A Hairy Situation: Towhead

While reading Duma Key by Stephen King, I came across a quirky-looking word 'towhead'. I was curious not only to work out the meaning but also to learn about the etymology as 'head' and 'tow' are quite hard to combine even in metaphorical way. On the Washington Post website there is a pretty convincing explanation why blond-haired people are referred to as 'towheads':

 In colonial times, families grew their own flax to make into fabric for clothing. Transforming the flax into thread was a complicated, involved process with many time-consuming steps. After the flax was harvested, it was soaked in water for several days to soften it so the inner fibers could be removed from the stalk. To separate the long, thin fibers from the shorter, coarser ones, the flax was pulled through a bed of nails or combed in a process called 'towing'. The shorter fibers that were extricated were of a lesser quality and were called 'tow'. This led to the term 'towheads' to describe people, particularly children, whose hair resembled these strands.

MerriamWebster.com  dates 'tow' to the 14th century and states that its origin is "Middle English, from Old English tow-spinning." However, Urbandictionary.com states that the meaning of 'tow' comes from Middle Low German 'touw' (which means "flax, hemp fiber"). This probably went back to the prehistoric Germanic base *tow-, *taw 'make', 'prepare' (source also of English tool), in the sense "make yarn from wool; spin".