FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT THE COLOUR RED.

Otago Witness, Issue 1934, 19 March 1891, Page 31

FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT THE COLOUR RED.

The adoption of colours as symbols is of very early date; for we know that, long centuries ago, the Moors had a species of colour language. Certain ideas, indeed, appear to be indissolubly Jinked with certain tints : white will ever be associated with purity, black with sorrow, blue with fidelity, and green with youth and its complement — hope. A fertile fancy has clothed well-nigh every colour, primary and secondary, with a perfect wealth of imagery and superstition: the folklore of red alone — that royal hue which a blind man so aptly described as resembling the sound'of a trumpet — would be sufficient to fill several chapters. Red is distinctly a warlike tint ; doubtless because it is the colour of blood. The badge of anarchy — the revolutionists of 1789 marked it for their own ; waived the red flag and mounted the red cap ; while, with a mad frenzy, they marched about the streets, dealing death to the aristocrats. Scarlet has been the colour of soldiers uniforms from the time of the Lacedemonians ; but our own gallant defenders did not always wear it. In Henry VIII's reign the Tudor colours, green and white, were | worn by the army ; and white, with a red j cross, by the City of London contingent. Scarlet and blue came into fixed use in the time of Queen Anne, when the wearing of armour was finally discontinued. It is not surprising that such a striking and brilliant tint as red should find peculiar favour among savages; and we learn from the Rev. Padre Francesco Juan San Antonio, who went on a mission to the Philippines, that no native of these islands was permitted to wear red until he had killed his man. t Only when the youthful " brave " | had given :this proof of his skill in the fight might he proudly clothe himself, or more likely daub himself, with the symbolical sign of heroism. He had to win his scarlet, as the young knight of olden Jbimes had to gain his spurs ; and no doubt the one was as mightily pleased with himself as the' cthe v r when this was accomplished. Again, we read that at the death of a New Zealand chief it was the custom to paint his bouse red, and also the corpse, before it was abandoned. Wherever it rested on its last journey, some stone or rock likewise received a splash of colour. Captain Cook noticed a fondness for red feathers throughout the Paoiflo Islands; a girdle o£ them—

taken from the chief idols — was placed I around the body of a Tahitian monachal while he was being invested with his royal I office. H We find from old medical prescriptions that our ancestors considered that there was " much virtue in your " red. A Saxon apothecary ordered for headache the herb crosswort, put on a red fillet, and bound ronnd the head. For the healing of a lunatic, you were recommended to " take cloverwort, and wreathe it with a red thread about the man's swere (neck) when the moon is on the wane, in the month wkioh is called April. Soon he will be healed." This was an exceedingly mild remedy, The majority of those once in vogue insisted that the unfortunate madman should be beaten and otherwise illtreated, in order that the demon "in possession " might be induced to depart. A red thread seems to have been considered efficacious in a variety of waye, and red was certainly the colour for charms. A skein of scarlet silk tied round the neck stopped nose-bleeding. In Russia nine skeins of wool wound round a child's throat kept away scarlatina, and one skein round his arms and legs would protect him from ague and fever. In the Highlands red thread is tied round the tails of the cattle before they are sent out to pasture in the spring ; this is, of course, with an eye to the Scottish saying— Boan tree and red thread Haud the witohes a' in dread. The Highland women keep away witches by tying red silk round their fingers. A Chinese baby wears a similar charm round bis wrist ; and mothers in Esthonia would not consider their precious infants safe from evil spirits if the cradles lacked a scrap of the all-powerful red thread. That red was sometimes administered to the sick in tremendous doses is an historical | fact. The Emperor Francis I, when seized with smallpox, was by order of his physician rolled in scarlet cloth. Although it failed to cure this particular patient, we find on record a case where scarlet was victorious, or at any rate received the credit of the conquest. The physician of Edward 1 1, "John of Gaddesden, cured one of the royal princes of smallpox in the following way : — " I took care," he writes, " that everything round the bed should be red colour, which succeeded so completely that the prince was restored to perfect health, without the vestige of a pustule remaining." From another source we learn that this " cunning leech " caused the prince to be covered with red blankets and a red counterpane; that he gave him the red juice of the pomegranate to drink, and made him gargle his throat with red mulberry wine. The Japanese evidently held the same belief concerning the potent virtues of red in overcoming the demon of smallpox. In Kcempf er's " History of Japan " is an account of the illness of the Emperor's children; wherein it is stated that they were surrounded by red hangings, and their attendants clad in scarlet gowns. Tongues of red cloth were formerly exposed for sale in a shop in Fleet street ; these were to be worn round the throat by scarlet fever patients. A certain degree of odium seems always to have been attached to red hair. One writer conjectures that it owed its origin, in this country at least, to the Danes ; but there is an ancient tradition which gives to the traitor Judas hair of this shade. Dryden alludes to it in the lines addressed to Jacob Tonson, the publisher — With leering look, bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two lett legs, with Judas-coloured hair. Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Rosalind in "As You Like It," " His very hair is of the dissembling colour,'' to which her companion, pretty Oelia, responds, " Somewhat browner than Judas'." The tradition is apparently of German origin, not of Eastern, as one would have supposed, for no allusion to it is found in the works of the fathers of the church, or of other early ecclesiastical writers. " Rotherbart — Teufelsart " (Red beard — devil steered) is a German saying of the uncomplimentary kind, which ought to find favour with the superstitious in Ireland, who think that an accident will happen if the first person they meet in the morning be a red-haired woman. The Italians have a proverb — "Capelli rossi, o tutto fuoco o tutto mosci " (Red hair, either all fire or all softness). In Iceland, a person gaily dressed is called by his neighbours a red elf (raud alfr), in allusion to the superstition which clothes the "good people" in scarlet; any one versed in elfin lore knows that there is a fashion about these'things, and that a gnome or dwarf would be a totally incomplete creation without his long white beard and pointed red cap. Children would have naught to say to such an anomaly. Some minor crimes were punished in Germany, in the good old days when such extraordinary and original penances were inflicted, by the culprit being sentenced to sit all day on a post in the middle of a canal, with a tall scarlet steeple cap on his head. Whether this was the origin of that outward and visible sign of ignorance — not in this case bliss — the dunce's cap, we are not precisely told, but probably the two are connected in some way. Red being mostly regarded as a regal, stately, and cardinal colour, we are not surprised to find that it was not everybody who was allowed to wear it. In an act in which King John Lackland confers certain privileges upon the Jews— we may be sure they paid dearly in hard cash for jthem — a I clause i 3 inserted in which they *re forbidden, upon any pretext whatever, to buy, g,nd we may presume to wear, scarlet cloth. The ■ Jewish colour was yellow, which ' the un- | fortunate peqple were frequently bound by law to wear, in order that all might at once recognise their nationality. Dr Brewer tells us that in Spain the vestments of the executioner are either red or yellow; the former to indicate blood-shedding, the latter treason.