Irish Tattoo (Was Geographical euphemisms)

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:17 PM -0600 1/6/03, Joyce, Thomas F. wrote:
>My daughter (half Irish) and I (full) referred to the inadvertent
>splotches of sunburn we picked up bicycling around Ireland last
>summer as "Irish tattoos."  I thought I made up the phrase, but
>maybe I encountered it somewhere and forgot.  Does anyone know?
>
One of the Irish ironyms in my list was "Irish tan" = 'sunburn',
based on the premise that a true Irish(wo)man doesn't tan.  The above
would seem to be based on the same premise.  Not quite as insulting
as most of the other ones, anyway.

larry