,R BOOKS
'URAL KNOWLEDGE)
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THE PAST
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Presented to the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY
by the
ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY
1980
Uoofes in Jfiatural Itnofolcfcge
THE PAST AT OUE DOOES
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, LTD
TORONTO
GARIBALDI'S 'RED SHIRT,' WHENCE CAME THE MODERN BLOUSE.
A Fashion that was brought from South America.
(See pp. 62, S3.)
THE PAST
AT OUK DOORS
OR
THE OLD IN THE NEW AROUND US
BY
WALTER W. SKEAT, M.A.
SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
FORMERLY OF THE F.M.S. CIVIL SERVICE,
AND FELLOW OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE
"Time hath endless rarities and shows of all
varieties ; which reveal old things in Heaven, makes
new discoveries in earth, and even Earth itself a
discovery." Sir T. BROWNE, Urnbnrial, I. 1.
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1913
Dft
COPYRIGHT
First Edition 1911
Second Edition 1912, 1913
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
TO MY
FATHER AND MOTHER
ON THEIR
GOLDEN WEDDING-DAY
NOVEMBER 15, 1910
Vll
AUTHOE'S NOTE
IN presenting this little book to the reader, the
writer must content himself with the warning that
what we call " civilisation " or " culture " is by no
means to be taken as any criterion whatever of the
mental power of a race. Of this fact the survivals
here recorded from Ireland and Scotland in them-
selves are proof. On the other hand, the vast mass
of ancient usage incorporated in the daily life, even
of the most up-to-date Londoner, would surprise
many lifelong students of such matters if they had
never happened to consider the subject as a whole,
and this must be an apology for any incompleteness.
The difficulties are increased by the almost incred-
ible fact that there is no adequate Folk Museum
in this country where the development of the
national life can be studied. Yet we may find
in this research some of the "little things we care
about," that deep soil of common usage into which
the roots of our common patriotism strike.
In conclusion I may be permitted to offer my
very grateful thanks to the many friends who have
assisted in collecting much valuable information or
illustrations, and above all, not only for unfailing
ix
x THE PAST AT OUE DOOES
help, but also for the stimulus of a great example,
to my father the Eev. Professor W. W. Skeat, upon
whose work the linguistic part of this book is largely
founded.
W. W. SKEAT.
ROME LAND, ST. ALBANS,
1911.
NOTE TO NEW EDITION
THE methods followed in this little book are capable
of almost unlimited extension for the purpose of
teaching various kinds of research work, whether in
history or geography or otherwise. Such research
could moreover be made to serve as a key to almost
the whole of our modern civilisation, with an in-
calculable gain in the stimulus that would thus be
afforded to the awakened intellect of the worker.
Nor need investigation of this kind be altogether
out of touch with practical affairs. It was alleged
to be the red wheat (v. pp. 43-44), still common
in Canada, that inspired the effort of the U.S.
government to obtain Eeciprocity, the Michigan
farmers having discovered that its hard grain was
better suited for their modern machine mills than
the softer wheat of their own country !
W. W. SKEAT.
ROME LAND, ST. ALBANS,
15th April 1912.
CONTENTS
HAP. PAGE
1. THE STORY OF OUR FOOD . .1
2. THE STORY OF OUR FOOD (continued] . . 17
3. THE STORY OF OUR DRESS .... 50
4. THE STORY OF OUR DRESS (continued} . 74
5. THE STORY OF OUR DRESS (continued} . .104
6. THE STORY OF OUR HOMES . . . .122
7. THE STORY OF OUR HOMES (continued} . . 148
XI
CHAPTEE I
THE STORY OF OUR FOOD
IN the present little book an attempt will be made
to show that though most of us are wont to
consider many everyday objects by which we are
surrounded " common " and therefore mean and
uninspiring, yet if we trace back their history we
shall find it full of a hidden romance, which will
raise it in our eyes till it grows as inspiring as the
story of the stars. And this history we can, every
one of us, " ascertain " (in the oldest sense of the
word, that is make sure or " certain ") in these days
of cheap and good and freely accessible books.
We shall find in the course of the following pages
many things about which we have probably never
thought, because they were part of our everyday life,
and therefore appeared too simple and obvious for us
to consider. A very little trouble on our part will
convince us that the opposite is the case, and that just
because these things are part of our everyday experience
B
2 THE PAST AT OIJK DOOES CHAP.
they are especially important for us to understand.
If this endeavour is successful it will, we hope,
be admitted that the subjects here dealt with are
in no way mean or common-place, and that their
real history is often vastly different from anything
that we might have been able to guess.
Whether we choose to make use of such oppor-
tunities as we have rests with ourselves alone. The
world will always be made up of those who wish
to understand the real meaning of what is around
them, and those who do not care. It will therefore
always be possible to say of these two classes that
Two men stood looking through the bars,
One saw the mud, the other the stare.
Surely the vault of heaven, " that majestical firma-
ment fretted with golden fire," is in the end better
worth our attention than the golden dross for which
the world principally contends, so soon trampled
into the mud of the market by the feet of the
selfish and reckless crowd.
We shall begin by giving examples to show how
much we may learn of the ancient racial groups from
which the main stock of the nation is built, through
an inquiry into our modern food-words ; how much
too of historic survival is to be traced in the story
of such humble implements as the plough and the
reaping-machine, in the common customs connected
r THE STOEY OF OUR FOOD 3
with our meals, and in the national and international
circumstances which have affected the introduction
of some of our habitual articles of food.
A MATTER OF MEALS
The idea of breakfast in historic times in
England did not usually correspond in the least
to what we now understand by the word. It
partook rather of the nature of a mere snack, such
as is still customary on the Continent and in the
East, its purpose being merely to afford some trifle
of food to sustain the strength, and in this way
actually to " break " the long " fast " which continued
from overnight till the principal meal was served.
We shall perhaps understand this the better
if we realise that our ancestors in the fourteenth
century used to dine at an hour but little later
than our own breakfast hour, at nine or ten o'clock
in fact, though it gradually become later until it
was fixed at noon, with supper, the other principal
meal of the day, at five or six. To put the matter
in another way, the "dinner-time" of the Normans at
first roughly coincided with the Anglo- Saxon time for
" breakfast." But the original sense of the French
word " dinner " was actually to " ^Tifast/' or " break
fast," so that there was every reason why both
names should have been applied to the earliest
4 THE PAST AT CUE BOOKS CHAP.
meal of the day. And the thing itself survives in
the labourer's early morning " dew-bit"
In the last century the dinner-hour grew rapidly
later, until as at present it has even taken the
place of the last meal of the day, the old-time. " sup-
per," or " sop " of bread soaked in gravy or broth,
which now survives as a plainer and simpler meal
than dinner, among all but the wealthier classes.
" Lunch," a modern abbreviation of " luncheon,"
was in its original form "lunchin" nothing but a
big slice or lump of bread or other eatable. This
would be particularly applicable to the big lump
of bread or cheese off which a labourer still makes
his midday meal. Gay, in 17 14, wrote, "I sliced
the luncheon from the barley- loaf." The sense of
the word was in course of time easily extended to
that of the " light " meal we now eat at noon.
On the other hand, " lunch " or " luncheon " has
been much confused with " nuncheon," which latter,
in its original form " noon-shenk," was applied not
to food but to drink, " shenk " being an old word,
traces of which survive in Shakespeare in the sense
of pouring out liquor. And nuncheon is still also
called " bever " the exact Norman equivalent of
the English word. Thus the original sense of
luncheon was a (noonday) slice or lump of bread
or cheese, and that of nuncheon a noonday drink.
It may be worth while mentioning here that
i THE STOEY OF OUR FOOD 5
the now familiar " sandwich," which so frequently
forms part of an outdoor lunch, gets its name from
the fourth Earl of Sandwich (d. 1792), who, be-
ing a confirmed gambler, invented it in order to
remain at the gaming table without interruption.
The same clear blending of Saxon and Norman
influences that appears, as is well known, in the
names given to the various forms of meat food,
occurs in regard to the appliances made use of at
meals. For table, chair, and plate or platter are
of Norman origin, whilst the words board, settle,
stool, glass and tray, are Saxon. The first of these
was given both to the round table and the table
dormante, that is, " sleeping," or fixed (Norman)
table as distinguished from the Saxon " board." Low
tables, on which bread was set in baskets of British
work, were also sometimes used by the Britons.
The round table, was at least as old as the
square table, and when private rooms for the family
were first introduced, became the recognised form
of table for the parlour, a fact which no doubt
accounts for the relatively large number of cases
in which it was so employed down to the latter
years of the nineteenth century.
In old-fashioned farni-houses it was long the
habit, and still is in some parts, for the master
and his servants to dine together in the same room,
the servants at a long table or "board," in strict
6 THE PAST AT CUE DOOES CHAP.
order of seniority, while the master and his family
sat at a small round table near the fire.
We all know how ill-mannered it is considered,
even at the present day, for a guest to sit out of
his place at table, and even in early Britain the
question of precedence was held so important that,-
by a law of Cnut any one sitting in his wrong place
might be pelted out of it with bones thrown by the
company, without privilege of taking offence.
Our apparently modern fancy of two lovers
eating off the same plate has come down to us
from a chivalrous old custom, which was once an
act of courtesy between friends, especially between
knights and ladies. It gradually fell into disuse,
though as late as 1752 the Duke and Duchess of
Hamilton in accordance with the ancient custom,
ate off the same plate at the head of their table.
Trenchers, whence our modern expression " a
good trencherman " is derived, were like " platters,"
occasionally to be seen in actual use in the reign
of Queen Victoria, and they are yet used for certain
meals 1 by the seventy scholars in college hall at Win-
chester. They were of clean white wood, usually
maple, and were often hollow on both sides, so that
meat could be served on one side and then pudding
on the other.
1 For bread and butter at breakfast, and also for tea and supper,
though not now for dinner. Like Fr. tranche, the word once meant
a slice of bread on which meat was served.
1 THE STOKY OF OUR FOOD 1
Almost the only kind of wooden " trencher " now
in general use is that on which bread is cut, and
this is now called a " platter "; its earlier name of
" trencher " seems going out. Both were long used
for fruit served up at the " banquet," which latter
term in Shakespeare's time was given, not as now to
the feast itself, but to the dessert. At this time, too,
Harrison says that " old men of his village still-
spoke of the exchange of treen or wooden platters
into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin."
Gentlemen in those days used to bring their
own knives with them to table, and these in Anglo-
Saxon times were shaped so like our modern razor
that on at least one occasion they were identified as
" Roman razors," under which strange designation
they once came to be labelled in a museum !
The knives then were laid by the spoons, which
were of silver, bone, or wood. " Spoon " really
means, in fact, a wooden chip, as in the common
expression " spick and span " or (more fully) " spick
and span new," where " span " has its original sense
of a newly-split " chip," a meaning which usefully
recalls the most ancient form of spoon. Even then,
however, the full force of the expression is hard to
see, unless we may perhaps conjecture that " spick "
in this case has the sense of a wooden " spike,"
such as we know to have been employed from the
remotest ages for holding the meat at meals, before
8 THE PAST AT OUE DOOKS CHAP.
the invention of the fork. If so, both " spike and
spoon " would have to be always new, for in order
to have them clean, they would be cut fresh, like
the fork itself in early times, 1 for every meal.
The fork (which was at first two-pronged, like
our modern carving-forks) is one of those obvious
implements which have no doubt been " invented "
over and over again in almost every part of the
world. In its application to our food, however, it
seems to have been an oriental idea, introduced into
Europe by the Venetians. For in the eleventh
century we read of a certain princess of Constanti-
nople, who had married a Doge or Duke of Venice,
and who was thought to be " luxurious beyond all
belief " simply because, " instead of eating like other
people, she had her food cut up into little pieces
and ate the pieces by means of a two-pronged fork."
For cooking purposes, forks were used by the
Anglo-Saxons, yet Edward I. kept a crystal fork as
one of his jewels, and Piers Gavestou, the favourite
of Edward II., had three silver forks " for eating
pears." Dessert forks of this kind continued to be
treasured by our rulers (as, for instance, by Henry
IV., Henry VII., Henry VIII.) down to Elizabeth.
The dinner-fork was not introduced into common
use in England till 1608, when Thomas Coryat
1 An early traveller, in 1253, says the Tatars then used for eating
their meat the point of a knife, or little fork, made for the purpose.
The usual explanation of "spike and chip" misses this point.
i THE STORY OF OUR POOD 9
observed it in Italy and started the custom at his
own table in England. Naturally he was much
laughed at, the novelty being described by one over-
excited person as "an insult to Providence, Who
had given us fingers ! "
Little by little, however, this much-ridiculed
invention made its way. But even now (such a
strange thing is custom) the two great branches of
the English-speaking race differ in their use of it,
for in parts of the United States the usual British
fashion of eating with knife and fork is said to
excite much amusement. For the custom prevailing
there (as in most parts of Europe) is to cut the meat
up into small pieces and then to lay the knife aside,
the eating being done with the fork in the right
hand showing what trivial distinctions may come
to be regarded as national peculiarities. The French,
to give another example, still eat cake with a spoon !
The " salt-cellar " or (more properly) " sall-er,"
that is, salt-holder, was in those days one of the
most important things on the board, because the
station of a guest was indicated by offering him a
seat either " above " or " below the salt," as the
case might be. It was often of great size, and of
precious metal. Edward III. had one "inamelled
all over with baboons and little birds," and they
were sometimes made like a ship or else like a
chariot on wheels, to make it easier to pass them
10
THE PAST AT OUR BOOKS CHAP.
down the table. In India and many other parts of
the world the eating of a man's salt still forms a
bond that cannot be broken, but in England such
phrases as " above " or " below the salt " and " worth
liy courtesy of Mrs. Stiillard-Penoyre.
FIG. 1 . Home-made Horn Cup,
or " Drinking - Horn," still
used by field labourers near
Stockton (Wore.), Bewdley,
and elsewhere.
By oowrtesy of Mrs. Stattard-Penoyre.
FIG. 2. Modern factory- made
Horn Glass or Drinking- Horn
from Bewdley.
his salt" alone recall the honourable place once filled
by the salt-cellar at the tables of our ancestors.
As is still the case on the Continent, there were
no salt-spoons on the mediaeval table. Glasses
were rare, the usual drinking -vessels beiug large
wooden mugs or goblets, wooden bowls, or drinking
THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD
11
horns, which last survive in the West for beer and
cider. The Anglo-Saxons filled their cups from
pails, which differed entirely from the vessels of the
Britons and the Romans ; they were bucket-shaped.
FIG. 3. "Feathers" on a Glass Cup, of the Anglo-Saxon type,
fcmnd in Bedfordshire.
liy courtesj of Mrs. Siallard-Penoyre,
FIG. 4. Drinking- vessel made from the tip of a bullock's horn. An
extremely rare specimen, bought at Conway, and dated 1762.
elaborately made with rings and hoops of metal;
wood or leather ; these were often highly ornamental
and were buried by the Saxons in the graves of their
owners. It is remarkable that a large proportion
12
THE PAST AT CUE DOOES
CHAP.
of the prizes given at school sports are made in the
shape of old English drinking-vessels, such as these
very goblets and bowls and tankards we have just
described. Some Saxon glasses were literally
" tumblers/' not made to stand, and these, no doubt,
suggested the Jacobean self-righting round-bottomed
cups, whence our modern tumblers derive.
These earlier forms of drinking-vessels long
persisted ; even King Henry III. had but one glass
cup, which was a present from Guy de Eousillon.
And both pewter and glass drinking-cups, such as
we now use, were not in anything like general use
before the sixteenth century.
As has been said, the Saxon glasses at first had
no foot, this feature coming, no doubt, from their
being made to resemble the
tip of a bullock's horn, which
formed the ancient drink-
ing-horn of the Norsemen.
Markings similar to the
feathers that adorn many of
our modern drinking-glasses
are in some cases quite
plainly to be traced on the
conical drinking - glasses of
the Anglo - Saxon period.
They can, indeed, be traced yet further back through
intermediate forms to a sort of running zig-zag (or
From Journ. K. A. Inst.
FIG. f>. Prehistoric Water-
vessel, showing zig-zag
pattern.
i THE STOKY OF CUE FOOD 13
" dog's tooth ") pattern, found on bowls and other
drinking- vessels of the Anglo-Saxons, as on those
of many other races from prehistoric times onwards
in most parts of the world.
But the oddest story of all is perhaps the history
of our word hamper, which derives its Norman name
" hanaper " from a basket meant to hold an Anglo-
Saxon stemmed drinking-cup of a particular kind
called " hnap." The older form of this word
hanap-er actually survived till 1832 in the title of
one of the officers in the English Exchequer who
was called Clerk or Warden of the Hanaper, the
hamper or hanaper in this case being a large basket
in which writs were deposited. In Ireland election
writs still go to the " Clerk of the Hanaper."
In the most ancient days, the table-cloth was the
skin of a wild beast spread upon the ground, but
from a very early period in Britain a cloth was
used, as in the peaceful picture of a family meal in
England, described in one of the ancient Icelandic
books called Eddas, " Mother took a broidered
cloth of bleached flax and covered the table. Then
she took thin loaves of white wheat and covered the
cloth. She set forth silver-mounted dishes of ...
old [well-cured] ham, and roasted birds. There was
wine in a can, and mounted beakers. They drank
and talked while the day passed by."
In some ancient records of Glastonbury, about
14 THE PAST AT OUR BOOKS CHAP.
the year 1250, it is laid down that the lord of the
manor should find his men " in food on Christmas
day/' but that the man " shall take with him a plate,
mug and napkin, if he wishes to eat off a doth, and a
faggot of brushwood to cook his food, unless he
would have it raw."
The most significant fact, however, connected
with the use of food by our ancestors, is that our
modern titles of honour lord and lady are both
founded upon the Saxon name for a loaf. For
the word " lord," originally stood for " loaf- ward," and
had the meaning of loaf-keeper, whilst " lady " meant
" loaf-kneader/'two simple facts which tell us volumes
with regard to the honour in which such work
was held by the Anglo-Saxons. Hence " lord " seems
to have arisen as a term of respect used by servants
to their master, like the German expression " brot-
herr " or " bread-lord " now applied to an employer
of labour, and the Swedish and Danish title " meat-
mother," also given by servants to their mistress.
" Dairy," like " lady," was first associated with
bread-making, " day " in this sense being a lady's
bread-making help (or "kneader"). Thus the "dairy"
or a day-ery" was the place where bread was kneaded.
And the pantry (in old French) was the " bread -
room" where the loaves were kept when baked.
The larder, on the contrary, was the place where
the bacon or " lard " was kept.
i THE STORY OF OUR FOOD 15
The bread when made was doled out to the
retainers and dependants of the " loaf-ward " or lord
in portions fixed by edicts, 1 which in Norman-French
were called " assizes." And as the expression
" loaves of assize " by a wrong division of the words
became " loaves of a size," this last word (size)
came in course of time to express the idea of
magnitude which it retains in modern English.
The adulteration of bread which is now treated
as a comparatively slight offence, was in those days
punished with extreme severity. The fraudulent
baker, if not stripped and whipped at the cross-
roads, was drawn on a hurdle with the offending
loaf round his neck, and pilloried, or else for
repeating the offence a third time, had his oven
destroyed, and was himself forced to forswear the
trade for ever. A special offence was putting iron
in a loaf to make it heavier.
Though " bread " was Saxon, " leaven " (better
spelt " leven ") is from a Norman word which means
" lightening/' and though " yeast," too, is a Saxon
word, we may yet be sure the bread consumed by
the Saxon peasantry was chiefly unleavened.
The making of good cheese (an art introduced,
as the history of its name shows, by the Romans)
was considered in the time of the Saxons quite as
1 Called, like the Assize of Clarendon, after their place of issue,
or like the "Assize of Bread and Ale" (the one here signified),
after the articles thus regulated.
16 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP,
much a part of good housewifery as the making of
bread (or indeed any other form of housework).
We even read of a Countess of Chester, who, though
married to a cousin of Henry II., kept a herd of
kine "and made good cheese," three samples of
which she presented to the then Archbishop of
Canterbury. The making of cheese is a very
ancient industry, as appears in the Bible.
Ale and beer were anciently regarded in England
almost as food and drink, and were hence taken even
at breakfast. Ale was for a long period made with-
out hops, the term " beer " being generally, though
not regularly, reserved for liquor made from hops.
Both were for centuries of excellent quality.
Indeed, in curious contrast to our own times, the
Saxons were so attentive to the quality of their
national drink that at Chester any one brewing bad
ale was put into a ducking stool, either to be dipped
into a muddy pond, or at the best let off with a
substantial fine. And in 1434 the brewers of
Oxford were compelled to swear by the Evangelists
in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that
they would each hereafter " brew ale that was good
and wholesome so far as his ability and human
frailty " allowed ! Although they have always
been described as great drinkers, it was nevertheless
the Saxons under their King Edgar who adopted
the peg-tankard, as it was called, one of the
i THE STOKY OF OUE FOOD 17
earliest attempts to check the evils of excessive
drinking.
The ale of those days was often brewed either
by women called " alewives " or " brewsters," whose
industry survived down to comparatively recent
times, or in connexion with monasteries, like that
at Burton-on-Trent, in very much the same way
that certain cordials are now sometimes connected
with religious houses abroad. This fact is held
by some authorities to account for the marking
of beer barrels with X. This they take to have
represented the sign of the Cross (which it is said
to have once more closely resembled) employed by
the monks as a solemn guarantee that the ale was
of good quality. Others, however, hold that the X
stood for ten, and indicated ale of a certain quality
on which ten shillings duty had been paid.
CHAPTEK II
THE STORY OF OUR FOOD (continued)
ENGLAND
EVER since Saxon times the English were noted on
the Continent for living upon a generous and varied
diet, and early in the sixteenth century had the
reputation of being the greatest eaters in Europe,
c
18 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS CHAP.
as contemporary records show. With regard to
the quality of their food, some Spanish visitors to
this country in the reign of Queen Mary declared
that in this respect they " fared as well as the King."
More tha"ii 200 years earlier, as we learn from a
significant passage in Piers Plowman, even the poor
would
eat no bread | that beans came in,
but only the better sorts
or else of clean wheat
Nor no piece of bacon | but if it be fresh flesh
Or fish fried and baked.
Above all they avoided rye bread ("black
bread"), which was the staple food of the peasants
of France. Even in quite recent years, at harvest
suppers it was the custom to serve up an immense
number and variety of dishes, almost every one of
which would be partaken of in turn by each of the
guests. Indeed even the usual market-day dinner, or
" ordinary " as it is called, attended by farmers,
can often show a wonderful record in regard to the
amount of food there devoured. There is good old
English precedent for customs of this sort, since
from the earliest times in England an extraordinary
profusion of all kinds of meat, wild game, fish, flesh
and fowl covered the tables of the rich, and helped
to vary the diet even of the poorest.
n THE STOKY OF OUE FOOD 19
The English word " hunt " and the Norman
" chase " have the same meaning ; and both races
were expert at this method of obtaining a supply of
fresh food for their table. But the Normans, when
they came into power, appear to have carried out
their operations upon a yet more royal scale, and
in a more organised way than the Saxons.
Of all the animals hunted, the deer was the
highest in repute, and even in Saxon times had
already obtained pre-eminence in this respect, as is
proved by the very meaning of its name, "the animal"
that is, the one animal (above all other beasts of the
chase). After Norman times, so closely was the
notion of hunting still associated with the chase of
the deer, that in course of time the word " venison "
came to mean deer -flesh alone, though in old
French (as in our own Bible version of the story of
Esau) the word still meant the flesh of any animal
hunted.
Other Norman metaphors which form part of
our language were borrowed in the first instance
from expressions used in the chase of the deer.
The common phrase "in the toils," is taken from the
name given to the great rope nooses suspended at a
short height above the ground from a cord stretched
across the path of the deer. Again, the familiar
" tryst " or " trusting place," is a term now known to
have been taken from the Norman name for the
20 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS HAP.
fixed stations appointed to the spearmen who took
part in the deer-drive.
Also, though " hound," like " deer," was English,
the expression " at bay " is a literal translation of
the picturesque Norman phrase aux abois, where
abois signified the harking of the hounds surrounding
a deer who has been run to a standstill, and has
turned upon his pursuers in the last stage of the
desperate struggle. 1 To take yet another phrase
relating to dogs, " relay " was in the beginning a
Norman hunting term, which meant a supply of
released, or rested dogs, but came to mean a set of
" rested animals " of other kinds as well.
" Quarry," which is now applied indefinitely to
the object of any kind of pursuit, comes from the
old French cuiree, a heap of skins or hides (from
cuir = skin or leather), and hence, as used by the
Norman huntsmen, a heap of slaughtered game. 2
The reason for its adoption was that the portions
given to the dogs were wrapped in the skin of the
slain animal : indeed, an early hunting book actually
explains that "the hounds shall be rewarded with
the ' neck ' and other parts . . . and they shall be
1 It is perhaps worth noting that this word abois, which is no
doubt of imitative origin, is very near indeed in form to the Greek
ban bau, to the German wctu ivau, and even to onr own familiar
nursery name for a dog.
2 This word in old English took the form of guerre, and
eventually turned into "quarry," through the same kind of
modification as that by which "cleric" became "clerk."
ii THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 21
eaten under the skin, and therefore it is called the
quarry"
Among words used by trappers, " springe," like
" spring-gun," is of course connected with " spring,"
in the sense of " rebound " and is of English origin,
as are also " snare " (a twisted cord or loop) and the
word " trap " itself, the last word meaning " step " or
" footprint " in this case something upon which the
animal stepped or set its foot. English, too, is
certainly the familiar expression stalking-horse, at
first a real trained steed, from behind which the
huntsmen used to shoot the game, and then (as in
Shakespeare) a wooden or canvas " horse " on wheels,
behind which fowlers, down to quite recent times,
used to hide whilst stalking wildfowl, a practice
which gave rise to the modern use of the phrase.
Of Norman or old French origin, are the words
" gin," short for " engin " with the accent on the
last syllable, as it was at one time pronounced in
the sense of " mechanism," and " trammel " which
is now used in the sense of impediment or hindrance,
but formerly meant a great net, usually a drag-
net, employed first for fish and then for wild-fowl,
especially partridges. And in addition to the
existence of so many hunting and trapping terms in
the language, the high places once occupied by the
master of the buckhounds and the hereditary grand
falconer in the royal household, show still further
22 THE PAST AT OUK DOOBS CHAP.
the very high esteem in which the pursuit of game
was formerly held in Great Britain.
We shall now take some examples of our chief
modern articles of food, whose names are yet more
closely connected with the blending of the elements
in the history of our nation. Thus, as is well
known, beef, mutton, veal, pork, bacon, and poultry
were the names given by the Norman butcher, who
killed the meat, to the ox, sheep, calf, pig and fowl,
which were the names employed by the Saxons, who
most commonly attended the animals while alive.
But, on the other hand, bread, ham, eggs, honey,
and the common products of the cottage gardens,
such as peas and beans, to this day retain their
Saxon names, and certainly formed a substantial
part of the food of the Saxon peasant.
Next to the question of hunting and of domesti-
cating animals, we have to speak of the food
grown upon the soil, and the implements used in
growing it.
Of the various forms of grain it is remarkable
that the words " corn," " oats," " rye," " wheat " (the
" white " grain), and " barley," as well as the verbs
"sow," "reap," "thresh," "mow," and the names of
nearly all the chief agricultural implements, the
" spade," " scythe," and "rake," and even the "ridge,"
and " furrow " itself, are one and all of pure English
derivation. This is proof if any were needed
n THE STOEY OF OUK FOOD 23
that the Normans, as a race, stood aloof from field-
work, which they left to the Saxon peasantry.
