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Fair women, dark men: The forgotten roots of colour

prejudice

Article  in  History of European Ideas · January 1990

DOI: 10.1016/0191-6599(90)90178-H

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Hisory of European Ideas. Vol. 12. No. 5, pp. 669-679, 1990 0191-6.599/90 53.oot
0.00
Printed m Great Britain o 1990 Pergamon Press plc

FAIR WOMEN, DARK MEN:

THE FORGOTTEN ROOTS OF COLOUR PREJUDICE

PETER FROST*

Which came first, colour prejudice or black slavery? Did the former simply
arise as apost hoc justification for the latter? Or was it already engrained in the
white colonist’s psyche before black enslavement?
This chicken-or-egg controversy has plagued American historians for the past
half-century.’ Oscar and Mary Handlin held that the first American colonists
made no legal distinctions between black slaves and white indentured servants.2
Although prejudice against Blacks did exist, it was merely part of a dislike felt
towards foreigners in general. The Handlins believed that slavery as a racial
institution arose in response to differing economic pressures on the white and
black servant classes. Improvements in the conditions of white servants had by
1660 caused skin colour to be identified uniquely with low social status, the result
being that legal restrictions pertaining to servants came to be couched in
racial terms. For example, to prevent confusion of social status, laws banning
intermarriage were passed. This infrastructure of discriminatory legislation
ultimately gave rise to colour prejudice: an ideology which served both to justify
and perpetuate the inferior status accorded to blacks.
Carl Degler took the Handlins to task for confusing two different questions:
how black slavery became established and how colour prejudice originated.3 ‘To
ask why slavery in the English colonies produced discrimination against Negroes
after 1660 is to make the tacit assumption that prior to the establishment of
slavery there was none’. Discrimination against blacks, whether slave or free, is
traced by Degler as far back as the 164Os, barely twenty years after their first
arrival in the American colonies. From the first importation of blacks in 1619 till
the codification of the slave laws in the 166Os, race relations had been guided by
popular prejudices which gradually crystallised into law. In such matters as
taxation, length of service, right to bear arms, and severity of punishment for
similar crimes, discrimination against African slaves was much harsher than that
practised against foreigners or indentured servants. Far from being a paradise
lost of interracial harmony, this forty year hiatus provided the mise-en-s&ne for
prejudicial attitudes, already in place, to work out future rules of conduct.
After reviewing the evidence for each side, Winthrop Jordan concluded that
both colour prejudice and racial enslavement dated back almost to the
beginnings of colonisation in America, suggesting an origin for both phenomena
on the other side of the Atlantic.4 Yet little evidence exists of race prejudice in

*Dkpartement d’anthropologie, UniversitC Laval, SteFoy, Quibec, GIK 7P4, Canada.

669
670 Peter Frost

Europe before the 16th century. Although people have always tended to think
highly of their own kind in comparison with others, such chauvinism in the
Middle Ages was expressed usually in terms of cultural or religious differences.
This is hardly surprising. Before the age of colonialism, Europeans rarely came
into contact with racially dissimilar peoples. Medieval depictions of black
Africans were poorly executed, implying that the artist had never seen such men
and women in the flesh.5 This ignorance stemmed from many factors: the more
primitive state of travel by land and sea, Muslim control of trade routes between
Europe and Subsaharan Africa, access to sources of non-African slaves (Slavs,
Tartars, Circassians, etc.), and the absence of slave societies apart from certain
areas along the Mediterranean.6
In medieval Europe, ethnic conflicts arose mainly between peoples that had
been in mutual contact for some time. If not similar in appearance to begin with,
they would become so through intermarriage, assimilation of prisoners of war,
and other forms of population exchange. The premodern world thus had few
instances of ethnic conflict where differences of colour could have played a role.
As Pierre van den Berghe points out:’

The typical situation is that ethnies which have been neighbors for a while also look
alike on the average. More precisely, genetic variation within each group is typically
much larger in virtually every phenotype than mean differences between groups.
Therefore, racism, in the majority of cases, is no good at ail in discriminating
between neighbors. Racism would do a much better job of discriminating between
distant groups, but, unless they meet, distant groups are seldom interested in
disc~minating between themselves; indeed, they are often not even aware of each
other’s existence.

