Land of Mu Once when we were one we only knew paradise,ecstasy and happiness. In the land of Mu, warriors can reach into the depths where fear and valor communicate with love and compassion.Initiation into the world of man is a feat of necessity challenged by everything we thought we knew. Beyond all expectations lies a world of unfathomable possibilities.Within these invisible walls exists the foundation of the consciousness of the ancient Muurs. We entered through creations fingertips at the speed of a million dreams,and now we know who we are.We are the hope for the future,the embodiment of the past,the most feared,misunderstood and hated . When will they ever learn and when will we ever wake up and take our seat on the golden throne named truth and enlightenment. Truth and Enlightenment! We have always been and we shall never cease to exist. Life is an ever fleeting,omnipresent glimpse of the essence into which the glow must absorb itself in order to create an environment suitable for the holistic manifestation of love. The Glow is that little black ball of light which originates just on the other side of nothingness. THE MYSTERIOUS MUU
AND THE DANCE THEY DO
by Greg Reeder
KMT 6:3, Fall 1995 © KMT Communications
"Think of the day of burial,
the passing into reveredness.
A night is made for you with
ointments and wrappings from the hand of Tait.
A funeral procession is made for you on the day of burial;
the mummy case is of gold,
its head of lapis lazuli.
The sky is above you as your lie in the hearse,
oxen drawing you,
musicians going before you.
The dance of the muu-dancers
is done at the door of your tomb."
Thus Spoke King Senwosret I in offering an ideal funeral as inducement to the wandering
Sinuhe to return home to Egypt before he died. Ointment and linen, gold and lapis lazuli, musicians _ and the dancing muu. From the early days of Egyptology, muu dancers have been the subject of much speculation and controversy. They initially were considered to be jesters, dwarfs and buffoons.2 Alexandre Moret offered an elaborate explantion that ranged from clowns that lightened the heart of Osiris to "Rois Buffons," who played a roll
in the ritual regicide of the king.3 These speculations were fueled by the highly unusual appearance of the muu, that to many seemed humorous, if not bizarre.
The first thorough examination of the subject of muu dancers was Emma Brunner-Traut's in 1938: Der Tanz im Alten Ägypten (The Dance in Ancient Egypt).4 As with other important writings on the subject of the muu, it is not available in English, so that an
indepth analysis of her work is in order.
We learn from Brunner-Traut's observations of representations on the walls of Middle and New Kingdom tombs that there were three kinds of muu dancers. The first of these hurried to intercept the funeral procession on the west bank and used hand gestures to
indicate the necessary permission to enter the necropolis. The second kind were guards or watchmen stationed in a special muu "Halle." From this structure they watched over the necropolis. The third variety of muu were associated with the "people of Pe," a subdivision along with Dep of the Delta city of Buto. They are shown in New Kingdom tombs dancing as a pair facing each other. The first two types of muu wear a high green crown on their heads, clearly manufactured from reeds. The pair of opposite-facing dancers are shown bareheaded.
Detail of a scene from the Tomb of Rekmire at Thebes depicting the third kind of muu, a symmetrically posed pair of gesturing males, without a headdress of any sort, who perform a ferryman's dance and ma represent "His-face-in-front-His-face-behind." Brunner-Traut explained that in the Theban Tomb of Sehetepibre the priest positioned in front of the funeral procession with outstretched arm declares, "Come O Muus," demanding from the assembled muu permission to enter the necropolis and authorization for the burial.5 In the New Kingdom Tomb of Tetiki (TT15) a group of three muu are
shown in kilts. Again, a priest stands before them with an outstretched arm. The muu make a gesture, with their thumbs and index fingers extended from closed fists.
Detail of a scene from the New Kingdom Tomb of Tetiki at Thebes, depicting the lead funerary- priest extending his arm towards three gesturing, high-stepping muu who wear tall conical wickerwork crowns. On the same wall, the second type of muu is portrayed. These stand in a building wearing the same crown as the gesturing muu, but their kilts are different. Above the muu "Halle"
are strangely irregular divisions which Brunner-Traut believed indicated interior rooms of the structure. Outside the building a pair of obelisks are pictured, along with two sycamore trees and palms surrounding a rectangular pool. For Brunner-Traut, this was "die ideale" landscape for a New Kingdom private grave.
In the Tomb of Renni at El Kab, three muu greet the funeral procession of the tomb owner. Men and women of the funeral cortege, identified as people of "Pe and Dep," make gestures of lamentation. The muu also are shown here inside their hall, with the same sort of exterior landscaping as seen in the Tomb of Tetiki. Anubis and Osiris are also depicted
in their respective chapels. Brunner-Traut pointed out that it is in the Tomb of Nebamen (TT17, time of Amenhotep II) that the crowned and dancing muu (the first category of the type) appear for the last time. In Nebamen the Goddess of the West watches over the
whole funeral procession, which also includes people of Pe and Dep, who pull the tekenu sled and are greeted by the muu.6
The third and final category of muu dancers is met for the first time in the Tomb of Paheri, also at El Kab. Here two men dance facing each other. They are positioned next to four structures in the form of the Lower Egyptian per nuu (pr nw) chapels, two date palms and
two large gateways. The pair perform the muu dance at the arrival of the deceased's coffin, which has been transported by boat. Brunner-Traut noted that the two dancers each symmetrically lift one arm so that their fisted hands, thumbs protruding, almost touch.
Their other hands are brought to their chests, hands again closed, thumbs protruding. In the Paheri example the facing muu dancers are not crowned but are shown crowned in their hall. The last time this second category of muu are so depicted is in the Theban Tomb
of Puimre (TT39). In the Tomb of Amenemhet (TT82), the funerary sled is pulled by persons labeled as people of Pe and Dep (Buto), Unu, Behbet and Sais. The opposite-facing muu dancers in Amenemhet are also identified as people of Pe. Brunner-Traut dismissed some of the
earlier "fantastischen" explanations of the muu, such as Moret's view of them as "buffons" who represented the king at carnival. She found the people of Pe and Dep and other places
mentioned in the western Delta as references to the mythical funeral of Osiris, and thereby to royal funerals. She identified the necropolis which the funeral procession seeks to enter
as the Kingdom of Osiris."7 The hall of the muu is where the coffin is set down and permission is sought for the mourners and deceased to proceed. Brunner-Traut noted it is at the entrance to the tomb that the muu dance and, as agents of the Kingdom of the West
(Osiris), offer approval of the burial by proclaiming the will of the gods of the dead. The environment around their hall marks the kingdom beyond. Thus, she believed, the deceased private person is portrayed as making a symbolic visit to Buto, where the paired
muu dance in greeting.
Detail of relief-scene from the Tomb Renni at El Kab depicting two crowned muu (lower right) standing within their "hall" alongside a garden with rectangular pool or "lake," palms, sycamores and two obelisks. The funerary-god Anubis stands in a shrine at left.
A similar scene is found in the ThebanTomb of Tetiki. German Egyptologist Emma Brunner-Traut suggested that the irregular shapes at the top of the muu "hall" represented interior rooms of this structure. She proposed that the setting of the hall represented an "ideal" landscape for a New Kingdom private grave.
Fellow-German scholar Hermann Junker identified the palms and "lakes" as a memory of the "holy island of Osiris," with the obelisks representing Heliopolis.
These burial-rituals for private individuals took as their model the king's funeral, wherein the deceased ruler journeyed to Buto in the Delta and to Abydos in the south, for the purpose of visiting his father, Osiris. In the Old Kingdom, only the dead king was
identified with Osiris; but, even before the Middle Kingdom, each deceased person had become associated with Lord of the Underworld. In predynastic times, Brunner-Traut offered, when a Lower Egyptian ruler died, his subjects _ the "people of Pe" _ performed a "Totentanz," a dance of the dead; and, as this became standardized, its influence worked southward and was known there as a dance of the "people of Pe."
Emma Brunner-Traut concluded that the muu were demigods of a sort, who appeared _ acting as agents from the Beyond _ to retrieve the deceased from this world to the next. That they wore crowns, she thought, was to be understood by the fact that most dieties were crowned.8 Brunner-Traut did an excellent job of laying out the problems of interpreting the iconography of the muu dancers. She established the framework for the discussions of the muu which followed her own.
Drawing of a block from the Sakkara Old Kingdom Tomb of Ptahhotep II, which shows two muu with papyrus fronds emerging from the tops of their heads. Junker identified these floral "crowns" with the "coat of arms" of Lower Egypt and associated these particular muu with the predynastic royal funerary-rites of the
Delta metropolis of Buto.
Drawing of a scene in the 12th Dynasty Tomb of Sehet-epibre at Thebes in which the priest preceding the hide-wrapped tekenu on its sledge summons a pair of muu wearing the tall conical crown. The priest calls out, "Come O Muus."
Just two years after Brunner-Traut published her study, another German Egyptologist dived into the pond of muu speculation. In 1940 the renowned and respected Hermann Junker _ a giant in the field of Old Kingdom studies _ published his DerTanz der Mww und das Butische Begr_bnis im Alten Reich (The Dance of the Muu and the Butoesque Funeral in the Old Kingdom),9 wherein he declared the results of his studies of then-recent discoveries in the necropolis of Sakkara which had a direct bearing on the conclusions of
Brunner-Traut. With the permission of Salim Hassan, Junker presented a detailed discussion of those discoveries giving the first solid evidence for the existence of muu dancers in the Old Kingdom.
Hassan had discovered a block from the Tomb of Ptahhotep II which showed fragments of a relief which Junker announced would help explain a fragmentary depiction from the Tomb of 'Idwt. According to the German's description of the Ptahhotep relief, two men
were shown with plant crowns on their heads, the "coats of arms" of Lower Egypt. He argued persuasively that these individuals were muu appearing in a special funeral ceremony.10 Junker offered that this rite was so complex only portions of it could be
depicted on a tomb's walls; furthermore, there were no certain rules governing what parts of the rite were to be represented.11 He believed that all these muu portrayls were styled after prehistoric royal funerals taking place in the ancient Lower Egyptian metropolis of Buto.12
This Butoesque ceremony involved the deceased king making a journey by boat to Buto and to other sacred sites in the Delta, primarily Sais and Heliopolis. These royal postmortem "pilgrimages" Junker called "Totenfahrts" or journeys of the dead. It is representations of such journeys on the walls of Old Kingdom tombs which both identify Buto's role in the development of Egyptian funerary iconography and, Junker claimed, offer an understanding of just what/who the muu depicted. The Old Kingdom scenes in
which muu can be recognized show them in environments which the German scholar identified with Buto and Sais. In particular he reproduced a scene from the Tomb of Nbk3w?r that clearly labels a banner above a gateway with the word for "Sais."13 In this scene a keri-heb priest is shown in an upper register addressing a group of muu who each wear high conical crowns. In a lower register a funeral boat is shown on a winding waterway, the wrt canal, which (along with a similar representation from the Tomb of Snfrwinjtátf ) was evidence for Junker of sacred water journeys in a funerary context. According to him, in very ancient times, Buto and Sais were directly connected by this wrt canal. Pr nw chapels _ staples in Lower Egyptian iconography _ appear in several of the Old Kingdom scenes studied by the German scholar, and he identified them as
representing the royal cemetery at Buto, noting that the shape of this chapel was similar to both the royal palace and kings' sarcophagi.14 Junker saw the palms and sycamore trees of later representations as a memory of the "holy island of Osiris." He suggested that the obelisks in the New Kingdom scenes symbolized Heliopolis, one of the other holy destinations of the predynastic Delta kings during their Totenfahrts.15
Junker marveled at the muu theories of others, remarking that it was rare for so many differing explanations to be given for a single custom as those offered for these dancers. He went further than Brunner-Traut's theory that the muu were demigods from the
Beyond fetching the dead; Junker thought they were the very "ancestors of the sovereign...the Souls of Pe."16 According to him the Pyramid Texts explicitly state that the Souls of Pe clap their hands and dance during their reception of the dead king at the
entrance to the Beyond (Pyr. 1005).17 Junker saw the muu dance, therefore, as a rite definitely ceremonial, in which the "step is measured, the extended foot is raised easily
over the floor." He saw the position of one arm of each muu raised to the chest in these Old Kingdom scenes as blows intended to signify mourning and lamentation.18 Thus, in Junker's view, the muu were not royal buffoons or water spirits; they were, in fact,
necropolis demigods, the spirits of deceased kings who emerged from the Beyond to quickly intercept the funeral procession.
Junker believed that those Old Kingdom rites in which muu appear originated in the funeral cermonies of the predynastic rulers of Buto, and these were taken over in dynastic times by the southern kings who had united the Two Lands _ although he did not have any
idea just how much of the ancient northern rites was retained and what was Upper Egyptian or else wholly a new creation. Junker did feel that the southern customs took precedence over those of the north; therefore, even if the Buto rituals had been strictly kingly, later imitation of them by private persons was not any usurpation of the prerogatives of rulers of the Old Kingdom.19 Thus, by the Fifth Dynasty, some of the elements of the ancient royal-funerary rituals of Buto had been joined to elements of the emerging worship of Osiris. Junker believed that the Butoesque kingly Totenfahrts to
Buto, Sais, etc. had become Osirized, with the dead king now fully identified with Osiris.
