Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-08-08
HOSIERY IN HISTORY.
Stockings in All Times and Ages-Bare.
Limbed Lasses.

III Is Qecloeuly interesting, II not en-.
tirely instructive. to look into the his.
tory of stockings. So far as civiliza-
ton and civilized usages must be con-
sidered, the anterior history of this
country is that of the land which fur
Eished the bulk of its coloniStS, and so
it becomes a matter of pertinence to
America to learn that while the Scotch
Highlanders. from the days of Agri-
cola to the battle of Killicrankie.
looked with scorn upon garments of
any sort, at least in the heat of battle,
the southern of Beleic Britons were
clad, like the Gauls, in cloth of fine
wool, which included a covering for
their limbs also. But the days of dis
tinctive hose for the Highlander and
South Briton were days of slow devel-
opment.
In the time of the Anglo-Saxons
drawers reaching half way down the
thigh and stockings meeting them were
alluded to by Saxon writers under the
name of breech and hose. In France
the femoralia or drawers of Charlie
magne were of linen. The monk of
St. Gall speaks of tibialia vel coxalia
Stocking or drawers) of linen of one
color, but ornamented with precious
workmanship 1t is evident from the
context that the writer meant long
drawers or hose and drawers in one,
like the brac &c of Caesars Gauls.
In the days of the Norman and Plan
tagenet kings the costume of the Meth
er extremities consisted of drawers
with long stocking or pantaloons with
feet to them, called by the Normans
''chausses. The Saxon word hose
occurs in a wardrobe roll of King
Johns time. Cloth stockings embroid-
cred with gold are among the articles
of dress ordered by Henry III. for his
sister Isabel. In the reign of Henry |.
the hose were richly fretted with gold
and variously colored silks.
But Elizabeth was the first English
sovereign to wear genuine knitted
! stockings, and as soon as the fashion
had been inaugurated the ladies went
wild over it. 1t is expressly stated in
contemporary records that they were
mot ashamed to wear hose of all kinds
of changeable colors, as green, red,
white, russell, tawny, and else what
not;" commonly knit, too, and ''cur-
iously indented in every point with
| quirks, clocks, open seams, and every
thing else accordingly"
1t was Mrs. Montague who presented
the queen with the first pair of black
| knit silk stockings, which pleased her
| so much that she would never wear
any cloth hose afterward. Soon after
this, says Stow, William Rider, then
apprentice to Thomas Burdet, seeing a
pair of knit worsted stockings at an
Italian merchants, brought from Man
made pair like them presented them
| to the earl of Pembroke, which was the
first pair of worsted stockings knit in
England.
In 1899 William Lee, master of arts
and fellow of st. Johns college, Cam
bridge, invented a stocking-frame.
Tradition attributes the origin of his
invention to pique he had taken
against townswoman with whom he
was in love and who neglected his
passion. She got her livelihood by
knitting stockings, and to depreciate
her employment he constructed this
| frame and intrusted his brother and
! other relatives how to work it. The
| other Stocking-makerS combined and
| drove him from the country, so that
at last he died at Paris of a broken
heart.
| In the reign Of Anne the vests were
! heightened to meet the stockings and
entirely conceal the breaches, the
stockings being of blue or scarlet silk,
stockings were worn by fashionable
bellies, who also INDUCED in the practice
of snuff taking.
Mrs. Damer, the eccentric and cele-
brated sculptor of the days of George
| Ill, is said to have been the first fe-
male who wore black silk stockings in
! England. Ladies wore white stock
ings, even in mourning, as late as the
year 1873, and white stockings are
worn by two-thirds of the English
women of ell classes to-day, the cost
and trouble of washing notwithstand-
ing.
The bare-limbed lasses of Scotland
and Ireland have attracted the eve of
every American tourist In the former
case the custom, which prevails chiefly
in the rural districts is largely dictated
by the practice prevalent among Scotch
women of washing heavy articles by
treading them in a tub with their feet,
and perhaps also for convenience of
fording the burns and brooks in noun
famous sections. AS to the Irish
''collenn," stockings have been deemed
superfuity for a century past, as
every contemporary historian hus
taken special pains to record. They
might have added that the average
Irish lassie, stocking or no stockings,
is the most Virtuous girl on the face
of the earth.-SGn Francisco Chronicle.