The intricacies of the women's coiffure were many. The practice of dyeing the hair or otherwise altering its color is of ancient date. Among the Saxons and Normans it seems to have been confined to the men, for during those periods the women kept their heads so completely covered that there was no inducement for them to resort to such practices; but at the time of which we are now treating the custom had some vogue among the ladies, although it does not appear to have become general until the reign of Elizabeth, when the ladies had reduced the art to such a nicety that they were able to produce various colors and, indeed, almost to change the substance of the hair itself: "Lees she can make, that turn a hair that's old, Or colour'd, into a hue of gold." A religious writer of the fifteenth century, declaiming against the various adornments of the hair and the arts which were employed to stimulate its growth as well as alter its color, and against the practice of wearing false hair, says: "to all these absurdities, they add that of supplying the defects of their own hair, by partially or totally adopting the harvest of other heads." To point a moral, he then gravely relates an anecdote to the effect that during the time of a public procession at Paris, which had drawn a great multitude of people together, an ape leaped upon the head of a certain fine lady, and seizing her veil, tore it from her head; with it came her peruke of false hair, so that it was discovered by the crowd that her beautiful tresses were not her own; thus, by the very means to which she had resorted to attract the admiration of the beholders, she received their contempt and ridicule.