More Irish than the Irish themselves (slogan)
More Irish than the Irish themselves was a phrase used in the
Middle Ages to describe the phenomenon whereby foreigners who came to
Ireland attached to invasion forces tended to be subsumed into Irish social and cultural society, adopted the
Irish language, Irish culture, style of dress and a wholescale identification with all things Irish. While this phenonemon was associated with earlier invaders, such as the
Normans, it was not associated with later arrivals from the
seventeenth century onwards.