English identity was once mocked as a mongrel mixture lacking name or nation.

Evidence

Thus from a Mixture of all kinds began, That Het’rogeneous Thing, An Englishman: In eager Rapes, and furious Lust begot, Betwixt a Painted Britton and a Scot: Whose gend’ring Offspring quickly learnt to bow, And yoke their Heifers to the Roman Plough: From whence a Mongrel half-bred Race there came, With neither Name nor Nation, Speech or Fame. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 11

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing interest in how national identities are constructed rather than primordial; echoes the ‘Grafting & Growth’ thread on hybridity and mixing as generative.

Related

• English national identity descends from a mongrel mixed ancestry (similarity 0.91)