What should this avail him? he asks; and so let us all be good friends,
bearded and unbearded.[166]
[166] _The Treatise answerynge the boke of Berdes, Compyled by
Collyn Clowte, dedicated to Barnarde, Barber, dwellyng
in Banbury_: "Here foloweth a treatyse made, Answerynge
the treatyse of doctor Borde upon Berdes."--Appended to
reprint of Andrew Borde's _Introduction of Knowledge_,
edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, for the Early English Text
Society, 1870--see pp. 314, 315.
But Andrew Borde, if he did ever write a tract against beards, must have
formerly held a different opinion on the subject, for in his _Breviary
of Health_, first printed in 1546, he says: "The face may have many
impediments. The first impediment is to see a man having no beard, and a
woman to have a beard." It was long a popular notion that the few hairs
which are sometimes seen on the chins of very old women signified that
they were in league with the arch-enemy of mankind--in plain English,
that they were witches. The celebrated Three Witches who figure in
_Macbeth_, "and palter with him in a double sense," had evidently this
distinguishing mark, for says Banquo to the "weird sisters" (Act i, sc.
2):
You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
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