The common word for hair in Modern Irish is gruaig, and contemporary hair-styles are expressed using phrases built around this word. So síntí gruaige are ‘hair extensions’, gruaig spíceach is ‘spiked hair’ and gruaig shuagánach refers to ‘dreadlocks’ (from suagán ‘a rope made of straw’). Actually, the word gruaig appears relatively late in Irish sources. Attested in post Reformation translations of the Bible and Tadhg Ó Cianáin’s seventeenth-century account of the ‘Flight of the Earls’, it seems to have come to the fore well into the Early Modern period. Before then, hair was folt, a word that is still used, primarily, to refer to the hair on your head.
Subjects of late medieval praise poems expected their hair to be singled out for special attention and these descriptions not only give an indication of late medieval hair-styles, but also show creative uses of words for everyday things. Ringleted hair was described as failgech, an adjective deriving from fail ‘a ring’; the term used for the type of boat known as a curach ‘coracle’ seems to be used also for a top-knot; and clad ‘a ditch’ serves to denote a parting in hair. Mention of a ‘cowlick’ survives in ‘The cattle-raid of Cooley’.
Here a man is described as having fine, fair, close-cut hair ‘as if a cow had licked it’ (mar bó ataslilad). References to long, wavy and fair hair predominate in praise poetry, in depictions of men as well as women, and the prevalence of long hair is also suggested in surviving medieval legal terminology. Punishable offences included foltgabál, seizing by the hair, and foltgal, pulling an opponent’s hair (in a fight).
In other contexts, too, Irish hair was a cause for legal pronouncement. A statute of 1297 proscribed the English from following the practice of Irishmen in having their heads half shaven with long hair tied up behind. This style was known in Irish as the cúlán. Over two centuries later, in 1537, a statute of Henry VIII forbade the English from copying the Irish fashion called the glib. This style seems to be portrayed in a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, dating from 1521, and was described by Edmund Spenser in his A view of the present state of Ireland from 1596 as a ‘thick curled bush of hair, hanging down over their eyes’.
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In the broader sense, the glib represents more than hair; it marks a political and cultural boundary between Irish fashion and English conformity in the early modern period. The prohibition of copying the glib by Henry VIII’s regime highlights how style could become a matter of sovereignty, not just aesthetics. Simultaneously, the persistence of terms like folt alongside gruaig demonstrates the linguistic shifts accompanying stylistic change over centuries. This intertwining of hair, law, and language offers a vivid facet of Ireland’s social history, where a strand of hair could reflect identity, status, and political sentiment.
- Grove of terms: gruaig, folt, failgech, cúlán, glib
- Legal pronouncements tied to hair practices (1297, 1537)
- Descriptions of hair in praise poetry and legal texts
Today, the language of hair retains echoes of those centuries, even as styles evolve from traditional long, flowing strands to modern, diverse interpretations. The historical arc-from folt to gruaig, from cúlán to glib-offers a compact lens on Irish cultural memory and linguistic resilience, embedded in daily appearances and ceremonial occasions alike.