Junker recognized that, in the Old Kingdom reliefs he studied, the muu dancer was portrayed with one or the other of two distinct headresses, although these did not seem to reflect any difference in the nature of the funerary rite performed. One muu headdress was
composed of papyrus stalks which seemed to be attached directly to the top of the dancer's head, as if they were growing there. Junker equated the latter arrangement to the plant symbol of Lower Egypt. The other muu headress was a tall, conical, openwork cap resembling the White Crown of Upper Egypt, as well as the bundle-shaped Atef crown.20 That the conical crown of the south should be represented in a rite originating in the funerary rituals of the northern kings of Buto was not a problem for the German scholar, inasmuch he was of the opinion that there had been a united kingdom _ before the
unification affected by Menes _ with a capital at Heliopolis. When these united Helipolitan states collapsed, the kings of Buto simply retained the symbols of the former union, the conical crown of the south being one of them. Junker believed that the last funerals of the
Buto rulers took place as much as 1,000 years before the Old Kingdom depictions of muu dancers.21
By the time of the tomb representations of the Middle and New kingdoms, the funerary rituals with muu dancers in evidence did not represent real-time excursions to sacred sites in the Delta. Instead, as economic relationships changed, the Butoesque rites were performed at the entrance to the cemetery or of the tomb itself. However, Junker did allow that some important deceased dignitaries may have been taken to the holy places of the north prior to interment, or that a statue of the deceased visited Buto and other Delta sacred sites.22 Thus, the depictions in Middle and New Kingdom tombs of the gateway of Sais, the shrines of Buto, the obelisks of Heliopolis, and pools and palms were all symbolic by these later periods.23
The subject of muu dancers was subsequently discussed by Jacques Vandier in 1944 and Jürgen Settgast in his Bestattungsdarstellungen of 1963. In 1975 another German scholar, Hartwig Altenmüller, offered yet another theory on the muu question, appropriately titled
Zur Frage der Mww (To the Muu Question).24
Altenmüller considered the muu as "ritual figures" who appear at four different places in the necropolis. They reside in the "Halle der Muu" and greet the deceased at the boat transporting the coffin, at the ritual place "Sais" and when the coffin is placed on a sled at
the "Gates of Buto," and they greet the canopic chest and the tekenu in the funeral procession. Altenm_ller wrote that muu were identifiable by their headgear, which he saw as plant material, bound papyrus stalks similar to the middle portion of the king's Atef
crown. Altenmüller labled as "psuedo muu" those facing pairs of dancers who appear in New Kingdom tomb scenes identified as muu by captions but who are without headdresses or any distinguishing costumes. He rejected Moret's concept of "rois buffoons,"25 and saw problems with Junker's theory of muu as the "Souls of Buto,"
inasmuch as no inscription directly equates the two, nor is there one which says the muu are even from Buto.26 He noted that the "Halle der Muu" appears for the first time in fourteen New Kingdom tomb depictions.
Altenmüller described the muu hall as a being situated in a park-like environment with ponds and gardens. By the New Kingdom, the muu dancers were associated not only with a symbolic journey to Sais on the wrt canal _ as in the Old Kingdom _ but also with
journeys to the "Two Gates of Buto" and the palace at Heliopolis (represented by twin obelisks). The muu emerged from their hall when the funerary priest called out, "Come the Muu." But their "funktion" following their appearance is the crux of Altenm_ller's
ideas.27
He turned to the Pyramid Texts for an explanation of the muus' funerary function, especially utterances 306-3l0, with emphasis on 310:
To say:
Should Unas be bewitched, Atum will be be witched,
should Unas be opposed, Atum will be opposed,
should Unas be beaten, Atum will be beaten,
should Unas be hindered on his way,
Atum will be hindered.
Unas is Horus, Unas came after his father,
Unas came after Osiris.
"O thou, His-face-in-front-His-face-behind,
bring this to Unas."
"What ferry shall I bring thee?"
"Bring to Unas the one which flies up,
the one which alights."28
Altenmüller interpreted this text as consisting of two sections. The first contains a four-part "swearing" formula which he believed refers to a magical protection for cult instruments against possible enemies. The second is a rejoinder, which contains an invitation to bring up a ferry. Altenmüller was not certain whether an individual ferryman was addressed, or two; but the reference to "His-face- in-front/ His-face-behind" suggests two persons. He equated these persons with the two dancers who face each other at the appearance of the tekenu and the canopic chest. Thus, in accordance with Pyramid Texts utterance 310, Altenmüller saw the muu as ferrymen who, through the use of a swearing formula, care for the safety of the deceased's ritual transport.29
Altenmüller noted that the crowned muu may have a reference to Pyramid Texts utterance 220, where the four Lower Egyptian crowns are "personified":
The doors of the horizon open themselves,
its bolts slide.
He has come to thee, Net (crown of Lower Egypt),
he has come to thee, Nesert (Uraeus),
he has come to thee, Great One,
he has come to thee, Great of Magic,
purified for thee, in awe before thee.
Be pleased with him, be pleased with his
purification,
be pleased with the words he says to thee:
"How beautiful is thy face when thou
art pleased,
when thou art new and young!
A god has given thee birth, the father of gods."
He has come to thee, O Great of Magic!
It is Horus who fought to protect his eye,
Great of Magic.30
After naming the four crowns, this text _ according to Altenmüller's interpretation _ reveals their natures, which he glosses as beauty of face, new, rejuvenated and created from the father of the gods. These four crowns, or their natures, greet the deceased and bear the responsibility for his journey over the waters of heaven. The four crown-gods of utterances 220-222, which the deceased encounters during his journey through heaven, Altenmüller linked with the four spirits of utterance 263, who greet the deceased and announce his arrival to the sun-god. He saw them as border guards and ferrymen for the deceased.31
Detail of four high-stepping, gesturing, crowned muu in the Middle Kingdom Tomb of Anteforker shown _ according to the author _ at the verymoment of crossing the threshold between this world and the next, having been summoned by the lead funerary priest to receive the deceased.
The two reed floats of the sky are laid down for Re
that he may cross to the horizon.
The two reed floats of the sky are laid down
for Horus of the Horizon,
that Horus of the Horizon may cross on them to Re.
The two reed floats of the sky
are laid down for Unas,
that he may cross on them
to Horus of the horizon, to Re.
It was pleasant for Unas to be with his Ka,
and he lives together with his Ka.
His panther skirt is on him,
his Ames-scepter is on his arm,
his Aba-scepter is in his hand.
He (?) those who bring him those four spirits,
the eldest ones,
at the head of the curly ones who stand on the
eastern side of the sky,
who lean on their scepters
in order that (these four spirits) say to Re
the beautiful name of Unas,
and to announce this Unas to Neheb-Kau
in order that the entrance of this Unas be greeted.
The fields of Rushes are filled (with water)
to let Unas cross the Sinuous Watercourse.
This Unas will cross a crossing
to the eastern side of the Horizon.
This Unas will cross a crossing
to the eastern side of the sky.
His sister is Sothis,
his place of birth is the Twilight (Duat).
In utterances 220-222 and 263, the tasks put forth seem the same, according to Altenmüller, who said they were to receive the deceased, informing the sun-god of his arrival and preparation for the excursion in the Boat of the Sun.32 That the muu of the
dynastic funerary-ritual are to be identified with the ferrymen of the Heliopolitan mythology is confirmed, Altenmüller argued, by pictorial evidence of an Old Kingdom dance that was performed at the occasion of a procession of a statue of the deceased. But this same dance _ with male dancers in short kilts symmetrically facing each other _ could also be depicted outside the context of a statue procession, as is seen in the shared Tomb of Niakhkhanum and Khanumhotep at Sakkara. In the Theban Tomb of Ibi, this dance
would seem to be performed by boat people, for the statue processon in that instance is interpreted as a river journey. Altenmüller expressed the opinion that the muu dancers in these examples supervise the implements necessary for the funerary ritual, and magically _ through their dance _ secure the way for the statue's transport.33
Additional evidence for connecting the muu to ferrymen may be found in an allusion in Pyramid Text 1223, utterance 520:
If you delay to ferry me over in this ferry boat,
I will tell your names to men whom I know,
to everyone, and I will pluck out those dancing tresses
which are on top of your heads
like lotus-buds in the swamp gardens.34
Altenmüller suggested that muu dancers in the Old Kingdom made wreaths of lotus blossoms for their hair. Similar lotus wreaths were also typically carried by helmsmen and persons using papyrus craft; and crews of larger rowboats and ships were frequently bedecked with floral head-decorations. Pyramid Text utterance 519 also portrays ferrymen with garlands on their heads. Altenmüller concluded, therefore, that the conical crowns of the muu were probably made of materials from the canals and waterways of the Delta, possibly papyrus shoots or grasses. Likewise, he held that the very name of the muu (35) denoted their waterways connection _ "Men who belong to the water" _ and that this name referred simultaneously to their original role as ferrymen.36
Thus, it can be seen that since the earlier days of Egyptology a subtle evolution in thinking about the myst-erious muu has taken place. What began as court jesters has transformed into divine ferrymen. Hartwig Altenmüller's ideas seem the most plausible explanation of the muu, and his studies point towards further refinements to the concept of muu dancers as ferrymen in the funerary ritual from Old through the New kingdoms. After digesting his considerable research into the subject, and following up on several trail markings he left behind, it would be remiss to not offer yet more speculation on the subject of the muu
"dancers."
Scene from the Fifth Dynasty Mastaba of Ti at Sakkara depicting gesturing boatmen accompanying cattle crossing a body of water, probably the Nile. These gestures are meant magically to ward off potential dangers to the fording cattle, such as the crocodile seen lurking in the waters. The author proposes that these boatmen's protective gestures correspond to the hand-signs muu are shown making when they greet the funeral cortege.
All commentators are agreed that, at some point during the funeral procession, the deceased and mourners were met by a group of muu. In a first reading of the tomb scenes, it appears that these muu are "hurrying" to intercept the procession because they are guardians of the necropolis and must authorize burials therein. But more is revealed on a closer inspection of these scenes. For instance, in the tombs of Anteforker (37) and Tetaki (38) a lead priest, the funeral procession halted behind him, gestures towards the
assembled muu with his outstretched arm. This is a pose of invocation.39 In the Tomb of Anteforker, three additional priests stand behind this lead priest: a kheri-heb or lector priest
(keeper of the scrolls), a sem (a shaman-like priest wearing a leopard skin) and the ami-khent. The lead priest intones the words "Muus Come" or "Come O Muu."40
It is at this very moment that the muu appear from the beyond, in response to the priest's commanding summons. They are not depicted in the tomb scenes as hurrying to intercept the funeral procession, but rather are seen at the moment of crossing over from the Other Side. Their feet are raised in the act of stepping across the the threshold between this world and the next. The scene in Tetaki shows them not following one after the other but, rather, in rank side by side, crossing over simultaneously. The muu appear like a chorus line, as each raises one leg, pausing several beats before stepping forward into the field of action. This same step can be seen in the folk dances of modern Egypt.
The strange hand-gesture of the muu can be elaborated upon, as well. As Richard Wilkinson has stated: "From Old Kingdom times a specifically protective gesture is found in representations showing figures extending one or two outstretched fingers toward dangerous creatures such as the hippopotamus or the crocodile."41 Specifically in Old Kingdom tomb depictions of "cattle fording" scenes, a protective spell is recited and a herdsman, sitting in a papyrus craft extends his magical hand-gesture to protect the beasts which are being herded in the water. Magicians leaning on staffs and uttering water spells, and boatmen with special knowledge, are involved with these fording scenes.42 Since the muu are apparently the ferrymen who ensure the safe transportation of the deceased, it is understandable why they emerge from the Beyond armed with blazing hand-gestures. Like the herdsmen in their boats leading cattle through the water, the muu guide the deceased on the winding waterways to paradise.
The muu "Halle" or "house" is exactly that: where the muu dwell, like genii in a bottle, awaiting the priest to summon them as ferrymen-guardians of the deceased. This structure sits at the edge of Paradise, the gardens of peace. The gods inhabit Paradise, in their
shrines, and Osiris is king. The cities of Buto (Pe and Dep), Sais and Heliopolis are the metropoli of the sacred geography of the World Beyond. This gardened Paradise is certainly patterned after the environs of the Nile Delta (see Book of the Dead, chapter 110,
for instance).
, That the people of Pe and Dep line the watercourse and take positions in the funeral cortege is understandable: they are the inhabitants there, greeting the deceased on his journey to the sacred cities; and they consequently take part in the burial ceremony. This can be thought of in two ways: what is depicted in the tomb scenes is either actually transpiring in the Next World, or the real-life participants in the funeral rites symbolically represent the
people of Pe, their actions in this world magically ensuring that those same actions will take place in the Hereafter.
