Who was then the gentleman?
This little poem and political commentary goes back to the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381.
The words reflect the typical division of labor then and also from an even earlier time in history: men dug in the fields and women spun thread from wool, flax, or cotton. Of course, further back in time, everyone foraged for food and tried to catch small animals. Then both men and women tilled the soil and kept domestic animals; in some cultures today, women do the farming.
But historically and in literature and art, spinning loose wool or flax or cotton into thread was associated with women.
For me, a day honoring or remembering women has to go back into history, remembering common women as well as women with special achievements. Today is International Women's Day, so let's look at how so many women spent their time.
Before there was a spinning wheel, women held a spinner in their right hand and twirled it to wrap the loose fibers into thread. First a woman wrapped the loose wool or flax around a staff and tied it in place. Resting the staff in the crook of her left arm, she pulled a little wool out with her left hand and twirled it into thread using the spinner, held by her right hand. The staff with the wool or flax tied around it was called the distaff, Sometimes the spinner was suspended from the wrist. Then spinning wheels were invented.
Women made thread in the evenings or in any spare time. My mother's Finnish grandmother always knitted or mended socks in the evenings, another type of women's work from an early time. My mother's other grandmother sewed beautifully on her Singer sewing machine. My father's sisters crocheted.
Spinning and women were so closely associated that the word distaff came to refer to women, as in "the distaff side of the family" (the mother's side of one's family ancestry). Also in art and literature there are many references to spinning and the distaff as symbols of women, as in the little poem above.
I cannot imagine needing to spend hours per day spinning to make thread or yarn. My sister-in-law enjoys spinning on a modern Louet double-thread spinning wheel and then knitting with her homespun yarn. I bought a Louet and hope to learn to spin someday, just to know what women's lives were like in days of yore, but there are other demands for my time, even in retirement. Those foremothers didn't have to keep up with their email.
As a child, I was fascinated with the spinning wheel on which Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger. But I did a search on it today and found out that it's nearly impossible to prick your finger on a spinning wheel or a distaff. The spindle, however, is much smaller and pricking a finger on it is "a common occurrence," according to Abby Franquemont, who works with fibers. Abby learned spinning during her early childhood years in Peru, where her hippie parents had moved to learn about the local culture.
She writes on Quora that there's another theory about how Aurora (aka Rose) pricked her finger:
Some believe she may have had a sliver of vegetable matter or flax pierce her finger, and then handled unclean fibers, from which she may have contracted a disease which rendered her comatose for a time.
Sheesh! What a theory. Abby notes that the Sleeping Beauty legend predates spinning wheels; thus a spindle was probably the cause of that prick and Rose's long sleep.
Ten years ago I came across an old spinning wheel in an antique store near Bakersfield, California. I had to buy this symbol of women and their work. It turned out that its spindle is fashioned from a corn cob. Around the spindle is wrapped a lot of white thread, whether spun or not, I don't know. But the spinning wheel must have belonged to a very poor woman, one who used a corn cob for a spindle. Perhaps she was one of those who fled Oklahoma for California during the Dust Bowl years (as in The Grapes of Wrath).
I expected to learn to use the spinning wheel, but a spinning wheel repairman in Hesperus, Colorado, assured me that it was too old and broken to bring back into service. I ended up buying a Louet from him.
Now I should resell the spinning wheel or give it away as I try to reduce my worldly possessions in the last decade or two of my life.
I loaded it into the back of my car to take to the Salvation Army (who probably don't want it) or an antique shop in Los Angeles (how to find one? and would the owner even take it?).
Two days ago, however, I brought it back into the house.
I love things that bring me face to face with the past, both the life of a poor woman in the 1930s and the ways women lived their lives hundreds of years ago.
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