Ivanhoe: A Romance, Page 48
Walter Scott
NOTE TO CHAPTER II.
Note B.--Negro Slaves.
The severe accuracy of some critics has objected to the complexion ofthe slaves of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as being totally out of costumeand propriety. I remember the same objection being made to a set ofsable functionaries, whom my friend, Mat Lewis, introduced as theguards and mischief-doing satellites of the wicked Baron, in his CastleSpectre. Mat treated the objection with great contempt, and averredin reply, that he made the slaves black in order to obtain a strikingeffect of contrast, and that, could he have derived a similar advantagefrom making his heroine blue, blue she should have been.
I do not pretend to plead the immunities of my order so highly as this;but neither will I allow that the author of a modern antique romanceis obliged to confine himself to the introduction of those mannersonly which can be proved to have absolutely existed in the times heis depicting, so that he restrain himself to such as are plausible andnatural, and contain no obvious anachronism. In this point of view,what can be more natural, than that the Templars, who, we know, copiedclosely the luxuries of the Asiatic warriors with whom they fought,should use the service of the enslaved Africans, whom the fate of wartransferred to new masters? I am sure, if there are no precise proofsof their having done so, there is nothing, on the other hand, that canentitle us positively to conclude that they never did. Besides, there isan instance in romance.
John of Rampayne, an excellent juggler and minstrel, undertook to effectthe escape of one Audulf de Bracy, by presenting himself in disguiseat the court of the king, where he was confined. For this purpose, "hestained his hair and his whole body entirely as black as jet, so thatnothing was white but his teeth," and succeeded in imposing himselfon the king, as an Ethiopian minstrel. He effected, by stratagem, theescape of the prisoner. Negroes, therefore, must have been known inEngland in the dark ages. [60]
