You Feel So Mortal: Essays on the Body by Peggy Shinner

Author:Peggy Shinner [Shinner, Peggy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2014-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Berenice’s Hair

The Tantrics said the forces of creation and destruction lay in the binding and unbinding of a woman’s hair. The Syrians said a woman who combed her hair on the Eve of Holy Sunday consorted with werewolves. The Slavs said the vili, or female spirits, hid in the water and made rain by combing their hair. The Scots said women should refrain from combing their hair at night when their brothers were at sea, because that could raise a storm and sink the boats. In Laos, the wife of an elephant hunter was forbidden to cut her hair in order not to sever the ropes restraining the elephant. The Navajo prohibited a woman from washing her hair while her husband was out hunting lest he come home empty-handed. The Punjabi said a woman should not wash her hair on Thursday or Sunday, because “the house would lose money and people would tell us lies.” The Romans said that strands of a woman’s hair made fine strings for bows against the Gauls. Berenice, wife of Egyptian king Ptolemy III, made an offering of her hair to Aphrodite, for her husband’s safe return from war. Upon his homecoming, her hair appeared in the sky as the constellation Coma Berenice, Berenice’s Hair. One of the stars is named Al Ḍafīrah, “the curl.”

. . .

The Wafiomi said a woman must not cut her hair for one year after her first menstruation. Before marriage, a Hopi woman wore a whorled, squash-blossom hairstyle resembling butterfly wings on either side of her head. After marriage, she braided her hair in a single plait. The Spartans said that before the wedding a bride must cut her hair short, wear the cloak and sandals of a man, and lie alone on a pallet in the dark. The Romans parted a bride’s hair with a hasta recurva, or bent spear hook, and this was called “combing the hair of the virgin.” The Turks said a bride should weave her hair into twenty to thirty braids twined with silver tinsel and attach a blue bead at the end of one to ward off the evil eye. “The hairs are Cupid’s nets, to catch all comers,” Robert Burton noted in The Anatomy of Melancholy. The Ilocano said a pregnant woman should refrain from leaving the house at night with her hair let down so as not to give birth to a snake. The Hindus said a man should part the hair of his pregnant wife three times from front to back to ensure the proper development of the embryo. In Oldenburg, women wrapped clippings of their hair and nails in a cloth and placed the cloth beneath a tree three days before the new moon as a cure for infertility. In Punjab, a woman who washed her hair and threw the dirty water over an infant in order to kill him and capture his spirit for her womb was known as gille val, a wet hair. Egyptian women buried a lock of their hair with their deceased husband as a charm of protection in the afterlife.

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