The old-time preparatory work of the weaver is much simplified for this Narragansett weaver in modern times, by the use of machine-spun threads and yarns. The warp of these bed coverlets is of strong twine or thread, while the weft is of various woollen yarns or zephyrs or crewels, bought at mills. These latter are aniline-dyed, and in no artistic sense equal the old indigo, hickory, sassafras, or madder home-dyed wools of yore. These skeins of yarn are prepared for use by spreading them on a reel or swifts, and winding the yarn off on quills in a quilling-wheel, which is somewhat like a simplified spinning-wheel.
Besides these weavers who worked in their own homes, making their own wool into cloth to sell, or weaving the thread and yarn brought to them by their neighbors, there was a distinct class of travelling weavers, who went from house to house working for a few shillings a day and their “keep.” They often were quaint and curious characters; frequently what were known as “natural preachers;” that is, either mystic or fanatic souls who tried to supplement or supersede the religious teaching of the community by itinerant preaching. Such teachers and preachers have ever flourished in Narragansett since the day of Samuel Gorton and his associates.
One of these weaver-preachers, undismayed by the indifference and even the disapproval of his neighbors, built a rude log pulpit in the woods near his home and there communed aloud with God if not with man. The sound of his fervid prayers and invocations could be heard afar off by passers-by in the wood-lanes and roads, even in mid-winter; while the emphasizing thumps of his sturdy fist kept his blood as warm as his religion and startled the Narragansett squirrels and chipmunks who thriftily used the recesses of the weaver’s pulpit as a storage-place for nuts and acorns. There were few women weavers among them, especially for linen-weaving, which was hard work. Occasionally some sturdy woman, of masculine muscle and endurance, was a weaver.
One of these Narragansett women-weavers was a witch. She would sit for hours bending over her loom, silent, peering into it and not doing a single row. This angered the dames for whom she worked, but they said nothing, lest they get her ill-will. Suddenly she would sit up and start her treadle; bang! bang! would go her batten as fast as corn in a corn-popper; and at night, after she had gone home, when her piece was still set in the loom, the family would waken and hear the half-toned clapping of the loom, which someone was running softly to help the witch out in her stint, probably the old black man. So, behold! at the end of the week more cloth appeared on the cloth-beam, more linen was ready for bleaching, and more rolls of carpet were woven than could be turned out by any man-weaver in the province. So whether it was hitching up with the devil or not, she always had employment in plenty; and her fine linen table-cloths were in every bridal outfit, and her linen web used in many a shroud throughout Narragansett.
She never ate with the family of her employer as did every other worker in house or on farm, nor was it evident that she brought food with her. The minister suspected she ate nocake, which she could easily hide in her pockets. She never asked for water, nor cider, nor switchel, nor kill-devil, nor had anyone ever seen her drink. Debby Nichols once saw a bumble-bee fly buzz-buzz out of her mouth as she wove in the minister’s loom-loft. But the minister said it was only a hornet flying past her—the garret was full of them. But, sure enough, at that very hour Joe Spink fell from his horse on the old Pequot trail from Wickford and broke his leg. Joe said a big bumble-bee stung the horse on the nose and made him rear and plunge. Joe had had high words with the witch over some metheglin he had tried to buy from her the previous week, for she brewed as well as she wove. The minister said that if metheglin had been the only drink Joe ever bought he wouldn’t have fallen from his horse, and that it wasn’t the first bee Joe had had in his bonnet.
One day some careless darkies in a kitchen set on fire a hank of tow that was being hetchelled by the chimney-side. The sudden blaze extended to a row of freshly ironed sheets, then to a wool-wheel, and soon a dense smoke and darting flames filled the room. All ran out of the house, some for water, some for buckets, some for help, and no one thought of the witch in the loom-loft. The bang and rattle of her work made her ignorant of the noise and commotion below, and as the smoke entered the loft she thought, “But that chimney do smoke!” Finally a conviction of danger came to her and she made her way down the loft-ladder and through the entry with difficulty to the open air.
“Where’s the cat?” was her abrupt greeting to the shamefaced folk who began to apologize spasmodically for their neglect to alarm her. “I saw her an hour ago on the spare bed in the fore room”—and back into the house rushed the witch, to return in a few moments with Tabby safely in her arms. This act of course deserved scant praise. Everyone murmured that there was probably some good reason for doing it, that everyone knew witches and cats had close relations, that the house didn’t burn down anyway, and probably she knew it wasn’t going to.
One night a neighbor met her, breathing heavily, her hand at her side, hobbling haltingly homeward. He told his wife he guessed the witch was pretty sick. She told the minister’s wife that the witch was getting her deserts. The latter in turn told her husband, and during a ministerial visit the next day he discoursed profitably on the probable illness and the unsanctified life of that misguided woman. The minister sat long in the front room sipping sangaree, but the hard-working little tailoress in the kitchen overheard his moralizing and his story. And when goose and shears were laid aside, and her day’s work was over, she hurried through the winter gloaming, across the ice-crusts of three fields, to the witch’s door. No light shone from the window, either of evil or domestic significance; but the tailoress pulled the latch-string and pushed open the door, and by the light of her hand-lantern found the witch in the chilled house cold and dead.
The following August a band of wondering, marauding boys, with alternate hesitation and bravado, entered the tenantless house. The windows had all been broken by missiles thrown by witch-hating passers-by, and the spring rains and summer suns had freely entered the room. And lo! the witches bed, on which she died—a sack full of straw of mouse-barley, with occasional spikes of grain attached—had sprouted and grown through the coarse hempen bed-tick, and was as green and flourishing as the grass over her unmarked grave.