Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/268

222 An old Indian festival dress is emblazoned with beads and silks in gay colours, and bears long square lappets hanging from a jewelled headpiece. The sombre tunic is enriched with jewels at the neck and waist. Remarkable specimens of old Indian taste and ingenuity are the tunics made of leather thickly encrusted with beads of different colours in geometrical pattern, such tunics being fringed with leather and completed by a much feathered head-dress.

Byron's verse gives a haunting picture of Moorish magnificence, when he describes Haidee in her joy:

In Bokhara the bride wears a rose-coloured veil on her wedding-day; and here, strangely enough, deep blue is the distinctive mourning colour. The costume of married women in Afghanistan must be granted much admiration: they wear a shirt with wide sleeves embroidered with flowers in coloured silks, coloured trousers, and a small cap embroidered in gold threads, and over this, at the approach of a stranger, they throw a large sheet. Beneath the cap the hair is divided into two plaits on either side and fastened at the back. Chains, nose and ear rings are selected at discretion; and the unmarried women are known by their white trousers and loosely flowing hair.

Returning to Western climes, I note that Isabella,