Well I don't like people being misinformed on such an issue. It’s only 100% irrelevant because you can’t or couldn’t be bothered disproving it. The phrase “Black Irish” is an American one, and as an Irish person I find its use, when defining the origins of the Irish, odd to say the least.
Myth of the Black Irish -
http://www.darkfiber.com/blackirish/
>>”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.”
>>“They can be dark and almost Latin looking like Colin Farrell or Moira Kelly”
Colin Farrell is from Dublin on the East coast of Ireland – one of the most non-indigenous parts of the whole island, inhabited by many of non-Gaelic extraction. Moira Kelly does not look almost Latin –
>>“Or blonde and almost Scandinavian looking like Peter O'Toole or Grace Kelly.”
Grace Kelly’s parents were from Mayo on the west coast of Ireland (she was a natural brunette as the picture above shows), Peter O’Toole was born in Galway. Both counties are in Connacht and both have Gaelic surnames. To reiterate, 99% of Connacht’s inhabitants with Gaelic surnames are R1B. Therefore both are of Stone Age European extraction. They look Irish. Sweden is about 20% R1B.
Source: Y-Chromosome Variation and Irish Origin -
http://www2.smumn.edu/uasal/DNAWWW/pdfs/Yirish.pdf
“When the DNA samples from Rush (Co. Dublin) were analysed it seemed there was virtually no genetic contribution from Norway here either.”
Source: BBC Viking Survey -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/bloodofthevikings/genetics_results_07.shtml
Wallace T. also remarked (while failing to provide a single solitary source to back up his notions) -
"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."
And you stated –
“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. True, they get the balck hair from the Spanish invaders.”
These statements are completely false, and while my first post attempted to prove this conclusively, I obviously haven't gone far enough.
So, first of all, who are/were the Celts? The word Celt originates with the Greek word for Barbarian, and was applied by them to the people who lived in central Europe. Traditionally, it was believed that Ireland was invaded in 300BC or so, by people from central Europe (Celts), replacing the bulk of the native population and thereby introducing Indo-European culture to the island. This is no longer believed by anthropologists and there are a few reasons why. During the Ice Age, the Stone Age people of Europe migrated to Iberia. Anthropologists can identify this population and their descendants because they and only they belong to the genetic group Haplogroup R1B. After the Ice Age, this population began moving north along the Atlantic coastline, eventually arriving in Ireland 10,000 years ago. R1B is the largest haplogroup in Europe and most western European men carry this marker on their Y-chromosome. People in Western Ireland of Gaelic extraction are over 95% R1B and Ireland as a whole is 80% R1B. R1B is the largest haplogroup in most parts of Europe, including central Europe, but the key point is that Haplogroup I is also found there in large percentages. Therefore if the Irish population was replaced by Celts, then the Irish would have much higher percentages of Haplogroup I among their population. Ireland is about 15% Haplogroup I, thanks primarily to the arrival of Norman, Norse, English, and Huguenot, and this haplogoup is found in the areas of Ireland where these people settled.
But Gaelic is a Celtic language? Again, this was the traditional belief supported primarily by the fact that Gaelic (and the Britannic languages of Cornish, Welsh and Breton) have an Indo-European vocabulary. But the fact is, the structure of so called Celtic languages is synonymous with that of the Basque language. The Basque language was traditional viewed as the only surviving Stone Age language in Europe – and Basques are 90% R1B. These similarities include the fact that the Verb appears at the start of a sentence in Irish (or Welsh etc). Also, when a word in Gaelic incurs a grammatical change, this change can affect the start of the word. For example, “cara” (friend) becomes “mo chairde” (my friends), with the “ch” having a very different sound to “c”. This does not happen in Indo-European languages. Gaelic also incurs the absence of a present participle and the use instead of a verbal noun. There are other examples also. So how did all these Indo-European words arrive in Gaelic? Well, the same way as the word “e-mail”, “hover”, and “gerrymander” arrived in England and it didn’t require an America invasion, did it? Gaelic and British culture are ancient to the islands of Britain and Ireland, going back at least 10,000 years, and are therefore Stone Age European civilizations. Newgrange, the oldest building in European, was built in Ireland circa 3500 BC. This is 3000 years before the Celts were said to have arrived in Ireland, yet Newgrange has examples of art that most people would think of as being Celtic.
