|
Black Irish: the Gollywog
Gollywogs, or Golly Dolls have been around for quite a while in Ireland. The Gollywog developed as a household toy after Africans started to come to Ireland from the African missions to study at universities and seminaries in Dublin and Maynooth.
The "Gollywog" name was borrowed from the English in the 19th Century, and the story of how that name evolved is quite an interesting one. England carried out active slave trading with the Carolinas well into the middle of the 19th Century, where Gulla was one of the many African dialects/languages spoken by slaves taken from their African homelands.
The intellectual leap from Gulla to "Golly" was not a big one and somewhere along the line the derogatory term "Wog", meaning somebody with tight, curly, black hair, which originated in India during England's establishment of its Empire there was tacked on to give the name "Gollywog". The Irish it may also have been the Anglo-Irish class in Ireland adopted the name for their black dolls. Incidentally, Gulla is still spoken by some inhabitants of the Carolinas today.
A second type of Gollywog was developed by an American woman, who, stranded and destitute in London at the beginning of this century, first made Gollywogs as a copy of vaudeville black face singers. These tail-coated, male dolls were very popular children's toys until the 1960s, when the British government, prompted by subjects returning from now independent British colonies, banned their manufacture and sale, and removed all the Gollywog dolls from State-run nursery schools.
Withstanding time, Golly Dolls retain their unique place alongside Teddy bears and dolls as companions, and remain an integral part of Irish life.
|
