Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/152

114 sitting on any convenient gravestone to remove the unwelcome impediments.

The national head-dress of the Highlanders is the round flat bonnet of blue cloth, with an eagle's feather; and for many centuries men and women wore plaids alike, the usual colours being white striped with red, black, or blue, the men's stockings matching these.

Thinking seriously over the dress of the peasant in the North, South, East, and West, I am tempted to protest that progression has meant retrogression, and that the modern country-woman, with her indiscreet lace-trimmed blouse revealing the ragged belt of her mud-coloured petticoat, makes a sorry figure in comparison with her sister-toiler of the past; and I recall sorrowfully even this description of an early Victorian peasant-woman's dress which reads: "To consist of a full skirt of print gathered into a band at the waist; there is a full crossover-bodice over a full vest of the same material, finished with a frill at the neck. The sleeves are full above the elbow with two puff^s, and from these are tight to the wrists, and a muslin mob-cap is worn with a bow of ribbon in front."

The country-woman who dwells in the indulgent times of Edward VII. should ponder over the picture, and repent of her shapeless bodice divorced from her unsympathetic skirt, and her cloth cricket cap held by aggressive pins above a group of tortured wisps of hair bound in steel bondage to a cruel curler.