Of the various agricultural implements used by
the Saxons we will first take the plough, a word
which strangely enough seems to be of an uncertain
continental origin, the true old English name
("sool" = "furrow-er ") being only represented as
"zool" in the local speech of Somerset and the
adjacent counties.
If we want to ascertain the pedigree of the
plough, we must first trace it back from its modern
types to the rudest forms of plough still known, or
recently known, in Great Britain ; we can then the
more satisfactorily compare these simpler forms with
those used by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers.
The now fast disappearing old-style English
plough, of which there were a hundred different
kinds, is in actual use in more than one part of the
Sussex Downs, where it is drawn, as at Chyngton
near Seaford, 1 by a team of oxen. In Sussex the
1 The present owner of the magnificent black ox-team of Chyng-
ton (Mr. E. J. Gorringe, J.P.) ; courteously sent me the following
information : his father and he had between them worked oxen in
the neighbourhood (though not on the same farm) for upwards of
sixty years, the farm at Chyngton being very hilly, and the gradients
very steep, and oxen being better at a dead pull than horses. Half
a century ago, upwards of twenty oxen were being worked on Chyng-
ton Farm, rollers being very dear, and the treading of the oxen
therefore more necessary to break up the ground ; they are not now
shoed, as was then the rule. The breed now kept is a South Wales
mountain breed of black cattle called "runts," which have more
24 THE PAST AT OUE DOOKS CHAP, n
oxen are always worked in the yoke, but elsewhere
in harness ; they are also still used, or have been
so in quite recent years, at Southover and Waldron,
in Sussex, in Berkshire, the Cotswold district of
Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Herts, near Cranbrook,
Kent, 1 and in other parts of the country.
The old-style plough used with a team of oxen
is itself of local evolution, the result of the experi-
ence of generations of Downland ploughmen. But
the most remarkable fact about it is, that when, on
reaching the end of a furrow, the oxen "jack round,"
as it is called, and start on the return journey, the
plough throws the sods of the second furrow, not in
the opposite way, but in the same way as those
of the first. This gives a perfectly level field,
which is better for reaping. The modern factory-
made steam-driven plough is made upon the same
principle.
Ploughs of the old-fashioned type, the work of
the village wheelwrights, still survive, and several
of them are employed at Chyngton alone, whereas
pluck than most breeds, the ancient Sussex breed having become
too valuable and too much of a fancy breed for the work, though
they used to be employed and were very good. Mr. Gorringe
added that the team here (like the plough) is an undoubted sur-
vival, and that he knew of but one other ox-team in the county,
"so we may look forward to a time when the ox-team will be a
thing of the past."
1 By Lady Mildred Hope, whose fine team of the North Wales
breed is very curiously marked.
26 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES CHM>.
in the valleys and plains the factory- made plough
has carried all before it.
But of all the forms of plough used in Great
Britain, the rudest that has been employed in
modern times is the Shetland plough, described by
Sir A. Mitchell on the occasion of his visit ; it is
still employed in Sutherland, in the Isle of Lewis, at
Cunmngsburgh in Shetland, and no doubt elsewhere.
This early Scottish plough, which was wheelless
and had but one handle or " stilt," served indeed to
scratch the ground, but did not turn over the soil ;
by a singular but barbarous custom, it was not un-
frequently drawn, in various parts of Great Britain,
by attaching it to a horse's tail. A plough of this
form is certainly of vast antiquity, and it is suffi-
ciently amazing to find it in such recent use in any
part of the British Isles, though ploughs of an equally
simple type are still used in various parts of the
Continent, for instance on the left bank of the
Rhine, between Kreuznach and the Belgian Frontier.
Even simpler ploughs, constructed entirely of wood, 1
are yet employed in remote parts of the world.
The Scottish or " Shetland " plough, to which we
have referred, is a link with the plough employed
by the Anglo-Saxons, which in its simplest form
1 In the South Kensington Museum is a model of a Siamese
plough, which is all of hard wood, and consists of a share, with
long curved handle, to which a curved pole is attached in front,
to enable it to he drawn.
ii THE STOEY OF OUR FOOD 27
was also wheelless, and possessed but a single handle.
It was drawn by one or more oxen in a yoke, and
the ploughman guided the cattle with a goad.
A yet more remarkable implement of husbandry
was the Scottish " foot-plough," the Gaelic name of
which signifies the " crooked foot," it being a kind
of bent V-shaped stick with a short blade, and
furnished with a peg at the bend for the right
FIG. 7. -Ox Plough, with one "stilt" or handle, as employed in
Shetland (1822) and still used. The driver or " caller " walks
backwards and leads or " calls " his cattle.
foot. This curious instrument could be employed
on mountain-sides where the ordinary plough was
useless, and although its action was that of a spade,
it was strangely enough of a shape closely resembling
a V-shaped hoe (like that of the ancient Egyptians,
from which latter the old Egyptian plough is known
to have been derived).
With the help of some rude agricultural imple-
ments used in Sweden, we can now reconstruct the
earlier stages in the history of the plough. First
came the pointed digging-stick of hard wood, then
28 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES CHAP.
a pick, consisting of a digging-stick with a peak to
it (the " hacker " of Southern Sweden), then a
heavier pick which was dragged through the ground
~by hand to cut a furrow, whence it came to be called
a furrow-crook. This furrow-crook was eventually
shod with iron, and lastly (owing to the substitution
of animal labour for that of man) came the " plough-
crook," which consisted of a share with a handle,
and a pole for drawing it. In this form the plough
was drawn by cows or mares the latter fact acquir-
ing still greater significance when we remember
that the modern French term for a mare (jument)
originally meant " yoke-animal " or " yoke-cattle."
Yet another of the early English agricultural
implements, the "spade," was also, in the first
instance, merely an improved digging-stick, specially
selected for its breadth at the foot, which enabled it
to be sharpened and used as a blade. Indeed, this
general sense of blade receives striking confirmation
when we find that the word " paddle " is a mere
abbreviation of " spaddle," a diminutive blade, used
to clean the share when it got clogged with mould.
We have thus seen that the earliest form of the
plough was nothing but a hoe or spade dragged
through the ground to cut a continuous furrow.
We have seen also that the hoe and the spade were
merely improvements upon the primitive digging-
sticks used in the earliest times by nomad races
ii THE STORY OF OUE FOOD 29
(even before the simplest kind of agriculture was
thought of) to unearth the edible roots and tubers
of the forest, upon which they lived. Thus were
developed, by successive fusion of many elements,
the complex steam ploughing-machines of to-day.
The story of the harrow is no less curious. Its
original form was nothing but a huge rake, such as
is used for the purpose by the Siamese and Malays,
and by many other races of the Far East to this
day. In England in the fourteenth century a tri-
angular frame was used, which was after all merely
an improvement upon the rake employed by the
Anglo-Saxons. The old French name for this simple
form of harrow was " herce." As the shape of the
" herce " was triangular, the name was transferred
to a three-cornered frame stuck full (like the
harrow) of iron pins, upon which candles were
fixed on certain holy days in the Church, and
especially, as time went on, at funeral services.
Bishop Gardiner, Privy Councillor to Henry VIII. and
Mary, had a " herse of four branches, with gilt candle-
sticks." Eventually, from close association between
this peculiar arrangement of lights and the frame-
work over the bier, the name came to be transferred
to the bier itself, one of the strangest developments
that has happened to any word in the language.
When the ground is prepared the seed is sown,
and even this apparently simple operation has
30 THE PAST AT OUK BOOKS CHAP,
something to teach us. For the seed which was
at first thrown " broadcast," or by means of a tube
called a drill, is now sown by a machine fitted with
a row of such drills, arranged like the pipes of an
organ, a plan which is believed to have been
suggested to its inventor, a Berkshire man named
Jethro Tull, by the fact that he was himself a
musician, and played the organ.
By caurtefy of the London Library.
FIG. 8. Early Form of Reaping-Cart, as used in ancient
Gaul. The indented edge cuts the ears, which fall into the
cart, the machine being pushed from behind by a bullock.
We now come to the reaping, and here we may
remark that the idea of employing a special machine
for this purpose goes back at least so far as the
days of the Eoman historian (Pliny), who wrote,
that " in the vast plains of Gaul [or ancient France]
very large wooden machines, armed with teeth on
their edges and mounted on two wheels, are forced
through the standing corn by an animal propelling
them from behind. Thus are the ears cut off; they
fall into the machine." This description is confirmed.
ii THE STOEY OF OUK FOOD 31
and a much more detailed account of this strange
old-world contrivance is given by another Eoman
writer.
After this it certainly is a very startling thing
to find that machines of this kind have been used
in France in quite recent years, and that a similar
By courtexy of f lie Xujrf. Glasjow .Vita-uin mid
FIG. 9. Toothed Sickle (or " Heuk ") as recently used in Scotland.
The teeth were cut with a hammer and chisel on an iron anvil.
A Toothed Hook ("No. 00 ") is still iu common use in Shetland
and in the North of Ireland.
machine, called a "header" (from its merely stripping
the ears off the straw), is still used, and is, moreover,
considered one of the cheapest machines to work,
both in some of our own colonies and in the United
States. Even the plan of yoking the cattle at the
back of the machine, described by the Eoman writers,
has had its counterpart in several of our modern
reaping-machines, which were made to be propelled
by two horses harnessed to a pole at the back. In
32 THE PAST AT OUE BOOKS CHAP.
passing we may notice that it was by an indented
or toothed edge like that of the early English sickle
that the grain was " headed."
This early English sickle may therefore be fairly
compared with the curiously curved prehistoric
sickles, with toothed-flint blades set in wood, which
were discovered some years
ago in Egypt. It is, more-
over, certain that the words
sickle and scythe, 1 as well
as " saw " and " sedge," are
all related in origin, and
FIG. 10. Prehistoric Toothed Sickle of 18th Dynasty, found in Egypt
by Professor Petrie, showing saw-like flints set in wooden socket.
all have as their root -sense the idea of a sharp-
edged and generally saw-like blade.
Many other tilling- and reaping-machines are
equally good examples, showing how the most
simple and ancient principles survive under a
modern and sometimes complete disguise. A horse
hoe or rake is furnished with a set of small hoes
or rakes, all working in a row. In one of the early
1 Originally spelt "sithe" as by Milton, the "c" having been
inserted by a mistake.
THE STOKY OF OUE FOOD
33
reaping -machines (invented by Bell) the cutting
was done by a row of giant scissors, or double-
edged shears, which, were soon replaced, however,
from the " Shepherds Calendar' (1499).
FIG. 11. Heaping with a Toothed Sickle in the fifteenth century. It
was used till quite recent years in E. Anglia (Norfolk), and the
grain was " lifted " by handfuls by the inpull of the hook.
by the more modern " teeth." And a particular
kind of hay-" tedder " or hay -tossing machine was
even invented, in which the hay was thrown by a
row of six pitchforks working simultaneously, with
D
34 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
a kicking motion that imitated the action of the
wrist, as seen in a pitchfork used by hand. Take
again the modern steam thresher, invented hy
Meikle, which is really built upon the principle of
the flail. It consists, in fact, of a number of beaters,
which beat out the grain just as the flail formerly
did, and are made to revolve by machinery within
a hollow drum.
The earlier form of threshing-machine, superseded
by Meikle's improvement, was invented by Kinloch
in 1784, ancj was based upon the equally simple,
though more damaging principle of rubbing the ears
against the inside of the drum, a process which was
too often destructive of the grain. 1
Here we have yet another example, showing
how even our wonderful modern machinery is the
work of many hands and many brains, and how
(like many other things that are made by men)
it progresses by gradual steps from the simple to
the complicated, from the partially effective to the
thoroughly efficient. Thus, even in the midst of
the clanging belts, the whirring wheels, and the
oscillating trays of the modern thresher, we may
still find a clue to the labyrinth of its machinery
in the single, elementary principle of the flail,
1 How elementary these principles are we shall realise if we
recall the fact that two of the easiest ways of separating the ripe
grain from the husk are by rubbing it between the palms of the
hands, arid tapping the grains with the thumb-nail,
ii THE STOEY OF OUK FOOD 35
which gives utility and unity to the whole
machine.
It now only remains to mention the principal
means by which the various grain products of the
field are reduced to flour. The principle of the
ancient mill, which was almost universal down to
the early nineteenth century, was that of a fixed
lower (or nether) millstone, upon which an upper
one revolved, the power required to turn the latter
being supplied in the earliest stage by hand (and
in subsequent stages by cattle, wind, or water), the
grain being thus broken up into meal of various
sizes, and sifted into one or two qualities or
" grades." In the modern machine mill (invented
in Hungary, and first established in this country
at Bilston in 1879), metal rollers are substituted,
enabling each quality to be produced by a separate
process. This improves the look of the flour, which,
however, is less wholesome than stone-ground flour.
In the older, or " German " form of windmill, the
whole building being very small, turns round on a
post below. Such " post-mills," still seen in East
Anglia, can be traced back to the fourteenth
century, and probably much earlier. The " Dutch "
form, with movable top or dome, and wings attached,
was not invented till 1550. Both were at first
turned by a long pole or lever outside, the " tail-
wheel " being substituted in the nineteenth century.
36
THE PAST AT OUE BOOKS CHAP.
The Dutch fifteenth-century flood-mills, which were
at first immovable, and were only worked when the
wind was in one quarter, were an intermediate
ay courtesy of Mr. U. X. Kingsford.
FIG. 12. Post-Mill at Leverton, Lines.
form. Later, they were placed in water on floats,
which could be "jacked " round to catch every wind.
Both wind -mills and water-mills are extremely
old, the simplest forms of the latter in Great Britain
ii THE STOKY OF OUB FOOD 37
being represented by the so-called "Norse" mills
of Northern Scotland, and the " Danish " mills of
ancient Ireland, which will presently be described.
WALES
In a scene in Shakespeare's Henry V., the
swaggering Pistol, having threatened to make
Fluellen, that is, Llewellyn, eat the leek (the
honourable badge assumed by certain brave Welsh-
men, who " did good service in a garden where
leeks did grow ") has the tables turned upon him,
and is forced to eat it himself. Nevertheless the
leek, so long recognised as the Welshman's emblem,
was once his favourite food, and when, by ancient
custom, the Welsh farmers met to help in plough-
ing each other's land, each brought a leek for the
common meal. Indeed, as the deer to the Saxon
became " the animal" so to the ancient Welsh the
leek was " the plant." And " garlic," which is
formed from leek, means simply " spear-plant."
SCOTLAND
How closely the peasantry of the Scottish High-
lands have kept in touch with some of the customs
once practised by the Stone Age peoples, will be
evident from the most casual consideration. In
Scotland and even the North of England, as well
38 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
as on the continent of Europe, oat-cakes (the making
of which by the Scots, was described by Froissart)
and girdle- (or "griddle") cakes are still made,
as in ancient Wales and England, by baking un-
leavened dough, spread out thin, on a bake-sfcwe,
as it is still to this day called, even though now
of iron.
In Scotland itself real baking or " toasting "
stones of a highly ornamental character were used
within living memory, as we are told by Sir Arthur
Mitchell ; but these stones were used for an open
fire, on an old-style hearth, and not for a grate.
Such stones are curious survivals of the Stone
Age, like the kindred custom of heating liquor by
plunging a hot stone into it, which to this day is
employed in the Isles, or the rough hand-made
clay pots (called " craggans "), ruder even than some
really made by prehistoric men, which are still used
now and then in the same localities.
A simple and ancient form of the water-mill was
also seen and described by the same writer during
his tour in the Orkneys and Shetlands. These so-
called " Norse " mills, which are simply mills of a
very antique local character and are in no way due
to Scandinavian influence, were, in fact, merely an
early improvement (by the substitution of water- for
hand-power) of the yet more antique hand-mill or
" quern." That this was the case seems to be
THE STOEY OF OUR FOOD
39
proved by the fact that their shaft is upright and
the wheel horizontal (as in the hand-mill itself).
Yet another very ancient custom, which con-
tinued among the Scots at- least down to the
seventeenth century, was
that of boiling the flesh
of the animals they killed
" in the skin of the beast,
"Norse" Mill of Scotland,
with horizontal wheel.
filling the same full of
water." So far back as
the fourteenth century,
Froissart says that they FIG. 1 3. A form of the so-called
" cared neither for pots
nor for pans, but seethed
beasts in their own skins " (stretched on four
stakes) the skins no doubt being filled with water
as related above. What closer parallel could be
found to this custom of cooking an animal in its
own skin than the favourite modern " haggis " of
our northern neighbours, which is a hash of the
liver, heart and lungs of a sheep, minced in its
own maw ?
The far-famed porridge of Scotland was not in
ancient times made of oatmeal alone, as is shown
by the history of the word itself, which is a corrup-
tion of pottage or potage. The name originally
signified the liquor of the cooking-pot, usually
broth made by stirring vegetables, herbs, or meat,
40 THE PAST AT OUR BOORS CHAP.
the soup being frequently thickened with barley
or some other grain. Hence, what we now call
porridge is merely thickening, such as was originally
put into the pot along with the other ingredients.
The exact period at which this change took place
is not clear, but at all events we read, in 161*7,
that "great platters of porridge, each having a little
piece of sodden meat," were brought in by the
servants in the house of a Scottish knight. And
the same author adds that the " upper mess, instead
of porridge had a pullet with some prunes in the
broth." The servants sat down with their master
and his guest, who observed that " they had no art
of cookery, nor furniture of household stuff, but
rather rude neglect of both."
A very ancient Scottish custom, originally pre-
vailing throughout Great Britain, consisted in reserv-
ing certain specified joints of a slain animal for the
chief and lesser officials. In the Western Islands
of Scotland in 1703, whenever the chief of an
island killed an animal, he reserved certain parts for
his dependents, according to their duties.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century
(1773), Dr. Samuel Johnson himself described
this custom as still prevailing in the Hebrides.
" When a beef was killed for the house, particular
parts were claimed as fees by the several officers
or workmen . . . the head belonged to the smith,
ii THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 41
and the udder of a cow to the piper, the weaver
had likewise his particular part ; and so many
pieces followed these prescriptive claims that the
laird's was at last but little." In this case we have
improved upon the original custom, at all events
(it may be supposed) from the laird's point of view.
For the only reservation made nowadays, consists in
offering the best cut of the joint, the wing of a
fowl or gamebird, and so forth, to a guest or a lady.
IRELAND
The history of the food of the people in
Ireland affords many close parallels to that of
Scotland. Thus an English physician in the reign
of Henry VIII. wrote that the Irish would " seethe
their meat in a beast's skin," the skin being " set
on many stakes of wood, and then they will put in
the water and the flesh. And then they will make
a great fire under the skin betwixt the stakes, and
the skin will not greatly burn. And when the meat
is eaten, they, for their drink, will drink up the
broth." A woodcut in the next reign (1581), of
an Irish chieftain at dinner in the open air,
shows meat cooked in this very manner at the
camp-fire.
The custom of reserving certain parts of an
animal, already described as anciently prevalent
42
THE PAST AT OUK DOORS
in Scotland, also continued at least down to the
middle of the nineteenth century in Ireland, where
the farmers in some parts of the country, on
killing an ox or pig, always sent the head to
the smith, whose kitchen was often decorated with
great numbers of the heads thus obtained.
From a print of 1581.
FIG. 1 4. An Irish Feast in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, showing
the " meat " killed and cooked in skins.
The present fondness of the Irish peasant for
pork goes back to extreme antiquity. Indeed, an
ancient legend, relating how a certain king of the
fairies tried to induce a mortal to enter Fairyland,
includes among the other inducements mentioned,
that in Fairyland there was plenty of fresh pork.
In a later age a member of one John O'Nele's
household, being asked by a companion whether
beef were preferable to pork, replied, "That is as
ii THE STOEY OF OUE FOOD 43
intricate a question as to ask whether thou art
better than O'Nele ! "
The baking was done on a hot stone, at least
down to the end of the nineteenth century.
The grinding of corn in Ireland was no doubt
originally effected, as in Scotland, by means of the
small hand-mill above mentioned. The oldest form
of water-mill, described as a " gig " (or, by a popular
error, a " Danish mill ") had its wheel fixed at the
foot, so that it " ran horizontally among the water,"
the millstone, fixed at the top of the same shaft,
turning round with the wheel.
In England, as has been shown, the name given
to the wheat plant is connected with its white
colour. But in Ireland its name signified " blood-
coloured," the Irish wheat, now becoming rapidly
extinct, being distinguished by its red or sanguine
hue. It is this fact which gives so dramatic a
touch to the description of an historical event
which is known to have taken place in connexion
with one of these ancient Irish mills.
In A.D. 651, two Irish princes, fleeing from the
men of Leinster, who had determined to kill them,
escaped and hid themselves among the works of
the mill in question. The Leinster men, however,
forced a woman who controlled the mill-sluice to
start the mill again, the result being that the
princes were crushed to death in the works. This
44 THE PAST AT OUK BOOKS CHAP.
event was described by a poet of the time in the
following sombre but powerful passage :
mill, what hast thou ground ? Precious is thy wheat !
It is not oats thou hast ground, but the offspring of Kervall. 1
The grain which the mill has ground is not oats but blood-
red wheat ;
With the offshoots of the great tree, 2 Mailoran's mill was fed.
This mill stood near the bridge over the small
stream that runs from Lough Owel to Lough Tron,
and Mailoran was the name of its owner. The
place is called Mullenoran, and the mill which
stood upon this very site as late as the end of the
eighteenth century, has actually been seen at work
by the grandfathers of people who are now living.
If, as is certainly the case, the assignment to
a guest of his proper place at table is considered
a matter of high importance to-day even among
ourselves, it was regarded as a yet more vital matter
in olden Ireland. Indeed, at the present day not
every guest, debarred from his due place of honour,
would be able to rise to the height of the famous
Irish harper, Arthur O'Neill, who, on receiving an
apology on that account from the host at a public
dinner in Belfast in the eighteenth century, replied,
" My Lord, an apology is unnecessary ; wherever
an O'Neill sits, that is the head of the table ! "
1 I.e. the two princes.
2 I.e. the princes, as before, the great tree being Kervall.
ii THE STOEY OF OUK FOOD 45
FOOD FROM ABROAD
In the early days when sugar, which seems to
have come into Europe through the Arabs after the
crusade, had not been introduced, wild honey from the
woods was used instead. Even when introduced (in
the form of the violet- and rose-coloured sugar, for
instance, which reached England from Alexandria
in the reign of Henry III.) it long continued to be
regarded as a rare and costly spice, and remained
so up to the time of the discovery of America at the
end of the fifteenth century. It was first refined
and made into loaves by a Venetian, the " loaves "
being mentioned in the reign of Henry VIII.
To take another article commonly obtained from
the grocer (or " grosser," a name originally applied
to traders who dealt in the " gross," but who would
be better described as " monopolisers "), what we
now call currants were till about one hundred years
ago generally termed raisins of Corinth, or Corinths
(as coming from the Levant). And currants are
still called " Corints " at Tenby, in Wales.
The fresh currants of our gardens, on the other
hand, are not really "currants" at all, but a sort
of dwarf gooseberries, and when introduced into
England in 1533, were called "beyond-sea goose-
berries." They are still termed " gooseberries " in
France.
46 THE PAST AT CUE DOCKS CHAP.
Coffee, an article introduced from Turkey, is
first mentioned in about 1600, and in 1650 the
first coffee-houses in England were opened in
Oxford and London respectively. 1 The London
coffee-house was set up by the servant of a certain
Mr. Edwards, a merchant trading to Turkey. This
servant, a youth named Pasqua Eosee, had
accompanied his master home from Smyrna to
prepare his coffee for him in the mornings. This
excited so much public attention that the servant
was allowed to open a coffee-house, the sign-board
of which represented the head of Pasqua Eosee
himself.
We know from the rhymes of Pope and other
writers, that " tea " was formerly pronounced " tay,"
as it still is in Scotland and Ireland and on the
continent of Europe. The reason for this (to
English people) old-fashioned pronunciation, which
is perfectly correct, was that tea first came to us
from Amoy, in the south of China, where the word
was actually pronounced " tay," instead of " cha "
as in other parts of that country.
Tea was sold in 1651, by one Garway or
Garraway in London, and when introduced cost
as much as ten sovereigns a pound. It was the Earl
of Arlington who set the habit of drinking what
1 Evelyn, in 1636, mentions one ' ' Nathaniel Conopios, out of
Greece," as the first whom he " ever saw drink coffee."
n THE STORY OF OUE FOOD 47
was then called a " dish of tea " at court (in 1666),
after which it soon became the height of fashion.
Marmalade is now usually, though not invariably,
made from Seville oranges, but, as its name shows,
it was at first made like the Portuguese " marmelada,"
from the " marmelo " or quince, or rather, perhaps,
from a particular kind of honey-apple which was
grafted upon a quince tree. And " marmelo " comes
from the Latin meli-mdum, of which the English
" honey-apple " is a translation.
In 1514, we read of a "box with preserve of
quince and marmelade," and later " marmalade of
quinces." But two and a half centuries elapsed
before " orange marmalade " was mentioned in 1769.
But the most astonishing history of all is that
of the word " treacle." In the seventeenth century
the " Venice treacle," which was especially famous,
was sold by an Italian who kept a small shop in
Venice, not far from St. Mark's Cathedral. But
this- was not in the least like what we should call
treacle nowadays. It was an extraordinary mixture,
composed of many strange and some revolting
ingredients, which was also called " viper- wine,"
and was sold as an antidote 'against snake-bite,
something on the principle of the proverbial " hair
from the dog that bit you."
Its ingredients included " vipers steeped alive "
in white wine (whence its name of " viper- wine "),
48 THE PAST AT CUE DOOES CHAP.
opium, spice, licorice, red roses, the juice of rough
sloes, " seeds of the treacle mustard " and many
others, to be mixed with honey into a sort of drink.
The vipers themselves gave it the name of treacle
from an old Greek word theriakd, which at first
became " triacle " both in French and English. ,-
This Greek word was employed to describe any-
thing belonging to a therion or "little wild beast."
As this was the expression applied in a verse of the
New Testament to the viper that came out of the
fire and fastened upon the hand of St. Paul, theriakt
came to be used of viper-wine too.
An old writer, More, who lived in the seventeenth
century, used the word in its original sense when
he wrote of "a most strong treacle [or antidote]
against those venomous heresies," and this is what
was meant too, by the poet Waller when he wrote
the (to us strange-sounding) line :
Your vipers treacle yield, and scorpions oil.
To conclude this extraordinary history, Henry
III. had a great spit of gold (such as was used in
place of a fork at that date) in which an alleged
petrified " viper's tongue " * was set. This was a
remarkably early example of a custom surviving
in the island of Malta, where certain small stones,
1 In the original Latin lingua serpentina or serpent's tongue ; no
doubt lie used it as a charm against the poisoning of his food.
Such stones have been identified as fossil sharks' teeth.
ii THE STOEY OF OUK FOOD 49
coloured like the eyes, tongue, heart, or liver of
serpents, found in the clay of the traditional cave
of St. Paul, are still steeped in wine and drunk
by the natives as an antidote against poison.
