PRUKE, or Periwig, was anciently a name for a long head of natural hair; such, particularly, as there was care taken in the adjusting and trimming of. Menage derives the word rather familiarily from the Latin pilus "hair." It is derived, according to this critic, thus, pilus, pelus, pelatus, pelaticus, pelutica, peruka, perruque. The Latins called it coma; whence 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 perruke weighed 200 shekels.

The word is now used for a set of false hair, curled, buckled, and sewed together on a frame or cawl; anciently called capitamentum or "false perruke." It is doubted whether or not the use of perrukes of this kind was known among the ancients. It is true, they used false hair: Martial and Juvenal make merry with the women of their time, for making themselves look young with their borrowed hair; with the men who changed their colours according to the seasons; and with the dotards, who hoped to deceive the Deities by their white hair. But these seem to have scarce had anything in common with our perrukes; and were at best only composed of hair painted, and glued together. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the description Lampridius gives of the emperor Commodus's perruke: it was powdered with scrapings of gold, and oiled (if we may use the expression) with glutinous perfumes for the powder to hang by. In effect, the use of perrukes, at least in their present mode, is not much more than 160 years old; the year 1629 is reckoned the epocha of long perrukes, at which time they began to appear in Paris; from whence they spread by degrees through the rest of Europe. At first it was reputed a scandal for young people to wear them, because the loss of their hair at that age was attributed to a defective the very name whereof is a reproach; but at length the mode prevailed over the scruple, and persons of all ages and conditions have worn them, foregoing without any necessity the conveniences of their natural hair. It was, however, some time before the ecclesiastics came into the fashion: the first who assumed the perruke were some of the French clergy, in the year 1660; nor is the practice yet well authorized. Cardinal Grimaldi in 1684, and the bishop of Lavau in 1688, prohibited the use of the perruke to all priests without a dispensation or necessity. M. Thiers has an express treatise, to prove the perruke indecent in an ecclesiastic, and directly contrary to the decrees and canons of councils. A priest's head, embellished with artificial hair curiously adjusted, he esteems a perry, monster in the church, nor can he conceive anything so scandalous as an abbot with a florid countenance, heightened with a well-curled perruke.