Coming up Redhead

Blogspot has this nifty overview feature called Traffic Sources so I can see some of the Google search keyword parameters that lead people to my posts. (Other than my biggest pageview fan, vampirestat.com—a spamspider, or a web crawler domain.)

Nearly all my traffic sources are redheaded questions. OK, I get that. THE VIKING IRISH REDHEAD GENE (at 27,127+ page views out of a total of 95,005 page views) is, by far, my most popular blog post. It accounts for 1/3 of all my blog traffic. (But, why this rabid fascination with redheads? Especially Vikings and redheads—she asks.)

By comparison, a spin-off redhead post, Red-headed step-children ranking number 5 on my top 5 blog posts, at 952 page views, doesn't even come close. Not even remotely. I even changed the filters on my Hot Blogs list. So THE VIKING IRISH REDHEAD GENE post is somehow Google-charmed.

So I created a spin-off post to see what would happen:
REDHEADS IN THE GRECO-ROMAN REALM

Would it too leap off the charts? At 86 page views, that would be nada. To level the playing field, I even used the exact same searchword list (like i did with this post): 

Celts, ginger, Irish redheads, red hair, red hair gene, redheaded stepchildren, redheads, Scottish redheads, Viking redheads

I used to think that traffic popularity had to do with total back-links within a blog post. So I began to add links right, left and center—to see if it made any difference. Nope. Let's just see of this post suddenly gets a lot of hits. I changed the title to Coming up Redhead.

However, in my all time Top Ten Pageviews by Countries list, I have 48,663 US readers ('splains that lack of historical acumen), my Number 9 ain't even close at 6023 UK readers, and in Ireland, the land of redheads, only 747 readers. No Scandinavian countries even made the Top Ten list. 

So, I guess that answers my question: who are my readers. So if I may extrapolate, Americans, in love with a skewed post-neoclassical notion of repatriation of Vikings as a romantic ideal, assume that raping Irish women lead to red hair? 

Not that any of this is even remotely blogworthy, but….

But when I saw this latest search question in my traffic sources, I nearly had butt-apoplexy:

are celts descended from vikings? 

(Warning: dangerous segues ahead.)

AGH! Talk about acute historical cluelessness. Really?

FWIW: List of outside traffic source search words (note: the largest entry is Vikings!):

red hair gene
redhead origin
"types of red hair"
redheads decent
are red haired people warriors
worrior model red hair
redhead origin red hair gene
where do red heads trace back to
what countries is it good to be a redhead
ancestory of natural strawberry blond fair skinned womanhighest redheads per country
why do some redheads have afros?
are redheads descended from africans
do the spanish like the irish red hair

red hair gene portuguese
german red head experiment
ancient history of redheads

origin of fair hair freckles blue eyes
what is the dominant eye color of red heads

algernon redhead wife willing
do men lime redheads

irish redheads
ireland women redheads
redhead irishman
redheaded celtic male
the irish vs the scots genes
why is it thought that red hair is irish?
are irish people known for red hair
where did the irish get their red hair
red heads in ireland when did they come about?
do all redheads have irish
does red hair mean your irish
are all gingers of irish descent

irish red hair gene discovered

irish genes
irish travellers genes
red hair regressive gene irish traveller
samhain redheads
ginger hairy scottsmen

vikings genes irish scotish
irish red hair vikings

irish genes red hair vikings ireland
redheaded irish people related to vicking chieftans
are blue eyed irish descended from vikings

when did blond hair ireland

are there redheads in russia

redheads in ukraine

are redheads nordic
red hair norse trait
redheads in norse mythology
does red hair come from scandinavia
are redheads from norwegian dicent
did the vikings bring red hair in ireland and scotland

are redheads from ireland really vikings
red heads in iceland
redhaired dane

redheads in sweden
pictures of swedish redheads

between skandinavia and eastern europe where are green eyes & red hair more prevelant
can scandinavians have redhair
vikings genes irish scotish
irish red hair vikings
viking redhead
vikings red hair
red hair green eyes vikings
are blue eyed irish descended from vikings is it true that red headed people desended from vickings
were there dark headed vikings

scandinavian genetic traits

viking bloodtype
norse blood type
is a+ blood from the vikings?
? how dna can tell you have viking blood
vikings steal irish women

scandinavian rape irish
redheads of viking rape
irish genes red hair vikings ireland

are celts descended from vikings

are celts descended from vikings? What?
nononononononooooooooo! 

