olution--or as the moralists of the Middle Ages would have expressed
it, if they had possessed the facility of verbal coinage which is
common enough with us, the "devilution"--of woman's attire, just as
though law had never attempted its regulation.

The intricacies of the women's coiffure were many. The practice of
dyeing the hair or otherwise altering its color is of ancient date.
Among the Saxons and Normans it seems to have been confined to the
men, for during those periods the women kept their heads so completely
covered that there was no inducement for them to resort to such
practices; but at the time of which we are now treating the custom
had some vogue among the ladies, although it does not appear to have
become general until the reign of Elizabeth, when the ladies had
reduced the art to such a nicety that they were able to produce
various colors and, indeed, almost to change the substance of the hair
itself:

"Lees she can make, that turn a hair that's old,
Or colour'd, into a hue of gold."

A religious writer of the fifteenth century, declaiming against the
various adornments of the hair and the arts which were employed to
stimulate its growth as well as alter its color, and against the
practice of wearing false hair, says: "to all these absurdities, they
add that of supplying the defects of their own hair, by partially or
totally adopting the harvest of other heads." To point a moral, he
then gravely relates an anecdote to the effect that during the time
of a public procession at Paris, which had drawn a great multitude of
people together, an ape leaped upon the head of a certain fine lady,
and seizing her veil, tore it from her head; with it came her peruke
of false hair, so that it was discovered by the crowd that her
beautiful tresses were not her own; thus, by the very means to which
she had resorted to attract the admiration of the beholders, she
received their contempt and ridicule.

A preposterous form of headdress arose in the time of Henry IV. and
became more exaggerated throughout the fifteenth century; this was
styled the horned headdress. It began with a heart-shaped headdress,
which rose higher on either side until, in the reign of Henry V.,
the points of the heart had become veritable horns. This ungraceful
coiffure assumed all sorts of extravagant and absurd varieties. It
became a favorite mark for the shafts of the satirists and the jests
of the wits, to say nothing of themes for ser