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/262



will not give himself up and be led away captive. Now, however, comes the grand fight. In a forest, with a bird perched on high upon one of the trees, the knight, dismounted from his horse, cuts off the head of the dragon, which, to the last, is careful to show his much shortened yet still fiery tongue to his victor. Now have we the last passage but one in the story. Upon his bended knee the triumphant knight is presenting the open-mouthed, tongueless, cut-off dragon's head to the king and queen, both throned and royally arrayed, the princess, their daughter, standing by her mother's side. The young maiden, no doubt, is the victor's prize; but now—and it is the last chapter—the knight and lady, dressed in the weeds of daily life and walking forth upon the flowery turf, seem happy with one another as man and wife. The two panes at this part, and serving as a border, seem out of place, and neither has a connection with the other; in the first, just outside a castle wall, rides a crowned king followed by a horseman, evidently of low degree; and a column separates him from a large bed, lying upon which we observe the upper part of a female figure, the head resting upon a rich cushion; next to this, but put in anglewise to fill up the space, we have a crowned lady and a girdled knight, sitting beneath a tree, each with a little dog beside them.

The costume of both men and women in this curious piece of cut-*work is that of the end of the 14th century. The parti-coloured dress of the men, their long pointed shoes, and the broad girdles, worn so low upon their hips by the king and knight, as well as the bascinet and helmet of the latter, with the horses' trappings, all speak of that period; nor should we forget the sort of peaked head-dress, as well as the way in which the front hair of the ladies is thrown up into thick short curls. All the human figures, all the beasts, as well as the architecture, are outlined in thin leather or parchment once gilt, but now turned quite black. With the same leather, too, were studded the belts of the king and knight, and the spangles and golden enrichments of the ladies' dress were of the same material. Saving here and there a few stitches of silk, everything else was of worsted, and that none of the finest texture. With such small means a good art-work was produced, as we see before us. The way in which each figure over the whole of this curious piece of cut-work is outlined by the leather edging strongly reminds us of the leadings in stained glass; in fact, both the one and the other are wrought after the same manner, and the principal difference between the window and the woollen hanging is the employment of an opaque instead of a transparent material. If the personages are dressed sometimes in blue, at others in crimson, it will be found that