The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages, 3rd ed. active 1840-1883 Sutherland Menzies

unnatural, of all sizes and in all positions, form very important parts of the subjects themselves; though this remark is hardly in place here, as the tapestries are of later date, and not solely needlework. To return, however: mention is made in an old chronicle of antiquitas Congregatio Ancilarum, quæ opere plumario ornamenta ecclesiam laborabant. It has been a subject of much discussion whether this Opus Plumarium signified some arrangement of real feathers, or merely fanciful embroidery in imitation of them. Lytlyngton, Abbot of Croyland, in Edward the Fourth’s time, gave to his church nine copes of cloth of gold, exquisitely feathered.[17] This was perhaps embroidered imitation. A vestment which Cnute the Great presented to this abbey was made of silk embroidered with eagles of gold. Richard Upton, elected abbot in 1417, gave silk embroidered with falcons for copes; and about the same time John Freston gave a rich robe of Venetian blue embroidered with golden eagles. These were positively imitations merely; yet they evince the prevailing taste for feathered work, and, as we have shown, feathers themselves were much used. It is recorded that Pope Paul the Third sent King Pepin a present of a mantle interwoven with peacocks’ feathers.

      And from whatever circumstance the reverence for peacocks’ feathers originated,[18] it is not, even yet, quite exploded. There are some lingering remnants of a superstitious regard for them which may have had their origin in these very times and circumstances. For how surely, where they are rigidly traced, are our country customs, our vulgar ceremonies, our apparently absurd and senseless usages, found to emanate from some principle or superstition of general and prevailing adoption. In some counties we cannot enter a farm-house where the mantel-piece in the parlour is not decorated with a diadem of peacock feathers, which are carefully dusted and preserved. And in houses of more assuming pretensions the same custom frequently prevails; and we knew a lady who carefully preserved some peacock feathers in a drawer long after her association with people in a higher station than that to which she originally belonged had made her ashamed to display them in her parlour. This could not be for mere ornament: there is some idea of luck attached to them, which seems not improbably to have arisen from circumstances connected originally with the “Vow of the Peacock.” At any rate, the religious care with which peacocks’ feathers are preserved by many who care not for them as ornaments, is not a whit more ridiculous than to see people gravely turn over the money in their pockets when they first hear the cuckoo, or joyfully fasten a dropped horse-shoe on their threshold, or shudderingly turn aside if two straws lie across in their path, or thankfully seize an old shoe accidentally met with, heedless of the probable state of the beggared foot that may unconsciously have left it there, or any other of the million unaccountable customs which diversify and enliven country life, and which still prevail and flourish, notwithstanding the extensive travels and sweeping devastations of the modern “schoolmaster.”

      Do not our readers recollect Cowper’s thanksgiving “on finding the heel of a shoe?”—