Part of the problem in tracing the origins of colour prejudice lies in the
insistence on seeing it as a form of ethnocentrism that uses skin colour, rather
than culture, religion or language, as a means of differentiating ‘us’ from ‘them’.
If, however, we widen our field of vision to encompass both intra- and inter-
populational data, we see that the trail of evidence does not peter out as we go
back in time before the 16th century. It continues.
Such a solution to the chicken-or-egg controversy has been suggested by
Jordan: colour prejudice preceded black slavery, but in a form unrelated to race
or slavery.g

Whiteness, moreover, carried a special significance for Elizabethan Englishmen: it

was, particularly when complemented by red, the color of perfect human beauty,
especially female beauty. This ideal was already centuries old in Elizabeth’s time,
and their fair Queen was its very embodiment: her cheeks were “roses in a bed of
lillies.“. . It was important, if incalculably so, that English discovery of black
Africans came at a time when the accepted standard of ideal beauty was a fair
complexion of rose and white. Negroes not only failed to fit this ideal but seemed
the very picture of perverse negation.

To understand how the first American colonists saw skin colour, we should start
by placing it in the context of their continent of origin-in Europe.
 The ancestors of America’s colonists saw variation in skin cofour in a more
relative manner than we do today. ‘White’, ‘brown’, and ‘bIack’ in the; Middle
Ages would correspond in modern usage to ‘fair’, ‘tan’, and ‘swarthy’. Medieval
literature does attest to an awareness of differences in skin colour, but these
differences were seen as existing largely between individuals rather than between
races. A ‘white’ person was simply a fair-complexioned individual; a ‘black’
person, a dark-complexioned individual.” Indeed, medieval Europeans had no
awareness of belongkg to a ‘white’ race, if only for want of contact with other
races. This ignorance made them more sensitive to differences of cofour among
themselves, particularly between the sexes.
A fair complexion was deemed an essential mark of womanhood* In medieval
romances the heroine is invariably compared to snow, ivory, ermine, swans,
starlight, or briar blossoms. The tenth century Welsh epic ~~~~~~~~~~i~~~raises
a comely lady in such glowing terms:”

II.whiter was her flesh than the foam of the wave: whiter were her palms and her
fingers than the shoots of the marsh trefoil from amidst the fine gravel of a welling
spring.. . . Whiter were her breasts than the breast of the white swan, redder were
her cheeks than the reddest foxgloves. Whoso beheld her would be filled with love
for her.

A less desirable woman is painted in more sombre tones:

Blacker were her face and her hands than the blackest iron that had been steeped in
pitch: and it was not her colour that was ugliest, but her shape.. .

Attitudes towards male skin colour seem more ambivalent, A man is considered
handsome, if fair-skinned; yet manly and courageous, if ‘brown’. The tenth token
of a knight of ‘strong Corage’ is that he should be of ‘broun colaure in al the
body”. On the other hand, the medieval historian Walter C. Curry concludes that
‘if there is any doubt as to the beauty OKugliness of brown persons, it is certain
that those who are black are decidedly ugly and sometimes hideous’.“’
Alice Colby in her survey of Old French literature states that both handsome
men and beautifuf women are described as white.” Yet this aesthetic ideal seems
more important for women+

The adjective tier refers to the brightness of the face, no matter whether redness,
whiteness, or both are being emphasized, This characteristic is mare important for
women than for men.
The whiteness of the chest or bosom, both of which are referred to EISChepiz or
p&he, is emphasized in tbe portraits ofone man and four women and is compared
to that of ermine, freshly fallen snow, a lily, and a hawthorn blossom,

Similarfy, Hugo Bfiimner in Iris review of Graeco-Roman literature nates: l4

672 Peter Frost

beauty of girls, women and adolescent boys; so often that more than a quarter of all
references [to skin colour] fall into this category. . The beauty of condor is less
often extolled with respect to the male gender-not at all in the case of grown
men-for such a feminine skin colour, though acceptable for boys and adolescents,
would be unbecoming for men.

