Halloween Costume Countdown - Day 10
Oct. 10th, 2011 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vivienHow did we go from this representation of a witch 
to this one?
Ummm... yeah, that's probably someone's dissertation, so I am just barely glazing the surface here. But let's wander through some images and some history anyway.
I did find some information during my research.
http://www.widdershins.org/vol6iss8/oestara01.07.html
There is another, commonly held belief that the pointed hat originated with another persecuted group in Europe, the Jews. While Jews did wear pointed headgear, most scholars now believe these hats were not a likely source for the witch's pointed hat. After all, pointed hats were fairly common throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
This fact leads us to the source I find to be most believable, and most mundane, for the Pointy Hat Look. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, commoners in Wales and England often wore pointed hats. As fashions changed, the last to retain the old styles were the rural and peasant folk, who were considered "backward" by higher society and were usually the ones accused of heresy and witchcraft. Much as we today have stereotypes of the sort of student who might commit violence at a high school, so did the medieval people have their ideas of what sort of person might be a witch.
This is a pretty good theory, especially when you examine some traditional "country" dress.
Seventeenth century country woman:
Welsh national costume:
Mother Goose!!!!
So I buy the theory that rural dress influenced the archetypal witch costume. Tomorrow I'll trace the evolution of the costume itself over the last hundred years or so.
to this one?
Ummm... yeah, that's probably someone's dissertation, so I am just barely glazing the surface here. But let's wander through some images and some history anyway.
I did find some information during my research.
http://www.widdershins.org/vol6iss8/oestara01.07.html
There is another, commonly held belief that the pointed hat originated with another persecuted group in Europe, the Jews. While Jews did wear pointed headgear, most scholars now believe these hats were not a likely source for the witch's pointed hat. After all, pointed hats were fairly common throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
This fact leads us to the source I find to be most believable, and most mundane, for the Pointy Hat Look. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, commoners in Wales and England often wore pointed hats. As fashions changed, the last to retain the old styles were the rural and peasant folk, who were considered "backward" by higher society and were usually the ones accused of heresy and witchcraft. Much as we today have stereotypes of the sort of student who might commit violence at a high school, so did the medieval people have their ideas of what sort of person might be a witch.
This is a pretty good theory, especially when you examine some traditional "country" dress.
Seventeenth century country woman:
Welsh national costume:
Mother Goose!!!!
So I buy the theory that rural dress influenced the archetypal witch costume. Tomorrow I'll trace the evolution of the costume itself over the last hundred years or so.