'Gingers Converting to Islam'

There was a recent video from Ed Dutton, aka The Jolly Heretic, on the topic of how common it is for white Muslim converts to be ginger.

The Science of Why Gingers Convert to Islam

It's an interesting topic, and obviously worthy of note to us, what with this being a blog about red hair and all that.

At present I don't have too much to say about why it seems so many converts have red hair. Apart from the obvious fact that if you stand out and don't quite fit it, it's natural that you'll be more willing to go somewhere else where you may feel more welcome.

In the video Dutton does give an overview of one theory about the evolution of red hair though, and that's something that I can't help but comment upon; as (though it's interesting) I don't quite buy it.

This idea that red hair came about because of a random mutation at some point, and then was positively selected for. As I've mentioned before on here, though I'm sure red hair can (and no doubt has at times) arisen due to genetic mutation, I think the general red hair we see in the world is more a product of the interplay between eumelanin and pheomelanin in mixed populations.

(The most recent elucidation of this was here: Out of the Witches' Cauldron - you can start reading from the Melting Pot heading to get a quick overview.)

The argument made in the video is that red hair was a novel adaptation on the part of females to attract short-in-supply males - a peacock's tail type thing. In fact, Dutton repeats the common idea that redheads are very pale. Paler than blondes. (I've argued that this is an optical illusion caused by the relatively high pheomelanin (red pigment), which amplifies the appearance of the low eumelanin.)

He then goes on to state that red hair is associated with negative, unhealthy traits - such as higher likelihood of skin cancer. Likewise due to the fact that redheads are a product of mutation. (Again, I would suspect these things are more a consequence of the pheomelanin/eumelanin imbalance. Kind of similar to the hybrid vigour produced by race mixing. Where you get positive and negative traits. Such as how multiracial people may be more prone to depression, etc.)

So he makes the case that redheads are 'sickly,' but also more desirable and selected for, which is obviously a little bit of a contradiction. He then mentions studies showing that in nightclubs red-haired women are more likely to get hit on. Stating that it's their unusualness that makes them attractive. I would say it's the relatively high pheomelanin (red pigment) that's the reason for this though. This is why women wear red lipstick when they go to nightclubs. Pheomelanin is what's responsible for the red in the lips, nipples and genitals (along with the hair) - so it's associated with sex - meaning redheads, with this relatively higher red pigment, have a natural red lipstick effect.

In fairness, he also mentions that the red-haired women are attractive because the pale skin signals high oestrogen - equalling high fertility. However, again, I would argue that redheads are only superficially paler because of the contrast with the high red pigment, and that high oestrogen is just associated with whiteness/paleness/blondeness in general. This is why we have the natural dichotomy in human society of the desirable blonde female and the tall, dark handsome man.

Anyway, either way, it's all quite interesting, and it may be worth coming back to the topic of the red-haired Muslim converts at some point in the future. After all, as we've mentioned before on here, there are some traditions that state that Muhammad was red-haired or red-bearded.

A Portuguese village named after ancient redheads!

A-dos-Ruivos is a village located in the parish of Carvalhal, municipality of Bombarral, district of Leiria and situated in the so-called Oeste Region of Portugal. Its population is 196 inhabitants (2001 census).

The origin of its name could be traced back to Norse Christians, Franks or Bretons, who settled in the area during the time of the Reconquista. Red-haired or freckled, the Moors called them rubios, ruivos or even francos.

The initial article "A" followed by "dos" means "the land of", for example, "I'm going to the land of the redheads" or simply "I'm going to the redheads".

According to anthropologist and doctor Eusebio Tamagnini, in a study carried out on hair pigmentation, published in 1936 by the University of Coimbra, the average number of redheads in Portugal is 0.17%.

Old windmill, recently restored, in A-dos-Ruivos

 A-dos-Ruivos

 Os cenouras de A-dos-Ruivos

The ancient Rutuli: a red-haired Italian people?

