(we believe) in no pictorial monuments older than the reign of Henry IV.; nevertheless, a French writer of the beginning of the fourteenth century, Jehan de Meun, (who completed the famous Romance of the Rose,) speaks very distinctly of women's horns: he describes the gorget or neck-cloth as being twisted several times round the neck, and pinned up to the horns—
La gorge et li goitrons sont hors de la touelle,
Ou il n'a que .iij. tours à la tourne bouelle;
Mais il y a d'espingles plus de demie escuelle
Fichiées es .ij. cornes et entour la rouelle.
After observing that these horns appear to be designed to wound the men, he adds, "I know not whether they call gibbets or corbels that which sustains their horns, which they consider so fine, but I venture to say that St. Elizabeth is not in Paradise for having carried such baubles. Moreover they make a great encumbrance; for between the towel (gorget), which is not of coarse linen, and the temple and the horns, may pass a rat, or the largest weasel on this side Arras."
Je ne say s'on appelle potences ou corbiaux
Ce qui soustient leur cornes, que tant tiennent à biaux;
Mais bien vous ose dire que sainte Elysabiaux
N'est pas en Paradis pour porter tiex babiaux.
Encores y font elles un grant harribourras,
Car entre la touelle, qui n'est pas de bourras,
Et la temple et les cornes, pourroit passer un ras,
Ou la greigneur moustelle qui soit jusques Arras.
(Le Testament Jehan de Meun.)
This passage was observed by Strutt, who has been blamed for attributing (on this single authority) the horned head-dress to so early a period as the reign of Edward I. of England. Jehan de Meun's description appears, however, to be tolerably explicit; and it is supported by passages from poems the dates of which are not doubtful. M. Jubinal, in his volume entitled "Jongleurs et Trouvères," has printed a very curious little satire on the fashions of the time, which appears under the title Des Cornetes, "Of Horns." It is taken from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, No. 7218, written (as I am informed by M. Paulin Paris) within the first ten years of the fourteenth century. In this poem we are told that the Bishop of Paris had preached a
