The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third...

When the head is sacred, the cutting of the hair becomes a difficult and dangerous operation. The hair of kings, priests, chiefs, sorcerers, and other tabooed persons is sometimes kept unshorn. Hair kept unshorn on various occasions, such as a wife's pregnancy, a journey, and war.

When the head was considered so sacred that it might not even be touched without grave offence, it is obvious that the cutting of the hair must have been a delicate and difficult operation. The difficulties and dangers which, on the primitive view, beset the operation are of two kinds. There is first the danger of disturbing the spirit of the head, which may be injured in the process and may revenge itself upon the person who molests him. Secondly, there is the difficulty of disposing of the shorn locks. For the savage believes that the sympathetic connexion which exists between himself and every part of his body continues to exist even after the physical connexion has been broken, and that therefore he will suffer from any harm that may befall the severed parts of his body, such as the clippings of his hair or the parings of his nails. Accordingly he takes care that these severed portions of himself shall not be left in places where they might either be exposed to accidental injury or fall into the hands of malicious persons who might work magic on them to his detriment or death. Such dangers are common to all, but sacred persons have more to fear from them than ordinary people, so the precautions taken by them are proportionately stringent. The simplest way of evading the peril is not to cut the hair at all; and this is the expedient adopted where the risk is thought to be more than usually great.

The Frankish kings were never allowed to crop their hair; from their childhood upwards they had to keep it unshorn.878 To poll the long locks that floated [pg 259] on their shoulders would have been to renounce their right to the throne. When the wicked brothers Clotaire and Childebert coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir, they inveigled into their power their little nephews, the two sons of Clodomir; and having done so, they sent a messenger bearing scissors and a naked sword to the children's grandmother, Queen Clotilde, at Paris. The envoy shewed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her choose whether the children should be shorn and live or remain unshorn and die. The proud queen replied that if her grandchildren were not to come to the throne she would rather see them dead than shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with his own hand.879 The king of Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, must wear his hair long, and so must his grandees.880 The hair of the Aztec priests hung down to their hams, so that the weight of it became very troublesome; for they might never poll it so long as they lived, or at least until they had been relieved of their office on the score of old age. They wore it braided in great tresses, six fingers broad, and tied with cotton.881 A Haida medicine-man may neither clip nor comb his tresses, so they are always long and tangled.882 Among the Hos, a negro tribe of Togoland in West Africa, “there are priests on whose head no razor may come during the whole of their lives.

The god who dwells in the man forbids the cutting of his hair on pain of death. If the hair is at last too long, the owner must pray to his god to allow him at least to clip the tips of it. The hair is in fact conceived as the seat and lodging-place of his god, so that were it shorn the god would lose his abode in the priest.”883 A rain-maker at Boroma, on the lower Zambesi, used to give out that he was [pg 260] possessed by two spirits, one of a lion, the other of a leopard, and in the assemblies of the people he mimicked the roaring of these beasts. In order that their spirits might not leave him, he never cut his hair nor drank alcohol.884 The Masai clan of the El Kiboron, who are believed to possess the art of making rain, may not pluck out their beards, because the loss of their beards would, it is supposed, entail the loss of their rain-making powers. The head chief and the sorcerers of the Masai observe the same rule for a like reason: they think that were they to pull out their beards, their supernatural gifts would desert them.885 In central Borneo the chiefs of a particular Kayan family never allow their hair to be shorn.886 Ancient Indian law required that when a new king had performed the ceremony of consecration he might not shave his hair for a year, though he was allowed to crop it.

