Part 1

Chapter 13,994 wordsPublic domain

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THE TALE OF THE SPINNING-WHEEL

BY ELIZABETH CYNTHIA BARNEY BUEL _Regent “Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter,” Daughters of the American Revolution_

ILLUSTRATED BY EMILY NOYES VANDERPOEL AUTHOR OF “COLOR PROBLEMS” AND “CHRONICLES OF A PIONEER SCHOOL”

LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT MCMIII

UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

DEDICATED IN GRATEFUL AFFECTION TO THE MARY FLOYD TALLMADGE CHAPTER DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

WHOSE READY SYMPATHY AND ENTHUSIASM HAVE NEVER FAILED IN WORK FOR “HOME AND COUNTRY”

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The Tale of the Spinning-Wheel is revised and enlarged from a paper read before the Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Connecticut; New England Society in the City of New York, Waldorf-Astoria, New York City; Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, D. A. R., Litchfield; Judea Chapter, D. A. R., Washington, Connecticut; Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America, Boston; Katherine Gaylord Chapter, D. A. R., Bristol, Connecticut; Connecticut Society of the Colonial Dames of America, New Haven, and also in Hartford; Denver Chapter, D. A. R., Denver, Colorado; Warren and Prescott Chapter, D. A. R., Boston, Massachusetts; Orford Parish Chapter, D. A. R., South Manchester, Connecticut; National Arts Club, New York; Esther Stanley Chapter, D. A. R., New Britain, Connecticut; Annual Spring Conference, Connecticut D. A. R., at Middletown; Dorothy Ripley Chapter, D. A. R., Southport, Connecticut; Wiltwyck Chapter, D. A. R., Kingston, New York; Litchfield Club, Litchfield, Connecticut, etc., etc.

THE TALE OF THE SPINNING-WHEEL

“_Queens of Homespun, out of whom we draw our royal lineage._”—HORACE BUSHNELL.

THE TALE OF THE SPINNING-WHEEL

The spinning-wheel—symbol of the dignity of woman’s labor.—What wealth of memory gathers around the homely implement, homely indeed in the good old sense of the word—because belonging to the home. Home-made and home-spun are honorable epithets, replete with significance, for in them we find the epitome of the lives and labors of our foremothers. The plough and the axe are not more symbolic of the winning of this country from the wilderness, nor the musket of the winning of its freedom, than is the spinning-wheel in woman’s hands the symbol of both. So symbolic is it also of woman’s toil, of woman’s distinctive and universal occupation, nay, of woman herself, that the “distaff side of the house” has always been expressive of the woman’s family, and “spinster” is still the legal title of unmarried women in the common law of England. Most ancient of all household implements, it has been used in one form or another by queen, princess, and serving-maid, by farmer’s wife and noble’s daughter, until it stands to-day a silent witness to the fundamental democracy of mankind.

“When Adam delved and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?”

The mutual dependence of spinning and agriculture, of woman’s work and man’s, is also strikingly illustrated by a carving on an old sarcophagus in the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome, depicting the Eternal Father giving to Adam an instrument of tillage, and to Eve a distaff and spindle. Thus, coeval with man’s first appearance on this earth, no written page of history, no musty parchment or sculptured stone, is so old that we cannot find upon it some traces of the spindle and distaff with their tale of joys and sorrows spun into the thread by the fingers of patient women whose hearts beat as our own to-day, in tune with the common throb of humanity. Though we may strain our eyes into the darkness of prehistoric ages, when primeval woman used the tree-trunk of the forest for a distaff, we will still find there some evidence of the use of flax and hemp for threads and ropes. Even in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, belonging to the Stone Age, we see their use in various ways—in the fishing lines and nets, in the cords for carrying heavy vessels, and in the ropes necessary to the erection of these very lake-dwellings themselves. “Rough or unworked flax,” says Keller, “is found in the lake-dwellings made into bundles, or what are technically called heads, and ... it was perfectly clean and ready for use.”

