The dress consists of a long skirt, a
spencer, and a coloured apron. On their heads they wear a man's
nightcap of black cloth, the point turned downwards, and terminating
in a large tassel of wool or silk, which hangs down to the shoulder.
Their hair is unbound, and reaches only to the shoulder: some of
the women wear it slightly curled. I involuntarily thought of the
poetical descriptions of the northern romancers, who grow
enthusiastic in praise of ideal "angels' heads with golden tresses."
The hair is certainly worn in this manner here, and our poets may
have borrowed their descriptions from the Scandinavians. But the
beautiful faces which are said to beam forth from among those golden
locks exist only in the poet's vivid imagination.
Ornamental additions to the costume are very rare. In the whole
assembly I only noticed four women who were dressed differently from
the others. The cords which fastened their spencers, and also their
girdles, were ornamented with a garland worked in silver thread.
Their skirts were of fine black cloth, and decorated with a border
of coloured silk a few inches broad. Round their necks they wore a
kind of stiff collar of black velvet with a border of silver thread,
and on their heads a black silk handkerchief with a very strange
addition. This appendage consisted of a half-moon fastened to the
back of the head, and extending five or six inches above the
forehead. It was covered with white lawn arranged in folds; its
breadth at the back of the head did not exceed an inch and a half,
but in front it widened to five or six inches.
The men, I found, were clothed almost like our peasants. They wore
small-clothes of dark cloth, jackets and waistcoats, felt hats, or
fur caps; and instead of boots a kind of shoe of ox-hide, sheep, or
seal-skin, bound to the feet by a leather strap. The women, and
even the children of the officials, all wear shoes of this
description.
It was very seldom that I met people so wretchedly and poorly clad
as we find them but too often in the large continental towns. I
never saw any one without good warm shoes and stockings.
The better classes, such as merchants, officials, &c. are dressed in
the French style, and rather fashionably. There is no lack of silk
and other costly stuffs. Some of these are brought from England,
but the greater part come from Denmark.
On the king's birthday, which is kept every year at the house of the
Stiftsamtmann, the festivities are said to be very grand; on this
occasion the matrons appear arrayed in silk, and the maidens in
white jaconet; the rooms are lighted with wax tapers.
