[Canticle_of_Deborah]

It is estimated that at least 10 percent of Scots have red hair and a further 40 percent carry the gene responsible, which could account for their once fearsome reputation as fighters.

Grrrrrr!

The article still doesn't explain the Italian redheads.

[beaver fever]

Italian redheads are decendants of the Etruscans who are believed to be Sythian nomads who colonized Tuscany from the North, probably Hungary or the Russian Steppes.

[Pyro7480]

Debbie,

You're a redhead!? No wonder I like you. ;-) I have Scottish and Irish ancestors, and though I'm half Filipino, I have red highlights. One woman who cut my hair asked if I had dyed my hair. I said, "Nope, 100% natural."

I have two close friends of mine who are redheads. One, who I had a crush on for the longest time, recently got married (she's the friend I visited in England back in September). The other is an art history graduate student up in Boston. She's a hardcore leftist, but somehow, we get along. I just wrote her an e-mail this morning, joking with her about my attraction towards redheads, that she is well aware of. I had stumbled upon a rerun of the X-Files on Sci-fi earlier this morning. I said to her that watching Gillian Anderson and the X-Files during my early teenage years must be partially to blame for my attraction. ;-)