Washing the Ethiopian white
Encyclopedia
Washing the Ethiopian White is one of Aesop's Fables
and is numbered 393 in the Perry Index
. The fable is only found in Greek sources and the impossibility of such an attempt became proverbial at an early date. It was given greater currency in Europe during the Renaissance
by being included in Emblem book
s and then entered popular culture. There it was often used to reinforce outright racist attitudes.
; in one version it is mentioned that the man (who there is washing himself in a river) is from India.
The usual meaning given the fable is that a person's basic nature cannot be changed or, as Thomas Bewick
has it in his tale of "The Blackamoor", ‘What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh’. He goes on to comment that 'when men aspire to eminence in any of the various arts or sciences, without being gifted with the innate powers or abilities for such attainments, it is only like attempting to wash the Blackamoor white.'
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the fable was used to underline the perception of the black man's 'natural' inferiority, both moral and social. So, while Bewick's generalising conclusion seems innocent enough, its uglier subtext
becomes apparent when referred back to the allusion to the fable in The Pilgrim's Progress
(1678). There the travellers come across the characters Fool and Want-Wit 'washing of an Ethiopian with intention to make him white, but the more they washed him the blacker he was. They then asked the Shepherds what that should mean. So they told them, saying, Thus shall it be with the vile person. All means used to get such an one a good name shall in conclusion tend but to make him more abominable.'
, who uses the phrase Αιθοπα σμηχεις proverbially in his epigram "Against an Ignoramus":
In the 15th century the proverb appeared in the Greek collection of Michael Apostolius
(1.71), which was consulted by Erasmus when he was compiling his Adagia
. In this book, which was written in Latin but cited Greek sources, Erasmus gave two versions. Firstly Aethiopem lavas or dealbas (You wash or make the Ethiopean white), which appeared in a list of other impossible tasks. The other version was Aethiops non albescit (The Ethiopian does not whiten).
Though the Adagias many editions were one source for the proverb's widespread use in Europe, another work was equally influential. This was Andrea Alciato
's Book of Emblems, first published in 1534 with frequent later editions. Here a despondent Ethiopian is pictured seated at a fountain where two Europeans are attempting to wash away his colour; the illustration is followed by a translation into Latin of Lucian's epigram. From here the theme was taken up by Hieronymus Osius
(1564) and the English emblematist Geoffrey Whitney
(1586). The long verse commentary by the latter draws the conclusion that Nature is not to be withstood; therefore in all dealings 'Let reason rule, and doe the thinges thou maie'.
A third source reinforcing use of the fable in Christian Europe was an apparent reference to it by the Jewish prophet Jeremiah: 'Can the Nubian ['Cushite' in the Hebrew] change his skin or the leopard his spots?' (13.23). Dating from the turn of the 6th century BCE, it suggests that a proverb of West Asian origin may even have preceded the fable. However, the episode of the baptized Ethiopian in the Christian New Testament
(Acts 8.26-39) taught the different lesson that outward appearance is not everything and even that the inward nature may be changed, giving rise to the paradox at the start of Richard Crashaw
's epigram on this subject: 'Let it no longer be a forlorn hope/ To wash an Ethiop'.
The ability to undo the created order of the world is through the action of divine grace
, and it is this doctrine which underlies the Renaissance
pagan presentation of Ben Jonson
's "The Masque of Blackness
" (1605). In it Niger, the god of the Nile, emerges from the ocean in search of a country where the skin of his black daughters can be whitened. The Ethiopian moon-goddess reassures him that his quest is at an end in Britain, which is
The same idea is returned to in Jonson's later masque, "The Gypsies Metamorphosed" (1621), which also involves change of skin colour from tawny to white.
For all that, a number of allied proverbs maintaining the opposite still persisted: they include negative statements such as 'black will take no other hue', 'one cannot wash a blackamoor white' and 'a crow is never the whiter for washing'. The last of these proverbs may have originated from the derivative fable of "The Raven and the Swan" recorded by Aphthonius
(Perry Index
398). In this a raven, envying the swan's plumage, tries to bathe away its colour and dies of hunger. Lying at the back of it, and the associated lesson that a person's basic nature cannot be changed, is one of the proverbs of Ahiqar
, Aesop's Near East
ern counterpart. 'If water would stand still in heaven, and a black crow become white, and myrrh grow sweet as honey, then ignorant men and fools might understand and become
wise.'
In the later context of the slave trade and the racial mixing that followed, the proverbial phrase was given a new meaning. So it is recorded that, in Barbados
, 'where you find a European and an African mating, the product was a mulatto; a European and a mulatto mated, the product was an octoroon, one eighth white; if that octoroon mated with a white, the product was a quadroon, a quarter white; if a quadroon and a white mated, the product was a mustee; and if that mustee and a European mated, the product was a mustifino, or seven eighths white (or as they said, 'seven eighths human') and that process was called "washing the blackamoor white".’
