Few documents portray the ethnicity of the Moors
in medieval Europe with more passion, boldness and clarity than the epic of
Morien. Morien is a metrical romance rendered into English prose from the
medieval Dutch version of the Lancelot. In the Lancelot, it occupies more than
five thousand lines and forms the ending of the first extant volume of that
compilation. Neither the date of the original poem or the name of the author is
known. The Dutch manuscript is dated to the beginning of the fourteenth
century. The whole work is a translation, and apparently a very faithful
translation, of a French original. It is quite clear that the Dutch compiler
understood his text well, and though possibly somewhat fettered by the
requirement of turning prose into verse, he renders it with uncommon fidelity.
Morien is the adventure of a splendidly heroic Moorish knight (possibly a
Christian convert) supposed to have lived during the days of King Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table. Sir Morien is described as follows: "He was all
black, even as I tell ye: his head, his body, and his hands were all black,
saving only his teeth. His shield and his armour were even those of a Moor, and
black as a raven."
Initially in the adventure Morien is simply called "the Moor." He first
challenges, then battles, and finally wins the unqualified respect and
admiration of Sir Lancelot. In addition, Morien is extremely forthright and
articulate. Sir Gawain, whose life was saved on the battlefield by Sir Morien,
is stated to have "harkened, and smiled at the black knight's speech." It is
noted that Morien was as "black as pitch; that was the fashion of his
land--Moors are black as burnt brands." And again: "His teeth were white as
chalk, otherwise was he altogether black." "Morien, who was black of face and
limb," was a great warrior, and it is said that: "His blows were so mighty; did
a spear fly towards him, to harm him, it troubled him no whit, but he smote it
in twain as if it were a reed; naught might endure before him." Ultimately, and
ironically, Sir Morien came to personify all of the finest virtues of the
knights of the European Middle Ages.
As a sort of concluding note, the English ethnologist and antiquarian scholar
Gerald Massey (writing in 1881 in his massive two-volume text, A Book of the
Beginnings) noted that, "Morion is said to have been the architect of
Stonehenge.... Now, as a negro is still known as a Morien in English, may not
this indicate that Morien belonged to the Black race, the Kushite builders?" It
should be further added, according to Dr. Jack Forbes in his scholarly work
Black Africans and Native Americans, "that for a very long period the Dutch
language used Moor and Moriaan for Black Africans." Among the Lorma community in
modern Liberia, the name Moryan is still prominent.
SOURCE:
Morien
Nature
Knows No Color-Line, By J.A. Rogers
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