This high valuation of light skin in women was not confined to the effete upper
classes. Peasant folklore, passed on over many generations to the present day,
suggests that the peasantry of the Middle Ages also considered a fair skin to be a
prerequisite of feminine beauty. Such at least is the case for the British Isles,ls
Italy,16 Serbia and Croatia,i7 Rumania,18 and Macedonia.”
What was the basis for this idea that women ought to be fairer in colour?
Probably the fact that they are. Female skin contains less melanin and has less
haemoglobin flowing through it, making women paler in appearance. By
comparison, men are browner and ruddier. *’ Spectrophotometric studies show
that women’s skin has a higher reflectance than men’s across a wide range of
human societies.*] Within a small homogeneous population, sex is the main
source of variation in skin colour.**
How noticeable is this sex difference? In today’s cosmopolitan societies, it is
largely obscured by racial and even ethnic differences of colour. In more
homogeneous societies, however, people have known that women are the ‘fair
sex’. Aztec, Etruscan, Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese art depict women
invariably as lighter in colour than men. 23In European art of the Middle Ages, ‘le
teint blanc semble aussi avoir Cte marque de feminitt. C’est en tout cas ce que
suggerent tant de tableaux a themes mythologiques, oti les femmes sont
systematiquement plus blanches que les hommes’.24 The medieval romance
Aucassin et Nicolette alludes to this sex difference when the heroine tries to pass
for a man. Before donning a tunic and trousers, she darkens her face with a herbal
dye. 25 In the 16th century, the French writer Jean Litbault observed that ‘Le teint
dtlicat se voit plus souvent aux femmes qu’aux hommes’.26

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO COLOUR PREJUDICE AND

BLACK SLAVERY

Did the high value placed on women’s lighter skin lead to negative sentiments
towards darker-coloured peoples? In medieval Europe, the only ethnic
boundaries along which colour prejudice could crystallise were those involving
the Saracens, the Tartars, and the Jews. In all three cases, as we shall see,
differences of colour contributed to the formation of negative stereotypes.
Medieval romances which praise the heroism of valiant Christian knights
against villainous Saracens emphasise the enemy’s darker colour.*’ In the
Chanson de Roland, the treacherous Abisme is as ‘black as molten pitch’. ‘Blacker
than pitch or ink’ are the Turks in the Chanson d’Aspremonr. A Saracen giant,
‘loathly ant was swart as pitch’, appears in Rouland and Vernagu. Another
Saracen giant appears in Ferumbras, ‘both black and loathly, and grisly of cheer.
In all manner wise, evil was he shaped: he seemed a devil of hell that out was
escaped’.
Fair Women, Dark Men 673

Descriptions of Saracens as ‘black’ rather than ‘brown’ may have been simply
caricature. As well, these terms were used more loosely than they are today. The
Ckanson de Roland nonetheless refers explicitly to the presence of blacks in the
enemy’s ranks?

What is the use? Although Marsile has fled, his uncle Marganice remains, he who
rules Carthage, Alfrere, Garmalie, and Ethiopia, an accursed land. He has the black
people under his command.. When Roland sees the accursed people, who are
blacker than ink and whose teeth alone are white, the count said, ‘Now I know for
certain that today we shall surely die’.

