[dangus]

:^D

Only thing is the REAL Irish aren't red-headed and freckled. Ireland gets that from the viking invaders. Turns out the real Irish are the Black Irish: Dark featured, but still rather pale skin and rather short.

[It's me]

True, they get the balck hair from the Spanish invaders.

[Wallace T.]

The "Black Irish" are those who, like the Welsh, have a great deal of genetic resemblance to the Basques of northern Spain and extreme southwest France. It is possible that Phoenicians and residents of Asia Minor and other Mediterranean countries contributed another short, dark type via trade routes to Cornwall and other parts of the British Isles where tin, and to some extent, silver and gold were found. They inhabited Ireland and Britain before 500 BC and did not speak an Indo-European language like the Gaelic that was brought to Ireland from Galicia in Spain or the Low Countries. Generally speaking, western Ireland, less affected by fairer Celtic, Viking, and Anglo-Norman invaders, tends to have a higher concentration of "Black Irish" than eastern Ireland.

The "Black Irish" are sometimes attributed to shipwrecked Spanish invaders following the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588. However, it appears that most of the survivors were imprisoned or killed if they landed on Irish shores. Additionally, many Spanish sailors were Galicians, and thus did not fit the swarthy stereotype of Spaniards. In fact, many of them would have resembled the fairer Celtic Irish. Furthermore, the general absence of Spanish surnames would indicate that there was little effect from the shipwrecked maritimer. Rather, the "Black Irish" reflect a much older population.

The Celtic invaders of the British Isles were generally fair haired and light eyed, and, while they brought their language and culture to Ireland, the Celts did not exterminate the inhabitants. Irish mythology generally pictures the heroes as fair complected, and in all likelihood, the aristocracy had that appearance. The Vikings and the Anglo-Normans brought into Ireland a large number of Scandinavian, English, northern French, and Flemish genes well before the Reformation. Names thought of as "typically" Irish like Doyle, Burke, and Clarke reflect Scandinavian, Norman French, and English origins.

The "real" Irish are a mixture of pre-Celtic, Celtic, and Germanic origins, as indeed are their British neighbors and, to some extent, the inhabitants of the Low Countries. They can be dark and almost Latin looking like Colin Farrell or Moira Kelly, redheads (Neanderthals?) like James Cagney or Maureen O'Hara, or blonde and almost Scandinavian looking like Peter O'Toole or Grace Kelly.

[muawiyah]

All true enough, 'ceptin' the Irish who moved to Wales long about the 9th through the 12th centuries have the highest incidence of red-hair of any population in the world ~ about 40%!

The darker color you refer to is NOT the original color of the general Irish population ~ rather, it's just a process of recessive genes for those characteristics becoming more widespread. That way there's simply more opportunity for two recessives to come together and give you the dark ones.

The original Scanderhoovian people were the Sa'ami, and they are in all essential respects the same as the ancient Sumerians, possibly the Dravidians, and also the foundational population in the part of China were Shang Dynasty glyphs were developed. When in Sumer, where they invented writing, they called themselves the "black headed people".

Those red-haired fellows are the descendants of Irish slaves so prized by the Vikings. I gather there was something of a shortage of women in that society, so they had to bring home girls from wherever they could be found.

[blam]

"Turns out the real Irish are the Black Irish: Dark featured, but still rather pale skin and rather short."

Okay, I'll buy that. Can you tell me where the real Irish come from then? Does Fomorian ring a bell?

[Marysecretary]

AHAH! That fits my theory to a T. Those Viking raiders. Good thing they were good looking!

[stands2reason]

So Celtics are dark-haired?