THE DANES & DUBH GALLS (Vikings, Black Strangers, MacDougal, MacDowell, Doyle, Campbell)

THE DANES & DUBH GALLS (Vikings, Black Strangers, MacDougal, MacDowell, Doyle, Campbell)

THE DANES & DUBH GALLS (Vikings, Black Strangers, MacDougal, MacDowell, Doyle, Campbell)

The British Isles were invaded by various races of Dubh Galls, nigrae gentes, or black foreigners, during an indefinable but most extensive period…

The Picts Proper and the Black Danes, being both Moors and both being “black strangers” or dubh galls, in the sight of the white races of Britain…

“Dubhghall (literally the black foreigner) was a name which they (the Irish) frequently gave to their Danish invaders”

SOURCE;

(The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Volume 22; 1850)

“They were of two RACES — the white and black strangers — Fingall and Dubhgall (Dougal)”

SOURCE;

(London Quarterly Review Volume 34; 1870)

“In A.D. 838, the Fiongaill, the “white strangers”, or Norwegians, took possession of Dublin; and in the year 850, these were dispossessed by a considerable force of the Dubhgaills, or black strangers, the Danes”

“Philologists inform us that the compound term dubh-loch-lanach, or “black man strong at sea,” signifies the Danes.”

SOURCE;

(Michael Conran, ‘The National Music of Ireland Containing the History of the Irish Bards, the National Melodies, the Harp, and Other Musical Instruments of Erin’; 1846)

“The two RACES of the Danes and Norwegians were distinguished by the terms Dubhgeinte or Dubhgall, that is, black pagans or black strangers, and Finngeinte or Finngall, white pagans or white strangers”

SOURCE;

(Studies in the Topography of Galloway
Being a List of Nearly 4000 Names of Places, with Remarks on Their Origin and Meaning, and an Introductory Essay; 1887)

“In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Dubh-glasses of Galloway—the “Moors and Saracens” of tradition—were its actual rulers…” — David MacRitchie

The country inhabited by the Cimbri was, it is stated, the modern Denmark and Holstein, which, indeed received from them the name of Cimbrica Chersonesus, or the Peninsula of the Cimbri…

But those Cimbri are said to have been known by another name: “Dani, lidem qui Cimbri. The Danes.”

The comely, fair-skinned people now inhabiting Denmark are out of the question, as having nothing in common with the Dani of “vast bodies and dreadful looks.”

If it can be shown that the “Danes” who invaded and overran the British Islands in the eighth and succeeding centuries, and who were distinctly latrones, or pirates, were also dark-skinned like the Black Huns, then the identification of the eighth century Danes (who are confused with ” Hungarians”) with the Dani or Cimbri, will be strongly suggested, if not established…

It is necessary, in steering one’s way through the numerous invasions of the Northmen, to distinguish clearly between Norwegians and Danes…

This is evidently done in the Pictish Chronicle, the Norwegians being called Normanni, and the Danes, Danari…

Ever since the Danes, or Dubhgaill, first came to Ireland there had been a contest between them and the Norwegians or Finngaill (White Strangers) for superiority, and in 877 a battle took place between them, in which the Norwegians had the victory…

The Danes, being for the time driven out of Ireland, went to Alban or Scotland…

Probably the name Viking also belongs to the Danes, and not at all to the Normans…

It is as Danes and Vikings that the piratical hordes that plundered, burnt, and destroyed along the Scottish sea-board, are chiefly known, and it was by a treaty with the king of Denmark (in 1014) that the Scottish King Malcolm succeeded in obtaining the withdrawal of these marauders from his country…

However, the two peoples, Northmen and Eastmen, Norwegians and Danes, are also known by other names…

Besides the general term of Gentiles (says Mr. Skene), that of Gall, the Irish word for stranger, was likewise applied to them, and two nations were distinguished as Finngaill, white Galls, and Dubhgaill, black Galls—the former being Norwegians, and the latter, Danes…

The typical Dane of to-day is not a black-haired man; quite the reverse…

And dubh means black, without any word of hair…

These two sections of invaders were also known as Finn Gennti, and Dubh Gennti, White Gentiles and Black Gentiles; and as (according to Armstrong), Fionn-Lochlinneaich, and Dubh-Lochlinneaich, White and Black “Lochlinners” or Scandinavians…

And, in “the wars of the Gaedhil and the Gaill” (Gaels and Galls), the Danari are styled “black Danars,” or “black Danes.”

In none of these terms is there any hint that the colour of the hair is indicated…

But the expression used by St. Berchan in speaking of the Norwegians leaves no room for doubt…

He calls them “the Gentiles of pure colour.”

The Danes, then, were not “of pure colour.”

They were dubh, black.

As black, at any rate (let us suppose), as the Black Huns, who were “of a dark complexion; almost black.”

There can be no question about it…

The designation given by the common people of one race to another is almost invariably founded upon some physical feature, and the most natural distinction is that of colour where the races differ in complexion…

The invading whites styled the “Indians” of America “Red-skins,” and these again called their conquerors “Pale-faces.”

A native Australian is a “black-fellow” to the modern Briton (who, after all, is his exceedingly distant kinsman).

Other “Blacks” are roughly spoken of by us either under that title or, under its other form, as “Negroes.”

