We had a second fitting on Tuesday, and started putting together the various items that will make up Greensleeves’ outfit. It was wonderful to see everything coming together!
First, a red wool petticoat “of the best” by Constance Mackenzie
Then a boned bumroll made by Ninya Mikhaila, and a sleeve “with gold embrodered gorgeously” by Juliet Braidwood.
Next, Ninya fitted the top half of Greensleeves’ wonderfully green silk satin gown with“sleeues of Satten hanging by”. Ninya has stamped the satin, and added a trim of gold lace on green velvet as decoration. There are piccadils at the neck.
and pinned on the skirt.
The front of the gown, and the linen kercher “wrought fine and gallantly” by Sarah Thursfield.
Once again with stockings we have a garment seldom seen in the pictorial record in the 16th Century. This detail, from a painting by Frans Francken the younger, does show some stockings, though it’s very slightly later than our period…
However, there are some surviving examples, even in England (though the Museum of London hold the only known example of a silk stocking foot found in England – the rest are of wool). By the C17th we have some surviving examples of stockings knitted with gilt threads being used to add patterns and decoration.
Stockings of Eleanor of Toledo, 1562
Greensleeves’ stockings, being from 1580, won’t be nearly as complex as these later designs, instead being plain knit up the leg, with the gold decoration at the cuff being based on figured designs of early stockings, such as those of Eleanor of Toledo.
Sally Pointer has made Greensleeves’ stockings, using a combination of methods. The basic leg of the stocking has been made on a 120 needle stocking machine for speed and cost reasons, while the the heel, toe and cuff are to be worked by hand. The silk is so densely knit that she’s had to fish out some Victorian 0.75-1mm knitting needles to finish the heel off, as she couldn’t get any of her more modern ones through the fabric.
Work on the stocking tops, using 2mm needles, silk for the red and a strand of modern gold embroidery thread carried with a yellow silk thread for the gold.
Work on the stocking tops: 2mm needles, silk for the red and a strand of modern gold embroidery thread carried with a yellow silk thread for the gold
For most people these days, any interaction with the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ will likely precede – if they’re lucky – an ice-cream, or – unlucky – a battle with a customer service call centre. Perhaps they might recognise it in the background of a period play or film as something historical (think Michael Flanders’s epithet of it as ‘another entry in England’s long history of musical rhubarb’). If any words are known, they are most likely of an unrequited (or at least disinterested) love.
This project is using ‘Greensleeves’ in its form as a song about a frustrated lover sending gifts to his “Lady Greensleeves”, its earliest surviving manifestation, but the melody remained popular for centuries, and innumerable other sets of words were also put to the tune.
Here is one for Christmas Day.
It comes from a small book of Christmas carols printed c.1661 and now in the Bodleian Library: New carolls for this merry time of Christmas To sundry pleasant tunes. With new additions never before printed, to be sung to delight the hearers.
The book contains a selection of anonymous carols for the twelve days of Christmas, including this one, which is to be sung on Christmas Day at night. It was the custom for [good] employers and land owners to look after their employees and tenants generously throughout the festive season, and the words of this song, which is written from a servant’s point of view, describe many of the good foods associated with the Christmas feast.
In common with many broadside ballads, the carol appears with lyrics but no music. Instead, instructions are given for the choice of melody – to the tune of Greensleeves.
The words are humorous: the servant puns on “Christmas Night” with “Christmas knight”, with whom he must do battle. The various foodstuffs are listed in such a way that he is pretending to combat with them – everything from “Sir Pig” to the “lofty walls” of a minced pie.
Here follows a transcription:
My master and dame, I well perceive are purposed to be merry tonight, And willingly have given me leave to combat with a Christmas knight. Sir Pig, I see, comes prancing in and bids me draw if that I dare; I care not for his valour a pin, for Jack of him will have a share. My Lady Goose among the rest upon the table takes her place, And piping-hot bids me do my best, and bravely looks me in the face: For pigs and geese are gallant cheer, God bless my master and dame therefore! I trust before the next new year to eat my part of half a score. I likewise see good minced pie here standing swaggering on the table: The lofty walls so large and high I’ll level down if I be able; For they be furnished with good plums, and spiced well with pepper and salt, Every prune as big as both my thumbs to drive down bravely the juice of malt. Fill me some more of your Christmas beer, your pepper sets my mouth on heat, And Jack’s a-dry with your good cheer, give me some good ale to my meat. And for the plenty of this house, God keep it thus well-stored always; Come, butler, fill me a good carouse, and so we’ll end our Christmas Day.
“I bought thee kerchers to thy head, that were wrought fine and gallantly: I kept thee both boord and bed, Which cost my purse wel fauouredly,“
The ‘kercher,’ a linen head covering worn by women beneath hats and hoods, is rarely seen in portraiture of the 1570s and 1580s, due to it being covered by another layer when worn formally. The above portrait of Joene Goldston is quite unusual in showing a wired kercher without it being covered by a hat or hood. Frustratingly it’s not of particularly good quality compared to other portraits of the time, and the detail is quite unclear.
However, kerchers (or, as they’re more commonly known these days, coifs) are relatively common survivors in museum collections compared to other 16th and early 17th century clothing. They’re small, so difficult to chop up and turn into other garments, and surviving ones are commonly heavily embroidered. It’s quite likely that they were kept because of the beauty and skill of the work they show. Many of the surviving examples are worked in many colours, or with gold and silver threads, but monochrome ones like the above whiteworked one are also beautiful.
Plainer versions of these kerchers were also created and worn at all levels of society, but rarely survive. Instead, we have to look to the pictorial record as well as wills and inventories to find these. Lucas de Heere’s pictures of English women gives an idea of what some of the linen head coverings worn in the 1570s looked like. The phrase “wrought fine and gallantly” suggests that the kercher is embroidered, though it’s difficult to extrapolate from that exactly what sort of embroidery the author of Greensleeves was envisioning.
Greensleeves’s finely wrought kerchers will be made by Sarah Thursfield, author of The Medieval Tailor’s Assistant. She’ll be using drawn thread work and cut work to decorate floral motifs spotted regularly across the linen, based on a variety of extant kerchers including the one shown earlier. Here are a couple of pictures of her samples, though the final version will use finer linen!
