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black irish has an entirely different connotation than the one stated here ---am sure one can find the history of the black irish online--am irish by association
Auntieannie68 I know the history of what Black Irish is online. I've only read about it on the internet. I've never heard it used by Irish people to describe Irish with darker colouring.
If anyone looks at the history of Black Irish and Black Dutch it traces back to the United States.
There's also the classic Irish coloring of blue eyes "put in with a sooty finger" - i.e., with long dark eyelashes. Usually such people have black hair, as did my grandmother, whose grandfather was from County Derry. I've heard people with this coloring referred to as "black Irish".
I may have replied before but, I have a niece by marriage with black hair, fair to creamy white coloring, and startling blue eyes with the sooty lashes. I have also known others over the years with the same coloring. I had always understood that was "black Irish". I never considered where it came from, it just was.....<s>
After the Spanish Armada was defeated by Elizabeth I, the crippled ships that weren't sunk
retreated around Ireland and did, in fact, have many that shipwrecked and never made it back
to Spain. They interbred with the Irish inhabitants and many of the mixed traits are evidenced
in the skin tones and complexion that are witnessed today and in the past.
This is what was told to me by my brown haired/brown eyed father...I am blue eyed blonde(mother's side) 100% Irish!
I am British, with an Irish father from Belfast (orangeman) who had black curly hair and sapphire blue eyes. While he had naturally pale skin, he could tan well.
I remember a British documentary years ago that said Black Irish were the people taken to Ireland from Scotland and England by William of Orange. And that "Black" simply meant they had darker hair and eyes, than the residents of Ireland at that time. Here is a piece from Wiki about this:
"In the early seventeenth century the English, partly in response to an uprising based in Ulster, settled large numbers of English and Scottish Protestants in the province, a process known as the Plantation of Ulster.[3] This changed Ulster from the most Catholic and Gaelic of the four Irish provinces[4] to the most Protestant and British." History of the Orange Institution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I've read that the terms Black Dutch or Black Irish are nebulous in definitions. I'm thinking it is because both contain an amount of African British or African American. In America the terms likely mean some Native American and African American and Freedmen, which is both Native American and African Americans who were slaves, but, became free.
Actually the Black Irish term does not necessarily have any connection to African blood since it is a term originating in Europe from as early as the 16th century.
My sister-in-law was born with glorious red hair and she has russet eyes and very pale, but, freckled skin. She is Jewish from Lithuania. Her father has red hair, her mother's hair is black. Both parents have brown eyes. They all look like they could be from Ireland.
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