Trivial Hirsute
by Judy Greenhill
Past Trivial Columns
THE
PEOPLE of old Siam (Thailand) believed that a spirit called Khuan dwelled in the
human head and that it had to be carefully protected from injury of every kind.
Consequently, the act of shaving or cutting the hair was accompanied by many
ceremonies: The Khuan would feel mortally insulted if the head in which it
resided was touched by the hand of a stranger.
Many primitive peoples have regarded the head as peculiarly sacred, and the
special sanctity attributed to it was explained by a belief that the head
contains a spirit which is very sensitive to injury or disrespect.
Beliefs and observances relating to human hair and nails were much the same as
those for the head, and special concerns that attend haircutting and
nail-clipping arise from a fear of offending or injuring the spirit.
The principle of ‘sympathetic magic’ was well-known in folklore: acquiring a
portion of someone’s clothing gives you the ability to work magic on them.
Possessing a part of their body gives you untold power. To the uncivilized mind,
a person’s hair clippings and nail parings were living, vital things, which
would continue to exist long after they were physically severed from one’s body.
And anyone who lost ownership of their clippings was placed in grave danger. The
simplest precaution against this danger was to avoid haircutting and
nail-cutting altogether. The only recourse after that — to preserve the cut hair
and nails from injury and protect them from sorcerers — was to stow them away in
a secret place, where evildoers would never find them.
In The Golden Bough, the 1922 monumental study in comparative folklore, magic
and religion, the author, Sir James George Frazer, talks of the extreme care
that the Incas of Peru took to preserve their hair and nail-parings. After
collecting the hairs that were shorn off or torn out with a comb, the Indians
placed them in holes or niches in the walls; and if they fell out, any other
Indian that saw them picked them up and put them in their places again. When Sir
James enquired of the Indians why they did this, they replied, “All persons who
are born must return to life” [they had no word to express resurrection], “and
the souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies.
We, therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at
a time when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place,
that they may be brought together more conveniently.”
In Swabia, Germany, Sir James learned that clipped hair was deposited in some
spot where neither sun nor moon can shine on it; for example, in the earth or
under a stone. In Danzig, Poland superstitious folk buried their clipped hair in
a bag under the threshold. In faraway Ugi, one of the Solomon Islands, men
buried their hair “lest it should fall into the hands of an enemy, who would
make magic with it and so bring about sickness or calamity.” The Turks, said Sir
James “never throw away the parings of their nails, but carefully stow them in
cracks of the walls or of the boards, in the belief that they will be needed at
the resurrection.”
When the Portuguese first traded on the African coasts they gave the name
Caffres (or pagans) to the Negroes of Guinea, as well as to those of the Cape
and Mozambique. The Caffres in those days were horrified at the thought that
some portion of themselves might fall into the hands of an enemy. Not only did
they bury their cut hair and nails in a secret spot, they cleaned each others
heads of vermin that might contain the blood of their host. An early witness to
the scene reported that, once captured, the vermin were “carefully delivered to
the person to whom they originally appertained, supposing, according to their
theory, that as they derived their support from the blood of the man from whom
they were taken, should they be killed by another, the blood of his neighbor
would be in his possession, thus placing in his hands the power of some
super-human influence.”
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