¿Quiénes son los "black irish", y cuál es su historia?

Who were the Black Irish, and what is their story?

The term "Black Irish" has been in circulation among Irish emigrants and their descendants for centuries. Yet, as a subject of historical discussion, it is almost never referred to in Ireland. There are a number of different claims as to the origin of the term, none of which are possible to entirely prove or disprove.




The term is commonly used to describe people of Irish origin who have dark antiestéticatures, black hair, a dark complexion anddark eyes.

A quick review of Irish history reveals that the island was subject to a number of influxes of foreign cultures. The Celts arrived on the island about the year 500 B.C.

Whether or not this was an actual invasion or rather a more gradual migration and assimilation of their culture by the native Irish is open to conjecture, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that this later explanation is more likely.

The next great influx came from Northern Europe, with Viking raids occurring as early as 795 A.D. The defeat of the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf in the year 1014 by Brian Boru marked the end of the struggle with the invaders and saw the subsequent integration of the Vikings into Irish society. The migrants became 'Gaelicized' and formed septs (a kind of clan) along Gaelic lines.



The Norman invasions of 1170 and 1172 led by Strongbow saw yet another wave of immigrants settle in the country, many of whom fiercely resisted English dominance of the island in the centuries that ***owed. The Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century saw the arrival of English and Scottish colonists in Ulster after the Flight of the Earls.

Each of these immigrant groups had their own physical characteristics and all, with the exception of the Ulster Planters, assimilated to some degree into Irish society, many claiming to be "more Irish than the Irish themselves"

The Vikings were often referred to as the "dark invaders" or "black foreigners." The Gaelic word for foreigner is "gall" and for black (or dark) is "dubh."

Many of the invaders' families took Gaelic names that utilized these two descriptive words. The name Doyle is in Irish "O'Dubhghaill" which literally means "dark foreigner" which reveals their heritage as an invading force with dark intentions.

The name Gallagher is "O Gallchobhair" which tras*lates as "foreign help." The traditional image of Vikings is of pale-skinned blond-haired invaders but their description as 'dark foreigners' may lead us to conclude that their memory in folklore does not necessarily reflect their physical description.

The Normans were invited into Ireland by Dermot McMurrough and were led by the famous Strongbow. The Normans originated in France, where black haired people are not uncommon. As with the Vikings, these were viewed as a people of "dark intentions" who ultimately colonized much of the Eastern part of the country and several larger towns.

Many families, however, integrated into Gaelic society and changed their Norman name to Gaelic and then Anglo equivalents: the Powers, the Fitzpatricks, Fitzgeralds, Devereuxs, Redmonds.

It is possible that the term "Black Irish" may have referred to some of these immigrant groups as a way of distinguishing them from the "Gaels," the people of ultimately Celtic origin.

Another theory of the origin of the term "Black Irish" is that these people were descendants of Spanish traders who settled in Ireland and even descendants of the few Spanish sailors who were washed up on the west coast of Ireland after the disaster of the Spanish Armada of 1588.

It is claimed that the Spanish married into Irish society and created a new class of Irish who were immediately recognizable by their dark hair and complexion. There is little evidence to support this theory and it is unlikely that any significant number of Spanish soldiers would have survived long in the war-torn place that was 16th century Ireland.

It is striking, though, how this tale is very similar to the ancient Irish legend of the Milesians who settled in Ireland having traveled from Spain.

The theory that the "Black Irish" are descendants of any small foreign group that integrated with the Irish and survived is unlikely. It seems more likely that "Black Irish" is a descriptive term rather than an inherited characteristic that has been applied to various categories of Irish people over the centuries.

One such example is that of the hundreds of thousands of Irish peasants who emigrated to America after the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. 1847 was known as "black 47." The potato blight which destroyed the main source of sustenance turned the vital food black. It is possible that the arrival of large numbers of Irish after the famine into America, Canada, Australia and beyond resulted in their being labeled as "black" in that they escaped from this new kind of black death.

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The first people of Ireland:

One of the oldest texts composed in Ireland is the Leabhar Gabhla, the Book of Invasions. It tells a semi-mythical history of the waves of people who settled in Ireland in earliest times. It says the first settlers to arrive in Ireland were a small dark people called the Fir Bolg, ***owed by a magical super-race called the Tuatha de Danaan (the people of the goddess Dana) probably from Africa. Then came the Fomors, another possible African type.

The second wave: The Celts were not one people. Keltoi was the name the Greeks and the Romans used to describe a series of barbaric tribes they encountered in Europe. They were different people with different origins. Among them were dark skinned Celts one would describe as Moors or today’s Africans. They settled in Ireland with other types of Celts and Germanic peoples.

