XIII Raising the Hat
It is really remarkable how many customs are allowed to pass without the idea occurring as to what is their meaning. There is, for instance, no more common usage of everyday life than that of salutation by raising the hat, or touching the cap, and yet, not one person in ten thousand stops to inquire what it all means—why this little action of the hand should be accepted as a token of respect.
Raising the hat is an intermediate form; the putting up the finger to the cap is the curtailed idea of the primitive act of homage, reduced to its most meagre expression.
There is an amusing passage in Sir Francis Head’s “Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau” on hat-lifting:
“At nearly a league from Langen-Schwalbach, I walked up to a little boy who was flying a kite on the top of a hill, in the middle of a field of oat-stubble. I said not a word to the child—scarcely looked at him; but as soon as I got close to him, the little village clod, who had never breathed anything thicker than his own mountain air, actually almost lost string, kite, and all, in an effort, quite irresistible, which he made to bow to me, and take off his hat. Again, in the middle of the forest, I saw the other day three labouring boys laughing together, each of their mouths being, if possible, wider open than the others; however, as they separated, off went their caps, and they really took leave of each other in the very same sort of manner with which I yesterday saw the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg return a bow to a common postillion.” Then Sir Francis Head goes on to moralise on courtesy, but never for a moment glances at the very curious question, “What is the meaning of this act? What was the original signification of this which is now a piece of formal expression of mutual respect?”
The raising the hat is in act similar to the subscription to a letter, “your humble servant,” the recognition of being in subjection to the person saluted.
To wear a hat, a covering to the head, was a symbol of authority and power. The crown is merely the head-cover originally worn by the sovereign alone. Afterwards to cover the head signified the possession of freedom, and the slave was bare-headed. When, among the Romans, a slave was manumitted, that slave, as badge of his being thenceforth a free man, assumed the Phrygian cap. On numerous monuments, Roman masters exhibited their munificence to their slaves by engraving caps of liberty, each cap signifying a slave who had been set free.
This is the meaning of the Cap of Liberty. On the murder of Caligula, the mob hoisted Phrygian caps on poles, and ran about with them shouting that they were no longer slaves. The death of the tyrant released them from a servile position.
In mediæval Germany, the giving of a hat was a symbolic act, conveying with it feudal tenure. He who received the hat put his hand into it, as a sign that he grasped all those rights which sprang out of the authority conveyed to him by the presentation of the hat. The Pope, when creating a Cardinal, sends him a scarlet hat. The wearing the hat was allowed only to nobles and freemen—no serf might assume one. Among the Goths, the priests as well as the nobles wore the head covered.
When Gessler set a hat on a pole, it was a token that he was exercising sovereign authority. The elevation of a hat on a pole was also a summons of vassals to war, like the raising of a royal standard. In a French Court of Justice, the judges alone wear their heads covered, in token that they are in exercise of authority there. So in our own universities, the tutor or lecturer wears his square cap. So in the cathedral, a bishop was wont to have his head covered with the mitre; and in a parish church, the pastor wore a biretta. We take off our hats when entering church to testify our homage and allegiance to God; and so in old Catholic ritual, the priest and bishop removed their headgear at times, in token that they received their offices from God.
It roused the Romans to anger because the fillet of royalty was offered to Julius Cæsar. This was the merest shred of symbol—yet it meant that he alone had a right to wear a cover on his head; in other words, that all save he were vassals and serfs. That presentation by Mark Antony brought discontent to a head, and provoked the assassination of Cæsar.
Odin, the chief god of Norse mythology, is called Hekluberand, the Hood-bearer; he alone has his head covered. As god of the skies this no doubt refers to the cloud-covering, but it implies also his sovereignty. So Heckla is not only the covered mountain, but the king or chief of the mountains of Iceland.
