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Wild beards may strike fear on the sports field, but don't try it at home, gentlemen, writes Shane Hegarty.

AS THE ALL-IRELAND football final plays out on the pub TV, Tyrone's Joe McMahon appears on the screen. "Will you look at the beard," observes someone from their barstool. "He looks like he should be chasing mammoths rather than Kerrymen!"

McMahon's beard - Bomber Liston meets Teen Wolf - is mesmerising. This is not because it is sculpted, shaped or defined (it is clearly none of these things). And it is not a fashion statement, although by last Sunday's big match even Tyrone's toddlers were sporting fake beards in homage to McMahon and his six team-mates who had refused to shave until they were beaten.

Instead, his is an aggressive beard, beginning just below his eyes and ending God knows where. You wouldn't turn up for a job interview sporting such a thing but on the field of play it looks like a warrior's beard.

In fact, the country's fascination with Tyrone's beards may have something to do with a cultural collective memory of the hirsute and snarling Celtic warriors described by quivering Roman legionnaires. Or perhaps they just remind us of watching Braveheart.

Either way, you wouldn't want to be the player who had to mark McMahon. The beard has been a source of perpetual fascination, reverence, disgust and curiosity across many cultures. Psychoanalysts say that no man grows a beard unconsciously, and that changing the look of the face is layered with meaning.

Evolutionists, though, suggest that the beard makes the jaw bigger, and emphasises the teeth as weapons. It's also quite handy in hiding a man's reactions during face-to-face negotiations. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer suggested that men grow beards because they do not have the knack for dissimulation that women have (before continuing the insults by observing how few of the men of Andalusia seem to require beards).

Some religions demand a beard, although there is debate within Islam as to what length and style, and how the Koran doesn't actually mention it as a requirement. Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, wear their beards because Leviticus commands that "ye shall not round the corners of your heads neither shall thou mar the corners of thy beard". And the Amish grow theirs either with marriage or once they pass 40, although they keep the upper-lip clean, a practice often credited to their associating moustaches with military traditions they want no part of.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/newsfeatures/2008/0927/1222419961833.html