"Pope's head" = 'large or wooly head of hair'

[Joel S. Berson]

The first Afro?

While recovering "calabooza" from "Omoo" (1847),
I discovered that Jesse's minions had not picked
up a quotation that I had sent him for
"Pope's-head" = 'a wooly head of hair', a new
sense for the OED.  Google Books now reveals
several quotations.  (4) and (7) below are
quotations with the concrete meaning, as
distinguished from metaphoric reference to the brush.

(1)  1740, possible association of "Pope's-Head
Alley" with hair? -- "Mr. Barlow kept Shop some
Years ago in Pope's-Head Alley in Cornbill, and
then esteemed a considerable Peruke-maker and
Hair Merchant."  "The Political State of Great
Britain, vol. 60 (Feb. 1740), p. 89.

(2)  1769, metaphoric -- "She often spends the
best part of a day in getting her hair French'd,
(as they call it) which absolutely deforms her ;
for what, with the prodigious quantity of false
hair, and wool clapt in to sill the curls, her
head resembles a mop, or a pope's head, to brush
down cobwebs".  "Batchelor: or Speculations of
Jeoffry Wagstaffe", Dublin, 1769, vol. 1, p. 24.

(3)  1844, metaphoric again -- "many a poll of
sun-burnt hair, in colour and consistency
resembling the housemaid's cobweb broom which is
quaintly denominated ' the Pope's head.' "  W.
Cornwallis Harris, "The highlands of Æthiopia
...", London: Longman et al., 1844, vol. 1, p. 348.

(4)  1847, concrete -- "Upon another island of
the same group [the Tonga Islands], where it is
customary to bestow no small pains in dressing
the hair--frizzing it out by a curious process
into an enormous pope's-head---an old
man-of-war's-man fills the post of barber to the
king."  Herman Melville, Omoo – A Narrative of
Adventures in the South Seas, Evanston and
Chicago:  Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1968, p. 247.

(5)  1850, metaphoric -- "No turban is worn ; but
frequently the head is ornamented with a great
profusion of beads, and the hair combed out at
full length, resembling very strongly a mop, or
what is sometimes called a pope's head, such as
chambermaids use for brushing down cobwebs."  J.
Ross Browne, "Etchings of a whaling cruise: with
notes of a sojourn on the Island of Zanzibar",
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850, p. 397.

(6)  1852, metaphoric -- "You are not going to
send the boy to school with this ridiculous head
of hair; why, his schoolfellows will use him for
a pope's head."  Marmion Wilard Savage, "Reuben
Medlicott; or, The Coming Man", New-York: D. Appleton, 1852, p. 22.

(7)  1869, concrete -- "Some women and many of
the children had erect hair, a " Pope's head," a
fluffy gloria standing out eight inches, like the
"mop" of a Somal, or a Papuan negro."  Richard F.
Burton. "Explorations of the highlands of the
Brazil ...", London: Tinsley Brothers, 1869, vol. 2, p. 358.

(8)  1888, attributive -- "Nature dictated it,
just as the color of hair of the first man named
" Rufus," "the red-headed." Mike was in perpetual
terror, for "each particular hair stood on end.
... Some of the "Street gods" who had seen
cobwebs .. had dubbed the "gentleman-usher"
"Pope's head Mike;""  Thomas M. Norwood,
"Plutocracy: or, American white slavery; a
politico-social novel", New York: Metropolitan Pub. Co., 1888, p. 94.

1879, "Pope's head-policeman" -- "It must have
caused the face of the Pope's head-policeman ­
who doubtless read the letter ­ to relax into a
grim smile."  The Musical Times, June 1, 1879 (vol. 20), p. 302, col. 2.

There are also a "Pope's head cactus" and a
"Pope's head pudding", combinations not in the OED.

Joel

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