Throwback Thursday: Straw Into Gold, By Elizabeth Creith

Editor’s note: This a very early essay from EC, from 2011. But it’s a good nonfiction post.

Rumpelstiltskin turned animal bedding into precious metal; for millennia people spun straw into gold when they made linen from flax. Linen is durable and moth-proof, soft and smooth enough to wear comfortably next to the skin, tough enough to make into sails or rope. Until 1780, when Richard Arkwright's spinning machine made a strong, smooth cotton thread possible, linen was the queen of plant fibers.

The Egyptians considered linen the gift of Isis, ritually pure, and used only linen for mummy wrappings. To the Hebrews, fine linen was the fabric of the wealthy. The Phoenicians used tightly woven linen garments for armor. Even in eighteenth-century Russia, transit duty on goods could be paid in linen shirts. What made this fabric so prized?

To spin wool, shear the sheep, then wash the fleece, tease the locks open and card or comb the fleece. If the fleece is very clean and loose it can often be spun straight from the sheep with only a light teasing preparation.

Linen is made from the stem fibers of the flax plant (Linum usitatissimum). Plants bred specifically for fiber have straight single stems, 24" to 36" tall, branching only at the seed-head. 

Linen production, now largely mechanized, was historically slow and laborious.

Just before the seeds ripen, the plants were pulled up by the root, tied into bundles and set to dry in an airy place. Ripening, and therefore pulling, could take several weeks. After pulling, the stalks were "rippled" – dragged through a comb – to remove the seed heads.

Once the whole crop was harvested, the stalks were retted in stagnant ponds, or sometimes "dew-retted" on grass. To ret means to cause to rot; retting promotes bacterial action that breaks down the pith and straw around the fibers. It's a smelly process and must be watched closely; too much spoils the fiber, but too little makes it impossible to carry out the next steps. Pond retting took five to seven days, dew retting three times as long.

After retting, the dried stalks were broken by hammering in a sort of guillotine of interlocking boards. This broke the straw and pith around the fibers. A wooden knife was used to "scutch" the flax, scraping away the broken bits. For both of these processes, the bundle of flax had to be held firmly by the root end to prevent tangles.

The flax was next "hackled," combed through three successively finer sets of teeth. This removed the short fibers and split the long ones down to their finest diameter. Only about half became "line flax," the long fibers, which make a smooth thread and cloth. The remaining short fibers, or "tow," make a coarser, weaker thread and coarser fabric.

The long fibers of line flax couldn't be spun from the hand, as wool (or tow) could. It must be spun from a distaff, either draped over a comb distaff or spread around a conical "lantern" distaff, a process called "dressing.".Dressing involved patiently spreading a bundle of line flax in overlapping fine layers, then rolling it onto the distaff and tying it in place. Only then could the flax be spun into linen.

Wool can go from sheep to thread in a few days; flax takes weeks of work and attention to become linen. At every stage, careless handling can weaken or tangle the fibers and spoil them for becoming the valuable line flax. It's not the gold of the fairy tale, but it's the next best thing – and far more comfortable to wear.


References:
Atton, Mavis. Flax Culture from Flower to Fabric, The Ginger Press, 1988
Baines, Patricia. Linen Handspinning and Weaving, B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1989


Elizabeth Creith has been a spinner and weaver for nearly thirty years. She specializes in historical techniques and natural dyes.

Guest Blog: The F-Word (No, Not That One!), By Elizabeth Creith

Editor's Note: The fairy folk, as Elizabeth Creith, guest blogger, ably explains here, are a complicated folk, as likely to help, hurt or ignore humans as do anything else to them. Elizabeth Creith is a writer and editor. You can find her work at Elizabeth Creith's Scriptorium.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;

from The Fairy Folk By William Allingham

I don't say the f-word. All right, I do – but only in combinations, like fairy tale or fairy godmother. I never use it to refer to the Gentry, the Little People, the Good Folk, the Grey Neighbours, the Others. You know – Them.

They're not the twee little flower-spirits the Victorians imagined, mainly concerned with granting wishes to silly humans. The Folk I know are at best indifferent to us, at worst malevolent, and always dangerous.

Lady Gregory, a friend of the poet Yeats, travelled extensively in Ireland, asking the country people about the Good Folk. What she heard was that when we deal with them, we usually come off second-best. There's a reason for so many euphemistic names for them; it's dangerous to draw their attention.

Lady Gregory heard of changeling children, stolen brides and kidnapped mothers, folk who were "elf-shot" or "away", or suffered from "the stroke" (a blow given by one of the Good Folk), boys who stepped into a circle for a dance or two and returned to find their families and friends long dead.



While some stories begin "There was a man who..." many of them happened to the teller. One woman told of losing two of her children to Them. She saw her daughter after the daughter's death.

"Where are you now, Catherine?" she asked.

"I'm in the forth [an underground dwelling of the Good Folk] beyond," the daughter replied.

These Good Folk are the Seelie Court – the "good guys". They may be tall and beautiful, or smaller than we, ill-dressed beneath the glamour. They're not grotesque, nor particularly malevolent. They simply regard us as we regard animals, as lesser beings whose wants don't matter.

The Unseelie Court are actively malevolent. Nuckelavee, who looks rather like a long-armed centaur, only skinless and showing muscle and veins, hunts humans. Jenny Greenteeth drowns and eats children. Baobhan Sidhe is a bloodsucking female spirit. Redcaps, boggles and goblins, all ill-disposed to people, are also all – well, Them. By saying you-know-what, you're as likely to attract the horrific Nuckelavee as the beautiful Melusine.

You may well ask if I, in the twenty-first century, really believe in the Good Folk.

Let me tell a story from my own family. When my grandparents bought Ballylough, the family farm in Ireland, the woman of the house told my grandmother where to empty her laundry water. In those days before indoor plumbing, the housewife used to pour it in one corner of the farmyard. One day she heard a knock on her door, and found there a little woman in a white blouse, black skirt and red cap.

"Could you please pour your water in the other corner," she asked the astonished housewife, "for where you pour it now, it trickles down my chimney."

The housewife wisely did as she was asked. No point making one of Them angry, even one who looks so much like a little housewife herself. You never know who else is listening.

References:
Briggs, Katharine. A Dictionary of Fairies. Penguin Books, 1977.

Lady Gregory. Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. Colin Smythe Gerrards Cross, 1970. Copyright 1920.