Headwear

According to Fynes Moryson, the ‘English-Irish for the most part have for many ages had the same attire and apparel with the mere Irish, namely the nourishing of long hair which hangs down to the shoulders … and this hair being exceedingly long, they have no use of cap or hat’. Edmund Spenser noted that this glib hairstyle was ‘a long curled bush of hair, hanging down over the eye, and monstrously disguising them, which are both very bad and hurtful’. He further complained that:

English attempts to ban the wearing of the Irish glib hairstyle in favour of the shorter hair and ‘civil’ hats or caps sported by Englishmen were closely tied to efforts to enforce English law in Ireland. Spenser makes it clear that Irish hairstyles were seen as a method of disguise and law evasion. As Christian Huck has pointed out, in order to be subject to the law inhabitants had to be identifiable, which was impossible as long as they were ‘monstrously disguised’ in the Irish fashion.

Moryson’s comments are likely to apply predominantly to the Irish kern, usually depicted bareheaded with long hair, as in the image drawn by an unknown English artist, shown in Plate 4. It is clear, however, that even within one of the most Anglicised of Irish towns, persuasion was required to ensure conformity to English styles. In 1592, in Waterford, for example, it was enacted that ‘every of the rate shall wear his gowne of English broode cloth and a round cap the next Christemas day uppon paine of vi s viii d sterling’.

It is also evident that in some parts of Ireland, hats remained a means of distinguishing and identifying political allegiance.