Hair on Fire, Part 2

when hair burns. So in the last episode, we talked about the distinctive and sometimes overpowering smell of burning hair, which seems to be mostly due to the presence of sulfur compounds that are formed and released when hair burns, a chief one being sulfur dioxide, which is released when the keratin of hair is decomposed by fire. Sulfur dioxide is also a major part of the characteristic smell of

a burning matchhead. We also ended up talking about a couple of studies of hair catching on fire in space ships, specifically addressing the question of whether human hair is a fire hazard in environments with higher levels of oxygen than Earth's atmosphere, and the answer seems to be yes. In oxygen rich environments where things catch fire more easily because there's more oxygen, human hair can be a potent fuel

source and fire can spread quickly over it. So these papers ended up talking about strategies to mitigate that risk in future spacecraft and space habitation environments that might be using elevated levels of oxygen. And then finally we talked about stories of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century English pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, who famously was said to put burning slow matches under his hat, and he's drawn with like these slow matches and it kind

of fuses, sticking out alongside his hair. In some evolved versions of this legend, maybe he's said to have the burning slow matches in his hair or in his beard, And we discussed where these stories come from, how historically plausible they are, including considerations of the danger of catching one's own hair or beard on fire in general.

My impression here may have been formed by seeing older illustrations of this, or like cartoons from the period that show people with elaborate hair wigs and headdresses catching on fire due to a candle placed underneath them or something. Ultimately, I found less about this than I expected to, and I can't tell if it was actually any more common than regular instances of people catching their hair on fire,

which of course does happen occasionally here and there. But just to get into what it did come across, I found mentioned in a post on the British Library's Untold Lives blog, and I may have mentioned this on the show before, but generally I think the British Libraries have some great blogs and archives about history and some interesting

documents in their collections. This post was by Julia Armfield from August twenty thirteen, and it's a short post concerning how the elaborate wigs that had been so popular among the wealthy during the Georgian era, which was about seventeen fourteen to eighteen thirty seven, these elaborate wigs began to fall out of fashion later on in that period and going into the Victiman period, they sort of fill out out of fashion after the French Revolution and then especially

after the eighteen thirties. According to the author, this was in part because of changing social perceptions about wigs that they came to be seen not just as fashion, but in some cases as a kind of undesirable show of vanity or as a deception. Which is funny because I realized that even today there are like changes in how you know, people are always like trying to affect their

outward appearance. There's like, you know, there's hair care and cosmetics and stuff like that in every era, and for some reason, you can look at someone trying to shape their appearance in a certain way and just say, well, that's just fashion, but with just a different kind of emotional spin on it. You start to think of it as they're trying to look unreal. They're trying to look away. They're not supposed to. Now it's a deception.

one reason for the popularity of wigs. Is that, well, maybe the lice will get into the wig instead of getting into your actual hair if you can cut your hair short or shave it, and then you know, they just get into the wig instead, But then you've got lice in your wig. I've read in separate places about mitigation strategies for this, including historical trends in wigs that would include built in lice or flea traps that would be some kind of container with like bait hidden inside

the hair. But also this British Library post mentions that Georgian wigs would be flammable due to the presence of palmades made in large part out of animal fats such

as hogs lard or mutton renderings. Of course, animal fat can be quite combustible, and so if you're using that as the base of a kind of hair styling material or palmade that we would think of today to hold the wig, and in its styling shape, you can imagine there would be trouble, like you know, combine wigs gelled up with animal fat and the use of candles as a primary light source, and it just seems like it

would be a recipe for wig fires. But I wasn't able to turn up a lot about this in like history books or academic articles about the history of wigs.

