“I suspected,” said Corsina, “that Cherry is not the brother of Fairstar, for he has neither a star nor collar of gold as Fairstar and her brothers have.” “That’s true,” rejoined her husband; “but jewels fall out of his hair, as well as out of the others.”—Princess Fairstar.
Hair. Mrs. Astley, an actress of the last century, wife of “Old Astley,” could stand up and cover her feet with her flaxen hair.
She had such luxuriant hair that she could stand upright and it covered her to her feet like a veil. She was very proud of these flaxen locks; and a slight accident by fire having befallen them, she resolved ever after to play in a wig. She used, therefore, to wind this immense quantity of hair round her head, and put over it a capacious caxon, the consequence of which was that her head bore about the same proportion to the rest of her figure that a whale’s skull does to its body.—Philip Astley (1742-1814).
Hair. Mdlle. Bois de Chêne, exhibited in London in 1852-3, had a most profuse head of hair, and also a strong black beard, large whiskers, and thick hair on her arms and legs.
Charles XII. had in his army a woman whose beard was a yard and a half long. She was taken prisoner at the battle of Pultowa, and presented to the Czar in 1724.
Johann Mayo, the German painter, had a beard which touched the ground when he stood up.
Master George Killingworthe, in the court of Ivan “the Terrible” of Russia, had a beard five feet two inches long. It was thick, broad, and of a yellowish hue.—Hakluyt (1589).
Hair Cut Off. It was said by the Greeks and Romans that life would not quit the body of a devoted victim till a lock of hair had first been cut from the head of the victim and given to Proserpine. Thus, when Alcestis was about to die as a voluntary sacrifice for the life of her husband, Than´atos first cut off a lock of her hair for the queen of the infernals. When Dido immolated herself, she could not die till Iris had cut off one of her yellow locks for the same purpose.—Virgil, Æneid, iv. 693-705.
Iris cut the yellow hair of unhappy Dido, and broke the charm.—O. W. Holmes, Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
Hair, Sign of Rank.