The third wave: This was during the period of Christianization of Ireland. The first Christians to successfully settle Ireland came from Ethiopia and Egypt. The established the first fellowships, built the first monasteries, established the now defunct Irish Othordox Church. That is part of why you have so many Black Saints in Irish Christianity.

The fourth wave came with the invasion of Ireland and Wales by the Vikings and the Danes, I believe in the 8th, 9th and 10 century AD. These Vikings and Danes were described as coming in two shades, black Dubhgall, and pale skin the Fingall.

Then the Moors came. Moorish Christians settled on the Island from Spain during the 7th to the 14th century. Some hid out there when their Spanish Empire fell. Recall that in Spain there was Jewish, Muslim and Christian Moors.

Some Normans who immigrated to the Island might have been Black people. At least I know that in Scotland, certain families like the Douglass claim to have migrated from Normandy via England. It is worth noting that the Douglass tribe of Scotland was renowned for their dark skin, i.e. “the black Douglass”.

So far so good that is what I have. I know that by the 14 century the English and Scottish crown were pressuring Irelaand. By the 15 century, they were carrying out land confiscation, slave raiding, slave/serf plantations and slave trading in Ireland. This accelerated in the 16th and 18th century even to the annexation of Ireland.

The 19th century was marked by massive expulsion of the Irish people from the land via the use of biological warfare known today as the Irish famine caused by the Irish potato blight.

All these centuries there was a Germanization policy as well. To bleach out the black Irish, or kill them or slave them, was the basis of various Royal policies. Finally, after years of miscegenation, brainwashing and divide and rule, in the late 19th century the left over Irish was admitted into the so-called “white race” created in the 17th century via racist laws.

With this admission they were given so-called white privileges, like blue collar jobs, police, fire-fighting, factory working in the Americas i.e. Canada and the United States. This supposedly was an improvement from the wretchedness they had known under the British misrule back home.

They were told they had to protect their newly won rights and privileges. Their job was to check the other Moors now known as the so-called black people or neցroes as designated in the neցro Code Slave Laws of the 17 century Americas.

The sad part of the story was that they took this new role too seriously. They barely knew better, after centuries of so much miseducation. They became the most avid defenders of the racist policies of their masters. Their price was a bowl of porridge and some crumbs of bread from the master’s table. While they and their brethren suffer the consequences of their own racist selfish presumptions and self-sabotage. It is now a generational illness.

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Glasterthum dijo:

Who were the Black Irish, and what is their story? - IrishCentral.com

La hipótesis que yo creo::, es la siguiente: los genes de la piel blanca aparecieron hace sólo 10.000 años, y a partir de ahí rápidamente fueron expandiéndose por Europa a un ritmo muy rápido.

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TylerDurden2 dijo:

Tu hipótesis es una manola mental que no hay por dónde cogerla.

1.- ¿Cuales son los genes de la "piel blanca"?

2.- ¿Por qué tales genes de piel blanca aparecieron hace 10,000 años de la nada? ¿los genes aparecen sin motivo solo porque tú lo vales? ::

3.- ¿No se supone que la piel obscura es una adaptación a la alta incidencia de rayos solares? Si Europa comenzó a descongelarse por aquellas fechas, debió haber sido al revés, hacerse obscuros en vez de claros.

4.- ¿Desde cuando el tonalidad de piel puede cambiar tan rápido en una población? ¿desde cuando la evolución es tan acelerada y espontánea?

5.- ¿Cual es el motivo evolutivo para aclararse la piel en un clima cada vez más cálido y soleado?

---------- Post added 06-sep-2014 at 07:40 ----------

Hombre Neanderthal, vivieron más de 100,000 años en Europa

Hombre de Cromagnon, piel clara, ojos claros:

Ningún estudio serio plantea que los cromagnons hayan sido obscuros de piel. De hecho la genética ha demostrado que los nórdicos actuales son los que más sangre cromagnon han heredado.

Luciendo probablemente así:

Hilo cerrado.

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SanStalin dijo:

Conclusion: que la leyenda de los "black irish" vendria de alguna tribu o antiguo reino que usaria insignias, o sencillamente se pintaban la cara, de dicho tonalidad cuando iban a la guerra.

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A.Normal dijo:

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ikergutierrez dijo:

Aqui una teoria de repoblacion de las islas por los primeros humanos procedentes del refugio cantabrico despues de la ultima glaciacion.Los que pintaron las cuevas del cantabrico, subieron para arriba en la medida que fue desapareciendo el hielo, ANDANDO, ya que estaban comunicadas por tierra.

