BLOW!

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 3 December 1927, Page 11

BLOW!

WHERE’S MY HANKY? I wonder what Eve did if she had a cold in the head ? There were certainly no “hankies" in those days. Perhaps she used a corner of her fig-leaf—sorry treatment for a tender, streaming nose! Or perhaps colds and other minor ills followed after their lapse from grace, when they were banished from their cosy home. No. handkerchiefs first saw the light in the bad old days, before Caesar took a pleasure trip to Britain. The heathen Chinee started the fashion, where it was common in its primitive silk tissue and paper form long before the Christian era. It originated in a coarse form, first as a “sweath-cloth” worn at the belt bv the Anglo-Saxons, and later carried in the hand as the muckinder, handcoverchief, handkercher, in turn, and ultimately as the handkerchief—a term derived from the French couvrechef or coverchief, the kerchief or wrap worn over the head, neck or breast by women. Churchmen were first to use handkerchiefs in Europe, and for a time priests alone were permitted to carry them, and then only before the altar. (I wonder if ever they surreptitiously used them?) In Tudor times and Jacobean days it was customary for ladies to give as tokens of affection little handkerchiefs of about three or four inches square, wrought round about with buttons at each corner. They took pride in their ability to embroider, and this they often did with the blue thread of Coventry. Then embroidery became the fashionable pastime of women of culture. In the far-off (?) days of chivalry the handkerchief was worn %s a favour, either on the casque or other headdress. The introduction of snuff into English society under the Georges brought the handkerchief into very prominent use, and it became an art to handle it with elegance and grace under the very trying circumstances of endeavouring to conceal a sneeze (Though why they took snuff to make them sneeze, then used all their powers to stifle the sneeze, passes my understanding).