”The hair color of the Irish is predominantly brown; black hair accounts for less than 3 per cent of the total, while the ashen series (Fischer #20-26) amounts to but one-half of one per cent. Forty per cent have dark brown hair (Fischer #4-5); 35 per cent have medium brown (Fischer #7-9); reddish brown hues total over 5 per cent (closest to Fischer #6, #10), while clear reds (Fischer #1-3) run higher than 4 per cent. The rest, some 15 per cent, fall into a light brown to golden blond category (Fischer #11-19). Thus the hair color of the Irish is darker than that of most regions of Scandinavia, but not much darker than Iceland; it is notably different from Nordic hair, as exemplified by eastern Norwegians and Swedes, in its almost total lack of ash-blondism. The rufous hair color pigment reaches a world maximum here; not so much in reds as in the prevalance of golden hues in blond and brown shades. The lightest hair is found in the Aran Islands, where the commonest shade is, nevertheless, medium brown; in the southwestern counties there are more goldens and at the same time more dark-browns than in Ireland as a whole, while the Great Plain runs fairest of all. Red hair, with a regional maximum of 8 per cent, is commonest in Ulster, rarest in Waterford and Wexford.”
