Futility of the Vicious Anti- Irish Decrees

These vicious decrees, like similar earlier ones, fell most heavily on the colonists, and, like those, they were ignored or evaded. They were directed, indeed, against the social and economic life of the country.

Irish language, dress and customs prevailed every-where even within the Pale itself. The limits of the Pale were too narrow for its impoverished inhabitants to be able to exist if shut off from trade and intercourse with the country around.

When Mac Riocaird Butler wrote in the Saltair of Caiseal, it was in Irish ; when Desmond’s grandson placed the facts of the Great Earl’s death before the Council, it was in Irish ; Kildare’s great library in Maynooth Castle had as many books in Irish as in any other language.

Desmond, Ormonde and Kildare all practised fosterage and gossipred, married with Irish families, and fought side by side with them in each other’s quarrels. In the Pale itself we hear the sad complaint in 1498 that the burghers of Kells, Trim, Navan and Dundalk use the Irish dress. The races had become completely fused despite the efforts of the ” new English ” officials.