Another swarthy people known to Europeans were the Tartars, a turkish-

mongol people inhabiting the steppes north of the Black Sea. In the 14th century
romance The King of Tars, a Christian princess married to a Tartar Khan gives
birth to a formless lump of flesh. The Khan’s pleas to the heathen deities being to
no avail, he consents to have the lump of flesh baptised, whereupon it becomes a
handsome boy. Impressed, the Khan converts to Christianity, his skin turning
white in the baptismal water. Two other chronicles of the same period describe
how a Tartar Khan’s Christian concubine bears him a son white on one side and
black on the other. At its baptism, the child emerges from the water white on both
sides2”
Finally, a certain coiour consciousness pervaded medieval anti-Semitism. In
the 13th century, Joseph Ben Nathan recorded the folfowing dialogue between
his father and an apostate Jew:‘O

Apostate-You are uglier than all men on earth, while the people of our kind (i.e.
Christians) are very fair to see.
K. Nathan-The wild plums that grow on the hedgerows (and are black) what
flower do they come from?
Apostate-From a white flower.. .
R. Nathan-Well, we Jews come from a pure, white source, and so our faces are
black; but your people come from a red, impure source. That’s why you are fair in
complexion. But the truth is that we are in slavery.

Changing demographic and economic conditions from the 14th century

onwards were to break Europe’s relative isolation, thus bringing Europeans
increasingly into contact with darker-skinned peoples. The Black Death had
wiped out much of the labouring classes; at the same time, an increase in trade
with the East had spurred economic growth, particularly in Italy. Manpower
became scarce and in the south of Europe the labour shortage incited the ruling
classes to bring in workers from elsewhere. Florence led the way and authorised
in 1363 the large-scale importation of slaves, mainly Tartars and Slavs from the
shores of the Black Sea.3L
Although men and women of diverse nationalities were slaves, skin colour held
nonetheless a particular importance. Acts of sale mentioned this physical trait
more often than any other. In fact, most acts gave only the name, the colour, the
religion or nationality, the price, and sometimes the age. Some stated only
whether the slave was white, olive-coloured, or black.32
674 Peter Frost

A slave increased in value according to his or her degree of whiteness. The most
expensive ones were the Russians and the Circassians, followed by the Tartars,
the White Moors and, finally, the Black Moors. Sex and colour counted equally
in determining the price: a woman sold for more than a man and a fair-skinned
Russian woman sold for more than a darker-coloured Tartar or black of the same
sex.33 It is doubtful that this price differential reflected a higher productivity on
the part of Russian or Circassian slaves. An Italian mother writing to her son
counselled him to buy a Tartar, since such people were ‘sturdy and suited to hard
work’. However, ‘the red ones-that is, the Russians, are of a more attractive
complexion and handsomer’.”
During the 15th century, access to the Black Sea slave markets was
progressively cut off by the Ottoman Turks. The fall of Constantinople in 1453
and of Caffa in 1494 necessitated a reorientation in the sources of supply and,
increasingly, black Africans were brought onto the market to meet the demand.
These slaves were procured initially from Moorish merchants in Spain and North
Africa. By 1460, however, the Portuguese had succeeded in establishing a direct
trade route along the Atlantic coast to Subsaharan Africa. It was henceforth by
this route that blacks would arrive in Europe and, later on, in the New World.35
Black Africans were soon swelling the ranks of the slave population across
southern Europe. As early as 1393, a hospital had been erected in Seville to look
after their needs.36 This growing Africanisation of slavery was remarked upon in
1444 when a shipment of slaves arrived at Lagos in Portugah3’

And these, placed all together in that field, were a marvellous sight, for amongst
them were some white enough, fair to took upon and well proportioned; others were
less white like mulattoes; others again were as black as Ethiopians, and so ugly,
both in features and in body, as almost to appear, to those who saw them, to be the
images of a lower hemisphere.

