The philosophy of beards : a lecture : physiological, artistic & historical / by T.S. Gowing.
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i Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons brought their Beards with them which they preferred of the forked shape, and this again might he either two-pronged, or three-pronged, or pluto- nian and neptunian. St. Augustine is figured with his Beard on his appear- ance to convert these Islands in the sixth century. His followers must soon have shaved, because a writer of the seventh century, complains that " the Clergy had grown so corrupt as to be distinguished from the Laity less by their actions than by their want of Beards." The illus- trious Alfred was so careful of the Beards of his subjects, that he inflicted the then heavy fine of twenty shillings on any one maliciously injuring the Beard of another. The Danes who invaded this country were Bearded. Eosbrooke says, some of them wore Beards with six forks, and history- mentions Sueno the fork-beard.* During this period, the French monarchy was growing. Its first kings held the Beard as sacred, and ornamented * Many princes have bome the title of Bearded—as the Greek Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, Count Godfrey, the Emperor Barbarossa, and Eberhard Duke of Wirtemberg in the reign of Maximilian, whose wisdom might truly be said to have grown with his Beard, and on whom the following verse was made:— " Hie situs est cui harha dedit cognomina Princeps, Princeps Teutonici gloria magna soli." (Here is a Prince whose Beard gave his surname, A Prince the glory of the land Almayne.)