A blessing on thy kerchief-cinctured head!
The word breid in the original, which we have rendered kerchief and coif, was in the olden times the peculiar head-dress of married females, while virgins wore their braided locks uncovered, a simple ribbon to bind the hair, and occasionally a sprig of heather or modest flower by way of ornament, being the only head-dress that could with propriety be worn by a maiden in the good old anti-chignon days of our grandmothers. The Highland maiden’s narrow ribbon for binding the hair was in the south of Scotland called a snood, probably from the old English snod—“neat, handsome”—a word still in use in the English border counties. In the south, even more pointedly than in the north, the emblematical character of the maiden ribbon or snood was recognised. It was only when a maiden became an honest, lawful wife that the coif—also called curch and toy—could be worn with propriety. If a damsel was so unfortunate as to lose pretentions to the name of maiden, without acquiring a right to that of matron, she was neither permitted to wear that emblem of virgin purity, the snood, nor advanced to the graver dignity of the coif or curch. In old Scottish songs there occur many sly allusions to such misfortunes, as in the original words of the popular tune of “Ower the muir amang the heather”—
“Down amang the broom, the broom,
Down among the broom, my dearie,
The lassie lost her silken snood,
That gart her greet till she was wearie.”
And in a verse of a curious old ballad that we took down some years ago from the recitation of a grey-headed Paisley weaver—
“And did ye say ye lo’ed me weel?
Then, kind sir, ye maun marrie me;
For that I maunna wear my snood