before the conquest, had worn short hair, appear to have been so much struck by the flowing ringlets of the Saxons, that

allowed to show itself, being usually hidden under a couvre-chef. When uncovered, it was worn very long, in two tails reaching down to the knees, sometimes plaited, sometimes twisted and enveloped in cases of silk. This fashion lasted until the end of the twelfth century, when the tails were untwisted, and the hair let loose on the shoulders. It was not even then allowed complete liberty, however, being either covered by a transparent veil, or confined in a net; and the veil thickened, shrouding the head more and more, until it assumed the shape of the wimple and gorget; while the simple

5

BEATRICE, COUNTESS OF ARUNDEL, D. 1439.

clergy, who in vain anathematised curlingtongs, added locks, and womanish fillets.

Up to this time, the hair of women, both in England and France, had but seldom been

open-work net became, in the course of time, a thick, padded caul. And then, farewell simplicity!

It is true that unmarried women, and queens at their coronation, still wore their hair loose; that in France, at the close of the thirteenth century, there are several instances of a simple and becoming head-dress of plaits of flowing hair surmounted by a chaplet of flowers; that no fault is to be found with the coils over the ears, as worn in the days of Edward III. But these instances are entirely lost to sight, beside such enormities as the bosses, and the many

varieties of the hennin which characterize the costume of the Middle Ages.

It is a noteworthy fact that Englishwomen appear to have been the most extravagant in these outrageous fashions; in France, the hennin never outgrew the limits of reason as it did here; and while in Germany it was but little worn, it does not appear at all in Italy or Spain.

The bosses first came into fashion at the close of the thirteenth century. These protuberances were caused by the wimple being tightly drawn over a thick coil of hair placed on either ear. Contemporary writers delighted in satirising these excrescences, which they likened to horns; sometimes, they even

bitterly of the amount of false hair worn by the women of his day. He recoils with disgust from the thought of wearing the hair of dead people, "who are now perhaps groaning in hell!"

And they dyed their hair too, these mediæval ladies, sometimes black, but most often yellow. They adored yellow hair. The heroes of their romances were nearly all provided with crisp curls of gold, while the heads of villains and traitors were usually of a fiery red. They somehow connected red hair with wickedness, and such unfortunate creatures as were afflicted with locks of that hue took great pains to hide their deformity. The bosses must not be confounded with

drew comparisons between the wearers of the bosses and a certain personage to whom horns are peculiar. Of course, ladies of fashion made these bosses as large as possible, by means either of padding or of false hair, which strikes one as unnecessary luxury, since this head-dress allowed no hair whatever to appear, save one casual small mesh on the forehead.

False hair was, anyway, much used in the Middle Ages. The share allotted to each by nature was not considered sufficient, even for the comparatively simple head-dress (already referred to) of plaits coiled over the ears and laid against the cheeks. A contemporary writer, Giles d'Orléans, complains.

the horned head-dress proper, the hennin, which came into fashion towards the end of the fourteenth century, and which was ungainly and absurd beyond description. There seems to have been no limit to its size, nor to the extravagance of its ornamentation. It assumed many different forms, the most notable being a pair of horns, a heart, a crescent, or a steeple. It is perhaps with the last variety that the name of the hennin is principally associated.

One cannot help admiring to a certain extent the architects who devised these monuments, but still more does one wonder at the martyrs to fashion who balanced them on their heads. To carry, with becoming

grace, a mass of padding and heavy ornament run up to the height of a foot and more, and weighed down by long streamers, or stretching out like branches on either side of the head, can have been no easy matter. Besides, these erections were either made so high that the wearer had to stoop on entering a doorway, or so broad that she had to edge in

enlarged it by plucking out her hair with tweezers. Never indeed was hair so ignominiously treated as in the days of the hennin. The wearers of those stiff jewelled head-cases might as well have been bald!

It was left for the men to do justice to their head-covering. From the middle of the twelfth century to the end of the fourteenth, they generally wore curls reaching to the shoulder. This was fashionable both in England and France. The curls twisted away from the face, and the hair on the forehead was either cut short or rolled back.

