Any Greek Mumsnetters about? I have a terribly important question....

[ContessaDiPulpo]

I'm reading Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides (very good so far, since you ask) and he's casually dropped into conversation the following statement:

'The Greeks had an old saying, too: "Red hair and blue eyes portend the devil".'

As the mother of a redheaded blue-eyed boy, this has amused me greatly - however it's a saying I have never heard of before and which I am struggling to find online. Is this actually a Greek saying?

Any help with this very important issue would be warmly received, thank you!

I'm not greek and have no idea, but bumping this for you as I'm intrigued now.....

The whole 'ginger bashing' in large parts of Europe (mainland and otherwise) is based on the belief that red hair is somehow related to the devil and to lacking a soul.
So I would not wonder if there were such a saying.

@ContessaDiPulpo

I'm reading Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides (very good so far, since you ask) and he's casually dropped into conversation the following statement:

'The Greeks had an old saying, too: "Red hair and blue eyes portend the devil".'

As the mother of a redheaded blue-eyed boy, this has amused me greatly - however it's a saying I have never heard of before and which I am struggling to find online. Is this actually a Greek saying?

Any help with this very important issue would be warmly received, thank you!

I'm not Greek but I have a home there. Not that that is significant because it isn't, per se, Greek! It's a common European mythology. Southern Europeans do not tend to have red hair, and many ancient cultures in Europe / Southern Europe associate red hair, and especially red hair and blue eyes (which is a very rare combination to have) as being "evil", "of the devil" etc. It certainly predates Christianity as similar sayings are recorded in early Greece and the Roman Empire. There are a number of examples of Aristotle commenting negatively about people with red hair.

Nobody knows for certain, but red hair was much more common amongst north-western Europeans, who tended to be something of a bloodthirsty and barbaric lot (certainly from some points of view) so it is possible that this may be a racial memory of invaders and/or contact with people who didn't appear as civilised. Red hair is also associated with some "Turks" (historically), and you know how well Turks and Greeks have always got along!

My Cypriot friend has red hair (so, so bright red hair) and even today she gets some people "warding" off the evil eye when she's around them. She told me that Cypriot red hair re-emerges every now and then and originates from a previous "Turkish invasion" (although long before modern Turkey existed - about 4,000 years ago I seem to recall).

I recall an old woman in Greece telling me years ago that red headed people turned into vampires when they die, but I have never heard anyone else say that, so some people may believe it or not. She was a bit dotty, but then superstitions usually are!

I think red and blonde were interchangeable in ancient Greece, so maybe a reference to blonde haired blue eyed northern Europeans?