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

[Laurence Horn]

Or the Catholic version of a Jewfro?

--LH, who used to have one of the latter.


On Sep 15, 2011, at 2:08 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> 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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