OF 15TH CENTURY. From Effigy of Countess of Arundel in Arundel Church." title="" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/> HORNED HEAD-DRESS OF 15TH CENTURY.
From Effigy of Countess of Arundel in Arundel Church.

STEEPLE HEAD-DRESS OF 15TH CENTURY.

Roman matrons generally preferred blonde hair to their own ebon tresses, and resorted to wigs and dye when Nature, as they considered, had treated them unkindly. Ovid rebukes a lady of his acquaintance in the plainest terms for having destroyed her hair.

"Did I not tell you to leave off dyeing your hair? Now you have no hair left to dye: and yet nothing was handsomer than your locks: they came down to your knees, and were so fine that you were afraid to comb them. Your own hand has been the cause of the loss you deplore: you poured the poison on your own head. Now Germany will send you slaves' hair—a vanquished nation will supply your ornament. How many times, when you hear people praising the beauty of your hair, you will blush and say to yourself: 'It is bought ornament to which I owe my beauty, and I know not what Sicambrian virgin they are admiring in me. And yet there was a time when I deserved all these compliments.'"

EARLY TUDOR HEAD-DRESS.

It would puzzle any fin de siècle husband or brother to express his displeasure in more appropriate words than those chosen by the poet.

HORNED HEAD-DRESS OF EDWARD IV.'s REIGN.

ELIZABETHAN HEAD-DRESS.

The Britons, before they mixed with other nations, were a fair-haired race, and early writers referred to their washing their auburn tresses in water boiled with lime to increase the reddish colour. Boadicea is described with flowing locks which fell upon her shoulders; but after the Roman Invasion the hair of both men and women followed the fashion of the conquerors.

From Planché's "History of British Costume," we learn that "the female head-dress among all classes of the Anglo-Saxons was a long piece of linen or silk wrapped round the head and neck." It appears to have been called a head-rail, or wimple, but was dispensed with in the house, as the hair was then as cherished an ornament as at the present day. A wife described by Adhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, who wrote in the eighth century, is said to have had "twisted locks, delicately curled by the iron;" and in the poem of "Judith" the heroine is called "the maid of the Creator, with twisted locks." Two long plaits were worn by Norman ladies, and were probably adopted by our own countrywomen after the Conquest.

During the Middle Ages feminine head-gear underwent many changes. Golden nets, and linen bands closely pinned round the hair and chin, were followed by steeple-shaped erections and horned head-dresses in a variety of shapes, of which the accompanying sketches will give a better idea than any written description.

During the sixteenth century matrons adopted either a pointed hood, composed of velvet or other rich fabric, often edged with fur, a close-fitting coif, or the French cap to be seen in the portraits of the unhappy Mary Stuart. Those who were unmarried had their hair simply braided and embellished with knots of ribbon, strings of pearls, or Nature's most beautiful adornment for the maiden—sweet-scented flowers.

The auburn tresses of Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, were always bien coiffée, if we may judge from her various portraits. She scorned the hoods, lace caps, and pointed coifs, worn by her contemporaries, and adopted a miniature crown or jaunty hat of velvet, elaborately jewelled. Her fair complexion and light hair were thrown into relief by ruffles of lace, and this delicate fabric was stretched over fine wire frames, which met at the back, and remotely suggested the fragile wings of the butterfly, or the nimbus of a saint, neither of which ornaments was particularly appropriate to the lady in question. The front hair was turned over a cushion, or dressed in stiff sausage-like curls, pinned close to the head, and was adorned with strings and stars of flashing gems and a pendant resting on the forehead.