To take a few more examples of names given to
articles of food : tapioca which is Brazilian, and sago
which is Malay, tell us plainly enough from what
countries those products first came. Again such
words as maize, which is of West Indian origin,
but modified by the Spaniards, and chocolate, a
Mexican word which also reached us (about 1604)
through the Spanish, tell us not only what country
they came from, but the nationality of those who
introduced them. 1 In another way the potato,
a plant native to Peru, and described by Harrison
in 1587 as "one of the roots brought from Spain,
Portugal and the Indies," may recall to us the dis-
coveries of our great Elizabethan navigators ; one of
the most famous of these (Sir John Hawkins) gave
an account of it in his Voyages in 1553, whilst its
actual introduction was (though unwarrantably)
long attributed to Drake or Ealeigh.
It has always been the fashion to decry the
1 In the French word nicotine (to mention as a parallel an
article which, though a stimulant, is not an article of food) is
preserved the very name of Jean Nicot, French Ambassador to
Portugal, Lord of Villeinain and Master of Requests of the French
Royal Household, who, in 1559 having bought the seeds from a
Flemish merchant trading to Florida, introduced tobacco into
France.
50 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
present, and to regret the " good old times " that
are "gone beyond recall." But in the matter of
our daily food, a student who inquires as to the pro-
gress of our race may speak to those who wish to
hear with a more than usually clear and certain
voice. For if we compare with our own comfort-
able surroundings the meals of the ancient Britons
who had for their seat the ground, whereon they
spread a carpet of rushes, or the hides of dogs and
wolves we can hardly fail to see in how many ways
our own lot is better than theirs. And this feeling
is deepened when we learn that their manner of
eating was " rather after the fashion of lions " ; that
they would " take up the joint and gnaw at it,"
using, if they could not get the meat off, their " little
bronze knives." In yet more ancient times " the
strongest man would seize the joint, and defy the
company to mortal combat."
CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF OUR DRESS
THE object of dress, which is not only to clothe
but to adorn, will easily be remembered if we
reflect that " garment " really means a garnishment
or adornment. The word " robe " throws a yet
in THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 51
stranger light on the subject, since it is connected
with an old German term which meant "to rob," a
fact which reminds us that " robes " were originally
the spoils stripped from the slain enemy, in which
the victor masqueraded. This is the old-world
custom alluded to in a splendid passage in the song
of Deborah (Judges v. 30) : " Have they not sped ?
have they not divided the prey ? to Sisera a prey
of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needle-
work, of divers colours of needlework on both sides,
meet for the necks of them that take the spoil ? "
Coming to the study of dress we shall find it
from an historical point of view more fruitful in
results than almost any other of the arts of our
modern civilised life. For in the first place
fashion, far from being the supreme and absolute
Dictatress that we have doubtless imagined, is her-
self subject to certain general principles or laws.
And many, if not most, of the supposed innova-
tions of to-day are simply revivals or modifications
of ancient, and in some cases immemorial, custom.
To give a single instance (pointed out by Mr.
Andrew Lang) of the extraordinary age of many of
our modern fashions, it may be remarked that the
wearing of a separate body or " corslet " and skirt
is traceable so far back as the "archaic" or
" primitive " age of Greece.
This " archaic " skirt had a semicircular piece
52 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS CHAP.
cut out at the foot, a custom that prevailed even
among prehistoric " stone-age " races. Moreover,
as worn by the ladies of ancient Crete, it was
generally " flounced." Again, a kind of small ladies'
boot, or " bottine " was worn by ladies of rank in
Crete upwards of three thousand years B.C.
How, and to what extent women have copied
the dress of men, and to a less extent men have
imitated that of women ; how the dress of servants
is frequently that which has been worn by their
master's class in preceding generations, and is also
the source from which our modern uniforms are
derived ; how the dress of quite small children is
copied from that of their elders, and frequently
perpetuates features of that dress which would
have otherwise quite disappeared ; these principles
and others will be obvious to all who look for
them.
Most important of all, however, is the fact .that
by comparing the present and past attire of all
sections of our community, we may obtain some
idea of the main general resemblances in the dress
worn by the ancient races that settled in Great
Britain. For thus only shall we be able to see
what is behind the many and great differences of
detail, and therefore fully realise the remarkable
strength and persistency of the influences that
have lasted a thousand years, and have by slow
in THE STOKY OF OUE DEESS 53
degrees moulded us into a nation, in place of a
welter of warring tribes.
THE DRESS OF MEN
Men's dress in Great Britain, as in other parts
of the world, is continually varying, though much
more slowly and within narrower limits than that
of women. In some cases the outer dress comes
to be made larger and fuller, either for display or
in order the better to protect the wearer, or the
garments beneath it ; in others the garment is re-
duced to the furthest possible extreme, usually in
order to allow more freedom of movement.
One of the most frequent rules is that the
garment last adopted is worn over the rest. Thus
the topcoat, greatcoat, or ulster now covers the
frock, or morning-coat, or jacket, all of these latter
having been outside coats when first adopted. And
these under-coats themselves in their turn cover the
waistcoat (which was also an outside garment by
origin), while the waistcoat again covers the shirt,
the latter itself derived from the ancient tunic.
The modern greatcoat (top-coat or overcoat) was
till quite recent years considered effeminate at most
of our public schools, and was formerly considered
unhealthy for any one to wear, except for long
journeys by coach, or on horseback. This may
actually have been the case, as the ancient over-
54 THE PAST AT DUE DOOES CHAP.
coat was of vast weight and size, and had layers
of capes, such as are now only worn of reduced
dimensions, by professional coachmen, or drivers.
The long brown overcoat called a petersham, as
well as the chesterfield and others, took their names
from the noblemen by whom they were introduced.
Lord Spencer, who lived in the reign of George
III. and was called the Eed Earl, also invented
the sleeveless short jacket which bears his name.
This latter, according to tradition, was suggested
to him either by an accident in the hunting-field
(by which his coat tails were torn off), or in a still
more alarming and humiliating manner by his
having them burnt off upon an occasion when he
had fallen asleep too near the fire.
Whatever may have been the occasion, the
"spencer" received his name, and along with the
" sandwich " (already mentioned as the invention of
another well-known nobleman) gave rise to the lines :
Two noble earls whom, if I quote, some folks might call
me sinner,
The one invented half a coat, the other half a dinner.
The coat, which was in very early times worn
indifferently both by men and women, has a curious
history, several stages of which we may still
actually see in use if we look about us. For the
ordinary single-breasted round " reefer " or " lounge "
coat without tails is a cut-down form of the morning
in THE STORY OF OUE DEESS 55
or " cut-away " coat ; and the cut-away coat is, as its
name implies, an abridged form of the older full-
skirted coat, the shape of which is retained in the
modern black frock-coat and in some liveries.
The older form of the coat first took the shape
of a simple, long, loose horseman's coat, reaching to
the knees, and with buttons all down the front,
which was worn by hackney-coachmen and others
in the reign of Charles I. The " cassock," a coat of
this kind, was worn with the vest introduced by
Charles II. in October 1666, as recorded by Pepys,
and (as we shall presently see) was subjected to
much ridicule in that connexion. Yet this coat
(with the long and full skirts) was popular, in the
reign of James II., and under William III. it
became the national garb.
In the course of time, for the sake of convenience
in riding, a much commoner method of conveyance
then than now, the skirts of this coat came to be
habitually turned back, and secured by fastening
their corners to a button in the centre of the skirt
tail at each side. When this looping-up became
permanent, in accordance with a French fashion of
1.793, the looped-back part being no longer re-
quired was cut away, and a garment somewhat after
the style of a " cut-away coat " resulted. This cut-
away coat, frequently of a scarlet colour, was fashion-
able for gentlemen in the reign of George III.
56
THE PAST AT OUK BOOKS CHAP.
In the army, however, the old form of looped-up
skirt was long retained, and was actually worn as
late as 1820, even by the Grenadier Guards. We
see, therefore, that
the description of
the "British Grena 7
diers " in the stir-
ring old song as
those " who carry
sword and rnusket
and wear the looped
clothes " rests upon
fairly recent his-
torical fact.
The modern
evening- dress, or
"swallow-tail" coat,
which is worn not
only by gentle-
men but also as a
species of uniform
by waiters, exhibits
this coat in a still
As originally worn
rtesy of L'nited Service Inst.
FIG. 15. Dress of "Guards'" Officer,
early nineteenth century, showing the
looping back of skirt-lapels, which led
to the "cut-away" form of morning
coat.
further stage of mutilation,
in Paris, the swallow-tail coat had three pairs of
buttons at the back, and the tails reached to the
ground. Many of us will remember that Uncle
Sam, in the pages of Punch, also wears a coat of
in THE STOEY OF OUK DEESS 57
this "swallow-tail" shape, and that the tails are
very much longer than is ever now usual with us.
The above mention of buttons leads us to the
question : " What was the origin of the two buttons
at the back of so many of our modern men's coats,
which now serve no apparent purpose ? " The
usual answer is that they were meant to support
the sword-belt, as in the modern policeman's uniform.
But if we examine the prints of this period we
shall find, after looking at a sufficiently large
number, that the sword * was then habitually
carried inside and not outside the coat, and hence
the explanation suggested above cannot be the true
one. Other explanations have also been given, but
if we look for examples, we shall find that these
buttons probably arose in quite a different way.
The very same kind of development which led
to the looping back of the coat tails, also led to the
turning over both of the cuffs and of the edges of
the skirt at the back of the tails. And the coat-tails
being once turned over, were fastened back by a
double row of buttons. But when, as before, the
turning back became permanent, the number of
buttons was reduced first to three pairs, which may
still be seen in many modern livery coats and in the
French coat mentioned above ; then to two pairs at
1 Except, of course, when slung from a bandolier or shoulder-belt,
in which case the non-connexion is obvious*
From B. M. Print.
FIG. 16,
From Frontispiece to Tristram
Shandy (Vol. //.)
FIG. 17.
Prom B. 21. Print
FIG. 18.
From French Print i
B. M. (about 1812).
FIG. 19.
FIG. 20.
FIG. 21.
FIG. 22.
Fio. 16. French Court Dress of 1722-23, showing two rows of button-holes left afte
turning back coat-lapels. FIG. 17. Coat with Turned-Back Lapels in 1759, showiii
retention of three button-pairs only. Fin. 18. Coat with three Button-Pairs only
a Russian Gentleman in Paris (early nineteenth century). Fio. 19. Coat with tw
Button. Pairs only. FIG. 20. Footman in Navy-blue Livery Coat (1910), with fou
pairs of buttons. FIG. 21. Footman in Navy-blue Livery Coat (1910) with thre
pairs of buttons. FIG. 22. Footman in Green Livery Coat (1910), showing retentioi
of two pairs of buttons.
CH. in THE STOKY OF OUE DKESS 59
the top and bottom, which may also be occasionally
seen in liveries ; and lastly to a single pair at the
top alone, these last two buttons being retained, as
in the case of our modern cuff buttons, even when all
other marks of their former purpose had disappeared.
Even the V-shaped nick which still survives in
the front of our modern coat collars, and has
come down to us from this same period, was at
first cut in order to allow the collar to stand up
properly round the neck, as we may see in the
portraits of Nelson, although it is now frequently
cut, in ignorance of that fact, in a way that would
effectually prevent it from doing so.
The waistcoat, as has already been said, was
originally an outer coat, and must have been at one
time practically indistinguishable from the man's
petty-coat, a short-waisted but usually long-sleeved
coat, in which form the waistcoat is worn, actually
still as an outside coat, by the modern railway porter !
The short white jackets worn by Highlanders in
undress, as well as by the Guards, are still called
" waistcoats " and are of the same pattern.
From the time of Henry VIII. at least, down to
the reign of Queen Anne, the waistcoat was a
fashionable dress for English ladies. In Henry's
reign we read of " two waistcoats for women, being
of cloth of silver, embroidered, both of them
having sleeves." And a special kind was worn on
60 THE PAST AT OUR BOORS CHAP.
horseback ; for in 1663 old Pepys the Diarist, saw
King Charles II. "riding in the Park, with the
Queen in a white laced waistcoat and a crimson
short petticoat, and her hair dressed a la negligence,
mighty pretty."
King Charles II. himself wore his waistcoat long,
reaching almost to the knees, that style of garment
being known by the name of " vest," which name
for the waistcoat is to this day almost invariably
the term employed by tailors, who have retained
in the " fancy vest " much of the ancient splendour
once distributed throughout the costume.
The plain black form of waistcoat to which
we are accustomed, was worn by King Charles
II. to promote the use of a simpler and less ex-
travagant attire. On the 17th of October 1666,
Pepys wrote that " the Court is full of vests, only
my Lord St. Albans not pinked * but plain black,
and they say the King said this pinking upon
white makes them look too much like magpies,
and therefore hath bespoke one of plain velvet,"
probably a black one, like that of my Lord
St. Albans.
But about this same time Pepys tells us that
"divers courtiers and gentlemen gave the King
gold by way of wager that he would not persist in
this resolution." And " five weeks later the French
1 That is, pricked or pierced with holes.
Ill
THE STOKY OF OUR DRESS
61
King, in defiance of the King of England, caused
all his footmen to be put into vests."
After this it is ^^~
amusing to learn
that this insult, " the
greatest indignity
ever done by one
Prince to another "
(as good old Pepys
hotly describes it ! ),
was too late to affect
the resolution of
Charles II., which
had changed, as had
been foretold, before
the end of the month
arrived !
The difference be-
tween shirt and skirt
seems to be that the
former name is given FIG. 23. The "Cassock" or long Out-
shortened
and the
latter to the part
originally cut off in shortening it. The shirt, which
acquires its name from being cut short (like the
" shorts " of our modern running track), was a
garment of the tunic kind, and was at first worn
to the
garment,
side Coat, and the Vest or long Waist-
coat, as worn by Charles II., showing
an earlier stage in the development
of our modern coat and waistcoat.
62 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CHAP.
as an outside dress. A modern example of this
was the red shirt uniform of the volunteers led by
Garibaldi in his successful struggle for the union
of Italy. This shirt was first worn, as is perhaps
not generally known, by Garibaldi's followers in
his campaign on behalf of the liberties of Monte
Video in South America in 1846. 1 The shirt is
now often worn with a turned-down cuff, like that
of a coat-sleeve.
As to the cause which led to the revival of the
trouser in its modern form, there seems to be some
doubt. By some they are thought to have resulted
from the lengthening of the knee-breeches worn in
the Stuart period, and the London Chronicle of
1762 actually declares that owing to the "high-
topped shoes and long trouser-like breeches with a
broad knee-band " a leg " in high taste is not longer
than a common council-man's tobacco-stopper ! "
This evidently refers to a kind of shortish trouser,
reaching almost to the boot-top, a Dutch fashion
first adopted in the reign of Charles I. On the
other hand, our chief modern authority on matters
of dress says that the modern trouser was popularised
as the result of the popularity of the Cossacks on
1 The original batch of these shirts were bought cheap from the
local makers at Monte Video, who had intended them for use in
the slaughter-houses for cattle in Argentina, their red hue having
been selected for this purpose.
in THE STOKY OF OUR DEESS 63
the occasion of their visit to London. No date is
given, but it must have been General Platoff s visit
after Waterloo (1816) that is meant. It certainly
appeared much earlier, but came in very gradually.
In 1812 we read that students of Trinity and
St. John's Colleges at Cambridge attending hall
or chapel in trousers were " considered as absent."
Even so late as 1823, tight-fitting trousers
shaped to the leg were worn alternately with the
full ones, and the former died out slowly. Again,
it was not till that year that the white breeches and
black gaiters of the Grenadier Guards, and the white
gaiters with black buttons and garters of the Foot
Guards, were exchanged for trousers.
At present, knee-breeches are worn, not only as
a part of Court dress and for many liveries and
games, but also, to a rapidly diminishing extent,
as part of the regular dress of men in Ireland.
With regard to the trouser itself, the partial return
to the " shaped " leg and the permanently turned-
up trouser hem of 1908 were late developments.
It may be thought that there is certainly no
interest or romance in connection with boots, and
little, if anything, to be learnt about them ; but how
many people know that the word boot, properly
speaking, means a top-boot only, and that our
ordinary boots are half-boots, as shoemakers correctly
still call them ? Yet this is the reason why shoes
64 THE PAST AT OUB DOORS CHAP.
(which are really half " half-boots ") are called " low
quarters " in America. Short boots or half-boots
were worn by the Saxons, and the Conqueror's
eldest son, " Court-hose," was so nicknamed from
his habit of wearing " short boots."
The full boot or top-boot seems, on the other
hand, to have grown in the course of centuries out
of the " leather hose " worn by the Saxons as modi-
fied for riding. It now frequently has a broad band
of colour at the top, which has a history of its own.
During the Stuart and Commonwealth period,
these long boots, which were worn by Eoundhead
and Cavalier alike, had their monstrous tops turned
either up or down, according as the wearer wished
to ride or walk. Our Household cavalry at the
present day still wear these boots permanently
turned up for riding. In the course of time civilians'
tops became permanently turned down (like the
cuffs of our coat sleeves,) and the colour of the lining-
was then imitated by the broad band of colour
(brown, buff, or white), which at the present day is
all that is left of the turned-down " top."
The toe-caps of our modern boots and shoes are
often decorated with a row of perforations forming
various patterns, which sometimes take the form of
a circle. This again is a survival of ancient custom,
for we read even in Chaucer of a young and some-
what dandified priest, who had his shoes decorated
in THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 65
with a pricked design of circular shape, something
resembling a diminutive rose window, on account of
which he was described as having " Paul's windows
carven in his shoes." We can, indeed, in some cases
trace them much further back to similar shoe
patterns employed by the Anglo-Saxons, who in
turn copied them from the Eomans themselves.
An amusing instance of misjudged criticism was
provided by the comments once made on two lines
in the play of King John, which were then thought
to afford one of many instances of Shakespeare's
ignorance or inaccuracy. These lines were :
Standing in slippers which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,
and the objection was that in Shakespeare's time
there were no "rights" or "lefts" to shoes or
slippers. As a matter of fact, however, the critics
in this case showed their own want of knowledge,
since not only were perfect " rights " and " lefts "
worn in the time of Shakespeare, but even earlier
still, in the fourteenth century, they were often so
made to an extravagant degree. On the contrary,
the ancient custom of having boots which might be
worn indifferently on either foot, survives down to
modern times in the boots worn by postilions.
To conclude with the mention of one or two
special kinds of footgear, how many of us know
that the word " pump," which is now applied to a
F
66 THE PAST AT OUR DOOES CHAP.
light kind of thin- soled shoe, used especially for
dancing, has probably got its name from being first
used for ceremony or "pomp"? In 1726 the
Highlanders are described as wearing pumps with-
out heels ; and formerly pumps were worn not only
by footmen, but also quite commonly by poor
country people, both in France (for instance in
Brittany) and England-, and they were still worn,
with the top-hat, by the boatmen of Deal in 1902.
Most extraordinary of all is the history of the
"galoche" or "galosh." This word comes from
the joining of two Greek words, meaning " wooden-
foot," the term used for a " shoemaker's last." As
time went on, by a slight change of meaning, it
came to be applied to a wooden clog or patten,
which was formerly worn by country people in
England, and may still be seen in France and
Holland. The galosh is of ancient use, and was
not always confined to the humbler classes. For
in the vision of Piers Plowman (137*7) we find
mention of the custom on the part of
a knight that cometh to be dubbed,
To get him gilt spurs, or galoches y-couped
(i.e. " cut ") ; " galoshes " being perhaps about the
very last kind of shoe that we should expect to see
worn by any one who now came to be knighted.
In Philadelphia (U.S.) the word " galosh " rarely
occurs, the word " gum " (for " india-rubber ") being
in THE STOEY OF OUK DKESS 67
employed instead. We can therefore sufficiently
enter into the feelings of a British visitor to the
States who was told that a young lady (occupied at
that moment in drying her galoshes at the front
door) was " rubbing her gums on the mat ! "
Still more unpromising, if possible, may appear
hats, and above all the silk hat, commonly called
a " chimneypot " hat or " stovepipe." Yet it has a
history from which we can learn much. The top-
hat of silk is a cheap substitute for a similar hat
formerly made of beaver skin, which stood water
and wore well enough, but was difficult to procure
on account of its high price. In shape the typical
French top-hat, especially during the last century,
had a tendency to curve inwards at the top, and
was in consequence much narrower at the crown
than the English top-hat. Hence it was more like
the steeple hat than the hat worn in England.
But the first public appearance of the top-hat
in its shiny modern form was in London on 15th
January 1797, and proved to be nothing if not
sensational. The wearer was John Hetherington,
a Strand haberdasher, and the unwonted sight of
his new and shiny headgear caused such a turmoil
in the street that he was charged with breach of
the peace and " inciting to riot," and was bound
over to keep the peace in the sum of 500.
The rudimentary bow, which now decorates the
By courtesy of Messrs. JUethuen and of Mr. Q. Clinch.
FIG. 24. The Top-Hat as worn by Princess (afterwards Queen)
Elizabeth. This hat is of a pattern which afterwards became
very popular with dandies of the opposite sex in the reign of
George II.
en. in
THE STORY OF OUR DRESS
69
lining, is a vestige from the time when the lining
was drawn together by means of a band passed
through it, to make it fit more closely to the head,
as in the tall hat still worn by huntsmen.
FIG. 25. The Top-Hat as worn by King Charles I. (taking the form
of a short-crowned steeple hat). Notice the origin of the lace
collar still worn by small boys, and the "points" on the back
of the glove. (See pp. 73, 94).
The modern hard felt hat seems to have been
the wear of an ordinary citizen in France during
70 THE PAST AT OUR DOOES
CHAP.
the period of the French Revolution, when it
appeared at Paris, and replaced the " cocked hat "
of the gentleman. At the same time it differs so
little from the hard round hat of the ancient
Romans, which was worn in England in the Saxon
period and still appears in the form of our modern
" carter's hat," that it may reasonably be thought
to have come from the ancient Roman headgear.
There also seems to be some affinity between it
and the pot helmet, referred to by Oliver Cromwell
when he wrote (in 1643), "I shall require a
new pot, mine is ill set. Buy me one in Tower
Street, a Fleming sells them." This would explain
why the modern hard round hat is often actually
called a " pot-hat " or " pot " to this day.
Of other hats and caps, it is interesting to know
that the flat " muffin-cap " of the parish school-
boy was worn by noblemen in the reign of Queen
Mary.
Even the straw hat, the coils or plaits for
making which are now imported from China and
Japan, is an English institution of some antiquity.
In 1592 an old writer, describing a countryman,
said,
A strawen hat he had upon his head,
The which his chin was fastened underneath.
And more than a century earlier a "black straw
cap" (in 1442) and a "straw hat" in 1451
THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS
were left in wills by way of legacy, an indication
that such hats were worth more then than now.
BOYS' DEESS
We all know that the long blue coat, yellow
stockings, bands and flat round cap of the Christ's
Hospital (or Blue
Coat) boys have
survived from what
was the boys' dress
in London in the
time of King
Edward VL, the
founder of the
school.
In other parts
of England there
are similar Blue
Coat schools (at
Liverpool, Chester,
Bristol, and Wells) ;
in some blue stock -
FIG. 26. Blue Boys' School, Chester (blue
uniform, blue cap, and "bands").
well as blue coats.
At York there is
a Grey Coat school, as also in London, the latter of
which was opened in the Broad Sanctuary, West-
minster, in 1698, the boys being dressed like the
72 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS CHAP.
Christ's Hospital boys, but in dark grey, with flat
caps.
The Duke of York's Military School, on the
other hand (founded in 1803), furnishes a famous
FIG. 27. Duke of York's Royal Military School,
Dover. Red coat of the School uniform, with
the " facings " worn by the School band.
example of a "Ked-coat" school, the only institu-
tion of its kind to possess military colours.
Take again, for instance, some of the details of
the dress worn at our older public schools. At Eton
in THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 73
the former custom of leaving the last button of
the waistcoat unfastened is explained as a survival
of the time when the waistcoat was worn with a
short flap to it. The straw hat, again, was once
an Eton institution, and was worn, for instance,
by the eleven in 1845, when the Winchester
eleven, playing against them, wore white top-hats.
The dress of quite small children is (as has
been said) often copied from that of their elders,
either at the existing or some earlier date. The
favourite " sailor suit," kilt, and other well-known
forms of dress worn by small boys, are examples
of the former. The knickerbockers, broad lace
collars, knots of ribbon, and the wearing of the
waistbelt below the waist, are examples of the latter.
Similarly the strings of a child's straw hat
represent the ribbons used in very early times for
tying on the hat or (at an earlier date still) the
hood. So, too, the shoes of children were at one
time made of the same shape for both feet, and the
shoes of quite small infants are still so made.
It may be observed that the younger the child
is, the less difference there is between the dress of
a girl and a boy, and this tendency is reflected in
the language, since "girl" in Old English meant
either a boy or a girl according to circumstances.
74 THE PAST AT OUR BOORS CHAP.
CHAPTER IV
THE STORY OF OUR DRESS (continued)
LIVERIES AND UNIFORMS
LIVERIED servants, such as outdoor footmen and
coachmen, who wear tall hats, top-boots, and doeskin
breeches, derive their attire from the fashionable
gentlemen's dress of the early eighteenth century.
The groom's belt is known to be a relic of the
time when ladies more often went on horseback
and sat on a pillion behind a gentleman or servant,
to whose belt they clung to avoid falling.
The cockade frequently seen on the hats of out-
door servants of the nobility, was worn by gentlemen
as late as 1789, and is thought to have been chosen
of a black colour to show allegiance to the house of
Hanover. An old Scots song of Sheriffmuir has
" the red-coat lads with black cockades " (meaning
the British). The white cockade was adopted by
the Jacobites because it was the colour of the King
of France, who had taken up the cause of James II.
It may not originally have been a rosette, and
there are several explanations of its origin, one of
which is that it is a survival of the tie formerly
used for cocking or fastening back the brim of the
hat to the crown, an arrangement which may still
IV
THE STOEY OF OUR DRESS
be seen, for instance, -both in the looping back of
the broad-brimmed bishop's hat and that of priests
in various parts of the Con-
tinent. In the time of the
poet Pope it was not only
pronounced but written
" cockard," an old French name
obviously connected with the
cocking of the hat for a Span-
ish cap. It should properly
be used only by the servants
of officers in the King's ser-
vice, or those who by courtesy
may be so regarded.
The scarlet cut-away coat,
plush breeches, silk stockings,
wig, and powdered hair of
the footman belonging to the
nobility, are taken from the
dress worn by gentlemen in
the reign of George III.
Again, the livery of a
sheriff's coachman takes us
back to the reign of George II.,
when the coat retained the
earlier square-skirted coat-tails.
" Footmen," who were so called because they
originally walked or ran on foot, to clear the way
FIG. 28. Coat worn by
a Sheriff's Coac'hman
(1910), showing reten-
tion of original square
skirt-tails dating from
reign of George II.
76 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS CHAP.
in front of their lord's carriage, were also for this
reason given a staff (which at first was a quite
serviceable article) for chastising any who resisted.
" Footman " also had once the sense of " foot-soldier."
On the signboard of an old inn called the Running
Footman, a footman was shown in the act of running,
and carrying his staff. Sir Walter Scott tells us
that even he himself remembered seeing, with the
state coach of John Earl of Hopetoun, a running
footman (" clothed in white and bearing a staff").
It is said that the Marquis of Queensberry, who
died in 1810, used to put candidates for the post
into his livery and make them run in front of his
house in order to show their pace, he himself watch-
ing them from the balcony. On one occasion, he
had just signified his approval by remarking, " You
will do very well for me," when the man unex-
pectedly exclaimed, "And your livery will do very
well for me," and promptly made off with it !
