Analysis: some of the hairy rituals included Clipping Thursday, burning hair and avoiding low-flying birds
By Clodagh Tait, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick
Human hair has significant symbolic significance in many cultures. Styles and hues may be associated with identification with a particular subculture or a religious or political group, or restricted to men or women, reflecting and reinforcing prejudices about their nature or proper roles.
Certain types of hair may be interpreted as 'inappropriate' in certain contexts or even uncanny. For example, in 19th-century Ireland people (especially women) with red hair might find their movements circumscribed by belief they could bring ill-luck to others.
No matter what the colour or arrangement of one’s hair may signify, the substance of the hair itself may be believed to have special properties and to be vulnerable to supernatural forces. Many beliefs and customs regarding hair are recorded in the National Folklore Collection, which allows us glimpses of communities’ anxieties about keeping hair, bodies and souls healthy.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, comedian Bernard O'Shea on the joys of having red hair
Irish people understood that hair could be affected by contact with the supernatural. Encounters with ghosts or fairies or improper behaviour in uncanny places might make hair fall out or go white. It was said that when a Waterford man and his servant used stones from an old chapel to make a cowshed, the man woke next day with pains in his bones and the boy was ‘comh maol le plaosg as an uaigh’, as bald as a skull out of a grave. Cassie Doherty of Culdaff, Co. Donegal, unadvisedly picked bluebells on a fairy hill and all her hair fell out: ‘It grew again, but it was never the same colour afterwards’.
Human hair could have magical properties and might be used in charms for healing or luck. Tradition in Laois stated that ‘the hair of a posthumous child boiled in milk and strained, cures the whooping cough’. Máire Ní Giobúin of Clifton, Co. Galway, told of 'Ribhe an Mamó', the granny’s rib (of hair). A girl suffering from whooping-cough could be cured by wrapping a strand of her grandmother’s hair around her neck. In Mayo a women’s wedding dress would be made by her friends, and the makers would put pieces of their own hair in the seams to ensure they would soon be married too.
The greatest concentration of statements about hair in the folklore collections concern the best time to cut hair, and what to do with hair once it had been cut. In many places in Munster, Monday was considered an unlucky day for cutting hair, or making other cuts, such as in tailoring cloth, slaughtering animals or opening graves.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's History Show, Prof Linda Connolly on how forced hair cutting was used against women during the War of Independence
Throughout much of Ireland, hair was not cut during Lent. In Co. Cavan, every body would get their hair cut on Shrove Tuesday "because it is not lucky to get it cut in Lent. They say that the hair would fall off their heads if they got it cut in Lent’. In Leitrim, Sligo and Mayo, refraining from cutting hair and nails during Lent was seen as a form of penance.
In these counties, and elsewhere in the north-west of the country, hair and nail-clipping should resume on the Thursday before Easter, known as ‘Clipping’ or ‘Trimming’ Thursday. Cutting hair on that day, especially children’s hair, would ‘make it grow strong’. Religious explanations might be offered: that Mary had torn her hair thinking of the forthcoming death of Jesus or that Jesus had had his beard and nails cut before being crucified.
Historians, archaeologists and folklorists are increasingly interested in the motives behind ‘ritual deposits’, where items like shoes, animal remains, and ‘witch’ bottles are found intentionally concealed in the fabric of buildings. Concealment often occurred in order to protect the inhabitants and the profit of the household.
From Universal Comedy, Dylan Moran on Irish hair
In Ireland the reasons for the concealment of hair in walls and ditches are well explained in the folklore collections, generally along the lines of this Roscommon example: ‘when a person cuts his hair he should not burn it or he will have to pick it out of the fire on the last day’ (the Day of Judgement). The children of Stonetown, Co. Louth were informed: ‘Hair should never be burned because being part of the human body it must belong to the body on the last day. Hair should be carefully "rolled up" ‒ preferably in a piece of paper ‒ and well hidden in a ditch or wall, so that it may be easily collected on the Last Day’.
In Limerick, by contrast, burning hair was recommended alongside hiding it because ‘on the Last Day, a person must go round the world and gather up every rib of hair he or she ever lost’. As the Kilgarvan, Co Kerry, folklore collector John O'Donoghue commented, 'won't the bald fellows have great odds on the poets!’
From RTÉ Culture, filmmaker Mia Mullarkey looks behind the stills at Crown, a major new photographic exhibition about traveller women's relationship with their hair
The 19th-century antiquarian, William Henderson, noted Irish concerns that birds might carry hair away, ‘causing the owner's head to ache all the time the bird was busy working the hair into its nest’. In 1930s Louth, it was believed that if birds used human hair in their nests, the owner would have a headache until the fledglings hatched, or possibly even ‘till the end of his days’, a fear also attested to in Limerick.
Swallows in particular might be after hair. In the 1860s, Richard Whately, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, recorded the belief that ‘there is a certain hair on every one's head, which if a swallow can pick off, the man is doomed to eternal perdition’. Watch out for low-flying swallows: they may be after your hair ‒ or worse, your soul.
Dr Clodagh Tait is a lecturer in the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. She is joint editor of Irish Historical Studies. She is a former Irish Research Council awardee.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
