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The Index is a measure of hair colour alone. When it comes to eye colour, the east–west
gradient is reversed. Brown eyes are commonest in the east and south, where they exceed 40 per
cent in East Anglia, but also in Cornwall. In Ireland, but also in Yorkshire and Cumbria, the same
counties where red/fair hair were at their highest proportion, the number of people with blue or
grey eyes rises to 75 per cent. In the far north of Scotland and the Hebrides, where fair hair was
common, blue or grey eyes are even commoner than they are in Ireland. When hair and eye colour
are combined to produce two basic types – what Beddoe calls ‘Mixed Blond’ and ‘Mixed Dark’ –
with fair/red hair and blue/grey eyes or dark eyes and dark hair respectively – the patterns reflect
the individual components to some extent. ‘Mixed Blonds’ outnumber their opposites in the north of
Scotland, east Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, while ‘Mixed Darks’ predominate in Wales, Cornwall
and the Scottish Highlands, along with Wiltshire and Dorset. In Ireland, especially in the west, the
Mixed Blond outnumber the Mixed Dark, leading to the conclusion, when coupled with the high
Index of Nigrescence, that there must be a high proportion of dark-haired people with blue or grey
eyes.
Beddoe begins his conclusions in the far north. ‘The Shetlanders’, he says, ‘are unquestionably
in the main of Norwegian descent, but include other race elements also.’ He draws the same
conclusion for the inhabitants of Orkney and of Caithness in the far north of the Scottish mainland.