I believe that the Irish kept extremely good relations with Spain. Spain was traditionally an enemy of England, and just because of that, the irish would have kept Spain in high regard. There was also Catholicism (after Henry VIII separated England from the Catholic church). I have read somewhere that the Irish families who could afford it sent their children to Spanish universities, so they could study under a Catholic educational system. In the University of Salamanca the Irish College (Colegio Mayor Irlandés) is still standing as a witness to the fact that it was not just a few Irish students who attended the university there.
The ancient ‘myths’ would appear to be correct - by far the largest gentic input to Irish blood stock and to a lesser extent British would appear to be from the areas settled by the Basque people of north eastern Iberia during the last ice age when the British Isles were uninhabitable.
Whether this has anything to do with the shared Irish and Basque tradition of blowing things up in independence struggles no-one seems to be sure, or willing to say… 
Irish people - Wikipedia (more references therein)
Perhaps it is more accurate to claim that the Celts, who colonized Spain and whose kids continued on to colonize Britain, ran out of destinations once they reached Ireland ca1000BC. While the relationships of DNA and crappy cuisine cannot be denied, the Basques, Spanish, and Irish languages do not share a recent common ancestor, which means that a bunch of yahoos from out of town adopted the local tongue when they started farming and marrying the local yokels.
ETA: Who couldn’t cook, either.
Oh, and I suspect the OP refers to this column.
The relationship between Ireland and Spain is closer than most imagine. Philip II of Spain was once king of Ireland, ruling jointly with his wife Mary of England. Very arguably, on Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s accession to the throne of England, Ireland ought to have remained the possession of Spain - and we would today have King Juan Carlos na hÉireann.
Certainly there is a lot of Spanish blood in Ireland dating back to historical times. Here in Galway, we have a historical monument called the “Spanish Arch”, originally a gateway in the fortifications through which Spanish trading galleons entered the city. The most important trade was in Spanish wines, which were mostly then sold from here to England. Many city buildings are constructed above spacious wine cellars.
So a lot of the Spanish did settle here and intermarry. However it should be noted that the people they were marrying were not native Irish but the descendants of early colonists from England and Wales, who were in turn of predominantly Norman stock - all part of Ireland’s rich ethnic tapestry. Native Irish people were not allowed to roam Galway freely during this period - though the fact that the town needed to enact laws against the adoption of Irish dress, manners and speech would suggest that the colonists were beginning to go native. This is something the Normans were always good at.
Actually Cecil’s swipe disparages one of the outstanding peoples of the medieval period. After all, the Normans conquered England, as well as swathes of France and Italy. They were an astonishingly successful people. The secret of their success appears to be a combination of extreme violence and a willingness to learn from and adapt to the peoples they conquered. The name is a cognate of “Northman” or “Norseman” - in other words, they were Vikings. Vikings who spoke French.
Cecil uncharacteristically errs of course when he calls the Gael “Ireland’s original inhabitants”. While it seems likely that they were the people who brought in what we now call the Irish language (Gaelic), they would have been preceded by other groups of the peoples we now loosely describe as Celtic (possibly more similar to the Welsh) and before that by bronze- and stone-age pioneers. They were followed by (mainly Norwegian) Vikings, by Normans and by English. It is entirely arguable that the Gael had no more significant an impact of the genetic makeup of modern Ireland than any of these other groups. They may, like the English after them, have been essentially a ruling elite. It seems very likely that the largest single contribution to the Irish genepool was donated by the first people to populate the country after the last ice age. These would have been stone age people, the ones who created the mysterious and impressive stone circles and tombs that are still found everywhere in Ireland and north-western Europe.
The Basques may well, as ryand above mentions, be the only people who still speak the language of those pioneers. Theirs bears no apparent relation to any of its neighbors, which we know were brought in by cultural movements mostly within historical times. But I don’t think it’s the case that the Basques populated Ireland - rather that a single group expanded into all western Europe as the last ice age receded. It is in the less accessible parts of Europe - in particular the mountainous Basque country, but to some extent also Ireland - that these traits are less overlaid by later movements. We resemble the Basques genetically (and more anecdotally, we look quite like them) because we share more of those first-generation European genes, having less input from overlaying influxes of Celtic, Roman and Germanic groups.
That’s one theory.