We can now see exactly what is the meaning of doffing the cap. It implies that the person uncovering his head acknowledges himself to be the serf of the person before whom he uncovers, or at all events as his feudal inferior. How completely this is forgotten may be judged in any walk abroad we take—when we uncover to an ordinary acquaintance—or we can see it in the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg removing his hat to the postillion. The curtsey, now almost abandoned, is the bowing of the knee in worship; so is the ordinary bend of the body; even the nod of the head is a symbolic recognition of inferiority in the social scale to the person saluted.
The head is the noblest part of man, and when he lifts his hat that covers it, he implies, or rather did imply at one time, that his head was at the disposal of the person to whom he showed this homage.
There is a curious story in an Icelandic saga of the eleventh century in illustration of this. A certain Thorstein the Fair had killed Thorgils, son of an old bonder in Iceland, named also Thorstein, but surnamed “The White,” who was blind. The rule in Iceland was—a life for a life, unless the nearest relative of the fallen man chose to accept blood-money. Five years after the death of Thorgils, Thorstein the Fair came to Iceland and went at once to the house of his namesake, White Thorstein, and offered to pay blood-money for the death of Thorgils, as much as the old man thought just. “No,” answered the blind bonder, “I will not bear my son in my purse.” Thereupon, Fair Thorstein went to the old man and laid his head on his knees, in token that he offered him his life. White Thorstein said, “I will not have your head cut off at the neck. Moreover, it seems to me that the ears are best where they grow. But this I adjudge—that you come here, into my house, with all your possessions, and live with me in the place of my son whom you slew.” And this Fair Thorstein did.
At a period when no deeds were executed in parchment, symbolic acts were gone through, which had the efficacy of a legal deed in the present day.
When Harald Haarfager undertook to subdue the petty kings of Norway, one of these kings, Hrollaug, seeing that he had not the power to withstand Harald, “went to the top of the mound on which the kings were wont to sit, and he had his throne set up thereon and seated himself upon it. Then he had a number of feather beds laid on a bench below, on which the earls were wont to be seated, and he threw himself down from the throne, and rolled on to the earls’ bench, thus giving himself out to have taken on him the title and position of an earl.”53 And King Harald accepted this act as a formal renunciation of his royal title. Every head covering was a badge of nobility, from the Crown to the Cap of Maintenance, through all degrees of coronet. In 1215, Hugh, Bishop of Liège, attended the synod in the Lateran, and first he took his place on the bench wearing a mantle and tunic of scarlet, and a green cap to show he was a count, then he assumed a cap with lappets (?) manicata, to show he was a duke, and lastly put on his mitre and other insignia as a bishop. When Pope Julius II. conferred on Henry VIII. the title of “Defender of the Faith,” he sent him as symbols of authority a sword and a cap of crimson velvet turned up with ermine.
It is probable that originally to uncover the head signified that he who bared his head acknowledged the power and authority of him whom he saluted to deal with his head as he chose. Then it came to signify, in the second place, recognition of feudal superiority. Lastly, it became a simple act of courtesy shown to anyone.
In the same way every man in France is now Monsieur, i.e., my feudal lord; and every man in Germany Mein Herr; and every man in England Mr., i.e., Master. The titles date from feudal times, and originally implied feudal subjection. It does so no longer. So also the title of Esquire implies a right to bear arms. The Squire in the parish was the only man in it who had his shield and crest. The Laird in a Scottish country place is the Lord, the man to whom all looked for their bread. So words and usages change their meaning, and yet are retained by habit, ages after their signification is lost.
The End
Notes
1 Sacrifices of the same kind were continued. Livy, xxii. 57: “Interim ex fatalibus libris sacrificia aliquot extraordinaria facta: inter quæ Gallus et Galla, Græcus et Græca, in Foro Boario sub terra vivi demissi sunt in locum saxo conseptum, jam ante hostiis humanis, minime Romano sacro, imbutum.”
