['28. I. FEB. '26, 1916.]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
163-
feature in the fashions of civilized Europe.
The illustrations given in Planche's ' Cyclo-
paedia ' almost certainly show the rolled tops
of stockings.* I pass over Quicherat's
definition of the term, because he has
neglected to quote evidence in its support :
too common an omission in his otherwise
sound and erudite treatise.
There is, however, a mode which appears in portraits, prints, &c., French, Nether- landish, German, English, Italian, and Spanish, just about the period when the canions are first noticed by writers. This is a fashion of short, sheath-like continuations (resembling the legs of our knee-breeches) covering the lower thighs and knees, and attached to the short trunks. Their ostensible purpose would seem to be, as Quicherat asserts, to fill up any hiatus between the trunks and the long stockings, where the latter were not sewn directly to the former.f Like the word canions (which I believe to describe them), they are of constant occurrence at this period. The stockings are indifferently drawn up and gartered over or inside these " canions," which are shown as plain, or ornate, slashed, embroidered, &c. This portion of attire, I submit, comes much nearer both Minsheu's explanation and the locus classicus (see below) from Stubbes, and accords better with the following quotations. Against Planche's conclusion, too, it may be urged that the canions were evidently a much more obtrusive and characteristic feature
- See the two well-known sixteenth-century
French paintings in the Louvre of balls at the Court of Henri III., where the rolls below the knees agree in colour and texture with the stockings, and not with the breeches, which are usually of a different tint. H. Estienne's ' Deux Dialogues,' &c., 1579, confirms this difference.
f The " long-stocked hose " or trunks and stockings joined together were known in French as chwsses s'entretenans, in Italian as calze intieri, and in Spanish as calyas enteras. .See, besides the dictionaries of C. Oudin (Spanish-French, 1607) and H. Vittpri (Spanish-French-ltalian, 1609), Torriano's edition of Florio, 1659, and Howell's ' Vocabularie,' 1659. They are illustrated in Vecellio's ' Habiti,' and more clea.rly in plate 21 of J. T. and J. I. de Bry's ' Emblemata Bfecularia,' 1596, which satirically shows several women fighting for a pair lying on the ground, complete with codpiece and points. A Flemish satirical print of a similar subject is reproduced in J. Grand-Carteret's ' La Femme en Culotte.' Peacham, in his ' Truth of our Times,' 1638, speaking of Elizabethan modes, mentions : "... .round breeches, not much unlike St. Omer's onions, ichereto the long stocking ivithoitt garters was joined, which was then the Earl of Leicester's fashion and theirs who had the handsomest log...."
of Elizabethan a>nd Jacobean dress than
the little " ornamental rolls " which, in-
cidentally, were a characteristic of the " lands-
knecht " type of costume so generally in
vogue c. 1510-40. These latter Fairholt,.
apparently relying on an equivocal line from
Wynkin de Worde, calls bulwarks (see his
' Glossary ' ).
1583. Stubbes, 'Anatomy of Abuses,' speaks of " French Hose," excessively abbreviated and scant, " whereof some be paned, cut and drawn out Mdth costly ornaments, with canions annexed reaching below their knees."
1585. Higins's ' Nomenclator,' " Subligar : Brayes, Slops or breeches without canions or netherstocks." Cf. (s.v. Subligar) Thomasius's * Dictionarium,' 1596, and Welde's ' Janua Linguarnm,' 1615.
1593. Will of Sir Henry Widdrington (Surtees Society's ' Durham Wills '), " j pair of French hose with crimson satten carry ons " (sic : whether an ignorant transcriber's error ?).
1598. Henslowe's ' Diary,' " A payer of round hosse of paynes of silke layd with sylver lace and caneyanes of cloth of sylver."" " A bugell doublet and a payer of paned hosse of bugell panes drawne out with cloth of sylver and canyons of the same."
Antoine Oudin, in his ' Recherches,' 1643, translates cosciale as ' ' canons de chausses ' ' ; and the Delia Cruscan ' Vocabolario ' of 1612 defines it as "a covering for the thigh of any sort, whether armour or dress." See the " coscialetti " worn by the " Burgundian Noble" in Vecellio's 'Habiti' of 1589. Cf. Covarrubias's ' Tesoro,' 1611, s.v. muslos de calqas.
1611. Cotgrave defines " Chausses a queuer de merlus " as " round breeches with straight canions," &c.
The canions were a sufficiently prominent portion of attire for the word, by trans- ference, to be applied sometimes to the breeches themselves; e.g., Middleton, 'More- Dissemblers besides Women,' " 'Tis pity thou wast ever bred to be thrust through a pair of canions" ; 1611, Robt. Richmond,. Prefatory Verses to Cory ate' s ' Crudities,' " For nought fears he backbiters' nips in doublet or in commons." The word is used figuratively, by analogy, in Dekker and Webster's ' Xorthward Hoe ' : " the bragging velure-canioned hobbi-horses."
The plain canions are seen in the full- length triptych portrait of Sir Percyval Hart and sons at Lullingstone, Kent, dated 1575 (left-hand figure); the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh (with his little son), 1602,.