A question often asked is : What is the origin
of the buttons on a page-boy's jacket ? It has been
suggested that the triple button-row on his coat was
derived from the " Dutch Skeleton Dress," which in
1829 is said to have been a "very popular fashion
for boys " ; the idea being that three button-rows
were invented in order to indicate the outline of
the boy's ribs or "skeleton." This was first sug-
gested by Dickens in his sketch "Private Theatricals."
IV
THE STORY OF OUK DKESS
But coats with converging button-rows in front
were worn as English uniforms in the army much
earlier than this "Dutch Skeleton Dress." And
the scrutiny of several thousands of figures in prints
FIG. 29.
FIG. 30.
Fio. 29. Dress worn by Achille Murat as a boy, showing the two button-
rows produced by turning back of the front coat-lapels, a third row
being afterwards added down the centre, which at first was "hooked."
Fio. 30. Dress of Page Boy (1910), showing the three button-rows as
fully developed.
belonging to this period enables us to say that
the two converging rows curving downwards from
the shoulders to the waist really represent the two
rows of buttons once used for fastening back the
lining of the front coat-lapels, the two inner edges
THE PAST AT CUE DOOES CHAP.
together
of the turned - back coat being at first hooked
in uniforms of Napoleon's time), and
ap afterwards replaced by a central
row of buttons.
Turning to the uniforms of
our soldiers, the scarlet tunic,
which gives its name to our
"red-coats/' was not definitely
established (with the blue facings)
as the uniform of the British
army till the reign of Queen
Anne. But then the scarlet and
blue livery colours used by the
English Eoyal family, and appear-
ing in the Eoyal Arms, were
those of the kingdom itself, not
those of a House or dynasty.
Hence our red military uniforms
may be regarded as a sort of
FIG. 31. Uniform of nationalised livery.
The popular term " red-coat "
came in during the great Civil
War. At the battle of Edgehill,
the British red coats were worn by the troops
on both sides, who were dis-
tinguished solely by their coloured scarves. And
in 1645 the entire army, under Sir Thomas
Fairfax, was dressed in red for the first time.
Yorkshire Light
Infantry in 1813,
showing the three
in
Army.
nr THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 79
By degrees the term " red-coat " established itself,
and in a poem of 1661 we read that
'Tis not the black coat, nor the red,
Hath power to make or be the head. .
But muskets and full bandileers - }
and again
The gown and chain cannot compare
With Redcoat and his bandileers.
It would seem that the red coat with blue
facings must have gradually displaced a blue coat
garded or trimmed with red. For in the reign of
Elizabeth, in 1581, we read that the men levied for
Ireland were to be dressed "in some dark colour,
and not blue and red, which, heretofore, hath been
commonly used." And in 1569 the musketeers,
raised for the Queen at Salisbury, wore " red caps
and blue coats," this being, no doubt, the uniform
referred to in 1581.
A fuller description occurs under Henry VIII.
(1545), when every soldier was ordered to wear "a
blue coat garded with red, the right hose red, the
left blue, and a strip three fingers wide on the out-
side of each," the forerunner of the broad trouser-
stripe worn by so many of our regiments to-day.
It is here necessary to remember that the blue
coat, which we have thus seen to have preceded the
red coat in the army, was at an earlier period worn
80 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CHAP.
by the citizens of London generally, but had gradu-
ally become a badge or mark of service.
We can thus understand why it should have
been eventually adopted as a livery for the armed
retainers of the King and the nation. Like green
and white and red, also used at first for important
liveries, it is still well represented in our army.
This subject of our military uniforms, however,
is a vast one indeed, and, most fascinating as it
undoubtedly is, it has been necessary to confine
our present investigations to the history of the red
coat alone, as typical of all the rest.
Well within living memory, the Thames water-
men wore high beaver hats of a drab colour, knee-
breeches, and pink stockings, and the King's Barge-
men at present have a green coat, knee-breeches,
and a sort of jockey -like cap ; whilst at Deal, as has
been said, so recently as 1902 the watermen still
wore top-hats and pumps.
But some of the most obvious examples of
survival in uniforms or liveries are to be seen in
the dress worn by officers of municipalities, city
guilds and companies, by inmates of some ancient
almshouses at Castle Rising, Winchester, the
Charterhouse, etc., by soldiers, firemen, postmen,
railway officials, and policemen, and that of bakers,
cooks, costermongers, butchers, etc. The butcher's
apron, by the way, was not always blue, but white
iv THE STOEY OF OUR DRESS 81
originally, a colour now more especially worn by
a special class of butchers, pork -butchers, for instance,
as well as by poulterers.
Other examples are grocers, cobblers, carpenters,
and blacksmiths, the brown leather apron of the
last mentioned, with the square bib above, being of
exactly the same pattern as it was six hundred years
ago. The "Masonic" or Freemason's apron, a rare and
all but unique case of the apron being employed by
men for ornament, may, however, represent, like
the bishop's apron, the surviving skirt of a gown.
THE DRESS OF WOMEN
It is certainly a very odd thing that most of the
chief kinds of dress at present worn by women in
England are copied from dresses first worn (so far
as our own national records go) by men ! l
Some of these dresses, which men once wore, are
the gown, robe, frock, blouse, coat, jacket, and,
strangest of all, the petticoat ! The gown, for
instance, rather more than a thousand years ago,
was a robe of fur, worn by monks who had bad
health, or had grown old and feeble, in order to
protect them from the cold.
Even in the time of King Richard II. it still
1 On the other hand, as has been shown hy Mr. R. A. S.
Macalister, the dress of the clergy was originally that worn by
women in ancient Rome.
G
82 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAR
formed part of the dress of both men and women,
but later it ceased to be usually worn by men,
and is now only worn by clergymen or lawyers, or
at our schools and universities.
Among ladies the name is now chiefly given to
an elegant dress, such as a tea-gown or dinner-gown.
Even the night-gown (or bed-gown) was formerly
used as a sort of dressing-gown, and was actually
worn in the streets, incredible as it may seem, as a
sort of overall in which ladies went walking or
shopping, in the reign of Queen Anne and even later.
The coat was also worn in very early times by
men as well as by women, and at the present day a
lady's coat is often made not only in the shape of
a man's coat, but also by a man's tailor. The
longer walking or driving coat is still more like a
man's garment.
When we come to the frock, we may perhaps
think that here at last we have a dress which was
first worn by women. But as a matter of fact the
frock, which was originally a long gown with large
open sleeves, was the outer robe always worn both
by monks and friars.
We shall realise this better when we reflect that
the ordinary term still applied to a priest who is
deprived of his priesthood is " unfrocked." More-
over, a particular kind of coat called a " frock-coat "
is still worn by men.
iv THE STOEY OF OUK DEESS 83
Apart from these exceptions, " frock " is applied
to the dress of women and children, as it was once to
a man's armour. With the frock, in time, the Saxon
smock was combined, and that is how our farm-
labourers and shepherds, till quite recently, still
wore what was called a smock-frock (p. 93), a kind
of overall with a hole for the head to go through.
From the earliest times both smock-frock and
smock were richly worked ; a smock given to
Elizabeth by Sir Philip Sidney was not, however,
in the great queen's favourite design, which was a
curious pattern of " oak-leaves and butterflies." This
may explain the fact that oak-leaves are now the
ornamentation of the civil court dress of the first
class and on some naval and military uniforms.
The smock-frock we have just mentioned was
called a House in France, where it was worn by the
peasantry as an overall, just in the same way as it
was worn in England. But its name was taken
from that of an ancient silken overall formerly
worn by knights over their armour to protect it
both from the sun and the rain, and afterwards
worn by ladies, no doubt in imitation of the knights
themselves. There is still preserved the record
of an order given by King John for a "blouse"
of this ancient kind, " lined with fur for the
use of the Queen." The modern lady's blouse
succeeded the garibaldi, which was copied from
84 THE PAST AT DUE DOOES CHAP.
the red shirt, already mentioned, of Garibaldi's
volunteers.
Another name for the upper part of a lady's
dress is bodice or boddice. Queen Victoria, in 1868,
wrote, " I and the girls (were) in Eoyal Stewart
skirts and shawls, over black velvet bodies." This
helps to illustrate the fact that our modern " bodice "
really stands for " bodies," and that the word
" bodices " is therefore nothing in the world but a
plural formed twice over (like the " ghostses " and
" pharisees," for " ghosts " and " fairies " that we
sometimes hear spoken of by country people).
The reason why the upper part of a dress came
to be called " bodies " (plural) was because in
ancient times it was made in two parts (like stays),
and laced together at front and back. It was,
indeed, for a long time actually called a " pair of
bodies " for this very reason. The mistake, how-
ever, of using " bodice " as a singular instead of
" bodies," is so old that we even find it in plays of
the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein such phrases
as " Eve's bodice " or a " ghost's bodice " occur. So,
too, the phrase, a " pair of corsets," is common,
though " corset " really means " a pair of stays."
Tight-lacing, by the way, is a very old institution,
and even in the time of the Normans was repre-
sented by a satirist in a picture of Satan, who
was drawn in the robes of a Norman lady. It is to
iv THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 85
this same custom that the great poet Chaucer, in
describing the wife of a carpenter, refers when he
remarks of a lady " her body was genteel, and
small l as a weasel ! " Yet, in the time of Peter
the Great, though worn in Germany, stays were
still quite unknown in Eussia, and even the Czar
himself, after a dance at which some German
princesses had been his partners, is said to have
exclaimed, " What hard bones these German ladies
have ! " We shall all remember that tight-lacing
was one of the means by which the wicked queen
attempted to make an end of the life of little
" Snow- White," in that most ancient and famous
fairy story recorded by the brothers Grimm.
The jacket (which means a little " jack "), though
still worn by men in such special forms as the
Norfolk jacket, pea-jacket, pilot jacket, and so forth,
is now principally worn by women and children.
But both the jacket and jack were in ancient times
first worn by men, and when the followers of Jack
Straw and Wat Tyler burned and plundered the
Duke of Lancaster's palace at the Savoy in London
in 1381, they took his jack (described as "his most
precious garment ") and stuck it on a spear to shoot
at, but finding that to destroy it in this way gave
them more trouble than they expected, they chopped
it to pieces with swords and axes !
1 I.e. slender.
86 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
These ancient " jacks " were made of a great many
folds of cloth and a stag's skin, which, being
hardened, became so tough as to form a complete
protection against arrows and dagger wounds.
At the siege of Lord Gordon's castle in Scotland,
that high-spirited princess, Mary, Queen of Scots,
remarked that she " regretted nothing but that she
was not a man, to know what a life it was to lie in
the fields all night, or to walk about with a jack and
a knapsack, a shield and a broadsword." Perhaps
(as Planche" suggests) her enthusiasm might have
cooled if she had been offered one of the " great
villainous English jacks " then customary.
The most distinctive part of a lady's dress, how-
ever, is her skirt, a word which is another form of
" shirt," also part of a man's dress. The modern lady's
skirt varies in shape and size, as we know, from
what is called the " sheath-skirt " (owing to the fact
of its fitting tightly like a sheath) to the old-
fashioned bell -shaped crinoline, an absurd style
of dress, invented apparently to display the rich
materials of which the skirts of those days were made.
In the reign of King Charles I., Lady "Wych, the
wife of a special ambassador, who had been sent by
King James to the Sultan of Turkey, went with all
her attendants, dressed in the big hoop skirts which
were then worn, to pay a visit to the Sultaness.
No doubt this dress was worn to impress her
iv THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 87
Imperial Highness ; but instead of this, the sight
being new to her, she merely inquired whether that
remarkable shape of dress was due to the fact that
Englishwomen were differently made from other
people, and Lady Wych had to take much trouble
to convince her such was not the case !
Fashionable modern skirts are sometimes made
in the Greek style, and sometimes even in the
Japanese style, but most of them are still made in
the various French modes, the chief of which in
1909 were the directoire and the empire dresses.
The directoire is so called because it was one of
the principal fashions worn in Paris during the
terrible French Ee volution, at the time when a small
committee of five men, called the " Directoire " or
Directory, was administering the government of
France. The empire dress, on the other hand, is
named from one of the chief styles of dress worn
during the first empire of Napoleon, at which time
it was a favourite dress of the Empress Josephine.
The Watteau dress (so called after the name of
a famous French artist of the time of Queen Anne,
who used often to introduce it in his pictures) and
the polonaise, or Polish woman's dress, no doubt so^
called because it first reached France from Poland,
are two other well-known French styles.
But the favourite " Princess " dress, with its
simplicity and its easy grace, is one of our rare
88 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
English fashions, and it is believed that it received
its name in honour of Queen Alexandra, at the time
when she was Princess of Wales.
The petticoat, now often used as a symbol for
woman in general, as distinct from man, was
originally, as its name implies, a "little " or " short "
coat (from the French word " petit," in the sense of
" small "), and was first applied to the coat of a man.
In several parts of England, as, for instance, in Kent,
where it survives as " petty-coat," the word is still
used with the meaning of a man's waistcoat. But
the fisherman's oilskin "petticoat" is a skirt-like
garb.
It was originally a man's outside coat; first a
short coat worn as armour, and then a short close-
fitting tunic worn under the coat. Even the warlike
Henry V. had a " petticoat of red damask with open
sleeves," and in a book of rules for officers of the
King's household, there were instructions for warm-
ing the King's petticoat before he put it on !
We do not know exactly how the change of
meaning came about, but it is thought most probable
that the identity of the name, as applied both to the
-short jacket and the skirt, or underskirt, may be
due to the fact that the " petticoat " was once a
short tunic, which came to be divided into two parts
at the belt for convenience in wearing it, as is the
case with our modern frocks and gowns. At all
iv THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 89
events, while the upper garment known as a
" petticoat " seems to have been gradually identified
with the man's "waistcoat," the lower garment
so called became the richly decorated petticoat
formerly worn as an outside skirt, but grew less
ornamental in character when it ceased to be visible.
The outer petticoat is still worn as a skirt in
some parts of Great Britain, for instance, in Scotland
and Ireland. And it survives in a beautifully
embroidered and often highly artistic form among
the peasant girls of Norway and Switzerland.
The apron (which was originally called a napron,
but by a wrong division of the words in rapid
speaking was turned into an apron) was a very
ancient part of an English lady's dress. It was
also, until modern times, regarded as an honourable
part of that dress, and was frequently worn by all
ladies, from the queen downwards. In Germany
aprons are still worn as a part of full dress, but
in England they are now only worn by children
and women of all ranks for household duties, though
an ornamental one is still worn by barge -women.
Aprons are also worn by men of certain trades,
examples of which have already been given.
Yet another costume closely borrowed from that
of men, is the dress worn by ladies in the hunting-
field, which includes even the top-hat. But the
most striking of all the effects of this tendency
90 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
is the disuse, by ladies, of the side-saddle, which
had been employed in England since Saxon times.
What we call the " clock " of a stocking came
from the seams of the gusset, a three-cornered piece
of stuff let into the foot of the stocking under the
instep, as had always to be done in the days when
stockings were made of cloth. For although the
modern clocks reach almost to the knee, those of
two centuries back only reached to about half that
height, being of the shape of an excessively long
" V " turned upside down, with a sort of nourish at
the point, and in the days of Queen Elizabeth we
read of " clocks about the ankles."
This view is confirmed by the important fact
that in some parts of Scotland the word " gusset "
is still used for the clock of a stocking.
Muffs, sleeves, and gloves were all originally
connected, for the oldest meaning of "muff" was
a sleeve, especially a long hanging sleeve such as
was worn by women, and in which the hands could
be " muffled " in cold weather. And the earliest
muff or muffler for the hands must have been
suggested by the habit of placing the hands one
behind the other and letting the long sleeve-ends
flow over them till they met. Examples of this
custom occur in the time of the Anglo-Saxons.
It is represented at the present day by the
practice of nuns and others, who have wide and
IV
THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS
91
long sleeves, but are not allowed the use of
gloves.
The Norman ladies in England actually wore
curious glove-like hand-mufflers, with long hanging
streamers, and the Anglo-Saxon ladies before that
mm
r courtesy of Mr. Arthur Beckett.
FIG. 32.
FIG. 33.
FIG. 32. The Bag-Glove without Streamers, as worn by Saxon Shepherds
under Norman Rule (thirteenth century). From wall-painting in Cocking
Church, which represents the announcement of the Nativity to the
Shepherds by an Angel (partially visible). FIG. 33. Norman form of the
Bag-Glove, with hanging ends or "streamers."
wore a simpler kind of hand-muffler without any
streamer, which seems to have been invented by the
Anglo-Saxons themselves.
Now these hand-mufflers are really a bag-glove
with thumb but without separate fingers, such as very
92 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CH. iv
small children wear even at the present day. Here,
then, we have discovered the oldest form of glove,
from which our modern gloves with fingers are
descended, and which were worn as late as the
reign of Elizabeth by Sir Philip Sidney himself.
This leads to one of our most interesting in-
stances of survival, for while to this very day, in
Iceland 1 and in other far countries of the frozen North,
bag-gloves are universally worn by grown-up people,
they are still commonly worn by small children
here, and in country parts of England they are yet
quite frequently worn by farm-labourers engaged
either in hedging or in binding corn. The " house-
maid's glove " is of the same character, and even a
kind of motor-glove is of the bag-glove form.
Much the same story, curiously enough, belongs
to the word " cuff," which in Anglo-Saxon meant a
sort of half-glove or mitten, and did not come to
mean the lower end of a sleeve till much later.
One of the names of the glove itself in Anglo-Saxon
was the odd word "hand-shoe," which is the same
name as is given to the glove in modern Germany,
the name showing, of course, that our shoes were
invented first and gloves afterwards. There seems
reason to believe that the three stripes of thread-
1 A quaint fact about these Icelandic bag-gloves is that they are
furnished with two thumbs, so that they can be the more rapidly
put on. Bag-gloves are warmer than gloves with fingers.
irtesy of Miss A. L. J. Gossvt.
FIG. 34. Modern Bag-Gloves, as Avorn by Hedgers (1910).
The wearer is dressed in a Sussex " smock " (see p. 83).
94 THE PAST AT DUE DOORS CHAP.
work on the back of our modern kid gloves have come
from the continual lengthening of the seams of the
fork-like pieces between the fingers, to make the
wearer's fingers look longer and more slim. These
seams were first carried right down on to the back
of the hand, almost to the wrist, and afterwards
separated at the knuckles. This must have been
in comparatively modern times, for the gloves worn
in ancient times never had such stripes ; at most
they had a jewel, or other ornament, on the back.
We all know the important part that gloves
have played both in love and war : to throw down
the glove being the expression still used to describe
a challenge to an enemy, or the favour granted by
a lady to her lover. The reason for this seems
to be that at first kings, knights and ladies wore
the glove as part of their ceremonial dress. Thus
it became the outward sign of authority over
others, and when the knight threw down his own
glove by way of defiance, it was equivalent to say-
ing, " I am your master, and there is the sign of
my authority over you." But when he wore his
lady's glove in his helmet, he admitted her authority
over himself. In this way some modern expressions
may be explained by the customs of olden chivalry.
If we look at the shoes of a modern Frenchman
or Frenchwoman, and compare them with our own,
we shall see that the French shoes look noticeably
iv THE STOEY OF CUE DEESS 95
" longer " in the toe than the English. This will
help us to remember that the fashion of wearing
long pointed toes came originally from France,
where they are said to have been invented by a
Count of Anjou, to conceal his deformed feet.
Similarly the high heel has been traced back
to the fashion set by King Louis XIV. of France,
who, being very short himself, wore very high heels,
to raise himself some inches above the ground, and
so make himself look a more imposing figure.
This does not mean, however, that Louis invented
the high heel, but only that particular kind of high
heel still known by his name. For other forms of
the high-heeled shoe were known long before he suc-
ceeded in 1643 as a boy of five. They were known
to our own King Charles L, for instance, as we are
told that when he went to meet Henrietta Maria
(afterwards his Queen) at Dover, and cast his eyes
down towards her (she seeming somewhat taller
than report made out), she was able at once to show
him her shoes, and replied : " Sir, I stand upon mine
own feet, I have no helps of art ; thus high I am,
and am neither higher or lower." l It seems probable
that the Louis heel was copied from the French by
the courtiers of Charles II. during his exile, and
brought to England by them at the Eestoration.
1 Queen Elizabeth, again, had shoes which are still extant,
with heels 2 inches high.
96 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
It is a remarkable fact that in 17*70 the use of
scents, paints, cosmetics, high-heeled shoes, false hair,
and even artificial teeth were all forbidden by a
British Act of Parliament, which enacted that all
who offended against it should incur the usual
penalty of the " laws against witchcraft, sorcery and
of such like misdemeanours," and that in the event of
any of His Majesty's male subjects being " betrayed "
into marriage by any such arts as these, the marriage,
in the case of a conviction, should itself be void !
The years 1908-10 were remarkable, amongst
other things, for the vast size of the hats (commonly
called cart-wheel hats) worn by ladies. These large
hats are by no means a new idea, for they have
been worn at various earlier periods of our history,
and have indeed been known at least since the time
of the marvellous hat which, in the year 1352,
Blanche de Bourbon, the young Queen of Castile,
ordered for herself at Paris. Composed of gold
cloth from Cyprus, it was picked out with pearls,
gems and enamel, and was decorated with ivory
oak-trees bearing pearl acorns, which latter were
being thrown to the swine below by children also
carved in ivory. In the boughs were singing-birds,
and the flowers in the grass below were being visited
by bees that came to steal their honey !
The modern form of folding fan has been in
use since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who in a
iv THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 97
painting of 1592 is shown with a fan of that shape
suspended about her waist by pink ribands. A
little later, ladies had immense fans with handles
half a yard long, which they often used to " correct "
their daughters, as the old accounts say. These fans
were also carried in public by men of rank and
fashion, as, for instance, by the Earl of Manchester,
and by the great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke,
who actually went on circuit with a fan of this
kind.
At the end of the eighteenth century, a very
large green fan, called a sunshade, was in use, and
was intended to screen the face from the sun, when
the owner was out of doors. This was the fore-
runner of the modern parasol. The umbrella, as
its name suggests, was also a small sunshade in
the countries where it was first invented.
The first umbrella used in England by a man
in the open street for protection against rain, is
usually said to have been that carried by Jonas
Hanway, a great traveller, who introduced it on his
return from Persia about 1750, some thirty years
before it was generally adopted. Some kind of
umbrella was, however, occasionally used by ladies at
least so far back as 1709 ; and a fact not generally
known is that from about the year 1717 onwards,
a "parish" umbrella, resembling the more recent
"family" umbrella of the nineteenth century, was
H
98 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
used by the priest at open-air funerals, as the church
accounts of many places testify.
In 1752 General Wolfe (at that time lieutenant-
colonel) wrote from Paris that people " there used
umbrellas in hot weather to defend them from the
sun, and something of the same kind to save them
from snow and rain!' In medieval times they were
known at Venice, where a state umbrella, resembling
the royal umbrellas so common in the East, was
carried over the Doge or Duke, on the occasion of
any great ceremony, just as the fan had been held
over the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
In the Far East, as in Africa, to this day the
umbrella is a symbol of high rank and royalty, 1 the
round umbrella, made to open and shut, being linked
up with sunshades of the "fan" type by the flat
umbrellas, constructed from a single palm-leaf, but
most ingeniously made so as to open or shut, which
are still to be found in remote parts of Indo-China.
Eings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets all go
back to the beginnings of our history, and were all
worn by men at first. Finely worked bracelets or
bangles of solid gold, loaded the arms of the Saxons,
and were, moreover, worn almost universally by
(and buried with) the principal men among them,
1 A curious umbrella represented in an Anglo-Saxon MS. as
being held by one man over the head of another, is probably a
"royal " umbrella of this sort.
iv THE STOEY OF OUR DEESS 99
especially by their kings and princes. The latter
were in the habit of presenting such rings to their
friends or retainers, either as a favour or in payment,
whence the old Saxon kings were called, in their
national songs, " dispensers of rings."
The heathen Danes also kept a sacred orna-
ment of the bracelet kind upon the altar of their
gods, or worn by their priests, by which their most
solemn oaths were taken, their usual oath being
" by the blade of my sword," or, " by the shoulder
of my horse."
It was on account of their strong belief in the
sacredness of this bracelet that King Alfred made
the Danes swear by it, when he had defeated them,
a thing which they had never previously done to
the king of any nation. And when Earl Godwin,
to appease the Danish King, Hardicanute, presented
him with a fine ship containing eighty soldiers with
coats of silver mail, and gilded shields and helmets,
it was a special feature of the compliment that
every one of the warriors wore two golden bracelets,
weighing sixteen ounces, upon each arm.
Eings were at first often worn for various
magical purposes. In some cases, even in the
present more enlightened times, they are believed
(especially when made of coffin-handles !) to protect
the wearer from cramp or rheumatism or (if
furnished with a sapphire) to protect the eye-sight.
100 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS CHAP.
Formerly they were believed to be a safeguard
against poison, as was the case with the ring given
by Ruthven to Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as
with the " snake-rings " of Malta, the stones of
which, as already mentioned, are found in the
traditional cave of St. Paul.
The " snake -rings " are, however, like many
trinkets and other objects, worn for " luck " or for
some supposed virtue, a survival of savage beliefs
which have lingered on into Christian times, out-
lasting the order of things that gave them birth.
In very early times, the ring, like the glove,
was an emblem of royal authority and formed part
of the official dress. An early example of the
thumb-ring of an English king is that of Athelwulf,
father of King Alfred, and in one of the old English
romances we read that at the hero's wedding there
were present
Archbishops, with rings
More than fifteen.
From which it appears that several rings were then
worn on each finger.
To conclude, it may be pointed out that milliner
was still written " milaner " in 1828 in Sir Walter
Scott's Fair Maid of Perth. Its original meaning
was a man of Milan, and it was employed at first to
signify a pedlar who sold ribbons, bonnets, gloves,
toilet accessories, such as looking-glasses, and mere
IV
THE STORY OF OUE DRESS
101
nick-nacks and trinkets, which were then chiefly
exported from, and sold by natives of, Milan.
GIRLS' DRESS
As in the case of boys, there are many old
established girls'
schools in Eng-
land, where the
dress still worn
is an interesting
link with our
past history. At
Bristol there is
a Red Maids'
School, one of
the very earliest
of such founda-
tions for girls,
founded in
162 9, "for forty
poor women
children," whom
the mayor and
aldermen were
to cause to
" goe and be apparelled in redd clothe."
This school gets its name from the red frocks
FIG. 35. Dress worn at Red Maids' School,
Bristol (founded 1627). Red dress,
with bonnet, white cape, and apron.
102 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS CHAP.
in which the girls are dressed, a colour perhaps due
to the fact that " Bristol-red " was, like " Lincoln
Green " and " Coventry Blue," one of the most
famous of
the city
colours of
the sixteenth
and seven-
teenth cen-
turies. An
author of
1530 re-
marks that
" at Bristowe
is the best
water to dye
red." The
poet Skelton,
too, speaks
of a kirtle
By courtesy of B. G. School, Chester. <
FIG. 36. Dress worn at Blue Girls' School, of' 1 BnstOWG
Chester. Navy-blue dress, broad white red," and
falling collar, and apron. another old
writer distinguishes it from the "London colour,"
which was scarlet.
The Red Maids at first had short sleeves and
the long white elbow-gloves of the Stuart period.
At Chester again, and in London, there are a
IV
THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 103
Blue Girls' School and also a Grey Girls' School
respectively, at which the colour of the girls'
dresses and capes is (or, in the case of the London
school, was till
recently) a sur-
vival of their
ancient uniform.
The Blue Girls'
School at Chester
was founded in
1718, and most
of the girls wear
the short sleeves
which have now
been discarded
by the Eed
Maids of Bristol.
