The past at our doors, or, The old in the new around us / by Walter W. Skeat.

  • Walter William Skeat
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The past at our doors, or, The old in the new around us / by Walter W. Skeat. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    106/220 page 90
    CHAP. is the disuse, by ladies, of the side-saddle, which had been employed in England since Saxon times. What we call the clock ” of a stocking came from the seams of the gusset, a three-cornered ])iece of stuff let into the foot of the stocking under the instep, as had always to be done in the days when stockings were made of clotli. For although the modern clocks reach almost to the knee, those of two centuries back only reached to about half that height, being of the shape of an excessively long “ V ” turned upside down, with a sort of flourish at the point, and in the days of Queen Elizabeth we read of clocks about the ankles.” This view is confirmed by the important fact that in some parts of Scotland the word “ gusset ” is still used for the clock of a stocking. Muffs, sleeves, and gloves were all originally connected, for the oldest meaning of ‘muff” was a sleeve, especially a long hanging sleeve such as was worn by women, and in which the hands could be “ muffled ” in cold weather. And the earliest muff or muffler for the hands must have been suggested by the habit of placing the hands one behind the other and letting the long sleeve-ends flow over them till they met. Examples of this custom occur in the time of the Anglo-Saxons. It is represented at the present day by the practice of nuns and others,- who have wide and
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