SOURCE: Jones, W. R. “Giraldus Redivivus: English Historians, Irish Apologists, and the Works of Gerald of Wales.” Eire-Ireland 9, no. 3 (autumn 1974): 3-20.

In the following essay, Jones examines responses to Gerald's controversial accounts of the Irish.

The English have never been especially complimentary of Celtic civilization; and, from the time of the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland in the twelfth century forward, words such as “barbarous,” “warlike,” “treacherous,” “slothful,” and “cruel” have come naturally to the minds of Englishmen contemplating their country's Irish neighbors. The ancient geographers, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and Solinus, tended to place the misty Celtic realms beyond the pale of Mediterranean civilization; and early medieval authors such as Bede portrayed the Scots and Irish as typical “barbarians.”¹ During the Middle Ages the apparent contrast between the pastoral, itinerant, and kinship oriented society of the Irish and the feudal, manorial, urban, and more centralized Anglo-French civilization of southeast...