For some while, at the end of the fourteenth century, it was fashionable for young men to wear the hair rolled all round the head, and bound by a jewelled circlet. But there came a time of war; long hair was in the way under a helmet, and therefore during the greater part of the fifteenth century it was almost universally cropped short. The well-known bushes of hair hanging on either side of the face, and almost hiding the eyes, come next in order, when the Wars of the Roses were at an end, and lasted until

sideways like a crab. This outrageous headdress flourished in its different forms for nearly a century, the subject of endless satire and condemnation. Some zealous churchmen, we are told, preached a crusade against it, promising ten days' indulgence to any little dirty boy who chose to hoot the wearers of the hennin, and pull down the abomination in the open street. But it survived this and many other attacks, and finally died a natural death late in the fifteenth century. It is a marvel that it lived so long. Not only was it ugly and uncomfortable in itself, but it gave rise to another ugly and uncomfortable fashion-the cultivation of a high, broad, and smooth forehead. If a lady had the misfortune to possess a wrinkled forehead, she caused the skin to be tightly stretched over her head, and secured under the stiff band of her head-dress. If she possessed a low or narrow forehead, she

QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA. D. 1669.

Henry VIII. arbitrarily ordered his courtiers to poll their heads. This fashion of closecropping, which lasted through the two following reigns, originated at the French court. It was occasioned by a slight wound on the head, which obliged Francis I. to cut off all his hair, and of course every one else followed suit.

The women had already taken to dressing their hair in the plainest way. They parted

it in the middle, brushed it smooth to the head, and plaited it somehow behind. But the various hoods and caps then generally worn hid the back of the head entirely.

These sober head-gear suited the taste of Mary well enough, but they did not satisfy her successor. The vanity of Queen Elizabeth, her love of finery, brought about a conspicuous increase of luxury in dress. That the head should have been rigged out in proportion to the body is only natural, and it is not surprising that a queen, whose wardrobe at the time of her death contained three thousand dresses, should also have left behind her a few hundred tufts of false hair. Far from being neglected, hair was indeed made much of in the days of Good Queen

the heart-shaped cap of Mary, Queen of Scots, which showed the hair on either side of the forehead in a puff of curls, or tightly crimped. A contemporary writer tells us that the young Englishwomen went mostly bareheaded, "the hair pleasantly plaited and brought back from the head;" but that many "because of the cold wear head-dresses of foreign hair."

This seems rather a strange motive for wearing a wig, or periwig, as it was then called. It is doubtful whether the Elizabethan periwig was an entire head of artificial hair, or merely a single lock. The term was probably applied to either. Anyway, both were largely used, and the demand for artificial locks became so great that, towards the

Bess. The erections which then graced the ladies' heads were not made of cardboard and gold-cloth and embroidery, but of hair underpropped with wires and padding. Sometimes the wearer's own hair was used, eked out by a certain number of sprays of curls and beautiful" inventions" in the form of leaves, etc.; but sometimes the whole head-dress was artificial, and ready to be fixed on at a moment's notice. Jewellery, feathers, trinkets of gold and silver, and even trumpery glass ornaments were used in great profusion to adorn the Elizabethan heads. One can imagine how these "childish gewgaws" must have caught in the ruffs!

But there were more simple head-dresses than the above. Every one is familiar with

close of the century, it was considered unsafe for children to wander about unprotected, as they were frequently stolen for the sake of their hair. Queen Elizabeth's extravagant use of false hair has already been referred to; her rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, also paid great attention to head-dress. One of her waiting-gentlewomen was reputed as "the best busker of a woman's head to be seen in any country;" and we know that the unfortunate queen actually wore a periwig on the scaffold, and that "her borrowed auburn locks" fell off when her head was held aloft by the executioner.

Men had but little cause to use false hair, so great was the variety and freedom of their fashions. They might wear their hair as