The Rutuli or Rutulians were an ancient people in Italy.
They lived in a territory whose capital was the ancient town of Ardea, located about 35 km southeast of Rome.

Ancient Latium. Enlarge to see the location of Ardea

According to modern scholars, they were most probably connected with the Etruscan peoples (some speculate with the Ligurian peoples). The connection with the Etruscans would explain the similarity between the names of the Rutuli's king Turnus and the name of the Tyrrhenian Sea (Turrenòs in Latin).
In Virgil's Aeneid, and also according to Livy, the Rutuli are led by Turnus, a young prince to whom Latinus, king of the Latins, had promised the hand of his daughter Lavinia in marriage. When the Trojans arrived in Italy, Latinus decided to give his daughter to Aeneas instead, because of instructions he had received from the gods to marry his daughter to a foreigner. Turnus was outraged and led his people as well as several other Italian tribes against the Trojans in war. Virgil's text ends when Aeneas defeats Turnus in single combat and therefore confirms his right to marry Lavinia. In some other accounts of the story of Aeneas, Latinus is later killed in a subsequent battle with the Rutuli.
During the 6th century BC, in Rome's early semi-legendary history, Rome's seventh and final king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus went to war with the Rutuli. According to Livy, the Rutuli were, at that time, a very wealthy and powerful people. Tarquinius was desirous of obtaining the booty that would come with victory over the Rutuli. It is unclear as to the eventual outcomes of the siege and the war.
Eventually, the Rutuli were absorbed by the Latins. 

The ethnonym Rutuli comes from the adjective rutilus, which (as we have discussed here) means red, reddish, and is probably of Etruscan origin (and this would confirm a connection between the Rutuli and the Etruscans). Unfortunately, we don’t know if, it this case, the colour refers to Rutuli’s hair or to something else (a garment they used to wear, for example, or their bravery in battle). In modern Italian, rutilismo means “red-hairness”. 

In the X book of the Aeneid, Virgil mentions the Rutul Camers, one of the strongest enemy of the Trojans.
I quote the lines, and as you will see, Virgil refers to Camers as fulvus:

Protinus Antaeum et Lucam, prima agmina Turni,
persequitur fortemque Numam fulvumque Camertem,
magnanimo Volcente satum, ditissimus agri
qui fuit Ausonidum et tacitis regnavit Amyclis. Book X, lines 561-564

Here’s the translation into English (John Dryden’s translation):

On Lycas and Antaeus next he ran,
Two chiefs of Turnus, and who led his van.
They fled for fear; with these, he chas'd along
Camers the yellow-lock'd, and Numa strong;

 

As you can see, fulvus has been translated as yellow-lock’d.
The Italian and French translations too give respectively biondo and blond.
The Spanish translation is the strangest, because it says Camers has a faz bermeja (red face). The German translation uses the adjective roten (red). Keep in mind I didn't check all the Aeneid's translations in the above languages. 

Now, let’s have a look at the adjective fulvus.
Here’s my old Latin-Italian dictionary. Fulvus is translated as rossastro, rossiccio (reddish), fulvo (fulvous, tawny), giallo (yellow).

In modern Italian, fulvo is used almost exclusively with the meaning of red-haired (both for humans and animals).
I also checked a couple of online Latin-English dictionaies:
WordSense: reddish-yellow, tawny, amber-coloured, fulvous.
Latin Dictionary: tawny, reddish yellow; yellow.

In the image below, you can see the colours of the ancient Romans. Fulvus is indeed a sort of reddish-brown, brown-yellow. There's definitely something yellow in it, but it's not its main characteristic.

However, if you search on the internet, you’ll find different shades, like this one.

