Scary Medieval Professions. Walking in Maira Valley

When you read Les Misérables of Victor Hugo you probably noticed an episode where Fantine sells her beautiful teeth and hair to send money to the family where lived her daughter. Who were buyers?

We are in the mountains, Maira Valley, today. Fantastic beauty, everything adjusted to attract tourists. But the road is hard even for the car drivers. When I lived in Campania and accompanied tourists to the Amalfi Coast, they said the road from Salerno to Amalfi was terrible. Secondary narrow valleys in the Alps are often non too much different. You don’t see the sea on the bottom of the rock under your wheels, but you are afraid of the same at certain points.

But still a century ago when there were no asphalt roads and cars in every family, the valley dwellers had to walk to the cities. Life was tough. Once the farmers' jobs were over, there wasn't much to do in the winter, and all the inhabitants of the mountains were looking for a way to earn something. Some small museums tell the story of the ingenuity of the local people.

One of them is a library, collected by a hermit, The Highest Library in Europe I’ve just written about.

Now, I’ll tell you about a strange profession that the mountain people invented to have more money and to keep their hands busy in the winter months.

Maira Valley. Fantastic beauty, everything adjusted to attract tourists

They went around the neighborhood (later in all of Italy and France) and collected hair for small change, fabric for clothes, or women's trinkets. Many women had long braids in that period, and those who did not have them collected the fallen hair from their combs and sold them. Hair binders returned with the “catch” and processing of the collected hair began. It was washed, sorted and made into wigs.

They said that better hair was in Venice, but it was likely the extreme poverty of the population that pushed the women to sell their hair.

This strange profession was called “lhi Pelassiers”. It was (and I believe still exists today) not only strange but also very rare. Some families became rich by practicing it, later. However, it is said that hair pickers no longer exist as a profession.