The Grey Girls'
School of London
was founded in
the Broad Sanc-
tuary, West-
minster, in 1698.
Coming to
dress worn by girls in general, the " pinafore "
or "pinner" was originally worn by women as
well as by children. It received its name from
being " pinned afore," that is, in front of the dress.
liy courtesy of Miss E. Day.
FIG. 37. Dress worn by Girls at Grey
Coat Hospital School, Westminster,
from 1701 to 1875. Grey laced bodice,
grey skirt, and old-fashioned cap.
104 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS CHAP.
It at first resembled an apron with a bib, but is
now rather an overall than an apron.
Even the dress of the smallest children often
contains interesting reminders of past history ; thus
the short frock and long hair, either plaited or worn
simply " down " and tied with a ribbon, takes us
back to the far-distant periods when these features
were characteristic of the grown-up members of
their sex. In former times even queens were
dressed except as regards the length of their skirt
in the simpler styles now sometimes followed
by the dresses of quite small children. Although
the more usual custom was for the hair to be " put
up " at marriage, Queen Eleanor, the wife of one
of our greatest kings, Edward I., at times continued
to wear her hair, as it grew naturally, down her back.
The plaiting of the hair in long tails which hung
down behind was an old custom of the Danish, as
well as of the Saxon and Norman, women.
CHAPTER Y
THE STORY OF OUR DRESS (continued)
ENGLAND
WE shall now see how, by tracing back and com-
paring the chief characteristics of dress now worn
v THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 105
by the inhabitants of these islands, we may learn
something at all events as to the features of the
ancient dress of Scotland, Ireland, "Wales, and even
of England. For although our ancient national
costumes have in almost all cases for many centuries
been continually overlaid by fashions imported
from abroad, yet in the mere fragmentary survivals,
which are all that remain, we may still find, as we
work backwards, some of the marks of race.
At the same time it must be remarked that this
evidence is much more difficult to collect than
might be expected, owing to the above-mentioned
general similarity between the dress of the various
races that settled in Britain. The dress of the
ancient Danes, for example, is hardly distinguish-
able from that of the Saxons ; and between that
of the Saxons and Normans the difference was not
substantial ; whilst that of the British themselves
was, after all, the same as that of the Saxons, only
that it was worn very much longer and fuller.
But we will discuss first the question of colour.
The scarlet colour, so often associated with
witches in high steeple-hats, as well as with those
nursery heroines, Mother Goose, Mother Hubbard,
Little Eed Eidinghood, and so forth, is still very
popular for robes of dignity in most professions. 1
1 St. Andrews, where it is worn even by students, is picturesquely
called the " City of the Scarlet Gown."
106
THE PAST AT OUK DOCKS
CHAP.
It is still the official dress of the mayor and
aldermen of many towns in various parts of the
country ; and it was also worn, for instance, at
London, Hull, Nottingham, and
York, during the fifteenth cen-
tury ; and at Oxford and Great
Yarmouth in the sixteenth. And
when the mayor was commanded
to wear a scarlet gown, his wife
was also ordered to wear a dress
of scarlet, under penalty of a
heavy fine for not doing so.
The red cloak in England
was an early Stuart fashion.
At the " Howard " (or Trinity)
Hospital of Castle Rising,
founded by Henry, Earl of
Northampton in 1614, the
Sisters wear* a red cloak in
FIG. 38. Dress of the Combination with the " SUgar-
Castle Rising Sisters. loaf hat of that eriod> At
Red cloak (with
Howard badge) and Clunn, in Shropshire, a " hospital "
sugar-loaf hat, dat- on fa e game f oun dation, a red
ing from James I.
gown is said to have been
worn by the men within living memory, though the
steeple-hats have been replaced by modern " toppers."
Only fifty years ago a clergyman wrote : " I
have preached in churches where the men, 'in the
By courtesy of the "Governess"
and Rev. H. Thursby.
v THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 107
rustic costume of white smocks/ sat apart from the
women, all of whom wore red cloaks. ... In my
father's church at Saffron -Walden. the nave was
always filled with red cloaks."
To this day scarlet coats are still worn, for
instance, by foxhunters and golfers, by certain
liveried servants, such as the powdered footman of
the nobility, the coachman of the Lord Mayor and
Sheriffs of London, and many others.
Coming to the question of form, the Anglo-Saxon
dress, which began to follow the Norman fashion,
even before the Conquest, developed into a
number of different garments as the result of the
various ways in which the tunic and mantle were
worn. Some of these have been already described.
Even the coat was a tunic-like garment, and the
waistcoat and petticoat probably had a like origin.
In England alone, as distinct from other parts
of Great Britain, the wearing of the trouser or
" trews," as a distinctive part of the national
costume, was discontinued from about the beginning
of the Saxon period, down to the nineteenth century.
This does not, of course, mean that there were no
examples of their use. They were (rarely) worn
by Saxons and Normans, 1 and again from the
1 The British trouser consisted of long loose trews, drawn tight
at the ankle, like the trousers of bicyclists. Such trousers are still
worn by the women of Turkey, and in other Oriental countries.
108 THE PAST AT OUR BOOKS CHAP.
fifteenth century by labourers and " shipmen " ;
hence it is quite likely they may have been worn
to some slight extent by other classes as well. In
Ireland, the remoter parts of Scotland, and on the
Continent, they were never quite given up.
The English steeple-hat, from one form of which
our modern tall " silk hat " is descended, has ap-
peared in a number of different forms in all ages of
our history, and has been worn by the " Sisters " at
Castle Eising, as already stated, since 1614.
This steeple-hat grew out of the conical hat
worn both by the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans
(and before their time in a looser form by the
ancient British and Irish). It yet lingers on in
northern France and other parts of Europe. That
this Norman headgear was of the same origin as
the English steeple-hat is proved by its side-wings,
resembling the " great butterflies' wings " (as they
were called) of the steeple-hats worn four hundred
years ago by ladies of rank in Paris and London
alike.
WALES
The forms of the old Welsh tunic and trews,
as they were worn in the twelfth century, have
most fortunately been preserved for us in some
twelfth-century church-carvings of Welsh knights,
one of which is here figured.
THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 109
They show no mantle, but that it was worn
(and of a rich dark colour) we know from
records of the same century.
There was even a Welsh
" kilt," of which old stone
monuments have preserved
the record. This garment
"is found delineated on an
old figured stone preserved
at the Knoll, near Neath."
This is described as repre-
senting a " rudely carved
human figure, in a short apron
or kilt, reaching from the
waist to the middle of the
legs," consisting of a series
of folds "radiating from a
waistband " and resembling
a " short and thickly quilted
petticoat," exactly like " the
Irish figures on the shrine
of Saint Manchan." And
another stone in Brecknock-
shire, ascribed to the eleventh
century " at the very latest,"
also shows a " figure clothed in a similar short
kilt." The famous scarlet cloak was not originally
Welsh, but was copied from the red English cloak
From Archceologia, XXX,
FIG. 39. Dress of a Welsh
Knight in twelfth cen-
tury. From a carved
wooden figure in Kilpeck
Church, built about
1134, showing the wear-
ing of the ancient cap
and long British "trews"
or trousers.
110 THE PAST AT CUE DOOES CHAP.
of the Early Stuart period. As late as 1797 the
scarlet cloaks of the Welsh peasant women led to
their being taken for " red-coats " by the French,
who surrendered to Lord Cawdor at Fishguard.
The "Welsh" steeple -hat, which was regularly
worn by women as late as 1870 in various parts
of North Wales and Anglesey, was also due to the
English steeple -hat dating from the time of the
Stuarts.
NATIONAL DRESS SCOTLAND
The " plaid " which was once ridiculed as " the
many coloured mantle of the mountain savage," due
to the substitution of wool for skins or linen, may
be of high antiquity, but the kilt is usually held a
modern abridgment of the belted plaid, and it has
even been stated that the kilt has been proved to be
the invention of " an army tailor attached to the
English forces employed under General Wade
against the Jacobite insurgents of Scotland."
Champions of the kilt claim, on the contrary,
that a short skirt of the kilt description was worn
in Scotland in the earliest times of which any
record exists. They point, for instance, to several
sculptured stones or monuments, the ages of which
have been in each case assigned to the period
covered by the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries.
These include the well-known Dupplin Cross, a
v THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 111
monument at Torres, and a stone slab at Dull in
Perthshire, all of which are said to show figures
dressed in what is described as " the Highland
garb, " and a stone at Nigg, which is ascribed to
the seventh century and is said to represent a
" kilted Highlander wearing a sporran or waist-
purse." In the twelfth century the seals of at
least three Scottish kings are said to represent those
sovereigns in the " Highland garb."
Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries
there are but one or two slight references to the
Highland dress in literature, and it was on this
account said to have fallen into disuse, at all
events in the southern 'and more civilised parts of
Scotland, and to have been readopted gradually
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The enthusiasm of the Highlanders for the ancient
garb was reawakened, it is said, in the risings
of 17 15 and 1745, when it was assumed by
Charles Edward, the Young Pretender. Certainly
it is recorded in the sixteenth century that the
" inhabitants of the western Isles [that is, of course,
the Hebrides and other islands] delighted to wear
' marled ' cloths, especially [those] that have long
stripes of sundry colours. Their predecessors used
short mantles or plaids of various colours sundry
ways divided, and amongst some the custom is
observed to this day, but for the most part now they
112 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
are brown, most near to the colour of the hadder
[that is, heather] to the effect that when they lie
among it the bright colours of their plaids shall
not betray them."
The importance of this sixteenth century state-
ment is not that it forms one of the earliest satis-
factory notices of the plaid, but that the practice
of wearing bright-coloured plaids even in the most
out-of-the-way parts of Scotland, appears to have
by that time almost completely died down, its
revival in the Highlands occurring in the next
century. Though its stripes and chequered patterns
were of Celtic origin, the name of the " tartan "
cloth (as distinct from its patterns and uses) was
derived either directly from the old French, or
perhaps more probably introduced from England.
As a garment the kilt, 1 according to the usual
view, took its origin from the lower ends of what
came to be called the belted plaid, apparently a
substitute for the ancient Highland belted shirt
worn as an outer garment, which was worn as a
single undivided dress till about the end of the
reign of James V. of Scotland. This dress, during
the reign of the son of Queen Mary Stuart, became
1 The fact that " kilt " meant " pleated " or "tucked up," as in
the old song of Burns,
I'll kilt my coats aboon [above] the knee,
And follow my love through the water,
has led old writers odd as it seems to a modern reader to speak
of " Diana kilted to the knee," and even of a "kilted " Venus !
v THE STOEY OF OUK DEESS 113
divided at the belt and developed into a skirt-like
garb (the " little kilt " or " filli-beg " as it is called
in Scotland), and a short-waisted coat worn under
the plaid (much like the original form of the
English sleeved waistcoat). It is said that the
belted plaid, or fuller form of the dress, was
especially employed by travellers and children, and
that the little kilt was a light substitute for it,
which was originally worn in the house.
Though the clan tartans were bright and varied
(the Eoyal Stuart tartan having large red squares,
and that worn for hunting having green and blue,
whilst that worn for dress was mainly white), the
checked plaid of the Scottish shepherd was often
plain white and black, in keeping with the tradition
that the wearer's rank was at one time indicated by
the number of colours in his dress.
After the " mantle or plaid," an important part
of the " Garb of old Gaul," was what was called
the "trews," which were worn by the better class
Highlander. These resembled what we should now
call " trousers," though they were made of the
" tartan cloth," and were usually close-fitting.
They were sometimes fringed down the leg, and
were properly made in two parts only, whereas
the trouser has four pieces. " Trews of tartan "
are mentioned as early as the fourteenth century,
and were adopted as part of the dress by Charles
I
114
THE PAST AT DUE BOOKS
CHAP.
Edward, the Pretender, and again expressly named
in the English Act of 1747, which was brought
in to prevent the wearing of the Highland
Brit. Mus.
FIG. 40. Charles Edward (the Young Pretender) wearing
the " Plaid and Trews. "
dress by those who sympathised with the rebels.
This Act commanded that " neither man nor boy,
except such as should be employed as officers and
v THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS 115
soldiers, should on any pretence wear or put on
the clothes commonly called the Highland clothes, that
is to say the plaid, ' fillibeg ' or little kilt, trouze,
[i.e. ' trews ' or ' trousers,'] shoulder-belts or any
part whatsoever of what peculiarly belongs to the
Highland garb" The wearing of the trews is a
strong link between the dress of the old Highlanders
and that of other races of ancient Britain.
Shoes, like those worn by the ancient British
of untanned cowhide, or deer, or sealskin, were lately
common in the Orkneys and Shetlands, remaining
as when described by Froissart six hundred years
before. The cap is more doubtful. Planche
remarks that the "flat cloth bonnet now worn in
Scotland does not appear to have formed part of the
primitive costume. " If ancient," he says, " it is of
Saxon or Norman or Danish introduction " ; the
ancient cap was leather, and conical in shape.
That this was its Irish form too, we shall presently
see. On the other hand, the great feather bonnet,
still worn by Highland regiments, is not a recent
invention, since it was worn by Montrose when he
joined the Highland army in Athole in 1644.
IRELAND
The similarity of the dress of the ancient Irish
to the older form of the national dress worn by the
116
THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
Scottish Highlanders was once so marked that the
identity of the two was alleged by Captain Burt in
1726 as an argument for abolishing the national
dress of Scotland, as that of Ireland had been. But
despite repression, some
features of the ancient
Irish dress still survive.
Of these, perhaps on the
whole, the most striking
survival is the hooded
cloak, worn to this day by
Irish country-women in
all parts of Ireland, which
is of the same kind as
that worn by figures of
women on sculptured
monumental crosses of the
ninth century.
The familiar knee-
breeches, which, when worn
with the battered top-hat
and ragged tail-coat of
" Pat " or " Murphy " (so dear to the readers of
Punch from the reckless and racy humour with
which they are associated), if not copied from the
costume formerly worn by Englishmen in Ireland,
might have been derived from a short form of the
" trews," which, among the ancient Irish, sometimes
FIG. 41. Girl with Hooded
Cloak.
THE STOEY OF OUE DEESS
117
terminated at the knee. The " trews," long or
short, which form a combined stocking and trouser
may have been worn as an alternative to the kilt,
since in all the apparently kilted figures, appearing
in ancient
Irish manu-
scripts, on
monumental
crosses, and
even on
shrines of
the eleventh
century, the
legs are bare.
In the year
1200 the
Irish dress
r e s e mbled
pretty closely,
except with
regard to the
tightness of
the " trews," the costume of the ancient Gauls and
southern Britons. Its main features consisted
of a short-sleeved tunic or shirt, which was after-
wards belted, a large mantle with cape and hood,
and long close-fitting " trews." From the same
account we learn that the clothes of the Irish were
By courtesy of the Royal Arch. Soc. of Ireland.
FIG. 42. Ancient Irish Kilt, according to a
group of figures on St. Manchan's Shrine,
in Ireland. (See account in Joyce.)
118
THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CHAP.
of thin wool, " and mostly black, because the sheep
of Ireland were in general of that colour."
In other words they were the natural colour of
the undyed (black) wool. But there certainly was
then no general agreement to adopt for the cloak
any one universal
colour. In the Book
of Leinster some
warriors in the Ulster
army had red cloaks,
others "light blue
cloaks," yet others
had "deep blue"
cloaks, and others
again wore them of
a green or white or
yellow colour, " all
bright and fluttering
about them ; there
FIG. 43. Irish Dress of 1200, show-
ing ancient Irish mantle, worn
with close-fitting "trews."
was a young red-
freckled lad with a crimson cloak [no doubt the son
of a chief or a young chief himself] in their midst."
Yet once there were rules, no doubt varying from
place to place, to restrict the use of colours.
For many years B.C. a slave was to be dressed in
garments of a single or " self " colour, a farmer in
two, and so on up to a king or queen, who wore
six. Red (as in the instance given above), with
THE STOEY OF OUE DKESS 119
green and brown were the colours prescribed for
the sons of chiefs, and the natural colours black
and white (or grey), varied by yellow, were for the
inferior ranks. It is clear that the ancient Irish
valued bright
colours, though
their selection
and arrangement
differed in various
parts of the island.
In many cases
the colours were
blended, especi-
ally in the dress
of the chiefs. In
the thirteenth
and following
centuries, how-
ever, the scarlet
cloak seems to
have become
established grad-
ually as a prin-
cipal recognised colour for an Irish chief. The
cloaks made by command of King John for the
Irish chiefs who came to visit him are recorded
to have been scarlet, and early in the next century,
in the year 1313, among the spoils left by the
FIG. 44. Irish Dress of the Seventeenth
Century, showing the scarlet mantle
worn by chiefs, and the close-fitting
"trews" and conical cap of their
followers.
120 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES CHAP.
sons of Brian Eae, when they fled from Mortogh,
were " shining scarlet cloaks." The scarlet mantle
reappears in the portrait of an Irish chief, whose
follower wears the close-fitting " trews " and the
ancient Irish conical cap, in 1663.
The shoes of untanned leather, which were
formerly worn as part of the Scottish and Welsh
costume, were worn apparently from the earliest times
in Ireland as well. It is recorded that a fox once
stole St. Ciaran's " brogues " (as shoes of this kind
were called) and proceeded to devour them, but
was captured just as he had made a meal of the
ears and the thongs. Brogues are still worn in
the Aran Islands off the coast.
The present national Irish colour, green, is of
modern origin, and was certainly not adopted before
the battle of the Boyne(1690), for at that battle
the Irish were distinguished by little strips of
white paper, which they wore in their hats, and
the English under King William, by small sprays
of green : hence at that time green was obviously
not the national Irish colour, which was in fact
royal blue.
INTERNATIONAL TYPES
Having arrived at this point it is possible to
take a yet wider survey. For we have seen that
the dress of each of the races that goes to make
v THE STOEY OF OUR DRESS 121
up a people (such as, for instance, the people of
Great Britain), though differing in certain minor
features, yet agrees to a remarkable extent with the
dress of its immediate neighbours.
It could, indeed, easily be shown, moreover,
that the people of Holland, Germany, Norway, Italy,
Spain, Great Britain and France each dress in a
style which not only agrees very largely with that
of the other members of this group, but at the
same time, in a way which, to some extent, helps
to express their own national character.
Similarly the community of style which affects
all these nations as a whole, also distinguishes
the European fashion of dress from that of other
continents. There is a vast difference in general
appearance and effect between the dress of
Europeans and that of even the most highly
civilised Asiatic communities. In the case of the
British Empire the dress of the governing or
dominant race shows, on one hand, a strong ten-
dency to become the national dress of all the races
that fight under its banner. On the other hand,
this rule is much qualified by local tendencies.
The facts already mentioned will suffice to show
that even the most commonplace details of our
everyday dress are fraught with problems of the
highest possible interest, although not seldom also
of very great perplexity. Although the Norman
122 THE PAST AT OUK BOOKS CHAP.
fashions, first introduced at the Conquest, swamped
for centuries what might have been the develop-
ment of the older forms of English costume in
particular, yet in many cases these very same older
forms rose under various modern guises once more
to the surface. The result is that it is now in
any case imperative for those who would understand
the full significance of the various aspects of our
national dress at the present .day, to approach the
subject historically from a racial point of view. In
fact it may safely be said that
Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be,
it is impossible quite to ignore these elements if we
would unravel rightly the threads that compose
this wonderful national web of ours, shot as it is
throughout with these brilliant gleams of colour.
CHAPTEE VI
THE STORY OF OUR HOMES
THOSE grandees of Spain, whom we have already
mentioned as having praised the large diet of the
English during their visit to this country in the
reign of Queen Mary, upon the same occasion
VI
THE STOEY OF OUR HOMES 123
qualified their praise of our national institutions by
remarking that the English of that time made
their houses of " sticks and dirt." The old
chronicler who records this, evidently took this
remark as a reflection upon the national honour,
since he observes by way of comment that the
Spaniards thus appear to "like better of our good
fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin
diet in their princely habitations and palaces." A
more robust patriotism would probably have taught
him, in the first place, that the statement, though
made perhaps with something less than the vaunted
Spanish courtesy of those "spacious days," probably
went, nevertheless, to the root of the matter, and
secondly that there was a reason, and that by no
means a discreditable one, for the fact.
Let us read the contemporary accounts that have
come down to us of the Englishmen of that age,
drawn by the master-hand of Shakespeare, or the
praises mingled with mordant criticism in that
stirring picture of this " haughty, free, and demo-
cratic race," so dangerous to its foes, drawn by the
French historian Froissart. We shall then no longer
feel doubt that the roughness and plainness of the
houses of the English in those days was not due
to any incapacity on their part to build better ones,
but simply to their inveterate contempt for soft
lying and luxury, in other words to the lion-like
124 THE PAST AT CUE DOOES CHAP.
hardihood of the race. The historian Holinshed,
indeed, definitely ascribes the fact that the lower
classes were then content with straw, rather to an
ignorant contempt for a pleasant bed and a soft
pillow, than to lack of means to obtain them.
It will now be shown, first, that our modern
forms of staircase, window and fireside are the
result of the slow growth of many centuries, the
originally central position of the fireside dating
back to the time of prehistoric Britain. Next
it will be shown how one of the chief forms of
house in England at the Conquest, and for hundreds
of years afterwards, was in fact the hall.
This was, at first, of the Saxon style, though
modified as years went on by Norman improve-
ments. Thus the hall, which was in fact the only
original part of the building, and had rooms in
the form of separate houses annexed to it, was
developed into what we now call a "house."
We shall next show that the clock towers of
our country churches were originally intended for
watch-towers, and were not of especially religious
origin. Again, the keep was first meant to be the
dwelling-house of the Lord of the Castle, the
manor-house taking the place of the castle at a
later period. Also the plan of some of our most
ancient towns is due to their being built upon
the site, and indeed sometimes on the very lines of
vi THE STOEY OF OUR HOMES 125
Eoraan towns or camping-grounds. Finally, in the
differences of form of even our private dwellings
(as much as in our public buildings), we may
find, if we look, persisting through ages, the
unmistakable impress of race.
BOUND ABOUT OUR HOUSES
One of the commonest sights on our railways is
the box (as it is called) that is used for signalling,
in many examples of which, if we stop to consider,
we shall recognise the main features of the ancient
pile-dwelling, which was approached by an outside
staircase or ladder. If we further observe that
these modern signal-boxes are frequently supported
upon four or more posts which stand a good height
above the ground, the space between them being
sometimes left open and sometimes boarded in
to serve as a storeroom, we shall have attained a
fairly adequate idea of the most important features
governing such old-world dwellings as were inhabited
by sonie of our remotest ancestors. 1
The ground-floor in early times was frequently
a mere storeroom, which in some cases must have
been produced by boarding or fencing in the space
between the posts of a pile-dwelling a process
1 The posts or " staddles " of timber or stone upon which many of
our barns or granaries arc built, to preserve the grain from the
onslaughts of rats and mice, represent the pile-dwelling principle.
126
THE PAST AT OUE DOOES
CHAP.
which can still be seen going on in some parts of
the world among pile-dwelling races. It did not,
FIG. 45. Old House in Sweedon's Passage, Grub Street, London
(early nineteenth century).
"A singularly curious specimen of an external winding staircase."
therefore, originally form a portion of the house or
living-part of the building, a fact the more easily
vi THE STORY OF OUE HOMES 127
remembered if we reflect that in every storeyed house
in the country it is not the ground-floor, but the storey
above it, which is called the " first " floor. Down
to the reign of King Henry III. an outer stair of
wood was much used for manor-houses, and as late
as 1773, Dr. Samuel Johnson, travelling in the
Hebrides, observed that one of the commonest
types of house built in those parts had two storeys, a
living-room upstairs, which was reached by an outer
staircase, and a mere storeroom on the ground-
floor, which could only be entered from above by
an inner stair, descending within the building.
The inner staircase, like the outer one, was
originally a mere wooden ladder. 1
Even King Henry III. reached his chapel from his
chamber at Clarendon by means of a " descending
trap," and in some old-fashioned country cottages a
ladder, with or without a trap, still forms the only
means of communication between the two floors.
In a majority of cases the use of a wooden ladder
is still the only way of reaching the trap-door
which opens into the loft. By gradual stages both
the outside and inside ladders were made easier.
Oaken or stone blocks, roughly hewn, took the place
of the rungs, and in the course of a few centuries
the " Tudor " staircase resulted.
1 It is chiefly the steepness of the angle that makes a distinction
between ladder and stair.
128 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
The early house-ladder had consisted of but a
single set or flight of steps. Necessarily, however,
as the " house " grew upwards and added storey
to storey, the ladder grew too, and the stairs in
many modern town houses have now so many
flights that they are frequently replaced, or supple-
mented by lifts. Stairs in counting are reckoned
either by pairs, or flights, the word " pair " in this
connection meaning, however, not a couple of stairs,
but a set. Thus a " three-pair-front " or a " four-
pair-back " is a room at the back or front of the
house, which is reached by three or four " pairs " or
sets of stairs respectively. 1
In concluding this matter of the stairs, we may
note that the words " balustrade " and " baluster,"
of which " banister" is a corruption, are from an old
Greek word (balaustiori) meaning " wild pomegranate
flower," which was at first given to railings carved
according to a particular pattern resembling the
double curve of the cup or " calyx " of that flower.
Another improvement which the Normans, if
they did not invent it, at least did much to popu-
larise, was the chimney, the older meaning of which
was a " fireplace," for which (though in a slightly
altered sense) we thus retain the Norman name.
1 A similar expression once in use was a "pair of cards"
(for a "pack "), and a pair of organs meant a set of organ pipes,
and hence an organ.
vi THE STOEY OF OUB, HOMES 129
In a hall of the Anglo-Saxon type, and no doubt
at first in Anglo-Norman halls as well, the hearth
was usually placed in the centre of the building, the
smoke being allowed to escape through an opening
in the roof called a louver (that is, " smoke-hole "), or
in later times, when adapted for letting in the light,
a " lantern." But of course this arrangement allowed
the smoke to wander about the hall, and must at
times have caused much discomfort to the guests.
Still, the size of the hall must frequently have
lessened even this inconvenience, and the Normans
soon improved matters by adding to the hearth a
low back wall (or " reredos ") with a funnel-shaped
canopy or hood for catching the smoke, which, from
its resemblance to a round cloak or "mantle," they
called a mantle-piece.
But though, so far as is known, no " side-flue "
or chimney in the side wall of Norman times
remains, it is now thought certain that such
chimneys were introduced at quite an early period,
not in the hall but in other parts of the building.
It was thus in use at the same time as the central
fireplace, and explains the " chamber with a
chimney" mentioned in Piers Plowman.
For the hall being open to the roof, there was
nothing to obstruct the free passage of the smoke
upwards. But the chambers at the side of the hall
were built one above the other, so that the smoke
K
130 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
from the lower rooms would be obstructed by the
rooms above them. Hence, from a very early period,
side-flues were used, at all events in such chambers.
These early chimneys, however, did not lead
into each other, and were very unlike our modern
chimneys, being little more than a large gradually
ascending funnel or cavity made in the thickness of
the wall, a sort of elongation of the hood, in fact,
with a vertical opening at the small upper end or
" throat," towards which the flue rapidly diminished.
An example of one of these strange funnels is in
the castle wall at Hedingham in Essex.
The custom of the central hearth persisted for
centuries, and in a few cases survived right down to
modern times. The hall of Westminster School had
a central fireplace down to 1850, and even within
living memory a central fireplace was employed in
the hall of Lincoln College at Oxford, and the
great hall of St. John's College at Cambridge was
warmed by the help of two lighted braziers, standing
in the middle of the room.
