Chats on Costume

by G. Woolliscroft Rhead

The preaching in the Middle Ages appears to have been remarkably effective. Monstrelet, in his Chronicles, relates a story of one Thomas Conecte, a preaching friar, who attacked the steeple head-dresses with great zeal and resolution. His eloquence was such that the women flung down their head-dresses in the middle of his sermon and made a bonfire of them within sight of the pulpit. He frequently had an audience of 20,000 people, the men ranging themselves on one side of the pulpit and the women on the other, the latter appearing "like a forest of cedars with their heads reaching to the clouds."

The impression he created was, however, not a lasting one; as soon as his back was turned the horns again began to grow: "The women that, like snails in a fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon as the danger was over."

The horn-shaped head-dress appears in no pictorial documents or monuments older than the reign of Henry IV. The heart-shaped head-dress began with a flat pad on the top of the head, with the sides slightly turned up, enclosed in a silken net, which was often jewelled, the hair being worn in coils above the ears, at the back, or hanging down, as the case may be. The sides were then turned up sharply in the shape of a V, and the head-dress heightened. This was developed in a variety of ways.

The steeple head-dress varied in its height—from a matter of 18 inches or less, to 3 feet—in its ornamentation and colour; it was either plain, or decorated with simple bands or ribbons wound crosswise; it varied, however, chiefly in the veiling. There was a veil thrown over the whole, and falling over the sides of the face, or, the veil was attached to the summit of the steeple and allowed either to hang loose, or was looped at some point at the back. There was also a veil which was attached to the lower border of the steeple at its point of contact with the head, and which completely shrouded the head, front and back; there was also the remarkable arrangement of the veil, which was built up on a system of wires, and which was called the "hennin."

HEART-SHAPED HEAD-DRESS.

A variation of the "hennin" was the "butterfly," in which the steeple which formed the base of the head-dress was reduced to a comparatively short "caul," and the veil extended itself on either side like the wings of an insect; this, in a slightly different form, continued to the Tudor period.

HORNED HEAD-DRESS.

There was also the "balloon" or turban. This, like the heart-shaped head-dress, commenced with a flat pad, like a cake, which in its earlier stage was invariably richly ornamented, offering no particular variety in its form; when it became round, it developed a second roll around the forehead, with bands at intervals, which formed its constructive elements.