it with gold. Their subjects were proud of it as marking them out to be free men in contradistinction to the degenerate Roman population. Alaric touched the Beard of Clovis as a solemn mode of confirming a treaty, and acknowledging Clovis as his godfather. The Merovingian Dynasty were Bearded. Then came Charlemagne who swore by his Beard, as did Otho the Great and Barbarossa. Emperors of Germany, after him. The following story shows the faith of those early times in the sacredness of this form of adjuration. A peasant, who had sworn a false oath on the relics of two holy Martyrs, having taken hold of his Beard, as further confirmation, heaven to punish him, caused the whole to come off in his hand!
Charlemagne also enacted that any one who should call another red-beard or red-fox, should pay a heavy fine; a law explained by a prejudice embodied in two German proverbs.[1]
Of red-beard no good heard
Red beard-a knave to be feared;
and carried to its climax in the anecdote of a Spanish
nobleman, who, having accused a man of some crime, and the latter being proved innocent, exclaimed, "if he did not do it he was plotting it, for the rascal has a red beard!" Those who need consolation under this
- ↑
Rothbart nie gut wart
Rothbart Schelmen art.