In any case, these are not colours that we would call yellow. With a modern terminology, we would call them brownish yellow, burnt orange, sienna, tobacco.
Obviously, we have to keep in mind that ancient people named colours differently from us, so that some even argued that, for example, ancient Greeks were blind to all shades of blue. So, maybe, where today we see shades of orange and brown, the ancient saw shades of yellow.
However, Romans used a different adjective to mean blond. In this article, you can read the hair and eyes colours of the early Roman emperors. Blond-haired is either subflavum or flaventium and as you can check in the image above, flavus is a warm yellow-mustard colour. Unfortunately, the description of the only red-haired emperor mentioned in the article (Vitellius) comes from a Greek source, so we don’t know which term the Romans would have used. Anyway, if these writers used flavus, this means it was not the same as fulvus, so maybe fulvus means light red, for example?

In the Aeneid, Virgil also uses fulvus to refer to a lion’s mane and to a stone. In the Book IV, line 262, he talks of a iaspide fulva adorning Aeneas’ sword.
Now, John Dryden’s translation just translates the words as “glittering gems”, maybe because fulvus comes from the verb fulgeo: to flash, to lighten, to glitter, to gleam, to glare, to glisten, to shine.
However, the iaspis is not any jem: it’s the jasper. The jasper can be virtually of any colour, although in the past the green one was the most used. 

Green jasper scarab

Today, the most popular is the red jasper, but in can also be yellow, black and white, gray, striped, etc.

Red jasper

I checked some other translations: two in Italian have biondo diasrpo, one German Gelb (yellow), while one Spanish have rojo (red) and the other amarillo (yellow).
So, all considered, it seems to me that most translators have decided that fulvus is yellow no matter what, in spite of the Romans having at least four more names for yellow. Apparently, they don’t understand that when we modern people think of yellow, we imagine, for example, a lemon, a daisy, sweetcorn… We don’t see what the Romans saw when they thought of fulvus, that’s why, in my opinion, the translation of fulvus with yellow is misleading. As far as hair colour is concerned, if translators don’t want to use "red" because they think red hair is so rare that no-one has it, I think "brown" or "light brown" would be a more appropriate choice. 

On a final note, I think it's worth mentioning that today a population exists called… Rutul people (also Rutuls or Rutulians). They live in Russia, Dagestan and Azerbaijan. Actually, they call themselves Mykhabyr. The origin of the name Rutul is uncertain. I translate from Wikipedia in Russian:

 

The ethnonym Rutuls is associated with the name of the village of Rutul, the most populous Rutul village. The origin of this term remains unclear to this day. Such a term is absent from the toponymy and lexicon of the Rutuls and neighbouring peoples, and, according to historian Musaev G. M., is imported. Well-known sources mentioning the word Rutul are Virgil's epic work Aeneid and Namatsian's poem On his return from Rome to Gaul. In Rutul language, the village of Rutul is called Mykhaa, and its inhabitants call themselves Mykhaadabyr. The term Rutul, as one of the names of the village of Mykhaa, has been known since the 15th century. According to one version, the name was given by the Arabs during the conquest of Dagestan. It is found in epigraphic monuments, in official documents as well as in Persian and Turkish charters.

 

The village of Rutul, Russian Federation

Paintings of Vlad III with Reddish/Blond Hair

You all know, even if only by name, Vlad III (1428 – 1476), also known as Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula.
In 1431, in Nuremberg, his father Vlad II was made by Sigismund of Luxembourg a first-class member of the chivalric Order of the Dragon. The dragon-shaped badge of the order gave rise to his Romanian sobriquet, Dracul ("the Dragon"), and his sons became known as Dracula ("sons of Dracul"), since the word "Dracula" is the Slavonic genitive form of "Dracul".
Thus, Vlad II became the first member of the House of the Drăculești, which ended in the 1650s with Mihnea III Radu (Vlad II's native House was the Basarab).
In modern Romanian, drac means devil, demon, so today dracul means the devil, the demon (-ul is the article).

Order of the Dragon. Reconstruction in Trakai Island Castle museum, Lithuania.

Reconstruction of the emblem based on the sketches in Austrian Museum custody; the original badge is missing.

