Originally posted by mankie:
Wasn't redneck originally used to describe a man who worked outside for a living....a farm hand for example. The 'redneck' is because they got a 'red neck' from being out in the sun all day. It later became used to describe what we think of as a redneck today....the skoal chewing, black, jew and homosexual hating, NASCAR watching, country (alt or other) listening, pickup truck driving, Jack Daniels t-shirt and baseball hat wearing, uneducated bigot!
Maybe I'm wrong because I'm just a stupid foreigner so what do I know.
you're not a stupid foreigner...I used to think basically the same thing about where the term came from...that it came from them having short haircuts (as opposed to being long-haired hippies) and working in the sun all day...but, here's an account that dates the term back much further:
In closing, I would like to touch on the origin of the term ??redneck? for your edification. In listening to one of a series of tapes from last October??s National League of the South convention, I came across one given by Mr. Frank Walsh who, as a musician, gives the history of many of the South??s traditional music. Among one of his numbers was one entitled ??Bonnie Dundee.? It seems that as much of our original Southern music is Scottish, the story of the Scot??s resistance to English domination, was a natural part of our heritage. The origin, much to my own surprise, of the term ??redneck? stems from the time when Bonnie Dundee was commissioned by the English King (read tyrant), to suppress the Scottish ??Covenanters? who came to oppose what they viewed as the religious heresies of the Anglican Church. The Anglican Church was the officially recognized Church of England that didn??t take kindly to challenges to their authority. The Scots, thanks to the invention of the printing press, had come into widespread possession of the Bible, previously confined to church leaders.
These Scots came to recognize various heresies in ??official? church teachings that led them to ??covenant? themselves to the true teachings in the Bible. A ??National Covenant of Scotland? was eventually written and solemnly signed in Edinburgh in 1638, often in the blood of its signatories. As a symbol of their covenant with God and each other, the Scottish Covenanters began wearing a red collar around their neck. Noting the symbolism, the English began to derisively refer to these religious dissenters as ??Rednecks.? Thus, the origin of the term was born in Christian reformation and resistance to religious and political coercion. Due to their religious and political oppression, and eventual defeat, many of Scotland??s Covenanters fled their homeland and came to settle the American South.
So it is that the South became the historic home for the Scottish ??Rednecks?....
