More Irish than the Irish themselves
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"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 wholesale identification with all things Irish. While this phenomenon was associated with earlier invaders, such as the Anglo-Normans, it was not associated with later arrivals from the seventeenth century onwards.