Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-11-13
MEN WITH LONG HAIR.
aov Warriors of Olden Times Dressed
 Their Head Adornment

St. Paul held that it was a shame to a man to wear his hair long, and so he tells the Corinthians in his first epistle to them On the other hand, Huychius, patriarch of Jerusalem, A. D. 600, declared the outward, visible signs of manly perfection to consist in an ample beard and in hair flowing down tho shoulders. In remote ages the Per slans, who now have their heads shaven, wore long hair. Darius had a most luxuri- ant poll. and Alexander, who conquered him, probably paid few visits to the hair cutters in the course of his lite. AL clblaoes and his clique of roueS introduced the effeminate fashion of halr into Greece. Before their time the Athenians were roundheads, and it is fair to presume that Aristides the Just, who did not pride him. self above measure on his devotion to the graces, sported good crop of bristles and ignored comb.
 HerodotuS relates that Tn token of mourn ing the Persians were wont to cut off not only their own hair but the names of their horses. The same historian tells that the Ayrlans, being defeated by the Lacedemo- nians, made sacrifice of their locks, and vowed that they would remain shorn as long as they had not reconquered Thyre.
 At Sparta, Lycurgus had decreed the wearing of long hair; but this law, to which Plutarch aludes, was never much obeyed. The Spartans, when they attained their six teenth year, did as the young Athenians, and burned their hair upon the altar of either Diana or Mars. The fact is, all the barbarians who used to come from across the seas in those times wore flowing locks, and the Greeks had no wish to resemble them, says the Boston Traveller. Our prinl- 1tive ancestors, the Britons, and like them, the Gauls, allowed their hair to grow undis- turbed. It often reached below the waist, and men hllo CaractacuS must have looked curious. Conquered by the Romans, the Gauls and Britons were ignominiously clipped. In his enumeration of the Gallic tribes led Into captivity by Caesar, Lucian speaks of the Liguses, ''now shorn, but ere while possessed of an abundant mass of hair" Those of the Gauls who obtained their liberation hastened to let their hair grow agaln; in order the more to mark the importance they attached to flowing locks they took to shaving their slaves.
 In France when a noblenlan was convicted of any felonious ofense the razor was in varlably applied to his pate. Clotaire L, King of France, caused his own son, Condo band, to be shorn for conspiring against him; and, by way of adding to the disgrace of his sentence. he Immediately afterward issued an cdict coudcmuing to the severest penalties any one who should by stealth or violence cut eff the hair of an honest man. l ne halr question assumed diSQuieting pro portions in France, for in the year 1901 Pierre Lombard. Archbishop of Paris (whose head left much to be desired in the matter of capillary adornment), was prevailed upon by the malContents to become their cham pion. He was q learned and good man, and no doubt he had often ponGered upon the unseemly appearance of his close-clipped crown in the silence Of the closet, until he took up tho cudgels like man determined to win.
 The King of France at that time was the gallant Phillip IL. generally known as Phil lp Augustus. After giving the matter his most attentive cons iteration he signed the magma charter of capillary liberty, at about the same time his royal compeer, John of England, was making a dismal face over the charter of Runnymcde.
 Generally speaking. the English follow the French III the matter of personal adorn- ment, but ill this case the English were be- forehand. So crrly in the reign of Henry II. our plcbcian forofathers had obtained eX- emption from the obligation of having their hair cut, and they obtained It without much ado.
 We hear nothing more about short hair until the sixteenth century. From the time or Tnnlp augustus to that ot Francls 1. every one, lord or lurpkin, let his hair fall down his back.
 Historians and chroniclers speak great
 
 used by the wealthy and noble of the middle ages, and it appears to have been a pretty prevalent custom to powder ones locks with gold dust
 Every one knows how long hair and short hair had a marked political significance dur ing the war of Charles l. against the Pre- tender. It was no joke then to be caught with bristles in Prince Rupert's camp, and to have come with curling locas under Cromwelrs eye would have been to run the risk of being sent, not to the hair, but to the headcutter's.
 Charles II. brought back the fashion of long cavalier locks, but these were soon su- perseded by the towering wigs introduced by Louis XIV. He had a very poor head of hair, thin, lanll, and of dirty buff color, and his barber devised most voluminous perique to meet the emergency. The flask ion renamed in use until the middle of Louis XIN.'s reign, when it gave way to the famous powdered wig. The great re- public swept away the wigs and many of the heads that were in Mem. It was then that the pig-tail fashion came in for both high and low, and lasted long enough to be remembered by some men of the present day. Napoleon I. mercilessly cut off the pig tails of his republican soldiers, and nearly caused a mutiny among the army of Egypt by so doingI Similarly, immense discontent was excited in the British navy when tho Admiral abolished the pigtail some seventy years ago. So we come down to the present time, when we gratify our individual tastes in the matter of our heads of hair, unless, or convicts, or are put Into a reformatory. when, for the general good, we must yield to sanitary cropping laws.