And it's killing me to leave the spelling errors stet.

Are Celts descended from Vikings? Let's see. A timeline would help, dude.

The Late Neolithic Copper Age Bell Beaker culture (ca. 2800 – 1800 BC), is probably the ancestor of the Celts. They had distinctive pottery drinking vessels and made barley beer. The Bell Beaker culture was a linguistic ancestor of Proto-Celtic. Also linguistically associated was the Pre-Hallstatt  Urnfield Culture in central Europe, as an ancestral culture of Celtic culture.

Iberian Bell Beaker culture had strong ties with Ireland—which hosted an archaic form of  Bell Beaker culture. Irish copper from Kerry had a specific lead isotope—was found in N. & C. Europe from ca. 2300 to 1700 BC. Central European Únětice Culture which predated the Celtic Hallstatt culture, also had strong ties with Britain and Ireland during the formation of Bronze Age Europe. (Irish gold lunulae, and later La Tène gold torcs).

Celts date back to at least 1200 BC (if not earlier), during  the Late Bronze Age, (Hallstatt culture was in full swing by 800-450 BC), followed by the La Tène culture (450 BC) of antiquity— and the Vikings first landed in Great Britain ca. 789 AD, but didn't stick around.

When did the Celts arrive in Ireland? There were several migrations. The Late Bronze Age, or earlier—mid 2nd millennium BC.

The arrival in Britain of cultural traits identified as Celtic is usually taken to correspond to Hallstatt influence and the appearance of chariot burials in what is now England from about the 6th century BC. Genetic studies regarding Y-DNA Haplogroup I-M284 have concluded that there was Late Iron Age migration of Celtic La Tène people to Britain and then onto north-east Ireland. —Wiki

The first recorded Viking raid in Irish history occurred in 795 AD when Vikings from Norway looted the island. —Wiki

The Vikings (from Old Norse víkingr) were seafaring north Germanic people who raided, traded, explored, and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia, and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries AD. —Wiki

The Viking Age is the period from 793 AD to 1066 AD in European History, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, following the Germanic Iron Age  In England, the Viking Age began officially on 8 June 793 when Vikings attacked the abbey on Lindisfarne. The Vikings who invaded western and eastern Europe were chiefly pagans from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They also settled in the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Iceland, Scotland (Caithness, the Hebrides and the Northern Isles), Greenland, and Canada. It is unknown what triggered the Norse expansion and conquests. This era coincided with the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300) and stopped with the start of the Little Ice Age (about 1250–1850) —Wiki

Maybe the person who wrote that query was dyslexic or didn't know the difference between BC and AD.

The only way it could remotely work is if you switched the query around:
are Vikings descended from Celts? And even then it would be problematic, unless you were referring to the Dublin Norse who took Irish (and Scottish) wives. Their children and grandchildren (who settled Iceland and the Faroes) would be Viking Celts. Agh! So their descendants were Vikings descended from one branch of Celts.

But that wasn't the question, was it?

Can I fish-slap someone now? What about a fish dance? With a redheaded salmon? Huh? Huh? Can I? Can I? Please, pretty please with a redhead on top? (No, not that way! Ya scurvy-ridden....)

This moment was probably brought to you by Monthy Python. Or not.

It is, however, Friday the Thirteenth.

Algernon?

What's Algernon doing in this list anyway? FWIW, even a detailed Google search didn't shed light on that one. (Sigh.)

Heh. This list ought to keep them occupied.

