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.