2 Jovienus Pontanus, in the fifth Book of his History of his own Times. He died 1503.
3 These cauldrons walled into the sides of the churches are probably the old sacrificial cauldrons of the Teutons and Norse. When heathenism was abandoned, the instrument of the old Pagan rites was planted in the church wall in token of the abolition of heathenism.
4 There is a rare copper-plate, representing the story, published in Cologne in 1604, from a painting that used to be in the church, but which was destroyed in 1783. After her resurrection, Richmod, who was a real person, is said to have borne her husband three sons.
5 Magdeburg, Danzig, Glückstadt, Dünkirchen, Hamburg, Nürnberg, Dresden, etc. (see Petersen: “Die Pferdekópfe auf den Bauerhäusern,” Kiel, 1860).
6 Herodotus, iv. 103: “Enemies whom the Scythians have subdued they treat as follows: each having cut off a head, carries it home with him, then hoisting it on a long pole, he raises it above the roof of his house—and they say that these act as guardians to the household.”
7 The floreated points of metal or stone at the apex of a gable are a reminiscence of the bunch of grain offered to Odin’s horse.
8 Aigla, c. 60. An Icelandic law forbade a vessel coming within sight of the island without first removing its figure-head, lest it should frighten away the guardian spirits of the land. Thattr Thorsteins Uxafots, i.
9 Finnboga saga, c. 34.
10 Hood is Wood or Woden. The Wood-dove in Devon is Hood-dove, and Wood Hill in Yorkshire is Hood Hill.
11 See numerous examples in “The Western Antiquary,” November, 1881.
12 On a discovery of horse-heads in Elsdon Church, by E. C. Robertson, Alnwick, 1882.
13 “Sir Tristram,” by Thomas of Erceldoune, ed. Sir Walter Scott, 1806, p. 153.
14 See an interesting paper and map, by Dr. Prowse, in the Transactions of the Devon Association, 1891.
15 Two types, the earliest, convex on both faces. The later, flat on one side, convex on the other. The earlier type (Chelles) is the same as our Drift implements. Till the two types have been found, the one superposed on the other, we cannot be assured of their sequence.
16 In the artistic faculty. The sketches on bone of the reindeer race were not approached in beauty by any other early race.
17 “The Past and the Present,” by A. Mitchell, M.D., 1880.
18 The author found and planned some hut circles very similar to those found in Cornwall and Down, on a height above Laruns. There was a dolmen at Buzy at the opening of the valley.
19 Hor. Sat. ii. 8.
20 Fornaldar Sögur. iii. p. 387.
21 Heimskringla, i., c. 12.
22 I have given an account of the Carro already in my book, “In Troubadour Land.”
23 Roman and Greek ladies employed parasols to shade their faces from the sun, and to keep off showers. See s. v. Umbraculum in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
24 A good deal of information relative to umbrellas may be got out of Sangster (W.). “Umbrellas and their History.” London: Cassell & Co., Ltd.
25 The first Englishman who carried an umbrella was Jonas Hanway, who died in 1786, but it was known in England earlier. Beaumont and Fletcher allude to it in “Rule a Wife and Have a Wife”:
“Now are you glad, now is your mind at ease;
Now you have got a shadow, an umbrella,
To keep the scorching world’s opinion
From your fair credit.”
And Ben Jonson, in “The Devil is an Ass”:
“And there she lay, flat spread as an umbrella.”
Kersey in his Dictionary, 1708, describes an umbrella as a “screen commonly used by women to keep off rain.”
26 Castrén, Nordische Reisen, St. Petersburg, 1853, p. 290.
27 “The Beggynhof,” London, 1869, p. 68.
28 Ed. Viger, IV., p. 161.
29 So Grimm and others following him; but I am more inclined to see in Herodias, Herr-raud the Red Lord, i.e., Thor.
30 “A Dyalogue describing the orygynall ground of these Lutheran facyons,” 1531. A later work on the excesses of sectaries is Featley’s (D.) Dippers Dipt, 1660.
