this one's for hanksan

[ursula]

From a fourteenth-century chronicle of England (quoted in Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, emphasis added):

In this time Englishmen so much haunted and cleaved to the wodnes and folly of strangers that they change their clothing every year, especially since the coming of the Hainaulters years ago. Sometimes their clothes are long and wide, at others they are short, tight, dagged and cut about all round. The sleeves of their surcoats and their hoods have tapets, long and wide which hang down too far. They look, to tell the truth, more like tormentors and devils in their clothing than normal men. And the women surpass the men in their clothing which is so tight that they hang fox-tails under their dresses at the back to hide their arses, a kind of behaviour which may well have provoked many of the evils and misfortunes that have beset the kingdom of England.

Comments

[reasie.livejournal.com]

yeah - I'm totally agreeing with Grace's interpretation.

Add to that I've seen fox tails affixed to the rumps of witches in literature from the time period... near the time period? Aw heck I gotta go looking through stuff now, huh? But I know it appears in Chaucer... and in Spencer (which is way later)... so a fox tail was a symbol, clearly, of not-nice things to begin with...