The Tale of the Spinning Wheel

by Elizabeth C. Barney Buel

WOMAN SPINNING. 14TH-CENTURY

WOMAN SPINNING. 15TH-CENTURY

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.

ARACHNE