The symmetrically paired dancers in the tomb scenes are likewise associated with the people of Pe. They may appear to be doing the "dance" of the muu, but they are not necessarily muu dancers. The fact that they are portrayed without crowns of any sort clearly distinguishes them from those muu who wear conical or floral headdresses. The dance the pair do is, in fact, about ferrymen, and so they are representing "His-face-in-front-His-face-behind" (Pyramid Text utterance 310, as Altenm_ller recognized), because a good ferryman must be able to see both ahead and behind in order
to avoid the dangers of the waterways. It may be supposed that the dance they perform is rooted in an ancient folk-tradition of dancing boatmen who celebrate their expert skills. In fact, this dance may be a ritual of movement and gestures meant to summon the muu from
beyond, much as does the vocal invocation of the funerary priest.
Author's illustration of the possible derivation of the tall conical wickerwork headdress typically worn by muu in Middle and New Kingdom tomb representations The similarity of this "crown" to the prow of a typical pharaonic-period papyrus skiff or float suggests that the former was meant to associate its wearers with the role of boatmen and particularly with their function as ferrymen to the deceased.
This leads to the question of the two seemingly different kinds of muu portrayed in Junker's Tomb of Ptahhotep II. There one type wear the tall conical crown that all commentators agree was made from papyrus stalks; and nearby, on the same wall, a second type appear to have actual papyrus plants attached to their heads. It is this writer's conclusion that the conical crown is not, however, patterned on either the Upper Egyptian White Crown or the Atef crown. Rather, the wickerwork conical muu headdress is in the
same shape of _ and made from the same material as _ the papyrus skiffs or floats of the Delta boat people. It may even represent the manipulated papyrus stalks which form the prow (front end) of such a vessel [see author's reconstruction]. Thus, the muu's affinity
with boat people can hardly be doubted.
But what of the muu with actual plants growing on (from?) their heads? The word h3 (ha) can be translated not only as "papyrus" but also "behind," and more specifically it is used in words meaning the back of the head.43 Most interestingly it is used in the name of the
celestial ferryman who is mentioned in chapter 99 of the Book of the Dead; and the same ferryman is portrayed in the vignette of chapter 93 in the Papyrus of Ani, where he is depicted navigating a boat, with his head turned around toward the stern of his craft. The
two types of muu, then, are directly related to the ferrymen "His-face-in-front-His-face-behind." The muu wearing the conical wickerwork crown is the former, while the muu with papyrus plants on his head is the latter.
One gets the feeling that the muu _ based on their surviving representations _ were likable characters in the ancient Egyptian funerary drama. Their high-stepping "dance" and accompanying gestures evoke a smile in the present-day viewer. Clearly they were
characters patterned after the common folk on the Nile Delta, people who lived along and worked on the canals of the north, surrounded by lush flora and diverse fauna. Marsh life and people were favorite themes of tomb decoration of the pharaonic period, and their treatment by the tomb artisans often show an affection and humorous sympathy. Who better to call upon to lead one through the winding waterways of Paradise than the boatmen of the Nile Delta?
Notes
1. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature 1 (Berkeley, 1975), 229.
2. E.A. Wallis Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary 1 (New York,
1978),
294b.
3. Alexandre Moret, Mysteries Êgyptiene (Paris, 1927, 257 ff.
4. Emma Brunner-Traut, Der Tanz Im Alten Ägypten (Hamburg, 1938),
43,
53-59.
5. Ibid., 43. 6. Ibid., 55. 7. Ibid., 57. 8. Ibid., 59.
9. Hermann Junker, Der Tanz Der Mww Und Das Butisch Begräbnis Im
Alten
Reich (Berlin, 1940), vol. 9 Mitteilungen, 1-39.
10. Ibid., 1. 11. Ibid., 11. 12. Ibid., 12. 13. Ibid., 3. 14. Ibid., 20. 15. Ibid.,
22.
16. Ibid., 23. 17. Ibid., 24. 18. Ibid., 25. 19. Ibid., 28-29. 20., Ibid., 32-36.
21.
Ibid., 36-38. 22., Ibid., 38. 23. Ibid., 39.
24. Jacques Vandier in Chronique d'Êgypte 19 (1944), 35 ff.; Jürgen
Settgast,
Untersuchungen zu altägyptischen Bestattungsdarstellungen
(Gl_ckstadt/Hamburg, 1963), 19, 30 frf., 42 ff., 50; Hartwig Altenmüller,
Zu
Frage
Der Mww in Studien Zur Altägyptischen Kultur 2 (Hamburg, 1975), 1-37.
25. Altenmüller, 1.
26., Ibid., 2. 27. Ibid., 7-9.
28. For convenience the English texts used are from Alexandre Piankoff, The
Pyramid of Unas (New York, 1969).
29. Altenmüller, 12.
30. Ibid., 13. 31. Ibid., 16. 32. Ibid., 18. 33., Ibid., 20.
34. Utterance 520, Pyr. 1223, is missing from the Pyramid of Unas. See then
R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford, 1969).
35. Altenmüller, 22. 36. Ibid., 36.
37. Norman De Garis Davies and Alan H. Gardiner, The Tomb of Antefoker,
vizier
of Sesostris I, etc. (London, 1920), pl. XXII.
38. N.d-G. Davies, "The Tomb of Tetaki at Thebes, No. 15," Journal of
Egyptian
Archaeology XI (1925), 10-18.
39. A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford, 1978), sign list A26.
40. Richard H. Wilkinson, Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art (London, 1994);
see
his discussion on invocaton, 195; also 74 for sacred locations.
41. Ibid., 194.
42. Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice
(Chicago, 1993), 227-229.
43. Gardiner, Grammar, signs M15, M16; also 580.
About the Author
Greg Reeder is a contributing editor to KMT.
1. Absorb the Glow and be absorbed by the light of JAH 2. The Sons and Daughters have returned to the customs of THE FUTURE Their lives are more important than their holdings,their leavings are more important than their takings.We are the reasons and we are the ones who were chosen to be exactly where we are at this very moment. Always take responsibility for the space you occupy, it belongs to you only after the realization that we are on a special mission.The course we take is the choice from within and without.We choose our own path which determines the destiny of our now and future selves. 3. "sailing on the sea of selves of late exists no time sea so cool and clear the self of selves divine" 4. "the Most High will protect your camel if you tie it up" 5. "the absolute truth is the infinite passing away of the finite previous truths" 6. "to live is to be,to die is to be to be is it is not to be being is what forever was" 7. "ideas are finite in makeup,infinite in number" 8. "blessed be the one who enjoys the noise for silence always comes,comes to one who destroys the joys of piracy and pun" 9. "don't call the forest that shelters you a jungle" 10. "the ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people" 11. "when you follow in the path of your father, you learn to walk like him" 12. "do not check the depth of a river with both feet" 13. " the fool speaks,the wise man listens" 14. "if you are hiding,don't light a fire" 15."he who cannot dance says his feet hurt"
16. "when you get there you"ll know it was the right path to take"
17. "I know another knows, I know another sees the light years pass under me"
18. "the youth is driven by the need to know"
19. "where is your God, is He in that well, is She in that river"
Are they in those Mountains, is It in that Bird"
where is your God, why do we need Him, why do we fear Her"
20. "where is forever, it may be in you"
21. "as the road goes by, I know that I am traveling,
I also know that I have many places to go"
22. "when the days are numbered,we need not count"
23. "listen to the words and fly with me, to who we are,not to who we should be"
24. "we are the rhythm of the drum, as it passes through the universal life force within"
25. "rhythms from beyond the Drum,melodies from beyond the Sun,
logic from the open plane to Love"s Secret Domain"
26. "the divine will dominate,the satanic will fade into oblivion,
righteousness shall rise among the masses,
the time of The Great Anointment is here"
27. "don"t kick a sleeping dog"
28. "evil knows where evil sleeps"
29. "the wisest man can learn from the biggest fool"
30. "absence makes the heart grow fonder"
31. "what goes around,comes around"
32. "the fruit always falls close to the tree"
33. "beauty is only skin deep but ugly is to the bone"
34. "the blacker the berry,the sweeter the juice"
35. "one falsehood spoils a thousand truths"
36. "the shortest distance from one to another is a straight line"
37. "nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream"
38. "let your conscience be your guide"
39. "soon found,soon lost"
40. "the bird knows where the worm goes"
41. "meditate and light will surround you"
42. "fly with your belly up and you will always face the sky"
43. "when everyone has everything there is nothing left for the future"
44. "prayer changes things"
45. "nothing ceases to exist"
46. "get out of the kitchen if you can"t stand the heat"
47. "randomness is the friend that gives us order"
48. "all things that can,will happen"
49. "consciousness of being is always a miracle"
50. "before your search begins to fold,
please let me take you to the gold,
are you a racist, a friend or foe,
search your heart please before we go"
51. "when we enter the yard of success we learn to measure by things other than reality"
52. "age old beings inhabit us,giving us the will to atone"
53. "the inner glow of the people will dazzle the negative scene"
53. "become yourself and your time will never end"
54. "spiritual guidance is the art of making a being become what he is"
55. "you can never be free while holding a grudge"
56. "It is easier to glorify God than to love God"
57. "LA ILLAHA ILLA'LLAH" {there is no God but God}
58. "the secret of secrets is in meditation"
59. "never wage war on your shadow"
60. "the lonesome bird flies low"
61. "the proof is in the pudding"
62. "give us this drum,and let us move forward through this because it belongs to us,the original the members of the first cast"
63. "buying into the hopelessness of the fascist is like living without life"
64. "so I went up on that mountain and I talked to everyone, toward me came a prophet with gifts in his hands he said"here,take this and I'll return tomorrow
and we all will go everywhere"
65. "the floods come and go and the cycles continue all things change according to karmic dictations"
66. "random is essence deliberate in it's actuality"
67. "you are the Mother of mothers,and the Mother of fathers
the One with the answer for all through you I see the unseeable, and know the unknowable"
The Journey
by Aashid Himons
I can see the shimmer of the white caps on the sea dancing in the morning sun as I
board this luxurious flying vessel named Tanyika, filled with our gold.Hopefully the gold will aid in our survival and it will make a good impression on those we encounter when we reach the Islands of Magic and Mist.
I look behind me and I see the city of David.I can hear the kings harp loud and clear.
My voice instinctively joins in the song of the voyage that is before us.
To my left is my son,to my right is my daughter,up above my head is my angel,
and in my heart is God.
This flying ship called Tanyika has wings covered with tonti (metal) and luz (light).
Solomon the King was already on board when I arrived.He had some final instructions for the Hemans that were chosen to embark on this adventurous undertaking.He also told the porters what was expected of them.He told us of the people we would meet, the places we were expected to settle and the songs we should teach and the secrets we should guard,the food we should eat.He also outlined the stories we should pass on to our children so that we may continue in the traditions of the ancient Habirus (Hebs.) dating from the dawn of consciousness, streaming into the sunset of eternity.The King then raised his hand and pointed to the center and said, " on that table is a stone that seems to shine and twinkle".The King was patient and quiet while all two hundred and thirty seven of us took time to inspect the stone, and then he told us," this stone is
why you are going on this mission".I was so mesmerized by the stone I forgot where I was and that's when the Kings voice rang out ,"Okay,you can all come back now. Maybe now you can understand the importance of these stones.We will keep our powers as a people as long as we have them in our posession,and we don?t need all of them,we just need a constant supply . And so my dear servants,you will find these powerful rocks some where on the Islands of Magic and Mist".
The King called Solomon sat down on his throne made of gold.I could tell by the look on his face he had more to say."As for the crew, I want you to keep this ship in top condition so there can be Odube(black) stones transported here as often as possible. I need them to impress my seal upon, so we may continue to prosper".I heard him say "shalom" as six giant porters lifted the throne and the King to their shoulders and proceeded to exit the Holy Ship,a ship annointed by the son of David, passed onto us from the Mother planets of yore.I could hear the rhythms of the rattles as the wives and concubines joined him on the other side of the vessel.What he told them I dare not ponder.It is in his wisdom we trust and with his love we are fulfilled. Suddenly I heard the women shout ,"long live Solomon",the rattles ceased and the Heman elders began to sing of the Ark and the Covenant and as all the Hemans started singing, I realized our journey was about to begin.I knew we would soon be arriving in a new land, not just to visit, but to inhabit. My stomach was churning with anticipation. As we rose above the hilltops I saw the King and our children returning to the palace,where they will be cared for until we are stable enough to send for them.
I said goodbye to the Holy Land of my ancestors and I embraced the new land for the future generations of the Haribu Hemans Klan.Seven hundred and eleven women, two hundred and thirty seven men landed in peace on the Isles of Magic and Mist.
