The Fomorians
There are many oblique references to the presence of Black people in ancient Ireland. Ancient Irish mythology refers to the original inhabitants of the island as being a giant, sea-faring people called the Fomorians (Fomors), which means “dark of the sea”. According to the ancient lore, they were a cushitic people from the African continent. Often depicted as demons, they defeated the first few incoming waves of invaders, but could not defeat the Firbolgs, who settled the land and lived side-by-side with the native Fomors.
Those myths may have a factual historical basis. It is proposed that the Formorians were a real people who were in all likelihood sailors from the African continent.
Two more invasions, the first led by the godly Tuatha de Danaan, and the second by the Celtic Milesians, took control of Ireland, mixing together with the Fomorians until they were no more.
There are credible sources for the African association with Ireland. The most likely of these is that they were Phoenicians and/or Egyptians. The Phoenicians were Canaanites, which came from the line of Ham. Ham is the mythological ancestor of the Black nation.
The Phoenicians were also well-known for their sailing skills, and are said to have traveled to the British Isles, which they called the “Tin Islands”. Perhaps, before Ireland was a Celtic domain, which it wasn’t until a few centuries BCE, the Phoenicians colonized it. It is noteworthy that the name Fomorians sounds a bit like Phoenicians.
There is also a legend that an Egyptian princess, Scota, left Egypt with some followers and journeyed to Ireland. Legend has it that Egyptians left many ancient tin mines all over Britain but especially Ireland which was their major source of the valuable metal.
Another idea is that they were Taureg Berbers. The Berber language is Hamitic, and the Berber people live in an area from which travel to Ireland would be easily accessible. The Berbers perhaps set sail from western Morocco, and settled on Ireland before the Celts, making it their new home.
Moorish Science Temple founder Drew Ali teaches that Ireland was once part of a Moorish empire, and that the Irish are a Moorish people. Perhaps there is a common root between the “moor” sound in Fomor and the word Moor?
Selkies and Half-Breeds
Another Irish legend tells of the Selkies, a sort-of “wereseal” that is a seal during day, but a human by nightfall. Sometimes, in an Irish family of fair-skinned, light-haired people, a child is born with dark hair eyes, and skin, and is called a Selkie.
The concept of the Selkies appears to make subliminal reference to the half-breed children that resulted from the extensive miscegenation that occurred between the Celts and the dark skinned original inhabitants that they had met upon their arrival in Ireland.
Many people of Irish descent have distant and recent African roots, and these features can still be seen in the people and in the culture. There are some Irish people with Afros (just like Andre the Giant a late continental European wrestler with afro-hair). In Southern Ireland, some people, referred to as “Black Irish”, are noted for their strikingly dark features, as opposed to the fair-skinned, light-haired north.
Although many Irish descendants are particularly pale, they do have pronounced Africoid facial features, as well as dark brown eyes, and dark brown hair that is sort-of kinky, especially in moist conditions. A sub race of the Irish called the Bronn are noticeably Mediterranean (read: African) in features especially their hair.
In addition to all of this, Celtic music is distinctly different from the rest of Europe, and easily comparable to African music.
Black, Viking and Irish
Unlike Scotland and England, Ireland was never colonized by the Romans. As a result, Ireland remained relatively isolated.
The Vikings established port cities like Dublin. The Viking texts left stories and descriptions of African soldiers captured in Ireland whom they called blaumen[blue-men].
Most Viking references to ”black” in Norse would have signified having black hair as opposed to skin color but blaumen meant black skinned. Most of these blaumen were captured soliders from Moorish Spain. It was observed that:
“A prominent Viking of the eleventh century was Thorhall, who was aboard the ship that carried the early Vikings to the shores of North America. Thorhall was “the huntsman in summer, and in winter the steward of Eric the Red. He was, it is said, a large man, and strong, black, and like a giant, silent, and foul-mouthed in his speech, and always egged on Eric to the worst; he was a bad Christian.””
“Another Viking, more notable than Thorhall, was Earl Thorfinn, “the most distinguished of all the earls in the Islands.” Thorfinn ruled over nine earldoms in Scotland and Ireland, and died at the age of seventy-five. His widow married the king of Scotland. Thorfinn was described as “one of the largest men in point of stature, and ugly, sharp featured, and somewhat tawny, and the most martial looking man… It has been related that he was the foremost of all his men.””
What about Scotland and Wales?
“Any comprehensive account of the African presence in early Europe should include England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Scandinavia. The history and legends of Scotland confirm the existence of “purely Black people.” We see one of them in the person of Kenneth the Niger. During the tenth century Kenneth the Niger ruled over three provinces in the Scottish Highlands.
The historical and literary traditions of Wales reflect similar beliefs. According to Gwyn Jones (perhaps the world’s leading authority on the subject), to the Welsh chroniclers, “The Danes coming in by way of England and the Norwegians by way of Ireland were pretty well all black: Black Gentiles, Black Norsemen, Black Host.””
