showed a strong tendency to exaggerated length, and the veils and kerchiefs were so long that the fair wearers were forced to knot them to avoid treading on them, while the skirts lay in great folds on the ground. Much significance might be attached to that precious old MS. where the illuminator depicts the devil in a woman's surcoat with a sleeve and skirts tied up in knots! Robes were laced up in front, and the cuffs of the sleeves embroidered or fur-trimmed, and over the long robe or tunic appeared a shorter garment resembling the sur côte which was chequered and spotted, presumably to represent embroidery, and finished with an indented border termed "dagged," in a fashion condemned by Henry II. Norman ladies wore their hair plaited, the braids often incased in silk or bound round with ribbon and finished off with three curls; but towards the end of the twelfth century the hair was frequently held in a network of gold set with stones.
The clergy had much to say on the subject of the long beards which reappeared during the reign of Henry I.; and that one, more forcible than elegant in his denunciations, who described the men of his time as "filthy goats," has for the solecism gone down to posterity with the priest who, preaching such a moving sermon on the subject that king and courtiers wept, took advantage of the impression he had made, drew out a large pair of scissors that he had concealed in his sleeve, and cropped the entire assemblage.
During the latter half of the twelfth century a change for the better came over the spirit of dress, which was now marked by a greater reticence. The extravagant cuff disappeared, and sleeves were