Therefore, when the white races of Britain styled the Danes “Black heathen,” they simply made use of the most natural term that could occur to them…

It was not only in Scotland that the Danes received this name, but throughout the British Islands…

Let me give a few extracts from the Annals of St. David’s, in Wales, (Annales Menevenses), which I obtain from Archbishop Baldwin’s Itinerary, translated and annotated by Sir R. C. Hoare…

It is a record of murder and rapine, a sample merely of what was happening throughout the greater part of the British islands at that period, and before and after it, when a peaceful and partly-Christianized people had to suffer every indignity at the hands of a ruthless and brutal race of pirates…

The extracts are these :—

812 A.D. Combustio Meneviz.

986. A.D. Godisric filius Harald cum nigris gentibus vastavit Meneviam.

987 A.D. The Danes landed in South Wales, and destroyed Saint David’s Lhanbadarn, Lhanrysted, and Lhan-dydoch (which were all places of religion), and did so much hurt in the country besides, that to be rid of them, Meredyth was faine to agree with them, and to give them a penie for everie man within his land, which was called, ‘The tribute of the blacke armie.’

Here there is perfect unanimity…

The “cum nigris gentibus” of the Annals, and Powel’s “blacke armie,” are at one…

Thus, we have as evidence these terms—dubh (used with four different nouns), niger and black—all applied in the most natural and matter-of-fact way to the Danish pirates by men of presumably white race…

Can anything be clearer?

What may be called genealogical evidence of the existence of black-skinned races existing in Scotland within historic times, has already been adduced in considering the “Moors.”

And it is difficult to decide whether the examples given ought to be styled Picts (so-called) or Danes…

Because both were “Picts,” and contemporaries…

And the very district which still bears the name of the ancient “Moray” men, was also the very district in which the “Danes” lingered longest (that is, excluding the Isles)

For which reason, it had become the hunting-ground of the fair-skinned victors, descendants of Freskine the Fleming, Berowald the Fleming (founder of the powerful Innes family), and others of kindred race…

Therefore, when a black man is discovered on a family tree of a thousand years ago, he may be either a “Dane” or a “Pict.”

Of those, however, who are better known by the former name there may be specified an ancestor of the Macleods of Macleod, that family being held to be descended (at the date of Martin’s visit to the Western Islands, and in his words,) “from Leod, son to the black prince of Man,” which island was for a long time under the rule of the Danes…

The father of this Leod was in all probability Olafr Svarti, or Olave the Swarthy, mentioned in the Flateyan manu-script, who was King of Man during the thirteenth century…

A certain branch of the Campbells had also a similar lineage…

The Danes, then, were like the ” Moors”—black…

Like them, too, they were Picts, as more than one eminent writer has proved…

Whether as “Danes” or as “Picts,” they were a swarthy, piratical race…

Thus, the Moors or Saracens, the Danes and other kindred races, and the Gipsies are virtually the same people under different names…

Whatever may have been the various race-combinations in Britain, at and after the Norman Conquest, the arrival of the Black Danes seems to mark the first important inroad of Asiatics (if we look backward from the nineteenth century)

These people are remembered in Gaelic records as Black-Lochlinners (Black Scandinavians), Dubl Galls, or Dubh Genti (black foreigners, or people), and also as “black Danars.”

Another account speaks of them as “Dani or Cimbri,” and they are called latrones, pirates, or robbers, “in the Gallic tongue.”

They are remembered as Ost-men, or East-men…

They make their first appearance [in the British Islands] in the year 793 in an attack upon the island of Lindisfarne; and they are said to have overrun the Hebrides in the same year…

In 986-7, it is recorded that “Godisrig the son of Harald, with the black nations, laid waste Menevia (St. David’s, in Wales); and did so much hurt in the country besides, that to be rid of them, Meredyth was faine to agree with them, and to give them a penie for everie man within his land, which was called, ‘The tribute of the blacke armie’;” a like tribute, in other districts, being known as “Dane-gelt” (the popular names for such a tax being the Gaelic dubh-chis, and the English black-mail)

The Danes of Northumberland belonged to the branch of the Northmen called Dubh Gall, or Dubh Gennti, that is, black strangers; and it is probably owing to this that (according to Armstrong) “a Lowland Scot” and “an Englishman” were also Dubh Galls, to the white skinned race of Highlanders who opposed them…

Dubl-chis, or -chios, is the Gaelic equivalent, rendered in the dictionaries “a tribute,” and “black-mail,” this last being of course the strict interpretation of the term…

In Galloway, also, which is a district celebrated for the inroads of “Moors or Saracens, ” from whom have come many clans distinguished by the Saracenic emblem of the crescent moon, there were people who, so recently as the year 1666, were armed with “crooked swords, like Turks.”

And the curved blade known as a “gully” was probably of the same origin…

We are told that this kind of sword was “a common weapon with the [Black] Danes;” to whom it was known as an atigar; being “the same scythe-shaped weapon as the Turkish yataghan.”

Indeed, the descriptions given of Black-Danish arms and armour are consistently Oriental; scale-armour, damascened battle-axes, gilded helmets and hilts, and “the same scythe-shaped weapon as the Turkish ‘yataghan:’ (this special description being taken from “The Comprehensive History on England”, p. 116)