I did find another blog post. This one was on a history blog called all Things Georgian by an author named Sarah Murden that managed to dig up a handful of eighteenth century newspaper reports from England and Scotland of young women's wigs or headdresses catching on fire from a candle or in one case I think, from a fireplace, and in a couple of cases leading to their deaths. But again I did not find convincing evidence that this

was actually a like really common currents or anything. So, you know, with candles everywhere and large smeared masses of hair bobbing around all over the place, it does seem plausible that this would happen a lot, But apart from a few reports here and there. I'm not sure it actually did. Historians of wigs and hair, if you're aware of something I'm not right in.

I don't know, we think of them as the way we might think of our own children if they're in the presence of an open flame.

bring to mind. But generally I was thinking, Okay, hair can burn, and it's reasonable to assume that every fire bearing culture would have some experience with this that they might further craft into various myths and legends, jokes, you know, terms of phrase and so forth. Right, I mean, you have fire, hair can catch on fire. Maybe it doesn't happen that often, but if it happens once, it's memorable.

And therefore you might have some traditions. You might have some magical creatures, You might have some gods and goddesses that have flaming hair. And while this is true, we do have some examples to discuss, we didn't. I wasn't able to find as many examples as I was expecting. I was expecting it to be just a long list of creatures and entities, but there's actually a lot of like bleed over into other categories that makes it difficult.

You know, like just characters with red hair or characters who have some sort of a halo or an ara. But then it's kind of left to exactly what languages used as to whether you would call this flaming hair.

actually a fire related deity in Greek mythology. This was just a visual choice by Disney that actually, I guess the exact alchemy of this is they're they're dragging in elements often associated generally with the Christian devil, you know, fire and so forth, and creating this kind of like Haiti Satan combo for their their main villain and making like a very distinct visual choice on how to present him.

all these different belief systems. But yeah, I found that you have certainly have no shortage of things like fire elementals in modern fiction and sci fi and fantasy, all sorts of creatures and spirits with flaming hair and flaming beards, but they're just these seem there's just seemed to be less of them when you actually look into folklore and mythology and legend.

these things called the Firelings. And I believe these pop up in some of the like Dark Crystal Expanded Universe material, I guess, you know, in comic books and so forth. And I think maybe they were going to be a part of a possible film project that never came to fruition. But these are supposed to be direct descendants of Gelfling exiles who live in the superheated core of the planet Thraw, And they're depicted as Gelfling like beings, but they have

hair of fire. And even then, I found like a couple of different images that kind of portray different ideas of this. Like in one of them, you can see the Gelfling, or in this case, the filing has hair that is literal fire, and the others they just look like fiery, golden beings. And it's kind of left up to your interpretation if their hair is just actual physical hair, or if it is like the the chemical emergence, you know, this this pyrotechnic experience of fire. I don't know.

but oriented in the opposite direction. Often. Yeah, I don't know, and that's not a fully formed thought, but something almost makes me think that it's something about like modern drawing and animation traditions that give rise to seeing these things as visually similar and then inviting the mind to make a connection where it's not just that hair looks like fire, but you have a character with fire fore hair.

enhance comparisons that would be made in general, because of course there are always going to be comparisons made between you know, reddish hair and fire. You can factor in things like you know, length and texture as well. But we you know, at the end of the day, we do have at least a few examples of creatures and entities that I feel like are close enough that we can say, okay, we can quibble about the details, but these creatures kind of sound like they have fire for hair.

And in this article, Harris describes this entity as entailing aspects of what we might think of as a werewolf, you know, in Western folklore especially as well as sightings of balls or wheels of fire. So that's another thing I saw several examples of. It's like you have sort of like fire entities, kind of will of the wisp sort of entities, and it depends on how far you push that from being like a mere strange light to being a flaming entity or a flaming head or something

with physiology to it. Now, another one that I've run across was the Kurapura. I've seen descriptions of this spirit from Tupequar knee traditions of Brazil, entailing a beard of fire, though Carol Rose doesn't mention this. In her entry on the creature in the book Spirits, Fairies, Leprechaus and Goblins and Encyclopedia, she describes it as a bright, red faced gnome with cloven hoofs, as well as a shaggy creature with backward turned feet. It's kind of a forest guardian

