Yellow Hair.
Itappears that the women of old Rome were fond ofyellow hair, and it is found that they were accustomed to turn it of this color by saffron, and by long sitting, daily, in the sun; others, instead of saffron, sometimes used medicated sulphur.
This art of changing their hair with saffron, was calledcrocuphantea. Tertullian, observing this artifice of the women of his time, told them that they were ashamed of their country, and would be Gaulish or Germanic women, so much did they disguise themselves.St.Cyprian andSt.Jerome, with Tertullian, pronounced the seeking by art to procure red-tinted hair, as presaging to the person who sought it, the fire and red flames of hell.
Galen affirms that in his time numbers of women died with the headache; neither could there any remedy be applied to this evil, because they stood a long time bareheaded in the sun, to render their hair yellow; and he reports that for the same cause some of them lost their hair and became bald, and were reduced to Ovid’s remedy for that defect, either to borrow other women’s hair, or to ransack the graves of the dead for a dishonest supply.
Tertullian, speaking on this subject, says, that women were punished for this their folly, for that by reason of their long stay in the sun, their heads were often most grievously attacked with the headache; and it seems, when this vanity was grown habitual to them, it degenerated into dotage; for Lucian very satirically derides an old woman, who, notwithstanding she was seventy years of age, yet would she have her hair of a yellow tincture; he exhorts her to desist from her folly; for though she could color her silver hair, yet she could not recall her youth!
The Venetian women, even at this day, and the Paduan, and those of Verona, and other parts of Italy, practise the same vanity, and receive the same recompense for their affectation; there being in all these cities open and manifest examples of those who have undergone a kind of martyrdom to render their hair yellow.
Schenekins relates the history of a certain noble gentlewoman, about sixteen or seventeen years of age, who would expose her bare head to the fervent heat of the sun daily, for some hours, that she might obtain long and yellow hair, by anointing it with a certain unguent; and although she obtained the effect she desired, yet she consequently procured to herself a violent headache, and bled every day abundantly through the nose.
Another maiden, also, by using this same art, became almost blind with sore eyes. Painting the hair blue or red, has been anciently noted by many poets, who took occasion to describe it, as may be seen in Pliny and Ovid.
This yellow hair was esteemed so great a rarity, that oftentimes, also, the natural crop was shaven off, and a yellow periwig clapped on instead; this Martial happily ridicules:
The golden hair that Galla wears,Is hers—who would have thought it?She swears ’tis hers—and true she swears,For I—know where she bought it.
The golden hair that Galla wears,Is hers—who would have thought it?She swears ’tis hers—and true she swears,For I—know where she bought it.
The golden hair that Galla wears,
Is hers—who would have thought it?
She swears ’tis hers—and true she swears,
For I—know where she bought it.
This, indeed, is carried to a great extent in the Low Countries, where the Jewish women, who are all black-haired by nature, wear great yellow periwigs instead,—golden-haired Dutch Venuses.