The aim of the present paper is to examine the language of cartoons produced in the nineteenth and early twentieth century for the satirical magazine Punch and which have an inherently Irish bias. Given that Punch engaged in satirising political events and discussions of the time, it is not surprising that Irish themes loom large among the topics treated. The satirising items were accompanied by drawings—line sketches—which poked fun at aspects of the Irish character, as perceived by the English. This developed into a tradition, which lasted at least from the early days of Punch in the 1840s to the first quarter of the twentieth century, and availed of many clichés of national character both in words and drawings. During this long period there was an interaction of textual and visual elements, which involved the translation of themes from one modality to the other. Given the time scale of Punch satires there is a kind of diachronic intertextuality in which earlier pieces affected the manner in which later pieces were composed.