To buy my own hood, I thought it wrong—
I knew it as I did my Creed,
But, for lack of money, I could not speed.
If we pass on from shop to shop in a more quiet and undisturbed fashion than poor ‘London Lackpenny,’ we must not forget that we are, at least so far, enjoying that which our forefathers could not.
With regard to the head-dress, and to begin with this, we have many memorials. ‘Tire,’ once a familiar word enough, is still preserved from decay by our Authorized Version of the Scriptures. Thus, for example, it is said in Ezekiel, ‘make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee.’[[337]] I do not know how comprehensive are the duties belonging to our present ‘tirewoman’ or lady’s-maid, but in the day when the tragic story of Jezebel was first translated, the sense of the word was entirely confined to the arrangement of her mistress’s ‘tiara,’ which is but another form of the same term. In the ‘Paradise Lost’ it is found as ‘tiar’—
Of beaming sunny rays, a golden tiar circled his head.
When we remember their former size, their horned and peaked character, and the variety of the material used, arguing as they do the then importance of the fact, we need not be surprised at meeting with comparative frequency such a surname as ‘Tyrer,’ ‘Tyerman,’ or ‘Tireman.’ It is somewhat hard to say whether our ‘Coffers’ are relics of the old ‘Coffrer’ or ‘Coifer,’ but as the latter business was all but entirely in the hands of females, perhaps it will be safer to refer them to the other. Such names, however, as ‘Emma la Coyfere’ or ‘Dionysia la Coyfere,’ found in the thirteenth century, may serve to remind us of the peculiar style of the head-gear which the ladies affected in these earlier times. The more special occupation of preparing feathers or plumes has left its mark in our ‘Plumer’ and ‘Plummer,’ memorials of the old ‘Mariot le Plumer’ or ‘Peter le Plomer.’ The old ‘caul’ or ‘call’ still lives in our ‘Calmans’ and ‘Callers.’ ‘Elias le Callere’ occurs in the Parliamentary Writs, and ‘Robert le Callerere’ in the ‘Munimenta Gildhallæ.’ Judging from the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale,’ we should imagine this also to have been a female head-dress. There the old witch appeals to the Queen and her court of lady attendants as to them who wear ‘kercheif or calle’—
Let see, which is the proudest of them alle,
That weareth on a kercheif or a calle.
Another form of the surname is found in ‘Alicia la Kellere,’ now simple ‘Keller,’ the article itself being also met with in a similar dress. In the ‘Townley Mysteries’ a fallen angel is represented as saying that a girl—