Fairy-locks

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Fairy-Locks or Elf-Locks (superstition) -- When young children, specially girls, wake from an evening's slumber with tangles and snarls in their hair, mothers with a tradition of faerie folk-lore might whisper to their daughters that they had caught fairy locks. Faeries, they say, tangled and knotted the hairs of the sleeping children as they played in and out of their hair at night.^[1]

Because fairy-locks were a tangle of hair, it is not unexpected for a baby shampoo^[2] to make use of the term when describing or marketing their product. The shampoo's name might be related to the tradition of explaining tangled and matted hair as the activity of playful faeries at night.

Elf-Locks or Fairy-Locks should not be confused with Dreadlocks which are intentionally twisted into hair, sometimes for religious purposes. Elflocks, according to fairy lore, would be considered the mischievous work of Elves or faeries which may be matted with mud and twisted to appear much like a traditional dreadlock.

Shakespeare references such elflocks during Romeo and Juliet in Mercutio's speech of the many exploits of Queen Mab, where he seems to imply the locks are only unluck if combed out. ^[3]

"She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes 
In shape no bigger than an agate stone....... 

That plaits the manes of horses in the night 
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, 
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes."

Therefore, the appellation of elf lock or fairy lock could be attributed to any various tangles and knots of unknown origins appearing in the manes of beasts or hair of sleeping children.

As to the tangles of elflocks or "Fairy-Locks" in human hair, Edar impersonates a madman, "he elfs all his hair in knots."^[4](Lear, ii. 3.) What Lear has done, simply put, is to make a mess of his hair -- perhaps so far as to be said to have dreadlocks.

See Also