Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales- "The Miller's Tale: Robin With the Bagpipe" (l380) Chaucer
"We know that Duine-dubh, a "black man" in Scotch-Gaelic, is "duine-gorm." a "green or blue man," in Irish-Gaelic: and that blue skin is the 'cant' term for 'mulatto'."
-- David MacRitchie, "Ancient and Modern Britons"
Taken from an illustration in the Ellesmere Manuscript, "Robin With the Bagpipe" plays his instrument from horseback by the Miller in Canterbury Tales c. 1380 The illustration "does justice both to our Miller's blue hood and to his bagpipe." As Antiquarian David MacRitchie claimed, and demonstrated, "Blue Men" and "Blue Blood" (prior to its later usage by European royalty and nobility) was a term used to describe blacks from Africa and those living in early Europe (500-1500).
A medieval poem Cursor Mundi, as example, describes a group of converted Saracens as "blue and black as molten lead. "
James E. Brunson
