which we now associate with the fishwife's dress, the upper skirt being pinned back over a full petticoat, the bodice of this being laced and the sleeves loose. Chaucer describes his poor Ploughman as wearing a tabard—a garment unheard of before the fourteenth century—a hat, scrip, and scarf; the Shipmanne was garbed "all in a gown of falding to the knee." This material was a kind of frieze, and in this day the coarse red woollen material still used by the Irish peasant women for petticoats and jackets is the old falding.
In the fifteenth century the chemisette to some extent yielded place to the bodice high at the neck and fastened at the back, finished by a small linen kerchief tied in the front. A plain full woollen petticoat was in vogue, and the sleeves were turned back with pleated cuflfs, the option in headgear being allowed between a close hood or kerchief and a plain hat of straw.
In the reign of Edward IV. the peasant women reverted most wisely to the bodice, which was cut low at the neck in a circular form; the plain skirts were gathered at the waist, and over a white linen cap, they placed a hood and cape cut in one piece.
In the days when the greatest widower was achieving his conjugal record, an old country-man is described as wearing a "buttoned cap" (one with flaps over the ears, turned up and fastened with a button), a "lockram falling band, a narrow turned-down collar of coarse linen—coarse but clean, a russet-coat; a white belt of horse hide, right horse collar white leather; a close round breech of russet sheep's-wool, with a long stock of white kersey, and a high shoe with yellow buckles." A pretty fellow, I'm convinced.
