The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-09-20

First, every one, lord or pumpkin, let his hair
fall down his back. Historians and chroniclers
speak great deal about the oils and oint-
ments that were used by the wealthy and
noble of the middle ages; and it appears to
have been pretty prevalent custom to
powder ones locks with gold-dust.
Frequenters of picture-galleries must
have observed that all portraits of
French noblemen during the medieval
times and up to the year 1880, represent
men with abundant locks, but that
from the year 1880 there is an abrupt
change: the hair of the Frenchmen becoming
from that date, as short as that of a modern
ail-bird The reason of this is as follows
His Majesty Francis the First, happening to
spend the Christmas of 1929 at Fontanebleau,
organized series of routs and revels in honor
of the new year. On the 9th of January,
it used to be customary for the mummers to
elect king, and engage in a mimic war
against rival party, who would pretend to
detrone the mock monarch. Francis, hear
ing that the lord of a neighboring castle had
been elected 'king" by some friends of his,
disguised himself, and went with party of
twenty courtiers to offer battle to the revel-
lers. The challenge was accepted. A fort
was erected in the great hall of the castle, and
Francis endeavored to carry it by storm. 1t
was usual to fight with eggs in guise of shot,
and bags of flour in lieu of maces; but after
while the strife waxed hot, and somebody
threw a lighted brand, which fell upon the
disguised kings head and feled him senseless.
The wound was very serious one. For some
time Francis remained in bed, and when he
made his temperance amidst his court, his
hair was cropped quite close; while his beard,
on the contrary, which he had always up
to that time shaved off, had been suffered to
grow luXuriantly. Imitation being the sin
cerest fattery, the courtiers hurried off
to put themselves into the haircut
ter's hands. Gradually the people fol-
lowed the example. Hair became short,
and boards heightened. From France,
the fashion passed into England and other
countries. 1t lasted for nearly a hundred
years.
AS every one knows, long hair and short
hair had marked political significance dur
| ing the wars of Charles the First against his
| Parliament. 1t was no joke, then, to be
caught with bristles in Prince Rupert's camp
and to have come with curling locks under
Cromwells eye would have been to run the
risk of being sent, not to the hair, but to the
head, cutters. Charles the Second brought
back the fashion of long Cavalier locks, but
these were soon superseded by the towering
wigs introduced by Louis the Fourteenth. He
had very poor head of hair; thin, lank, and
of dirty buff color; and his barber devised q
| most voluminous peruque to meet the emer-
| gency Of course the fashion ''took," and
| this big unsightly headdress, which must
| have been insupportable insummer, remained
in use until the middle of Louis the Fif-
| teenths reign, when it gave way to the fa-
nous powdered wig.
The great republic swept away the wigs,
and many of the heads that were in them.
1t was then that the pigtail fashion came in,
both for high and low, and lasted long enough
| to be remembered by some men of the pre.
sent day. Napoleon the First mercilessly cut
off the pigtails of his republican soldiers, and
nearly caused a mutiny among the army OF
Egypt by so doing. Similarly, immense dis
content was excited in the British navy when
the Admiralty abolished the pigtail some hall
century ago. So we come down to the pre-
sent times, when we crafty our individual
tastes in the'matter of our heads of hair anG
our boards, unless indeed we are private sol
diers, or paupers, or convicts, or are put int
reformatory; when, for the general good, W,
must yield to sanitary cropping laws.