By the second half of the 15th century, blacks had come to make up 83% of the
slave population in Naples. Similar increases took place elsewhere in the
Mediterranean during this peri0d.j”
In Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, Valencia and Majorca, the slaves were put to
work on sugarcane plantations, vineyards, and other farms. On the island of
Majorca, where they made up from 18 to 36% of the population, a slave code was
drawn up in 1406 to appease fears of revolt. The code forbade slaves to meet in
groups of three or more, to bear arms, and to leave their quarters at night. An
offender who broke curfew would receive a hundred lashes. Carrying arms would
incur the same punishment for the first offence, flagellation without mercy for
the second, and amputation of a foot for the third. Meetings of more than three
people would be punished by fifty lashes for the first offence, one hundred for the
second, and flagellation without mercy for the third. On the eve of the discovery
of America. all the features of black slavery had fallen into place: an enslaved
work force increasingly made up of black Africans, plantation agriculture
requiring a large supply of labour to produce large quantities of food for export,
and a body of legal norms limiting the freedom ofthese labourers in all aspects of
their lives.”
During this passage from the multi-ethnic slavery of the Middle Ages to the
black slavery of the colonial era, the distinctions of sex and colour already
mentioned intensified. White blacks of both sexes sold for the same price,
Russian and Circassian women fetched 50% more than men af the same
nationality. The high value placed on white women showed itself in the sex-ratio
of the slave population. Blacks were predominantly male; whites, female. After
the fall of Constantinople, the proportion of women in the black slave
population increased from one third to over one half, apparently because of the
shortage of white women from the Black Sea markets. Yet this proportion would
never reach the same levels with the blacks as it had with the Russians and
Circassians (Table 114”-

Table 1. Sex-ratios of the slave population in the 15th century

Sicily Men Wmnen ~~.Fe~~~~

Blacks-1400-1450 27 12 31
-1450-1500 35 40 53
White Moors 5 5 50
Tartars 3 4 57
Russians 6 11 6.5
Circassians 2 18 90

Nl?&?.S
Blacks 42 58 58
Moors 6 2 25
Turks 11 2 15
Tartars I2 I2 50
Russians 4 33 88
Circassians 10 53 84

Not%
In Naples, the high proportion of men among Moorish and Turkish slaves is due to the
fact that most were prisoners of war.
Samples are based on notarial acts of sale and purchase and do not represent a complete
census of the slave population.
Source: Verlinden, L’Esdavage dam I’fkrope m&fi&vaie,208-216, 221, 224, 226, 229,
303-314, 318,320, 329.

Contemporary literature can flesh out these statistics and offer insight into the
aesthetic judgements underlying price behaviour in the slave markets. II
Dir’nrmondo, written in 1370 by the Florentine Fazio degli Uberti, states that in
England ‘the people of this land are white and fair to see, even as in Ethiopia they
are black and hideous’.?’ In a 15th century religious allegory, Le tmit6 de la vie
cantemplative, Jesus marries an Ethiopian woman who represents the black soul
of the sinner. God the father opposes this mesalliance: ‘It pleases me that you
should take a spouse but not that one, for she is too ugly and black and is of base
extraction and ribald. You would dishonour your lineage which is all that is
lordly.. . . She is an Ethiopian as black as a Moor of Morienne . , ,‘J2
In 1439, John Lydgate related the story of a mixed marriage at the court of the
Kingdom of Naplesa An Ethiopian slave is freed and wedded to a servant girl
called Philippa Catanensi. Through scheming and cunning, Phiiippa endears
676 Peter Frost