Another is that thanks to the warm gulf stream current, the west of Ireland and the Basque country were bastions where people actually managed to hold out through the last ice age, so we retain some of the genetic makeup of a people who were driven out of Europe a very long time ago. They (we?) survived on grain crops, a diet very low in vitamin D - hence the loss of melanin in our skins and hair, and the fact that I now have sunburn after merely spending a sun-dappled afternoon outdoors…
Good to know I might be able to survive an ice age though.
The Gaels are the original people of Ireland of historic times. But, yes, their prehistoric arrival was quite late – well into historic times for other parts of Europe.
One thing to remember is that Ireland used to be a thorn in the Popes’ sides. The Irish only decided to be super-Catholic when they realized it would get up England’s nose.
Most people (even people with names like “Barry”) have forgotten that the Yola people and language ever existed.
I had always thought I read that those survivors of the Armada who washed up on the Irish coast ending up being killed by the Irish anyway. Correct me please if I’m wrong, I date finding out that I’ve misremembered, but better to find out sooner rather than later.
I think I remember something that may or may not be the programme mentioned in your BBC link. A survey done of genes throughout the British Isles, showing that most people were 50/50 (IIRC) Celt/Anglo Saxon, with a thin sliver in a sort of line from Spain to Ireland, cutting through parts of England and Wales. If, that it, I’m remembering correctly :rolleyes:
It was an accident. They accidentally walked into pitchforks. All of them.
That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
I think it’s less that we have forgotten, more that we never heard heard of them before…
It’s an interesting tangent though.
This is pure unadulterated WAG, but I’d heard, I don’t know where, that when sailors from the Spanish Armada washed up in Ireland, many were mercilessly cut down by the local Irish – common enemy notwithstanding, they were foreign military on their clan’s land, and they didn’t get any mercy.
I may have heard it on some random PBS special or History channel program, although it directly conflicts with Cecil’s citations. Did anyone ever hear anything to support that the Irish clans attacked shipwrecked Spanish Armada sailors?
EDIT
Humph, I should read more carefully. Thanks Pushkin: and dropzone:, you guys woouldn’t happen to have citations or sources, would you?
The brilliant fiddle player from the group Teada is named Oisin Mac Diarmada. Does anyone have any insight or speculation as to the origin of that name? I’ve always been curious.
Oisin was the name of a legendary Irish hero and the narrator of the Fenian Cycle, one of the major pieces of ancient Celtic poetry. He’s also referred to as Ossian. Mac Diarmada means “the son of Diarmada”, and is usually Anglicized as McDermott.
Not that Wikipedia is the best source, but if you look under “Landfall” in this article, it’ll tell you what happened to the crews of the various ships (usually either slaughtered on the shore or captured and executed, but a few got back to Spain)
Costello, deValera, O’Higgins… there’s been plenty of back and forth between the two peoples for centuries.
The national hero of Chile is Bernardo O’Higgins. When a Bolivian pal of mine found out he was going to be a father, I told him he should give the kid a decent South American name like Fujimori or O’Higgins. He chuckled.
Costello isn’t Spanish, it’s Anglo-Norman. There was a Norman knight named Jocelyn de Angulo who was given land in Ireland. His descendents got the name “Mac Goisdelbh”-Irish Gaelic for “Son of Jocelyn”, which turned into Costello.
Eamon de Valera was the son of a Cuban father (who’s last name was de Valera or de Valero) and Irish mother (who’s last name was Coll) who met in New York.
Bernardo O’Higgins was the son of Ambrose O’Higgins, who emigrated from Ireland to Spain (and then joined the Spanish imperial service and was sent to Chile) to escape poverty and anti-Catholic discrimination.
son of Diarmaid, actually. “Diarmada” is the genitive case.
Actually, Eamon de Valera was probably an illegitimate child whose mother, Catherine Coll, made up a story about being married to someone named Juan de Valera so that she didn’t have to admit not being married when Eamon was born:
Various BBC documentaries, nothing handier than that unfortunately. The last I heard the claim was on the series Battlefield Britain.
You can watch that episode on [del]You Tube[/del] Google Video! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9212478137300825714
I talk about this with a relative. We also discuss: Was Zorro Irish? Was Che Guevara Irish? I don’t like his certainty that Armada survivors must have been killed by the Irish because there was a bounty on their heads. Chocolate bars aside, this kind of historical certainty worries me. Personally, I do not like to think that humans are in a mad rush to kill other humans. It helps to hate the other person first. I would ask people not to have a certain conclusion about questions of history such as this.