Red hair

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

 * 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, Homer's Hymn to Ceres (Exeter: B. Thorn & Son, 1781)

Prose

 * 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

 * 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)


 * Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.
 * Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965)