Old English (Ireland)
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The Old English were a wave of early medieval Norman, French, Welsh, English, Breton and Flemish settlers who went to Ireland to claim territory and lands in the wake of the Norman invasion. Though English governments expected the Old English to promote English rule in Ireland, many soon abandoned their English identity, adopted the native Irish language and religious customs and marrying the mere Irish (contemporary term meaning pure Irish, mere meaning pure in contemporary English), and came to be called more Irish than the Irish themselves.
In contrast, the New English, the wave of invaders who came to Ireland from the Elizabethan era onwards, kept their English identity, religious, social and cultural traditions and unlike the Normans and the Old English, remained distinct and separate from the rest of Ireland.
The earliest known reference to an "Old English" community is in the 1580s (Canny, Reform and Restoration). The community of Norman descent prior to then used numerous epithets to describe themselves but it was only as a result of the cess crisis 1556-1583 that they began to form into an identifiable Old English community. Some contend it is ahistorical to trace a single "Old English" community back to 1169 as the real Old English community was a product of the late sixteenth century in the Pale. Until then identity was much more fluid; it was the administration's policies which created an oppositional and clearly defined Old English community.
Mac Lysaght makes the distinction in his Surnames of Ireland book between 'Hiberno-Norman' and 'Anglo-Norman' surnames. This sums up the fundamental difference between "Queen's English Rebels" and the Loyal Lieges. The Na Gearaltaigh of Munster, for instance, could not accurately be described as "Old English" as that was not their political and cultural world. The Butlers of Ormond on the other hand could not accurately be described as 'Hiberno-Norman' in their political outlook and alliances, especially after they married into the English royal family.
Some historians now refer to them as "Cambro-Normans", and Seán Duffy of Trinity College, Dublin invariably uses that term rather than the misleading "Anglo-Norman" (most Normans came via Wales, not England), but after many centuries here and just a century in Wales or England it seems quite odd that their entire history since 1169 is now known by a description, Old English, which only came in the late sixteenth century.
Brendan Bradshaw, in his study of the poetry of late sixteenth century Tír Chónaill, points out that in the Irish the Normans were not called Seanghaill there but rather they were called Fionnghaill and Dubhghaill. He argued in a lecture to the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute in University College, Dublin that the poets referred to those of Norman stock who were completely hibernicised thus with the purpose of granting them a longer vintage in Ireland that they had (Fionnghaill- Norwegian vikings; Dubhghaill= Danish vikings). This follows on from his earlier arguments that the term Éireannaigh as we currently know it also emerged during this period in the poetry books of the Uí Bhroin of Wicklow as a sign of unity between Gaeil and Gaill; he viewed it as a sign of an emerging Irish nationalism. Breandán Ó Buachalla essentially agreed with him, Tom Dunne and Tom Bartlett were less sure.