For Patrick's Day, some opinions of the Irish. One or two probably tell us more about the author than the subject. I posted similar quotations about the Scots one New Year's Eve and intended to do the same for the Irish, until I noticed that too many were about the Irish interest in genealogy, a product of the clan system. English officials, desiring the destruction of the Gaelic order and the adoption of feudal relationships, continually complained about, or sneered at, this custom. I've cut down on the genealogically oriented moaning, and boosted the vituperation level.

Scotus est, piper in naso.
Could have been of the Scots or the Irish, as I opined before. "No sooner a word than a blow", as the saying goes.

All the Irishe almoste, boste them selves to bee gentlemen ... for yf he can deryve him self from the heade of a septe, as most of them can ... then he holdeth him self a gentleman.
(Edmund Spenser, 1596?)

The people in general are great admirers of their pedigrees, and have got their genealogy so exactly learnt that though it would be two hours work for them to repeat the names only from whence they are lineally descended, yet, will they not omit one word in half a dozen several repetitions.
(Richard Head, "The Western Wonder", 1674)

... the Irish are all gentlemen, tho beggars and vagabonds, if they be of a name that has ever a gentleman of it.
(John Dunton, "The Dublin Scuffle", 1699)

Sometimes I addressed myself to certain Hibernian strangers who asked no better; and you should have seen us argue! ... We might have been taken for madmen rather than for philosophers. (Alain-René LeSage, "Gil Blas of Santillana" published serially 1715-1735))
The Irish exiled in mainland Europe were by repute as disputatious as the Scots. The notes to my English translation of LeSage's novel refer to an observation by his contemporary, Montesquieu, the the Irish have " ... a talent for argument that is to be reckoned with."

The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representation of the merits of their countrymen. No, sir, the Irish are a fair people; they never speak well of one another. (Samuel Johnson, 1775)
Another gobshite.

He is a foreigner, he is Irish; republicanism does not penetrate such skulls.
(Dictionary of National Biography, first edition)
The reason given by the French convention commissaries for rejecting General Charles Kilmaine for a command-in-chief, though they described him as "brave, active and dashing".
Wrong!

The uncivilised Irishman ... abides in his squalor and unreason,in his falsity, and drunken violence, as the ready made nucleus of degradation and disorder.
(Thomas Carlyle, 1839)
Carlyle really was an old shit.

Torpid and degraded pariahs
(W.E.H.Lecky, C.1892)
The Irish peasantry, historically.

The great Gaels of Ireland
Are men that God made mad'
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.
(G.K.Chesterton, The ballad of the White Horse" 19??)
Poetic licnce, nobody's wars are merry.

Charming, soft-voiced, quarrelsome, priest-ridden, feckless and happily devoid of the slightest integrity in our stodgy English sense of the word.
(Noel Coward, 1960)
"The times they are a-changing."