herself to the ladies of the court and has her husband made seneschal of the
King’s household. But the former slave’s rapid rise is viewed with disfavour. The
other attendants at the court speak with disdain of this ‘Ethiopian brown and
horrible of sight’ and predict that Philippa’s fortune will turn upon her. Indeed,
Philippa’s luck does change. Her husband dies, her children perish from various
causes, and her scheming is found out. At the end, she is burned at the stake. The
moral of the story is clear: one must not rise too far above one’s assigned station in
life. The idea that blacks were destined for slavery had taken root.
II Pentamerone, published in 1634-36, presents a series of folk tales collected in
and about Naples. Passed down by tradition long before being put to paper, these
tales tell us much about the attitudes held towards black slaves during the
15th and 16th centuries. In particular, they highlight the relationship between
admiration of fairness in women and stigmatisation of darkness in African
slaves. The first tale, a ‘frame story’, encompasses the others: A princess wishes to
marry a prince who, because of a fairy’s curse, sleeps in eternal slumber. In order
to awaken him and claim him as her husband, she must fill a vase with her tears.
She succeeds, but at the last moment a black slave woman seizes the vase and
marries the prince. The princess is prevented from telling him what happened, so
she awaits an opportunity to use indirect means. Her time comes when ten
women are invited to recite tales at the prince’s court. The ninth one recounts
The Three Citrons, the story of a prince who refuses to marry. One day, however:44

The Prince was about to cut a cream cheese in half. but, being distracted watching
some jackdaws flying about, he unfortunately cut his finger, and two drops of blood
fell on the cheese. This produced such a beautiful combination of colours that the
Prince was seized with the desire to have a wife as white and red as the cheese dyed
with his blood.

The prince of the tale searches the world for such a woman. Finally, cutting into a
magic citron, he sees his heart’s desire suddenly emerge. He leaves her briefly
and, in the meantime, a black slave woman arrives, kills her and takes her place.
On coming back, the prince is shocked by his beloved’s change of appearance:45

Shortly afterwards the Prince returned with a great cavalcade and, when he found a
band of dark caviare where he had left a pan of white milk, he was for a time beside
himself. At last he said: ‘Who has made this blot of ink on the fair white sheet on
which I thought to write my happiest days? Who has draped with mourning the
freshly white-washed house in which I hoped to find all my joy? Why do I find this
black touchstone when I left a mine of silver that would make me rich and happy?”

After a series of miraculous events, the woman as white as cream cheese comes
back to life and is reunited with the prince. The black woman, unmasked, is
burned alive. The Three Citrons having been told, the princess takes the place of
the last story-teller and presents herself as the princess of the story. The black
queen confesses to her deceit and is buried alive. With this ‘happy ending’ the
prince and the princess are married.
In Sicily there lived around the same time the only black man of the Middle
Ages to be canonised by the Church: St. Benedict the Moor, born free in 1526 of
Fair Women, Dark Men 677

slave parents. At the age of 21, he was insulted by neighbours who taunted him
because of his colour and the status of his parents. A wandering hermit seeing this
incident came to his defence, ‘You will make fun of this poor black man now,
but I can tell you that ere long you will hear great things of himaJ6 Legend had it
that he was originally a white man who, in order to escape from feminine
temptations, prayed to God to make him ugly-so God turned his skin black.?’
Like the stories of II Pentamerone, however, St. Benedict was the product of an
era drawing to a close. By the 1560s the flow of black slaves had shifted from the
Mediterranean to the Americas. The plantation economies of Sicily, Valencia,
and Majorca now had to compete with those of the New World for both slaves
and markets. And these Mediterranean societies, unlike their competitors, could
resort to a large supply of free labour. As slaves became more expensive than
peasant labourers, the former dwindled in numbers and importance; so much so,
that by the 17th century the few remaining ones were Moors taken in raids on the
North African coast. For all practical purposes the Mediterranean had ceased to
be a point of contact between black and white.“8

CONCLUSION

The passage from the multi-ethnic slavery of the Middle Ages to the black
slavery of the colonial era supports Carl Degler’s thesis. To claim that black
slavery created colour prejudice is to put the cart before the horse. It would be
more correct to say that colour prejudice made black slavery into a more
dehumanising institution than previous forms of servitude. Stigmatisation of
black skin appears to have arisen originally from a strong association of fair skin
with femininity, a cultural substrate antedating the first contacts between black
and whites and founded on a real difference between the sexes.
Peter Frost
Laval University, Quebec

