gee that is an oxymoron! irish and tans-black and tans were the controversial group as i remember-but the train of thought i had was this. my relatives that are irish either had jet black hair w/ ice blue eyes and white skin or redhead and freckles w/ blue eyes. however, my grandfather tanned red like a bronze color. also an irish uncle by marriage did too-and had the ice blue eyes and black hair.i am the only female in my family on that side that tans! and several of my kids are of the fish belly white irish skin -lol- out of 5, only one gets really tan and he is blonde with blue eyes/ the others tan eventually but not like their brother and i do. my mother and grandmother(married to the one who tanned bronze) were not able to tolerate any sun without almost instantaneous blisters-my grandmother got fever sores on lips and my youngest of the 5 does too so he is never without lip gloss even when we lived in nj. weird what passes down! i never thought of having a brown haired brown eyed relative as we*husb and i* dont have any relatives with brown eyes. however, together we have 3 with brown eyes and 2 with blue. have 2 brown eyed grand. and 2 blue eyed. go figure! lol-linda