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 yeing is another art that was the sole province of women, men could take part in growing or gathering of dye plants but it was the women who formulated the colors and dyed the cloth. There was even a taboo in early Common Era Ireland about the presence of men when cloth was being dyed. It was believed that the dye would come out wrong, the cloth would be streaked. There were certain days of the week and month when no cloth should be dyed, unfortunately that information doesn't seem to be available anymore.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that those skilled in the use of dyestuff were also considered to be herb women and healers as many of the plants used for dyeing such as Dandelion, Bilberry, Foxglove, Nettles, and Meadowsweet, also have medicinal properties.
The earliest dyes were made from the juice of berries and the decoctions of leaves, flowers, roots and bark and lichens. Lichens were used for some of the oldest dyes, requiring no mordants(a substance that makes color permanent) to make them colorfast. Once mordants were discovered, dyeing became a true art form, with more possible color and pattern variation available. A crude form of alum, the most common mordant in use today, could be extracted from wood ash, human urine, sheep manure, oak galls, filtered smoke or the sediment found in certain pools of water that were rich in aluminum or iron. Some mordants such as iron or oak galls would make a "flatter" color, where as alum based mordants such as wood ash or urine gave brighter glossier colors. Distinct shadings and hues could be achieved by combinations of plant, mordant, preparation, and dyeing technique.
Preparing the dyes could involve a long fermentation process as in the case of lichens and woad. Woad by the way is not native to Ireland and Scotland, though there is a native variety that grows in southern England, it is generally a continental plant. Here is a short list of some of the dye plants used in Ireland:
- For Blue:
- Bilberry, Devil's Bit, Elderberry, Privet, Red Bearberry, Sloe or Blackthorn etc.
- For Black:
- Alder, Blackberry, Bog mire, Dock, Elder, Meadowsweet etc.
- For Brown:
- Birch, Bogbean, Briar, Dulse, Larch, Veronica etc.
- For Green:
- Bracken, Bedstraw, Foxglove, Nettles, Weld, Yellow Flag, etc.
- For Crimson:
- Ladies Bedstraw, Cudbear Lichen and Murex welks.
- For Red:
- Alder, Blackthorn, Kermes (an insect), Lichens and mosses, Field Madder, etc.
- For Purple:
- Cloudberry, Crowberry, Dandelion root, Elderberry, St John's Wort, Murex, etc.
- For Yellow:
- Agrimony, Birch, Bog Myrtle, Broom, Marsh Marigold, Heather, etc.
In cases where the cloth was dyed in one piece, the process was split into two parts. The first stage was to give a ground or primer coat to the cloth. This was a reddish-brown color achieved by steeping or boiling the cloth with twigs of Alder. The Gaelic term for this is "ruamann" which is glossed as the "first dye" or tinge or "the stuff that gives it or prepares it for the second or last...no color can be given without ruamann". In the Book of Leinster, a passage refers to ruamann as being dyestuff in general, though ruam primarily means red. Another reference lists the word ruamnad as the verbal form for dyeing any color. The second stage would be the application of the desired color.
Waulking
Waulking, said to have been introduced the 13th century of the common era by the Normans, is a finishing process that is applied only to woolens. Similar to the felting process, it is a form of pre-shrinking which thickens the cloth and gives it a certain amount of water-proofing. There are four minor parts to the waulking process, one is the fulling of the cloth which is done on a waulking board or frame-a rough wooden or wickerwork table like structure which sits either at floor or waist level. Second; cleansing the cloth, third; folding the cloth, and fourth, the process of giving it tension after which comes a rite of consecration.
As with other aspects of textile production this was exclusively woman's work. Only in the last part of the process, when tension was given to the cloth by pounding it while it was rolled, did men occasionally participate.
Waulking was a communal project accomplished by an even numbered team of women. To participate in the waulking process was a high honor, as the women attended by invitation only. Once organized, this was a day long project, once the process was begun it had to be finished in one session. The "waulking women" called na mnathan luaidh in Scots Gaelic, assembled at the house of the owner of the cloth after breakfast.