NOTES

1. Raymond Starr and Robert Detweiler, Race, Prejudice and the Origins of Slavery in
America (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), pp. 159-164.
2. Oscar Handlin and Mary F. Handlin, ‘Origins of the Southern Labor System’,
William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd series, VII (1950), 199-222.
3. Carl Degler, ‘Slavery and the Genesis of American Race Prejudice’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History II (1959), 49-66, 488-495.
4. Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro 1550-1812
(Williamsburg, 1968):
5. Jean Devisse and Michel Mollat, The Image of the Black in Western Art (Paris, 1979)
II, parts 1 and 2.
6. 1. Origo, ‘The Domestic Enemy: The Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the 14th and 15th
Centuries’, Speculum XXX (1955), 321-366; Charles Verlinden, L’Esclavage dans
I’Europe rn~di~va~eII (Ghent, 1977).
7. Pierre L. van den Berghe, ‘Class, Race and Ethnicity in Africa’, Ethnic and Racial
Studies VI (1983), 221-236.
678 Peter Frost

8. Jordan, White over Hack, pp. 8-9.

9. Walter Clyde Curry, The Middle English Ideat of Personal Beauty: CIS,fiwld in the
Metrical Romamw. Chronicles. and Legendv of‘ the XIII, XZV und XV Centurier
(Baltimore, 1916), pp. 80-86. Vestiges of this old way of seeing skin colour
survive in some family names: White, Brown, Black, Leblanc. Lebrun, Lenoir, etc.
10. Anon, The Mabinogion (London, 1975), pp. 110-l 11.
11. Curry, The Middle English Ideal qf Personal Beauty, pp. 86-87.
12. Alice M. Colby, The Portrait in TLc,e(fth-Century French Literature (Geneva, 1965),
pp. 68-69.
13. Ibid., pp. 47, 59.
14. Hugo Bhimner, Die Farbenbezeichnungen bei den Romischen Dichtern (Berlin. 1892),
pp. 19-20.
15. Francis James Child, The EngJish and Scottish Po~aJar BaJZads (New York, 1965),
I, p. 86, II, pp. 183, 363, 399-400; W.E. Mead, ‘Color in the English and Scottish
Popular Ballads’. in F.J. Furnivall, .4n English Misceflany (New York, 1969).
pp. 321-334.
16. E. Martinengo-Cesaresco, &ssn)~s in the Study of Fe/k-Songs (London, 1886),
pp. 95. 113, 117, 119, 139.
17. Bela Bartok and A.B. Lord, Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs (New York, 1951), pp. 269.
279, 287, 293-297. 303, 305, 319, 357, 405, 421.
18. Bela Bartok, Rumanian Folk Music (The Hague. 1967) III, pp. 41.45,47.61, 73,83,
117, 119, 129, 149, 163-165, 167, 199, 233, 415, 513, 565.
19. B. Traerup,EastMacedonian Folk Song~s(Copenhagen, 1970), pp. 129. 131, 151. 165,
175, 185, 191, 201, 219.
20. E.A. Edwards and S.Q. Duntlcy. ‘The Pigments and Color of Living Human Skin’.
rlmerican ~0z~rnaZ0~Anafo~ty LXV (1939), l-33.
21. Peter Frost. ‘Human Skin Color: A Possible Relationship between its Sexual
Dimorphism and its Social Perception’, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine XXX11
(1988), 38-58.
22. This difference of complexion does not stem from differences of lifestyle between
men and women. It appears instead to result from physiological changes associated
with sexual maturation. In fact, it is only at puberty that the sexes differentiate in
skin colour. K. Omoto. ‘Measurements of Skin Reflectance in a Japanese Twin
Sample’, Journal qf‘the Anthropologica/ Society yf Nippon LXX111 (1965). 115-122:
A.K. Kalla, ‘Ageing and Sex Differences in Human Pigmentation’, Z. Morph, Anthrop.
LXV (1973). pp. 29-33; D.P.S. Kahlon, ‘Age Variation in Skin Color. A Study in
Sikh Immigrants in Britain’, Human Rio/og_t~XLVIII (1976), pp. 419-428; M.S. Mesa,
‘Analyse de la variabilite de la pigmentation de la peau durant la croissance’,
Bul~~~~n et M~~ro~r~~ de la Soci&P ~Anthropolog~e de Paris, se& 13, X (198i),
pp. 49-60.
23. Jacques Soustelle, The Dai/y Life of the Aztecs (Stanford, 1970), p. 130; Massimo
Pallotino, La peinture Ptrusque (Geneva, 1985), pp. 34,45,73,76-77,87,93,95, 105,
107, 115; Jean Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt (London, 1905), pp. 26-27; Hiroshi
Wagatsuma, ‘The Social Perception of Skin Color in Japan’, Daedalu XCVI (1967)
407-443.
24. Marie-Claude Phan and Jean-Louis Flandrin. ‘Les metamorphoses de la beauti
feminine’. L’Hi.Ytoire LXVIII (1984). 48-57.
25. Anon, Aucassin et Nicolette (Paris, 1984), p. 151.
26. Phan and Flandrin. ‘Les metamorphoses de la beaute feminine’.
27. W.W. Comfort. ‘The Saracens in Christian Poetry’, TheD~b/iffRevje~~~Xi~lX (191 I),
23-48; Curry, The ~iddJc Englivh Meal ef Pf,r~~ona/ Beaut_r: p. 89; D. Metlitzki, The
Matter qf Arab-v itt .~edieva/ England (New Haven and London, 1977), pp. 192-197.
Fair Women, Dark Men 679

