Ok everyone, so I need some help. I've been looking for documentation for merkin use in the Middle Ages, and have hit a wall. The OED places it's use as a word to 1617, but it's actual use, as far as I can tell, dates to 1450. Unfortunately, the only reliable source I've found is the Guardian, and alot of websites copying the info in it:
A short and curly history of the merkin
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/jun/26/features11.g2
[...]
The Oxford Companion To The Body traces the merkin back to 1450, a time when the bidet was a distant prospect and personal hygiene fell well short of the mark. Pubic lice were common - so some women, fed up with the constant itching, just shaved the lot off and then covered their modesty with a merkin.
Prostitutes, too, were frequent wearers. In the days before penicillin, it didn't take long to become infected with sexually transmitted diseases. They knew it was no work, no pay, and didn't want to scare the customers off with their syphilitic pustules and gonorrhoeal warts. So the merkin was used as a prosthesis to cover up a litany of horrors.
The Oxford Companion recounts an amusing tale of one gentleman who procured the disease-riddled merkin of a prostitute, dried it, gave it a good comb and then presented it to a cardinal, telling him he had brought him St Peter's beard. [...]
Gareth Francis
I'd dearly love to find some primary sources or scholarly references to make this a bit more credible! Anyone got some?
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