 

Many people believe that Vlad III was the inspiration for the character of Count Dracula from Bram Stoker's novel, but this is not true, because Stoker knew very little about him. From Stoker's working notes we know that he had initially decided to call his protagonist "Count Wampyr".
Stoker found the name Dracula in the book An Account of the Principalities of Walacchia and Moldavia, written in 1820 by William Witkinson, British consul in Bucarest. Witkinson mentions the name Dracula only three times, referred both to Vlad III and (wrongly) to his father. Regarding Vlad III, the author only reports that he crossed the Danube, attacked and defeated the Turks, but was then pushed back into Wallachia and forced to take refuge in Hungary. His brother then became voivode in his place. And that's all. He doesn't even mentions his habit of impaling his enemies.
However, on page 19 of the book, Stoker finds the following footnote: "Dracula in Wallachian means devil. The inhabitants of Wallachia, yesterday as today, are accustomed to give this nickname to anyone who distinguishes himself by courage, cruelty, or cunning." It is this footnote that makes Stoker decide to change the name of his main character from Count Wampyr to Count Dracula. In fact, in his working notes we find the following statement: “DRACULA in Walacchian language means DEVIL” (Stoker's capital letter).
In modern-day Romania, Vlad III is considered a national hero and one of the greatest Romanian rulers, who fought for the independence of the Romanian lands, and Romanians don't like very much his association with Count Dracula.

Statue of Vlad III in Giurgiu, southern Romania

Recently, I came across some portrait paintings of him, where his hair is fair/reddish, while in other portraits it is very dark. Some of these paintings were made during his lifetime, but the authors never met him personally, and unfortunately the only portrait made by an artist who met him face-to-face has got lost.
This portrait had been commissioned by Niccolò Modrussa, a legate on behalf of Pope Pius II who met Vlad in Buda. He also left a written description of him, clearly intended to give a negative impression of the ruler.

"We saw him imprisoned, and [he was not], indeed, very tall, but sound and strong of limb, with a fierce and dreadful appearance, a large, aquiline nose, inflated nostrils, and a thin and somewhat red face, on which quite prominent eyelashes surrounded wide-open bluish-gray [glaucos] eyes, and which black, thick-haired eyebrows made to appear threatening. In addition his cheeks and entire chin were shaven, and the only part [of his face not shaven were] the upper lips. Swollen temples increased the bulk of his head. A bull-like neck connected the lofty head with his broad shoulders, onto which his black, curly hair reached."

In 1560, a copy was made of the aforementioned portrait, which is now kept in the Ambras Castle in Innsbruk (Austria). 

The famous Ambras Castle portrait

The author, however, took some liberties: for example, he altered Vlad's eyes' colour, painting them brown and not bluish-gray. Some claim that the bigger lower lip too is an alteration, made with the purpose of making him look more cruel (Modrussa’s account doesn’t mention a swollen lower lip). 

In German-speaking countries many pamphlets had been circulating since 1460s, telling stories about Vlad’s cruelties, so it wouldn’t be unlikely that the author of the Ambras Castle portrait would alterate Vlad III’s face to make him look evil and wicked. These pamphlets always had a woodcut on the title page and thanks to the invention of movable type printing, they began circulating in the whole of Europe and with them Vlad’s likeness as well. So, the painters we are going to see below probably draw inspiration from these woodcuts. As you can see, Vlad III is always depicted with his carachteristic pearl cap.

 Magi Chapel of Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence, 1459–1461 (Benozzo Gozzoli)

Detail of Vlad III

The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, 1470–1480, Belvedere Galleries, Vienna (author unknown)

Vlad III is depicted as the Roman proconsul Aegeas, who ordered the cucifixion of Saint Andrew

 

 

Vlad III as Dragonfighter (probably St. George). 15th century altar in Mălâncrav, Transylvania

As a final note, it's worth mentionig that Vald III' grandfather, Mircea the Elder (Vlad II's father) might have had red hair.