, using the pen-name Edward Baldwin, included the fable (under the title "Washing the Blackamoor White") in his Fables ancient and modern, adapted for the use of children. In it he demonstrates the inadvisability of spinning out Aesop's pithy telling in tedious modern detail and also how difficult it is for even a 'liberal' philosopher to rise above the spirit of the age. The humourist Thomas Hood
manages no better in his poem “A Black Job”, which takes as its subject a bogus philanthropic scheme to bathe away the skin colour of Africans so that they ‘Go in a raven and come out a swan’.
Visual depictions are little better. Isaac Cruikshank
issued a caricature print in 1795 under the title "Washing the Blackamoor White". Satirising the mistress of the future George IV
, it shows Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey
, sitting in an arm-chair while two ladies wash her face, which has the complexion of a mulatto. The Prince of Wales crouches at her feet, holding out a basin. In a speech bubble, he says: "Another Scrub & then!! take more water," as she enquires, "Does it look any whiter?" The lady on the right holds a scrubbing-brush and puts a soap-ball to Lady Jersey's face.
The same title was used for a Punch
cartoon in 1858, with the subtitle 'Sir Jung Bahadoor
and his Knights Companions of the Bath.' This referred to the ennobling of the ruler of Nepal
as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
in return for his support during the Indian Mutiny. In a travesty of Alciato's emblematic image, a group of knights clad in mediaeval armour keep a bath topped up with hot water and scrub down the king, who crouches in it wearing his regalia. The accompanying text referred to this as an 'ineffectual ablution' and commented that 'Jung Bahadoor is a gentleman of a dark red complexion. The Bath will not render it white'.
A series of Pears Soap advertisements also took the fable as its theme, depicting a black child literally losing his skin colour after using the product. It first appeared in the Graphic magazine for Christmas 1884 and made an immediate impact. Soon there was a reference to it in “Poor Little Liza”, a popular song by the minstrel showman Harry Hunter, with the chorus 'And as for poor Liz, poor little Liza,/ I regret to say,/ She got two cakes of Pears soap/ And washed herself away. A later advertisement for Christmas 1901 shows a black mother carrying a screaming child out to a washing tub while three concerned youngsters peer round the corner of the cabin. It is captioned ‘Oh Golly, she’s gwine to make dat nigger white’.
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
and is numbered 393 in the Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
. The fable is only found in Greek sources and the impossibility of such an attempt became proverbial at an early date. It was given greater currency in Europe during the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
by being included in Emblem book
Emblem book
Emblem books are a category of mainly didactic illustrated book printed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, typically containing a number of emblematic images with explanatory text....
s and then entered popular culture. There it was often used to reinforce outright racist attitudes.
The fable and its meaning
The story concerns the owner of a black slave who imagines that he has been neglected by his former master and tries to wash off the blackness. Some versions mention that this goes on so long that the poor man is made ill or even dies of a cold. In early times, the Greek word Άιθιοψ (Aithiops) was used of anyone of black colourWhite Aethiopians
White Aethiopians is a term found in ancient Roman literature which may have referred to the lighter skinned Berber non-negroid populations of Saharan-Africa.-Classical period:Pliny the Elder White Aethiopians (Leucaethiopes) is a term found in ancient Roman literature which may have referred to...
; in one version it is mentioned that the man (who there is washing himself in a river) is from India.
The usual meaning given the fable is that a person's basic nature cannot be changed or, as Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick was an English wood engraver and ornithologist.- Early life and apprenticeship :Bewick was born at Cherryburn House in the village of Mickley, in the parish of Ovingham, Northumberland, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne on 12 August 1753...
has it in his tale of "The Blackamoor", ‘What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh’. He goes on to comment that 'when men aspire to eminence in any of the various arts or sciences, without being gifted with the innate powers or abilities for such attainments, it is only like attempting to wash the Blackamoor white.'
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the fable was used to underline the perception of the black man's 'natural' inferiority, both moral and social. So, while Bewick's generalising conclusion seems innocent enough, its uglier subtext
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
becomes apparent when referred back to the allusion to the fable in The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been...
(1678). There the travellers come across the characters Fool and Want-Wit 'washing of an Ethiopian with intention to make him white, but the more they washed him the blacker he was. They then asked the Shepherds what that should mean. So they told them, saying, Thus shall it be with the vile person. All means used to get such an one a good name shall in conclusion tend but to make him more abominable.'
Emblematic and proverbial use
Early allusion to the fable appears in the work of LucianLucian
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....
, who uses the phrase Αιθοπα σμηχεις proverbially in his epigram "Against an Ignoramus":
-
- You wash the Ethiopian in vain; why not give up the task?
- You will never manage to turn black night into day.
