Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/130

 him there once dwelt a king (James I.) of Great Britain, who would have envied him his bright new stockings; and who, before he came to the throne of England, was fain to wear some borrowed ones, when in Scotland he had to receive an English ambassador. If we take this loan, for the nonce, from the Earl of Mar to his royal master, to have been as shapeless and befrilled as are the yellow pair (Blue Coat School boys' as yet) once Queen Elizabeth's, now among the curiosities at Hatfield; then were those stockings—the first woven in England, and presented by Lord Hunsdon—funny things, indeed.

Though so small a thing, there is in this collection a little cushion, No. 9047, p. 273, which bears in it much more than what shows itself at first, and is likely to awaken the curiosity of some who may have hereafter to write about the doings of our Court in the early part of the seventeenth century. This cushion is needle-wrought and figured all over with animals, armorial bearings, flowers, and love-knots, together with the letters I and R royally crowned with a strawberry leaf, and the strawberry fruit close by each of those capitals, as well as plentifully sprinkled all over the work.

In Scotland, several noble families, whether they spell their name or, use as a canting charge—"arme che cantano"—of the Italians; the French "frasier," or strawberry, leafed, flowered, fructed proper; the buck too, figured here, comes in or about their armorial shields. Hence then we are fairly warranted in thinking that it was a Fraser's lady hand which wrought this small, but elaborate cushion, most likely as a gift, and with a strong meaning about it, to our King James I., whose unicorn is not forgotten here; and, in all probability, whilst she also wished to indicate that an S was the first letter in her own baptismal name. Siren too is another term for mermaid—that emblem so conspicuously figured by the lady's side. All this, with the love-knot so plentifully broadcast and interwoven after many ways, and sprinkled everywhere as such a favourite device, perhaps may help some future biographer of James to throw a light over a few hidden passages in the life of that sovereign.

Human hair, or something very like it, was put into the embroidery on parts of this small cushion. On the under side, to the left, stands a lady with her hair lying in rolls about her forehead. After looking well into them, through a glass, these rolls seem to be real human hair—may be the lady's own—it is yellow. Peering narrowly into those red roses close by, seeded and barbed, the seeded part or middle is found to be worked with two distinct sorts of human hair—one the very same as the golden hair on the lady's brow, the other of a light sandy shade: could