James Frain

Caption

This may seem a little macabre, but not to me, because this was a part of a *roots trip* me and my brother Matt undertook. We rented a car, drove across Ireland (while I was shooting “An Awfully Big Adventure in Dublin in 1995) and headed for the town of Ballaghaderreen in County Roscommon—which has a stunning number of Frain’s, Freynes, and every other imaginable spelling of this ancient Norman-origin name. The Normans colonized Ireland in the 11th Century—after successfully colonizing England. Whereas in England, they completely took over the country &, over 500 years, integrated with the Anglo-Saxon population (thus creating the modern idea of “the English” & the Germanic/French “English” language) in Ireland they didn’t bring off the same level of integration. So the two peoples remained structurally separate until very late, which is in some sense the beginning of the ancient English/ Irish conflict. It seems the Frain families settled over the years, because my gene test came back 98% Celtic and only 2% Norweigan (as the Normans were Viking invaders who took over northern France—so remained genetically “Northmen” from “The Northland”). The pre-Norman tribal history of relentless waves of invasion by the Romans, the Angels, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Danes (who occupied half of England under “the Danelaw”) & the Vikings, has been forgotten out of British history, so the English genuinely seem to believe that they are some kind of organic race—whereas we are a combination of centuries of invasion from various different tribal & imperial formations. “English” is an artificial category. The 19th century invention of the category of “whiteness” further obliterated all this history. Whiteness is an even more artificial invention of the imperial colonizing genocide & slavery 17th to 20th century period. English = Germanic/French, with Danish & Latin influences—one of the reasons why it’s so difficult to learn—and why there are so many different grammatical rules. The Celtic people were not native to the islands either—they were a tribal people from central Europe. There are no native peoples. Ultimately, we all come from Africa.