Red Hair in Art: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art.

 

He was born in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, and studied architecture at the Königliche Technische Hochschule of Dresden. In 1905, along with Fritz Bleyl and two other architecture students, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, founded the artists group Die Brücke. The group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge (hence the name) between the past and the present.

In 1913, his writing of Chronik der Brücke (Brücke chronicle) led to the ending of the group. At this time, he established an individual identity with his first solo exhibition, which took place at the Essen Folkwang Museum. During the next two years, he painted a series of "Straßenszenen" (street scenes) showing the streets of Berlin, with the central characters of street walkers.

 At the onset of the First World War in September 1914, Kirchner volunteered for military service. In July 1915 he was sent to Halle an der Saale to train as a driver in the reserve unit of the 75th Mansfeld Field Artillery Regiment. Kirchner's riding instructor, Professor Hans Fehr, arranged for Kirchner to be discharged after a mental breakdown. 

Throughout 1916, Kirchner produced a series of oil paintings and many drawings, during his stays in Königstein. After an exhibition of his work at the gallery of Ludwig Schames, in Frankfurt am Main, in October 1916, Kirchner sold many works and began to do well financially. In December, he suffered from another nervous breakdown and was admitted to Dr. Edel's sanatorium in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Later, he was admitted to The Bellevue Sanatorium, run by Ludwig Binswanger, in Kreuzlingen (Switzerland) where he continued to produce paintings and woodcuts.

In 1921, there was a major display of Kirchner's work in Berlin and the reviews were favourable. He  continued to work in Frauenkirch (near Davos), his style growing increasingly abstract.

Throughout the 30s, Kirchner became increasingly upset with the situation in Germany. After Austria was annexed by Germany in the Anschluss, Kirchner became disturbed by the idea that Germany might invade Switzerland. On 15 June 1938, Kirchner took his own life by gunshot in front of his home in Frauenkirch; however, there are doubts about his death being a suicide.

Here are some of his paintings featuring red hair.

Two Green Girls with Red Hair

Dancing Couple

Kirchner, Doris and Heckel at the Table

Two Nudes in the Wood

Reclining Woman with a White Shirt

Painter and Model

Red Hair

The red colour and red hair in C. de Troyes' Perceval

Recently, I came across a graduation thesis written by a student from the university of Padua (a city not far from Venice), entitled Bianco, nero, rosso. Semantica dei colori nel Perceval o Le conte du Graal (White, black, red. Semantics of colours in Perceval, the Story of the Grail). Perceval is an unfinished verse romance written by Chrétien de Troyes in Old French, in the late 12th century.

In the first part of the thesis, the author traces the history of the colours white, black and red from their origins to the Middle Ages and then examines Chrétien de Troyes' use of these colours in “Perceval”. Some information is already present in this blog and therefore I will not repeat it. I will limit myself to citing the passages that seemed most interesting to me and that I believe have not been covered in this blog, some of which also refer to red hair.

 

Engraving considered to be a representation of Chrétien de Troyes in his work studio (1530)

Page 40

Goethe himself in his Theory of Colours, a purely scientific work born in opposition to the dominant theory of Isaac Newton in this field, dedicates a very substantial part of the text to the emotions that colours generate in the human soul. As for red, for example, his speech is very specific and notes how not all shades of this colour influence people in the same way: yellow-red transmits delight and is very pleasant for those who observe it, red-yellow expresses great energy and excitement, blue-red makes one restless, while red-blue (for example the purple colour used by the clergy) indicates a continuous tension towards the top. Pure red, finally, represents ideal satisfaction, the highest manifestation of colour, symbol of gravity, dignity, clemency and glory. According to the German scholar, primitive peoples showed a preference for red-yellow due to its energy and, later in history, each people chose a colour or a colour range that they felt represented by and that expressed in a more or less conscious way the lifestyle and general state of mind of the population.