The Walking Flowers
by Aashid Himons
The golden sun surrounded the presence of all as our craft touched down on what from then on was considered Holy soil to be remembered and returned to during the entirety of our stay in this new sacred land.The music stopped and the doors snapped open and the cool fresh breeze blew across my face giving me an inner feeling of well being which I had only felt once before and that was on a visit to the valley of Kush when I was merely a child of ten years. Just at that moment I heard a voice say "Ahaamdi lead the way. Yes, yes we are ready to venture forward," said a young woman named Almata. So I, Ahaamdi of Heman, born in a cave under the Falls of Ra, stood to pour libation and proceed to lead my family to the promises of this Holy land. The green colors and the black tree trunks were surrounded by flowers, some taller than me. The trees were so tall the tops were unable to be perceived by the eye without climbing or hovering. The beautiful reds and yellows and pinks and purples and blues and many colors I had not seen before seemed to be arrayed in perfect order on these giant flowers. A rhythm and a melody started dancing in our heads and suddenly a new song was born. The drummers moved closer as the ancestors warmth was felt by each klan member and the body movement embraced us all. Almost to a frenzy the spirit uplifted us, this is the religion of the ancient times. My voice choked as I exclaimed, "what is that, is that a flower singing and dancing and walking toward me?" All of the family was so in the spirit they didn't notice what was happening right in front of their eyes. We were being encircled by what seemed from a distance to be beautiful flowers. Now I could see that they had eyes and arms and legs. "These are people," I shouted with total immediacy. The song stopped and the flowers smiled and held out one hand each, as if they wanted for some reason to touch us in curiosity. In the next moment we reached to touch them for exactly the same reasons. I guess we looked as strange to them as they did to us. No one was speaking or uttering a sound and there was a collective communication beyond the use of vocal words. Talking without words or sounds had always been in the Heman line but we also liked to talk and sing with sound. Clearer and clearer became the mental communication between the Hemans and the Flower People, as we strolled along on what I later understood to be a tour of these unbelievably friendly forests and hills. The realization came to us through our ecstasy that we had left the ship and not said anything to the crew. They are not of our line and may not have picked up on the perception that was happening. They also are under Solomon's orders not to leave the ship unguarded for any reason. It's the only one of it's kind on this planet, a gift from the ancient Mother of Mu to help us in our survival and to spread Her Holy Word of peace and love through just outcomes. As we turned around to see the path back to the ship of the Holy Mother, the biggest flower silently said," my name is Shatoja and we are the Black Dubhaas and we inhabit the whole Hinbon Irer, which ends at the beginning of the Mutata Irer,inhabited by the Red Tontans, on the coast that continues to our other side.We only use the spoken word with song and music and we would appreciate it if you would do the same while here in the Hinbon. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, but if you are looking for something to take away, you must leave something of equal value. And we determine the value." The elder Mother Jamawila Hemman from the mind spoke up and said," we will respect your ways as long as they are in the order of and don't conflict with our teachings which we will also give to you and maybe it will enhance what you already have." We had been walking and by this time the sound of the Holy Ship was near. there were no signs of trouble and I was very relieved. I am the one that must take the responsibility for absent mindedly walking away because of the intense minding necessary on our first encounter with the Black Dubhaas. A voice came from the distance I recognized to be that of Captain Damatunu of Jeduthun the woman in charge of the Holy Vessel and the daughter of Jeduthun the King's seer. Loudly she yelled,"why did you leave" It worried, baffled and confused us, but I see now you're alright." Looking directly at Shatoja my mind said to him,"You understand I have to use sound now?" He nodded approvingly and now it seemed the appropriate time to say our farewell to the crew. Some kisses and hugs and last minute requests and lift off would be as soon as we get a little relevent information on the availability of, and access to, the Odube stones. As I swung around to ask the Dubhaa leader about the possibilities of getting a few to send King David's anointed son, Solomon. To my surprise the King of the Flower people had vanished. I sent a signal of telepathy and from Shatoja an answer came almost immediately."You are the ones we have expected since one thousand years ago. We were told by our forefathers and mothers that a white, fiery circle would announce your return and that music will fill the air. You are the Haribu Heman from the tribe of Judah, we welcome you.The smell of your herbs is intoxicating, and your hearts are as strong and tender as that of a Dubhaa. You have the Or (gold) and we have the Odube. A trade agreement is possible only if it's fair to all. Wisdom, music, herbs, rituals, art and mating are items also worth considering for barter. So build your homes right therewhere you entered and we shall live as neighbors in peace. By this time tomorrow our first exchange will be underway and the road to prosperity is straight ahead. Stay in our minds and we will stay in yours, we will not lose love as the future of our children moves toward us." Impressions of elation spread among the Flower ( Dubhaa) klan,the Haribu Hemans and the Haribu Jeduthun crew. "On the way and all the way to the heavens we honor the King of Israel," the chant from the inner voices of my brethren rang more powerfully than I had ever heard it ring before. "We have entered a hallowed land of peace and plenty, neither of which exists in Judah, Israel or Syene. The gods of the overworld have blessed us and Jah is the overseer of all creation.Let us gather wood now, the night is approaching without a moon and with a chill. After the first shipment of Odube is on it's way to His Imperial Majesty, I would like meet the Red Tontans. I can only hope they are as enlightened as the Black Dubhaa."A refreshing aroma was in the air as darkness descended, and the canopy of the forest protected us from the full force of the misty rain Now I understood why we had always called these, the Islands of Magic and Mists.
Manifesto Of The
BLACK THORN LEAGUE
By Hakim Bey
1.According to orally-transmitted teachings of Noble Drew Ali, founder &
Prophet of the Moorish Science Temple of America: -- Ireland was once
part of the Moorish Empire; that is, the celts were
Moslems, & there were black moors from N. Africa also present in
Ireland. But the moors were expelled by militant Christianity -- this
event is disguised in the legend of St. Patrick's expelling the snakes -
for which reason the MST celebrates St. Patrick's Day, in a mood of
irony perhaps, in expectation of an eventual Return.
2.In Noble Drew Ali's system, celts are considered an "Asiatic race", &
thus potential converts to Moorish Science. We consider NDA's theories
to be racial but not racist, because (again according
to oral tradition) they were based (at least in part) on spiritual
affinity. "Europeans" who wished to Join the MST (including some of the
later founders of the Moorish Orthodox Church) were declared to be
really celts or "Persians" -- (which may have something to do with the
oft-remarked similarity of Eiran and Iran).
3.NDA's hidden history of Ireland may be taken as an esoteric metaphor
-but it is supported in some surprising ways by archaeology & even
"official" history. In the first place, the celts are an Asiatic race,
or at least the most recent arrivals in the west from the mysterious
"Hyperborean" heartland of the Aryans -- last of those nomadic
migrations which settled India, Persia & Greece.
4.Second: What is one to make of those early Celtic crosses inscribed
with the bismillah ("In the Name of God", opening words of the Koran) in
kufic Arabic, found in Ireland? The Celtic Church,
before its destruction by the Roman hierarchy, maintained a close
connection with the desert hermit-monks of Egypt. Is it possible this
connection persisted past the 7th/8th centuries, & that the role of the
monks was taken up by Moslems? by Sufis? in contact with a
still-surviving underground Celtic Church, now become completely
heretical, & willing to syncretize Islamic esotericism with its own
Nature-oriented & poetic Faith?
5.Such a syncresis was certainly performed centuries later by the
Templars & the Assassins (Nizari Ismailis). When the Temple was
suppressed by Rome & its leaders burned at the stake, Ireland
provided refuge for many incognito Templars. According to The Temple &
The Lodge, these Templars later reorganized as a rogue Irish branch of
Freemasonry, which (in the early 18th century) would resist amalgamation
with the London Grand Lodge. The Islamic connection with masonry is
quite clear, both in the Templar & the Rosicrucian traditions, but Irish
masonry may have inherited an even earlier Islamic link -- memorialized
in those enigmatic crosses!
6.It's interesting to note that Noble Drew Ali's Masonic initiations may
not have been limited to
Prince Hall or black Shriner transmissions, but may also have included
some hidden lines connected to Irish masonry, & dating back to
Revolutionary days in American history. It is known that many common
soldiers in the British Colonial Army were masons affiliated with the
Irish rather than the London Grand Lodge. This "class" difference -was
reflected in the American Revolutionary Army, whose officers were
"official" masons but whose private ranks tended to be Irish".
7.Historians sometimes forget that in the 18th century, in America, the
Irish were generally considered "no better than Negroes". In 1741 on St.
Patrick's Day in New York a riot broke out,involving a conspiracy which
included Irish, African, & Native American men & women --naturally "of
the meanest sort." Some Irish conspirators were overheard to swear
they'd kill as many "white people" as possible. The uprising failed &
the plotters were executed. As the bodies of two hanged in the open air
decayed in an Iron gibbet, "observers noticed a gruesome, yet
instructive, transformation. The corpse of an Irishman turned black &
his hair curly while the corpse of Caesar the African, bleached white.
It was accounted a 'wondrous phenomenon'"
(Linebaugh & Rediker, "The Many-Headed Hydra").
8.Clearly the Celt & African were linked not only in the gaze of the
oppressor class, but also in their
own world-view -- as comrades, as somehow the same -- in a solidarity
which extended to Indians & to other "Europeans" who fell beneath the
level of the "respectable poor" into the category of slaves & outcasts.
Racist feelings did not divide the 18th century poor & marginalized --
as would become the case under later Capitalism. Rather the marginalized
of all races constituted an
underclass & moreover, an underclass with some awareness of itself,
hence with a certain power(the power of the "strong victim"). This
consciousness might well have been developed in part by Irish-black
"masonry" of some sort. And Noble Drew Ali might have known of this
tradition, which he masked (or perhaps unveiled) in his parable of the
snakes - & celebration of March 17th.
9.In another interpretation of St. Patrick's anti-reptilism, the
"snakes" he banished were in fact "druids", i.e. Celtic pagans. The
snake may have been an emblem of the Old Faith, as it is for
many forms of paganism, including African (Damballah) &
Indian(the Nagas) -- & even for the Ophite Christianity of Egypt (Christ
himself depicted as a crucified snake).
10.Celtic pagan lore was embedded in the Romance traditions especially
in the Arthurian material -- & here once again. we find ourselves in the
world of the Arabo-Celtic crosses. For the romances are permeated with
"Islamic" consciousness. In Malory's Morte dArthur & Eschenbach's
Parzifal many Saracen (i.e. Moslem/Moorish) knights are depicted not as
enemies but allies of the Celts --
& in the latter book the entire story is attributed to Moorish sources
(which are now lost). Saracens, Christians, & crypto-pagans are united
in a mystical cult of chivalry which transcends outward religious forms,
& is emblematized not only in pagan symbols like the Grail & the
Questing Beast, but even in such cultural borrowings as the lute (al-'ud
in Arabic), or indeed the cult of romantic/chivalric love, transmitted
from Islam to the west by Sufis in Spain.
11.Ireland's contacts with Spain certainly extend back into the Islamic
period, & the so-called "Black Irish" may have as many Moorish as
castillian genes. Medieval Irish monks probably absorbed
Sufism & Islamic philosophy along with the art of the illuminated
manuscript -- witness the extraordinary stylistic resonance between the
Book of Eells & the Kufic Korans of Omayyad Spain. If St. Francis could
visit N. Africa & come back to Italy wearing a Sufi's patched cloak, so
the Irish might easily borrow from Egypt & al-Andalus.
12.All speculation aside, the Moorish Orthodox Church entertains its own
esoteric interpretation of NDA's teachings on these matters. We heartily
endorse his "elective affinity" theory of affiliation with a greater
spiritual Celto-Asiatic "race". DNA counts for something, but soul for a
great deal more. "Every man & woman their own vine & fig tree" (one of
NDA's slogans) is not a matter of fate but of character, not of birth
but of choice.
13.In our historical/imaginative exegesis & unfolding of NDA's parable,
we have uncovered a complex of heretical Islamic & Moorish cultural
strands linking Celtic neo-paganism, esoteric Christianity, & the
Arthurian cycle, thru Sufism & masonry, to the perennial libertarian
struggle of the marginalized & oppressed peoples of the "Atlantic"
world.
14.We propose to embody this poetic complex in a popular chivalric
order, devoted symbolically to the cause of "bringing the snakes back to
Ireland" - that is, of uniting all these mystical strands into one
patterned weave, which will restore the power of its synergistic or
syncretistic power to the hearts of those who respond to the particular
"taste" of its mix. We have borrowed this slogan from contemporary
neo-pagans in order to symbolize the special mission our order will
undertake toward Celtic-Moorish friendship. The BLACK THORN LEAGUE will
be open to all, regardless of whether they are MOC members or not,
providing only that they support this particular goal.
15."Black" in our title signifies not only the black banners of the
moors but also the black flag of anarchy. "Blackthorn", because the tree
symbolizes druid Irelands & is used to make cudgels.
"League", in honor of the various Irish rebel groups which have
organized as such. Other organizational models include such
Masonic-revolutionary groups as the Carbonari, or Proudhon's anarchist
"Holy Vehm", or Bakunin's Revolutionary Brotherhood. We also emulate
certain anarcho-Taoist Chinese tongs (such as the Chaos Society)~~ &
hope to evolve the kind of informal mutual aid webworks they developed.
16.The League will bestow the Order of the Black Thorn as title & honor,
& will hold an annual conclave & banquet on St. Patrick's Day in memory
both of Noble Drew Ali's vision, & of those rioters of 1741 who
conspired in low taverns to overthrow the State.
Bring The Snakes Back To Ireland!
the myth of
the Black Irish:
Spanish syntagonism
and prethetical salvation
by tpkunesh
Qui Angliam vincere vellet
ab Ybernia incipere debet.
Who would England win
In Ireland must begin.