There was a triplicity of women involved in leading the process. One was the song-woman, the ban dhuan. Sometimes she was an aged woman who had much waulking experience, if she was too infirm to do the work she would sit at the head of the table and lead the singing. Waulking was measured by song not time, if the cloth needed more waulking the women never said "it will take another half-hour" but "it will take another song". It was considered unlucky to have a songless waulking-a dò bodraich. The ban dhuan would lead with the verses and the rest of the women would sing the chorus. The songs, the òrain luiadh, were of common themes-love, war, hunting, sewing. The songs had to be skillfully sung. It was thought that if a woman sang out of tune or had a harsh voice and overwhelmed the rest of the team, the loireag, a kind of water spirit thought to preside over the operations of warping, weaving and waulking, would be especially wrathful to her. There was a strict prohibition about repeating songs, it was believed that if the same song was sung twice, the lioreag would come and make the cloth as thin and uncompacted as at the beginning of the process and all the work would be wasted. It's quite possible that the "lioreag" used to be a local goddess associated with weaving.
However it is notable that we do not find any specific reference in either the Irish or Scots pantheon to goddesses being associated with weaving or textiles. We can keep in mind however, that there are many indications from Old Europe that Goddesses associated with water had strong ties to all aspects of textile production.
The other two members of the na mnathan luaidh were the woman of waulking; the ban luathaidh who led the actual work and the woman of ceremony; ban dhlighe who led the various ceremonial processes in the correct order. During the actual waulking on the board, the cloth was always manipulated in a four-time sun-wise direction.
Once the waulking process was finished there followed a ceremony of consecration, while we only have a Christian version it is easy to imagine the entire process being dedicated to the Elder Gods. This ritual involved three women. The oldest would lead with the other two following according to age. The first woman would take the folded cloth and move it round a half turn in a sunwise direction saying "Cuirim ca deiseal" "I give a turn sunwise." Freeing her hands she seized it again and gave it another half turn to complete the round saying "am freasdal an Athar" "dependant on the father." The other two women repeat the process saying instead in the name of the son, and in the name of spirit.
After the process was finished the men were invited back to the house and much celebration with food music, dancing and good cheer, would go on into the wee hours of the morn'.
Throughout this essay we have seen that all aspects of textile production were associated with the Divine feminine and that the intensive labor involved in cloth production was preformed almost exclusively by women.
Which came first the women or the Goddesses? As with all things human and Divine, the basic facts of life gave birth to the myths that fueled social structures. In this case we have but to look back to our early social beginnings and the inarguable fact of birth and nourishment.
It is fairly certain now that women were the primary food gatherers for early societies, and contrary to popular belief, gathered food supplied the bulk of a tribe's nourishment. As gathering gave way to agriculture and stock rearing, women continued to play a central role in the planting, harvesting and preparation of plant foods and the care of domesticated animal. As societies became more settled and by that fact larger, what was home-grown and reared took on greater importance in the diet of the population.
By a fact of biology, women are better-suited to gather plants and small animals as well as to tend fields, gardens and penned animals, than to range far and wide in pursuit of large mammals. It is not that women are unable to track and hunt large animals, it is that with the beginning of childbearing, these activities are no longer desirable under normal circumstances. While it can be argued that a woman could leave her child with a sister, mother or friend to go hunting for large game, anthropological evidence of modern hunting and gathering societies does not support this argument. What is seen is that women take their children with them on foraging expeditions.
And what does this have to do with textiles? Babies. All aspects of textile production are child safe activities. Activities that can be interrupted to tend to a young child's needs. A nursing woman can put down her spinning or take a break from weaving to feed her child, an activity which would have been a daily aspect of life until the child was three or four years old. This isn't something you can do on a hunting expedition…Spinning and weaving are also social activities where a group of women can work together while keeping an eye on the cook pot, the children and the sheep. Since humans are pre-disposed to deify aspects of our culture and lives, it is natural that "goddesses" would have developed in response to these important aspects of a woman's daily life. In Northwestern European cultures, this evolved into social and mythological associations of Goddesses with textiles and eventually associating Her female spinners, dyers and weavers with magic, prophecy and Sovereignty.
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