The French, for example, adopted very bright colours, the English and Germans not too exciting colours in the blue range, Italians and Spanish dark red to express dignity and power.

Page 41

Red is the first colour of which we have historical evidence, the first to be used in painting and dyeing and to which men have attributed a meaning. For this reason, it can be said that since the beginning it has had a primacy over other colours. It also has the greatest number of words in almost all written languages, starting from Hebrew, Greek and Latin.
The first colour to which a name was given, after the concepts of light and dark (and therefore the colours black and white), it was red in most cultures.
The linguistic sphere often offers us an interesting glimpse into the way of thinking of men who lived in periods before ours and at the same time reveals something deeper and often unconscious. In many languages, based on the context, for example, the same term was used to express different concepts, as in the case of coloratus in Latin, or colorado in modern Castilian, which mean red or coloured at the same time. Another example is that of the Russian language, in which the terms krasnyj (red) and krasnyj (beautiful) belong to the same lexical family. In this regard, it is enough to think of the Red Square in Moscow, which was called this way already in the time of the tsars, before the communist period, not because the brick buildings surrounding it were that color, but rather because it was considered the most beautiful in the city.

 

Detail of the paintings in the Cueva de las manos (Cave of the Hands) in Santa Cruz (Argentina), dating back between 7,300 BC and 700 AD

Page 52

The red flames in the first theory were associated with Hell and constituted the body of the dragon of the Apocalypse. This colour was therefore considered destructive and evil, it blazed without illuminating and was darker than darkness. It was, in essence, the colour of the Devil and his demons who in miniatures were always painted in this way (later also traitors such as Judas, Cain, Renart will be described with red hair, beard or fur). The second theory was decidedly positive, because it associated the flames with divine manifestation: in the Old Testament, Yahweh appears through fire, for example in the episode of the bush with which he communicates with Moses, and in the New Testament it represents the Holy Spirit who gives life. It is therefore a bright and luminous red that was supposed to purify and regenerate the soul.

 

Page 54

The shades of colours were very important in the Middle Ages, more than they are for us today, because they had precise and often different meanings even between very similar shades. This is the case of red tending towards orange, for example. This colour was greatly devalued starting from the 12th century and became the representative of a great variety of vices, of which Judas is the main example. In the New Testament, he is not described physically or in terms of clothing, nevertheless after the year 1000 he is almost always seen represented with a red-orange beard and hair. He, therefore, combines in himself the negative aspects of two colours: red and yellow. [...] Yellow has always been the colour associated with lies and felony and has never been redeemed over the centuries, even if in Rome it was sought after in clothing. Even in the artistic and literary fields, key rules were respected in the representation of certain characters: attributes, movements, objects and colours, that allowed and still help us to recognise the subject of a painting or story. The idea that red hair was the distinctive sign of traitors par excellence has spread to many aspects of everyday life and it is no coincidence that in the Middle Ages many traitors and deceivers are described with this physical trait. Some famous examples are: Cain, Mordred (the incestuous son of King Arthur), Renart (the cunning fox), Fauvel (the vicious horse) and in general all rebellious sons, perjured fathers, usurping uncles and adulterous women. In the Bible, neither Cain nor Judas were described with red hair, despite this, however, other negative characters in history possess this trait. This is the case of Esau, Jacob's twin, who is willing to sell his birthright to his brother for food, and although he later regrets this, his father will send him into exile with the accusation of being an extremely rude and impetuous person.

In Rome this distrust was no less. The name rufus, in fact, was used sarcastically and as a form of insult because a person with hair of this colour was not only considered aesthetically ugly, but above all, on an internal level, he was defined as hypocritical and cruel, a tradition that in Europe would continue until modern times.

 

Detail of Judas from Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper

This reference to red-orange hair is very interesting. In this post we have seen that a distinction was made between red-orange hair and dark red hair. The former was considered ugly and carrot-y, while the latter was very appreciated. However, we coulnd’t find a reason for that. According to this thesis, the reason could be that red-orange colour combines the negative aspects of red and yellow.