As already stated, the older meaning of
" chimney " was what we should now call a " fire-
place," and the knowledge of this fact enables us
to understand the real meaning of the expression
" chimney-corner," of which our grandfathers were
so fond. This old-fashioned " chimney-corner,"
which was also called the " ingle-nook " (from an
vi THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 131
old word " ingle " which meant " fire "), was a corner
of the fireplace in days not yet passed out of living
memory. An open fireplace was then general, and
this often of such a size that its sides were hung
with hams and flitches of bacon, whilst the inmates
of the house sat by, enjoying the cheerful blaze.
In many parts of the country these quaint
chimney-corners are still to be seen, and with them
the spacious old chimneys of former days, so wide
that on looking up almost any one of them which
happen to be out of use, we can see the sky, as well
as the projecting bricks that stud their sides, arranged
ladder- wise from top to bottom inside the flue, as foot-
hold for the little sweep- boys who had to climb them.
It was in " old-fashioned " fireplaces such as
those of which we have been speaking that there
took place the silent and almost imperceptible
revolution to which we owe our modern grate. The
word " coal " was for centuries applied to burnt or
glowing wood, as in the modern " char-coal."
Strange as it may seem, though we first hear of
coal in England in the twelfth century (and though
it has always been used locally since then, more
especially in the coal-fields of the north of England),
it was not till quite a late period (the reign of
William III.) that coal-fires came into anything like
general use. For this curious fact, popular pre-
judice seems to have been mainly responsible. For
132 THE PAST AT OUK BOOKS CHAP.
it was believed previously that the fumes of coal-
smoke were a deadly poison to all who had to
breathe them, so much so that the burning of coal
was made illegal, and it is recorded that in the reign
of Edward I. (1306) a man was actually put to
death for burning sea-coal in London.
Before this modern popularisation of coal, tho
customary fuel for many centuries past had been
wooden billets, which were supported commonly
upon a sort of iron trestles called "andirons" or
fire-dogs, between which were placed some lower
irons called creepers. The front ends of these were
often much decorated. Shakespeare describes the
andirons of Imogen's chamber as having
two winking cupids
Of silver, each on one foot standing nicely,
Depending on their brands.
These andirons, or, as they were later called, "cob-
irons " upon the introduction of coal were connected
by bars and thus transformed into a grate or basket
(the word is a mere variant of crate) called "dog-grate,"
because formed from " fire-dogs." And these latter,
named from their shape, appear in French in 1317.
The "back -plate" followed; a bright metal
ornament or " fret," still to be seen especially on
kitchen stoves, 1 was attached under the lowest bar ;
1 The word stove was originally a heated room, and is mentioned
in 1627 as a "stove, or hothouse." In Germany the word stube
still retains the meaning of a chamber.
vi THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 133
the grate itself was " fixed " for convenience' sake by
making the cob-irons fast to the back wall, and the
open space at each side, where the chimney-corner
had been, filled in with side-piers or " hobs." The
latter name was transferred from the two raised
stones at each side of the old-fashioned flat open
hearth between which the embers were generally
confined. The bent pieces of sheet-iron, still used
in our kitchens, represent the earliest form of
fender, intended to prevent the brands or cinders
from falling out upon the wooden floor.
It remains to mention the development of our
modern fire-irons, which naturally received a fresh
impulse from the employment of coal. The intro-
duction of a set closely corresponding to those still
in use can be approximately dated by a list of
wedding presents of the reign of King James I. In
this we read of an invention consisting of a " fire-
shovel, tongs, irons, creepers, and all other furniture
of a chimney, of silver, 5 ' with a " cradle," that is
grate, " of silver to burn sea-coal." Although this
assuredly does not mean that our present fire-irons
were never used in any form before this date, it is
certain that all of them, but especially the poker,
must have become much more of a necessity when
the use of coal became general.
We must remember that it was not every house
in the old days that had a chimney at all, for in
134 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
about the year 1200, when chimneys were used, only
one chimney was allowed to a castle-hall and one
to a manor-house. Other houses were allowed a
raised hearth, with a " rere-dos " or back-piece.
In later times, these back-pieces developed into
the well-known and often beautifully designed iron
" fire-backs " of Sussex. The privilege of having a
private hearth was at this time highly valued, and
it was not surprising to read that on many occasions,
in 1516, for example, the right to use a fire was
bequeathed by a dying man to his widow. The
use of chimneys did not become at all general till
the reign of Elizabeth, when we read of the
" multitude of chimneys lately erected."
The curfew, of which we have all heard so much,
was a large copper hood, which, upon the tolling of
the curfew bell, was put over the fire as an
extinguisher. It was not, as so often stated, a
mark of subjection imposed by the Conqueror upon
an unwilling country, though no doubt the law
enforcing its use was at first harshly administered.
The curfew custom at the time of the Norman
invasion was already established in France, Spain,
and Italy, and even in Scotland, and had been en-
forced locally in England in the reign of King
Alfred. It can therefore only be regarded as a
perfectly reasonable and even necessary regula-
tion of police, adopted as a precaution against fire,
vi THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 135
at a time when nearly all houses were built of
timber.
The curfew bell is still rung, without any com-
pulsion whatever, in many country churches ; and
complete lists of all such churches have been com-
piled. One of the most curious cases is that of
St. Mary -le- Moor at Wallingford in Berkshire
where the bell was rung to welcome William the
Conqueror on his arrival straight from the battle-
field at Hastings. In return for this compliment
it can scarcely be called loyalty to his cause,
Duke William granted permission for the curfew
bell to be rung at 9 P.M., and lights to be put out an
hour later than in most other places, a practice which
(it is claimed) has been kept up ever since 1066.
The word " window " originally meant " wind-
eye " L and unlike "sky -light" 2 a name which
equally indicated its original purpose was at first
intended for ventilation rather than light. In the
walls of barns, even down to the present day, we
can see what these early windows were like, and
1 " Windeye" : this is of old Norse origin. The Anglo-Saxon
expressions were " eye-thrill" (where "thrill" means "hole" as
in nostril = nose-thrill), or "eye-door."
2 The word "light," as applied to what wo should now call a
window, is like "lattice" (a structure of crossed laths) of very
ancient use, and this sense of the word survives in such an ex-
pression as that of "ancient lights," an inscription often put on
the wall of a building as a warning that the owner will have
ground of action against any one who in any way attempts to
obstruct the light given by his windows.
136 THE PAST AT CUE DOOES CHAP.
how closely they sometimes resembled the loop-
holes in a castle wall. In the earliest times they
were often merely narrow vertical slits or perhaps a
symmetrical arrangement of small round holes.
Before the introduction of glass, when windows,
as we now understand the term, were employed for
light -giving purposes, they were usually either
covered or closed by shutters at night. In the
former case they were covered with oiled linen or
some other substitute for glass, such as horn, and it
is a remarkable fact that horn panes are still to be
seen in the windows of the ancient Talbot Inn at
Oundle, which was built in 1626.
Glass was employed in England before the end
of the seventh century, but this was in the form
of stained church windows, and then the workmen
for this purpose had to be imported (e.g. by Bishop
Benedict at Wearmouth and Jarrow). It was not
till some centuries later that it was used to any
appreciable extent for private houses, and glass-
making was not at all general in England till the
reign of William and Mary, who may have en-
couraged the industry, long established in Holland.
Even the rich do not appear to have made use
of glass windows in their mansions at all commonly
before the days of Elizabeth, and the great and
prohibitive cost even then made such windows a
luxury beyond the reach of any one else. As glass
vr THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 137
grew cheaper, the windows of the wealthy were
made as large and as numerous as possible, for the
purpose of display. Hardwick Hall, for instance,
came to be described in an old rhyme as having
"more glass than wall." In 1753 the window tax
was first charged, and some idea of its burdensome-
ness can be inferred from the fact that, to take a
single example, a tax amounting to fifteen shillings
and sixpence levied in that year had risen, by 1817,
to nearly ten pounds. Naturally this not only re-
stricted the number of windows, but caused those
already existing to be bricked up. This explains
why, in old houses of this period, we often see so
many bricked-up windows, and why many of those
in existence were so small.
The hinged " casement," which had grown out
of the ancient wooden shutter, was the immediate
predecessor of our modern " sashed " window, and
so precious were once the squares of glass of which
it was composed that even people of rank some-
times carried them about in their carriages from one
mansion to another, so as to make one set do for
several houses, or else had them taken out whenever
they left home, and laid up till their return.
We may at the same time note, that the word
"pane," which is now applied to a window alone,
originally meant a patch, rag, or piece of cloth.
In the time of Queen Elizabeth it meant either an
138 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CHAP.
opening or " slash " in a dress (intended for dis-
playing the garments beneath or for inserting
pieces of cloth of other colours) ; or the diamond-
shaped markings made on a quilted coat by sewing
it across in diagonal lines, whence it came to be
used for the diamond-shaped panes of a casement
window. The expression " paned with yellow " of a
man's clothing occurs in 1592, and a " pane of glass "
thirty -five years later. The diminutive form of
" pane," which has much the same meaning, is panel.
Sashed windows, such as we now use, came in
under Charles the First, and were general in the
reign of Queen Anne. In the most modern times
the general revival of interest in many old institu-
tions and customs has led to the revived use of the
casement window in many new buildings. This
helps us the better to realise the descriptions in our
poets, from the time of Shakespeare, who describes
Juliet's " window' " as a " casement/' down to that of
Keats, who almost within living memory wrote of
the song that ofttimes hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn
an expression of the rarest felicity, as is the same
poet's splendid description of the " casement high
and triple-arched " in the Eve of St. Agnes.
A piece of furniture occasionally influencing the
structure of the house is the bed, which among the
vi THE STORY OF OUE HOMES 139
ancient Britons was usually of skins spread on the
floor, for which the Romans of the occupation
substituted rushes or heather. The Saxon beds
among the poorer classes were sacks filled with
fresh straw, which were laid upon benches, though
actual bedsteads were enjoyed by people of rank.
This use of straw continued for centuries after-
wards ; indeed it was employed even in the king's
bedchamber, down to the earlier part of the
fifteenth century. A quaint instruction to the
royal bedmakers of that period was that " a yeoman
with a dagger was to search the straw of the King's
bed, that there be no untruth therein the bed
of down to be cast upon that." But in those early
days (as has been said) our robust fellow-country-
men had a healthy contempt for a soft couch, and
it was not usually therefore due to lack of means
if their bed was a hard one. When bedsteads
were used they commonly took the forms of what
was then called the " standing - bed," and the
" truckle " or " trundle-bed," the latter (which was
used for servants and children) being a low flat
bed on castors, that could be pushed underneath
the big bedstead of the master or parents during
the daytime, and pulled out again at night, if so
wished, when required for use.
The name of the still familiar " tester " is taken
from an old French word meaning " head," a tester-
140 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS CHAP,
bed being a bed with a large " head," commonly
protected by curtains. The old-fashioned " four-
poster " was a bed of this kind protected by curtains
at the foot as well. Such beds were originally the
privilege of rank, but like many other royal fashions,
they were eventually copied, first by the nobles,
then by people of lower degree.
A fact that may seem rather hard to realise
at first is that the idea of having a separate bed
for each individual was by no means universally
prevalent in the Britain of our ancestors, and that
it was often considered a mark of respect to set
apart a separate bed for a guest. Of ancient
Ireland it is recorded that certain poets, who were
paying a visit to one of the Kings of Connaught,
were so unreasonable as to insist that they should
each have a separate bed. To this custom we may
ascribe the employment of such huge old beds in
England as the " great bed of Ware," which is said
to have been twelve feet square, and big enough for
at least twenty people. When Shakespeare speaks
of " as many lies as will lie in this sheet of paper,
though the sheet were big enough for the bed of
Ware in England," it is to this bed that he refers.
In houses of the better class peasantry, the bed
was frequently made in a cupboard, or built into
a special recess, a fact which may help us to
remember that in ancient England the "sleeping-
VI
THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 141
house " or " bed-house " was very frequently either
a separate structure or an annex to the hall. In
many country cottages to this day, particularly in
Scotland, a special recess is made in the wall, into
which is fitted a bunk, or perhaps even one of those
wonderful contrivances described in Goldsmith's
immortal poem as a " bed by night, a chest of
drawers by day."
Down to quite modern times well-to-do people
used to travel with their bed in their carriages ; and
an instance of this, no doubt not the latest, was
recorded in 1840. This custom now takes the
form of travelling by sleeping-car on the railway.
At the foot of the bed, as we may see in many
old pictures, was usually kept a large chest of
the kind made famous by the sad story of the
" Mistletoe Bough " in which money and articles
of value, or family heirlooms, such as ladies'
trousseaux, were safeguarded. These chests were
formerly of massive workmanship, and sometimes
most richly carved or painted ; examples of such
chests may still be met with in England, as well as
on the Continent, for instance in Norway, where
beautifully decorated or carved chests of this kind
are still quite common. 1
The " wardrobe " of those days was, as a rule, not
1 Sir Laurence Gomme tells us that similar chests once held
the joint property of the early village community.
142 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS CHAP.
a cupboard but a small room, fitted up with what
we should now call " clothes -cupboards." In
London the name of a church called " St. And re w-
by-the- Wardrobe " survives to show that the ward-
robe, which in this case was that of the Queen,
might even take the form of a separate building,
In 1258 an order was given to make two "cup-
boards or armoiries " in the " King's upper ward-
robe, in Winchester Castle, where the King's cloths
were deposited." This record is of special interest
as showing how the " cupboard " came to be used
in the same way as the " armoiry " or " armoury,"
in which the Knights' gear originally hung.
In the fifteenth century, however, the original
cupboard still survived as a kind of" side-board," that
is, an arrangement of shelves or boards at the side of
the hall, upon which the services of plate and gold
and " cups," or other drinking- vessels were ranged.
Even in Elizabeth's reign we meet with the
expression " thoroughly gilded, as the silver plate
upon their cupboards." One such hall-cupboard,
which was used at the wedding of Prince Arthur,
son of Henry VII., contained plate worth 20,000,
and was built in five stages or steps, which were
covered with a cloth, and had the cups displayed
upon them. So too abroad, in a German book
of 1587 there was a similar picture of one of
these ancient cupboards, which was used during
VI
THE STORY OF OUK HOMES 143
the ceremonies at Prague, when the Grand Duke
Ferdinand of Austria invested the Emperor and
the Grand Dukes Carl and Ernest with the order of
FIG. 46. A Eoyal Hall of the fourteenth to fifteenth
century, showing a " Dresser " or " Cup-Board " in five
tiers, the prerogative of royalty, for display of plate.
[Note the use of the steeple-hat in all stages, and similarity of
dress worn both by some of the men and women the women's
hats have veils.]
the Golden Fleece. This latter cupboard also had
five steps, and this leads us to the fact that by a
strange rule of etiquette, cupboards of five such
144 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS CHAP.
steps were at that time the exclusive mark and
privilege of royalty ; the nobility of all grades might
have cupboards built in from two to four steps only,
according to their rank, and plain gentlemen might
have cupboards of only a single step.
This is a point of much interest, since it helps
us the better to recognise in this ancient hall-
cupboard our modern kitchen dresser. Quotations
show further that the former application of the
word " dresser " was to a table in the dining-room
or hall, from which dishes were served or on which
plate was displayed. In a translation of the works
of the French historian Froissart (1525) we read of
" all the plate of gold that was served in the palace
at the dresser." That the courtly practice was
imitated by country-folk in a country manner is
amusingly shown by the allusion in Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew (iv. i. 166) and the remark of
Harrison, in the middle of the same century, that
there were farmers then who had " a fair garnish
of pewter on their cupboards."
Thus the modern kitchen dresser represented the
old hall cup-board or side-board of a single stage,
the space under the step being filled in with a
cupboard during the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries.
Henry VIII. paid a joiner " for eight cup-boards,
some with aumbreys [really arms-cupboards] and
some without." And it was besides in the same king's
vi THE STOKY OF OUR HOMES 145
reign that the dresser or " dressor," as it was then
called, was discarded from the hall or principal
apartment, and the name was first applied, as now,
to a, piece of kitchen furniture.
Even the very " paper " 1 on the walls will tell us
something of its history, when we discover that the
older name for wall-paper was "wall-hangings," or
more simply " hangings." We even find in a Journal
called the London Gazette, published in 1718, a
reference to " paper painted or stained for hangings,"
and at a yet later date (1752) we find it still
actually called " hanging-paper." So we see that
" wall-paper " is merely a modern cheap substitute
for the once beautifully figured and embroidered
" hangings " of tapestry, first mentioned in Anglo-
saxon times as " wall-clothing," and portrayed by
poets of all ages in our history down to Keats, who
gave us that vivid picture of an ancient mansion
during a storm, in which
The arras, rich with huntsman, hawk and hound,
Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar,
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.
The particular kind of tapestry, which went by the
appellation of " arras," got its name from the town
of Arras in France, wliere it used to be made, and
the English material called "worsted," which was
very much employed for wall-hangings in the
fourteenth century, came from the village of
1 See page 199. L
146 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
Worsted, near Norwich. These wall-hangings were
anciently called " hallings," and were so valuable
that they were frequently bequeathed in wills, an
instance being the will of the Black Prince who left
to his son Eichard " a hall of worsted that is,
tapestry for a hall embroidered with mermaids of
the sea and a red and black border " vertically striped
and " broidered with swans with ladies' heads" as well
as a " hall of ostrich feathers, of black tapestry with
a red border wrought with swans with ladies' heads "
to the church at Canterbury, a "hall" embroidered
with eagles and griffins to the Princess his wife.
In Scotland it was, however, so rare that even King
James V., when he travelled, had to carry tapestry,
from one palace to another.
Down to the sixteenth century the ceiling was
nothing but the under side of the floor above, which
was often richly carved or panelled. Its name is
corrupted from the Latin word for " heaven," which
came to be used to express a similar idea, and
traces of this Latin usage also survive in the
modern French del and other modern languages ;
indeed even in the German name, the sense of
" heaven " is preserved, though the form of the word
is different. In 1350, the expression " a heaven of
cloth of gold " is employed in the sense of a
canopy, and so far back as the eleventh century
such expressions as " house-heaven " and " heaven-
VI
THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 147
roof" were the Anglo-Saxon names for the ceiling
of a room.
Both wall-hangings and carpets l were first used
principally for churches for which purpose carpets
were specially made at Eamsey in Huntingdonshire.
In the thirteenth century, however, Don Sanchez,
Archbishop of Toledo, and half-brother of our
own queen Eleanor, brought some rich carpets and
hangings with him to England for his sister's rooms.
This fact occasioned the criticism that the Queen was
" having her apartments adorned with costly hang-
ings like a church and carpeted after the Spanish
fashion"
But nevertheless, the royal example was soon
eagerly followed, and found its way even into the
houses of well-to-do farmers, whence it spread
gradually over the entire country.
In concluding these remarks we may note that
there being no furniture-makers in those early days
even the sovereign, as, for example, Henry III., had
to order the purchase of "a great beech tree to
be made into tables for the royal kitchens at
1 Before the use of carpets, floors frequently consisted of the
natural soil rammed down. Indeed, the floor of the hall, below
the raised platform or "dais," was significantly termed the
"marsh." The extreme rarity of boarded floors at this date
appears from the fact that King Henry III. ordered a room on the
ground-floor in Windsor Castle to be "boarded like a ship," the
employment of such a metaphor showing how unfamiliar the idea
must then have been.
148 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
Westminster." The " upholsterer " of later days
was at this time an auctioneer, and got his name
from being an " upholder " or " uphold-ster " of
various articles of furniture; in other words, he
" held them up " at auction. This is why we find
in Piers Plowman "upholders on the hill shall have
it to sell," the hill in question being the Cornhill
in London. Even as late as 1*750 at the Grey
Coat Hospital in London, an order was given "to
Mr. Goff, the upholder, for a bedstead, bedding and
curtains," and in 1762 a further sum is again
recorded as having been paid to Mr. Goff, "the
upholsterer " ; this was certainly the same individual.
The Court Upholsterer or Tapissier, as he is called
(from being at first a worker in tapestry), is to
this day an officer of our own Eoyal household.
CHAPTEE VII
THE STORY OF OUR HOMES (continued)
ENGLAND
THE vast majority of the people in these islands
dwell in buildings which may be described either
as a house (properly so called) or a cottage, the
difference between the two types consisting in the
fact that the house is almost always provided with
vii THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 149
an entrance passage or hall, which is wanting in
the cottage. Down to the fifteenth century,
labourers' cottages or cabins in England still took
the form of a single undivided room, with three
apertures for window, door and chimney (often
with no fireplace at all), and a hurdle across the
centre to separate the children from the pigs, sheep
and chickens. These cabins were for the most
part extremely small, and till the reign of Henry
IT. were not only usually of wood, but of so slight
a character that that king was able to issue a
command for " the houses of heretics " to be
" carried outside the town and burnt."
The practice of building in wood went back
to Anglo-Saxon times, as is shown by the Anglo-
Saxon words " to timber " and " tree-wright/' which
meant build and builder respectively. Even when
stone was substituted for wood as the building
material, the ancient methods of timber construction
were still followed, as appears, for instance, very
clearly in the tower of the church at Earls Barton.
Going back to a much earlier period, although a
cabin or " square box " type of hut (either with or
without holes for window, door and chimney) was
certainly known as far back as the Stone Age, yet
the general form which the hut then took was un-
doubtedly round, and of this there is plentiful proof
in the remains that are found in the remoter parts
150 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CH AP.
of Great Britain. Of the round type there are
several survivals even at the present day. Among
these are the round charcoal-burner's hut with its
turfed walls, examples of which may be seen as
ISy courtesy of Mr. S. Haztiedine Warren.
FIG. 47. Charcoal-Burner's Hut, Epping Forest. A modern repre-
sentative of one kind of Prehistoric Round Hut, showing the
upright form of door now taking the place of the inclined doors
formerly cut in the slope of the turfed hut-walls.
near London as Epping Forest. There are also the
bell tent of our soldiers and the round "summer-
house" still to be found in many old-fashioned
gardens, which are similarly built upon the plan of
a round prehistoric cottage.
vii THE STOEY OF OUR HOMES 151
The use of the term " summer house " in the
last instance, indeed, is significant, for the earliest
summer-house was a rough temporary shelter erected
in summer and for the use of the men who drove
the cattle, as was then generally the case, to the
upland pastures where they fed in summer. The
opposite of this term was winter-house, which was
similarly employed in reference to this most ancient
and widespread custom of wandering peoples. In the
Bible, in the book of Amos, we find " I will smite
the winter house with the summer house ; and the
houses of ivory shall perish . . . saith the Lord."
The principal unit from which the English
house was ultimately derived was, on the other
hand, undoubtedly the hall. Most of us know that
even down to the present day the front door
frequently opens into what is still called the " hall "
most frequently the merest apology for an
entrance or ante-room with rooms above it. This
small confined passage, which still in most cases
forms a connexion between the living-rooms of the
family and the servants' quarters, is certainly the
true though degraded survival of the once magnificent
banqueting-room of our ancestors, at once in by-
gone days the largest, most important, and, indeed,
only original part of the ancient dwelling-house. 1
1 Westminster Hall, though not the oldest, is perhaps, out of
many, the most illustrious example that yet remains to us.
152 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
Thus we see that, like so many other of the
most important factors in our modern civilisation,
the English house has been built up by the
successive incorporation of several units in one, as
a result of the slow but steady growth of centuries.
This fact, if we reflect, may lend some interest
even to the dullest and most forbidding in appear-
ance of all our modern houses. It is, indeed, this
old importance of the hall that explains why many
old manor-houses and other mansions, both in town
and country, coming down to us from a time when
the hall was an even more prominent feature than
in a castle, still retain " The Hall " as their simple
designation a term which is applied by a yet
further extension, to the chief house in a parish,
irrespective of its form.
The ancient Danes, Norwegians, Anglo-Saxons
and Germans (and no doubt the Normans too) all
built various forms of the hall. But though they
each of them moulded it after their own ideas, and
in accordance with their own requirements and
materials, thus causing much difference of detail,
yet the central idea of a joint living-room for the
community, supported when large on a double row
of pillars and open to the roof, was familiar to all
of them. It can be traced to this day throughout
Europe as the modern representative of the ancient
tribal building of all the races that employed it.
vii THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 153
In those far distant days the rooms of what we
should call a " house " were not combined as a single
building under one roof; the hall was, in fact, the
primitive house, and any additions that were made
to it at first took the form of separate structures,
each of which was itself called a " house " as well.
This explains why in old records we find what
would now be several parts of the same building
described separately as the "bake-house," "larder-
house," " spinning-house," "fire-house " or hall, and so
forth, all of which were under separate roofs.
The royal manor-houses of Henry III. comprised
an enclosure in which the buildings, still perfectly
isolated, were dotted about at random all over the
ground. For the sake of convenience, however, they
were soon connected by covered ways, in order that,
as is actually recorded, the Queen might walk from
her chamber to her chapel " with a dry foot."
By gradual steps of this kind, the ordinary house,
beginning with the hall, acquired private chambers
in the form of an annex at the upper end, or side,
of the hall for the family, and kitchens, storerooms,
barns, and eventually servants' rooms, and other
offices at the opposite extremity.
As time went on, the hall with these annexes
came to be combined under a single roof. One fact
that helped to make this development necessary
was the gradual disuse and desertion of the hall,
154 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
which of course no longer required to be built
of such a size, when the practice of sharing the
common ineal in it came to be abandoned.
In Piers Plowman (1360-1390) we read how
this form of luxury gradually crept in, and we may
readily guess how stoutly it must have been con-
demned and combated by those who (like the poet
of the Vision) clung to the ancient fashions :
Now hath each rich a rule | to eat by themselves
In a private parlour | for poor men's sake, 1
Or in a chamber with a chimney 2 | and leave the chief hall,
That was made for meals | to be eaten in.
This stage in the history of the hall eventually
left it as a mere entrance-room or passage, giving
communication equally with the rooms occupied
by master and servants. It also gradually helped
to bring about a practice either of building the
walls higher than before, so as to allow for the
conversion of the higher part of the building into
an upper storey or "sleeping-loft," or of adding
fresh rooms at the side or end of the hall. The
"up-floor," as the Saxons had called it, was after-
wards lighted by a couple of dormer windows.
The hall part of the house usually stood with its
long side to the front, the annexed buildings flank-
ing it, usually at right angles, flush with the front.
1 I.e. to avoid the poor.
2 Fireplace.
vii THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 155
This general plan was often adopted for old manor-
houses, rectories, and farm-houses, usually, of course,
with farm buildings attached. In the towns, the
houses were generally erected with the gable-end
abutting on the street-front.
We have seen how the English hall was made
into what we should now call a house, both by
bringing together a number of small independent
houses under the cover of one roof, and by building
fresh rooms above them. Both these principles can
be seen carried out, often on an extremely extensive
scale, in our modern public buildings, and even in
many private ones.
In some of the huge industrial cities of to-day,
the greatly increased cost of building land has
stimulated what may be called the " piling-up pro-
cess," until the structure becomes in many cases a
vast and overpowering mass of masonry of the kind
often humorously styled a " sky-scraper."
Each successive storey is, usually, the monotonous
counterpart of the one that went before, and if
during our walks we look at the houses or shop-
fronts in almost any large town, we shall even see
some characteristic features that once formed a
structural part of the first-floor or ground -floor
(such as " floor " projections and columns or pillars),
employed over and over again to decorate each
successive storey, until the roof is reached.
