Red Irish

Rufosity in Ireland and Britain: Some Sources and Comments

Contents:
Introduction
Red Hair in the British Isles and Amongst Jews.
Irish Redhead Convention
Red hair is most common in Ireland by Robin McKie:
Irish Prejudice Against Redheads
British Isles: Ulster has highest Incidence
The rufous hair color pigment reaches a world maximum in Ireland
Irish Stereotypes and Prejudices Against Red Hair
40% of Irish are Redhead carriers
Hair Color in the British Isles
Alan Trowel Hands: RedHair Minority Contributes to the Stereotype
Alan Trowel Hands: Irish were more Blond and Redhaired in the Past than they are now.
Alan Trowel Hands: RedHair was more Common in Ireland in the Past. Western Ulster and Northern Connaught.
Brit-Am Intermediate Observation.

Red Hair in Norway Traced to Neil of Ireland?

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Introduction
We were under the impression that we had once seen a statistic saying that Donegal in Northwest Ireland had the highest incidence of redhair in Europe. Researcher Paul Conroy who evidently has firsthand acquaintance with this area wrote an e-mail to the M222 (formerly the R1b1c7 i.e. Irish Modal Haplotype of Northwest Ireland) DNA e-mail discussion group. He was replying to a remark we had made on the possibility that there be found a connection between redhair and M222 DNA since both have a relatively high occurence in Donegal. Paul was inclined to disagree and remarked that, "The typical person from Donegal has dark brown hair". He also quoted from memory a study of the English ethnologist John Beddoe (1826-1911) that for rufosity (redhair) placed Wales and northern England before Ireland and Scotland. Perhaps our impression concerning Donegal was mistaken? We looked for sources concerning Donegal and redhair on the web but did not find anything apart from the statement by Alan Trowel Hands (see below) that "in this very area of western Ulster and northern Connaught ... red hair is most common." The area in question does include Donegal, so maybe we were right after all?

Apart from that we came across other points of interest, some of which are given below.
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Red Hair in the British Isles and Amongst Jews.
Red hair
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair

Extracts:

Today, red hair is most commonly found at the northern and western fringes of Europe; it is associated particularly with the people located in the United Kingdom and in Ireland

Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads; 13 percent (13%) of the population has red hair and approximately 40 percent (40%) carries the recessive redhead gene.[12] Ireland has the second highest percentage; as many as 10 percent (10%) of the Irish population has red, auburn, or strawberry blond hair.[13] It is thought that up to 46 percent (46%) of the Irish population carries the recessive redhead gene. A 1956 study of hair colour amongst British army recruits also found high levels of red hair in Wales and the English Border counties.[14]

Red hair is also fairly common amongst the Ashkenazi Jewish populations, possibly because of the influx of European DNA over a period of centuries,[citation needed] or in the original founding of their communities in Europe.[15] Both Esau and David are described in the Bible as red-haired. In European culture, prior to the 20th century, red hair was often seen as a stereotypically Jewish trait: during the Spanish Inquisition, all those with red hair were identified as Jewish.[16] In Italy, red hair was associated with Italian Jews, and Judas was traditionally depicted as red-haired in Italian and Spanish art.[17] Writers from Shakespeare to Dickens would identify Jewish characters by giving them red hair.[18] The stereotype that red hair is Jewish remains in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia.[19]

In the United States, it is estimated that 2.6% of the population has red hair. This would give the U.S. the largest population of redheads in the world, at 6 to 18 million, compared to approximately 650,000 in Scotland and 420,000 in Ireland.

