Hello Brian, I'd like to say I understand your answer, but the simple truth is, I don't! I think I'd better go and swot up on what I thought was my native language, and find out what it is I need to know. Thanks for the reply.B.

Of course you are right, Brian A. I thought of Lady MacB. The Thane of Fife had a wife....

Wasn't the late Queen Mother Thane of Glamis, or Thaness.

Brian H. Thank you sir.

Graham

I do allow substitutions. Thanks for a thorough read.

Lance

Oh, rue the day when crowning thatch
No longer seems quite up to scratch
And follicles go on the blink
So flowing locks begin to shrink!

As passing years reveal your scalp –
A shiny pale pink mini-Alp,
Worse still,, a sort of wrinkled corm –
You find they kept you dry and warm.

Ah, Youth, with no need for a cap
To hide an ever-growing gap
Or painfully re-seeded pate
Like Signor B’s of recent date!

Alas, an unknown wit once wrote
Wise words that always get my vote:
Ideal for town and country wear,
There is no substitute for hair.

Jerome,
This is great, remininiscent of Swift. One change you might consider is to substitute "Anon declared" for "As Anon said" in Line 14, to strengthen the meter, and support your excellent finishing couplet.

Many thanks, Douglas. Think you're right that the uncertain stressing of Anon disturbs the flow a bit. Will probably substitute 'someone' along with other minor tweaks elsewhere. I think the italics and 'someone said' and 'repeat' are enough to establish that I'm not claiming the final couplet as my own but a quote.

It stuck in my mind over many years from a university magazine where the lines it concluded were untited and unsigned as far as I remember.

I think the rest of it ran something like this:

When Samson smote the Philistines
His locks grew long and lush;
Delilah loved the shaggy lines
Of that body like a brush.

Remember, males, to let it grow
Upon the back and sides
So that the ladies long to know
The secret that it hides.

Suitable for town and country wear
There is no substitute for hair.

Come to think of it, the dates and place would fit Brian Allgar, as revealed in the recent thread by Duncan G.M.

Nah, Jerome, it weren't me. Even in them days, I knew how to scan, dinnI?

Pilgarlic’s Progress
(by their synonyms you shall know them)

Spartan, buff, ascetic, depilous,
In puris naturalibus,
Glabrous, smooth and lusterless,

With compensating growth of beard
Or Gymnosophical and sheared,
Peeled or shaven, lean and tonsured,

Sober, stark, uncomplicated,
Austere and unadulterated,
Undecked and underdecorated,

Frank, prosaic, neat, unfurbished,
Unembellished, plain, unvarnished,
Unpoetically ungarnished--

Euphemise, contrast, compare,
Aestheticize the bald and bare,
Yet nothing tops a head of hair—

Suppress testosterone with drugs,
Resort to wigs and plugs and rugs.
Truth is, bald men look like bugs.

We few, we few pilgarlic few!

Susan, that is lovely. But I do not look like a bug. Pilgarlic, eh?