of game. Then there's also an Afro Brazilian tradition of the Kurapira that casts everything more as a will of the wisp that leads people off track in the forest, but maybe sort of bribe with offerings. But I've seen some more recent articles that mention either red hair or

hair of fire. So I can't completely dispute that idea, but again, it seems like we often run into this territory of there's probably some linguistic drift in some of these descriptions, you know, especially when you're dealing with multiple translations, So hard for me to tell any way exactly like what the tradition actually is. Are we dealing with creatures that are thought to have hair of fire or does that just sort of get added on somewhere in the chain.

so forth. I also reminded of a fireball yo kai from Japanese traditions. I think we may have talked about this one before and name Ubagabi, and this is more of a fireball, but with the face of an old man. And I guess if it is an old man's face, then you could say, well, the hair is fire, but maybe not. Maybe that's adding too much on, you know. I've also seen some ideas about Loki from Norse mythology having hair of fire or flame hair. This I didn't

get a real strong feeling off of this either. Hair with these two can get kind of complicated, and in general, our sort of understanding of them are kind of, you know, influenced by Marvel comics now, but you know, Thor sometimes had red hair and a red beard, and Loki is sometimes depicted with red hair, sometimes arguably resembling a flame.

And this is where I've seen various commentators, you know, pointing out this idea that Loki may be connected to the word Logi, which means flame, but is also the name of one of the otin who personified fire. So again I don't know there's that you could make a case. I guess that sometimes Loki was perhaps a fire headed god,

but maybe not. Now one of the stronger cases I came across is there's an Armenian warrior god by the name of Vaughan, the Dragon Reaper, who apparently is more traditionally described as having celestial fire for hair, a beard of flames, and eyes like suns. So this one would seem a stronger example. Though it is interesting here too that we're getting into like celestial fire here in this idea of like a holy flame that doesn't necessarily behave like a real flame, and is also kind of like

a halo, kind of like a holy aura. But I feel like this guy, you can make a stronger case and say, Okay, this guy has has fire for hair.

fire going on. But also again sometimes it's maybe more akin to a halo or an aura or multiple auras. And of course there's often a lot of information that is being relayed through these these religious images. But for instance, the tantric Buddhist Paul den Momo is sometimes depicted with hair of flame. The Hindu got Agny is sometimes depicted with hair of fire two varying degrees, but sometimes it's more of an aura of flame. So again there's going to be a lot of drift here, and a lot

of it is going to be left to personal interpretation. Now. One of the more interesting things to discuss, though, really gets us more I guess into the literature end of the spectrum, getting into Latin literature here, but are there's not one, but there are two instances in Virgils and Enid concerning omens of burning hair and or hair that becomes or is surrounded by a holy fire. M okay, So virgils Ineid has come up on the show before, but I thought we should maybe take a moment just

to ground it properly and talk about what it is. So. Virgil was a Roman poet who lived seventy BCE through

nineteen BCE and served Emperor Augustus. He composed the epic poem The Aenead between twenty nine and nineteen BCE as an attempt to ground Rome, the Roman people, and the rule of his boss Augustus within a deeper mythopoetic tradition, because while Romans he certainly had epics such as Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey, they lacked for a true national epic and a true founding work of mythic literature.

So that's what Virgil had set out to do, to create one, spinning a saga out of Greek myth and the epics of Homer into a Roman history. Now, Virgil died at the young age of fifty, possibly due to complications from heatstroke. I think maybe there's some back and forth over this, but sometimes I see it rather matter of factly said that it was probably heat stroke. But he dies, and as he is dying, he requests this unpublished and unfinished epic to be destroyed. He's like, it's

not ready yet, I just get rid of it. Please destroy it. His orders are not obeyed, though, and Augustus having been exposed to some very flattering passages of the epic in which the hero, the hero of the tale, mirrors and predicts the rise of Augustus, he says, now, this work is great. Please make sure that it is published. And then it is published. And as we'll get into, maybe not every passage of the ania is as flattering as those that Augustus initially heard.