156 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
The most picturesque of these characteristic
repetitions is perhaps that of the projecting part
of the first-floor, which was a development of the
timber-built house. 1 In England it was called, in
the time of Shakespeare at least, a " jutty " or " jetty,"
from its jutting forwards, this enabling it to protect
the goods exposed for sale in the street below.
It seems clear from its name that the " solar," or
sun-chamber, which was given to the upper storey
in earlier times, and is still used on the Con-
tinent, was introduced into England by the Normans,
who grafted it upon the typical English hall. In
a famous old Norman poem of the thirteenth
century, the subject of which is the life of St.
Alban, a clerk upon arriving at Verulam (the old
name of St. Albans) tells us that he there found
" a stone Palace which was no cottage " (he means
that it was a house of great size), " with solars and
storeys, and great cellars below."
It is interesting to find the " sun-chamber " here
coupled with the " cellar," because the Eomans
employed the arch for vaulting their cellars, and
thus we are led to the fact that this form of con-
struction, though adopted by the Normans, must
have been originally derived, like the " solar," from
the Eomans themselves.
1 See illustration on p. 188. It is absent from Norman churches
and castles, in which the material used is stone.
vii THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 157
With the softening of manners in England and
the increasing desire for privacy, there had grown
up, by slow degrees, the idea of having private
rooms or " chambers " (as the Normans called them),
designed for the various requirements of the family.
These chambers, which by the thirteenth century
were located on the upper floor and were reached
by an outer staircase, included the parlour or
conversation -room the name of which is taken
from an old Norman word connected with our
own word parley, which properly means to " talk "
the drawing-room which, down to quite modern
times, still retained its early fifteenth -century
name of " withdrawing-roorn," from its being the
room to which the family, more especially the ladies,
" withdrew " and the dining-room or eating-room,
which became necessary when the custom of eating
in hall was abandoned by the family.
Coming to the present day, the gradual develop-
ment of the hall, as a single large apartment with
annexes into the house of later days, can perhaps
best be studied from observing many of our older
manor-houses and colleges, in which the hall still
retains a prominent position. But a more familiar
instance of this development may be seen in many
of the ancient farm-houses which are still to be
found in out-of-the-way parts of the country. A
number of farm-houses are yet in existence which
158 THE PAST AT OUE BOOKS CHAP.
consist of a dwelling-house, barn, and stables under
one roof. In a few instances, even, there is a door
or passage leading from the house to the barn,
though such examples are rare.
Farm-houses consisting of a central part with
two aisles and a dwelling-house at the upper end,
though rare, are still to be seen in some parts of the
country, as, for instance, at Upper Midhope in
Yorkshire. The cattle in this case are stalled
between the pillars in one of the wings or " aisles,"
whilst the remainder of the space, including the
opposite " aisle," is occupied by the threshing-floor.
Here it is plain that the part of the building
covered by the barn and the stalls corresponds
in form to the ancient English hall, while the
dwelling part answers to the family apartments,
which in olden times were annexed to it. A yet
more obvious development of farm buildings from
the hall can be seen abroad, as, for instance, in
Saxony, where a common type of farm-house con-
sists of a long and broad building with two " aisles "
in which the horses and cattle are stalled, the
servants sleeping above these, and the family at
the end of the building.
The better-class private country dwelling-houses
in the fifteenth century consisted, as a rule, of a
single large apartment with an earthen floor, and
open to the roof, in which the entire family lived
vii THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 159
and dined and slept. In London itself, where the
houses frequently had a dug-out cellar, in addition
to the ground-floor and first-floor, it was not unusual
for the three large apartments thus provided to
be each inhabited by a separate family, even in
the case of the well-to-do, so that our modern flats
are, after all, nothing more than a revival of this
most ancient custom.
An observant writer has remarked that " in
various counties we can scarcely fail to be struck
with the differences in the forms of the cottages, as
in the height of the buildings, the pitch of the roof,
as well as the material." A proper survey of the
country from this point of view would surely prove
that such differences were to some extent due to
the influence of race. The evidence of language,
as the following examples will show, would materially
assist such an inquiry. .
As is well known, every little knot or group of
Saxon houses such as grew into the modern many-
roomed house standing in its own grounds, was
called a lurgh or tun (our modern " town "), a fact
which sufficiently explains the reason for the vast
number of places in England at this day, the names
of which end in one or other of these terminations.
Of these two words, burgh (also borough and bury)
meant a place of protection or shelter, and is a
mere variant of our modern English " burrow," an
160 THE PAST AT OUK DOORS CHAP.
expression which appears, oddly enough, in the first
syllable of " burglar"
The corresponding Danish termination was -oy.
The Anglo-Saxon ending -tun, on the other hand,
meant a homestead or " ham," 1 such as was then
frequently enclosed by a rampart of earth, usually
formed of soil thrown up from a ditch and sur-
mounted by a hedge, 2 in which we may see the
forerunner of one of the usual forms of enclosure
by which our farmers protect their fields. A fact
which makes this clearer is that, originally, such
hedges were properly employed to enclose homesteads,
the system prevailing in England almost universally
down to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
being that of open fields.
The British or Celtic form of " tun " was " dun "
or " down," and as the British encampments were
usually on a hill, " down " came to mean a hill.
From what has already been said, we can see
how, in many cases, we may still roughly trace
upon a map the limits of the settlements of each
1 Frequently confused with the Friesland ending "-hamm," a
hemmed-'ui place or enclosure. Both endings are common.
2 A striking example is that of Bamborough, of which we read in
the Saxon Chronicle, that one Ida in A.D. 547 "built Bamborough,
which was at first enclosed with a hedge, and afterwards by a wall" ;
but the real meaning of this is that the rock was palisaded, and
the settlement thus became a "borough." So, too, Kingsbury near
St. Albans got its name from being a royal "Burgh," and was once
a stockaded palace of the Saxon kings of Mercia.
VII
THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 161
race, of which the nation was originally composed,
by finding out the oldest forms of the place-names.
For example, the common Saxon ending " -ing "
occur-s with very great frequency in Sussex, a
country which we know to have been overwhelm-
ingly Saxon ; whereas the Danish " -by," common in
Lincolnshire, does not occur in Kent, Hampshire,
or the Isle of Wight, all of which were peopled by
Jutes. On the other hand, there are many place-
names of Saxon or Norse origin, on and near the
coast of South Wales, a part of the country where
if we did not stop to reflect we should certainly not
have expected to find them.
Before leaving the subject of domestic architec-
ture, there are one or two features of certain public
buildings, as, for instance, churches and castles,
which stand in a more or less definite relationship
to the " hall," and therefore ought not to be left out
of the discussion. At the same time, it can hardly
be pointed out too strongly that it is quite beyond
the scope of this book, in any way, to deal with
even the chief features of the various " styles " in
our church and castle buildings. Information of
this kind has been very often published, and is
readily accessible to all who are interested, though,
in spite of the quite overwhelming proportion of
attention given to it, it is probably not so im-
portant from our present point of view, as are
M
162 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CHAP.
methods of house-building of the domestic sort. All
that can be here attempted is to direct attention to
one or two general aspects of these two forms of public
architecture, which happen .to illustrate some of the
leading principles with which this book is concerned.
Both castle-hall and church have this in common,
that they are alike intended as meeting-places for
the folk of a particular village or district. Both
afford examples of some of the principles that we
have already seen at work in secular buildings (for
example, that of the building up of the unit), and
both alike are eloquent of the peculiar characteristics
and surroundings of the races by which they were
from time to time respectively built.
In the earliest times, the church was the common
hall of the parish, and often served as a fort in time
of attack ; indeed it frequently stood on the very
site of the stockade that had been built by the first
settlers. Courts were held in it, as is still the
practice in northern Spain. Corn and wool were
stored in the nave, and the village feasts took place
there ; even dancing was permitted at Christmas, as
late as the seventeenth century, in the churches of
Yorkshire. Yet, in the case of our churches and
cathedrals, the process of development was almost
from the first profoundly modified and complicated
by the domination of the religious idea, which
affected the entire plan of the structure. During
vii THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 163
what was called the Komanesque period of church
architecture, " cruciform " or cross-shaped churches
were built, and at one time this became the all but
universal style, the Western Church following, as a
rule, the shape of what is called the "Eoman" cross,
and the Eastern Church that of the Greek.
On the other hand, the churches of the early
Christians were also very often erected in the form
of a long " hall," supported by a double row of
pillars, resembling that in which the Eoman Governor
held his Court. The usual opinion is, that in the
early days of Christianity, " halls " of this kind were
frequently converted to Christian uses, the west
end of the building, corresponding to that at which
the Koman Governor had formerly sat, becoming, as
at Silchester, the Christian sanctuary. 1 Such a Eoman
hall was called a Basilica, from a Greek word mean-
ing "royal," because it was copied from the "Eoyal"
or King's Porch at Athens. This form of building
came to be favoured greatly, no doubt from its
simplicity and convenience, as well as for the reasons
given above, by English church-builders, and the use
of the church building as a court, as well as for
many other purposes, continued in England for
centuries. Perhaps we may sum up by saying that
some forms, at least, of our earliest English churches
1 This was about A.D. 300 ; the transference of the altar to the
east end took place some centuries later.
164 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CHAP.
were evolved from non-religious buildings in other
lands, but that it was as churches that they appear
to have been introduced into England.
A fact of supreme importance in the history of
English church-building was the Norman influence,
which, in the course of its own development -in
England, seems to have substituted stone for timber
as the regular material for building, and having thus
completely remoulded the architecture of the country,
inspired and provided funds for our most active
church-building period, which attained its perfection
at Durham. This influence has stamped itself deep
upon the language, witness such expressions as
" nave," " arch," "chancel," " aisle," "tower," " porch,"
and many other words of Eoman origin, that reached
us through the Norman.
Hence, although the standard of building reached
by the Saxons was itself a high one, yet the old
writer, Aubrey, is not far from the truth when
he remarks, with reference to the Conquest, " the
Normans then came, and taught them [the Saxons]
civility and building." The only thing here to
guard against is the idea that the Normans brought
their architecture with them " ready made " (as it
were), instead of developing it gradually, as is now
believed to have been the case, in England, before
the middle of the twelfth century.
In some of our still existing churches, it is not
vii THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 165
difficult to trace the steps by which, in order to
develop the structure to the requisite size or
grandeur, one unit or division of the building was
added to another.
In some continental churches, indeed, as in those
of Switzerland and Norway, these principles are
exhibited with especial clearness.
An abbey differed from a cathedral in this, that it
was built, as a rule, out of the offerings of pilgrims
and other devout persons, and thus grew up gradu-
ally around the shrine of some famous Saint.
Bound these abbeys and convents, as around
many old castles, there developed a tendency, as
time went on, for villages or even towns to spring
up. There is a very good example of one of these
convent-made villages in the north of Hertfordshire.
On the very spot where a wayside cross was erected
(in or about the year A.D. 1160), a convent was
founded by the Lady Eoise or Eohesia, and a priory
was afterwards built by Eustace de Mere. This
was at first called Eoise Cross, and afterwards Eoise
Town or Eoyston.
Lastly, we come to the question of the church-
tower. This, as we know, is often called a lelfry,
a name from which there is much to be learnt.
The old spelling of the word was not " belfry " but
" berfrey," and although this " berfrey " or " bierfrois"
was used for a bell-tower as early as 1226, yet the
166 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
word had nothing to do with " bell " even when it
happened to contain one, but simply meant, origin-
ally, a " strong place of refuge." The fact of its being
also used for bell-towers no doubt helped to fix the
form of the word as " belfry."
In its oldest form the " berfrey " ' was usually a
movable tower of timber work such as was used in
the Middle Ages for besieging fortifications. When
the French historian Froissart speaks of " two
belfroys of great timber, with three stages (or
stories), every belfroy on four great wheels," and
adds that each " stage " contained 100 archers, it
is this ancient siege -tower to which he alludes.
From this usage the Norman " berfrey " came to
mean a tower to protect watchmen, and hence a
watch-tower, a beacon-tower, and so on.
Eeminiscent of its ancient origin is therefore
the fact that, like the body of the church itself,
the church-tower was much used down to quite
modern times for purely secular purposes. The
tower of St. Clement Danes erected in London on
the very spot where the Danes, driven out of the
city by Alfred, settled in the ninth century was
sometimes used for a beacon to guide the shipping
on the Thames, sometimes as a station for guns to
keep order among the proud churchmen and nobles
who resided in and about the neighbourhood, and
sometimes too as a protection against the pirates
vii THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 16*7
who attacked and plundered those frequenting
the river. The church-tower was, in a great many
cases, actually employed as a watch-tower or look-
out place in the country villages, and often stood
quite apart from the church itself.
Some of these separate towers have indeed
survived to this day. Even at Chichester
Cathedral, at Evesham, Berkeley and elsewhere, the
tower stands quite apart from the main building
and its spire, as is the case in many of the
cathedrals on the Continent. At East Dereham,
Walston and Els^ow the same kind of division
may be seen. At St. Albans the town Bell-tower,
or " clock-house," stands quite alone, having no
church attached, and the tower here was remarkable
for containing one of the most ancient horologes
(the predecessors of our modern church -clocks),
made by an abbot of St. Albans in 1326. This
particular horologe was unique, being such as then
was " nowhere else in Europe," and showed various
movements of the heavenly bodies. 1
Most of our old church- towers have four
windows in the topmost storey, one looking towards
1 Possibly it may have resembled the celestial globe (showing
the movements of the sun, moon and planets, impelled by weights
and wheels, which pointed out with certainty the hour, night and
day) that was sent to the Emperor Frederic II. in 1232 by the
Sultan of Egypt. The first mention of the clock as a piece of
household furniture occurs in the Roman de la Rose (1305).
f
c c/2
8"|
II
ll
CHAP, vii THE STOEY OF OUR HOMES 169
each point of the compass ; this arrangement was,
of course, originally made for the convenience of
the watchman's work.
Many old towers were inhabited by watchmen,
as was still in quite recent days the case in
Germany, and "some yet show traces of former
habitation in the shape of fireplaces. 1 The tower of
Bedale Church, near Richmond in Yorkshire, which
was built for defensive purposes, was actually
furnished with a portcullis. Again many of the
churches on the East Anglian coast were regularly
used as beacon-towers for the guidance of ships at
sea. In other parts of the country, as at Newcastle,
they were employed to give light to travellers on
the then pathless moors. Hence we may see
plainly that the original object of these towers was
to serve as watch-towers, or for other non -religious
purposes, and that they were also intended as a
residence for the watchmen, and not merely to
contain a peal of bells.
In many respects, therefore, the church-tower once
served a purpose similar to that of the main tower,
or " keep," as it was called, of a castle. The keep
was, in the first instance, in particular the domestic
part of the castle and contained a set of rooms
1 It may be added that the term " luffer "-boards (louver-boards)
often given to the open weather-boarding at the top of a church
tower, probably goes back to the time when these boards were
really used as " louver-boards," for the escape of the smoke.
170 THE PAST AT OUE DOORS CHAP.
built one above the other for the use of the
owner and his family. Such early keeps contained,
in addition to sleeping chambers for the family, a
large room used as the dining-apartment, and in
some cases a chapel as well. The best example
that can be given is perhaps the famous " White
Tower" of the Tower of London, begun by the
Conqueror's order, which contains, in addition to
many private chambers, a hall no less than 90 ft.
long, as well as a chapel.
Besides the rooms we have mentioned, the keep
of an ancient castle often contained in an upper
storey a watchman's room. This was the case at
the Peak Castle in Derbyshire, inhabited by two
watchmen from the year 1158 onwards. Incident-
ally also the keep served, when occasion arose,
as a place of refuge against attack, for all who
lived within the castle precincts, and paid what
was called ward-silver or castle-guard. In this
respect the keep resembled the Northumbrian
" peel " originally a "palisaded" tower or, to take
a less familiar example, the watch-tower built beside
a chief's residence in some parts of North-west India.
To conclude, the keep was often actually erected
usually upon a rock or other eminence on the
very site of an ancient watch-tower or look-out
place, which has certainly in some cases existed
since prehistoric times.
vii THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 171
Indeed the circuit of its outer wall, or " curtain,"
as it was called, may from this point of view be
regarded as the counterpart of the rampart of earth,
crowned by a palisade, which defended the settle-
ments of the early inhabitants of Great Britain.
To put the matter in another way, the prehistoric
castle, if the term may be allowed, consisted of a
fort or earthwork, often of a circular plan, which
contained and protected the huts of the defenders.
Excellent examples occur in all parts of Great
Britain, as well as on the continent of Europe.
One of the best in England is perhaps the famous
round fort at Grim's Pound on Dartmoor, which
measures about 400 feet across, and still shows the
round foundations of the defenders' dwellings.
We must therefore think of the castle not
merely as a single building, but rather as a cluster
of buildings, modified through being built and
owned by a single individual for military purposes
chiefly. Very commonly, in fact, it actually con-
sisted in the most ancient times of a single watch-
tower or citadel, surrounded by small lightly
built houses, in which the lord's retainers lived.
Not until long after the Conquest did the castle
become highly specialised and developed, to keep
pace with the improved military science of the day.
The earliest castles of the Conqueror were mere
ramparts of earth, or at most, wooden structures,
172 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
the building of stone castles by the Normans not
taking place till the middle of the twelfth century.
When at a much later period such buildings
began to be designed as private residences, the keep
long survived its early use, and was retained as
an ornament to the building. In many cases the
castle became a true residence, but it is, neverthe-
less, chiefly to the manor (in its original sense of
" manor-house ") that we must look to supply a
link between the ancient military keep and the
now old-style farm-house, as well as with the
modern " house " properly so called.
We now come to the consideration of houses
arranged side by side in rows, or, as we should now-
adays say, in " streets," a common word which we
habitually and heedlessly use, without ever recall-
ing the fact that like the name we give to the
very walls of the houses we live in it is of Roman
introduction. Thus we may, if we stop to reflect,
return in spirit to the far-off days when Britain
was for about four centuries overshadowed by the
wings of the Roman eagle.
In the far-off age, when London first became a
town, each house must have stood, like the houses
in modern Dutch towns, in its own enclosure. In
the twelfth century the houses of London had
only one storey above the ground-floor, but in the
fourteenth century they began to be built with two
vii THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 173
or even three floors, the upper storey being called
a " garret," the meaning of which is " watch-tower."
This garret was made to project after the manner
of the lower storey, though to a lesser extent, partly
perhaps with the idea of giving, as has been said, a
little more room and shelter to goods in the street,
but chiefly, no doubt, from its being built as a mere
repetition of the storey below. In houses of this
type the garret was utilised as a storeroom or
" loft," the first floor being the actual living-room
of the family.
By studying the streets in almost any of our
older towns we can often see clearly how the size
and course of some of them have been affected by
conditions connected with the old order of things
long passed away. Where the successive upper
stories projected each in the direction of the house
opposite on both sides of the street, the effect in
the very narrow streets of former times was to
bring the top windows very close to each other, so
much so, in fact, that people in them might, it is
often said, shake hands across the street.
Certainly these projecting stories did much to
narrow the streets in such old towns, but until
the popularisation of the coach this did not much
matter, since nearly every one rode on horseback
an idea still commemorated in such names as that
of " Knightrider Street " in the City of London.
174 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
All that was then really wanted was a some-
what broader street for waggons, a feature which
is preserved in such a name as " Wain Gate " or
" Waggon Street/' which is common in the north.
The remaining streets were frequently mere
alleys, impassable to all but foot-passengers, horses
and cattle. These were called by different names
in various parts of the country, either by the
Norman name " alley " or the English name " row."
Of these lanes there are numberless examples,
many of them appropriated to particular trades, as
in the case of Goldsmiths' Eow, Butchers' Eow,
Carriers' Eow, and Paternoster Eow, in London. The
latter was named from the turners of beads for
rosaries, who lived there because of its nearness to
St. Paul's, they being popularly called " paternoster-
makers," because they manufactured the beads used
for counting the repetitions of the Lord's Prayer
(" Pater Noster ").
In the same way certain parts of the town
would often be associated with a particular nation-
ality, as in the Jewry a part commonly found
in most large medieval towns Little Ireland, Little
Scotland, Little Britain, and even Petty France.
In some of our oldest cities, of which York is a
type, the whole of the ancient part of the town was
surrounded by a wall, and the four main waggon-
tracks led to four principal gates, the rest of the
VII
THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 175
streets being for the most part the narrow rows to
which we have referred, except where later improve-
ments or alterations have been introduced. The
reason for this is that York was laid out as a Eoman
FIG. 49. Plan of Chichester, showing how closely the modern city
follows the lines of the Eoman walled town, with four principal
gates and streets (North, South, East, and West).
military station, and was therefore arranged as
such a station would be. Indeed, in Saxon times,
York was actually called York-" Chester " (that is,
"York camp ") or "Chester " only, whilst the present
city of Chester was formerly called " West Chester "
by way of distinction.
176 THE PAST AT OUE BOOKS CHAP.
The plan varied, of course, according to the
ground, and often followed the plan of some pre-
existing British encampment ; l and the modern
city does not always stand upon the same site as
the Eoman town. At St. Albans the Eoman town
of Verulam stood on the opposite side of the valley,
with the river Ver and a small lake between it and
the modern city, the main street of which is built
on the site of the ancient Eoman race-course.
The shops in front of town houses were shop-
fronts, with barred unglazed windows, or of the
nature of booths ; the windows, which were
furnished with bars by way of protection against
thieves, were left perfectly open all day, and only
closed at night by means of strong wooden shutters,
such as are still used for closing shops in Spain and
many other parts of Europe.
Another kind of shop (which, if we may go by
its name, was a Eoman feature adopted by the
Normans) was the " tavern." This was really a
kind of cellar, 2 with a stair leading up into the
street, something like the Italian wine-shops, some
1 Both Pevensey and Verulamium were of an irregular oval ;
Silchester was of an octagonal form ; Bath probably pentagonal ;
and the City of London an oblong. The latter (in 1300) possessed
seven double gates, four facing the cardinal points, and three
supplementary ones. The number of towns of Eoman origin in
the country is very great ; it is now known that Oxford, like
Cambridge, was a Roman station.
2 The corresponding English name was "shade."
vii THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 17*7
of which may be seen in London. These stairs at
length became so numerous that they encroached
seriously upon the street, and were forbidden in
consequence. The result of this was, that in
numerous cases they were turned into cellars, by
the filling up of the stair-hole and removal of the
stairs, and this is said to be the chief reason why
there are so many cellars under the pavement in
our modern English towns. There are still many
of such town " taverns " to be seen abroad.
There is much more to be said, but all that can
here be added consists of a few additional facts
intended to complete the main outlines of the
picture. The trade signs, such as then swung over
almost every shop, are still to be seen in nearly
every town in the country. Some of these were
the badges of the noble families of which the shop-
owners were retainers, others the symbols of the
trades or guilds to which they belonged (as in many
continental towns of to-day) ; a third class no doubt
were house-marks.
The best existing examples of the first class of
these signs occur in the signboards of our modern
inns, the explanations of many of which are known.
The " White Hart " is the badge of King Eichard
the Second, and the " Blue Boar " of King Eichard
the Third, and innumerable others might be given. 1
1 The tin-smiths alone had a live sign squirrels in a cage with bells.
N
178 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES CHAI-.
Of the second class, there are now very few that can
be considered historic, the chief of these being the
three golden (originally blue) balls of the Pawn-
broker, which have been identified with the Arms
of the Lombards, the first to engage in this form of
business in England. Perhaps, too, we may ad^,
the Highlander of the tobacconist, and the strange-
looking barber's pole, the latter an emblem going
back to the days when the Surgeon, who at first
united the office of barber with his own calling,
was required to distinguish his pole from that of
the barber by adding to it certain emblems indicative
of his craft. Even our common slang phrase " to
hang out" came from the once general habit of
hanging out a sign.
Examples of the third class are now but few,
though we are told on good authority that a house,
with what is called a " wool-stapler's " mark
engraven upon it, and bearing the date 1584, is
still to be seen at the village of Witney, in Oxford-
shire, and that merchant -marks are common at
Yarmouth and Norwich. In Denmark and other
parts of the Continent house-marks are still used ;
they were, in fact, necessary before numbers were
employed to distinguish the houses in the towns.
These house-marks formed part of the general
system of marking all kinds of private property,
and were to the yeomen what heraldic bearings
vii THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 179
were to the noble ; indeed more than one knightly
family in North Germany still bears its house-mark
(e.g. the pot-hook or kettle-hanger) on its coat
of arms. The yeoman's land, cattle, ducks, and
implements all bore the same mark, which he drew
when he attached his signature to a document, or
else cut it upon a piece of wood. This last custom
accounts for the knife or rod sometimes affixed
as a guarantee to such old deeds. In the earliest
times it usually represented some indispensable
implement of the owner, such as a plough, scythe
or sickle, a spade, or the tires of a barrow, as well
as mere fanciful emblems, such as stars or anchors.
"We can thus understand the true nature and
origin of our modern trade-marks, as well as of the
marks used by stone-masons, livery companies and
similar bodies; or the marks to this day placed
upon swans at the periodical swan-upping, or " swan-
hopping " as it is often wrongly called. Even
the broad arrow-mark placed upon boundary stones
(which the old Irishman supposed to be the fossil
footprints of some large bird, the " trid of the aigle
afore the flood," as he picturesquely put it) as well
as on Government stores, the dress of convicts and
so forth, is of similar origin, since in all these cases
it is simply used as an assertion of the sovereign's
paramount authority.
There are numberless other survivals and
180 THE PAST AT OUR DOORS CHAP.
reminders of the old regime, many of which will
afford us pleasure, and some perhaps even regret.
But it is necessary to remember that there was
another side to the picture. For all the while, in
open spaces in and near our ancient towns, there
stood, as we may yet see, many dark and sinister
blots on the civilisation of the " good old '"' days.
Among these were the " cock-pit," the " bull-ring "
(as at Ludlow), the " bear-garden," the pillory and
the stake, the " cage," and even the gibbet with
its ghastly clanking burden, the victims of which,
whether man or brute, suffered things unspeakable,
that have left their stains, indelible as the blood
then spilt, upon the very metaphors of our language.
WALES
In the year 1200, it is recorded that the Welsh
were in the habit of sleeping on beds of rushes,
with their heads to the circular wall and feet to the
fire. It is clear, therefore, that their ordinary huts
must have been of the round type with central fire-
place. The stone foundations of circular huts of this
kind, which must have been carried up either in stone
or wattle- work, are still plentiful in Wales, as, for
instance, in Carnarvonshire, at Penmaenmawr.
On the other hand, however, the old Welsh
tribal house, or king's hall, was long-shaped, with
vii THE STOKY OF OUK HOMES 181
six pillars arranged in two rows down the centre of
the building. 1 These pillars were formed of well-
grown trees, apparently so selected and arranged
that the forks on the inner side reached over to
meet each other in the form of an arch. The low
walls were of wattle-work, and the open fireplace
(the live emhers of which, called the " seed of fire,"
were banked up at night and never allowed to go
out) was in the centre between the two middle
pillars. There was a raised platform or dais at the
upper end of the hall, where the king and his
principal officers sat on chairs ; this latter distinc-
tion being a privilege of office ! The retainers slept on
rushes in the aisles of this building, and the kitchen
was under a separate roof.
Thus the old Welsh tribal hall in all main
essentials very closely resembled the halls of the
English and the Danes. Further, in the old Welsh
laws the arrangements for the king's court were
evidently taken from an outdoor court, since " the
lord is to sit with his back to the sun or wind,
lest he be inconvenienced by the sun, if hot, or
by the wind, if high." Hence, the Welsh king's
indoor court must have been copied from the courts
held in the open air by the kings of the Britons.
