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.

Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air. ~ Sylvia Plath

Her hair was like elfin-gold ~ Robert E. Howard

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 Richard Hole, 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)