Stepping across the threshold of history, we learn that sixty-five centuries ago there lived in Egypt a king of the recently discovered first dynasty, who, as his name, Merneit-Ata, signifies, put his trust in the goddess Neith, the all-sustaining mother of the universe; and in his tomb to-day has been found a large upright slab, five feet high, whereon are carved the emblems of this goddess—two arrows crossed on an upright distaff. Here, in the dim morning of history, we find the distaff already honored as the sacred symbol of this feminine divinity, in whose eternal motherhood the Egyptians vaguely recognized that mysterious Power from which all things proceed. This was no prehistoric age of barbarism, for in the University Museum in London are now to be seen the relics of this long lost first dynasty, unearthed at Abydos within the last four years by Dr. Flinders Petrie—relics of a civilization already far advanced. We stand face to face with their weapons of war and of the chase, their household implements, their exquisitely carved ivories and gold jewelry and coin, their very clothing of fine linen, the work of the spinsters of those days, and the brain reels with the thought that even before them there were generations upon generations of human beings living in organized societies and practising the arts and engaged in the occupations of a high order of civilized life. The whole course of the first dynasty is now laid bare to us, and we find that its beginning in 4700 B.C. is modern history compared with the periods of development that must have gone before, for there is proof positive that even before this dynasty, ten other kings reigned in Egypt, and other hands grew flax on the banks of the Nile and spun and wove it into Egypt’s far-famed linen. In ancient Egypt linen occupied a most important place; it was worn by all classes, alive or dead, and it was the only material that the priestly orders were allowed to wear. We have all seen the beautiful mummy linen found wrapped around the mummies even of the most remote antiquity; and we know that only the best that Egypt could produce would be wound around the sacred bodies of their dead. This mummy-linen was not spun on a wheel, but on a hand-distaff, called sometimes a rock, such as the women of India use to this day in spinning the fine thread of India muslin, and such as was also used by the children of our American colonists while tending sheep and cattle in the field. The spinning-wheel as we know it is of much later date. It does not appear until the fifteenth century,—although the date of the first wool-wheel is placed by one authority in the fourteenth century,—before which time all spinning of wool, flax, and cotton was done on the primitive distaff tucked under the left arm in the way so familiar to us in pictures of peasant girls and Greek maidens spinning as they walk. Woman’s first distaff was the trunk of a tree; her spindle a rude stick, on which she wound and twisted the yarn as her fingers laboriously pulled and shaped it from the flax wrapped around the trunk. From this distaff of nature it was but a step to the manufactured distaff of history. This distaff was a staff about three feet long; the lower end was held between the left arm and the side; the upper end was wrapped with the material to be spun. The thread was passed through, and guided by, the fingers of the left hand, and was drawn and twisted by those of the right, and wound on the suspended spindle, made so as to be revolved like a top, which completed the twist by its own impetus and weight. The illustration shows a distaff of the fifteenth century supported by a rude stand, leaving the left arm free to hold the spindle. In this slow and simple fashion the clothing of all the world was spun before the fifteenth century, and still is spun to-day in many lands. The spinning-wheel simply took the distaff as it was, and attached a wheel and treadle to revolve the spindle; and the vast machines of modern industry merely elaborate and multiply into many spindles this simple device of previous ages. The principle remains absolutely the same, so much so that we may say that from tree-trunk to modern factory the methods of preparing and spinning flax have changed the least of all the industries, the sculptures of ancient Egypt depicting processes which are easily recognizable as those practised to-day not only in Egypt, but also by the modern Finn, Lapp, Norwegian, and Belgian flax-grower. The paintings in the grotto of El Kab show the pulling, stocking, tying, and rippling of flax just as it is done in Egypt now; and our own colonists of a hundred years ago followed precisely the same methods as the Egyptian, who preceded him in the world’s history by sixty-five hundred years. Pliny’s description of Egyptian flax-culture and preparation reads like an account of the labors of our own foremothers; and the walls of ancient tombs are covered with pictures of the old familiar process. Egyptian flax went to all parts of the world and occupied a foremost place as an article of commerce, for linen was the staple fabric for clothing of all the ancient peoples. Pieces of linen are still found clinging to skeletons in the tombs of the Chaldeans, and it was the national dress of the Babylonians and Persians. All who are familiar with the Bible know the importance accorded to flax and the flax-spinner among the Hebrews. Joseph did not need to go to Pharaoh to be clothed “in vestures of fine linen,” if the women of his time were as deft at spinning as those women of a later day who brought their offerings to the furnishing of the tabernacle in the wilderness. “All the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue and of purple and of scarlet and of fine linen. And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goat’s hair;” “wise-hearted,” because in them “the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary”—guided in their handiwork by the spirit of God, which fills not only poet and prophet, but artist and artisan as well. What a hum there must have been in the Israelitish camp as the women set hands to the spindle and took up the distaff, and the sound of many feet went through the tents, as they walked back and forth, pulling out the long threads that were to hang in beautiful fabrics of embroidered woollen and linen cloth around about the tabernacle! “Thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen.... The length of one curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits; And thou shalt make curtains of goats’ hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make. The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits.” A hanging for the door was also made of “fine twined linen.” A cubit was about one and eight tenths of a foot: the amount of laborious spinning represented by those curtains will be better understood when we see later on the slowness of the process; and yet so much was sent in that Moses was obliged to give commandment, saying, “Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the offering of the sanctuary.” Thus the Hebrew sanctuary of God, the sacred place of the ark, was built up, in this fifteenth century before Christ, on the foundations of woman’s labor.

