Red hair, Celtic heritage and medical stereotyping I: Men

By Gordon Bates, Historian in Residence, Royal College of Psychiatrists and Janette Leaf, Honorary Research Fellow, Birkbeck College, University of London

Red hair and temperament

In the popular imagination, red hair in both sexes is linked to a hot temper, but not all stereotypes associated with this hair colour cross the gender divide. Because of this split, we’re concentrating on men in this blog and will follow-up with a second blog where we look at women. Female redheads are supposed to possess heightened sexuality and a mesmerising allure, whereas redheaded men have a much tougher time of it and are no longer welcome as sperm donors on certain programmes. For centuries, the men have been cast as warriors, clowns, or worse, betrayers. This blog looks at how these views gain the gloss of science in the medical literature.In Britain and the US, red hair frequently acts as a shorthand for Celtic heritage and it is true that this unusual colouring is more common in Scotland and Ireland. The prevalence of red hair is roughly 2% worldwide but 6% in these countries. What it means for redheads is that they are a visible minority group subjected to all sorts of assumptions – almost overwhelmingly negative – and that can play havoc with their mental health.

The expression of an excess of the pigment pheomelanin in the hair follicles results in red hair colouring. This is usually the result of a mutation in the M1CR gene. The M1CR gene confers an evolutionary advantage in those areas closer to the poles. People with the gene require less light exposure to synthesise Vitamin D. Modern genetic analysis allows us to track the appearance of these genes over time and place. It seems likely that it was the Vikings who originally brought this genetic fingerprint with them to the UK. Some of the Viking raiders from Denmark and Sweden settled in the British Isles carrying their stories as well as their hair colour. In the Flóamanna sagas set around the ninth century A.D., the Viking god Thor was a fearsome red-headed warrior but prone to impulsive mistakes due to his temper.

Images: Arthur Rackham, Donner calls upon the Storm Clouds in Richard Wagner, (translated by Margaret Amour) (1910). The Rhinegold and the Valkyrie. London: William Heinemann, New York: Doubleday, 70 [out of copyright]; The 'Leprachaun' is a Royalty free Getty image; Woodcut of "Grimaldi and Son" printed by John Arliss of Gutter Lane

The Hibernians (Scots) and the Vikings both had reputations as ferocious fighters but the early negative prejudices against red hair start to appear from Greco-Roman accounts onwards where it was pretty much tantamount to barbarian: brave, but wild and uncivilised. In Greek comedies, Thracian slaves wore red wigs and were invariably made figures of ridicule. It’s from them that we get the curly red wigs of the circus clowns and Ronald McDonald. In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Rosalind describes Orlando’s red hair as the ‘dissembling colour’, a physical trait that was closely linked to treachery. The figure of a ‘red-headed step-child’ is often used as an insult to denote someone particularly deserving of scorn or pity, as in the North American expression ‘I’m going to beat you like a red-headed step child.’¹

19^th century Celtic stereotypes and psychiatry

Following the publication of Ernest Renan's La Poésie des Races Celtiques (1854)², it was broadly argued that the Celt (now broadly conflated with the red head) was poetic, light-hearted and imaginative, highly emotional, playful, passionate, and sentimental. These pseudo-racial stereotypes wax and wane over time and also included a reputation for supernatural sensitivity and closer links to the ‘fairy folk’. It is no accident that Leprechauns are usually depicted with red hair. This became highly relevant in the mid-nineteenth century when Spiritualist interests flourished and the occult revival led to more positive associations. These links could be advantageous to women and will be explored in the next blog.

Contemporary physicians were not immune from this kind of stereotyping which is often unconscious. Their views can be discerned easily in psychiatric journals and text books of the era. In an 1894 article for the Journal of Mental Science, Dr Thomas Draper stated: ‘the quick witted, passionate, versatile and vivacious Celt has, for those qualities which made him so charming, too often has to pay the price of instability.’³ The Bristol physician J. Mitchell Clarke also claimed, without evidence, that ‘In Britain hysteria seems to be more rife in the “Celtic” part of the population.’⁴ It is more likely that the Irish men were over-represented in British asylums as a result of the mass migrations triggered by the Irish Great Famine.

Psychiatry and General Practice are the medical specialties which depend upon and lie closest to the prevailing socio-cultural environment with its subconscious biases and overt victims. As a modern-day psychiatrist, it is much easier to spot and call out the misguided medical prejudices of the long nineteenth century, though they still persist for other racial and non-racial characteristics. The recent College exhibition 'We Are Not Alone' – Legacies of Eugenics showed this persistence. Though thoroughly discredited, the exhibition demonstrated the pervasiveness of the idea of preventing the breeding of those with undesirable characteristics to genetically manipulate the nation to enhance desired characteristics. The importance of eugenics within Nazi ideology is well known but it remained a significant part of British medical, academic and political thought at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Even though psychiatry no longer hangs onto the same spurious generalisations of heredity, redheads remain subject to bullying, physical abuse and potential psychological trauma. Perhaps knowing the history of the archetypal figures and shameful stereotypes can help professionals to guard against the mistakes of the past and be alert to the potential pain of the present.

References

1. World Wide Words: Red-headed stepchild
2. Renan, Ernest. “La poésie des races celtiques.” Revue des Deux Mondes 24 (5): 473–506. (1854) (Reprinted in Ernest Renan. 1928. Essais de morale et de critique, 375–456. Paris: Calmann-Lévy).
3. Drapes, Thomas. On the Alleged Increase of Insanity in Ireland. Journal of Mental Science. 1894; 40 (171): 519-548.
4. Clarke, John Mitchell. Hysteria and Neurasthenia. London: John Lane, 1905. p. 6.