But also in that episode, we talked about how Dante, the author of The Divine Comedy, thought Virgil was just like the coolest guy ever and the best example of poetic virtues, which is why he uses him as the virtuous pagan character who guides his fictionalized tour of Hell.

the ancestor of the Romans. The first six books of this epic cover his journey to Italy, but it's not like a direct journey, like there's a joint through the underworld, for example, and that's key as an influence on Dante and then books seven through twelve if the Aeneid concerned the wars in Italy, so the first book is a road trip, very much in the spirit of the Odyssey, and the second book is very much in the spirit

of the Iliad, because it's concerned mostly with this big war. Now, to be clear, this in this treatment in others, the founding of Rome and the Roman people is greatly embellished by myth and literature. I mean, that's again, that's kind of basically what Virgil set out to do.

and long term legacy are not completely assured. And we'll get into some examples of that as we go, but any rate, it's it's a book that's very concerned with prophesizing the future of Rome, mostly saying great things are ahead, but sometimes with little caveats like bringing up probably great things are ahead, but watch watch out for this or that. Right And at the end of book two we have

the omen of Ascanius is burning hair. So Ascanius, who's also believed called LULUs at times, he's like a little boy. At this point point, he is the he is the son of Aneas, he's eventually going to become the king of the Latin city state of Alva Longa, and is in this respect he's you know, he can kind of loop him in as being one of the founders of the Roman race. But again, his father Anias is this position as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He's the

hero of Troy. He's fled the burning city of Troy with his son after receiving he after he receives this omen of the burning hair from the god Jupiter. So his son's hair catches a flame, and there's you know, some back and forth over this, and and and and it becomes like it's like a divine flame, a sort of soft, harmless fire that is around his brow like a crown. So even here we have some there's some

room to interpret it. You can think of it as a like a crown of flame, hair of flame, halo ara, and so forth.

tail the shooting star and a flaming arrow. And again there's this idea that y'all got to get out of here and go on to great things, in other words, the founding of Rome, and so forth Anna Rogerson in twenty seventeen's Virgils Zoscanius writes that this episode illuminates quote the path that must be taken in order ultimately to achieve the Roman dream, but she also stresses that the fire also carries with it other associations quote, hinting at

different potential outcomes and reminding us again that his role as a sign and are of a Roman future is not as secure or as patent as it might seem.

of that in a minute. But also the idea of fire appearing around the child's head has the has the connotations of danger, right, and so it's like both at the same time. Do you think that's at all what Rogerson is getting at.

little bit through the poetry. Interesting, So, Ascanius and his father flee Troy, with Aneas carrying his own elderly father on his back. There are some great depictions of this, you have, like a cross generational trio escaping the burning city. And so there are all various images where you'll have Aneas with this older man, huge older man on his shoulders, kind of piggyback style, and then here's the young in behind him, kind of like tugging on his clothing a

little bit like Dad, are we there yet? Have we founded Rome yet? And so forth. Now, later on in book seven, Aneas's last wife, Lavinia, she has an episode with burning hair as well. I told you there was going to be a second one. Her hair catches fire during a sacrifice at the altar of the gods. And I'm going to read a bit here. This is in a translation, of course, from the Aeneid. While the old king lit fires at the altars with a pure torch,

the girl Lavinia with him. It seemed her long hair caught, her head dress caught in crackling flame, her queenly tresses blazed, her jeweled crown blazed, mantled, Then in smoke and russet light, she scattered divine fire throughout all the house. No one could hold that site anything but hair raising marvelous. And it was read by Sears to mean the girl would have renown in glorious days to come, but that she

brought a great war on her people. And I was reading about interpretation of this by John E. Rexen from nineteen sixty one in fire Symbolism in the Eneid, and this author wrote, these flames presented both destructive and constructive aspects. Laviniu's people would be involved in the conflagration of war with the Trojans, but a marriage torch would unite her with Eneas, who had found a new city in Italy named Lavinium after her Ah.

all it's not all roses. Sometimes there is a burning city and so forth.