According to one account none of his subjects, except a Brahman, might have his hair cut during this period, and even horses were left unclipped.887 Amongst the Alfoors of Celebes the Leleen or priest who looks after the rice-fields may not shear his hair during the time that he exercises his special functions, that is from a month before the rice is sown until it is housed.888 In Usukuma, a district to the south of Lake Victoria Nyanza, the people are forbidden to shave their heads till the corn has been sown.889 Men of the Tsetsaut tribe in British Columbia do not cut their hair, believing that if they cut it they would quickly grow old.890 In Ceram men do not crop their hair: if married men did so, they would lose their wives; if young men did so, they would grow weak and enervated.891 In Timorlaut married men may not poll their hair for the same reason as in Ceram, but widowers and men on a [pg 261] journey may do so after offering a fowl or a pig in sacrifice.892 Malays of the Peninsula are forbidden to clip their hair during their wife's pregnancy and for forty days after the child has been born; and a similar abstention is said to have been formerly incumbent on all persons prosecuting a journey or engaged in war.893 Elsewhere men travelling abroad have been in the habit of leaving their hair unshorn until their return.

The reason for this custom is probably the danger to which, as we have seen, a traveller is believed to be exposed from the magic arts of the strangers amongst whom he sojourns; if they got possession of his shorn hair, they might work his destruction through it. The Egyptians on a journey kept their hair uncut till they returned home.894 “At Tâif when a man returned from a journey his first duty was to visit the Rabba and poll his hair.”895 Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, because his father had vowed to offer it to the River Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea.896 Formerly when Dyak warriors returned with the heads of their enemies, each man cut off a lock from the front of his head and threw it into the river as a mode of ending the taboo to which they had been subjected during the expedition.897 Bechuanas after a battle had their hair shorn by their mothers “in order that new hair might grow, and that all which was old and polluted might disappear and be no more.”898

Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told that “occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of wearing the hair is only adopted by them [pg 262] when they have a solemn vow, as to revenge the death of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never cut off until they have fulfilled their promise.”899 A similar custom was sometimes observed by the ancient Germans; among the Chatti the young warriors never clipped their hair or their beard till they had slain an enemy.900 Six thousand Saxons once swore that they would not poll their hair nor shave their beards until they had taken vengeance on their foes.901 On one occasion a Hawaiian taboo is said to have lasted thirty years, “during which the men were not allowed to trim their beards, etc.”902 While his vow lasted, a Nazarite might not have his hair cut: “All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head.”903 Possibly in this case there was a special objection to touching the tabooed man's head with iron. The Roman priests, as we have seen, were shorn with bronze knives.

The same feeling perhaps gave rise to the European rule that a child's nails should not be pared during the first year, but that if it is absolutely necessary to shorten them they should be bitten off by the mother or nurse.904 For in all parts of the world a young child is believed to be especially exposed to supernatural dangers, and particular precautions are taken to guard it against them; in other words, the child is under a number of taboos, of which the rule just mentioned is one. “Among Hindus the usual custom seems to be that the nails of a first-born child are cut at the age of six months. With other children a year [pg 263] or two is allowed to elapse.”905 The Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians of North-West America do not pare the nails of female children till they are four years of age.906 In Uganda a child's hair may not be cut until the child has received a name. Should any of it be rubbed or plucked off accidentally, it is refastened to the child's head with string or by being knotted to the other hair.907 Amongst the Ewe negroes of the Slave Coast, a mother sometimes vows a sacrifice to the fetish if her infant should live. She then leaves the child unshorn till its fourth or sixth year, when she fulfils her vow and has the child's hair cut by a priest.908 To this day a Syrian mother will sometimes, like Hannah, devote her little one to God. When the child reaches a certain age, its hair is cut and weighed, and money is paid in proportion to the weight.

If the boy thus dedicated is a Moslem, he becomes in time a dervish; if he is a Christian, he becomes a monk.909 Among the Toradjas of central Celebes, when a child's hair is cut to rid it of vermin, some locks are allowed to remain on the crown of the head as a refuge for one of the child's souls. Otherwise the soul would have no place in which to settle, and the child would sicken.910 The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra are much afraid of frightening away the soul (tĕndi) of a child; hence when they cut its hair, they always leave a patch unshorn, to which the soul can retreat before the shears. Usually this lock remains unshorn all through life, or at least up till manhood.911 In some parts of Germany it [pg 264] is thought that if a child's hair is combed in its first year the child will be unlucky;912 or that if a boy's hair is cut before his seventh year he will have no courage.913