The MC1R recessive variant gene that gives people red hair and non-tanning skin is also associated with freckles, though it is not uncommon to see a redhead without freckles. Eighty percent of redheads have an MC1R gene variant,[4] and the prevalence of these alleles is highest in Scotland and Ireland. The alleles that code for red hair occur close to the alleles that affect skin color, so it seems that the phenotypic expression for lighter skin and red hair are interrelated.
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Irish Redhead Convention
http://www.thegatheringireland.com/Attend-A-Gathering/Individual-Gathering.aspx?eid=520#.UV3fBiT8IdU
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Red hair is most common in Ireland by Robin McKie
http://irishtribesman.blogspot.co.il/2007/01/red-hair-is-most-common-in-ireland.html
Where one is the maximum value, they got figures of 0.16 and 0.23 for the frequencies of red-hair genes in Cornwall and Devon. The frequency in Oxfordshire was 0.07; in Sussex and Kent 0.13; in northeast England 0.11; in Lincolnshire 0.07; and in Cumbria nil. In Wales the figure was 0.21, and in Orkney a high 0.26. But the highest was in Ireland. Using data from other research studies, the team got a figure for Ireland of 0.31, confirmation of the stereotypical image of the red-haired Irishman.
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Irish Prejudice Against Redheads
THE VIKING IRISH REDHEAD GENE MYTH
http://mohurley.blogspot.co.il/2009/03/irish-redheads.html
In Donegal, if a girl is born with red hair it is a sign that there was a pig under the bed. Irish Proverb (Contrary to what you are thinking, pigs are sacred animals in Ireland)
Irish farmers did not want their daughters to marry redheads as many tinkers had red hair. Many were persecuted, so they moved to Scotland. (Probably the Orkneys. Orc = pig.)
In Ireland, redheadedness is often associated with good luck.
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British Isles: Ulster has highest Incidence
Black Irish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish
Hair, skin and eye color statistics in Ireland circa 1940s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish#Hair.2C_skin_and_eye_color_statistics_in_Ireland_circa_1940s
C. Wesley Dupertuis conducted a survey of Irish people in the 1940s under the guidance of the Department of Anthropology of Harvard University, and gathered the following data:[13]

At the time, the hair color of the Irish was predominantly brown. Less than 15% had black or ashen hair; 50% had dark brown hair.[citation needed][13] Medium brown hues made up another 15%. Persons with blond and light brown hair accounted for close to 5%, while approximately 10% had auburn or red hair. Both golden and dark brown shades could be seen in the southwestern counties of Ireland, but fairest hair in general is most common in the Central Plain.[14] Ulster had been evidenced to have the highest frequencies of red and blond hair, with the lowest found in Wexford and Waterford [i.e. southeast ireland].

Studies have indicated the Irish are "almost uniquely pale skinned when unexposed, untanned parts of the body, are observed"[15] and "40% of the entire group are freckled to some extent".[citation needed] Moreover, "in the proportion of pure light eyes", data shows that "Ireland competes successfully with the blondest regions of Scandinavia", as approximately 42% of the Irish population have pure blue eyes. Another 30% have been found to possess light-mixed eyes and "less than 1 half of 1% have pure brown".[13]

Brit-Am Comment: Ulster having the highest incidence of rufosity in the British Isles may be misleading since it appears from the notes of Alan Trowel Hands (given below) that in Ulster redhair is more predominant amongst the Catholic (i.e. more native Irish) population than the Protestant.

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The rufous hair color pigment reaches a world maximum in Ireland
Ireland: Harvard Survey:
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-X2.htm
The hair color of the Irish is predominantly brown; black hair accounts for less than 3 per cent of the total, while the ashen series (Fischer #20-26) amounts to but one-half of one per cent. Forty per cent have dark brown hair (Fischer #4-5); 35 per cent have medium brown (Fischer #7-9); reddish brown hues total over 5 per cent (closest to Fischer #6, #10), while clear reds (Fischer #1-3) run higher than 4 per cent. The rest, some 15 per cent, fall into a light brown to golden blond category (Fischer #11-19). Thus the hair color of the Irish is darker than that of most regions of Scandinavia, but not much darker than Iceland; it is notably different from Nordic hair, as exemplified by eastern Norwegians and Swedes, in its almost total lack of ash-blondism. The rufous hair color pigment reaches a world maximum here; not so much in reds as in the prevalance of golden hues in blond and brown shades. The lightest hair is found in the Aran Islands, where the commonest shade is, nevertheless, medium brown; in the southwestern counties there are more goldens and at the same time more dark-browns than in Ireland as a whole, while the Great Plain runs fairest of all. Red hair, with a regional maximum of 8 per cent, is commonest in Ulster, rarest in Waterford and Wexford....

The planoccipital, brachycephalic, aquiline-nosed Dinaric element, if it were ever brunet, must also have lost its original pigment association; today it is frequently red haired.
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Irish Stereotypes and Prejudices Against Red Hair
Could Ireland's cloudy weather be the reason for the stereotypical red hair?
By CATHY HAYES, IrishCentral Staff Writer
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Could-Irelands-cloudy-weather-be-the-reason-for-the-stereotypical-red-hair-178077221.html

Sadly redheads also receive a great deal of abuse. The Centre for Equality Policy Research think tank recently claimed that redheads suffer more discrimination per head of population than ethnic minorities.

