(_For the Mirror_.)
Among the ancient Greeks, all dead persons were thought to be under the
jurisdiction of the infernal deities, and therefore no man (says Potter)
could resign his life, till some of his hairs were cut to consecrate to
them. During the ceremony of laying out, clothing the dead, and sometimes
the interment itself, the hair of the deceased person was hung upon the
door, to signify the family was in mourning. It was sometimes laid upon
the dead body, sometimes cast into the funeral pile, and sometimes placed
upon the grave. Electra in Sophocles says, that Agamemnon had commanded
her and Chrysothemis to pay him this honour:--
"With drink-off'rings and _locks_ of _hair_ we must,
According to his will, his _tomb_ adorn."
Candace in Ovid bewails her calamity, in that she was not permitted to
adorn her lover's tomb with her locks.
At Patroclus's funeral, the Grecians, to show their affection and
respect to him, covered his body with their hair; Achilles cast it into
the funeral pile. The custom of nourishing the hair on religious
accounts seems to have prevailed in most nations. Osiris, the Egyptian,
consecrated his hair to the gods, as we learn from Diodorus; and in
Arian's account of India, it appears it was a custom there to preserve
their hair for some god, which they first learnt (as that author
reports) from Bacchus.
The Greeks and Romans wore false hair. It was esteemed a peculiar honour
among the ancient Gauls to have long hair. For this reason Julius Caesar,
upon subduing the Gauls, made them cut off their hair, as a token of
submission. In the royal family of France, it was a long time the
peculiar mark and privilege of kings and princes of the blood to wear
long hair, artfully dressed and curled; every body else being obliged to
be polled, or cut round, in sign of inferiority and obedience. In the
eighth century, it was the custom of people of quality to have their
children's hair cut the first time by persons they had a particular
honour and esteem for, who, in virtue of this ceremony, were reputed a
sort of spiritual parents or godfathers to them. In the year 1096, there
was a canon, importing, that such as wore long hair should be excluded
coming into church when living, and not be prayed for when dead.
Charlemagne wore his hair very short, his son shorter; Charles the _Bald_
had none at all. Under Hugh Capet it began to appear again; this the
ecclesiastics were displeased with, and excommunicated all who let their
hair grow. Peter Lombard expostulated the matter so warmly with Charles
the Young, that he cut off his own hair; and his successors, for some
generations, wore it very short. A professor of Utrecht, in 1650, wrote
expressly on the question, Whether it be lawful for men to wear long
hair? and concluded for the negative. Another divine, named Reeves, who
had written for the affirmative, replied to him. In _New_ England a
declaration was inscribed in the register of the colony against the
practice of wearing long hair, which was principally levelled at the
Quakers, with unjust severity.