The Strawberry Girl.
The hood worn by the Normans was called a chaperon. It was a sort of pointed bag with an oval opening for the face; sometimes the point was of great length, and was twisted, folded, knotted. In the Bodleian Library is a drawing of eleven figures of young lads and girls playing Hoodman-blind or Blindman’s-buff. The latter name came from the buffet or blow which the players gave with their twisted chaperon hoods. The blind man simply put his hood on “hind side afore,” and was effectually blinded. These figures are of the fifteenth century.
Black Silk Hood.
The wild latitude of spelling often makes it difficult to define an article of dress. I have before me a letter of the year 1704, written in Boston, asking that a riding-hood be sent from England of any color save yellow; and one sentence of the instructions reads thus, “If ’tis velvet let it be a shabbaroon; if of cloth, a French hood.” I abandoned “shabbaroon” as a wholly lost word; until Mrs. Gummere announced that the word was chaperon, from the Norman hood just described. This chaperon is specifically the hood worn by the Knights of the Garter when in full dress; in general it applies to any ample hood which completely covers head and face save for eye-holes. Another hood was the sortie.
Quilted Hood.
The term “coif,” spelt in various ways, quoif, quoiffe, coiffer, ciffer, quoiffer, has been held to apply to the French hood; but it certainly did not in America, for I find often in inventories side by side items of black silk hoods and another of quoifs, which I believe were the white undercaps worn with the French hood; just as a coif was the close undercap for men’s wear.