Polish plait
The term is connected to a system of beliefs in European folklore, and healing practices in traditional medicine in medieval Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that believed matted hair was an amulet, or a catchment or trajectory for illness to leave the body.
Larry Wolff in his book Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment mentions that in Poland, for about a thousand years, some people wore the hair style of the Scythians.
According to M. Marczewska, who researched the subject from the perspective of folklore studies, animistic beliefs and long-held pagan beliefs relating to illness viewed illness as caused by an invading evil spirit, which by convalescence left the body and was less problematic when living in the hair formation, which was then shed naturally or cut and ritualistically disposed of by persons specializing in folk medicine or practitioners of folk magic.
British diarist Hester Thrale, in her book Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, described a Polish plait she saw in 1786 in the collection of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden: "the size and weight of it was enormous, its length four yards and a half [about 4.1 m]; the person who was killed by its growth was a Polish lady of quality well known in King Augustus's court."
According to Larry Wolff's book The Invention of Eastern Europe, Poles were considered "semi-Asians", the descendants of Tatars and barbarians.
Diderot wrote in his Encyclopédie (due to his misunderstanding of Martin Cromer's text) that the Tatar invasion of Poland was the source of plica.
"[3] Zygmunt Gloger in his Encyklopedia Staropolska [pl] argued that according to research done by the Grimm Brothers and Rosenbaum, plica polonica and the idea that it spread from Poland was an error, as it was also found among the Germanic population of Bavaria and Rhine River area.
In the second half of the 19th century, some medical professionals waged a war against superstition and lack of hygiene among the peasantry, and traditional folk medicine.
A huge 1.5-meter long plica can be seen preserved in the Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Jagiellonian University Medical College in Kraków.
In the areas of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth which were occupied by the Russian Empire, young men with plica were exempt from service in the tsarist army.
In Britain this condition was believed to be caused by elves, hence the name "elflock" (mentioned in Shakespearean poetry and folk tales), although this term could refer to tangles much milder than a Polish plait.
Folk belief in Germany associated it with witches or wights (Hexen or Wichtel) giving plica the names Hexenzopf or Wichtelzopf; in Poland, the cause was an unclean spirit.
One of the names of plica in Polish was wieszczyca, "wieszcz" means bard, specifically, a folk poet with the gift of prophesy or a vampire-like living person.
