Some circular, some oval in translation;
Some perpendicular in longitude;
Some like a thicket for their crassitude;
That heights, depths, breadths, triform, square, oval, round,
And rules geometrical in Beards are found."
Lord Mayor of York escorting Princess Margaret through York in 1503. Shows the Beard of the Lord Mayor.
Some curious lines appear in "Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume," edited by Frederick W. Fairholt, F.S.A., printed for the Percy Society, 1849. The piece which is entitled "The Ballad of the Beard," is reprinted from a collection of poems, entitled "Le Prince d'Amour," 1660, but it is evidently a production of the time of Charles I., if not earlier. "The varied form of the beard," says Fairholt, "which characterised the profession of each wearer, is amusingly descanted on, and is a curious fact in the chronicle of male fashions, during the first half of the seventeenth century." Taylor, the Water Poet, has alluded to the custom at some length; and other writers of the day have so frequently mentioned the same thing, as to furnish materials for a curious (privately-printed) pamphlet, by J. A. Repton, F.S.A., on the various forms of the beard and mustachio. The beard, like "the Roman T," mentioned in the following ballad, is exhibited in our cut—Fig. 1—from a portrait of G. Raigersperg, 1649, in Mr Repton's book.
Beards in the Olden Time