Ogu Eji Ofo Annu
Sources:
Ancient And Modern Britons, by David Mac Ritchie
Nature Knows No Color-Line, by J.A. Rogers
Question. Is their anyone here whose Great Great Grandmother was slave & raped by her Masters’?
I just read the posts. Since everyone is struggling to prove how un-racist they are, yet black people have been the butt of jokes for so long; I am not surprised to read such comments here as —– “Chawky without lotion”; “SNOW MONKIES” as well as, “hair that is kinky and nappy.”
As a black man living in the deep rural south U.S.; I have experienced racism everyday for my entire life. I find this site offensive.
U don’t think so, Honky?? Rasta-this! Come to Alabama; Ya’ll need walk a mile on my watermelon farm.
*****Question. Is their anyone here whose Great Great Grandmother was slave & raped by her Masters’?****
No, but I own mother tried to enslave I and I have been raped personally.
Plenty wombmen are still enslaved to this day, pale skin, brown, black, asian, it makes no difference to the Pale Afgani woman who lights herself up to escape the pain of downppression how pale or brown her oppressors, or white/brown/black catholic or Rasta or Moslem or Hindu etc wombman pressured by Male control to not use any form of birth control or allowed the option of abstinance and therefore subjected to multiple pregnancies since adolecence with no job skills and many mouths to feed, while their bodies never get to recover from multiple births….
Walk a mile in a wombmans shoes Brother, and see downpression goes deeper in a wombmans psyche, all this “pity the African man” indulgence….His Majesty never indulged in that sort of talk, it was all constructive and Unifying and conducive to real change and the implementation of True Humanitarian Justice instead of “poor-me Africans”
I am a struggling RAsta on welfare, no different from many Black Rasta,or black people or indigineous people of many nations fighting against injustice and being penalized for it, what makes things so much harder for you?
Racial hatred let it burn burn burn….it would be easier for I if I were black with this Rasta heart of mine, instead of continually having to come up against Hatred for my Righteousness and colour.
Jah RastaFarI to heal all racial hatred and grudges
Let HIM guide the I to Freedom and Spiritual righteousness
Bless and OneLove
Sistren Nyah I
I’m with Dee. With all of this racial tention, and confused children not knowing who to hate, and who to like, how to hate, and all of that non-sence. Why can’t all of us just accept that we ALL have a little of this and a little of that in us, and we can’t so anything about it, but pray and ask God for a solution if it is that important to you to know why he did what he did to make the world like this. Lets keep the peace and live with it:) Praise him.
Bless Idren, I owe an apology…after reading back what I have written, I can see how, hostile, intolerant, ignorant and lacking in compassion I come across sometimes, maybe it is a white thing I don’t know, but I do struggle and feel alot of grief at the reality of downpression…I am so sorry for coming across as a person who cannot accept and cry with her brothers, and sistahs ova this horrendous racial prejudice, the madness that has ovataken the world. I know that although it is not a competition ova who has suffered the most, Rasta should be and is a culture that focuses on healing the wounded psyche of African people thru the power of the Most High, as we see embodied in the Istorical person of His Majesty Haille Sellaise ~ Jah RastaFarI.
I know and accept that many Rasta feel uneasy with white people in their midst and this is ovastandable. Trust must be built between people, but I’m not sure if it can be done relating to each other as “colour”,even though it is so obvious that it is a huge part of what many people feel it is to be Rasta.
Obviously there are no easy answers and I’m just about ready to stop trying to reason, as I feel instantly discredited, simply by virtue of my colour and sex. After spending a huge amount of time this year trying to work it out with words, I and I am ready to just garden,(food that is,I spend as much time as I can collecting cow and horse dung from the surrounding paddocks) play music, giving Jah constant praises and bring up non racist and non sexist children, while developing I self by learning of I SELF….
Where is I culture?
Obviously a long way to go before we are past the “WAR” His Majesty speaks of….But I and I keep Jah Faith – yes Good will triumph ova evil…!!!!!! and knowledge and truth will destroy ignorance and deception…
Jah Bless and Guidance
Sistren Nyah I
I have spent at least two hours reading these previous comments, and I still have not finished all of them. Yet, I have read enough to feel tremendously saddened by the degree of mindless dogmatism and arrogance displayed by zealots on both sides. Am I really supposed to be impressed by the intellectual pretensions of people who, manifestly, cannot construct a grammatically coherent sentence in the English language, which I presume is their own?
There is an old axiom: A little knowledge . . . a very little knowledge . . . is indeed a dangerous thing.
