"
[Illustration: Lord Mayor of York escorting Princess Margaret through
York in 1503. Shows the Beard of the Lord Mayor.]
Some curious lines appear in "Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume,"
edited by Frederick W. Fairholt, F.S.A., printed for the Percy Society,
1849. The piece which is entitled "The Ballad of the Beard," is
reprinted from a collection of poems, entitled "Le Prince d'Amour,"
1660, but it is evidently a production of the time of Charles I., if not
earlier. "The varied form of the beard," says Fairholt, "which
characterised the profession of each wearer, is amusingly descanted on,
and is a curious fact in the chronicle of male fashions, during the
first half of the seventeenth century." Taylor, the Water Poet, has
alluded to the custom at some length; and other writers of the day have
so frequently mentioned the same thing, as to furnish materials for a
curious (privately-printed) pamphlet, by J.A. Repton, F.S.A., on the
various forms of the beard and mustachio. The beard, like "the Roman T,"
mentioned in the following ballad, is exhibited in our cut--Fig.
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