Having carried out an experiment they said, 'A job applicant with ginger hair is seven times more likely to be rejected than a dark-haired applicant, and eight times more likely than a fair-haired applicant.'

Barbara McNulty, a lecturer in psychology at the University of the Western Isles, said that red hair still gives out deep cultural signals.

'Women, for example, are wild and quick-tempered, while ginger-haired men are unattractive and geeky.'
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40% of Irish are Redhead carriers
The Red Hair Gene
http://www.myredhairgene.com/
The majority of redheads are concentrated along the edges of eastern and western Europe, particularly in Scotland and Ireland. It is estimated that around 4% of the European population are red headed, while as much as 13% of the Scottish and 10% of the Irish are red headed. In Ireland, an estimated 40% of the population are red hair carriers. In the United States, 2 percent of individuals have naturally red shades of hair, making US the single country with the largest population of redheads (~6 million).
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Hair Color in the British Isles
Beddoe: Great Britain General Survey
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-X3.htm
The pigmentation of the British has, in no large or significant series, been studied by means of standard charts. In regard to skin color, little is known from the statistical standpoint, except that it is characteristically fair,15 and apparently as light as that of the Irish in most cases,16 although in certain relatively brunet regions, such as Deyonshire, Cornwall, Wales, and parts of western Scotland, there are without doubt darker-skinned minorities. The Irish tendency to freckling is also common in Great Britain, especially among the Scotch, who without doubt equal the Irish in this respect.17 More characteristic of British skin than freckling, even, is its tendency to become red when constantly exposed to the air. This extreme vascularity [thin-skin apprearance], although without doubt partly climatic, must be racial to a certain extent, since it is accompanied by a physiological inability to tan.

Taking Great Britain as a whole, the hair color of its inhabitants is very similar to that of the Irish, except that the British have more light brown, and the Irish more dark brown, shades. In this comparison, England, including Wales, is nearly identical with Scotland. Both the English and the Scotch have as much red hair as the Irish, while the Welsh have more; both the Scotch and the Irish have somewhat higher increments of black hair than England with Wales; and if Wales is studied separately, England emerges as the lightest haired of the four major divisions of the British Isles, and Wales as the darkest.18

The regional distribution of hair color in Great Britain19 closely follows that of total pigmentation as shown on Map 8. In England, black hair ranges from nearly 0 to 10 per cent, except in Devonshire and Cornwall, where it reaches a maximum of 20 per cent in the region of Penzance. Along the eastern coast it is extremely rare, and the average for the country is probably between 4 per cent and 5 per cent. Dark brown hair accounts for 14 per cent to 43 per cent of the population in the different parts of England. In general, it runs below 30 per cent in the regions of intensive Saxon and Danish occupation - that is, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Yorkshire - while it averages above 30 per cent in the west, and has a mean of approximately 40 per cent in Cornwall. ... Among English blonds, golden hair is far commoner than the ashen variety, but ash-blondism is by no means absent, nor as rare as in Ireland.

In Wales, 10 per cent of the total have black hair, and only 8 per cent are fair in the English sense. Dark brown predominates over medium brown, while red, which averages 5 per cent, runs as high as 9 per cent in small localities. Beddoe finds as much as 86 to 89 per cent of black and dark brown hair in such places as Newquay [coast Cornwall] and Denbighshire Upland [northeast coast of Wales]. On the whole, Wales, in accordance with its mountainous character and its general preservation of ancient cultural traits, is a region of strong local variability, which manifests itself particularly in pigmentation.

In Scotland... Tocher finds that jet black hair is commoner in the western highlands than elsewhere, and is statistically correlated with the greatest survival of Gaelic speech. But since Gaelic was brought from Ireland in the Christian era, and the Goidelic Kelts of Ireland were not notably black haired, this brunet condition must be due to an earlier racial element. That black hair and Keltic speech both survive in Wales, furthermore, does not mean that the two were originally associated, for Kymric had heen spoken in Wales only a few hundred years before the Saxons came. The western lowland counties of Scotland, which include the ancient Kymric kingdom of Strathclyde, are no darker in hair color than the rest of Scotland.

