To poll the long locks that
floated on their shoulders would have been to renounce their right
to the throne. When the wicked brothers Clotaire and Childebert
coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir, they inveigled
into their power their little nephews, the two sons of Clodomir; and
having done so, they sent a messenger bearing scissors and a naked
sword to the children's grandmother, Queen Clotilde, at Paris. The
envoy showed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her
choose whether the children should be shorn and live or remain
unshorn and die. The proud queen replied that if her grandchildren
were not to come to the throne she would rather see them dead than
shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with
his own hand. The king of Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, must
wear his hair long, and so must his grandees. Among the Hos, a negro
tribe of West Africa, "there are priests on whose head no razor may
come during the whole of their lives. The god who dwells in the man
forbids the cutting of his hair on pain of death.
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