What about the Picts? Well, the Picts also belonged exclusively to R1B and are therefore of European Stone Age extraction. The language they spoke is now believed to have had more in common with the language spoken by the Britons, than Gaelic did. This has been established by examining place names in northern Scotland. Old-Gaelic did not contain the letter “p”, and words in Welsh containing a “p” are generally spelt and pronounced with a “c” in Gaelic. Example – “Cean” is the Gaelic for head, while it is “Pen” is Welsh. This “p” sound is very common in Welsh, and was also common in place names of Pictish extraction. The same also applies for the letters “f” and “g” if I remember correctly. To summarize, the British, Gaelic, and Picttish civilizations are the three ancient civilizations of Britain and Ireland, and modern genetics fully supports this statement.
What about the English? Anglo-Saxon right? Well a haplogroup survey of East Anglia found them to be roughly 55% R1B, and 30% I. Germany on the other hand is about 40% R1B, 20% I and 35% R1a (other haplogroups were also found in both areas). So you can make your own judgements regarding how Germanic the English are based on those figures.
Source: Y-chromosomal diversity in Europe is clinal and influenced primarily by geography, rather than by language.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11078479&dopt=Abstract
So this brings us to the "residents of Asia Minor and other Mediterranean countries”. R1B is not found with any degree of significance among the inhabitants of Asia Minor. Therefore if they “contributed another short, dark type” to Ireland “via trade routes to Cornwall”, then how come the genes common to the people of Asia Minor are not found in Ireland or Cornwall? The haplogroups found in the Mediterranean today are the same as those found in northern Europe but with the addition of haplogroups introduced from North Africa and the Middle East – via the Moors for example. Again, why are these genes not showing up in Ireland? The fact is, the "residents of Asia Minor and other Mediterranean countries” did not contribute to the Irish genetic makeup in any kind of non-trivial fashion.
“Turns out the real Irish are the Black Irish”
OK, so what you’re saying, I think, is that the Stone Age inhabitants of Ireland were the Black Irish. I am from Co. Galway in the West of Ireland, and all my grandparents have Gaelic surnames and are from my general locality, therefore genetically I am of Stone Age European extraction. So you’re referring to me and my extended family as “Black Irish” if I understand all this correctly. So I am “Dark featured, but still rather pale skin and rather short”? That’s strange because I have brownish red hair, I'm 6'1", and I have blue-green eyes. My sister and brother both have red hair, and my mother and father are brunettes like me.
What do you mean by “rather pale”? The use of the word “rather” suggests that there is a population somewhere else in Europe with paler skin than that found in Western Ireland. Where exactly?
>>”And rather short?”
“Indeed it was observed that, before the Famine the Irish were the tallest, strongest and "most comely" of the people of Europe.”
Source: http://www.irishheritage.net/prize.html
“The Irish people were the tallest, healthiest, most fertile people in Europe.”
Source: http://www.rootsweb.com/~irish/meetings/03may-1.htm
“in 1850 Americans were the tallest people in the world, with American men averaging 5'6". Almost 150 years later, American men now average 5'8", but we have fallen in the standings and are now only the third tallest people in the world. In first place are the Dutch. Back in 1850 they averaged only 5'4" -- the shortest men in Europe -- but today they are a towering 5'10".”
Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n2_v19/ai_20159533
>>“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.”
I’ve lived in the west and the east of Ireland, and while I’d definitely agree that there are more blondes in eastern Ireland, I would not say there are more black haired people in the West. The dominant hair colour in the west of Ireland is, as I have said already, chestnut coloured just like McGregor in the previous post above.