Black Morrow

The bandit's severed head, as a Moor, appears on the crest badge of Clan MacLellan.

Black Morrow, also known as Black Murray and Outlaw Murray, is the name given to a late 15th century Scottish outlaw who was slain.

A popular ballad makes the bandit as living in Ettrick Forest, while a recorded oral tradition, a wood in Kirkcudbrightshire.

In the tradition, the outlaw is described as a Gypsy, Moor or a Saracen.

Written sources

The story as a ballad, appears as "An Old Song Called Outlaw Murray" in the Glenriddel Manuscripts (XI, 61) published in 1791. It also appears in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of ballads compiled by Walter Scott (1803). Aytoun's Ballads of Scotland (1859) in a note appended to the ballad mentions an earlier manuscript: "written between the years 1689 and 1702" which contains the song. While the latter manuscript is presumed lost, "it is clear that the ballad was known before 1700; how much earlier it is to be put we can nether ascertain nor safely conjecture". According however to Scott, the ballad or dancing song "appears to have been composed about the reign of James V", while the story itself takes place during the late 15th century. Note that the ballad doesn't describe the bandit as a Gypsy, Saracen or Moor, nor even as Black Murray, only as Outlaw Murray.

A different story related to the ballad is found in Crawford's The Peerage of Scotland (1716) who mentions George Mackenzie, as having written down an oral tradition in 1680.

Unlike the ballad, the tradition describes the slain bandit as a Moor, who was accompanied by Saracens:

"Sometimes it [the crest] represents some valiant Act done by the Bearer... the Lord Kirkcudbright [his ennobled descendant], does bear a naked Arm, supporting on the point of a sword a Mores [Moor] head ; because Bomhie [the ancestral estate] being forfeited, his Son kill'd a More, who came in with some Sarazens to infest Galloway; to the Killer of whom the King had promised the Forfeiture of Bomhie."

— The Science of Heraldry, George Mackenzie

Crawford considered this band of Saracens and Moors, to be Gypsies, despite Mackenzie not describing them as such.

Black Murray

It remains unclear when Outlaw Murray began to be called Black Murray (or Black Morrow) because neither does the recorded tradition call him this; the folklorist David MacRitchie in 1894 traced Black Murray to two literary sources, one from 1824, the other, 1843, arguing they were local Kirkcudbrightshire versions of the original Mackenzie/Crawford tradition:

"Kirkcudbright tradition tells of a certain 'Blackimore' 'Black Morrow', or " Black Murray," who inhabited a wood near that town, still known as the 'Black Morrow Wood'... It is clear that the "Blackamoor" of both versions, stated in each to have been killed by young Maclellan, is the same as the chief of the 'Moors' or 'Saracens' whom Sir George Mackenzie speaks of as remembered in tradition as far back as 1680."

The author of The History of Galloway (1841) suggests Morrow or Murray is a corruption of Moor, "who from his swarthy complexion was called Black Morrow".

Story

The ballad is different to the Mackenzie/Crawford tradition, although both take place during the late 15th century and the outlaw (or bandit) lives in a Scottish forest. Both are also connected to the names Murray, or Morrow. Walter Scott describes the Outlaw Murray of the ballad: "as a man of prodigious strength, possessing a batton or club, with which he laid lee (i.e. waste) the country for many miles round". This closely resembles the bandit of the Mackenzie/Crawford tradition, but the forest of the ballad is Ettrick Forest, not a wood in Kirkcudbrightshire. In the Mackenzie/Crawford tradition, the murderous bandit is slain by a Maclellan clansman (i.e. William Maclellan). A £50 reward was offered for his capture, or death. In a local Kirkcudbrightshire version of the tradition, MacLellan deliberately replaced spring-water in a well with spirits in order to get bandit drunk. MacLellan is said to have murdered the outlaw and carried his head to the King; the head became a family crest as a Moor's head.

Racial identity

The name Black Murray (Black Morrow) via the early 19th century local variants of the tradition, was assumed to derive from either:

• The term "Blackamoor" (referring to the dark complexion of the Moors).
• The name of the wood where the outlaw lived in Kirkcudbrightshire: "Black Morrow (Plantation)". [1]
• The crimes or evil nature of the bandit.

David MacRitchie argued for the first view, and that the bandit was dark skinned. In contrast Mactaggart who popularized the story in his The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia (1824) argued Black Murray derived his name from his bad deeds (analogous to "Black Douglas") and not swarthy skin:

"[A] bloody man, gloomy with foul crimes, Black prefaced it, as did Black Douglas, and that of others; so he became Black Murray."

The bandit as a dark skinned Moor, could though explain the Moor's head that appears on the crest of the Arms of Lord Kirkcudbright, and in consequence the modern crest badge used by Clan MacLellan. The blazon for which is a naked arm supporting on the point of a sword, a Moor's head. Yet another theory links the bandit to the name of the wood he lived in of the same name, but it could alternatively be argued the wood took its name from him, than vice-versa.

See also

• Clan MacLellan

Sources

• Crofton, H. T. (1888). "Early Annals of the Gypsies in England". Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. 1(1): 5-24. [2]
• Child, F. J. (2003). "The Outlaw Murray". In: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Vol. 5). Dover Publications [reprint of 1894-1898].
• MacRitchie, D. (1894). Scottish Gypsies Under the Stewarts. Edinburgh: David Douglas.