The idea of this study struck me six years ago after the first mention of the Black Irish as told to me in variant four of the myth. The question of its origin, meaning, and purpose has haunted me ever since, primarily due to my own Irish heritage (my mother's family name is Kelly) and extended residence in Spain. [My grandfather, Theodore Primeau Kelly, registered Standing Rock Sioux (Lakota) Indian (mixed-blood), also used the term to describe himself, but that was his disguise to pass himself off as white in White society.]
It should be kept in mind that this is a myth whose background is the twentieth century, to date. Due to the lack of variants prior to the XXth century I feel some trepidation in asserting belief in any one cause of origin.
This lack of literature and fieldwork regarding the hispanic Black Irish actually leaves us with more questions than I can attempt to answer. This, then, is only one attempt at an explanation of the myth, a simple stab in the dark. Hopefully the introduction of this topic will result in a more fruitful discussion and study of the myth.
tpk 12 march 1984
St. Paul, Minnesota
Readers' comments on this essay and related links.
Please read this section before commenting.
It is necessary, first, to discard the idea that "myth" refers to a fixed, inviolable content
upon which all members of a community agree. The text is not the context. Second, it is necessary to discard the idea that there is a particular authoritative or outocratic social group that can impose an unquestioned interpretation on a particular experience. Instead, the content is variable and individual. Third, it is important to recognize that both the content and the interpretation are part of a semiotic interaction of verbal and nonverbal expressions. Simply put, mythic discourse refers to a complex process of ongoing interactions and not to a spciifc type of content. The "text" in this case is not simply a written document but the narrative context in all its complex relatedness to the entire field of religious action and behavior. The structures of mythic discourse are found in fluid patterns of communication and are transformed over time throught individual and collective experience.
- Lee Irwin, the Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman:1994) p 188
The color black appears often in the descriptive
language of the physical and cultural features of Ireland. It is also used to
specify certain groups found within the broader spectrum of Hibernian
society. One such employment of the word 'black' in a racial sense is the
reference to the "Black Irish" of the British West Indies (1), the
mixed-blood offspring of 17th century Irish emigrants and African slaves
who live on the island Montserrat, known also as the "Emerald Isle of the
Caribbean."(2) The term "Black Irish" is also currently used with a
deprecatory meaning by the Catholic Irish to describe the Protestants of
Ireland who have historically supported the British rule of Ulster.
"Black" in this sense connotes the "religious and political bigotry"(3) felt
by the Catholics towards the "Prods." The third usage of the expression
"Black Irish" is far rarer and has yet to be found per se in print. In this
sense "Black "refers to the dark (hence "Black") hair, eyes, and skin that
supposedly marks a person of Irish blood as having descended from the
conjugal relationship of a Spanish survivor of the Armada with an Irish
woman.
According to rumors and legends, these Black Irish are the descendants
of a few surviving ill-fated Spanish sailors who sailed with the Felícima
Armada from Spain to invade England but were ultimately shipwrecked
on the northern and western coasts of Ireland in the autumn of 1588. A
very small number of the more than seven hundred Spanish men who
made it alive to the Irish coast survived, and a few of those who did
allegedly became intimate with enough Irish women so as to engender a
new inter-racial (Hibernian-Iberian) strain of progeny whose "dark hair
and eyes and soft brown Southern skin testifies to its remote Spanish
ancestry."(4)
This story has been retold by a number of Irish and Irish-Americans of
this decade by way of explaining their own "dark hair and
eyes"--although from personal experience these facial characteristics have
never been matched by a "brown Southern skin." No folk or scholastic
literature (to the best of my knowledge) exists to verify this Hispanic
ancestry and, indeed, it is doubted whether there is any proof at all to the
claims of Spanish blood in Irish veins. Without written historical
authentication of these beliefs, the story has been relegated to a strictly
oral tradition, bar the few variants that are cited below.
The four following variants are the sum total of referents found regarding
connubial Spanish-Irish relations in reference to the Armada's descent of
1588. It should be noted that all four come from 20th century sources.
Variant one: Anyone who goes along the coast of
Ireland and along the Devonshire (SW England) coast
will in one locality after another find that the inhabitants
of this or that village are asserted to be descendants of
the men from the Armada wrecked upon their coast; that
the dark complexion of the population is owing to the
fact that a number of men of the Armada settled and
married in that part of the district.
--Major Martin Hume, The Geographical Journal,
XXVII: 5 (London, may 1906) p 448
Variant two: A few others [i.e., Spanish survivors of
the shipwrecked Armada] escaped. There were other
Irish girls who pitied them and took them home and
forgot that they were enemies; so that even now on that
coast a child is occasionally born whose dark hair and
eyes and soft brown Southern skin testifies to its remote
Spanish ancestry.
--Lorna Rea, The Spanish Armada (New York 1933) p
160
Variant three: The belief that men of Spanish
appearance in County Galway [W Ireland] may be
descendants of men who came ashore from the ships of
the Armada and inter-married with the Irish...
--T.P. Kilfeather, Ireland: graveyard of the Spanish
Armada (Dublin 1967) p 63
Variant four: When she discovered that I was living in
Spain, she--an Irish-American--remarked that she
herself had Spanish blood in her veins. Asked to explain
further, she replied that her family had always said that
she was "Black Irish" to explain her dark brown hair,
eyes, and personal like of Spain, and that these features
were inherited from a Spanish forebear who had sailed
with the Armada, been shipwrecked, and later married
into her ancestral Irish family.
--personal account of a conversation with Mary Jean
Goodman,
an Irish-American born in Minnesota (St. Paul 1978)
The truth of these statements is challenged within by the authors of
variants one and three, both natives of the British Isles:
Variant one's challenge:
There is very small foundation for this, either with
regard to Ireland or the West of England. In the end of
the year 1588, Fitz William reported that, with the
exception of a few score wandering Spaniards, the
whole of the rest had been either killed or had escaped to
Scotland. In 1596 there was a letter written ... by six
men who had escaped and remained in O'Donnel's
country, appealing to the King [Philip II] to let them
come back to Spain. They said they alone remained of
all who landed. These were six men, and this was only
eight years after the Armada was defeated. Even
supposing these men were wrong and there were a
dozen or two more in various parts, there were never
enough men to influence in the slightest degree the
complexion or the ethnological peculiarities of the
inhabitants of the Irish coast.
--Major Martin Hume, comments made in The
Geographical Journal, XXVII:5 (London, may 1906) p
449; see note 18
Variant three's challenge:
The belief that men of Spanish appearance ...
inter-married with the Irish cannot stand the test of
historical examination.
--T. P. Kilfeather, Ireland: graveyard of the Spanish
Armada (Dublin, 1967) p 63 (5)
In research to date there is no other written source to be found that
mentions a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Irish phenotype created
by the infusion of Spanish blood. Given the lack of supporting evidence,
such as birth and death records, genealogies, surviving Spanish
surnames, much less anything more than an oral tradition in times of
well-documented 'history,' the opposing argument -- that the darker Irish
phenotype is falsely ascribed to the genes of the Armada's sailors --
stands. As a story which purports to be true and is widely and seriously
believed, both in time and space, but devoid of any data with which to
support its claim, it enters the realm of myth. As myth it is open to
investigation as to the reasons for its existence: how it came to be told,
why, and with what effects.
The former question--the 'how' of myth--is best described as the
historical background surrounding the mythic characters which, in this
instance, are the sailors of Spain and the women of Eire. These characters
could (and will) be refined further, but Ireland's own mythic history
speaks of just such a meeting. Gaelic legend, recorded and revised in the
Lebor Gabala Erenn or Book of the Invasions of Ireland (whose earliest
source is dated in the eighth century ce)(6), writes of a series of five
invasions, the last, the greatest, and the most recent of which is
responsible for the current population of Ireland. This was the sea
invasion of the Sons of Mil Espane (aka the Milesians) who "after many
wanderings in Scythia and Egypt eventually reached Spain,"(7) and
subsequently conquered Ireland. Variations of the eponym's name exist,
such as "Mile" and "Milesius" (the Latin form), but all agree that the
source of medieval Irish kingship descended from Spain. The theory that
the IXth "Spanish" Legion of the Roman Empire (which served in
Scotland and disappeared from historical mention in the first century ce)
is the "sole ground of the story of the colonisation of Ireland from Spain
by Milesius" (8) also supports the conclusions of the Book of Invasions.
The natives of Eire whom the Sons of Mil defeated were the Tuatha De
Danann, 'the Peoples of the Goddess Danann,' Danann who is "Mother
of the gods."(9) Although the "Peoples" of the goddess Danann referred
to are always male, more paramount is the fact that the men are defined
by a Woman (the goddess Danann) and that the island of Eire itself has
been and always is referred to in the feminine form as "she" and "her"
[people].(10) The primordial intentional Spanish invasion is uncannily
similar to the modern accidental Spanish landing of 1588:
The Tuatha De Danann raised a furious storm by means of their magical
arts and the Milesian fleet was scattered. Donn and three other sons of
Mile perished. A broken remnant of the fleet, after beating for a long time
about the coasts of Ireland, succeeded in again landing... (11) The result
of the landing also resembles the legend of the Black Irish: "One early
text says the Tuatha De provided the sons of Mil with wives." (12)
These striking similarities beg for the myth of the Black Irish to be
understood as an historical repetition of the act of creation of Gaelic
nation. All of the correspondences fit:
past (primeval)
present (1588)
Spanish males: the Sons of Mil sailors of the Armada
Irish females: Danann, "wives" "Irish girls"
Spain-sea: Milesian fleet the Armada
Eire-land: Tuatha De Danann descendants of Mil Espane
Both landings also entailed initial Irish resistance to the foreign españoles
and subsequent inter-marriage of the native Irish women with the
dominant militaristic Spanish men. In this manner the tale of the Black
Irish is invested with an unknown quantity of sociogonic meaning for
those Irish familiar with knowledge of the Book of Invasions, and the
XVIth century Spaniards become the second Mil Espane.(13) The Black
Irish legend can also be seen as a type of social charter which reaffirms
the traditional bond between the Irish and the Spanish by the
inter-marriage of the two parties. This international bonding, however,
seems to imply the equality of the two nations while, in fact, there
actually existed a great disparity--in Spain's favor. The Spanish Sons of
Mil were regarded as the victors and vanquishers of superior status,
whereas "the other peoples of Ireland are sharply distinguished from
them and implicitly relegated to an inferior status."(14) Likewise within
the story of the Black Irish is the implicit understanding (probably due to
the forthright acknowledgement of being Black Irish) that the taint of
Spanish heritage carries with it some superior merit. In this case the myth
benefits the Black Irish alone who by its telling are themselves associated
with a mythically powerful people -- the Spanish. The legend of the
Black Irish thus charters: 1) a social bond between the nations of Eire and
Spain, and 2) the superior status of the Black Irish within the larger
society.
Moving from the founding of the Milesian-Irish nation towards the fatal
year of the Armada we find that a constant religious(15) and
commercial(16) relationship existed between the two nations since the
sixth century ce. This bond was further strengthened by Henry VIII's
rejection of Roman papal authority and the adoption of Protestantism
which was forced on the Emerald Isle. Before the Armada's arrival,
Irish-Spanish relations had changed from good to intimate as Spain's
King, Philip II, supported the Irish Catholic Church and the various Irish
earls intent on breaking the yoke of English domination forced upon Eire.
Knowledge of the historical background of the close socio-religious ties
between Ireland and Spain sets the stage for a benevolent interpretation of
the Black Irish myth. The title and story deal explicitly with the Irish as
the affected group and the Spanish as the main actors. What is usually not
drawn out in the legend is the implicit English background and English
action necessary for the events to occur. Without the English, all impetus
and motive for the Armada's existence -- much less its culminating
material and human destruction -- would be missing: England serves as
the catalyst for the confrontation between Eire and España (a factor
missing from the myth's interpretation as historical repetition) and the
myth becomes an implicit, subtle polemic for the autonomy of Eire from
England. This confrontation between two superpowers--thesis and
antithesis -- is an inherent factor in the dialectical process. Long before
the crippled Armada saw Ireland's shores it was the English nation
versus Spain, island queen against continental king, "Protestant and
Catholic -- persecutor and persecuted." (17)
After the disastrous encounter of the Armada with hurricane winds, the
ships were strewn, shattered wrecks, all over the coasts of England and
Ireland. In the latter country, the crews were treated very differently,
according as they happened to cast upon the shores of districts amenable
to English authority or influences, or the reverse. In the former instances
they were treated barbarously -- slain as queen's enemies or given up to
the queen's forces. In the latter, they were sheltered and succoured,
treated as friends, and afforded the means of safe return to their native
Spain. ... this hospitality to the shipwrecked Spaniards is too much for
English flesh and blood to bear.
This 'positive' attitude towards the Spanish on part of the Irish is
continued on past the debacle of the Armada. References to the great "aid
from Spain"(18) are numerous in the literature dealing with post-Armada
relations between Ireland and Spain.
