Ups And Downs Of Underwear In The Middle Ages III

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

French Marjorie, as early as the ninth century, acceded to the mode demanding that dresses be worn extremely tight and made so as to define the waist. A dress of this type is sometimes described as a "fitted costume." By the twelfth century, at the latest, portraits represent the dress as indisputably fitted over something decidedly hard.

We begin to hear of Marjorie's cotte or "fitted chemise," worn with a girdle over an inner tunic or shorter chemise. Over the cotte went the surcot.. As Marjorie walked, she was fond of holding up her very long skirts to show the cotte at the bottom, which was the same material as her sleeves.

Early in the Middle Ages Marjorie's garments had generally been all of a piece, sometimes girdled more or less closely, but for the most part characterized by long lines from shoulder to toe. In the thirteenth century, if not before, a long and slender waist was regarded by Marjorie in England as a measure of elegance. Some form of confining the body, culminating in tight lacing, was practised by the ladies, "especially," as our old friend Strutt observes, "by such of them as were inclined to be corpulent."

In ballads, which in their oral beginning were a form of gossip, we get some of the best of ancient underwear lore. A very fair inventory of a feminine outfit is provided in the following dramatic undressing act, from a ballad, May Colvin :

She's mounted on a milk-white steed,
And he on a dapple-grey,
And on they rade to a lonesome part,
A rock beside the sea.

"Loup off the steed," says false Sir John,
"Your bridal bed you see;
Seven ladies I have drowned here,
And the eight' one you shall be.

"Cast off, cast off your silks so fine
And lay them on a stone,
For they are too fine and costly
To rot in the salt sea foam.

"Cast off, cast off your silken stays,
For and your broidered shoon,
For they are too fine and costly
To rot in the salt sea foam.

"Cast off, cast off your Holland smock
That's bordered with the lawn,
For it is too fine and costly
To rot in the salt sea foam."

"0 turn about, thou false Sir John,
And look to the leaf o' the tree;
For it never became a gentleman
A naked woman to see."

He turned himself straight round about
To look to the leaf o' the tree;
She's twined her arms about his waist
And thrown him into the sea.