Let us turn for a moment to Greece. Once more we find woman’s handiwork holding an honorable place, for the patron goddess of spinning, weaving, and needle-work is none other than Pallas Athene, the warrior goddess of wisdom, founder and protector of Athens, and herself a spinner acknowledging no rival among gods or men. Who does not know how the full fury of her godhead was let loose upon the luckless Arachne, that mortal woman who dared challenge her to a competition in spinning and weaving? Overhearing Arachne’s boast that not even Pallas Athene herself could surpass the beauty of her handiwork, and that she would try her skill with the goddess, or suffer the penalty of defeat, the wrathful divinity assumed the form of an old woman, and tried to induce the reckless girl to desist. Arachne persisted in her defiance, even when the goddess revealed herself in all her majesty. They then proceeded to the competition. Ovid tells us how they wrought, each surpassing the other in the wonderful living pictures woven into the web, until at last the insulted goddess shattered the mortal’s loom to atoms, and revealed to Arachne the full extent of her impiety. Unable to endure the thought of her guilt and shame, she hanged herself forthwith. The goddess pitied her as she hung, and touching her said: “Live: and that you may preserve the memory of this lesson, continue to hang, both you and your descendants, to all future times.” To this day the spider, Nature’s busy spinner, bears witness to her fate, and to the outraged dignity of the goddess who thus honored the spinster’s art by competing therein with a mortal. Surely the much abused epithet of “spinster” is entitled to respect, more especially as this divine spinster honored also the unmarried state in choosing ever to “pursue her maiden meditations fancy free.”

Thus does Theocritus apostrophize the distaff:—

“O distaff, practised in wool-spinning, gift of the blue-eyed Minerva, Labor at thee is fitting to wives who seek the good of their husbands! Trustfully come thou with me to the far famous city of Neleus,

* * * * *

So that, O distaff of ivory cunningly fashioned, I give thee Into the hands of the wife of Nicias, the skilled and the learned! So shalt thou weave mantles for men and transparent tissues for women.

* * * * *

And at the sight, O my distaff, shall one woman say to another: Surely great grace lies in trifles, and gifts from friends are most precious!”

This recalls Alcandra’s gift of a golden distaff to Helen of Troy; and an interesting companion picture to these ancient Greeks is our own Benjamin Franklin, who thus presents a spinning-wheel to his sister in a letter dated Jan. 6, 1736:—

“DEAR SISTER,—I am highly pleased with the account Captain Freeman gives me of you. I always judged from your behavior when a child, that you would make a good, agreeable woman, and you know you were ever my peculiar favorite. I have been thinking what would be a suitable present for me to make, and for you to receive, as I hear you are grown a celebrated beauty. I had almost determined on a tea-table; but when I consider that the character of a good house-wife was far preferable to that of only being a pretty gentlewoman, I concluded to send you a _spinning-wheel_, which I hope you will accept as a small token of my sincere love and affection. Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind, in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel. Excuse this freedom and use the same with me. I am, dear Jenny,

“Your loving brother,

“B. FRANKLIN.”

Compare Franklin’s sentiments emphasized still further in Poor Richard’s Almanac:—

“Old England’s Laws the proudest Beauty name When single Spinster, and when married Dame, For Housewifery is Woman’s noblest Fame. The wisest household Cares to Women yield A large, an useful and a grateful Field.”

Fancy the horror which would congeal the soul of Poor Richard to-day at the sight of woman stepping boldly outside that “large Field” of the kitchen and spinning-room! In the eyes of both Greek and American, the woman plying spindle and distaff was more nobly and graciously employed than the spoiled beauty gossiping over the teacups, for, says Richard,—

“Many estates are spoiled in the getting, Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting.”

Nor should we forget the august Fates themselves, who spin the thread of human destiny, weaving it into the web of universal life, and cutting here and there a thread as each mortal fulfils his allotted hour,—

“And sing to those who hold the vital shears, And turn the adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of gods and men is wound.”

Here we see the spindle as the emblem of human destiny, and always in the hands of women. Witness the three Norns, likewise, of our own northern ancestors, who sit around the tree Igdrasil and spin out the world’s life on their whirring spindle.

