Message-Id: <199805221333.HAA15193@indra.com>
From: "Lesley Anne Baker" <Lesley_Anne_Baker@snet.com>
To: sca-east@indra.com
Subject: EK: Irish garb - long (was: A Tentative Hello)
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 07:33:49 -0600
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-Poster: "Lesley Anne Baker" <Lesley_Anne_Baker@snet.com>


> My name is Juliet Morgan, an Irish woman from the late 11th century,
> and I was wondering if anyone had ideas for period garments for me.
> I'm quite new, and not sure how to go about choosing.  Any help
> would be greatly appreciated!!

Hello Juliet and welcome.  I'm Muirgheal.  I have mostly been looking at
Irish garb from a couple of centuries earlier than you are, but I may be
able to offer some help.

The first suggestion I will offer to people looking for help with Irish
garb is a book recomendation.  Try to get a hold of a copy of _Dress In
Ireland_ by Mairead Dunlevy (published 1989 by Holmes & Meier, ISBN:
0-8419-1269-6)  (It's somewhat expensive, so you may want to try
inter-library loan.)  Although only the first three chapters are relevant
for SCAdian use and only the first chapter for you and me (chapter 2 covers
the 14th & 15th centuries and chapter 3 the 16th century) it has a lot of
good information that is hard to find anywhere else.  Most of what little I
know comes from that book, supplemented by pictures from the Book of Kells.

The typical Irish dress of the 11th century would consist of an ankle
length tunic called a leine, then over that another shorter one called an
ionar.  Over that they would wrap a long cloak called a brat and the women
would wear a veil.  The men would sometimes wear trews (trousers),
particularly when working and in that case they might wear just the ionar
over them without a leine.  The leine would sometimes also be worn alone
without an ionar although that appears to be a more informal style.  The
fabric was usually linen or wool, but by the eleventh century, silks
imported from Byzantium and Persia were becoming available as a luxury item
for the wealthy.  The Irish had a strong liking for bright colors and
usually combined several colors in an outfit.  (One cautionary note however
about bright colors.  Although they liked bright colors and would wear
fabric as bright as they could make it, they did not have analine dyes,
which are what are used today for bright colors.  Even a fairly bright
natural dye on wool might look somewhat muted as compared to some of our
modern analine dyes.  A major reason why they liked silk so much once it
became available was probably the fact that it will take dye better than
wool and much better than linen.)

The word "leine" comes from the Irish word for linen, since that was the
fabric it was most often made of.  It has over the years been used to
describe a wide variety of styles of tunic and is still used today in Irish
Gaelic to mean "shirt".  The leine started out in the early Christian
period as a sleeveless tunic with a large collar that evolved into a hood.
The only references that Dunlevy makes to hooded leinte are very early in
period, but she doesn't really say when the hood dissapeared.  By lack of
examples, I'm assuming that the leine generally would not be hooded by the
11th century, but I don't really know that.  The leine did develop long
fitted sleeves sometime before the Book of Kells was made (which was
probably around the late 8th or early 9th century.)  By the twelfth century
the sleeves of the leine are pictured as quite loose on the upper arm, but
tight-fitted on the lower arm to the wrist, and appear to be cut in one
piece with the body.  The leine would often be decorated with embroidery on
the collar, cuffs, and especially on the skirt.

The ionar would eventually evolve into a jacket or vest, but it started out
as a tunic apparently quite similar to the leine except shorter.  I don't
have a lot of info specific to the ionar.  I would make both leine and
ionar as T-tunics (which from the illustrations by Giraldus Cambrensis
(12th century) I am fairly sure is accurate for the leine and I am assuming
it would also be true of the ionar.)  Then, if you're really ambitious (a
lot more so than I am) you can try embroidering them.  If you're somewhat
less ambitious, but still want your leine and ionar to be decorated, I've
seen some nice looking results done with fabric paint.  (I don't know
whether using fabric paint is period or not.  They had the technology
available to be able to paint on fabric, and it would have had the same
advantage of simplicity over embroidery then as it has now, but the only
period accounts I know of (from Dunlevy) that mention decoration call it
embroidery.  Of course, this could simply mean that being embroidered was
what made the decoration special enough to be worth specifically
mentioning.)

The piece of garb that is the most distintively Irish (particularly for
early period) seems to be the brat (a type of wrapped cloak).  It's also
the simplest possible piece of garb to make since it is simply a long
rectangle of fabric (generally wool), but it was often decorated with
either fringe or a decorative border of embroidery, applique, or
tablet-woven braid.  Mine is 45 inches wide by about 7 1/2 yards long and
that seems about right or perhaps just a little short (I will probably go
with 8 or 8 1/2 yards when I make another) if wrapped once around to
produce the type of drape seen in the pictures in the Book of Kells.
Several written accounts mention brats that were wrapped up to five times
around - I'm not sure how much fabric that would take, but I can understand
why they would have been so highly valued in a society where all fabric had
to be woven by hand.  There are records of a brat being sold for a brown
horse and later for three cows.  There are also references to how useful
the brat is when travelling, because it can serve not only as a cloak and
blanket, but even be made into a tent.  I'm not exactly sure how these
brat-tents were made, but it certainly could have enough fabric for one.

To wear the brat, wrap the center of the fabric over your sholders like a
shawl so the ends drape down to the floor in front of you, then pick up
those ends and drape the end of the fabric on the right side over your left
wrist and the end of fabric on the left side over your right wrist, leaving
enough draped between them to allow freedom of movement for your arms.  If
left alone the front neckline closure of the brat is fairly open and that
is seen in at least one picture in the book of Kells, but much more common
is a kimono-style neckline which would suggest that the brat is pinned
closed.  This would agree with written accounts that mention the type of
pin used on the brat.  One odd thing is that although many of the pictures
in the Book of Kells show brats that are apparently pinned closed, none of
them actually depict the pin itself (there is actually one picture that
shows a pin, it's a picture of the virgin Mary sitting with the Christ
child in her lap and Mary has a pin on her right shoulder, but in _Dress in
Ireland_ Mairead Dunlevy refers to both the style and placement of that pin
as a Byzantine influence, so I'm not going to base any Irish costuming
suggestions on it.)  The best conclusion I can draw from this is that
although there are a few examples of elaboratly decorated broches from this
period, the pins were more commonly too small and inconspicuous for the
painters to bother depicting (at least at the time and area where the Book
of Kells was written.  Perhaps this could be a regional thing???).  (I'm
really not satisfied myself with this explanation, but I haven't come up
with a better one yet.)  I wear a small penanular pin fairly low (almost to
waist level) on the left side that draws the brat closed into the sort of
kimono-style neckline seen in the paintings.

The brat was not the only type of cloak available, however.  At least by
the twelfth century a poncho like cloak called a fallaing was sometimes
worn instead.  It was basically a peice of fabric with an opening in the
center for a neck hole.  It went to between elbow and wrist length on the
sides and about knee length in front and back.

Well, I guess I did start rambling on a bit.  You're the first person to
ask about Irish clothing since I started trying to seriously research it.
If you have any specific questions feel free to contact me either on the
list or privately.  I make no guarantees about actually knowing any
answers, but I'll answer whatever I know.  Good luck.

Muirgheal
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