one or other of which we shall always find wrought up in the textiles in this collection. We will then begin with
Wool.
After gleaning out of the writings of the ancients all they have said about the physical geography of the earth, as far as their knowledge of it went, and casting our eyes upon a map of the world as known of old, we shall see at once the materials which man had at hand, in every clime, for making his articles of dress.
In all the colder regions the well-furred skins of several families of beasts could, by the ready help of a thorn for a needle, and the animal’s own sinews for thread, be fashioned, after a manner, into the requisites of dress.
Throughout by far the longest length and the widest breadth of the earth, sheep, at an early period, were bred, not so much for food as for raiment. At first, the locks of wool torn away from the animal’s back by brambles, were gathered: afterwards shearing was thought of and followed in some countries, while in others the wool was not cut off, but plucked by the hand away from the living creature, as we learn from Pliny:[1] “Oves non ubique tondentur: durat quibusdam in locis vellendi mos.” Got in either method the fleeces were, from the earliest times, spun by women from the distaff. At last so wishful were the growers to improve the coats of their lambs that they clothed them in skins; a process which not only fined the staple of the wool, but kept it clean, and better fitted it for being washed and dyed, as we are told by many ancient writers, such as Horace and the great agricultural authority Varro. In uttering his wish for a sweet peaceful home in his old age, either at Tibur, or on the banks of the pleasant Gelæsus, thus sings the poet:
Dulce pellitis ovibus Gelæsi
Flumen.[2]
And what were these “oves pellitæ,” or “tectæ” and “molles,” as they were called, in contradistinction to “hirtæ,” we understand from Varro, who says, “oves pellitæ; quæ propter lanæ bonitatem, ut sunt Taren-tinæ et Atticæ, pellibus integuntur, ne lana inquinetur quo minus vel infici rectè possit, vel lavari ac parari.”[3]
This latter very ancient daily work followed by women of all degrees, spinning from off the distaff, was taught to our Anglo-Saxon sisters among all ranks of life, from the king’s daughter downwards. In his life of Eadward the elder, A.D. 901, Malmesbury writes: “Filias suas ita instituerat ut literis omnes in infantia maxime vacarent, mox etiam colum et acum exercere consuescerent, ut his artibus pudice impubem virginitatem transigerent.”[4] The same occupation is even now a female favourite in many countries on the Continent, particularly so all through Italy. Long ago it bestowed the name of spindle-tree on the Euonymus plant, on account of the good spindles which its wood affords, and originated the term “spinster,” yet to be found in our law-books as meaning an unmarried woman even of the gentlest blood, while every now and then from the graves that held the ashes of our sisters of the British and the Anglo-Saxon epochs, are picked up the elaborately ornamented leaden whorls which they fastened at the lower end of their spindles to give them a due weight and steadiness as they twirled them round.
Beginning with the British islands on the west, and going eastward on a line running through the Mediterranean sea, and stretching itself out far into Asia, we find that the peoples who dwelt to the north of such a boundary wrought several of their garments out of sheep’s wool, goats’ hair, and beavers’ fur, while those living to the south, including the inhabitants of North Africa, Arabia, and Persia, besides the above-named animal produce, employed for these purposes, as well as tent-making, the wool and hair which their camels gave them: the Baptist’s garment was of the very coarsest kind.