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 repeating 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-w^oman, 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
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