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Black Irish - why proud of it?

By Laraine Rose

Many a family perports to have arrived on the scene of Ireland by the dark Irish phenotype created by the infusion of Spanish blood. My research has led me to doubt this athough, I'm sure that if debated with them, it would lead to their staunch objection.

The color black appears often in the descriptive language of the physical and cultural features of Ireland. One such employment of the word 'black' in a racial sense is the reference to the "Black Irish" of the British West Indies, 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."

The term "Black Irish" is also currently used with a disparaging meaning by the Catholic Irish to describe the Protestants of Ireland who have historically supported the British rule of Ulster. "Black" in this sense of "religious and political bigotry" felt by the Catholics towards the "Prods."

The third usage of the expression "Black Irish" is far rarer and has yet to be found in print. In this sense "Black "refers to the dark 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 (male) 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 strain of progeny whose dark hair and eyes and soft brown Southern skin testifies to its remote Spanish ancestry.

This last 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 I have seldom seen these facial characteristics 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 different references cited below. (All four of the following records listed below come from 20th century sources.)

-- Major Martin Hume, The Geographical Journal, XXVII: 5 (London, may 1906) p 448

"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."

-- Lorna Rea, The Spanish Armada (New York 1933) p 160

"A few others [i.e., Spanish survivors of the shipwrecked Armada] escaped. There were 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."

-- T.P. Kilfeather, Ireland: graveyard of the Spanish Armada (Dublin 1967) p 63

"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..."

The truth of these statements have been challenged by authors of the British Isles:

-- Major Martin Hume, comments made in The Geographical Journal, XXVII:5 (London, may 1906) p 449

"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."

-- T. P. Kilfeather, Ireland: graveyard of the Spanish Armada (Dublin, 1967) p 63

"The belief that men of Spanish appearance ... inter-married with the Irish cannot stand the test of historical examination."

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. It is held that the Irish rarely killed them, and they must have had a hand in assisting the 400 or more who, according to Fitzwilliam, escaped to Scotland. 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.

In research to date I found no other written source that mentions a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Irish 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 argument that the darker Irish person is falsely ascribed to the genes of the Armada's sailors, stands. As a story which claims to be true and is widely and seriously believed, 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 and why.

So why the proud boasts of being a "Black Irish?" I have an Irish friend who found it very odd/funny that large numbers of American tourists (often retired Irish Americans from Boston/Chicago in tour groups) would proudly proclaim that they were "Black Irish!" The Irish that she knew took this to mean that they were saying that they were descended from the Irish who were transported as indentured servants (i.e. slaves) to Barbados and had intermarried with the African slaves there. Dublin was almost lily-white and shall we say "xenophobic" at that time and she asked me why Americans would so proudly proclaim that they were descendants of African slaves in the "new world"? What would you have answered?

Credits:

1. John C. Messenger, "The Black Irish of Montserrat," Eire-Ireland, II-1 (St. Paul, Minnesota: spring 1967)

2. Don Riley, "Untainted Montserrat boggles eye and mind," St. Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul MN 26 february 1984), 3D

3. 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

4. Cyril Falls, op.cit., p 166

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish

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		Poddys recommended this intel. Feb 10, 2011
		nick respected this intel. Feb 10, 2011

Great intel. I have often wondered the meaning of Black Irish, and you have certainly clarified it well.

Thanks for your comment, I'm back at Qondio now on a limited basis. My bones were just itching to write. Will visit some of your work soon.

Thank you for sharing this well researched and well written story, Loraine.
This is a ***** story on Irish history in my opinion.
Keep up the good work.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Thanks for the kind words. I enjoy research and my husband's family always said that Will came from the Black Irish .. that's why I wanted to clarify just what that title entailed. You sure have been busy since I've been away from Qondio.. I'll be visiting your site soon to read some of your work.
Laraine

The Irish use the word 'black' to denote anything that is evil or ungodly. In all my time on the island I never heard of any individual being referred to as 'black' Irish - only 'black' (with no reference to skin colour).
The only 'black Irish' I ever heard spoken of in Ireland (my first wife was Irish) were either the IRA who oppressed the whole nation in efforts to reunite it against the wishes of the majority or criminals.
Tales in the British Isles of glamorous (or so they would have seemed to the natives) foreigners shipwrecked on the thousands of miles of shore line are almost a tradition. In reality, most of the population of the British Isles were too poor to give up the chance of either robbing or holding to ransom in order to satisfy more base instincts.
I suppose it is significant that those claiming to be 'black Irish' have, for the most part, never visited the island in the same way that most 'Irish Americans' have never visited but sing all the 'songs' that have been written in modern years about the auld country.
In the south west of England the most common ancestral claim is that a distant relative was a famous pirate (usually Cornish).

Hiya .. You are sooo correct! I have a lot of family living in Ireland who have co-oberated all that I have written. I'll be visiting your work soon .. Just getting my sealegs under me again.
Laraine

I so much enjoyed reading your well researched article Laraine. I've missed you. Thanks for sharing what it means to be Black Irish with us.

Thank you for your kind words. I'll be returning to visit your intels asap.
Laraine

I never heard that story about the Spanish Armada. The story doesn't make sense to me.

Why would a woman -- or a lot of women -- allow herself to be impregnated by an enemy sailor in confinement who is likely to disappear soon and be sent back to the enemy home country (or killed)? Remember: at that time Ireland (and most of the rest of Europe, really) was very poor. The issue of supporting a child was on everyone's mind. Having a child by a prisoner out of wedlock was not a way to survive -- especially when the Church at that time frowned on out of wedlock children.

Doesn't make sense to me either. This is what makes me believe that it is a myth.

Thank you for commenting.
Laraine

Excellent research. It's amazing how many Spaniards did survive the wrecks of the Armada. Frustrating how history didn't get properly documented back then, or we would know for sure.

Poddys Feb 10, 2011 04:10

appreciated

Interesting article, Laraine. I've heard of the "Black Irish" since I was a child.

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