Hence the exclamation of Falstaff: I would I were a weaver! I could sing psalms, and all manner of songs.Henry IV. act ii. sc. 4. He [the parson] got this cold with sitting up late, and singing catches with cloth-workers.-Ben Jonson's Epicene, act iii. sc. 4. Sir Toby Belch talks of a catch which should "draw three souls out of one weaver" (Twelfth Night, act ii. sc. 3); by which the peculiar power of music upon a weaver is strongly intimated. By the soul is meant all his souls, viz., vegetative, sensitive, and reasonable, according to the scholastic philosophy. In an action for the infringement of a patent tried in 1821, in the Court of Common Pleas, the question was, whether the plaintiff's mode of weaving was or was not new. A witness stated that so far from there being anything new in the plaintiff's manner of doubling the thread, he could state with certainty it had been known and practised upwards of two thousand years. The Court appeared quite amused at his knowledge of the ancient mode of thread-making; and the Chief-justice quoting the verse When Adam delved and Eve span, appeared to expect that the witness would give some information of the method of spinning practised by our general mother. The counsel by whom the witness was cross-examined, was extremely jocular, and professed himself desirous of learning the manner in which he had acquired his very particular knowledge of such high antiquity; he answered that he had examined the cerement of an Egyptian mummy, and found that the thread of which it was composed, and of which he produced a specimen, had been spun and twisted exactly in the manner described in the plaintiff's patent. With respect to spinning, we have evidence, in a manuscript in the British Museum, written early in the fourteenth century, of the use of a spinning-wheel at that date: herein are several representations of a woman spinning with a wheel: she stands at her work, and the wheel is moved with her right hand, while with her left she twirls the spindle; and in 1530, we find mentioned a spinning-wheel to which women sat, and which was worked with the feet. The spinning-wheel is an improvement on the simpler process of the distaff and the spindle, which implements appear to have been anciently the type and symbol and the insignia of the softer sex in nearly every age and country. Homer and Herodotus speak of golden spindles. Solomon, from a still older authority, says: "she layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." - (Proverbs xxxi. 19.) The Egyptians, from the representations on the tombs of Beni Hassan, appear to have spun their thread without the distaff, but by using a spindle in each hand, which proficiency does not appear to have been ever attained by the moderns: a male spinner, in the same moment, uses both hands to the spindle. And in a picture on the walls of Pompeii we find two spindles and a calathus, but no distaff: moreover, the whirls of the spindle are affixed to the upper part, in the Egyptian manner-a very remarkable peculiarity, well deserving the attention of the archæologist. Minerva is fabled as the inventress of the distaff and spindle. It was the custom to carry before the Roman bride a distaff charged with flax, and a spindle likewise furnished; among the ancient Greeks the bride brought to her new home a distaff and spindle, and hung her husband's door with woollen yarn. A rural law in Italy forbade the women to use their distaffs abroad, or even to carry them openly; it being considered a bad omen to meet them thus employed. A similar superstition once obtained in France. The Fates are described as spinning the web of destiny: the first held the distaff, the second spun the thread, which the third cut. In later times, we find the distaff and the spindle still more conspicuous as the distinguishing badge of the female sex. Among our Saxon ancestors, the "spear half" and the " spindle half" expressed the male and the female line; and the spear and the spindle are to this day occasionally found in their graves. In the Liber Albus of the City of London, 1419, it is ordered by Wardmote, that "if any man or woman shall be attainted of being a brawler, or scold, let such person be taken unto the thew [a kind of pillory], with a distaff dressed with flax (called 'dystaf with towen') in his or her hand, with minstrels, and be set thereon for a certain time, at the discretion of the Mayor and Aldermen." The distaff and spindle have been found in many ancient tombs, as well as hung over them, and sculptured upon them; and on an English tomb, 1540, we find eleven daughters with their spindles. In the Boke of Husbandry