The eastern Scottish coast, from Caithness to Berwick, shows little of this black hair, and in general the areas of both Pictish and Saxon concentration are quite deficient in it. This finding should dispel the idea that the Picts were a notably brunet people. Fair hair is commonest in the east, in both highlands and lowlands, and is especially prevalent in the very northeastern corner, and in the Orkneys and Shetlands, where much of the blood is Scandinavian.

In the cities of Scotland some important facts in regard to hair color have been uncovered. While Edinburgh and Aberdeen have relatively fair populations, and reflect the pigment character of the populations around them, Glasgow, which is not only the largest city in Scotland but also the second largest in the British Isles, is notable for a heavy concentration of dark brown hair, which seems distinctive not only of the city itself but also of the thickly settled manufacturing district which surrounds it. Tocher, who has made an exhaustive study of the city by sections, finds that while dark hair is commonest in the poorer districts and in the portions of the city which contain the largest ratio of foreign population, it cannot be entirely attributed to foreign blood, which is in the minority everywhere.
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Alan Trowel Hands: RedHair Minority Contributes to the Stereotype
http://eng.molgen.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=945&start=110
I think Beddoe cant be completely written off but his preconcieved ideas and his massive exaggeration of differences between east and west need noted. What can be overlooked is that fair skin is pretty well ubiqitious in the British Isles with only some variation. Light eyes are very very common in Ireland and western Scotland despite darker hair being common there. They are even fairly common in most of the west of England. It is pretty clear that many of the Celtic areas of the isles were high in blue eyes. In terms of hair colour you can come away thinking the island was divided into one half of very dark often Black haired people on the west and nordic blonde types on the east. In reality in terms of the majority of adults the difference (even is studies like Beddoes') is between more mid-light brown hair in the east and more mid-dark brown hair in the west. British blondes (even the more convincing ones) are usually women who have mid-light brown hair who have bleached or died it back to the colour of their childhood. He is greatly exagerating the differences. I have posted before that I think Wales was not some refuge for the Britons of England. I assume the pre-Norman population of Wales was largely descended from pre-Roman Welsh. Various surveys have indicated that real adult blonde hair is extremely rare in Britain and most of it comes out of a bottle. Myths tend to exagerate and people tend to notice the small element that wanders from the average. For example nearly 90% of Scots and Irish dont have red hair but because its elevated from a continental norm of a few percent to nearly 10% it is the thing people notice. I think it only takes colouring swings of 5-10% one way for wholescale stereotyping to commence. I have read hair colour breakdowns in Coon and other sources and the remarkable thing is how a slight swing of 10% or so leads to massive stereotyping and in reality the hair colours of all Europeans (except the very darkest and fairest extreme countries) is so similar. The French for instance tend to be stereotyped as dark but are in fact not very dissimilar from the British as a whole when it comes to hair colour - black hair is actually rare on average in France for example.
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Alan Trowel Hands: Irish were more Blond and Redhaired in the Past than they are now.
http://eng.molgen.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=945&start=130
Dark is dominant in terms of eyes and hair when light and dark mix so in general (short of a huge influx) the populations of the past probably had much higher levels of non-dominant/recessive genes which tend to get squeezed out. I have no doubt there was a lot more light hair and eyes in the past. This comes out in the both the manuscript depictions, the physical descriptions in legends and also (and probably more reliably) the nicknames of many of the chiefs like Ruad (red haired), Buidhe/Find (yellow/light haired) which are very very common in the genealogies of Irish clans even into the 17th century AD. Almost every native Irish person depicted in the few surviving drawings or paintings by outsiders prior to 1600 shows uniform blond hair. One description by an English source actually uses the term 'yellow hair like and Irishman' or something like that. There is reason to believe that the warrior class at least did have a lot of red an fair hair. Its hard to say what happend later. The Irish native upper class was chopped down and move or migrated to the continent. Its even noticeable in native Irish sources that black hair is derided as being a Fir Bolg thing. One way or another there is reason to believe that the upper classes in Gaelic Ireland had a really big red/blonde element and this has diminished since that class disappeared. Also note that Giraldus describes the Irish as being giants in sharp conrast to the animals which tended to be smaller than he was used to. This is confirmed in many studies including Hooton that the western Irish were large compared to the eastern Irish who had a much larger Norman and Anglo element. Nearly all of the external pre-plantations sources like De Cuellar comment on the Irish as being large bodied, ruddy etc. Red hair in Ireland is also distirbuted with the highest frequency being in the least Norman areas of the north and west. Hooton notes that the western Irish were significantly more light skinned and freckly than in the east too. So, in general the native Irish appear to have been taller, larger bodied and fairer skinned than the Norman areas. The Norman areas may have brought some lighter hair but they also had a lot less red hair than the natives.
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ireland provinces

