Page:British costume (IA britishcostumeco00planuoft).djvu/29

 But let us hasten to the period when the ligght of history begins to dawn upon us, and the personal observation of intelligent men becomes the authority on which our descriptions are based.

Fifty-five years before the birth of Christ, Julius Cæsar landed on these shores, and found the inhabitants of Cantium (Kent) the most civilized of all the Britons, and differing but little in their manners from the Gauls, from whom they had most probably acquired the arts of dressing, spinning, dyeing, and weaving wool, as they there practised them after the Gaulish fashion, and possessed, in common with their continental kindred, some valuable secrets in them, unknown to other nations. Of this fact we have the direct evidence of Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Pliny; the latter of whom enumerates several herbs used for this purpose, and tells us that they dyed purple, scarlet, and several other colours, from these alone. But the herb which the Britons chiefly used was the glastum or woad (called in their native language, y glâs, glas lys, and glacilys, from glâs, blue ), with which they stained and punctured their bodies, in order, says Cæsar, to make themselves look dreadful in battle ". His words are, however,"Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod cœruleum efficit colorem, atque hoc horribiliori sunt in pugnâ adspectu." Now the word vitro is disputed, and "nitro," "luteo," "ultro," "glauco," and "guasto,"