The Black Irish and the Blue Douglass
Note: This piece is part of a series of blogs commissioned by the Unsilencing Black Voices team, Sandrine Ndahiro and Catherine Osikoya, in which writers respond to Douglass’s visit to Ireland.
Christopher Fitzgerald
When Frederick Douglass visited Ireland in 1845 he no doubt encountered a way of speaking that was new to his ears. As he passed through the streets and bohereens of Irish towns and villages through the four months which he described as the happiest in his life, he may have heard a phrase that was new to his ears; ‘duine gorma’. The Irish language is somewhat lacking in the phraseological flourishes that depict people of other races in the discriminatory terms that the English language so prolifically embraces. Duine gorma is the term that is used in Irish to reference black people, yet, translated directly; duine means person and gorm means blue; so black people in Irish are blue people in English (or something). This was many years before The Smurfs, Avatar or the Blue Man Group would enter the cultural zeitgeist, so why then would the Irish language use blue to describe black? It was not a case of there being an absence of a word for black in Irish; dubh was as common in Irish as black is in English, and indeed the dub in Dublin originates from this. Though it is uncertain as to why duine gorma is used in Irish, there are two theories. One is that the use of the work for ‘black’ would make the term too close to fear dubh (black man), which is used to refer to the devil in Irish; another is related to the blue colour of clothing that the Tuareg of North Africa wore who were regular trading partners with the Irish for many centuries before Douglass set foot in the country.
The oneness that Douglass felt with the Irish people need not be such a surprise; the Irish people have a shared heritage and lineage with Africa that goes back centuries. Excavations of Navan Fort in County Armagh found the skull of a barbary monkey that was buried there in around 800 BC. This must have been given as a gift to the King who resided in the fort or traded in from its native home in the North Africa. A book excavated from a bog in Offaly is bound in Egyptian papyrus and is cited as being 1200 years old. Indeed, the seafaring Irish have a centuries-old relationship with Africa that resulted in exchanges of goods, but may be responsible for much of the riches of cultural importance that were present in Douglass’s time in Ireland as well as now.
In his Atlantean series of documentary films, Bob Quinn puts forward several strong arguments that Irish people share more in terms of lineage with areas of North Africa than with our more commonly cited European neighbours. Quinn compares Irish singing, language and art to those of the indigenous Berbers of North Africa and makes a compelling argument that much of Irish culture, if not DNA, originates in Africa. Of course, many of Quinn’s claims were derided by Irish historians and scholars – but Quinn went on to say that this was due to an unconscious racism and a fear that these people had a trace of African in them. Whether Douglass was aware of these connections or not is unknown, but the echoes of traditions that genetically ran through Douglass and culturally reverberated through the people of Ireland he encountered may have rhymed and contributed to the comfort he felt among the Irish people.
As Douglass sat down to listen to sean-nós singing in an Irish public house in 1845 he may have heard the influence of the ancient tribal singing of his ancestors in Africa. The year previously, John McCormack was born in Athlone, County Westmeath. Growing up, McCormack was fond of listening to the sean-nós singing of the local men and when he began to sing himself, his talent was evident. After training his voice in Italy, McCormack moved to America and there sang popular Irish songs to Irish emigrants and became the world’s most famous tenor. He was popular with all communities of America, including black Americans, and influenced popular singing throughout the United States. His influence was so strong that it penetrated all genres. Coincidentally, a century later, in 1996, another John McCormack, the speaker of the house who very nearly became President of America, was presented with a plaque by the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs for being instrumental in designating the Washington home of Frederick Douglass as a national shrine.
As I listen now to the music of black Limerick rapper Denise Chaila, I think of these reverberations, through Chaila, McCormack, Douglass, through the sean-nós singers and King of Navan Fort to the Tuareg of North Africa and back again to me in my room, listening to music I like and feel strangely connected to.