Red-headed step-children

My Dear K,

Redheadedism is not specifically a Scottish trait, we Irish have more than our fair share of redheads and they're not treated any less fair than anyone else in our family...that's why I puzzled over your comment: Red-headed step-children. If anything, the fair-skinned redheads in our family are treated extra-special and allowed more freedom (temper tantrums, etc).

I know that in other cultures, to be a redhead is considered a negative sign or bad luck—but not in Celtic cultures. There's even a specific word in Irish for redhead that's different from ordinary red, and it means magic red as in the red-eared white cattle of the Otherworld. Derg and ruadh. (new blood, old blood). I thought maybe you'd heard the saying somewhere specific. But, I gather that you're using it as metaphor — not folklore. Not something your grandfather told you.

I studied folklore with Alan Dundes at UC Berkekey and have collected a fair bit of it for the archives. If you have specific folklore, it's important to record it—when you first heard it, under what circumstances, Who (age, occupation, place collected) why what when where how come—and an analysis of context. If you want more information on the process I'd be happy to post it.

We should be collecting our own stories of immigration and survival, make them available. Think of it, what's the journey we each took to arrive at this place, this time? Yes! Storyteller Gay Ducey told me that we're hard wired for stories and she's right. We need the stories.

Ahem, I could equally sugges that you do protest too much yourself... but I also glean from your offline email that you're carrying a whole lotta painful baggage too and it's probably hard to sort the emotional response from the oral tradition or historical accounts.

(Yeah yeah, I know the adage: history is written in the eyes of the oppressors. Except there are plenty of other ways to get the news...by artifacts, linguistics and by oral tradition. So you read the lines and your ears and somewhere between the two, are the multicolored facets of truth.

Maybe you never meant to flame-mail me or the group but it sure came across that way, hence the flurry of detailed emails on my part...I was trying to cover the angles and keep a neutral historical stance. Not easy when you were playing fast and loose with facts. Unfortunately arrogance combined with a lack of knowledge is not a useful virtue.

I too grew up in the oral tradition, but I actually was raised (24/7) by my Bantry Irish grandmother so I got a lot of information than I bargained for. Probably why I became a poet was to give a home to all the stories.

Later, I studied Celtic history on my own; only recently did I take formal classes at UCB and SFSU. So I do know both sides of the "historicity" argument. That's why I took the time to write to you to begin with. (Bad, I know to end with a preposition! But it's the Irish syntax coming through.)

And in my family, the English Protestant Crown, especially Cromwell was the antiChrist. (For good reason too, if you knew your history at all...) I had a redheaded Scottish granduncle Michael Ward whose family were originally Donegal Irish (he was a childhood playmate to the Royal Family at Balmoral) and I've got loads o Scottish-American cousins. (The redheads are Irish.)

Our family ceilis in the basement of our old Victorian in SF included Scottish, Irish and Jewish families. Sure politics were discussed. I remember bagpipes skirling, jars of whiskey slammed down on the tables during heated discussions but racial intolerance was never allowed.

I also live with a Scotsman so I know a fair amount of Scottish history and current cultural traditions from that oral tradition too... His response to the gist of your emails was "it's pointless conversing with people like her. I grew up with them. They won't change."

To teach tolerance (and compassion) remains forefront in my book. My grandmother taught me to not harbor grudge against the English or Scots for what their governments did as they were but vessels of the Crown. She did not want me to carry the seeds of bigotry within me...to the next generation. Dear K, do not carry the feud forth.

I don't know how my family managed to survive the Famine but they did survive without having to resort to becoming Protestant in the process... Your slamming Irish Catholics is a bit of a sore spot.

We've really had our fill of it. Did you know some Irish Catholics were fed in Quaker and Protestant soup kitchens IF they gave up their religion? Others chose to eat grass instead and starved to death with green-rimmed mouths. Remember that when you "wear the plaid" and drink green beer to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, a Catholic holiday.

