[887] An Englishman, named J. W. Boswel, invented a machine on which sixty-eight meshes, with perfect knots, could be knit at the same time: it could be adapted also to fine works, and to lace. A description of it may be seen in the Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, vol. xiv.
[888] Many commentators on the Greek and Roman writers have fallen into mistakes respecting these noose-ropes, because they were not acquainted with the nature of them. Their use among the Parthians is confirmed by Suidas, under the word σειραὶ, p. 303; where he says that on that account they were called σειροφόροι. Josephus asserts that they were employed by the Alani, and relates that Tiridates would have been caught in this manner, had he not quickly cut to pieces the rope. Under the same head may be comprehended the retiarii and laquearii, in the bloody spectacles of the Romans, whose method of fighting is said to have been found out by Pittacus. See Diogen. Laert. i. 74. To this subject belong the snares of the devil, pestilence, and death, in the Scriptures, and particularly in Psalm xviii. ver. 5. The laquei mortis of Horace, Carm. iii. 24, 8, were hence to be explained, and not by a Hebraism, as some of the old commentators have imagined. In the ordeals of the ancient Germans, when a man was obliged to combat with a woman, the latter had a rope with a noose, which she threw over her antagonist, who stood in a pit, in order that she might more easily overcome him. That such ropes are still employed among various nations is proved by Vancouver. In Hungary the wild horses at present are said to be caught by ropes of this kind.
[889] Wafer’s Voyage. Anderson’s Iceland. The author says that the beards are cut into slips; but these slips were fish-bone, which could be made into baskets but not into nets. He certainly meant the hair on the beard, which in Holland is used for wigs.
[890] De Vest. Sac. Hebr. p. 100.
[891] Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvii. cap. 3.
[892] Rete, id est ornamentum sericum ad instar retis contextum.—Acta S. Deodati, tom. iii. Junii, p. 871.
[893] In the Limpurg Chronicle, which may be found in Von Hontheim, Hist. Trevirensis, vol. ii. p. 1084, is the following passage: “The ladies wore new weite hauptfinstern, so that the men almost saw their breasts;” and Moser, who quotes this passage in his Phantasien, conjectures that the hauptfinstern might approach near to lace. I never met with the word anywhere else; but Frisch, in his Dictionary, says, “Vinster in a Vocabularium of the year 1492 is explained by the words drat, schudrat, thread, coarse thread.” May it not be the word fenster, a window? And in that case may it not allude to the wide meshes? Fenestratum meant formerly, perforated or reticulated; and this signification seems applicable to those shoes mentioned by Du Cange under the name of calcei fenestrati. At any rate it is certain that the article denoted by hauptfinstern belonged to those dresses mentioned by Seneca in his treatise De Beneficiis, 59. Pliny says that such dresses were worn, “ut in publico matrona transluceat.”
[894] Dict. de Commerce. Copenh. 1759, fol. i. pp. 388, 576.
[895] Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. liii. 1783, p. 38. In the Heiligen Lexicon St. Fiacre is improperly called the son of an Irishman of distinction.
[896] Howell, in speaking of the trade in the oldest times, says, p. 222, “Silk is now grown nigh as common as wool, and become the cloathing of those in the kitchin as well as the court; we wear it not onely on our backs, but of late years on our legs and feet, and tread on that which formerly was of the same value with gold itself. Yet that magnificent and expensive prince, Henry VIII., wore ordinarly cloth-hose, except there came from Spain, by great chance, a pair of silk stockins. K. Edward, his son, was presented with a pair of long Spanish silk stockins by Thomas Gresham, his merchant, and the present was taken much notice of. Queen Elizabeth in the third year of her reign was presented by Mrs. Montague, her silk-woman, with a pair of black knit silk stockins, and thenceforth she never wore cloth any more.”