In the 15th century the proverb appeared in the Greek collection of Michael Apostolius
Michael Apostolius
Michael Apostolius was a Greek theologian and rhetorician of the 15th century.- Life :...
(1.71), which was consulted by Erasmus when he was compiling his Adagia
Adagia
Adagia is an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus' collection of proverbs is "one of the most monumental ... ever assembled" Adagia (adagium is the singular form and adagia is the plural) is an...
. In this book, which was written in Latin but cited Greek sources, Erasmus gave two versions. Firstly Aethiopem lavas or dealbas (You wash or make the Ethiopean white), which appeared in a list of other impossible tasks. The other version was Aethiops non albescit (The Ethiopian does not whiten).
Though the Adagias many editions were one source for the proverb's widespread use in Europe, another work was equally influential. This was Andrea Alciato
Andrea Alciato
Andrea Alciato , commonly known as Alciati , was an Italian jurist and writer. He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists.-Biography:...
's Book of Emblems, first published in 1534 with frequent later editions. Here a despondent Ethiopian is pictured seated at a fountain where two Europeans are attempting to wash away his colour; the illustration is followed by a translation into Latin of Lucian's epigram. From here the theme was taken up by Hieronymus Osius
Hieronymus Osius
Hieronymus Osius was a German Neo-Latin poet and academic about whom there are few biographical details. He was born about 1530 in Schlotheim and murdered in 1575 in Graz. After studying first at the university of Erfurt, he gained his Masters degree from Wittenberg university in 1552 and later...
(1564) and the English emblematist Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney was an English poet, now best known for the influence on Elizabethan writing of the Choice of Emblemes that he compiled.-Life:...
(1586). The long verse commentary by the latter draws the conclusion that Nature is not to be withstood; therefore in all dealings 'Let reason rule, and doe the thinges thou maie'.
A third source reinforcing use of the fable in Christian Europe was an apparent reference to it by the Jewish prophet Jeremiah: 'Can the Nubian ['Cushite' in the Hebrew] change his skin or the leopard his spots?' (13.23). Dating from the turn of the 6th century BCE, it suggests that a proverb of West Asian origin may even have preceded the fable. However, the episode of the baptized Ethiopian in the Christian New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
(Acts 8.26-39) taught the different lesson that outward appearance is not everything and even that the inward nature may be changed, giving rise to the paradox at the start of Richard Crashaw
Richard Crashaw
Richard Crashaw , English poet, styled "the divine," was part of the Seventeenth-century Metaphysical School of poets.-Life:...
's epigram on this subject: 'Let it no longer be a forlorn hope/ To wash an Ethiop'.
The ability to undo the created order of the world is through the action of divine grace
Grace (Christianity)
In Christian theology, grace is God’s gift of God’s self to humankind. It is understood by Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to man - "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved" - that takes the form of divine favour, love and clemency. It is an attribute of God that is most...
, and it is this doctrine which underlies the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
pagan presentation of Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
's "The Masque of Blackness
The Masque of Blackness
The Masque of Blackness was an early Jacobean era masque, first performed at the Stuart Court in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace on Twelfth Night, January 6, 1605. The masque was written by Ben Jonson at the request of Anne of Denmark, the queen consort of King James I, who wished the...
" (1605). In it Niger, the god of the Nile, emerges from the ocean in search of a country where the skin of his black daughters can be whitened. The Ethiopian moon-goddess reassures him that his quest is at an end in Britain, which is
-
-
-
-
- Ruled by a sun, that to this height doth grace it :
- Whose beams shine day and night, and are of force
- To blanch an Æthiop, and revive a corse.
- His light sciential is, and, past mere nature,
- Can salve the rude defects of every creature.
-
-
- Call forth thy honor'd daughters then :
- And let them, 'fore the Britain men,
- Indent the land, with those pure traces
- They flow with, in their native graces.
- Invite them boldly to the shore ;
- Their beauties shall be scorch'd no more :
- This sun is temperate, and refines
- All things on which his radiance shines.
-
-
-
-
-
The same idea is returned to in Jonson's later masque, "The Gypsies Metamorphosed" (1621), which also involves change of skin colour from tawny to white.
For all that, a number of allied proverbs maintaining the opposite still persisted: they include negative statements such as 'black will take no other hue', 'one cannot wash a blackamoor white' and 'a crow is never the whiter for washing'. The last of these proverbs may have originated from the derivative fable of "The Raven and the Swan" recorded by Aphthonius
Aphthonius
Aphthonius can refer to:* Aelius Festus Aphthonius* Aphthonius of Antioch...
(Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
398). In this a raven, envying the swan's plumage, tries to bathe away its colour and dies of hunger. Lying at the back of it, and the associated lesson that a person's basic nature cannot be changed, is one of the proverbs of Ahiqar
Ahiqar
Ahiqar or Ahikar was an Assyrian sage known in the ancient Near East for his outstanding wisdom.The Story of Ahikar, also known as the Words of Ahikar, has been found in an Aramaic papyrus of 500 B.C. among the ruins of Elephantine...