of the same date, the growth and preparation of flax are urged upon the good housewife, who may, therefore," make shetes, bordclothes, towells, sherts, smockes, and such other necessaries; and therefore let the distaffe be always readye for a pastyme, that thou be not ydle. And undoubted a woman can not gette her lyvinge honestly with spynnynge on the dystaffe, but it stoppeth a gap, and must nedes be had." This shows that spinning was a needful art, was the occupation of female leisure, the employment of the rich and the poor in the intervals of more important business, and in the long nights of winter. It was, in fact, like the crochet and fancy-work of our day, a remedy against idleness. (See Mr. Akerman's paper, Archeologia, vol. xxxvii.) Among the feats of spinning, the following deserve record. In 1745, a woman at East Dereham, in Norfolk, spun a single pound of wool into a thread of 84,000 yards in length, wanting only 80 yards of 48 miles, which, at the above period, was considered a circumstance of sufficient curiosity to merit a place in the proceedings of the Royal Society. Since that time, a young lady of Norwich has spun a pound of combed wool into a thread of 168,000 yards; and she actually produced from the same weight of cotton a thread of 203,000 yards, equal to upwards of 115 miles :-this last thread, if woven, would produce about 20 yards of yard-wide muslin.-(See an interesting paper, in Things not Generally Known. Second Series, pp. 1-6.) Wonders of a Cotton-mill. The most striking actions of machinery are those which involve not only swift irresistible motion, but also transformation of the materials on which the moving force is exerted. Take, for example, a Cotton-mill. In the basement story revolves an immense steam-engine, unresting and unhasting as a star in its stately, orderly movements. It stretches its strong iron arms in every direction throughout the building; and into whatever chamber you enter, as you climb stair after stair, you find its million hands in motion, and its fingers, which are as skilful as they are nimble, busy at work. They pick cotton and cleanse it, card it, rove it, twist it, spin it, dye it, and weave it. They will work any pattern you select, and in as many colours as you choose; and do all with such celerity, dexterity, unexhausted energy, and skill, that you begin to see what was prefigured in the legend of Sir Michael Scott and his "Sabbathless" demons, to whom the most hateful of all things was rest, and ropemaking, though it were of sand, more welcome than idleness. For my part (says Prof. George Wilson), I gaze with entire wonder and admiration on the steam Agathodæmons of a cotton-mill, the embodiments, all of them, of a very few simple statical and dynamical laws; and yet able, with the speed of race-horses, to transform a raw material, originally as cheap as thistle-down, into endless useful and beautiful fabrics. Michael Scott, had he lived to see them, would have dismissed his demons and broken his wand. Doileys. The small wine-glass napkin which bears this name was first made by "the famous Doily, still fresh in every one's memory, who raised a fortune by finding out materials for such stuffs as might at once be cheap and genteel."-(Spectator, No. 283.) Doiley's warehouse was upon the site of the house, No. 386, Strand, now the east corner of Wellington-street. This was originally the site of Wimbledon House, built by Sir Edward Cecil, and burnt down 1628. Dryden names "Doily petticoats;" Steele had "a Doily suit" (Guardian, No. 102); and Gay mentions "a Doily habit.”—(Trivia, book i.) Pyne, in his Wine and Walnuts, describes "Doily as a very respectable warehouseman, whose family, of the same name, had resided in the great old house next to Hodsoll the banker's, from the time of Queen Anne. This house, built by Inigo Jones, which makes a prominent feature in the old engraved views of the Strand, having a covered up and down entrance, which projected to the carriage-way, was pulled down about 1782 on the site of which was erected the house now occupied in the same business." In 1838, these premises were taken down, and the present house, at the east corner of Wellington-street, erected. Colours.