Re: Lambe Baal
Classic English Literature and European Arts is full of passionate admiration and devotion to female long hair. Unfortunately, I cannot post some of the paintings from Renaissance Period, they're not very family friendly as most people can obviously guess. But moving, in Ancient Greek culture, long hair for women symbolised nobility, femininity, chastity, sexuality and sin, and the same attitude could also be found in present day Subcontinent. The idea of short hair in Western societies became a trend after the First World War, with rise of women's movement, short hair became an expression of power, modernity and rebellion.
Plenty of English writers and poets have praised long hair in their work. Just to highlight few of the examples:
Her flowing locks, the raven’s wing, Adown her neck and bosom hing; How sweet unto that breast to cling, And round that neck entwine her! * From *Her Flowing Locks by Robert Burns
She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song,
Till stars grew out of the air.
From The Cap and Bells by William Butler Yeats
Nay but you, who do not love her, Is she not as pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught – speak truth – above her?
Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
And this last fairest tress of all,
So fair, see, ere I let it fall!
Because, you spend your lives in praising;
To praise, you search the wide world over;
So why not witness, calmly gazing,
If earth holds aught – speak truth – above her?
Above this tress, and this I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!
From Song by Robert Browning
Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair -
A tress of golden hair,
A drowned maiden’s hair
Above the nets at sea?
From The Sands of Dee by Charles Kingsley
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around, And strangled her.
From Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning
O Helen fair, beyond compare! I’ll make a garland o’ thy hair,
Shall bind my heart for evermair,
Until the day I die!
From* Helen of Kirconnell*
You also have Sir Walter Scot musing over his lover's hair in To a Lock of Hair - ""Thy hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright / As in that well-remember'd night / When first thy mystic braid was wove, / And first my Agnes whisper'd love.". From Shakespear, to Lord Byron, Keats and AS Bayatt have romanced long hair in their best work.
Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing.
So Industrial revolution enbded romanticism of long hair in west, but still we see people like Michael Jackson with long hair. There might be areas in west, which are not affected by revolution. Areas, where people might be near to nature. Do ladies in such areas still follow this love for long hair.
