Page 159 - Demo

Chapter Five 159
instead of the Irish people being grief-stricken by Bruce’s demise, a great sigh of relief went up from them. In fact, one Annalist referred to Bruce as “the destroyer of Ireland in general, both of the English and the Gaedhil.” He continued:
“There was not a better deed that redounded more to the good of the kingdom, since the creation of the world, and since the banishment of the Finé Fomores out of this land, done in Ireland, than the killing of Edward Bruce; for there reigned scarcity of victual, breach of promises, ill performance of covenants, and the loss of men and women, throughout the whole kingdom, for the space of three years and a half that he bore sway; insomuch that men did commonly eat one another for want of sustenance, during his time.”
The failure of the Bruce campaign did not, however, halt the resurgence of the Gaedhil. Several important Norman settlements had been destroyed during the war and by 1350 the Normans were inding it diicult to hold on to many of their earlier conquests-the hour was fast approaching when their inluence was to be still further diminished. By this time the English monarchy was convinced that the conquest of Ireland would never be successfully achieved by the methods that had been employed since 1169, and already alarmed at the steady recovery of the Irish, a new and greater threat confronted them-the Gaelicization of the Normans themselves. Just as their Norse ancestors had become French in France, so too these settlers were now rapidly becoming Irish in Ireland. They spoke the Irish language, adopted Irish customs, inter-married with native Irish families, and often retained land ac- cording to Irish law.
Many of them became, in efect, Irish chiefs, and this association with the natives gradu- ally brought them under the inluence of Irish literature, music, and mode of living. In Eng- land, about this time, a somewhat similar change was taking place. There, too, the Normans were rapidly losing their French language and customs and were being absorbed by the English, and even in the time of Henry 11 (1154-1189) one chronicler stated that “already the English and Normans, dwelling together and inter-marrying, are so mixed that it can scarcely be determined who is English and who is of Norman birth.”
The Norman-French language of the conquerors had blended with the Anglo-Saxon of the native, to such an extent that it resulted in what we today term the “English” language and it became so popular, so quickly, that in 1362 this new speech replaced Norman-French