"More Irish than the Irish themselves" is a phrase used in Irish historiography to describe a phenomenon of cultural assimilation in late medieval Norman Ireland.
Relief of coat of arms of the FitzGerald of Desmond in Buttevant Friary. The 3rd Earl of Desmond (known in Irish as Gearóid Iarla) was a prime example of the Gaelicisation of the 'Hiberno-Normans'.
Norman Irish
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Norman Irish or Hiberno-Normans is a modern term for the descendants of Norman settlers who arrived during the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. Most came from England and Wales. T
More Irish than the Irish themselves
…significantly Gaelicised by the end of the Middle Ages, forming septs and clans after the indigenous Gaelic pattern, and became known as the Gall or "Old English" (contrasting with the "New English" arriving with the Tudor conquest of Ireland). The Statutes of Kilkenny, 1366, complained that " ... now many English…
The Pale in 1488
Monument marking the site of the capture and execution of the Earl of Desmond James FitzMaurice FitzGerald in Glanageenty forest, County Kerry.
Kilkenny Castle, seat of the General Assembly of the Irish Confederacy (1642-1652), an independent government composed of Gaelic and Old English Catholic aristocrats
Maurice FitzGerald, Lord of Maynooth, Naas, and Llansteffan, progenitor of the FitzGerald dynasty, from a manuscript of the Expugnatio Hibernica