a light transparent stuff, in manner of gauze: made of raw silk gummed and twisted on the mill; woven without crossing, and much used in mourning.

Crapes are either craped, i.e. crisped, or smooth; the first double, expressing a closer mourning; the latter single, used for that less deep. Note, White is reserved for young people, or those devoted to virginity. The silk destined for the first is more twisted than that for the second; it being the greater or less degree of twisting, especially of the warp, which produces the crisping given it when taken out of the loom, steeped in clear water, and rubbed with a piece of wax for the purpose.

Crapes are all dyed raw. The invention of this stuff came originally from Bologna; but the chief manufacture of it is said to be at Lyons.

History tells us, that St Bathilda, queen of France, made fine crepe (crepa) of gold and silver, to lay over the body of St Eloy. The Bollandists own they cannot find what this crepa was. Binet says, it was a frame to cover the body of the saint; but others, with reason, take it to be a transparent stuff, through which the body might be seen; and that this was the crepa whence our word crepe was formed.