THE LICE SEEKERS
When the child’s forehead, full of torments red
Implores the swarm of white dreams hovering dim,
Two elder sisters take him from his bed,
Sisters with silvery nails and slim,
He hears their black lids beating; and their mild,
Electric fingers, in the scented breath
Of silence that in greyness folds the child,
On royal nails crack little lice to death.
by Arthur Rimbaud (1851–1891)
translated by Jethro Bithell (d.1938), 1912
Throughout history, artists have sought to depict lice in some way, whether through the medium of prose such as our French friend opposite, or visually. The Garden of Health, published in 1491, shows a man on his knees being brushed by a lady while three over-sized lice run around a water bowl
In India, a temple finished in 1546 has a panel showing a husband lying on a bed as his wife plucks lice from his hair. In Tintoretto’s Susanna and the Elders from the mid-16th century, we find an ornate two-sided comb and Caravaggio also included a double-sided comb in Martha and Mary Magdalene (c. 1596). The Dutch school was especially keen to reflect the realities of everyday life and several famous paintings show subjects delousing each other.
Christopher Marlow, a contemporary of Shakespeare, refers to lice and stavesacre in his drama, Doctor Faustus. In 1728, Jonathan Swift wrote:
When you saw Tady at long bullets play,
You sate and loused him all a sunshine day:
How could you, Sheelah, listen to his tales,
Or crack such lice as his between your nails?
These days, children find the subject fun to read thanks to writers such as John Dougherty who has a head louse called Jim as the hero in Niteracy Hour, Francesca Simon who added Horrid Henry’s Nits to her series about the infamous eponymous rascal, and Australian author Tristan Bancks whose Nit Boy series has also been animated.
In the summer of 2011, The Itch of the Golden Nit, a collaboration between the Tate, Aardman Animations (the creators of Wallace & Gromit) and hundreds of children across the UK was shown on television.
Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho’, faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.
Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her –
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.
Swith! in some beggar’s haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi’ ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne’er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.
Now haud you there, ye’re out o’ sight,
Below the fatt’rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right,
Till ye’ve got on it –
The verra tapmost, tow’rin height
O’ Miss’ bonnet.
My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
Inspired by seeing a louse crawling on the bonnet of a lady sitting in front of him in church, Burns is likely to have been describing a body louse on the move, rather than a head louse.
As plump an’ grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I’d gie you sic a hearty dose o’t,
Wad dress your droddum.
I wad na been surpris’d to spy
You on an auld wife’s flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On’s wyliecoat;
But Miss’ fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do’t?
O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An’ set your beauties a’ abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie’s makin:
Thae winks an’ finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
by Robert Burns (1785)
‘Love this poem … had to recite it, aged 10, in front of the whole primary school. Ah, memories. To be honest, we weren’t really sure what it was about, as we called them nits. Think it took a few years to dawn on me that I’d been reciting a poem about head lice!’
Sarah Litchfield, herself now a primary school teacher