Washing the Ethiopian (or at some periods the Blackamoor) White is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 393 in the Perry Index.[1] The fable is only found in Greek sources and, applied to the impossibility of changing character, became proverbial at an early date. It was given greater currency in Europe during the Renaissance by being included in emblem books and then entered popular culture. There it was often used to reinforce outright racist attitudes.
Milo Winter's illustration of the companion fable of "The Raven and the Swan", 1919
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 colour; in the unreliable version by Syntipas, the man (who there is washing himself in a river) is identified as from India.[2]
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.'[3]
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.'[4]
Emblematic and proverbial use
Early allusion to the fable appears in the work of Lucian, 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.[5]
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.[6] 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 Ethiopian white), which appeared in a list of other impossible tasks.[7] The other version was Aethiops non albescit (The Ethiopian does not whiten).[8]
Though the Adagia's 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.[9] From here the theme was taken up by Hieronymus Osius (1564)[10] 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'.[11]
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'.[12]
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
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.[13]
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'[14] and 'a crow is never the whiter for washing'.[15] 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.[16] 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 Eastern 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.'[17]
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".’[18]
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 stereotypes.[19] In 1805 the writer William Godwin, 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.[20] 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’.[21]
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.[22]
The original Pears soap advertisement based on Aesop's fable, 1884
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'.[23]
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.[24] It first appeared in the Graphic magazine for Christmas 1884 and made an immediate impact.[25] 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.[26] 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’.[27]
A proverb is a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic language. A proverbial phrase or a proverbial expression is a type of a conventional saying similar to proverbs and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. Collectively, they form a genre of folklore.
Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.
Adagia is the title of an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus' repository of proverbs is "one of the most monumental ... ever assembled".
The Frog and the Ox appears among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 376 in the Perry Index. The story concerns a frog that tries to inflate itself to the size of an ox, but bursts in the attempt. It has usually been applied to socio-economic relations.
The story and metaphor of The Dog in the Manger derives from an old Greek fable which has been transmitted in several different versions. Interpreted variously over the centuries, the metaphor is now used to speak of one who spitefully prevents others from having something for which one has no use. Although the story was ascribed to Aesop's Fables in the 15th century, there is no ancient source that does so.
The Miser and his Gold is one of Aesop's Fables that deals directly with human weaknesses, in this case the wrong use of possessions. Since this is a story dealing only with humans, it allows the point to be made directly through the medium of speech rather than be surmised from the situation. It is numbered 225 in the Perry Index.
The Dog and Its Reflection is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 133 in the Perry Index. The Greek language original was retold in Latin and in this way was spread across Europe, teaching the lesson to be contented with what one has and not to relinquish substance for shadow. There also exist Indian variants of the story. The morals at the end of the fable have provided both English and French with proverbs and the story has been applied to a variety of social situations.
Zeus and the Tortoise appears among Aesop’s Fables and explains how the tortoise got her shell. It is numbered 106 in the Perry Index. From it derives the proverbial sentiment that ‘There’s no place like home’.
Aesop was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters.
Being between Scylla and Charybdis is an idiom deriving from Greek mythology, which has been associated with the proverbial advice "to choose the lesser of two evils". Several other idioms, such as "on the horns of a dilemma", "between the devil and the deep blue sea", and "between a rock and a hard place" express similar meanings. The mythical situation also developed a proverbial use in which seeking to choose between equally dangerous extremes is seen as leading inevitably to disaster.
The Walnut Tree is one of Aesop's fables and numbered 250 in the Perry Index. It later served as a base for a misogynistic proverb, which encourages the violence against walnut trees, asses and women.
The Hawk and the Nightingale is one of the earliest fables recorded in Greek and there have been many variations on the story since Classical times. The original version is numbered 4 in the Perry Index and the later Aesop version, sometimes going under the title "The Hawk, the Nightingale and the Birdcatcher", is numbered 567. The stories began as a reflection on the arbitrary use of power and eventually shifted to being a lesson in the wise use of resources.
The young man and the swallow is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 169 in the Perry Index. It is associated with the ancient proverb 'One swallow doesn't make a summer'.
The Two Pots is one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 378 in the Perry Index. The fable may stem from proverbial sources.
The Crow or Raven and the Snake or Serpent is one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 128 in the Perry Index. Alternative Greek versions exist and two of these were adopted during the European Renaissance. The fable is not to be confused with the story of this title in the Panchatantra, which is completely different.
Developed by authors during Renaissance times, the story of an ass eating thistles was a late addition to collections of Aesop's Fables. Beginning as a condemnation of miserly behaviour, it eventually was taken to demonstrate how preferences differ.
The Fox and the Mask is one of Aesop's Fables, of which there are both Greek and Latin variants. It is numbered 27 in the Perry Index.
The reason for the hare to be in flight is that it is an item of prey for many animals and also subject to hunting by humans. There are three fables of ancient Greek origin that refer to hare chasing, each of which also exemplifies a popular idiom or proverb.
"The Lion Grown Old" is counted among Aesop’s Fables and is numbered 481 in the Perry Index. It is used in illustration of the insults given those who have fallen from power and has a similar moral to the fable of The dogs and the lion's skin. Parallel proverbs of similar meaning were later associated with it.
The Oxen and the Creaking Cart is a situational fable ascribed to Aesop and is numbered 45 in the Perry Index. Originally directed against complainers, it was later linked with the proverb ‘the worst wheel always creaks most’ and aimed emblematically at babblers of all sorts.
↑ “Soap Advertising – the trader as civilizer and the scramble for Africa”, in Imperial persuaders: images of Africa and Asia in British advertising, Anandi Ramamurthy, Manchester University Press, 2003, ch.2, pp.24-62
"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
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