Spinning Wheels and The Horned Women.

Spinning wheels.

The art of spinning has always been a big part of domestic life. Until about 1550 all thread was spun with a distaff and spindle. The distaff is a cleft stick, which holds the carded wool or plant fibres. The spindle is a straight stick weighted with a detachable whorl at the bottom. The spinner (or spinster?) pulls the fibres out with one hand, twisting them between finger and thumb and winding the thread onto the spindle.

 Archaeologists find spindle whorls buried in graves. Genealogists refer to the ‘distaff’ side of the family, meaning the female side and the term spinster is still the legal term for an unmarried woman. The tools of the spinner are deeply imbedded in our language and folklore.

Spinning is the art of transforming loose fibres such as wool and flax into thread. This is done by pulling out the fibres to the required width and introducing twist to fix and strengthen them. The ancient tools of the spinner were the distaff and the spindle. The distaff was a long staff to which the fibres were tied to keep them untangled. The spindle was a short shaft weighted with a stone whorl which was used like a suspended spinning top to provide momentum and the downward pull of gravity for the work. These same implements were the spinner's only tools until the late fourteenth century when early spinning wheels were developed. The first Spinning wheels were large, inefficient, expensive and unpopular so the spindle remained in common use until the eighteenth century.

The spinning wheel, which was operated by a foot treadle, leaving both hands free to work the thread, appeared around 1550 in wealthy households. Of course, there was a crossover period as more and more people got spinning wheels, instead of spindles.

The spindle comes across strongly as a symbol of womanhood (of a straight laced, hearth tied, skirt bundled variety, from an age when both sexes worked themselves to exhaustion in the daily round). But even in her subservience a woman held power and the distaff was her weapon against the world of men. In the domestic battle the mediaeval woman reached for her distaff, a far more versatile weapon than today's rolling pins due to its length.

A common theme of spinning tales is the breaking of magical boundaries. Spinning women attract all kinds of supernatural creatures and spirits, hostile spirits include the mischievous fairies from the Scottish tale ‘The Good Housewife and her Night Helpers’. The housewife worked late at her spinning while her family slept. Eager to complete her weaving she made a wish that someone would come from land or sea, far or near to help her finish the work. This unwise request summoned a large number of fairies who took up the woman’s carding, spinning and weaving. The fairies kept crying out to the housewife for food until the larder was empty and the poor woman was half demented. She tried to wake her family but they were all deep in an enchanted sleep. Terrified she ran from the house and consulted the village elder who helped her extract the fairies by trickery.

A very similar story is told in here in Ireland in which a spinning housewife, working late, was visited by twelve witch women. Each of them had horns growing out of their foreheads and carried wool combs, a reel or a spinning wheel. They all sat down in the house and began to work at the wool with lightning speed. Again the housewife was driven to distraction by their demands for food and ran from the house to fetch water for baking. She was helped by a kindly spirit living in the well and the witches were expelled, again by trickery.

The story is called:

The Horned Women.

A housewife sat up late one night carding and preparing wool, whiles all the family and servants were asleep. Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and a voice called, "Open! Open!"

"Who is it?" said the woman of the house.

"I am the Witch of one Horn," the voice answered.

The housewife, who was a little hard of hearing and supposing that one of her neighbours had called and required assistance, opened the door, a woman entered, having in her hand a pair of wool-carders, and bearing a horn growing out of her forehead. She sat down by the fire in silence, and began to card the wool with violent haste. Suddenly she paused, and said aloud:

 "Where are the women? They are taking too long to arrive."

Suddenly there was another knock on the door, and a voice called as before, "Open! Open!"

The housewife once again stood up and opened the door.  Immediately a second witch entered, having two horns on her forehead, and in her hand a wheel for spinning wool.

"Give me somewhere to sit," she said; "I am the Witch of the two horns," and she began to spin as quick as lightning.

Throughout the night the knocks went on, and the housewife continued opening the door, and more and more witches entered, until at last twelve women sat round the fire—the first with one horn, the last with twelve horns.

 They carded the thread, and turned their spinning wheels, and wound and wove, all singing together an ancient rhyme, but no word did they speak to the woman of the house.

 Strange to hear, and frightful to look upon, were these twelve women, with their horns and their wheels and the housewife felt near to death, she tried to stand so that she might run from the house and get help, but she couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak or cry out, The witches had cast a spell upon her.

Then one of them called out to her and said,

"Get up woman and make us a cake."

The woman of the house began to search for a pot to bring water from the well so that she could mix the meal and make the cake, but she couldn’t find one.

So the witches said to her, "Take a sieve and bring water in it."

The woman took the sieve and went to the well; but the water poured though the holes, she couldn’t carry the water for the cake, and she sat down by the well and wept.

All of a sudden she heard a voice,

 "Take yellow clay and moss, and bind them together, and plaster the sieve so that it will hold." The voice said

She did as the voice said and the sieve held the water for the cake and the voice said again:

"Go back to the house, and when you get to the north side of the house, cry aloud three times and say, 'The Mountain of the Fenian women and the sky over it is on fire.' "

She did as the voice said. When the witches inside heard the call, a great and terrible cry broke from their lips, and they rushed out roaring and shrieking, they fled to Slievenamon, where their chief abode was.

The voice that had spoken to the woman was that of the the Spirit of the Well and now it spoke to her again telling her to go back into her home and prepare it against the enchantments of the witches if they returned again.

The spirit told her that in order to break their spells, she must sprinkle the water in which she had washed her child's feet, the feet-water, outside the door on the threshold; secondly, she must take the cake which in her absence the witches had made of meal mixed with the blood drawn from the woman’s family. They had been put under a magical spell and were in a deep sleep.  She had to break the cake into bits, and place a bit in the mouth of each sleeper, they would be restored and the spell they were under would be broken. The voice told her that she must take the cloth the witches had woven, and place it half in and half out of the chest with the padlock; and lastly, she was to  secure the door with a great crossbeam fastened in the jambs, so that the witches could not enter, and having done all these things she waited.

It wasn’t long before the witches came back, and they were raging and calling out for vengeance.

"Open! Open!" they screamed; "open, feet-water!"

"I cannot," said the feet-water; "I am scattered on the ground, and my path is down to the Lough."

"Open, open, wood and trees and beam!" they cried to the door.

"I cannot," said the door, "for the beam is fixed in the jambs and I have no power to move."

"Open, open, cake that we have made and mingled with blood!" they cried again.

"I cannot," said the cake, "for I am broken and bruised, and my blood is on the lips of the sleeping children."

Then the witches rushed through the air with great cries, and fled back to Slievenamon, uttering strange curses on the Spirit of the Well, who had wished their ruin; but the woman and the house were left in peace, and a mantle dropped by one of the witches in her flight was kept hung up by the mistress in memory of that night; and this mantle was kept by the same family from generation to generation for five hundred years after. The witches were never to return.