Redlegs
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Redleg is a term used to refer to poor whites who live or at one time lived on Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada and a few other Caribbean islands. Their forebears were sent from Ireland, Britain and Continental Europe as indentured servants, forced labourers, or peons.
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- Etymology
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Redleg is a term used to refer to poor whites who live or at one time lived on Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada and a few other Caribbean islands. Their forebears were sent from Ireland, Britain and Continental Europe as indentured servants, forced labourers, or peons.
== Etymology == According to folk etymology, the name is derived from the effects of the tropical sun on the fair-skinned legs of white emigrants, now known as sunburn. However, the term "Redlegs" and its variants were also in use for Irish soldiers who were taken as prisoners of war in the Irish Confederate Wars and transported to Barbados as indentured servants.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Redlegs” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.