The Armada's failure (1588), the subsequent Spanish attempt at forming
a beach-head for Irish resistance and an invasion of England at Kinsale
(1601) for another Reconquista of Catholic land from the heretical
Protestant English, the Flight of the Earls from Eire to Spanish Flanders
(1607), and the continuing supply of Irish 'Wild Geese' given to the
Spanish military (1580-1700) all indicate the support (albeit futile) that
Spain gave to and received from its Irish Catholic compatriots. Although
Spain ultimately failed in its attempts to save Ireland (much less England
and the rest of northern Europe) from the imposition of a Protestant
theology, Spain did provide a society receptive to the self-exiled Irish
upper-class and military in which to live. The University of Salamanca's
Colegio mayor de los nobles irlandeses, the Irish seminary in Valladolid,
the re-settlement of Irish exiles in Cataluña,(19) the sherry bodegas of
Jeréz, the Spanish army,(20) and the Spanish nobility(21) -- all areas of
Spanish society provided open accommodations to the foreign Irish.
Taking these stories of historical design together, one forms the picture of
a fruitful and enduring relationship between Spain and Ireland since
primordial times. It can be surmised that the creation of the legend of the
Black Irish was a manipulation of facts and events by the Irish to form a
'myth of renewal'(22) wherein the arrival of the Sons of Mil Espane in
Eire is re-enacted by the arrival of the Spanish Armada in Ireland--the
return of the mythic eponymous ancestor. The intermingling of the new
Spanish 'black' blood with the common native Irish blood serves to fuse
again the link with the sacred past and to ennoble the thinned blood of the
progeny who issued from the union. As the genealogy of the Sons of Mil
was artificially enlarged by "synthetic historians"(23) so as to include
families which were originally absent from the noble Milesian hereditary
line, the artifice of myth-creation so, too, was used by Irish coastal
peasants to capitalize on an inopportune landing of Spanish through
whom the quality and quantity of the First Men's blood is increased in
their own veins. This historic repetition of the mythic past by
re-interpreting and re-enacting the creation of the Irish nation through the
landing and intermingling of native with foreign (Spanish) blood
presupposes a positive attitude towards the Spanish in the social milieu of
the common Irish in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries.
One could also interpret the seeding of Spanish blood anew into the veins
of the Irish as the passage of political and moral power from one tired
contestant (the Spanish) to another fresher (the Irish) who is more able
and better adapted to the new challenge. Such may be the case when one
takes into account the significance of the Armada's failure as marking the
final defeat of Spanish naval supremacy in Europe. This failure, coupled
with the successive failure of the Spanish to establish a military post in
Kinsale (to precede a full-scale invasion of both Ireland and England)(24)
and Spain's losses in Flanders, could but only herald the upcoming
economic and military downfall of the Hispanic Hapsburg empire. With
Spain's power and influence ebbing it would have been the proper time
for the Irish to take up the fading torch and -- with whatever support that
could be eked out of their religious and political ally to the South -- throw
off the Protestant yoke and push the English into the sea.
But such was not the case. Because of the continuous drain of Irish men
to fight in the Spanish wars in the Netherlands ("the Flight of the Wild
Geese") and because of the allied involvement of the Irish nobility with
the Spanish cause against England which caused the Flight of the Earls,
Ireland -- within one generation of the Armada's loss -- was left
powerless and leaderless. Without Spanish aid the common Irish were
left stranded to contend with the might of the English military and
political system. Without the guidance of the Irish upper-class, the
peasants remained impotent for centuries under the rule of a hostile
foreign crown.
It would thus seem improper to lend to the myth of the Black Irish such a
positive air if the transfer of Spanish blood to Irish peasants is to be seen
as symbolically marking the Irish as the heirs to the defeated Catholic
champions of Europe (the Spanish), for it was the Spanish themselves
who gave the 'kiss of death' to Ireland as it simultaneously lost to their
common English enemy and drained the country of its political leaders,
its military defenders, and its guiding intelligentsia. Spanish blood,
coupled with Irish blood, would be better seen as a corrupting liquid that
should be bled from the body politic and denied rather than cherished,
remembered, and mythologized.
Yet it seems that the legend of the Hispanic Irish, told by the 'Blacks' and
white Irish alike, transmits with it an inherent quality that the alleged
descendants are proud to mention. The myth -- however long it may have
existed prior to the XXth century -- is told as a manner of associating
oneself and one's Irish family with a glorious past. This benevolent
attitude and association of the Irish to the Spanish may be the myth's
purpose, the 'why' of its existence. But given the fact that mythic
hermeneutics change given different time-space coordinates, further
investigation of the time of its alleged conception (both figurative and
literal) renders a different intent of the myth's creators, namely, to
disavow discomfiting chapter in Irish history and to mask the "Black
Chapter."
There exists no corroborating evidence to support the story of
shipwrecked Spanish sailor's relations with Irish women and their
resultant progeny. There does exist, however, a quantity of written
testimony describing instances in which members of the Spanish
Armada's shipwrecked crew were stripped naked, robbed and delivered
over to English authorities or summarily murdered by the Catholic Irish
peasants themselves.
In all accounts of the relations between the Spanish and Irish, severe
distinctions between power, class, and socio-economic status are quite
obvious but have, as a rule, been overlooked. Spain in XVth--XVIIth
century Europe was considered one of the premier first-world powers,
given the Iberian (i.e., Spain and Portugal) military and commercial
domination of the seas and Spain's continuously replenishable economic
source of gold and silver shipped back from its Latin American colonies.
The King of Spain in the latter XVIth century, Philip II, was the single
most powerful monarch in all of Europe with colonies dispersed around
the world. He also had plans of acquiring the British throne, first legally
via his marriage to Mary Tudor (later murdered by Elizabeth), but later
via his role as Defender and Champion of the Catholic Faith against the
heretical seditious English.
In Ireland, Spain was seen as the Catholic foster-parent who would
rescue and protect Eire from the invading and marauding Protestant
English who were set on destroying the socio-religious tradition of the
Irish. Beyond sharing a common religious doctrine and an intense
distrust and disdain of the English (one based on power rivalry, the other
on opposition to colonialization), the Hibernian and Iberian societies were
also similarly stratified into two basic social classes: the upper nobility
and the lower peasants. This social dichotomy played an important role in
the historical events testified to by witnesses. Notice that no distinctions
between the status of the Spanish males and the Irish females are made in
any of the variants. This leads one to presume an egalitarian context for
the interplay between the Irish and Spanish mythic characters when, in
reality, none existed.
The Spanish Armada was in no sense a fleet of the middle-class military
sent as an invasionary force to attack and overwhelm Ireland; rather it
was made up of a great number of Spanish nobles intent on landing in
England with enough treasure to establish themselves in a hostile
country, whose ships and selves were heavily loaded with a great
quantity of gold, silver and jewels. When these ships and nobles were
wrecked on the colonial coast of English-controlled Ireland it was into the
immediate hands of the "mere" (i.e., peasant) coastal Irish that they fell.
The admiral of the Spanish fleet, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, had
forewarned all ships to "take great heed lest you fall upon the island of
Ireland, for fear of the harm that may happen unto you upon that
coast"(25) due to the 'enemy' English in Ireland. But as it turned out, the
'allied' Irish peasantry was as much the enemy of the Armada as the
English overlords. A survivor of the shipwrecked fleet, Captain
Francisco de Cuellar, wrote of his experiences at the hands of the Irish.
In his account he referred to the Irish who met the sick and half-drowned
Spanish on the beaches as:
savages [salvajes] who turned [the landing boat] up for
the purpose of extracting nails or pieces of iron; and,
breaking through the deck, they drew out the dead
men...[whom] they stripped and took away the jewels
and money which they had... The land and the shore
were full of enemies who went about jumping and
dancing with delight at our misfortunes; and when any
one of our people reached the beach, two hundred
savages and other enemies fell upon him and stripped
him of what he had on until he was left in his naked
skin. Such they maltreated and wounded without pity
...(26)
Other groups of Spaniards were murdered by the Irish peasants or
delivered by them into the hands of the English after first having stripped
the foreigners of all valuables and clothing:
Three [ships] were forced into Galway Bay. Here, it
must be recorded, is a black chapter, for not only is it
said in tradition that Irishmen brought about the
shipwreck of a Spanish vessel, but that they cravenly
gave up those Spaniards who had escaped death by
drowning to the agents of Queen Elizabeth. ... Greed for
Spanish gold, silver, silks and wines may have been
[the] unholy motive.(27)
Although the records indicate that the greatest number of Spanish
survivors were hung or summarily beheaded by the English, and that a
number of shipwrecked Spaniards survived exclusively by the care
shown by Irish chieftains and peasants, it must be kept in mind that a fair
amount of the Spaniards who arrived alive on the shores of Eire were
subsequently stripped and murdered by their supposed allies--the 'mere'
Irish. Yet even more interesting is that it is precisely in a county where
the legend of the Black Irish still survives (i.e., County Galway; v.
variant three above) that the Black Chapter of Irish collusion with the
English against the Spanish is written.
That the Irish acted ignobly towards their Spanish Catholic brethren is the
subject of much dispute: "There exists little evidence in support of the
common belief that the shipwrecked Spaniards were slaughtered in large
numbers by the Irish, except in the case of the Ovendens;" (28) "there is
no way of estimating accurately the number of Spaniards drowned or
dispatched; just as there is no evidence at all for the exaggerated belief
that the [Irish] people murdered them by the thousand;"(29) and the
contrary opinion is submitted: "[the Spanish] were sheltered and
succoured, treated as friends, and afforded means of safe return to their
native Spain;" (30) "... on several occasions the Irish looted Spaniards of
all they had, down to their clothes. But they rarely killed them, and they
must have had a hand in assisting the 400 or more who, according to
Fitzwilliam, escaped to Scotland."(31)
In regards to the social attitudes of the Irish in the following XVIIth
century, foreign travellers stated that: "The Irish are fond of strangers;
they love Spaniards, French and other foreigners, but the English and
Scots are their irreconcilable enemies;"(32) "The native Irish are a very
loving people to each other though constantly false to strangers, the
Spaniards only excepted."(33)
An accounting of the Armada by number of ships, men, and losses even
describes the "total [Spaniards] definitely lost in Ireland" (5,250) as either
"drowned or killed by shipwreck" (3,750) or "executed by English
forces" (1,500) with only 750 shipwreck survivors. (34)
But the records show otherwise. The Ovenden (aka Hovenden /
Ovington) brothers mentioned above were Irishmen who "butchered with
lance and bullet" some 310 Spaniards.(35) Their action was supposedly
justified, though, for " if therefore the action of the Ovendens appears
savage, it was no worse than that of the English."(36) Boethius Clanchy,
an Irish chieftain, is said to have been compelled to "have slain his share
of Spaniards in a horrible orgasm of sheer terror before the
Unknown."(37) Another local chieftain, O'Malley, is held responsible
for his "kerns" who "fell on the poor [Spanish] wretches limping ashore
exhausted, battering them down on the rocks or slashing their blood into
the sandy shorewater, they were all as much maniacs as murderers."(38)
These are the alleged three solitary instances (the Ovenden brothers
"being the sole example"--bar two) of Irishmen who "slaughtered the
shipwrecked Spaniards in large numbers."(39) Besides wholesale killing
of the Spanish by 'savage' Irish groups, the robbery and denuding of
their 'allies' is yet another -- albeit lesser -- offense to be accounted for.
Captain Cuellar, in his Account, (40) recounted his personal experience
at the hands of the Irish and what he saw done to others: that he and
others were beaten, robbed, and stripped repeatedly by the Irish coastal
peasants.(41) Relief for the Spanish survivors came only when they
chanced to meet the lone Irish man, woman, or local chieftain who
offered them food and/or shelter.
This juxtaposition of two distinct Irish attitudes towards the Spanish
survivors of the Armada is taken directly from the literature that describes
the events. It is not my intent to argue either side of the issue, suffice it to
say that I do not believe the murder and loot of rich, weakened,
shipwrecked foreigners by an impoverished, politically-oppressed
peasantry needs any justification here. The suspension of any and every
social ethic in light of economic disparity is an all too common historical
occurrence to try to apply a moral judgement in this small case. History,
whether read as myth or literature, will survive to say that the
shipwrecked Spaniards suffered pain and death in the English-occupied
land of their allies, Eire, and that the Irish themselves were responsible
for possibly half of the misery inflicted upon the Spanish, in conjunction
with their mutual English enemies.