Alan Trowel Hands: RedHair was more Common in Ireland in the Past. Western Ulster and Northern Connaught.
http://eng.molgen.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=945&start=140
Ulster as is well known has a division between protestants (mainly descendants of 17th century British settlers) and catholics who were mainly descenants of the pre-plantation population. Now Ulster, particularly mid-west Ulster and north Connaught was known as the Great Irishry because Normans, Anglo-Irish etc had little impact compared to other parts of Ireland. Vikings also made no permanent settlement in Ulster, founded no towns etc. There were very few normans or viking descendants in Ulster to combine in the generic Irish catholic population in Ulster, quite different from the way the Old Norman and Old English families in the rest of Ireland existed in significant numbers to join the new generic Irish catholic group during the reformation period. So, more than anywhere else in Ireland, the catholics of Ulster are the descendants of the original Irish or at least the biggest block of them. It is in this very area of western Ulster and northern Connaught that red hair is most common. Also note it is common among the catholics, Hooton specifically noted that red hair was relatively low among Protestants, the descendants of 17th century British settlers largely from SW Scotland, NW England and SW England. Even today, while both sides have a predominance of some shade of brown hair, red hair is seen as more typically catholic and blonde hair as most typically protestant. As I posted earlier its amazing how many of the last most famous Gaelic chiefs were red haired including Red Hugh O'Donnel and Eoghan Ruad O'Neill. It was clearly a trait among the warrior class in Ireland. The bottom line is Tacitus (no doubt exaggerating somewhat) noted the large bodied reddish haired type among the more remote tribes in Scotland and it seems that there was a very similar component in the native Irish population. This is not your classic blonde germanic stereotype but there was clearly a large, pasty, often rufous type in the pre-Roman populations of Scotland and Ireland. Boudica also seemed to fit this type. It must be part of the pan north-European autosomal heritage that goes way back before Celts or Germans.

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Brit-Am Intermediate Observation.

Scotland and Ireland have the highest incidences of redhair in the world. Scotland with 13% has a higher incidence than Ireland with 10%. The populations of both Scotland and Ireland have about 40% genetic potential for redhair though Ireland may have more (ca. 45%?). In Ireland redhair was more common in the west and amongst the warrior classes. The proportion of redhair in Ireland has diminished due to differential rates of emigration as we shall show. It would also seem that in Ireland there exists greater mitigating factors against the open expression of the redhair gene. This may be due to climate or to the rest of the population (with whom redheads intermarry) being less genetically amenable to a rufous appearance than that of Scotland. The impression is that in Ireland a slightly higher percentage may have natural tints or hues of red whereas in Scotland the reddish color comes out in greater strength.

cf. Red Hair Amongst the Jews Before World War 2

Arkadius Elkind in "Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference, 1880-1940" edited by Mitchell B. Hart

The majority of writers find from 1.8 percent (Spanish) to 4.3 percent (Galician and Ukrainian) redheaded individuals among the Jews; according to our observations there are to be found up to 2.66 redheaded individuals among the Jews of Poland. The average percentage of redheaded individuals among the total number of Jews according to Table I is 3.3. per cent.

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Red Hair in Norway Traced to Neil of Ireland?

Eupedia Source: http://www.eupedia.com/genetics/origins_of_red_hair.shtml

Southwest Norway may well be the clue to the origin of red hair. It has been discovered recently, thanks to genetic genealogy, that the higher incidence of both dark hair and red hair (as opposed to blond) in southwest Norway coincided with a higher percentage of the paternal lineage known as haplogroup R1b-L21, including its subclade R1b-M222, typical of northwestern Ireland and Scotland (the so-called lineage of Niall of the Nine Hostages).

It is now almost certain that native Irish and Scottish Celts were taken (probably as slaves) to southwest Norway by the Vikings, and that they increased the frequency of red hair there.