Remember the 2 million Irish who starved to death or were lost on the slave coffin ships destined for Barbados and beyond—all because of the faith they were born into. Those who survived the voyage were sold as slaves to breed more slaves because they were considered sub-human by the Crown. New World Order. It's a pity you chose an anti-Catholic stance in your emails. It reminds me of the xenophobic Scots-American narrowmindedness that led to the foundation of the KKK.

Take a look at how the Irish were treated and depicted by the English and the Americans in the 1860s, by contrast, the Scots fared a whole lot better at the hands of the Anglos. They were not routinely called "white niggers" and "human monkeys" by the British and American press.

I have a blog I recently wrote on the subject after Arby's released the Irish dancing chimps ad, which was, at best, culturally insensitive. Shall I post the link?

My grandmother was spat upon and ridiculed for her ancestry, she was refused a seat on a trollycar and there she was, 9 months pregnant while seated passengers hurled racial slurs against the Irish Catholics breeding like cats. She cried. Her water broke, her firstborn arrived to a world of racial animosity.

As to the Highlanders, they were often Catholic as Protestantism was considered a Lowland religion... Do you know anything about when they became Protestant (I'm assuming this here because of your emails...) And how did they survive the Clearances? Did they emigrate when sheep became more valuable than a human life?

Red-headed step-children aside, I'm puzzled by the comment against the Irish as betrayers of the Scots? I'm fairly conversant with Celtic history and I'd love to know what it's referring to.

Was there really that much dislike for the Irish in your family? Wow. My flabber is gasted. Where did that angst come from and why? What happened in your family that caused such inter-racial animosity? That's how it sounded from your emails.

If so, then I gotta ask, so why are you part of the Irish in CA group? Maybe your interests might be better served with a Scottish group? Although I'm positively certain that you'd get just as much flack there as here for your attitudes.

Or stick around! Another idea would be to collect your own folklore from yourself and then trace the origins of the root myths we carry within that make us all so unique.

I would add that racism and religious intolerance are a result of an incomplete education— enough ammo to fight the "other" but no clear understanding of the larger facts and context. How gangs start... Remember "Birth of a Nation"?

Where does that intolerance come from? Each arriving immigrant group, subjugated by neo-colonialism at home, practices racial hatred on the next arriving group what was practiced upon them... The Scots-Irish intolerance upon the Irish, the Irish intolerance upon the Blacks, African Americans upon the Hispanic, and so on. The model is at hand.

Interestingly, I was once interviewed for a poetry position at UC Berkeley for the African American Studies Dept. (of all things) and one of the questions I was asked, how I would design a course around (Irish) neo-colonialism in the Caribbean. I had to talk fast from the hip. Didn't get the job but it sparked my interest in the stories of "lost" multicultural nations, the Irish-Black families of the Barbados, Monseurat, Trinidad—Irish-Cherokee, Seminole, even Creole-Acadian nations, etc. More than one Trail of Tears.

One time in the '70s, an African American family called us from New Orleans, saying they were related. We said no, regretfully, thinking both sides of out family had only just arrived in 1904 and 1912. Turns out, after the Famine, some of the Reilly family did make it to the Big Easy and to Puerto Rico.

We only just found out a couple of years ago when my uncle went to Puerto Rico and saw a portrait of the governor, his namesake, most likely a great-great granduncle. And now we're sorry we didn't have the foresight to take that New Orleans family's phone number way back when.

I am no closer to understanding what is meant by the phrase: redheaded stepchildren, other than it's clearly a racial slur, meant to hurt, and as such, I can only hope that you'll someday have the ability to step back and see the larger picture—and see the false syllogism of your argument.


Note Bene: this was an email I wrote in rebuttal to a series of rather bigoted flame-mails posted by a young American woman of Scottish ancestry in our Irish in California Yahoo group. The exchanges had me going back and reverifying history to the point that I had material for several blogworthy posts. I did not post her emails as they were rather awful. I tried hard not to flame her, but tried to reach her via fairly neutral language. To no avail. So some good work came out of it. I tried to be gentle, and educational, but she'd have none of it. She was pretty attached to her bigotry.