Blame It on the Fairies!

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Enjoy your weekend!

How does Shakespeare, fairies and knots in hair have anything to do with each other?

This is a follow-on from my previous post Knots in My Hair! 

Last year, while teaching Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare to my son’s high school class, I came across a funny mention to knots in the hair. It appears in the bizarre speech made by Mercutio. He blames the fairy, Queen Mab, for putting knots in dirty hair and that once combed out, the locks are unlucky.

After years of brushing Amanda’s hair, I wouldn’t say that the locks are unlucky, but that the children are who have to endure the combing of their hair!

Here’s the quote below:

"She [Queen Mab] is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone.......
That plaits the manes of horses in the night
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes."

Wikipedia’s conclusion to this states, “Therefore, the appellation of elf lock or fairy lock could be attributed to any various tangles and knots of unknown origins appearing in the manes of beasts or hair of sleeping children.”

I also found this interesting quote on Wikipedia:

“When young children, especially girls, wake from an evening's slumber with tangles and snarls in their hair, mothers with a tradition of fairy folklore might whisper to their daughters that they had caught fairy locks or elf-locks. Faeries, they say, tangled and knotted the hairs of the sleeping children as they played in and out of their hair at night” (A Child’s Book of Faeries by Tanya Robyn Batt).

I’m so glad I’m from a modern era that understands the need to wash and that I can buy good shampoos and conditioners!