-Blue and Buff. The adoption of colours as symbols is of very early date, and the Moors of Spain, by materializing them, formed a language. The French still preserve them: e.g., Blue as an emblem of Fidelity, Yellow of Jealousy, Red of Cruelty, White of Innocence, Black of Sadness and Mourning. Blue was in England the recognised colour of Fidelity three centuries ago. The Earl of Surrey, in his Complaint of a Dying Lover, says :In my mind it came, from thence not far away, Where Cressid's love, King Priam's son, the worthy Troilus lay. And as to him belongèd well, I covered it with blue. Coventry was formerly famous for dyeing a Blue that would neither change its colour, nor could it be discharged by washing: therefore, the epithets of "Coventry Blue," and "True Blue," were figuratively used to signify persons who would not change their party or principles on any consideration.-(R. W. Hackwood; Notes and Queries, 2nd S., No.78.) "True Blue" is said to have been first used as a political term by the Presbyterians of Scotland against the Episcopalian Church, citing Numbers xv. 38: Speak unto the children of Israel and bid them make their fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringes of the borders a riband of blue, and it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord. In Hudibras, Butler, speaking of his hero, says : For he was of that stubborn crew, Hight Presbyterian true blue. This will carry the blue higher up than the reign of George I. In some satirical verses written soon after Bishop Burnet's death (1715), in a dialogue between the devil and the bishop, occurs: Devil. But how does Dr. Hoadly? Burnet. Oh, perfectly well, A truer blue Whig you have not in hell. The expression, a true blue Whig, was, therefore, in common use early in the reign of George I. Mr. Fox usually wore in the House of Commons a blue frock-coat and a buff waistcoat, which colours Wraxall describes as "the distinguishing badge or uniform of Washington and the American insurgents." It is, however, very improbable that the English Whigs would have adopted the colours of the American patriots; whereas it is more probable that the American patriots should have adopted the colours of the English Whigs. : Blue has, however, been employed upon much stronger occasions than displays of Whig feeling in the No-Popery riots of 1780, the colour worn by Lord George Gordon and his friends was blue; and the firebrand Member appeared in the House of Commons with a blue cockade in his hat. When Colonel Herbert threatened to remove the offensive badge, Lord George, pretending to yield to the wishes of his friends, took down the cockade, and put it into his pocket. We remember, in the unmeaning simplicity of boyhood, to have worn a blue cockade when Sir Francis Burdett was committed to the Tower, in the year 1810. Next, as to buff. Instead of the Italian word buffalo, which is now employed by naturalists, our ancestors used the word buff, from the French bufle, to designate the animal. They likewise used buff-skin and buff-leather, for the skin and leather of the buffalo. Johnson has the following: Buff, n.s., a sort of leather prepared from the skin of the buffalo; used for waistbelts, pouches, and military accoutrements. 2. The skins of elks and oxen dressed in oil, and prepared in the same manner as that of the buffalo.. 3. A military coat made of thick leather, so that a blow cannot easily pierce it. The expression, "to stand buff," for "to stand firm," which occurs in Hudibras's epitaph : And for the good old cause stood buff, 'Gainst many a bitter kick and cuff, alludes to the thick leather jerkin which served as a defence. As the leather used for this jerkin was of a tawny hue, the word buff came to denote a colour ("buff-coloured"); hence it acquired as an adjective the sense which it now commonly bears in English, and which is peculiar to our language. This acceptation of the word is, however, of no great antiquity; the earliest writer from whence it is cited is Goldsmith. We may therefore conclude that the phrase "blue and buff," for the colours of the Whig party, does not ascend beyond the middle of the last century. (Sir G. C. Lewis; Notes and Queries, 2nd S., No. 210.) Blue and buff were the recognised colours of the Whig party at the beginning of the present century, and were for this reason assumed by the Edinburgh Review. This distinctive mark is thus alluded to by Lord Byron : Ere the next Review Soars on its wings of saffron and of blue. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. The colours of the Orange lodges in Ireland have always been orange and blue (or purple); and the colours had previously been used by Irish Protestants as their distinctive badge. If we suppose that orange and blue (which would easily pass into blue and buff,) were King William's colours, this would explain their becoming the badge both of the English Whigs and of the Irish Protestants. Neither blue nor buff must be set down as emblematic of fidelity because they were adopted by the Whigs. We find pleasant evidence of |