Having reviewed the controversial ethical disparity shown by the actions
of the Irish towards the Spanish (i.e., the murder of allies) in the
historical accounts, we can now examine the acknowledged economic
disparity between the two groups:
"As Cuellar describes it, Irish society was primitive in
the extreme and in general singularly unattractive,"(42) "
It must not be forgotten that de Cuellar, a Spaniard of
the 'upper' class, is describing the Irish as he found
them. His impressions and attitudes were necessarily
coloured by his memories of, and customs in his own
country--one of the most ancient and civilized in Europe,
then at the height of her power, with vast territories in
three continents."(43)
The manner in which the Spaniards and their possessions are described is
a good measure also of the dichotomy of material wealth present in the
stories:
"[He was] dressed in 'black raised velvet with broad
gold lace' [and] died in the gray Irish waters wearing a
doublet and breeches of white satin, with russet silk
stockings,"(44) "there came striding out of the waves
sixteen persons 'alive' with their chains of gold." (45)
The stereotype of the rich, foreign Spaniard is reinforced by another
(religious) myth called 'The Spanish Sailor'(46) which is/was told along
the northwest coast of Ireland, coincidentally an area of numerous
Armada wrecks. In the story, a Spaniard becomes a sailor and promises
his mother to remain true to the Catholic faith. As the years pass he
accumulates a "lot of money" and when he feels his death approaching,
asks to be set ashore on the shores of NW Ireland. Becoming very weak
and moaning, a priest and his clerk happened upon him and, in
accordance with his mother's wish, the priest administers the Last Rites
to the dying man. The Spaniard dies, but not before donating his
money-belt to the priest and requesting the construction of a church with
it. This myth is told to explain the origin of two churches, built by the
priest, but it also bears a striking similarity to the oppositions present in
the myth of the Black Irish:
Spain
::
Ireland
dead
::
alive
rich
::
(poor)
foreign
::
domestic
sea
::
land
secular
::
religious
single
::
plural
These opposing qualities are mediated by the unifying factor of
Catholicism. In both myths the Spanish die and the "mere" meek Irish
"inherit the earth;" they, the true survivors of Spanish defeat, who end up
with a greater quantity of the foreigners' material and spiritual wealth.
Both the ethical and economic disparities in some fashion challenge or
belittle the native Irish culture for either their impotent or hostile reactions
to the landing of Spanish allies or for the implicit Irish lack of financial
capital. But no myth lives in which all of the characters are objectively
neutral or in which the foreign element has no negative connotation
either. Just-so in the myth of the Black Irish, the Spanish are responsible
in their own way for the resultant military and political disparities that
widened after the Armada's demise--to the disadvantage of both nations.
Based on King Philip II's own inner convictions, the "efforts of
successive English governments of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries to cope with the Irish problem by the expropriation of Irish
lands, the plantation of English colonies, the repression of the Roman
Catholic religion, and, occasionally, by the deliberate extermination of the
native population"(47) had to be arrested with military power "since both
the honour of Spain and his own devotion to religion demanded it."(48)
Ireland itself was not without its political and military leaders, especially
in view of the efforts that Hugh O'Neill, along with other Irish earls, put
into the effort of reconquering Eire from the occupying English. It was
actually O'Neill himself who "sought with every argument at his
command to secure at last a Spanish invasion of Ireland."(49) The
struggle of the Irish nobility to secure the independence of their country
in the midst of greater English power was heroic but doomed without the
aid of an ally equal or superior to their enemy. Pope Gregory's plan for a
holy war in Ireland against the Protestant English failed earlier due to the
lack of either French or Spanish support. In 1580, the Spanish landed a
force at Dun an Oir in County Kerry which was subsequently massacred
by the English. The Armada's failure to invade England and to return
home unharmed left Europe is a puzzle, but the defeat and surrender of
the Spanish landing force at Kinsale in 1602 confirmed the view that
Spain's military power had fallen. Philip II's honour in Ireland meant
nothing to him now and it was even said that "king and people were
weary of the importunities of the many Irish refugees in their midst and
spoke of them as Irish beggars." (50) Although it is said that "Spain had
lost nothing in Ireland,"(51) the remark is not quite true: Spain had lost
its credence as a Catholic power allied to the Irish cause. Its attempts in
Ireland had failed and its honor remained besmirched.
What is more evident and more damning aún is that Ireland had lost
everything in Spain:
In Ireland, the gigantic wave which the Spaniards had
raised on the surface of English rule subsided in the
aftermath of their departure; in a few weeks it was as if
nothing had ever happened, that the vision of great ships
looming like awesome birds of ill omen along the
coastline was a mere dream. The old Gaelic chiefs, their
chance gone, returned to their internecine squabbling ...
Spanish help would be no more.(52)
Every Spanish loss in Ireland meant a loss of Ireland as the rebel Irish
were forced by treaty or threat of death to leave their country.
Immediately following the first loss of the Spanish in Ireland at Dun an
Oir (1500) began the Flight of the Wild Geese (53) which continued on
throughout the XVIIth century. This Flight was forced on many Irishmen
who had taken part in the 1580 rebellion and was "offered" later by
Spanish army recruiters who needed Irish blood to maintain Spain's grip
on the Netherlands. The loss at Kinsale in 1602 and the subsequent
failure of Spain to honor its pledges to the Irish nobles who had sought
Spanish aid in order to augment their fight for self-defense resulted in "an
era characterized by bitter frustration over the failure of Ireland to achieve
political and religious identity."(54)
The Kinsale loss also resulted in the Flight of the Earls which, coupled
with the slower and steadier Flight of the Wild Geese, resulted in the
veritable emasculation of the patriarchal Irish culture and society. This
was the hejira of the Irish nobility -- the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel,
along with a hundred northern chieftains -- to the mainland of Europe,
taking up military service under the Spanish as did the Wild Geese or
settling down to live the life-in-exile, mainly in Cataluña of NE Spain.
The net effect of the Flight of Earls dealt a devastating blow to the Irish:
To the Ireland of the time, the depression and emigration
of the leading families meant more than the destruction
of an aristocracy would have meant to any other country
in western Europe. The whole social system depended
on the great families: it was they who supported the
scholars, musicians, poets, law officers. The
disappearance of a historic family left a blank in the
countryside.(55)
Politically and militarily, XVIth and XVIIth century Spain was power-ful
while Ireland of the same time was power-less. The special diplomatic
bond formed between the two nations was born solely on the merits of
their shared religion and their antagonism towards the common English
enemy. Their relationship as allies was to benefit both parties, resulting in
Irish independence and Spanish religio-political hegemony. The lapse of
conviction and power on the part of Spain was a betrayal of the Irish trust
and hope in salvation which would befit a portrayal of Spain -- in Irish
eyes -- as an impotent, castrating, blood-sucking nation of bad Faith. So
why would a romantic myth of Spanish-Irish love survive this epoch?
Historical hindsight may indicate the ultimate Spanish betrayal of Irish
interests, but the hope of salvation is a greater factor to be reckoned
myth.
As we have pointed out above, four disparities or oppositions exist in the
social milieu of the myth of the Black Irish: 1) ethical--Irish degradation
of Spanish ally; 2) economic--the Spanish rich confront the Irish poor; 3)
political--the empirical Spanish lose to/betray the colonized Irish; and 4)
military-power-ful Spain succumbs to power-less Ireland. The unifying
and mediating factors within the myth's context are two: 1) Spain and
Ireland's opposition to English political and cultural hegemony, and 2)
Spain and Ireland's common Faith in the Roman Catholic religion. It is
the unifying factors themselves that presume a socio-religious equality
existing between the allies but historical analysis that uncovers the ethnic
disparities between the Iberians and Hibernians. The following diagram
lists the various mythic and historic components found within the legend:
two realities:
ideal (self-definition)
definition by ally
definition by its enemy
Eire
Irlanda
Ireland
España
Espane
Spain
England
--
Sarana/ Inglaterra
England is the only victor, remaining as Spain and Ireland's nemesis.
The legend plays down to a stalemate between the two defeated allies: the
historical disparities and oppositions are drawn out, the mythic
components are quantified, and the myth's meaning remains unresolved.
But one method of analysis is left: the analysis of its dialectical structure.
The similarities between the native Tuatha De Danann's opposition to the
Sons of Mil Espane and their later adoption of the foreign invaders as a
positive socio-political element, and the Irish "resistance" to the Armada's
landing but subsequent creation of the Black Irish myth, are too obvious
to go unremarked. Using a dialectical framework to chart the history, the
Tuatha De is the initial thesis, the landing of the Sons of Mil -- the
antithesis, and medieval Eire becomes the synthesis. This was the last
mythic combat between the native Irish Celts and a foreign invader whose
merging resulted in the historical Eire. As the synthesis (Eire) moves
from the new to the established order to become the thesis, it is met by
the antithesis--the English. When King Henry VIII of England divorced
Catherine of Aragon (of Spain) in 1535 and separated England from the
Roman Church, the split between the Catholic Church and the English
State created a whole new world of opposition/s. Protestantism remained
the antithesis as the Catholic Tudor queen Mary I became sovereign
(1553) and was then eliminated (1559). Elizabeth I, England's first
Protestant queen (1559-1605), secured the Protestant antithesis in Europe
and--by her hated Irish policies -- secured the English antithesis in Eire
which, removed from the Gaelic tongue, became "Ireland" -- the English
antithesis of Eire.
English Ireland's contemporary (s. XVI-XVII) antithesis (which never
realized its full potential) was Spain, and had any of its attempts to land
and wrestle control of Ireland from its English lords been successful, the
Emerald Isle would probably have become a protectorate of Spain which,
for our purposes here, would be renamed "Irlanda"--the Spanish
synthesis of Ireland. But England's nemesis failed and remained simply a
potential that ultimately signed a treaty of peace with London in 1604,
thus putting an end to the overt hostilities between the two countries and
implicitly surrendering Eire/Ireland to the English. Nonetheless, this
opposition of the thesis (English Ireland) with the antithetical empirical
aspirations of XVIth century Spain, which given more military and
economic support, may well have resulted in the synthesis of "investing
Ireland in a king ... of Philip's [III] choice,"(56) was not the dialectical
process that the Gaels had envisioned or hoped for. What the Irish sought
now was salvation from their oppressor and a return to the primal state of
pre-English Ireland, Eire, through Spanish mediation. Even though
historical process was not to be denied, the mythical process of returning
to one's origin--to Eire, free from all outside control -- was the higher
goal. Empirical Spain sufficed as the means to the end of English
oppression but the historical redemption process would have also
involved becoming the Spanish protectorate 'Irlanda,' not returning to
independent Eire.
What was needed and found was a turn outside of the dialectic's
historical process: the opposition of the prethesis to the thesis in the form
of Ireland's mythical eponymous ancestor -- España. The prethesis acts
as the alternative factor in the dialectical process of opposition to the
status quo's thesis: the antithesis progresses temporally into the future
whereas the prethesis regresses into the "pragmatic" past of "reflective
history"(57)--myth. The hypothetical historical resolution of the
opposition between the colonial English and the empirical Spanish in
Ireland's favor would merely have resulted in a Hispanic 'Irlanda,'
whereas the positive resolution of the conflict between English Ireland
and the mythic Espane/España would have succeeded in creating a
dialectical (p)re-synthesis of Eire, free of both Spanish and English
hegemony, re-turned to original pre-English independence.
Self -less methodical dialectical pro-gress in time is history; self -ish
dialectical re-gress in time is myth. The purpose of the prethesis is to
supply an ideological mental milieu which is anti-historical and
reactionary; a myth whose projection into the past will offer the political
substrata needed to recoup the distant ethnical glory. In the myth of the
Black Irish, the Eirish Gaels are the obvious protagonists, but
not-so-obvious and only implicitly understood is the antagonistic role of
the Irish English. The intermarriage of the Espanish with the Eirish does
not serve to set the stage for a historical dialectic which will place Spain
as victor over an Irlanda but rather functions as a method of mythic
reduction whereby both national groups are reduced to a common
ancestry (the Celtic Mil Espane) in which the regenerated foreigners -- the
XVIth century Espane/Españoles -- become syn-tagonists: a people who
play a major dramatic role in support of the protagonist, selflessly,
against the antagonist.
syntagonist
protagonist
antagonist
España
Eire
England
The structuralization of the myth of the Black Irish well serves the
purpose of laying out the inherent oppositions and disparities in the two
Celtic cultures--insular and pen-insular. Dialectical analysis illustrates the
broader picture of oppositions and resolutions within a context of national
and international conflict. Myth reduces contention and joins the two
distinct contemporary cultures together into the mythic union that was the
past.
This is the legend of the Black Irish, the self-imposed identification of
Eireland with the mythic--not the true--España, whose power would have
brought the riddance of the colonial English and the re-establishment of
pre-Anglo Eire. The myth is still told today to maintain Eire's historical
identification and religio-cultural union with the past, between island and
peninsula, in which the struggle for Roman Catholic self-determination
still survives.
- ya -
Comments? Critiques? Drop me a note: tpkunesh@hypertext.com
footnotes
1.John C. Messenger, "The Black Irish of Montserrat,"
Eire-Ireland, II-1 (St. Paul, Minnesota: spring 1967) back
2.Don Riley, "Untainted Montserrat boggles eye and mind," St.
Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul MN 26 february 1984), 3D back
3.personal conversation with James Gearity, Irish-American
(Minneapolis MN 1 march 1984); and
conversation with Mrs. Jean Giles (neé Kelly), (St. Paul MN 27
february 1984) back
The Royal Black Perceptory (Imperial Royal Black Chapter of
the British Commonwealth) was established in 1797, in the
aftermath of the 1795 Battle of the Diamond. It was founded "for
the preservation of the Protestant religion, and to serve as a
bulwark against insidious attempts of the opponents of liberty".
(Sir Knight Norman Stronge, Bart., former Sovereign Grand
Master of the Imperial Grand Black Chapter of the British
Commonwealth, cited in Gardiner 1993). See "Royal Black
Institution" at http://homepages.iol.ie/~pfc/loyal.html#Royal
Thanks to John McCann, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.
