XIII ETHIOPIAN FASHIONS IN HAIR-DRESSING i6 
wishes to resist she can easily break away, but this sort 
of identification of a girl by the dancing warrior 
occasions great mirth. The girls press quite closely to 
the dancing ring.’’ (Cunningham.) 
The Shilluks living on the west bank of the White 
Nile adoDt a somewhat similar mode. The hair is 
i. 
shaved from the front part of the head, but at the back 
it is allowed to grow and felt in such a way that it 
looks at a distance as if the man had a broad-brimmed 
cloth hat stuck on the back of his head. Close at hand 
it resembles the nimbus wdiich surrounds the head of a 
saint in pictures, and the felted hair like a nimbus is 
deficient at the nape of the neck. The Dinkas around 
Bor, on the east bank of the Bahr-el-Gebel, adopt a 
different plan, for they encourage the hair to grow long 
and stand on end. Some shave the scalp except a 
strip two inches broad along the middle of the head 
extending from the forehead to the nape of the neck. 
In this zone the hair is trained to stand on end, and, as 
it is often tw^o or three inches long, produces a con¬ 
dition resembling the crisp horse-hair on the crest of a 
Grecian helmet, or, the mane of an ass. 
The Dodinga dress their hair in an unusual way :—- 
The hair is daubed with clay and made into a mass 
which is moulded round the head into the shape of an 
inverted bowl. The hair is left attached to the crown. 
As the hair grows, the mass loosens until it looks like a 
big bonnet. The chief man covers the convex surface 
of this mass of hair and clay with discs of leather. 
Each disc has an average diameter of two inches and on 
the leather they sew white and red beads in a spiral 
pattern. This extraordinary fashion of hair-dressing has 
been described and figured by Major Powell-Cotton. 
There is an excellent specimen of the Dodinga chignon 
in the British Museum ornamented with rows of shells. 
Bleached hair is a favourite fashion with some of 
the Somali dandies. This alteration in colour is produced 
by plastering the hair with quicklime. The lime 
M 