In this paragraph the author also writes something strange, namely that in the Bible Saul and Caiaphas are described as having red hair. This is not true and I’m surprised that she didn’t check the Bible to verify the claim.

 

Page 75

«Et quant messire Gauvains l'ot,

si se trestorne et voit venant

.i. escuier desavenant.

Et quex fu il, dirai le vos:

les chevox ot merlez et ros,

roides et contremont dreciez,

come pors qui est hericiez,

et les sorcix ot autretés,

que tot le vis et tot le nes

li covroient jusqu'as grenons,

que il avoit tortiz et lons

Boche  ot fandue et barbe lee,

tondue et puis recercelee,

et cort le col et le piz haut.» (vv. 6740-6753)

 

“Hearing this, my lord

Gawain turned round and saw

A squire approaching. Who

Was he? I'm going to tell you.

His hair was red, thick,

Stiff, and standing straight up

Like a wild boar in anger,

As were his eyebrows, which seemed

To grow all the way down

His face, and over his nose,

Covering everything as far

As his huge and twisted mustache.

His mouth was narrow, his heavy

Beard was forked and curly.

His neck was short, his chest

Immense.”

(The English translation comes from here).

Before reaching the castle with five hundred windows, Gawain, as a perfect courteous man, finds himself helping a seriously wounded knight, lying under an oak tree, and assisted by a girl desperate for his condition. Thanks to some herbal compresses, the wounded man regains consciousness and expresses the desire to reach a priest to confess, fearing he would die without first having surrendered to God. To move around, he asks Gawain for a nag, which was being ridden at that moment by a squire who was approaching them. And it is this squire to whom the words above are addressed, which describe him in an unflattering way. The first physical data that is provided to us is precisely that relating to the hair and its colour: red. Already from this single aspect we can understand that the character will not be positive for the hero of the story, in fact, as previously stated, the red colour of the hair in the Middle Ages was perceived as a guarantee of the immorality of the person. […]
In this case, the squire will not have the role of traitor or liar, rather he embodies a perfect outcast of society, who does not know the fundamental rules of courtesy in the dialogue between men of honour. In fact, we note a great contrast between the words that Gawain addresses to him, very respectful and formal, and instead the ill-mannered and rude response of the man, who wishes him a cruel fate.
However, the colour is not enough to connote the character, who is compared to the porcupine for the ruffled, sparse and shaggy hair that, together with the long and curly beard, contribute to create a very funny and ridiculous figure.
He is a character substantially devoid of dignity, who falls from his mount because of a glove that Gawain has thrown at him as a challenge, who threatens the knight with vain, empty words, destined to remain without any follow-up.
The clash between the two does not occur, there is no fight and the character disappears when attention is focused on the wounded man and his behaviour when he recognises Gawain. This makes us understand the baseness of this character, against whom it is useless even to clash, whose presence is easily forgotten.

 

Page 96

In medieval texts there are three main types of knights: the White Knight, the Black Knight and the Red Knight: based on the colour of the armor and the crests, these characters are instinctively associated with certain qualities. The White Knight usually acts as the hero's master, therefore embodies an extremely wise character, often elderly or in any case with a great experience of chivalric life behind him. The Black Knight, on the other hand, is almost always a prominent character, who hides his identity, usually a very brave fighter during tournaments, animated by good intentions.
Finally, the Red Knight tends to be hostile to the hero, is a traitor and evil and is often assumed as an emissary of the Devil or as a being from another world.
In Perceval, heraldry is very simplified and the knight whose color is specified is only one: the Red Knight. Initially an enemy faced by Perceval, later he himself will be called with this name, after having made his own the weapons of the one he defeated.

 

I won’t quote the other passages about the Red Knight, but if you’re interested in Arthurian legends I invite you to translate the whole thesis with an automatic translator, because it’s a very good work