The possible history behind the term Blue Blood

[Groenewolf]

I was just looking around for some random information about nobility in Europe when I cam across the folowing quote from this book (http://www.amazon.com/Aristocrats-Robert-Lacey/dp/0316511641/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230469282&sr=1-13) :


It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin—proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy. (Robert Lacey, Aristocrats. Little, Brown and Company, 1983, p. 67)

However I would like to know if some of you have heard of this before and has some more information about this.

[TheGreatest]

In the United States, Mulattos had started the ''Blue-Vein Society" club to separate themselves from their Negroid counterparts.



A group of African Americans which limits its membership to "blue veins" or light skinned black people. During the turn of the century there were self-proclaimed Blue Vein Societies in dozens of US cities representing the miniscule Black upper and upper-middle classes. The societies aped partician white "Blue Blood Socieities" (satirzed by Edith Wharton) and their cheif purpose seems to have been to sponsor balls as meeting places for elgible "blue veined" youth.

The African American write Charles W. Chestnutt describes the origin of the term in the quote below when talking about the Cleveland Blue Vein Society.
"Some envious outsider made the suggestion that no one was eligible for membership who was not white enough to show blue veins. The suggestion was readily adopted by those who were not of the favored few, and since that time the society, though possessing a longer and more pretentious name, had been known far and wide as the "Blue Vein Society," and its members as the "Blue Veins." "
-- Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Wife of His Youth", 1898

[Fortis in Arduis]

Right. So nothing to do with giant lizards then? That was the David Icke explanation. :D

[TheGreatest]

Right. So nothing to do with giant lizards then? That was the David Icke explanation. :D


I have blue veins and I'm no lizard.
Now excuse me while I return to the underground city and prepare to destroy humanity. :) :thumb001:

[LouisFerdinand]

According to Online Etymology Dictionary:
BLUEBLOOD
1809 in reference to the blood that flows in the veins of the old and aristocratic families of Spain translating Spanish sangre azul, claimed by certain families of Castile as uncontaminated by Moorish or Jewish admixture; the term is probably from the notion of the visible veins of people of fair complexion.
In reference to English families by 1827
As a noun, "member of an old and aristocratic family," by 1877.

[LouisFerdinand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zE0p-jevag