that it was not partial or transitory. A satire on the vanity of the ladies, written in England about the end of the thirteenth century, and preserved in a manuscript in the British Museum of that date[1], commences thus—"What shall we say of the ladies when they come to festivals? they look at each other's heads, and carry bosses like horned beasts; if any one be without horns, she becomes an object of scandal."
Quei diroms des dames kaunt vienent à festes?
Les unes des antres avisent les testes,
Portent les boces cum cornues bestes;
Si nule seit descornue, de eele font les gestes.
A Latin song on the venality of the Judges, preserved in an English manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century[2], speaking of the influence of the fair sex in procuring judgments, says,—"But if some noble lady, fair and lovely, with horned head, and that encircled with gold, come for judgment, she dispatches her business without having to say a word."
Sed si quædam nobilis,
Pulcra vel amabilis,
cum capite cornuto,
auro circumvoluto,
Accedat ad judicium,
Hæc expedit negotium
ore suo muto.
These horns are compared above to the horns of rams; perhaps we may be assisted in forming an idea of their shape by the consideration that the writers of the age apply the term horned to Bishops when wearing the mitre—thus in the Apocalypsis Goliæ Episcopi[3],
Væ genti mutilæ, cornutis ducibus!
Qui muletant mutilos armatis frontibus,
Dum habet quilibet fœnum in cornibus,
Non pastor ovium sed pastus ovibus.
We thus find in written documents a particularity of costume described very distinctly at a period when it has not yet been met with in any artistical monuments; a circumstance not easily accounted for, but which should make us cautious in judging too hastily of the absolute non-existence of any thing from mere negative evidence. T. WRIGHT.
- ↑ Printed in the Reliquiæ Antiquiæ, vol. i. p. 162.
- ↑ Printed in the Political Songs, (Camden Society Publication,) p. 224.
- ↑ Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, p. 8.
