Chapter H.B. to Hamet of H by Brewer's Readers Handbook

She had such luxuriant hair that she could stand upright and it covered her to feet like a veil. She was very proud of these flaxen locks; and a slight accident by fire having befallen them, she resolved ever after to play in a wig. She used, therefore, to wind this immense quantity of hair round her head, and put over it a capacious caxon, the consequence of which was that her head bore about the same proportion to the rest of her figure that a whale’s skull does to its body.—Philip Astley (1742–1814).

Mdlle. Bois de Chêne, exhibited in London in 1852-3, had a most profuse head of hair, and also a strong black beard, large whiskers, and thick hair on her arms and legs.

Charles XII.had in his army a woman whose beard was a yard and a half long. She was taken prisoner at the battle of Pultowa, and presented to the czar in 1724.

Johann Mayo, the German painter, had a beard which touched the ground when he stood up.

Master George Killingworthe, in the court of Ivan “the Terrible” of Russia, had a beard five feet two inches long. It was thick, broad, and of a yellowish hue. —Hakluyt (1589).

Hair Cut Off. It was said by the Greeks and Romans that life would not quit the body of a devoted victim till a lock of hair had first been cut fro m the head of the victim and given to Proserpine. Thus, when Alcestis was about to die as a voluntary sacrifice for the life of her husband, Thanatos first cut off a lock of her hair for the queen of the infernals. When Dido slew herself, she could not die till Iris had cut off one of her yellow locks for the same purpose.—Virgil: Æneid, iv. 693–705.

Iris the yellow hair of unhappy Dido, and broke the charm.—Holmes: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

Hair Sign of Rank. The Parthians and ancient Persiars of high rank wore long flowing hair.

Homer speaks of “the long-haired Greeks” by way of honourable distinction. Subsequently the Athenian cavalry wore long hair, and all Lacedæmonian soldiers did the same.

The Gauls considered long hair a notable honour, for which reason Julius Cæsar obliged them to cut off their hair in token of submission.

The Franks and ancient Germans considered long hair a mark of noble birth. Hence Clodion the Frank was called “The Long-Haired,” and his successors are spoken of as less rois chevelures.

The Goths looked on long hair as a mark of honour, and short hair as a mark of thraldom.

For many centuries long hair was in France the distinctive mark of kings and nobles.

Haizum, the horse on which the archangel Gabriel rode when he led a squadron of 3000 angels against the Koreishites in the famous battle of Bedr.

Hakem or Hakeem, chief of the Druses, who resides at Deir-el-Kamar. The first hakem was the third Fatimite caliph, called B’amr-ellah, who professed to be incarnate deity and the last prophet who had personal communication between God and man. He was slain on mount Mokattam, near Cario (Egypt).

Hakem the khalif vanished erst,
In what seemed death to uninstructed eyes,
On red Mokattam’s verge.
   —R. Browning: The Return of the Druses, i.

Hakim (Adonbec el), Saladin in the disguise of a physician. He visited Richard Cœur de Lion in sickness; gave him a medicine in which the “talisman” had been dipped, and the sick king recovered from his fever.—Sir W. Scott: The Talisman (time, Richard I.).

Hakluyt Society (The), “for the publication of rare and valuable voyages, travels, and geographical records.” Instituted in 1846.