PERRUKE, PERUKE, or Peruwig, was anciently a name for a long head of natural hair, particularly such as great care had been taken in adjusting and trimming. Ménage derives the word rather fancifully from the Roman word pilus, hair. The Latins called it coma, and hence part of Gaul took the denomination of Gallia Comata, from the long hair which the inhabitants wore as a sign of freedom. An ancient author says, that Absalom's peruke weighed two hundred shekels. The word is now used for a set of false hair, curled, buckled, and sewed together upon a frame or cawl, anciently called capillamentum, or false peruke. It is doubted whether or not the use of perukes of this kind was known amongst the ancients. It is certain, however, that they used false hair. Martial and Juvenal ridicule the women of their time, for making themselves look young by means of borrowed hair; they scoff at the men who changed their colours according to the seasons, and the dotards, who hoped to deceive the destinies by their white hair. But these oddities do not seem to have had any thing in common with our perukes, and were at best only composed of hair painted and glued together. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the description which Lampridius gives of the Emperor Commodus's peruke; it was powdered with scrapings of gold, and oiled, if we may use the expression, with glutinous perfumes, to make the powder adhere. The year 1629 is reckoned the epoch of long perukes; at this time they began to appear in Paris, whence they spread by degrees throughout the rest of Europe.