DUBH GALLS (Black Strangers, Black-Skinned Boars & Devils)

DUBH GALLS (Black Strangers, Black-Skinned Boars & Devils)

DUBH GALLS (Black Strangers, Black-Skinned Boars & Devils)

Of those West Highland specimens, perhaps as good an example as any will be found in the person of Allan Mac Ruari, a “black heathén” of the fifteenth century…

His portrait is preserved in a Gaelic song, composed after his death, and written down afterwards by the famous Dean of Lismore, in whose Book, as translated by Dr. McLauchlan, the lines may be read…

The poem, or song, is a hearty outburst of relief at his death, and exultation over his probable fate…

It begins thus—

“The one demon of the Gael is dead,
A tale ’tis well to remember,
Fierce ravager of Church and cross,
The bald-head, heavy, worthless boar.”

The fifteenth-century Gaelic poem, just quoted, speaks of the pirate, Allan MacRuari, as “the one demon of the Gael,” saying also—

“Then, when came the black-skinned boar,
Many the devils in his train,”—

The title of “boar” being presumably given to him on account of the boar-like shape of his headgear and armour…

It is probable that he was called a “boar,” from the shape of his head-gear and armour…

This name is plainly given to him for some reason or another, bécause in another line he is again styled a “boar”;—and the reason just surmised seems the likeliest…

But in the second reference of this kind he receives another epithet:—he is “the black-skinned boar.”

And it is stated that “many were the devils in his train.”

It must first be remembered that a common, if unpleasant, epithet applied to the black race, is that of “devil.”

This term of “devil” was at one time quite commonly used to denote certain races of black men, as will be more distinctly pointed out hereafter…

So the black-skinned Allan and his band of swarthy “devils” were simply dubh galls…

The fairer of the two wrangling gipsies of Mr Simson’s description, taunts the other with the “black devil in his face.”

And there are other and more notable cases of such “devils,” to be more particularly looked at in another place…

The name seems to have been chiefly applied to the black Tartar tribes…

British peasants—in many districts—possess many tales that are akin to, or identical with, those of the ” Arabian Nights.”

Whether such tales are oftenest found among the swarthier sections can hardly be known; but one of those collectors who has given us many stories of dusky warriors, with Eastern characteristics, has more than once passed a remark upon the tawny complexions of the people from whom he got those “Popular Tales:” such people forming part of the population of the “Isles of the Foreigners,” and often claiming a descent from the dubh galls referred to…

Of these inroads, and settlements, and conquests, there are numberless traditions in these “Islands of Frangistan.”

The nigrae gentes, or dubh galls, or “black Danars,” are remembered by many other names in British speech; as “thieving Tartarians,” as “marauding companies of Moors or Saracens,” and, very likely, as “Turks.”

When the word Turk occurs in Gaelic it is translated “a boar”

Whether or not the word has signified ” boar” longer than “Turk,” it seems to have often been used to denote the man who resembled the animal; and not the animal itself…

But it seems quite as legitimate to translate the word “Turk.” as to translate it
“Boar” (or sometimes the feminine name)

Because Tuirc signifies equally “of or belonging to a Turk,” and “of or belonging to a Boar.”

In the Story of Conall Gulban, Conall and his comrades are warring against Turcaich, properly translated “Turks” by Mr. J. F. Campbell…

But it would be as reasonable to use the word “Boar” in this story, as to use it in the song of Allan Mac Ruari (Roderick, or Roderigo, or Rory, or Ruy)

He is spoken of as “the black-skinned boar”; but we should probably understand his position better as “the black-skinned Turk.”

That, therefore, the “Moors or Saracens” who are remembered in British tradition as “making depredations” in various quarters, were also known as “Turks,” is very probable…

Indeed, a meaning which this word, Torc, bears in Ireland, shows that it has been used to designate a race of rulers…

Because, in Ireland, Torc not only means “a boar,” but it also means “a sovereign; a lord.”

Now, Ireland could never have been governed by four-footed boars; though much of it felt the power of the Black Tartarians of the Baltic…

And these must have been the kind of “black boars” whose rule is still remembered in British topography…

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.”

We are told that this kind of sword was
“a common weapon with the [Black] Danes;” to whom it was known as an ategar; 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 :'”

There are numerous traditions, all over the British Islands, of “black men” of fierce disposition; and certain British sea-boards still retain legends of “devils” who attack coasting vessels, and either kill the mariners, or rob them of all they possess…

There is no doubt that a large detachment of such “Saracens” hailed from the port of Algiers; and that they had a remote political and ethnical connection with the northern “Saracens;” but many of these traditions clearly relate to the latter division of those people…

That they were fierce, intolerant, and over-bearing; that they burnt, plundered, killed and ravished without mercy; and that they practiced such barbarities as scalping, impaling babies upon their spear points, and every form of torture that could be devised; all this cannot be questioned…

But they also possessed much material civilization; silks, jewels, gold and silver, the games of chess, cards, dice, & the use of money—in short, many, if not all, of the attributes of the great Eastern Empire whose coinage was theirs, and whose supremacy they may have occasionally acknowledged…

SOURCE;

(Ancient and Modern Britons; 1889)