But before launching into a description of their ceremonies, festivals, and superstitions, perhaps it might prove of interest if we here attempt to give a slight description of the dress of our island forefathers at different periods, during the last three hundred years, drawn from various sources. We will begin by an extract from a letter written by Mr. George Métivier, that eminent antiquary, historian, and philologist, to the _Star_ of June 20th, 1831:-- A Guernseyman Three Centuries Ago. “Knows’t me not by my clothes? No, nor thy tailor.” --_Shakespeare._ “Suppose we conjure up a Guernseyman in his winter dress--a specimen of the outer man, such as it appeared on high-days and holidays ‘sighing like a furnace to its mistress’ eye-brow’ in the reign of the most puissant King Henry VIII., and under the long dynasty of the five Westons--(James Guille, the son-in-law of one of them, was then Bailiff). It is probable that the insular gentleman, in the highest sense of that important word, copied the dress of his English and Norman friends, as well as their manner, whether in good or evil. “Similitude excludes peculiarity: we have therefore nothing to do with Monsieur le Gouverneur, or Monsieur le Baillif, or the most refined in wardrobe matters of his learned assessors. It is certain, however, that the generality of our ancestors--‘l’honnête’ and sometimes ‘le prudhomme’--derived the materials and cut of their raiment from St. Malo’s--whence their very houses were occasionally imported--ready built. We are indebted to a writer of the Elizabethan era for the source of the following portrait. “_Le cadaû_,[2] the chief article of a Guernseyman’s winter costume, exactly resembled, both in name and form, the primitive Irish mantle. Generally composed of wool, or of a kind of shag-rug, bordered with fur, it descended in ample folds till it reached the heels. A surface of such extraordinary dimensions might have exposed the wearer to some inconvenience in stormy weather: but our fathers, no novices in the art of cloak-wearing, knew how to furl and unfurl this magnificent wrapper, and suit its folds and plaits to all changes of the season. In the first Charles’ reign, the Jersey farmers, who still ‘bartered the surplusage of their corn with the Spanish merchants at St. Malo’s,’ were far better acquainted with that long-robed nation than we can now pretend to be. To the _cadaû_ was attached a _carapouce_[3]--an enormous hood. If made of serge or good cloth, it was still a _carapouce_; if the material was coarse--such as friars wore through humility, or mariners and fishermen from motives of economy--the _carapouce_ degenerated into a _couaille_. The sea-farer’s top-coat affords an instance, not yet quite obsolete, of this island’s former partiality for Armorican tailors, dresses, and names--a Tardif and a Dorey will show you their _grigo_.[4]