So I was thinking about the passage where the great warrior Achilles he finds out that his bosom companion a Patroclus, has been killed in battle by the Trojan prince Hector, and Achilles reacts sort of by like losing his mind. He's filled with grief and rage and a thirst for vengeance. And so the Greeks and the Trojans in this part of the poem are fighting over the right to retrieve

Petroclus's body from the field of battle. And then the goddess Athena puts this godlike power and aura into Achilles so that he will be able to terrify the Trojans and drive them into a route. And so this is from the translation by Caroline Alexander. Achilles, beloved of Zeus, arose, and Athena casts the tasseled aegis about his mighty shoulders. She shining among goddesses, encircled round his head a cloud of gold, and from it blazed bright, shining fire. Okay,

so maybe a little bit different. Maybe not hair directly on fire, but a cloud of gold around the head from which blazes bright fire. It goes on to say, and as when smoke rising from a city reaches the clear high air from a distant island, which enemy men fight round, and they the whole day long are pitted

in hateful warfare around the city walls. But with the sun's setting, the beacon fires blaze torch upon torch, and flaring upward, the glare becomes visible to those who live around, in the hope that they might come with ships as allies against destruction. So from Achilles' head the radiance reached the clear high air, and going away from the wall,

he stood at the ditch. Nor did he mix with the Achaeans, for he observed his mother's knowing command, and standing there he shouted, and from the distance Pallas Athena cried out. Too unspeakable was the uproar he incited in the Trojans, as when a clarion voice is heard, when cry the trumpet of life, destroying enemies who surround a city. Such then was the clarion voice of Eacides. And when they heard the brazen voice of Eacides, the spirit in

each man was thrown in turmoil. The horses, with their fine manes, wheeled their chariots back, for in their hearts they forebode distress to come. And the charioteers were struck from their senses when they saw the weariless terrible fire above the head of Pilius's great hearted son blazing. And this the gleaming eyed goddess Athena caused to blaze. So again it's sort of an edge case because it doesn't say directly the hair is on fire, in that it's

literally being consumed by flame. But it's this more common imagery we get of a radiance that appears around or over the top of the head and is described as burning like fire, or burning like his hair were on fire. And in fact it come back more towards Virgil's time period, the context of the early Roman Empire. You can think of cases of imagery like this that appear in say

the Christian New Testament. So in the New Testament, in the Book of Acts, chapter two, we get the story of the Pentecost, which is the anointing by the Holy Spirit of Jesus's apostles in Jerusalem, fifty days after the

Resurrection has taken place. And this part says that in the NRSV translation quote, when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place, and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the spirit gave them the ability.

So in this case it does not seem intended to

terrify like it did in the Iliad. But what's sort of common in all these stories across the Eneid by Verge, across the Iliad, and across the New Testament is the appearance of fire or radiance above the crown of a human head to show in some way that God or the gods have intervened on behalf of this person, either to make them powerful in battle, to give them new powers of speech or understanding, or to show a kind of prophecy about them, to mark them as destined in some way.

more dead ends than usual. But maybe that's useful to you the listener to hear what it's like when you expect to find certain things out there and you come up cold.

science fiction as well. I didn't look there as much, but you know, so many examples, certainly in the illustrated medium. There I ran across, like multiple superheroes that have like hair of fire. So I do think you're onto something with that possible connection to modern depictions of hair and that kind of like propping up more and more examples of fire elemental beings with flaming hair and flaming beard.

They're gonna be in the place of core episodes. Our Core episodes, of course, are key science and culture episodes get published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. We're running those Weird House Cinema rewind episodes on Mondays now and of course regular Vault episodes reruns of Core episodes those occur on Saturdays.