Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/377

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The Green Bag.

against poor Joan of Arc was her cutting and wearing her hair short. The Apostle, her adversaries contended, had forbidden such a thing. She pleaded that she acted thus, by the command of God; but the Canonists of the University of Paris decided that in wear ing men's clothes and short hair, taking the sacrament while in them and asserting that God so commanded, she was blaspheming God, despising his sacraments, transgressing the Divine law, holy writ and canonical or dinances: that she, accordingly, savored ill in the faith, boasted vainly and was suspect of idolatry, and condemned herself in not being willing to wear her sex's garments and in following the customs of the heathen and the Saracen. Some such an idea of the wickedness of long locks must have influenced the Round heads and their fellow Puritans.The Council of Agde ordered the priests to refuse absolution to any penitent who would not cut off his hair. The Council of Toledo decreed that "anyone desiring penance was first to be polled, then made to change his habit to sackcloth and ashes, and so admitted to penance." Saint Ambrose, writing to a virgin, who had committed fornication bid her cut off her hair, which, through vain glory, had given her occasion to sin. One of the primitive Christian customs on the occasion of a first marriage was the loosening or untying of the bride's hair. In 1634 the General Court of Massa chusetts enacted, inter alia, that if any man should judge the wearing of long hair to be uncomely or prejudicial to the common good and the party offending reformed not on notice given, then that the next assistant, being informed thereof, should have power to bind the party so offending to answer at the next Court, if the case so require. In 1649 Governor Endicott and the magistrates issued a declaration against men wearing long hair, prefaced by these words: "Foras

much as the wearing of long hair, after the manner of the ruffians and barbarous Indi ans, has begun to invade New England," and declaring "their dislike and detestation against wearing of such long hair as a thing uncivil and unmanly, whereby men do de form themselves and offend sober and mod est men, and do corrupt good manners." The records of the Bay Colony show that in 1676 thirty young men were presented— "some for wearing silk, some for long hair and other extravagances." Hair must not be used as an alarm clock. A divorce has been granted to a man be cause his wife pulled him out of bed by his whiskers; and in another case a poor husband was granted similar relief because his wife heaved a teapot at him and jerked out quite a quantity of his hair. (This latter was duly produced in court, filed and marked ex hibit A.) May the color of a woman's hair be legal ground for a divorce? And what is an im proper red for a woman's head? These were the important questions that came up in a Xew York court not long ago. Beards suggests barbers; originally these men were the assistants and dressers to the ecclesiastics when those godly men pract'sed surgery; when, m 1163 the Council of Tours forbade any cleryman or monk to undertake any bloody operation, the art of surgery fell into the hands of the barbers and smiths —the latter were soon ousted by the former, and the barbers became so important that in 1461 the freemen of "The Mystery of Bar bers, using the mystery or faculty of Sur gery," obtained a charter from Edward IV., and were incorporated under the name of "The Company of Barbers in London, and none were allowed to practise the art except those admitted by the company. Al though this charter was several times amend ed by subsequent kings, yet side by side with the regular barber-surgeons there grew up a body of men who practised pure surgery, and