Red hair
Appearance
Red hair, also known as orange, ginger or auburn hair, is a rare human hair colour, most common in people of Northern or Northwestern European ancestry. It has been prized as a symbol of courage in men and beauty in women.
Quotes
[edit]- Their tresses, like the crocus’ flamy hue,
In waving radiance round their shoulders flew.- Homer, "To Demeter" (7th or 6th century BC), as translated by Richard Hole, Homer's Hymn to Ceres (Exeter: B. Thorn & Son, 1781)
Prose
[edit]- His gaze went again to her unruly locks, which at first glance he had thought to be red. Now he saw that they were neither red nor yellow but a glorious compound of both colors. He gazed spell-bound. Her hair was like elfin-gold; the sun struck it so dazzlingly that he could scarcely bear to look upon it.
- Robert E. Howard, "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", The Coming of Conan (1953)
Verse
[edit]- His heer, his berd was lyk saffroun,
That to his girdel raughte adoun;- Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Thopas, First Fit
- Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-haired offspring ev’rywhere remains,- Daniel Defoe, The True-born Englishman (1701)
- Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deepening in the Sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;- Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto I, 39.
- These curious locks, so aptly twined,
Whose every hair a soul doth bind,
Will change their auburn hue and grow
White and cold as winter’s snow.- Thomas Carew, "To A. L. Persuasions to Love",
Poems (1640)
- Thomas Carew, "To A. L. Persuasions to Love",
- Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.- Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965)