, Aesop's Near East
Near East
The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
ern counterpart. 'If water would stand still in heaven, and a black crow become white, and myrrh grow sweet as honey, then ignorant men and fools might understand and become
wise.'
In the later context of the slave trade and the racial mixing that followed, the proverbial phrase was given a new meaning. So it is recorded that, in Barbados
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...
, 'where you find a European and an African mating, the product was a mulatto; a European and a mulatto mated, the product was an octoroon, one eighth white; if that octoroon mated with a white, the product was a quadroon, a quarter white; if a quadroon and a white mated, the product was a mustee; and if that mustee and a European mated, the product was a mustifino, or seven eighths white (or as they said, 'seven eighths human') and that process was called "washing the blackamoor white".’
Popular references
The majority of popular depictions of the fable in Britain and America remained more or less offensive. The lyrics of the comic opera The Blackamoor Wash'd White (1776) by Henry Bate Dudley have been quoted as perpetuating negative racist sterotypes. In 1805 the writer William GodwinWilliam Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
, using the pen-name Edward Baldwin, included the fable (under the title "Washing the Blackamoor White") in his Fables ancient and modern, adapted for the use of children. In it he demonstrates the inadvisability of spinning out Aesop's pithy telling in tedious modern detail and also how difficult it is for even a 'liberal' philosopher to rise above the spirit of the age. The humourist Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...
manages no better in his poem “A Black Job”, which takes as its subject a bogus philanthropic scheme to bathe away the skin colour of Africans so that they ‘Go in a raven and come out a swan’.
Visual depictions are little better. Isaac Cruikshank
Isaac Cruikshank
Isaac Cruikshank , Scottish painter and caricaturist, was born in Edinburgh. His sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank and George Cruikshank also became artists, and the latter in particular achieved fame as an illustrator and caricaturist. Cruikshank is known for his social and political satire.His...
issued a caricature print in 1795 under the title "Washing the Blackamoor White". Satirising the mistress of the future George IV
George IV of the United Kingdom
George IV was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and also of Hanover from the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later...
, it shows Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey
Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey
Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey was one of the more notorious of the many mistresses of King George IV when he was Prince of Wales, "a scintillating society woman, a heady mix of charm, beauty, and sarcasm".-Early life:She was born Frances Twysden, second and posthumous daughter of the Rev...
, sitting in an arm-chair while two ladies wash her face, which has the complexion of a mulatto. The Prince of Wales crouches at her feet, holding out a basin. In a speech bubble, he says: "Another Scrub & then!! take more water," as she enquires, "Does it look any whiter?" The lady on the right holds a scrubbing-brush and puts a soap-ball to Lady Jersey's face.
The same title was used for a Punch
Punch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
cartoon in 1858, with the subtitle 'Sir Jung Bahadoor
Jang Bahadur
Maharaja Jung Bahadur Rana was a ruler of Nepal and founder of the Rana dynasty of Nepal...
and his Knights Companions of the Bath.' This referred to the ennobling of the ruler of Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
in return for his support during the Indian Mutiny. In a travesty of Alciato's emblematic image, a group of knights clad in mediaeval armour keep a bath topped up with hot water and scrub down the king, who crouches in it wearing his regalia. The accompanying text referred to this as an 'ineffectual ablution' and commented that 'Jung Bahadoor is a gentleman of a dark red complexion. The Bath will not render it white'.
A series of Pears Soap advertisements also took the fable as its theme, depicting a black child literally losing his skin colour after using the product. It first appeared in the Graphic magazine for Christmas 1884 and made an immediate impact. Soon there was a reference to it in “Poor Little Liza”, a popular song by the minstrel showman Harry Hunter, with the chorus 'And as for poor Liz, poor little Liza,/ I regret to say,/ She got two cakes of Pears soap/ And washed herself away. A later advertisement for Christmas 1901 shows a black mother carrying a screaming child out to a washing tub while three concerned youngsters peer round the corner of the cabin. It is captioned ‘Oh Golly, she’s gwine to make dat nigger white’.
Further Reading
- "Washing the Ethiopian white: conceptualising black skin in Renaissance England", Anu Korhonen, in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Ch.4, pp 94-112
- Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character, Hazel Waters, Cambridge University Press, 2007
- Imperial persuaders: images of Africa and Asia in British advertising, Anandi Ramamurthy, Manchester University Press, 2003, especially “Soap Advertising – the trader as civilizer and the scramble for Africa”, ch 2, pp.24-62
- “From Greek Proverb to Soap Advert: Washing the Ethiopian”, Jean Michel Massing, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, London 1995, Vol. 58, pages 180-201
- "19th century AD", H.L. Malchow, Past & Present, May 1993