(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 a