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Black Morrow, also known as Black Murray and Outlaw Murray, is the name given to a late 15th century Scottish outlaw. 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, a Saracen or, more commonly, an Irishman or from Ireland. The folklorist David MacRitchie took a strong interest in the ethnicity of the outlaw because of his dark skin, and the story is commonly quoted in modern Afrocentrist literature. Others however (e.g. John Mactaggart) have disputed whether the bandit was dark skinned, or a "Blackimore".
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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 (but in the ballad, the outlaw owns an entire stronghold in the woodland). 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. Another difference is that in the Mackenzie/Crawford tradition, the bandit is slain by a Maclellan clansman (i.e. William Maclellan), but in the ballad the bandit is not murdered. In a local Kirkcudbrightshire version, MacLellan deliberately replaced spring-water in a well with spirits in order to get bandit drunk. MacLellan is said to have murdered the outlaw for a £50 reward and carried his head to the King; the head became a family crest as a Moor's head.
Origin of "Black" in name
The word "Black" in Black Murray (Black Morrow) via the early 19th century local Kirkcudbrightshire versions of the tradition, derives from either:
MacRitchie argued for the first view, and that the outlaw was dark skinned. In contrast John 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, going as far to deny the bandit was ever a Moor in the first place:
Tradition has him as a Blackimore ... So goes tradition—but my opinion, if it be worth any thing, is, that he was no Blackimore; he never saw Africa; his name must have been Murray, and he must have been too an outlaw and 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 or Saracen, 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 an arm supporting on the point of a sword, a Moor's head). Yet another theory links the bandit to the name of the Kirkcudbrightshire wood he lived of the same name (Black Morrow Plantation), but it could alternatively be argued the wood took its name from the outlaw, rather than vice versa.