28. Anon, The Song of Rolartd (University Park and London, 1978), 119, CXLIII-
CXLIV.
29. L.H. Hornstein, ‘New Analogues to the King of Tars’, Modern Language Review
XXXVI (194 I), 433-442.
30. Bernhard Blumenkranz, Le Jug mPdiPval au miroir de /‘art chretien (Paris, 1966),
p. 21. Blumenkranz cites another text where a Christian reproaches a Jew for being
‘dark and ugly, and not at all white like the rest of mankind’. Ibid., p. 140.
3 1. Origo, ‘The Domestic Enemy’.
32. Verlinden, L’Esclavage duns I’Europe mt;dikvale, pp. 142, 156-157, 467-414, 916.
33. Ibid., pp. 517-519.
34. Origo, ‘The Domestic Enemy’.
35. Verlinden, L’Escfavage duns I’Europe mediPvaie, p. 354.
36. R. Pike, ‘Seviltian Society in the 16th Century: Slaves and Freedmen’, &.r~anic
American H~.~tori~alReview XLVII (1967), 344-359.
37. Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Cronica dos feitos de Guine II (Lisbon, 1949), pp. 124-125.
38. Verlinden, L’Esciavage dam I’Europe m&dit’vale,pp. 353-354.
39. Ibid., pp. 351-358.
40. Ibid., pp. 211, 224, 306, 315, 330-331, 460, 517 and Table 1.
41. George G. Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation,
(Cambridge, 1956), p. 29.
42. Devisse and Mollat, The Image of the Black in Western Art, pp. 145-146.
43. H. Bergen, ‘The Story of Philippa Catanensi’, Fall ofPrinces (Washington, 1923-27),
pp. 1000-1001.
44. Benedetto Croce, The Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile (Westport, 1979), II,
p. 151.
45. Ibid., XI, p. 156.
46. Alban Butler, Butler’s Lives of the Saints (London, 19561, II, pp. 30-31,
47. Roger Bastide, ‘Color, Racism, and Christianity’, Daedafus XCVI (1967), 312-327.
48. Verlinden, L’Escfavage dam (‘Europe mPdiPvale, pp. 1026-1029.

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