ABSTRACT
Commenting in A View o f the Present State o f Ireland upon what he regards as the “degeneracy” of the Old English families that have adopted the Gaelic language, Spenser observes that “wordes are the Image of the minde So as they procedinge from the minde the minde must be nedes affected with the wordes So that the speache beinge Irishe the harte muste nedes be Irishe for out of the abundance of the harte the tongue speakethe” (p. 119).1 Similarly, Fynes Moryson regarded the adoption of the Gaelic language as a “tuchstone” of “inward affection” demonstrating an unwillingness on the part of the “English Irish” to “apply themselves any way to the English, or not to followe the Irish in all thinges.”2 These remarks activate habits of linguistic discrimination stretching back to the ancient Greeks for whom “barbarism” was primarily a semantic concept: originally “barbarians” were those who could not speak Greek but made incomprehensible “babbling” noises (like bar bar)? By extension, “barbarians” were those who did not share in what were held to be the superior cultural attainments of the Greek-speaking world. Latin speakers were initially regarded as “barbarians” but, after the conquest of Greece and the consequent Hellenizing of Roman civilization, the Romans redefined the notion of barbarity in such a way as to exclude themselves but to embrace all those living beyond the boundaries-and against the perceived values-of the Graeco-Roman world. The category of the “barbaric” was therefore fluid and changeable, constructed and deconstructed as the need arose, and entirely dependent upon cultural, and to a large extent linguistic, perspectives. As St. Paul observed, “if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me” (1 Corinthians 14.11).
