With basen deck’d, should grace the hole.
To guide the wounded, who unlopt
Could walk, on stumps the others hopt;
But, when they ended all their wars,
And men grew out of love with scars,
Their trade decaying, to keep swimming,
They join’d the other trade of trimming;
And to their poles, to publish either,
Thus twisted both their trades together.”
From Brand’s “History of Newcastle,” we find that there was a branch of the fraternity in that place; as at a meeting, 1742, of the barber-chirurgeons, it was ordered, that they should not shave on a Sunday, and “that no brother shave John Robinson, till he pay what he owes to Robert Shafto.” Speaking of the “grosse ignorance of the barbers,” a facetious author says, “This puts me in minde of a barber who, after he had cupped me, (as the physitian had prescribed,) to turn a catarrhe, asked me if I would be sacrificed. Scarified? said I; did the physitian tell you any such thing? No, (quoth he,) but I have sacrificed many, who have been the better for it. Then musing a little with myselfe, I told him, Surely, sir, you mistake yourself—you meane scarified. O, sir, by your favour, (quoth he,) I have ever heard it called sacrificing; and as for scarifying, I never heard of it before. In a word, I could by no means perswade him but that it was the barber’s office to sacrifice men. Since which time I never saw any man in a barber’s hands, but that sacrificing barber came to my mind.”—Wadd’s Nugæ.