4.Lorna Rea, The Spanish Armada (New York 1933) p 160 back
5.On p 67: "In the tales of the seanachies of Galway, one may still
hear of how only two men and a boy escaped death of all those
who had been shipwrecked in the Falco Blanco, the Concepción,
and those who came from the nameless ship. They were
sheltered by the people of Galway--at great risk to their own
lives--fed and clothed in many homes. Did they ever get back to
Spain? Did they remain in Galway, learning to speak and to
dress as Irishmen did? These are intriguing questions, but to
them it is doubtful if there will ever be an answer." back
6.F. J. Byrne, Irish kings and high-kings (New York 1973) p 9
nb: The abbreviation "ce" stands for common era, a
chronographical term used to acknowledge the cultural and
religious diversity in the Western hemisphere, in contrast to the
commonly used abbreviations bc (before Christ) and ad (Anno
Domini/Year of Our Lord) that reflect time only in the Christian
cultural context. back
7.ibidem, p 199 back
8.Robert C. MacLagan, Scottish myths: notes on Scottish history
and tradition (Edinburgh 1882) p 64
nb: The eponym 'Mil Espane' or Milesius has two possible
sources: 'Mil' being derived from the Latin 'miles,' or soldier, or
the Latin 'mille' meaning thousand. 'Espaine' undeniably comes
from 'Hispania'/España/Spain. Thus 'Mil Espane' would mean
either the Thousand or the Soldiers from Spain. back
9.Alwyn and Brinley Rees, Celtic heritage (New York 1961) p
26,30 back
10.Kevin P. Reilly, "Irish literary biography: the goddesses that
poets dream of," Eire-Ireland, XVI:3 (St. Paul MN: fall 1981) p
64-70 back
11.Joseph M. Flood, Ireland: its myths and legends (New York
1916/1970) p 21 back
12.Rees, op. cit.; p 39. The Irish version of the Historia Britonum
of Nennius, ed. and tr. J.H. Todd (Dublin: 1848) p 250 back
13.or the third: see F.J. Byrne, op.cit., p 201 back
14.Byrne, op.cit., p 9 back
15.Paul R. Lonigan, "An unexplored question: Celtic church
influence on Old French hagiography;" Eire-Ireland IX:1 (St.
Paul MN: spring 1974) p 73 back
16.Wm. Spotswood Green, "The wrecks of the Spanish Armada on
the coast of Ireland," The Geographical Journal XXVII:5
(London: may 1906) p 430, 439; also anonymous,
Advertisements for Ireland, 1623 (Dublin: 1923) back
17.Padraic Colum, A treasury of Irish folklore, 2nd ed. (New York:
1967) p 169 back
18.ibidem, p 172 back
19.Dorothy Molley, "In search of the Wild Geese," Eire-Ireland,
V:3 (St. Paul, Minnesota: autumn 1970) back
20.R. Wall, "Irish officers in the Spanish service," Irish genealogist
1978:5 back
21.Micheline Walsh, Spanish knights of Irish origin, 3 vol.
(Dublin: 1960-1970) back
22.Mircea Eliade, Myth and reality (New York 1963) back
23.Byrne, op.cit., p 9 back
24.John J. Silke, "Spain and the invasion of Ireland, 1601-02,"
Irish Historical Studies XIV:56 (Dublin: september 1965) back
25.State Papers (Ireland), vol. 137:1; cited by Wm. Spotswood
Green, op.cit., p 434 back
26.Captain Cuellar's narrative of the Spanish Armada and his
adventures in Ireland, trans. Robert Crawford (London 1897) p
49, 50back
27.T.P. Kilfeather, op.cit., p 63-4 back
28.Cyril Falls, Elizabeth's Irish wars (London 1950) p 166 back
29.Sean O'Faolain, The great O'Neill - a biography of Hugh
O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, 1550-1616 (New York 1942) p 134
back
30.Padraic Colum, op.cit., p 169 back
31.Cyril Falls, op.cit., p 166 back
32.Edward MacLysaght, Irish life in the seventeenth century: after
Cromwell (London, 1939) p 18 back
33.ibidem, from The memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe (1907
edition) pp 56-63 back
34.Niall Fallon, The Armada in Ireland (London 1978) p 215 back
35.Cyril Falls, op.cit., p 165 back
36.ibidem, p 166 back
37.Sean O'Faolain, op.cit., p 135 back
38.ibidem, p 135 back
39.Evelyn Hardy, Survivors of the Armada (London 1966) p 116
[original reference not given] back
40.Robert Crawford, trans., op.cit., p 51-8 back
41.Evelyn Hardy, op.cit., p 120.
nb: These personal accounts are taken by many historians to be
culturally-biased reports not so much about the Irish but against
them and arbitrarily dismissed as such. See also following
op.cit., p 322 back
42.John de Courcy Ireland, "Book review of Survivors of the
Armada by Evelyn Hardy;" Irish Historical Society XV:59
(Dublin: march 1967) p 321 back
43.Evelyn Hardy, op.cit., p 96 back
44.Lorna Rea, op.cit., p 160-1 back
45.Sean O'Faolain, op.cit., p 135 back
46.Sean O'Sullivan, Legends from Ireland (New Jersey: 1978) p
101-02 back
47.W.R. Jones, "'Giraldus Redivivus'--English historians, Irish
apologists, and the work of Gerald of Wales" Eire-Ireland IX:3
(St. Paul, Minnesota: autumn 1974) p 13 back
48.John J. Silke, op.cit., p 299 back
49.ibidem, p 298-9, of footnote 9 back
50.Cyril Falls, op.cit., p 162 back
51.John J. Silke, op.cit., p 312 back
52.Niall Fallon, op.cit., p 208 back
53.see Maurice Hennessy, The Wild Geese: the Irish soldier in exile
(London, 1973); and Brendan Jennings, Wild Geese in Spanish
Flanders, 1582-1700 (Dublin 1964) back
54.W.R. Jones, op.cit., p 13 back
55.? back
56.John J. Silke, op.cit., p 301 back
57.Georg W.F. Hegel, Reason in history, trans. Robert S. Hartman
(Germany 1837/Indiana 1953) p 7- 8 back
new text/s to consider:
Survivors of the Armada
by Evelyn Hardy (Constable: London 1966)
4
SURVIV0RS OF THE ARMADA
To our survivor and writer-in-chief, de Cuellar, the people seemed
barbarous and savage. They were so to the English who with the
patronage of a more powerful invading race were ignorant of, and
uninterested in Ireland's glorious past, of her Gaelic customs, laws,
legends, language and literature; her caste of Catholic thought in a
religion which they had once shared; or her methods of intricate skilled
warfare adapted to the difficult terrain--never fully-mastered by any
invading soldier, no matter how experienced he had become in
continental warfare.
Tudor England with her growing population and increased vitality sought
expansion to the west, at the same time attempting to ward off the thrust
of a Spain enriched with the gold of Peru whose sovereign, in addition to
his native country, ruled over the Netherlands, Southern Italy and Sicily,
Sardinia, Milan, the Spanish colonies in the Americas and (after 1590)
Portugal and all the Spanish colonies in the Indies. Ireland's involvement
in her neighbour, England's, problems was inevitable, yet her position,
not only geographically, was ambiguous. Close to English and
continental shores she was yet remote and detached: small in size she was
of great importance to a stronger power who could use her as a base or an
ally against England. By 1588, misunderstood and mishandled by
successive English sovereigns and governments, decimated by
meaningless bitter wars, and rebellious under increasing religious
tyranny, both oppressed and depressed, she had become wholly unfit to
meet the impact of a new Renaissance world from whose influences she
had remained virtually untouched, or to become involved in what
Mattingly calls "the first great international crisis in modern history". In
this state of mental bewilderment and despair she was increasingly drawn
to Rome, or to Spain, for understanding and practical support. Since the
three countries shared the same form of Christian faith this was natural,
but the links with Spain were far more numerous and ancient, more
subtly forged than those with Italy. They were, and are, geological,
botanical, ethnological, archaeological, historical and commercial, even in
one basic instance linguistic. Here we are concerncd only with the racial
DESTINATION OF THE FLEET
5
and commercial, as they impinge on questions pertinent to the hurling of
the Spaniards on Irish shores in the autumn of 1588.
There is a common supposition that large, undefined
numbers of Irishmen and women are descended from
survivors of the Armada, a theory that Mattingly succinctly
disposes of in fourteen lines. Anyone who studies the State
Papers and other contemporary accounts of events in that
terrible year must come to the same conclusion--that it is
improbable that the few "ragges of men", as Lord Deputy
Fitzwylliam described the starved, shipwrecked, emaciated,
half-dying Spaniards who were washed up and remained
alive, should beget numerous descendants. Either they died
like flies on landing, or they were exterminated at once on
strands, rocks and shoals, or later in bogs, woods and
mountains in which they had taken refuge; in camps, prisons
or market squares. We have an example of the first in the
young soldier, who had fought at Terceira, who died beside
the sleeping de Cuellar during the night.
The men of rank who were saved from the sword for ransom
were kept close confined in castles in the west or north,
until they could be conveyed to those in the east for easier
transport to England. The common soldiers or sailors who
survived and were sheltered by friendly chieftains got away
through Irish or Scottish aid as quickly as they could, to
Scotland or the continent, their overpowering instinct being
to escape the English whom they observed slaughtering their
companions, harrying the Irish and hounding themselves. An
inconsequential number, as we shall see, remained in service
in the north with that Prince of Elizabethan Irishmen, the
Great O'Neill, but these were an exception. Any physical
similarities. of the Irish to the Spanish may therefore more
reasonably be attributed to their common Iberian blood and
the intermingling of the two races throughout many centuries
past, facilitated by trade and commerce.
The commercial links between Ireland and Spain, fostered by the
prevailing south-westerly winds, appear to go back to Mesolithic times.
Here archaeology confirms ethnology.
Eloy J. Gallegos, _the Melungeons: the pioneers of the interior
Southeastern United States 1526-1997_, Villagra Press:
Knoxville 1997
Part III: the Heritage -- Origins of the Iberians
The origins of the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (Spanish/Portuguese)
are many and varied. For this reason wehn one is asked what does a
Melungeon look like, the answer can be as varied as the origins of the
Iberains themselves. A family of Melungeons for example can have
members vary, one member can be small, wiry, dark-complexioned;
another light colored eyes (blue or hazel), fair skin and hair; ... In many
of the Melungeon, Redbone, Lumbee etc. communities, when asked to
explain their non-Anglo appearance, they call themselves, Black Dutch,
Black Irish, Portuguese, and in more recent years Cherokee, not Indian
but Cherokee. Only recently I visited with a long-time associate who at
one time called himself Black Dutch. Since discovering that the
Melungeons came from a very honorable and heroic past, he as many
others of Melungeon heritage no longer hide behind the Black Dutch,
Black Irish shield. Recently he acknowledged to me that "its no so bad
being Spanish."
- p 69-70
Comments? Critiques? Drop me a note: blackirish@hypertext.com
other interesting topics ...
the Cherokee-Blackfoot | the Melungeons
42 NEGATIVE CONFESSIONS
THIS IS THE WAY WE MUST LIVE IN ORDER TO HAVE A BETTER WORLD FROM THE ANCIENT HOLY BOOK OF KEMIT. THE BOOK OF THE COMING FORTH BY DAY AND BY NIGHT, OR AS THE DECEIVERS NAMED IT, “THE BOOK OF THE DEAD” TO INJECT FEAR INTO OUR DECISION TO READ IT OR NOT.
1. I have not done iniquity (wickedness)
2. I have not robbed with violence
3. I have not stolen
4. I have done no murder, I have done no harm
5. I have not defrauded offerings
6. I have not minished (diminished) oblations (offerings)
7. I have not plundered the god
8. I have spoken no lies
9. I have not snatched away food
10. I have not caused pain
11. I have not committed fornication
12. I have not caused shedding of tears
13. I have not dealt deceitfully
14. I have not transgressed (broken or violated a command or law)
15. I have not acted guilefully (deceitfull,treacherously)
16. I have not laid waste the ploughed land
17. I have not been an eavesdropper
18. I have not set my lips in motion (against any man)
19. I have not been angry and wrathful except for a just cause
20. I have not defiled the wife of any man
21. I have not defiled the wife of any man
22. I have not polluted myself
23. I have not caused terror
24. I have not transgressed (broken or violated a command or law)
25. I have not burned with rage
26. I have not stopped my ears against the words of Right and Truth
27. I have not worked grief
28. I have not acted with insolence (disrespect)
29. I have not stirred up strife
30. I have not judged hastily
31. I have not been an eavesdropper
32. I have not multiplied words exceedingly
33. I have done neither harm nor ill
34. I have never cursed the king
35. I have never fouled the water
36. I have not spoken scornfully
37. I have never cursed God
38. I have not stolen
39. I have not defrauded the offerings of the gods
40. I have not plundered the offerings of the blessed dead
41. I have not filched the food of an infant, neither have I sinned against the god of my native town
42. I have not slaughtered with evil intent the cattle of the god |