If we ask more we need only turn to Homer, the inimitable reflector of the customs of his day. In his verse the spinner lives again, as she spins the fine white linen and gorgeous colored wool. Beautiful are the pictures she weaves into the cloth, stories of gods and demi-gods and heroes. Odysseus, entering the feasting hall of the Phæacians, is transfixed with wonder at its splendor; its seats, throughout all their length, were spread with the marvellous work of the Phæacian maidens, showing radiant in the torchlight, for the Phæacian women far exceeded all others in this household art. Did not the Phæacian queen recognize on Odysseus the very garments she herself and her maidens had made? And all the while loyal-hearted Penelope sat at home and wove her web to keep off suitors, not to catch them, though Shakespeare rather sneeringly remarks that “all the yarn she spun in Ulysses’ absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.” Evidently spinning and the making of the household garments were not beneath the dignity of royal fingers in those old Greek days. Queenly indeed were these occupations, and right royal these distaffs of ivory and gold, the gifts of kings and poets, the symbols of woman’s dominion. Was not the wool basket even of Helen of Troy lipped with gold? And in the excavations on the site of Troy to-day are found innumerable spindle-whorls of terra-cotta; and in the later excavations Dr. Schliemann found, twenty-eight feet below the surface in the Royal Mansion, a distaff eleven inches long to which a quantity of blackened woollen thread was still adhering. In those days of war and pillage the garments a man wore were the best tokens of his identity; the handiwork of the matron and her daughters was an individual seal set, as it were, upon the lives of their male relatives; home-made and home-spun were their garments, not turned out by the dozen, ready-made from a factory. Penelope sees through the wiles of the false Odysseus when he describes the garments she had made for the real one. This custom of the matron weaving the household cloth has thus given the Greek poets a favorite means of recognition of lost relatives which is certainly more poetic than the worn-out device of the “strawberry-mark” on the “long-lost brother.” Even the water nymphs practise weaving; Circe also, and Calypso; mortals and immortals; yea, the mighty Hercules himself threw down his club and spun for love of Omphale: thus do Greek mythology and literature reflect the importance of spindle and distaff in the home-life of the Greeks, who, as we have learned, recognized the value and the dignity of woman’s labor in believing it to be under the particular tutelage and protection of the dread daughter of Zeus.

The Romans copied the Greeks in this as in many other things. They borrowed the spinster-goddess outright and called her Minerva to hide the plagiarism. Our friend Poor Richard says:

“When great Augustus ruled the World and Rome, The Cloth he wore was spun and wove at Home, His EMPRESS ply’d the Distaff and the Loom.”

Richard is borne out by another authority, who states that “Cæsar Augustus wore clothes made by his wife or daughter.” The hapless Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, Tarquin’s nephew, and Consul of Rome in 509 B.C., “was found spinning when her husband visited her from the camp.” Gracious pictures these, of haughty Roman matrons, wives of consuls and emperors, spinning and weaving their husbands’ togas. It is not often that we get such cosy and homelike thoughts of Rome, whose very name recalls naught but flashing legions and the clash of swords on brass.

And the women of the north, where the family was the unit of society and the village was a cluster of homesteads knit together by the ties of kindred—was the spinning-wheel heard in this land of our own ancestors? In the poetic diction of the Norsemen, with its expressive double substantives, we find that the maiden is called the “linen-folded,” that is, she who is clothed or draped in linen. In the saga called “Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue,” it is written:

“Dead in mine arms she droopeth, My dear one, gold-ring’s bearer; For God hath changed the life-days Of this lady of the linen.”

She who was folded in linen was the maker of that linen; and the beautiful flowing draperies of Norse and Saxon women and the tunics of the men are as true witnesses to their homely occupations as the drapery of the Greeks. Was it not the doom of the warrior maiden Brynhild, the disobedient Valkyr, to become a woman and sit by the fire and spin? For the rough nature of the North revolted from feminine occupations, and this warrior daughter of Wotan saw in spinning only deep humiliation and disgrace. Thus the ancient northern literature is also full of pictures of the women spinning their household linen, spinning their wedding linen, spinning the linen of husbands and sons. Noble ladies in the halls of earl and thane, wives in the lowlier homes of simple freemen, and in the cots of peasant and thrall—they all spun and wove for the needs of the home. What music-lover can ever forget Wagner’s picture of the northern maids of later days assembled in a spinning-bee to spin the wedding linen for one of their number? The merry hum of the wheels so exquisitely copied by orchestra and chorus, interrupted now and then by Senta’s plaintive song of the supernatural lover who has drawn her thoughts away from her betrothed,—surely this spinning-chorus from the “Flying Dutchman” will live as long as music lives, and will remain a representative instance of this beautiful northern custom.

Again, in the rush-strewn hall of mediæval knight or baron hung with tapestry, the work of his lady and her dependants, depicting his deeds and those of his ancestors, we read the same tale of the spinning-wheel and distaff with its allied arts of weaving and embroidery.

Nay, did she not write history, too, this noble spinster, with her spindle and loom,

“Who, as she plied the distaff, In a sweet voice and low, Still sang of noble houses, And fights fought long ago”?