1 It may be remembered that in the well-known Welsh "War-
song of Dinas Vawr, the vanquished king "fled to his hall-
pillars."
182 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
SCOTLAND
In modern times the marked difference between
the look of Scottish houses and those of England,
with all that that difference may mean to a Scottish
eye, has never been more happily described than by
Eobert Louis Stevenson. " One thing, especially
(in England), continues unfamiliar to the Scotch-
man's eye the domestic architecture, the look of
streets and buildings ; the quaint, venerable age of
many, and the thin walls and warm colouring of all.
We have in Scotland far fewer ancient buildings,
above all in country places ; and those that we have
are all of hewn or hailed masonry. Wood has
been sparingly used in their construction ; the
window-frames are sunken in the wall, not flat to the
front, as in England ; the roofs are steeper-pitched ;
even a hill-farm will have a massy, square, cold, and
permanent appearance. English houses, in com-
parison, have the look of cardboard toys, such as a
puff might shatter. And to this the Scotchman
never becomes used. His eye can never rest con-
sciously on one of these brick houses rickles of
brick, as he might call them or on one of these
flat-chested streets, but he is instantly reminded
where he is, and instantly travels back in fancy to
his home. ' This is no my am house ; I ken by
the biggin' (building) of it.' And yet perhaps it is
vii THE STOEY OF OUK HOMES 183
his own, bought with his own money, the key of it
long polished in his pocket ; but it has not yet, and
never will be, thoroughly adopted by his imagination;
nor does he cease to remember that, in the whole
length and breadth of his native country, there was
no building even distantly resembling it." ]
Much of this at the present day is true enough.
But we must not be misled into thinking that the
dwellings of the Scottish peasantry have always
been so markedly superior to those of the English,
or even that the former were always of stone,
natural as the use of such a material may appear
in a mountainous country like Scotland.
As late as the beginning of the eighteenth
century there were " many wooden, mud, and
thatched houses within the gates of Edinburgh,
Glasgow, and Aberdeen ; and few of any other kind
outside the gates, either there or in other parts of
the country." It is true that the famous round
dwellings, called " Beehive " huts, were some-
times of stone. Yet so rare, in fact, were stone
dwellings in earlier times that such phrases as The
Stone House, even in such a town as Perth, not unfre-
quently occurred ; and stone castles were a wonder
of the country-side where they were erected, and
were often alleged to be the work of demons.
1 [R. L. S., Memories and Portraits, pp. 6-7. Chatto & Windus,
1904.]
184 THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
The usual material in those earlier days, both for
houses and castles, was wood or wicker-work ; but
an old Norman-French poem describes a fortified
dwelling, the material of which " was neither stone
nor wicker-work ; the earthen wall was raised on
high, indented and embattled." This building
stood upon a lofty rock, overlooking the Irish Sea,
and, as was then usual, depended for its safety
almost entirely upon the natural strength of the
position. Its inmate, to use the very words of the
poet who describes it, " need fear neither engineer
nor assault ; the rock was too lofty."
Coming to modern times, one of the most
interesting Scottish survivals is the persistence of
the central fireplace, which is still used, for instance,
in a few cottages in Orkney and the Shetlands.
IRELAND
The modern Irish "shanty," in having now usually
two rooms, is to that extent an advance on the
cabins in which the poorer classes of England
lived down to the fifteenth century, the latter
being undivided rooms without ceiling or chimney,
in which the smoke was allowed to wander about
at will, and in which the entire family lived,
together with the pigs, sheep and chickens. The
shanty lit. " old-house "-has an extremely low
VII
THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 185
gable, in curious contrast to the ancient rectangular
buildings of Ireland, whether of stone or timber.
S/cetch by J/z'ss Reid.
FIG. 50. Central Fireplace, as still used in an Orkney Cottage.
The smoke escapes through the opening in the roof. One of the old-style
cupboard beds is to be seen at the end of the room.
186 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES CHAP.
Before the Christian period, the wicker-work
huts of the Irish peasantry, the forts and most
other buildings, except the feasting -halls of the
chiefs and larger dwelling-houses, were generally
round or oval, with a central fireplace, and the
custom of erecting round buildings survived iu
Ireland even down to the fifteenth century.
The homestead of an ancient Irish farmer
is known to have contained, within a circular
entrenchment, at least seven huts the dwelling-
house itself, the kitchen, a kiln for drying corn,
a sheep-house and pig-house (all of which were
round), and the barn and calf-house, which were
long-shaped. Thus the general idea was not unlike
that of the modern Zulu or Kaffir " kraal," l in which
the round huts of the inhabitants are protected by
a circular stockade. Yet the better-class hall was
a right-angled building, supported either by one or
two rows of five pillars down the centre, with one
large principal apartment in which the family lived,
ate, and slept. It thus corresponded to the early
halls of Scotland and Wales, and even of England.
FOREIGN INFLUENCES
In comparatively modern times the chief influences
affecting domestic buildings in this country have
1 That is, "corral" or "enclosure."
viz THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES-
been Italian, French, Dutch and Flemish. Italian,
the first of these influences, which reached England
for the most part either through Holland or France
(from both of which it received some colouring),
began in the sixteenth century, and lasted for about
two hundred years.
At first it showed itself merely in the orna-
mentation of monuments, as in the tomb of
Henry VII. in the chapel of that King at West-
minster Abbey. Then for a considerable period
it influenced merely the ornament of domestic
buildings, but in the seventeenth century the
Italian plan and outlines were adopted, ending
in the copying of Italian buildings line for line.
In the old-fashioned " formal " gardens of many
ancient residences, to which the very name of
" Italian garden " was given, 1 the resemblance was
yet more easily apparent.
Modern French influence on domestic buildings,
on the other hand, which is to be seen at Widcombe,
near Bath, has been considered to be largely due to
Henrietta Maria, the French queen of Charles I. ;
the French church built at Dover in that King's
reign was one example. Certainly most of the
plaster-work figures, which adorn a few old house-
fronts in the country, date from the time of the
1 A famous example of an old-fashioned French garden is to be
seen at Chatsworth, the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire.
188
THE PAST AT OUE DOOES CHAP.
Stuarts, though it has also been suggested 1 that
French Huguenot influence of an earlier date may
have affected a few buildings of the mill type, such
as the Pin-mill at Stroud.
The lofty gable and " pepperbox " turret of many
FIG. 51. Figured Mouldings on projecting front of old House
(the Rising Sun Inn) at Saffron- Walden.
Scottish castles, which were domesticated in the
sixteenth century, were also derived from France,
and together with a strange-looking gable-end, built
1 "The "Ancient House" at Ipswich of the Sparrowe family
is a notable exception, dating from 1567.
VII
THE STOEY OF OUE HOMES 189
in gradually ascending steps, which is called the
" corbie " or " crow's step " gable, have been
attributed to the effect of the ancient alliance
between Scotland and that country.
Gables of this kind are chiefly found in
Belgium and other parts of the Low Countries, but
they are also common in many parts of France and
FIG. 52. A. "Corbie" or Crow-Step" Gables, on the roofs of
Stirling Castle (from a view about 1840). B. Detail of "Crow-
Step " Gable, etc.
Germany, as, for instance, in Llibeck, and also in
Denmark. As mentioned above, this style of gable
was chiefly popular in Scotland, but it was also
employed to some extent in the north and east of
England. Examples, which are numerous, are at
Brome Hall (Norfolk), and Heading Street (Kent).
Flemish influence also appears on the coast of
190 THE PAST AT OUK DOOES CHAP, vn
Kent, especially in the older buildings at Eye,
Deal and Sandwich, the last-named town showing
this influence so strongly that it is often said it
might be taken for an old-world Flemish town.
But perhaps the best example of all is the
well-known " beacon " tower of Boston Church in
Lincolnshire, which was used for the guidance of
mariners entering the port, and is alleged to have
been copied bodily from the tower of the great
church at Antwerp.
The influence of Holland, which can be seen
in the curved gables of Eushton Hall (1627) and
the double curved gables of the mill at Bourne
Pond, near Colchester (1591), was no doubt greatly
emphasized by the joint reign of the two Dutch
royalties, William and Mary. There are even some
traces of the Dutch manner in the work done by
Wren at Hampton Court for those two sovereigns.
Both curved and " crow-step " gables are extremely
common in the newer shop-buildings in London.
At the present day Dutch influence is strongest
in some of the east coast towns, as at Yarmouth, for
instance, and King's Lynn, which latter town, owing
to its geographical surroundings, has been called the
Holland of the east coast. Dutch influence is also
evident in many old houses in Guildford and its
neighbourhood, and examples may be found else-
where by students of the things around us.
SOME BOOKS FOE REFEKENCE 191
SOME BOOKS, AND PASSAGES IN BOOKS,
GIVEN FOR FURTHER REFERENCE
ADAM, FRANK. The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish
Highlands. Edinburgh and London : W. & A. K. Johnston.
1908.
CLINCH, GEORGE. English Costume. London : Methuen & Co.
1910.
CUTTS, Rev. E. L. Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages.
London : A. Moring. 1911.
FAIRHOLT, F. W. Costume in England. Third edition, enlarged
and revised by the Hon. H. A. Dillon. Two vols. London :
G. Bell & Sons. 1885.
GOMME, G. L. (now Sir LAURENCE). The Village Community
(with special reference to survivals in Britain). London :
Walter Scott. 1890. Esp. valuable is ch. ix. pp. 275-287.
JOYCE, P. W. Social History of Ancient Ireland. London :
Longmans, Green & Co. 1903. Two vols. Esp. II. ch. xxii.
pp. 203-212 ; II. ch. xx. pp. 20-58 ; and II. ch. xxi. pp. 104-
144. A standard work upon Ireland for advanced readers.
MITCHELL, Sir ARTHUR. The Past in the Present. Edinburgh :
D. Douglas. 1880.
An admirable introduction to the subject of survivals in
Britain, with special reference to Scotland.
PLANCHE, J. R. History of British Costume. Third edition.
London : George Bell & Sons. 1881.
The larger work by this same authority is invaluable for
advanced readers.
RHYS, Sir J. and D. BRYNMOR- JONES. The Welsh People.
London : Fisher Unwin. 1900. Esp. ch. vi. pp. 199-201 ;
248-252 ; 568-569.
A standard book on Wales for advanced readers.
TYLOR, E. B. (now Sir E. B.) Anthropology. London : Macmillan
& Co., Ltd. 1881. Esp. ch. viii.-xi. (the Arts of Life : Food,
Dress, Dwellings). The well-known and unequalled text- book.
WRIGHT, THOMAS. The Homes of Other Days. London : Trubner
& Co. 1871.
DICTIONARIES
SKEAT, Rev. Professor W. W. A Concise Etymological Dictionary
of the English Language. Clarendon Press, Oxford. New
edition. 1911.
An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. New
edition. Revised and enlarged. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
1910. Fourth Edition.
MURRAY, Sir JAMES A. H. A New English Dictionary on
Historical Principles. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
INDEX
Abbeys, usually built up round
the shrine of a saint, 165
Abroad, food from, 45-50
Ale and beer, 16
"Alley," 174
Almshouses, dress worn in, 80
"Apron," 89
worn by men, 80-81
Architecture, Norman, developed
in England, 164
"Armoury," 142
Arras, 145
Arrow, the broad, 179
"At bay," meaning of, 20
"Aumbrey," or "arms- (later
confused with alms-) cup-
board," 144
"Back-plate" of grate, 132
Bag-gloves, 91-3
"Bake-stones," 38, 43
"Balustrade," meaning of, 128
Bangles, 98-9
Banister. See " balustrade "
"Basilica," 163
"Bay." See "at bay"
Beacons on church -towers, 169
Bear-garden, 180
"Bed," or "bed-stead," 138-41
of Ware, 140
Beer and ale, 16
Beer-barrels marked with "X," 17
Belfry and bell-tower, 165-6, 167
Bell-tents, 150
Bench-marks, 179
Bishop's apron, 81
Black bread, 18
Black coats, contrasted with red,
79
Black dress (in ancient Ireland),
118
Blacksmith's apron, 81
"Blouse," 83 ; cp. 62
Blue coat in army, 79-80
"Blue coat" schools, 71
Blue Girls' School (Chester), 103
" Bodice " or " boddice," 84
" Body " and skirt, separate, 51
Bonnet, Scottish feather, 115
Boots and shoes, 52, 63-7
Boston " stump " or beacon-
tower, 189
"Bowler," (round hat) 69-70
Boy's dress, 73
Bracelet, sacred, of the Danes, 99
Bracelets, 98-9
Bread, 15, 18
" Breakfast," meaning of, 3
" Brewsters," 17
Bristol, dress of Red Maids'
School at, 101-2
"Broad arrow," the, 179
Buckhounds, Master of the, 21
Buildings, foreign influences on
English, 186-90
Bullock's horn, used as drinking-
cup, 12
Bull-ring, 180
"-burgh," "-borough," "-bury,"
meaning of endings, 159
192
INDEX
193
Butcher's apron, 80-81
Buttons of page-boy, 76-8
Buttons, two, at back of coat,
57-9
Cabins or huts in England, 149
"Cage," the, 180
Caps, 70
Irish, 120
Scottish, 115
Welsh, 109
Carpets, 147
" Casement " windows, 137-8
" Cassock," a horseman's coat,
55
Castle Rising, dress of ' ' sisters "
at Howard Hospital, 106
Castles, 162-171
"Ceiling," 146-7
Cellars in streets, 176-7
Central fireplace, survival of
(Orkney and Shetland),
184-5
Charcoal burner's hut, 150
"Chase" and "hunt," 19
Cheese, 15-16
Chest, family, 141
village, 141 note
Chester, Blue Girls' School, 103
Grey Girls' School, 103
" Chesterfield " (overcoat), 54
Children's dress, 73, 85, 101-4
Chimneys, 128-34
" Chocolate," 49
Christ's Hospital, dress of boys
at, 71
"Church" and "hall," 162-4
Churches, altar at west end in
early, 163
Church towers, 165-70
Chyngton, black ox - team of,
23-5
Clay pots, 38
Clerical dress, origin of, 81 note
Cloaks, English red, 106-7
Irish, 117-20
Scottish, 110 seq.
Welsh, 109
" Clock " of a stocking, 90
Clocks, church, 167
Cloth at meals, 14
Coal-fires, 131-2
Coats, 53-62
Cob- irons, 132
Cockades, 74, 75
Cockpit, the, 180
Coffee, 46
Convent-made villages, 165
Convict's dress, 179
" Corbie " or " crow-step " gable,
189-90
"Corset," 84
Cottages, different shape in various
counties, 159
"Craggans " or clay pots, 38
Cramp-rings, 99
Crinolines. 86-7
"Crow-step " gables, 189-90
" Cuff," 92
" Cup - board," modern dresser
derived from the, 143-5
Cupboard-beds, 140-41, 185
Curfew, 134-5
''Currant," meaning of, 45
"Curtain," outer wall of a castle,
171
" Cut-away " coat, 55
"Dairy," meaning of, 14
" Danish " mills, 37
Deal watermen, dress of, 80
"Deer," meaning of, 19
"Dinner," meaning of, 3
in open air, 41-2
" Directoire " dress, 87
"Drawing-" or "withdrawing-,"
room, 157
Dress, international types of, 120-
22
"Dresser," 142-5
Dressing-gown, 82
Drinking-cups and glasses, 10-13
Duke of York's "Red -coat"
school, 72
" Dun " or " down," meaning of
160
Dutch influence on English build-
ings, 187-90
O
194
THE PAST AT OUE DOORS
Earrings, 98
Earthen houses and castles (Scot-
land), 184
" Empire" dress, 87
Eton, details of dress at, 73
Evening-dress coat, 56
Falconer, Hereditary Grand, 21
Fans, 96-7
Farm buildings, on plan of the
"hall," 158-9
Farming terms, Saxon, 22-3
" Feathers " on drinking-glasses,
11, 12-13
Felt hat or "bowler," 69
Fender, kitchen, 133
Figured mouldings on old house
fronts, 187-8
"Fire-backs," 129, 134
"Fire-dogs " or andirons, 132
Fire-irons, 133
Fireplaces, 128-34, 169, 184-5
"Flats," 159
Flemish influence on English
buildings, 187-9
Food-names, Norman and Saxon,
19, 22
Footmen, dress of, 58-9, 74, 75,
76
Foot-plough, 27
Forks, 8-9
Forts and castles, 171
Freemason's apron, 81
French influence on English build-
ings, 187-8
"Fret" of a grate, 132
"Frock," 82-3
Frock-coat, 55, 82-3
"Furrow-crook," 28
Gables, foreign influence on Eng-
lish, 189
"Galoche," or "galosh," mean-
ing of, 66
"Garibaldi," 62, 83-4
" Garlic," meaning of, 37
"Garment," meaning of, 50
" Garret," a watch-tower, 173
Gibbet, 180
"Gig," or "Danish" mill, 43
" Gin," a kind of trap, 21
"Girdle-cakes," 38
Girls' dress, 101-4
Glass, window, 136-8
Gloves, 90-94
"Gooseberry," 45
"Gown," 81-2
"Grates," 132-3
Great- coats, 53
Greek dress, 87
Green, not originally the national
Irish colour, 120
Grey-Coat schools, 71-2
Grey Girls' School, Chester, 103 ;
London, 103
"Grocer," meaning of, 45
Groom's belt, 74
Ground floor as store-room, 126
"Haggis," 39
Hair, false, forbidden, 96
" Half-boot," meaning of, 63
"Hall," a tribal building, 152,
180-81
the unit from which the
"house" was chiefly de-
veloped, 151
desertion and degeneration of,
154
and "church," 162-4
"Railings," 146
"-ham," and " -hamm," mean-
ing of endings, 160
" Hamper," meaning of, 13
Hand-mufflers, Saxon and Nor-
man, 91
"Hanging-paper," 145
" Harrow," meaning of, 29
Hats, 67-70, 96. See also Cap
"Hay-tedder" or "tosser," 33
"Head of the table," 44
"Hearse," meaning of, 29
Hearth, central, 129
"Hedging" gloves, 92-3
Heels, use of high, 95
"Hobs," 133
Homestead, ancient Irish, 186
Hooded cloak, Irish, 116
INDEX
195
Hoop skirts, 86-7
Horn cups, or drinking horns, 10-
11, 12
Horn window-panes, 136
Horse-hoe, 32
Horse-rake, 32
"Hound," 20
"House," modern, a fusion of
various buildings, 151-5
House-marks, 178-9
"Houses of heretics" carried
away and burnt, 149
Houses, Scottish and English,
contrasted by R. L. Steven-
son, 182-3
Howard or Trinity Hospital,
Castle Rising, dress at, 106
"Hunt "and "chase," 19
Hunting- dress, ladies', 89
Huts, square and round, 149
Imported food, 45-50
" Ingle-nook," meaning of, 130-
31
International types of dress, 120-
22
Ireland, dress in, 115-20
food in, 41-4
Italian influence on English
buildings, 187
"Jack" and "Jacket," 85-6
Japanese style, 87
Joints of meat, reserved, 40-41, 42
"Jutties" or "Jetties," 156
Keep, of castle, 169-70
compared with church-tower,
169-70
Kilt, ancient Irish, 117
Scottish, 110-15
ancient Welsh, 109-10
King's Bargemen, 80
Knee-breeches, 63, 116
Knives, shape of, 7
"Lady," meaning of, 14
"Larder," meaning of, 14
"Leaven," meaning of, 15
"Leek," meaning of, 37
" Lights," ancient, meaning of,
135
Liveries and uniforms, 74-81
"Long hair," girls', 104
" Looped " coat-tails, 55, 56
"Lord," meaning of, 14
" Lounge " coat, 54
" Louver," meaning of, 129
"Luffer-boards," meaning of, 169
note
" Lunch, " meaning of, 4
Maize, 49
Manor-houses, 172
Mantle, ancient Irish, 117-20
Scottish, 110-15
ancient Welsh, 109
Mantle-piece, 129
Mares used for ploughing, 28
" Marmalade," meaning of, 47
"Masonic" apron, 81
Men's dress copied by women,
81-90
Mill, Irish princes crushed to
death in, 43-4
Mills, 35-7
"Milliner," meaning of, 100
" Morning." or " cut-a-way" coat,
55
"Muff," 90
"Muffin-cap," 70
Napkins, 14
Necklaces, 98
Nicotine, meaning of, 49 note
" Norse " mills, 37
"Ordinary," farmers', 18
Orkney cottages, central fireplace
in, 185
Outdoor court of old Welsh kings,
181
Over-coats, 53
Ox-plough, 23-8
"Paddle," a, 28
Page-boy's buttons, 76-8
" Pane," meaning of, 137-8
196
THE PAST AT OUE BOOKS
"Pantry," meaning of, 14
Paper, wall-, a substitute for
"hangings," 145
Parasols, 97
"Parlour," 157
*' Peel," a, palisaded tower, 170
"Peg- tankards," 16-17
"Petersham" (overcoat), 54
" Petticoat " or "petty-coat," 88-9
Pile-dwelling principle employed
in barns, 125 note
Pillories, 180
"Pinafore," 103-4
Place at table, 6
Place-names, evidence of race in,
159-61
Plaid, the, 110-15
Plaiting (of hair), 104
Plasterwork figures on old house-
fronts, 187-8
Plate, custom of eating off' the
same, 6
"Platters," 5, 7
Plough, 23-8
Ploughing by the tail, 26
"Polonaise," 87
Pork, 42-3
"Porridge," meaning of, 39-40
Portcullis in church tower, 169
Postilions' boots, 65
"Post-mills," 35-6
"Potato," 49
" Pot " hat, 70
" Princess " dress, 87
Projecting storeys, or "jutties,"
173
"Pumps," 65-6
"Quarry," meaning of, 20
Quarter, foreign, in towns, 174
"Quern," or handmill, 38
Reaping-machines, 30-33
in ancient France, 30-31
Red cloaks, 106-7, 118-120.
See also Scarlet
"Red -coat" School, Duke of
York's, 72
Red coats, in the army, 78-9
Red Maids' School, 101-2
" Reefer " coats, 54
"Relay," meaning of, 20
"Rereclos," or "fire-back," 129,
134
"Rights" and "lefts" (of boots
and shoes), 65
Rings, 98-100
"Robe," meaning of, 50-51
Roman influences in town-build-
ing, 172, 175-6
Round huts, 149-50, 180, 183,186
"Row," a narrow street, 174
"Running footmen," 76
Rye bread, 18
Sago, 49
"Salt-cellars," 9-10
Salt-spoons, 10
" Sandwich," 5
"Sashed" windows, 137-8
Scarlet colour,| 55, 105-7, 118-
20. See also Red
School dress of boys, 71-3
of girls, 101-2
Scotland, buildings in, 182-4
dress in, 110-15
food in, 37-41
"Scythe," meaning of, 32
Seed-drill, 30
Shanty, modern Irish, 184
Sheriff's coachman, dress of, 75
Shetland plough, 26-7
"Shirt," 61-2, 87
red, of Garibaldi, 62. See
frontispiece
Shoes, 63-7, 94-6, 115, 120
"Short boots," 64
"Short frocks," girls', 104
Shutters, unglazed windows pro-
tected by, 176
"Sickle," meaning of, 32
"Side-board," 142
Side-saddle, disuse of, 90
Signs, street, 177-9
"Silk-hats," 67-9
Simplicity of English life, ancient,
122-4
"Size," meaning of, 15
INDEX
197
"Skin-boiling," 39, 41
Skirt, separate from "body," 51-2
"Skirt" and "Shirt," 86
"Sky-light," 135
"Sky-scraper," 155
Sleeves and gloves, 90-91
"Smock-frock," 83
Snake-rings, 100-101
Snake-stones, 48-9
"Snare," 21
"Solar" or "sun-chamber," 156
Spade, 28
Spencer (jacket), 54
"Spick and span," 7, 8
"Spoons," 7, 9
" Springe," 21
Stairs, meaning of a "pair" of,
128
Stairs and ladders, 127-8
Stake, the, 180
" Stalking-horse," meaning of, 21
"Stays," 85
Steeplehats, 106, 108, 110
Stevenson, Scottish and English
houses contrasted by R. L.,
182-3
"Stone-boiling," 38
Stone houses, 156 note, 171-2,
180, 182-3
Storeys, additional (in houses),
173
Straw hats, 70-71
"Street," 172
Street signs, 177-9
Sugar, 45
loaves, 45
Summer-house, 150-51
" Sun-chamber " or " solar," 156
Sunshades, 97
"Supper," meaning of, 4
"Swallow-tail" coat, 56, 57
Swan-upping or "-hopping," 179
Table-cloths, 13-14
Table, place at, 6, 44
"Table," round or long, 5
Tail, ploughing by the, 26
"Tapioca, "49
"Tapissier, Court," 148
"Tartan" cloth, name of, 112
"Taverns" or "shades," 176
Tea, 46-7
Teeth, artificial, forbidden, 96
"Tester," 139-40
Thames waterman, dress of, 80
Threshing-machines, 34
Thumb-rings, 100
Tight-lacing, 84-5
Toecaps, of boots and shoes, 64-5
"Toils, In the," 19
Top-boots, 64, 65
Top-coats, 53
Top-hats, 67-9
Towers, church, development of,
165-70
Trade-marks, 179
Trades, dress of various, 80
'Trammel," meaning of, 21
" Trap," meaning of, 21
Trap-doors for stairs, 127
"Treacle," meaning of, 47
"Trenchers," 6-7
''Trews" and "trousers," 107-8,
113-15, 116-19
Trinity Hospital, Castle Rising,
dress of "Sisters " at, 106
Trousers, 62-3, 107-8, 109, 113-
15, 116-19
"Truckle"- or " trundle "-beds,
139
"Tryst," meaning of, 19
"Tumblers," 12
"Tun" or " town, " meaning of,
159-60
Turrets, "pepperbox" (Scotland),
188
Umbrellas, 97-8
Uniforms and liveries, 74-81
" Upholsterer," meaning of, 148
"Venison," meaning of, 19
"Vests" or "waistcoats," 60-61
Waistcoats, 59-61
Wales, buildings in, 180-81
dress in, 108-10
food in, 37
198
THE PAST AT OUR DOOES
"Wall," 172
" Ward-robe," meaning of, 141-2
Watchmen in church towers, 167
Watermen, dress of, 80
Water-mills, 38-9
"Watteau" dress, 87
"Wheat," meaning of, 43
red, 44
White (the colour) worn by Irish
at the Boyne, 120
Wickerwork, huts and forts of,
184, 186
Winchester, dress at, 73
"Window," 135-8, 176
Women copy men's dress, 81-90
Women's dress copied by men,
81 note
Wooden castles, 171, 184
houses, 149
Worsted, 145-6
"X " marked on beer barrels, 17
"Yeast," 15
By courtesy of Ed. of" The Library," and of the Master, Christ's Coll., Camb.
FIG. 46 A. Wall-paper dating from 1509, recently discovered at
Christ's Coll. , Cambridge, being 200 years earlier than
knmvn specimen. See The Library, 3rd Ser. Vol. ii. No. 8.
By WALTER W. SKEAT, M.A.
MALAY MAGIC
BEING AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FOLK-
LORE AND POPULAR RELIGIONS OF
THE MALAY PENINSULA
With a Preface by C. O. BLAGDEN.
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PAGAN RACES OF THE
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THE PAST AT OUR DOORS
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110
36
1913
Skeat, Walter William
The past at our doors
