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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 11 (June 1, 1930)

An Eye-Browse

An Eye-Browse.

Take, for instance, those whiskery what-nots which act as eaves for his eyes; can even Henry afford to boast that he embellished His Lizzie with eyebrows? By the seven brands of the bounding bedstead, he can Not.

But reluctantly, we must admit that the facial filaments aforesaid have of late been maltreated by certain false females; it is only too true that the beautiful Beatrice has had them peremptorily plucked and supplanted by pseudonymous substitutes which look as near to Nature as whiskers on a whale; but in the main, man shrinks from such vile vandalism. Scotland, for instance, refuses to be brow-beaten; Caledonia condemns this particular brand of “plucking,” with a spirit which is proof (over-proof in fact) that no matter how Scotch a Scotsman may be, he'll never scotch his eyebrows—he realises that Mother MacNature produced these bushy buffers on the Border of his brows to prevent his bonnet from skidding all over his map, and obscuring possible “spots” before the eyes; thus the subtle significance of that Highland harmony, Blue Bonnets over the Border. How, think you, historical reader, could he have won the Battle of Bannockburn with one hand clutching his bonnet and the other holding the cork in his esprit de corps? Well might We absorb the spirit of Scotland in full measure—or at the very least, in ninepenny nips, for not only does Scotland venerate its eyebrows as a hirsute hatrack, but also as a sanctuary for songsters; it is said to be not uncommon to hear the liquid notes of Scotland's national warblers or burblers—the bearded bagpiper and the red-beaked gargler—issuing from the hirsute herbage abaft the binnacles of some kilted clansman, as the sun staggers to rest behind the distilleries.