Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/77

V decorating the coloured page—were large or small, plain or decorated, as the individual fancy might dictate, and their adoption was common alike to England and to France, where they afforded a complete change from their predecessors, the small béguins or hoods, and shared favour with the two-horned head-dresses, with horns about a yard high. The linen for the hennin was stiff, to help the fine



wire or cane frames to do their duty with greater success; and to accentuate further their importance there were great wings on either side, so widely set that the passing of a doorway was a difficulty.

Priests and husbands inveighed alike against this fashion, and one monk felt its absurdities so acutely that he rode through the provinces, deploring the excess of the hennin as of equal gravity with that of gambling and the throwing of dice. He preached this doctrine so plausibly that he induced the easily-aroused populace to chase in the streets the women who were wearing the