Given the nature of the human ego, human beings will always have a tendency, in their own minds, to transform their molehill of knowledge into an alleged mountain of “expertise”. I suspect that most of the people who post their massive generalizations and categorical statements here do not have formal academic training or degrees in the subject at hand, but rather are quoting “sources” whose veracity and objectivity are, at least, questionable. It should be self-evident that even renowned scientific authorities on a given subject . . . men and women of equal intelligence and experience . . . can still disagree with one another about the interpretation and significance of material evidence, and what constitutes a “fact”. The mere assertion of something as an “indisputable” fact does not make it an objective fact simply because its advocate holds that belief with great emotional intensity. Unfortunately, in the climate of political polarization, dogmatism and ideological “correctness” to which debate has deteriorated in this country, many people simply have no training in analytical discrimination or forensic evidence necessary for them to make a distinction between purely subjective belief and documented objective fact. It is also difficult for many people to understand that, in many fields, such as history and anthropology, different facts can both be true -to an extent – even though they appear to contradict each other. A good illustration of this is the fable about the five – or was it seven? – “wise” men, all blind, who had never seen or heard of an elephant. They were taken to “see” one, and each of the wise men, touching only one part of the elephant, proceeded to describe what “kind” of creature it was. And each of them, in turn, insisted that the others were totally wrong in their analysis.
I’m sure my point is obvious.
When I was a young history student at university during the early 1970’s, one of the first things implanted in my mind was a much greater recognition of how the “science” of statistics is used for political and ideological propaganda, and to give the facade of objectivity to a patently self-serving agenda. In a nutshell, the point is that statistics — even true statistics — can be made to lie . . . not only by the way they are selectively taken out of a more ambivalent context, but by the emotional tone, sarcasm, condescension, etc. in which they are presented by those with a particular partisan agenda.
No culture or ethnic group in history has ever had a perpetual monopoly on “civilization” and learning. Every major civilization which has ever arose has borrowed, and stolen, extensively from those that came before. We have all built our own achievements on the discoveries of our ancestors, no matter whom they may have been. And in that long process, we have mixed and bred with each other . . . in one degree or another. The differences in our DNA are the product of tens of thousands of years of environmental adaptation and mutation, and they are miniscule compared to the differences in our cultural and linguistic views of “reality”. We are like those “wise”, but blind, men, all arguing about reality, yet each of us only seeing a part of it.
For reasons which I’ve never really understood, it has been my experience that most people are uncomfortable with any kind of ambiguity. Even if they understand the existence of complexity, subtlety and nuance on an intellectual level, on a purely visceral emotional level they still want to believe in some “absolute” unchanging truth or certitude about their own moral righteousness that they can hang on to. There is nothing wrong with simply admitting that we don’t know everything about our human past. One fragment of knowledge does not a whole picture make. I have studied history all of my life. I have a degree in the subject. Yet, the more I have learned, the more I have realized there is still an infinite amount to discover. One fact always leads to another.
In closing, some of those posting here do not seem to be aware of the irony of their own attitudes. They have impulsively accused others of racism, all while making the most vicious, condescending and racially-insulting remarks themselves about the other’s ancestors or cultural accomplishments. Those who have engaged in this practice should know who they are. Why is it any more acceptable to be Afro-centric than it is to be Euro-centric? Why is that any less racist?
I’m actually copying my comment from a different article on this site but I feel the same about comments on this article. I don’t understand why some people are so upset. –
This is an interesting page but what is more interesting is the interaction between everyone. It’s small minded to think that black Africans were not present and useful in socities outside of Africa going back as far as first contact between nations. It is also small minded to believe that black Africans are the root of everything. I see so many comments here that seem rooted in a need to prove something. Even if we are referencing old works it doesn’t mean that it’s the final say on a subject. Our idea of race as ever important may not be the way that people saw things hundreds or thousands of years ago. I would imagine they were tougher times and you would work it out with those around you for the common cause of survival. Even including slavery in the US. I’m sure that the slaves of wealthy land owners were probably treated poorly compared a slave in the rural mountains of NC, just as I am more important as an employee to a small business owner than to a giant corporation. Slaves have existed in every society and eventually they have been assimilated into that society.
On a personal note I will say this as a descendant of black African slaves it is important to see that there are black Africans in other areas of the world do other things through out history. I’m sure there were Asian, Slavs and Europeans deep in the heart of black Africa before we would ever think possible and I believe that black Africans have traveled to each of those places as well.
I think it’s a mistake to read too much or too little into the written history that we have access to. Every piece of literature has not survived, everything is not deemed as important to one person to the next and what we read may not be what was intended by the author. I like to think that before black Africans became a hot commodity in the slave trade we were just people living our lives and calling us out as black Africans wasn’t necessary to everyone who put words to page instead they used words like friend, neighbor or shield mate and that was enough.
Liam –
This is regarding your Oct 7 post…
Finally!! Someone who is unbiased and fair. Thank you for your wonderful analogy. Your words are true and well represented. There seems to be a lot of Ego in these posts, as well as misrepresentation of “facts” from both sides. “One fragment of knowledge does not a whole picture make”…so true. Not one of us can say we truly have all the answers. Why can’t people just accept that all cultures added their ideas and innovations to what makes up our world today?? Much love to all in the world – open your minds people to the possibility of endless possibilities!!