But, syr, I praye you, yf you tell can, Declare to me, when God made man, (I meane by our forefather Adam) Whyther he had a berde than; And yf he had, who dyd hym shave, Syth that a barber he coulde not have. Well, then, ye prove hym there a knave, Bicause his berde he dyd so save: I fere it not. * * * * * Sampson, with many thousandes more Of auncient phylosophers (!), full great store, Wolde not be shaven, to dye therefore; Why shulde you, then, repyne so sore? Admit that men doth imytate Thynges of antyquite, and noble state, Such counterfeat thinges oftymes do mytygate Moche ernest yre and debate: I fere it not. Therefore, to cease, I thinke be best; For berdyd men wolde lyve in rest. You prove yourselfe a homly gest, So folysshely to rayle and jest; For if I wolde go make in ryme, How new shavyd men loke lyke scraped swyne, And so rayle forth, from tyme to tyme, A knavysshe laude then shulde be myne: I fere it not. What should this avail him? he asks; and so let us all be good friends, bearded and unbearded.[166] [166] _The Treatise answerynge the boke of Berdes, Compyled by Collyn Clowte, dedicated to Barnarde, Barber, dwellyng in Banbury_: "Here foloweth a treatyse made, Answerynge the treatyse of doctor Borde upon Berdes."--Appended to reprint of Andrew Borde's _Introduction of Knowledge_, edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society, 1870--see pp. 314, 315. But Andrew Borde, if he did ever write a tract against beards, must have formerly held a different opinion on the subject, for in his _Breviary of Health_, first printed in 1546, he says: "The face may have many impediments. The first impediment is to see a man having no beard, and a woman to have a beard." It was long a popular notion that the few hairs which are sometimes seen on the chins of very old women signified that they were in league with the arch-enemy of mankind--in plain English, that they were witches. The celebrated Three Witches who figure in _Macbeth_, "and palter with him in a double sense," had evidently this distinguishing mark, for says Banquo to the "weird sisters" (Act i, sc. 2): You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so. And in the ever-memorable scene in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, when Jack Falstaff, disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, is escaping from Ford's house, he is cuffed and mauled by Ford, who exclaims, "Hang her, witch!" on which the honest Cambrian Sir Hugh Evans sapiently remarks: "Py yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a 'oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under her muffler!" (Act iv, sc. 2.)