[94] “The Tuaregs are divided into two bodies, the black and the white. These denominations do not correspond, as might be supposed, with a difference of colour, but only of costume. The white are clothed like the Arabs, the black have a costume of their own. A large blouse falls to the feet: the sleeves are not less than two metres in width. It is called Tob or Sayi, and is in cotton from the country of the blacks. When they travel, a piece of cloth, deep blue, fifteen centimetres wide, called tynala, is wrapped round the whole body, from the middle upwards, enveloping the neck, mouth, and nose, and covering the head; and through the small interval that is left between the folds of this mask, they can see by throwing back their head.” Exploration de l’Algerie, vol. ii. p. 164.
[95] May not this be the mantle introduced by Caracalla into Rome, and from which he derived the soubriquet by which posterity has known him, Cara Cowl, or black hood?
[96] As known to the Greeks, it was of the same dimensions. The exquisite beauty of that of Alcisthenis the Sybarite has preserved its description. It was fifteen cubits long, and was sold for one hundred and twenty talents, or nearly £30,000. The dye is Tyrian, the border of animals; the gods are in the centre, and Alcisthenis himself is at each end, and all this wrought in the loom.—Arist. de Mirab. xvi. 199; Athen. xii. 58.
[97] “That all Jewesses and Moriscos of our kingdoms and dominions, shall, within ten days of this date, wear long mantles reaching to their feet, and cover their heads with the same. Those who act contrary, for so doing are to forfeit all the clothes they have on, to their under-garment.”—Don John II. Valladolid, January, 1412.
[98] One of the oldest Celtic figures in stone, is at Carn Serai in Argyleshire; it exhibits the fillimore, as the Jewish women wear the haïk; one selvage is a few inches lower than the other,as the haïk is not folded exactly in the middle. The name of the place is curious.
[99] This monstrous solecism of the jacket, in tartan, may be observed in Wilkie’s picture of George IV., at Holyrood House.
[100] Tartan is the English for Brechan. It is generally supposed to be Gaelic, but it is not so: it seems originally to have signified shot colours, which always appear in the tartan from the crossings of the colours. It has by some been derived from Tyre tint. The Brechan or Tartan is the set of each clan. The English confound Tartan and plaid, and speak barbarously of a “plaid waistcoat,” when they mean a tartan waistcoat. The plaid is in Gaelic a shepherd’s mantle, but is never used for the Brechan mantle, or “battle colours.” It may be derived from διπλοιδιον (Pollux vii. 49), a name given by the Greeks to a mantle which was supposed to be worn double.
[101] Addison, commenting in his time on the vulgarising influence of the capital, says, “If you want to know a man who has seen the world, you will know him by his deficiency in those characters which seem to belong to good society.”
[102] They were resigning their diet of milk and honey, and taking to sloe-leaves and toast. The reason brought back on me Spain, Greece, and all the changelings. Ask a Turk why he does anything? he answers Adet-dur—“It is the custom.”