Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 1

CXIV INTRODUCTION.
Now, what manner of men were these Gauls, when
men saw them Avho could describe them ?
All the Gauls kept their hair untouched by iron,
and raised it like a mane towards the top of the head.
As to the beard, some shaved it, others wore it of a
moderate length. The chiefs and the nobles shaved
the cheeks and the chin, and let their mustache grow
to all their length. (Histoire de France, page 33.)
Their eyes were blue or sea-green, and shone under
this thick mass of hair, of which the blond hue had been
changed by lime-water to a flaming tint.
Their mustaches were " Eousses," which is the only
word I know wliich will translate ruadh.
The warrior was armed with an enormous sabre on
his left thigh ; he held two darts in his hand, or a long
lance ; he carried a four-cornered shield, painted of
various brilliant colours, with bosses representing birds
or wild animals ; and on his head was a helmet topped
with eagles' wings, floating hair, or horns of wild ani-
mals ; liis clothes were particoloured, and he wore
"brighis;" he was always fighting at home or abroad;
he was a curious inquiring mortal, always asking ques-
tions ; and truly he must have been a formidable
savage that old French Gaul. Men's heads were nailed
at the gates of his towns and his houses, beside tro-
pliies of the chase, much as modern Gael now hang
up the trophies of their destructive skill, in the shape
of pole-cats and crows.
The chiefs kept human heads embalmed and pre-
served, like archives of family prowess, as the Dyaks
of Borneo and the New Zealandere still do, or did very
lately. Tlie father had the power of life and death over
liis wife and children, and exercised it too by burning
the guilty wife ; and, though some chiefs had several
wives, and there are some scandalous stories of the