A costuming/folklore crossover question: Little Red Riding Hood

[gem]

I've been wondering about the term "riding hood--" where we got it, what it's supposed to be, why the "riding" bit, etc.  The nearest thing I can find is that the title comes to us from Perrault's La Petite Chaperon Rouge, but that doesn't explain where the "riding" comes from.  The Grimm version is Rotkäppchen; does that translate more as "red riding hood?"  I think the translation is so curious, because there doesn't seem to be any story significance attached to it (Little Red is walking, after all).  Today we're so accustomed to the rhythm of those four words, that they sound really weird to us as "Little Red Hood," but it doesn't seem as if that would have been the case for early English translations (before the title was deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness).

Anyone know what a "riding hood" might be?

Gramercy!

[operafantomet]

Interesting question!

My unqualified guess is that such hooded cloaks as she was said to be wearing, was mostly used for travels and for protection against the weather = commonly considered a "riding garb"?

Wikipedia has this to say:
"Little Red Riding Hood is Le Petit Chaperon rouge in the earliest published version, by Charles Perrault, and French depictions of the story naturally favour the chaperon over the long riding-hood of ones in English."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaperon_(headgear)

[LadyShadow]

That question does make one think.

[Aunty Lou]

Here is what I remember...
Country women in Britain and the Celtic countries wore cloaks as outerwear for far longer than cityfolk.  These cloaks were very often in red wool, especially in England, where the wool trade was centered.  They were worn, with variations like hoods or no, from the midieval period all the way to the turn of the 20th century.  "Redingote" is a direct borrowing from the French, and may have simply been applied to the common cloak and stuck as "ridng hood"...  Sounds likely as anything else, hmmm?

Aunty Lou, the costuming maven