31 Quoted in Westminster Review, Jan., 1860, p. 194.
32 “Autobiography of Peter Cartwright.” London, 1862 (7th ed.)
33 “The Epidemics of the Middle Ages.” London, 1859.
34 The word is, of course, derived from Instrumentum.
35 See “Fretella,” in Ducange, “Fistulæ species.”
36 M. Gilbert prints, “As the dew flies,” etc.; this is a mistake—“doo” is dove.
37 Possibly we may have this in the still popular Cornish lament, “Have you seen my Billy coming?”
38 On December 14, 1624, as many as 128 ballads were licensed, the names of which are given. “The Blind Beggar (of Bethnal Green);” “Maudline of Bristowe (The Merchant’s Daughter of Bristol);” “Sweet Nansie I doe love thee;” “The Lady’s Fall;” “My minde to me a kingdom is” (Sir Edward Dyer’s famous song); “Margaret, my sweetest;” “In London dwelt a merchantman;” “I am sorry, I am sorry;” “In May when flowers springe;” “I am a poore woman and blinde;” “The Devil and the Paritor (Apparitor);” “It was a Lady’s daughter;” “Roger’s Will;” “Bateman (Lord);” “Bride’s Good Morrow;” “The King and the Shepherd;” “As I went forth one summer’s day;” “Amintas on a summer’s day;” “Ah me, not to thee alone;” “Sir John Barley Corne;” “It was a youthful knight;” “Jane Shore;” “Before my face;” “George Barnwell;” “From Sluggish Sleepe;” “Down by a forrest;” “The Miller and the King;” “Chevie Chase;” “How shall we good husbands live;” “Jerusalem, my happie home;” “The King and the Tanner;” “Single life the only way;” “The Lord of Lorne;” “In the daies of old;” “I spide a Nymph trip over the plaine;” “Shakeing hay;” “Troy Toun;” “Walking of late abroad;” “Kisse and bide me welcome home;” “The chirping larke;” “John Carelesse;” “Tell me, Susan, certenly;” “Spanish Lady;” “When Arthur first in Court;” “Diana and her darlings;” “Dear love, regard my life;” “Bride’s buryal;” “Shakeing of the sheets;” “A rich merchantman;” “Gilian of Bramfield;” “Fortune my Foe;” “Cripple of Cornwall;” “Whipping the catt at Abingdon;” “On yonder hill there springs;” “Upon a summertime;” “The Miser of Norfolk.”
39 Friedrich (J.B.) Geschichte des Räthsels, Dresden, 1860.
40 “Le Dieu Gaulois du Soleil,” Paris, 1886.
41 “Scriptores rer. German. Frankof.,” 1718, p. 508.
42 “Eckhard, Monument. Jutreboc,” p. 59.
43 “Anton, Versaml. uber Sitten d. alten Slawen,” II. p. 97.
44 The date on this stone is only 1807, so that the practice must be very modern.
45 Other dolmens with holes at Trye-le-Château, Presles, les Mauduits, in Seine et Oise; at Vic-sur-Aisne; at Bellehaye, and at Villicor—Saint Sépulcre (Oise); and others are in the Morbihan, Charente, etc.
46 What we in England term cromlechs, the French more correctly call dolmens.
47 The building up of part of the circle round a cairn was probably to block the way of the spirit in the direction of the village occupied by the living.
48 Bull. de la Soc. d’anthropologie de Paris, t. ix., p. 198.
49 Reinsberg Düringsfeld. “Trad. et Legendes de la Belgique,” 1870, T. II., p. 239.
50 Journal of the British Archæological Association, vol. xxxviii., 1882.
51 They are found, for instance, on tombstones near Inverness.
52 The majority of these vessels, which abound in the West of England, were unquestionably measures of corn. But all were not so; those that have rounded hollows like cups, and not square cut, were for holy water.
53 “Heimskringla,” Saga III., c. 8.
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