sometimes you do better by concentrating on your opponents mistakes: but I feel such thinking is old and worn out now between Ireland and England, but perhaps not to the Irish-Americans....I have a cousin who was an organiser for Noraid: even in '94 he was talking about the need to reconcile both traditions in the North.
There's hope yet.