«Los antepasados de los británicos no son los celtas, sino los vascos». diariovasco.com

El parentesco genetico, solo descubierto en los ultimos años, es la base de esta teoria.

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Una de las principales tesis que mantiene el Instituto Galego de Estudos Célticos (IGEC) ha sido matizada por el catedrático y director del Instituto de Medicina Legal de la USC, Ángel Carracedo. Carracedo, uno de los más importantes genetistas del mundo, ha puntualizado este viernes que la genética sólo puede averiguar si un pueblo tiene un origen genético común o relacionado, por sus cromosomas o por el ADN mitocondrial. De esta forma, descartó que la genética pueda confirmar que Galicia es celta.
Ángel Carracedo.

Ángel Carracedo.

Con esta afirmación, ha desmentido una de las principales tesis del IGEC y de uno de sus principales dirigentes, el arqueólogo André Pena Graña, que apuntaban que Carracedo confirmaría que "la leyenda de Breogán es cierta" y que los celtas del Reino Unido e Irlanda proceden de Galicia. Esta leyenda fue recogida en una compilación irlandesa del siglo XI, el 'Lebor Gabála Érenn' -'Libro de Conquistas'-, que narra las diversas invasiones que habría sufrido la isla.

Este manuscrito relata que el rey Breogán construyó en la ciudad de Brigantia, situada en la Península Ibérica -y que algunos arqueólogos identifican con A Coruña-, una torre de altura tal que sus hijos, Ith y Bile, podían ver una distante orilla verde desde su cima. La visión de esa lejana tierra los llevó hacia el norte hasta Irlanda, donde Ith sería asesinado. En venganza, los hijos de Mil, nieto de Breogán y sobrino de Ith, navegaron desde Brigantia a Irlanda y la conquistaron.
Desplazamientos de Galicia a Irlanda

Carracedo fue el encargado de abrir este viernes, con una conferencia inaugural, el III Congreso Internacional sobre la Cultura Celta que organiza, precisamente, el IGEC. Durante su discurso sobre 'Los movimientos de población del Noroeste gallego a la luz de la genética', Carracedo confirmó que Galicia sirvió como refugio glaciar y que, después de las glaciaciones, parte de esta población se desplazó a Inglaterra e Irlanda.

Pero, a pesar de esta afirmación, quiso dejar claro que él, cuando se refiere a los movimientos de población, no habla de celtismo, ni de culturas o lenguas, sino de genética de los pueblos. Y para analizarla, dijo, "se usan marcadores de cromosoma y de ADN mitocondrial".

Precisamente, el IGEC ha invitado a estas jornadas a lingüísticas, arqueólogos, antropólogos e historiadores para abordar el origen celta de Galicia, entre los que se encuentran Juan José jovenlandesalejo Álvarez, catedrático de Lengua y Literatura Griega de la USC; Carlos Búa Carballo, Indo-europeista de la Universidad de Leipzig; Branca García Fernández-Albalat, doctora en Historia Antigua y especialista en Religión Celta o el catedrático de Prehistoria, Fernando Acuña Castroviejo.
'Conexiones evidentes" entre las regiones celtas

Este congreso cuenta con el apoyo económico de la Consellería de Cultura cuyo titular, Roberto Varela, avaló, durante la presentación del mismo, las teorías celtistas. "Existen conexiones culturales más que evidentes entre las regiones de origen celta" y señaló como muestras de estas similitudes los "trabajos arqueólogicos que se remontan a la Edad de Hierro, elementos lingüísticos y toponímicos prerromanos o una sensibilidad musical compartida".

Además, recordó que el "orgullo" por el "pasado celta" fue común en el renacimiento de la literatura gallega y coincidió en el tiempo con el potenciamiento de la literatura y la historia celta en Irlanda o en Bretaña.
Toponimia celta

Más directo sobre el origen celta de Galicia es el director del Instituto Galego de Estudos Célticos, Heitor Rodal, quien recurre a los sustratos que hay en la toponimia de Galicia. "Muchos de los topónimos gallegos tienen un origen y una explicación a través de las lenguas celtas", señala.

Y va más allá. "Los últimos estudios realizados en esta materia demuestran una relación (celta) mucho más alargada de lo que se sabía hasta hace poco". Por ello, apuesta por profundizar en los estudios lingüísticos y toponímicos para avanzar en un origen celta de Galicia.

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