CHAPTER X
OF BRITISH PEASANTS
While searching in the annals of the bygone costume of the peasant, the most democratic person might be tempted to regret the repealing of all sumptuary law. We are grateful to-day to recognise the artistic value of the red tie of the masculine tiller of the field, or of the coloured handkerchief over the head of the harvest-woman, but, in those other times, the plains and the fields, the woods and the forests, were the background for a people in brave array, on which blue, red, green, and white played conspicuous part. And not alone in colour must their garb have been pre-eminently attractive to the eye, but in the simplicity of its make, the liberal display of white linen about the neck and the head, and the further addition of coloured lacings. These completed an effect of picturesque carelessness which may well have been allowed to cover a multitude of sins of omission in personal cleanliness.
Glancing roughly through the periods, I find that the dress most worn in England by the peasant women in the eleventh century consisted of a coarse woollen gown with long sleeves closely fitting to the wrists, a white linen apron, and a linen kerchief covering the head as a wimple. In the reign of Henry I. it is recorded that men wore simple tunics of red lined with white, innocent of a girdle, and open from the waist at the left side, the sleeves possessing long cuffs reaching almost to the elbow. The mantle was often added, and beneath the tunic were chaussés or drawers, and either boots or shoes, with crossed diagonal lacings. Hats or hoods were of leather, felt, or cloth, and warm mitten-shaped gloves of coarse make were adopted. In the time of Henry II. women, who held faithfully to linen aprons, caps, and kerchiefs, wore long gowns and plain bodices laced up the back, the sleeves put rather full at the shoulders, and the petticoats pleated at the waist.
In the thirteenth century the bliaus, or smock, of canvas or fustian was made in many varieties of coarse cloth, russet, and cordetum produced for the use of the poor. The peasant women were converted towards some ambition for the beautiful, and their costume became impressed with the ornamental, consisting of a bodice cut low in the neck to show a pleated chemisette of white linen, and attached to a fully gathered skirt, fastening with buttons down the front. Their boots were high and had buttons on the fronts, while the white linen apron and white linen cap or kerchief still held their place.
In the days of King Edward II. the men adopted a long gown buttoning from the neck to the waist, with loosely hanging sleeves, showing closely-fitting under-sleeves, the hood being folded back or pendent, and the shoes pointed.
The double dress was introduced in the fourteenth century, a dress which is in the form which we now associate with the fishwife's dress, the upper skirt being pinned back over a full petticoat, the bodice of this being laced and the sleeves loose. Chaucer describes his poor Ploughman as wearing a tabard—a garment unheard of before the fourteenth century—a hat, scrip, and scarf; the Shipmanne was garbed "all in a gown of falding to the knee." This material was a kind of frieze, and in this day the coarse red woollen material still used by the Irish peasant women for petticoats and jackets is the old falding.
In the fifteenth century the chemisette to some extent yielded place to the bodice high at the neck and fastened at the back, finished by a small linen kerchief tied in the front. A plain full woollen petticoat was in vogue, and the sleeves were turned back with pleated cuffs, the option in headgear being allowed between a close hood or kerchief and a plain hat of straw.