Updates on the Tudor Kirtle

A few weeks ago I made some updates to my Tudor kirtle before heading to Newark Castle in Port Glasgow, a sixteenth-century manor house which has survived and been partially restored inside.

The main update consisted of beginning the process of lining the skirt with fur. I'm using cheap old thrift coats for this, and I've only gotten my hands on one so far, so only the back part of the skirt is lined. However, it already creates a nice effect!

The image on the left is from the Book of Hours of Henry VIII (c. 1500), f. 182v. 

I had a bunch of fun wandering around the castle, and had a chance to sing Henry VIII's 'Pastime With Good Company' in the restored main hall. Here's a video:

I plan to line the skirt all the way up the back, and at least half of the front, because at the moment the heavy weight just at the bottom of the skirt is putting a lot of stress on the point where it attaches to the bodice. I think that having the fur rolled into the pleats will help distribute the weight.

I'm a little torn between keeping the fur in the kirtle, now that I've put it in, and saving it for a future gown skirt and re-lining the kirtle with some wool or linen. I might do the latter, simply because the fur is precious. Or I could have both the gown and kirtle lined with fur... The main idea with lining the kirtle in fur was that it will protect the train as it drags on the ground, since fur is easier to wipe down than nice wool and velvet.

But anyway, here are some photos. =)

In the restored hall.

This is in the older, 15th century part of the castle.

My straps started to fall down, and I left them because I was getting a headache. Alas.

The castle, in the midst of modern construction around it.

The Lowlands of Holland: A new recording of an 18th century song

Alongside being a costumer, I am a singer. And my favourite thing, of course, is period music. =) Folk songs, especially. I particularly like the pithy political ones (Cam Ye O'er Frae France is my all-time favourite at the moment) and laments about drowned lovers, press-gangs, ghost ships, faeries, and all things sad and creepy. The Lowlands of Holland, known originally as "The Sorrowfull Lover's Regrate" or "The Maid's Lament for Her Lost Love," combines a bit of the political with a lot of the sad lament, and appeals to my Dutch heritage, so I was eager to find the original lyrics and record it.

You can find this and other songs on my bandcamp page, which I try to update whenever I have time to record things. I have no accompaniment or fancy recording equipment here in Halifax so this one's just a capella and untweaked, but hopefully people will enjoy it. I'm going to embed the song here so that you can listen as you read more about the song, if you so wish. It's quite long. It's worth listening to the end (or jumping to the end...), though, as it ends quite amusingly with a heartfelt prayer followed by the charmingly blunt "...I have no more to say."


For quite a while I've been looking around for an original publication of the lyrics to The Lowlands of Holland. In this particular pamphlet, from 1776, the song was titled "The Sorrowfull Lover's Regrate, or The Low-lands of Holland," and it can be found in the Edinburgh library. My university, thankfully, gives me access to their 18th century collections online, and I was able to get a facsimile of the original page.

(Let me know if you want a higher-res version)

Alas, the 1760 garland version referenced by early 20th century collectors is still nowhere to be found online, and of course earlier oral traditions, perhaps dating to the Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars of the 1670s (hinted at in alternative verses describing Holland as cold and full of money - European Holland - instead of warm and full of sugar cane - Surinam, Brazil, or some other part of New Holland), are now thoroughly lost.

Many versions hint more strongly at the presence of a press-gang to force the young husband off to sea, and place the events more firmly within the context of a war. Yet this late-18th century version still provides a window into the lot of seafarers and their families, as well as British views of Holland's New-World territories as merely an extension of itself. The strong connection drawn here between Holland and its colonial territories (to the point where only the presence of sugar cane tells the listener that 'the Lowlands of Holland' are not Holland itself) is particularly interesting in light of the fact that Britain was, at that moment, losing a large chunk of its own territory in North America, and could no longer draw that strong connection between itself and the arms of its own empire. Yet the verses concerning Holland's strength on the sea and its expansive ambitions also illustrates strongly that Britain was much more concerned with the encroachments of other empires in Jamaica and the Caribbean than it was with the departing Americans.

Hope you enjoyed it! My bandcamp page has a few other recordings on it (some medieval music, and one of my own compositions), and I'll be adding more to it as I find time to record things. I'll try to post here when I do.