LINEN 



121 



Ireland's linen trade was its great sheet anchor in times the records of which have 

 been lost in the mist of ages. Long before the reign of William the Conqueror Irish 

 linen occupied a largo space among the wares exposed for sale at the great fairs of 

 England. The looms used in the make of goods were, however, of very primitive con- 

 struction ; and, until the semi-regal reign of Wentworth, Earl of Stratford, no effort 

 had been made to improve those machines. In course of a tour through Ulster that 

 viceroy saw that much was required to place the Irish trade on something like equality 

 with their French and Dutch competitors. He had already, by importing superior 

 flax seed and giving it at cost price to the farmers succeeded in creating, as it were, a 

 higher class of fibre, and at considerable cost he brought over from Holland some 

 hundreds of looms, all of which ho distributed among the more ambitious class of 

 weavers. 



The trade at that time may be said to have been a local one, as the total annual 

 value of linen exports did not exceed an average of 10,000/., and that aggregate 

 had not increased in any great degree when the first batch of Huguenot exiles landed 

 in Ireland. How much the Prince of Orange contributed towards the establishment 

 of a new system of flaxen manufacture has still to be acknowledged by the people of 

 that country. He was the warm friend of the Gallic fugitives, and his kindly feeling 

 towards those victims of persecution led to the most important results in all depart- 

 ments of the Irish trade. We have alluded to the value of exports in 1690. In 1706 

 the quantity of linen sent from Ireland was 530,900 yards, valued at IQd, a yard. 

 In 1726 there were 4,368,396 yards exported; and in 1766 the account had ran up to 

 17,892,000 yards, while the average value had arisen to 15d. a yard. Forty years 

 afterwards, Ireland exported 43,534,000 yards of linen, and in 1836 the export was 

 60,000,000 yards. 



Up to this time, and for a great many years afterwards, all the linen produced in 

 Ireland had been woven by hand. Considerable impulse was given to the trade by 

 the introduction, a few years before, of flax-spinning by steam-power. Still, although 

 flaxen goods were largely produced in Kirkcaldy arid Dundee on the power-loom 

 principle, no attempt had been made to bring out the new weaving-machine in Ireland. 

 We here give two figures of the loom as constructed some years ago for the working 

 of heavy linen. 



FLAX WEAVING LOOM FOB HEAVY FABRICS. A A A, figs. 1390, 1391, frame of loom; 

 B, beam on which the yarn for warp is wound ; c, cloth -receiving beam ; D, driving 

 pulleys and fly-wheel ; E, hand rail for supporting the reed ; F, swords of supports of 

 going part ; G, picking sticks for driving the shuttle ; H, leather straps for connecting 

 the picking sticks with their actuating levers L ; M, N, jaws of a clamp to cause the 

 retaining friction on the 

 collars of the beam B, by 

 which friction the quantity 

 of weft is regulated ; o, 

 end of lever, bearing the 

 weight by which the jaws 

 are brought together ; p, 

 lever, keyed at one end to 

 the upright shaft Q, and 

 connected with the other to 

 the fulcrum of the weighted 

 lever o ; it, lever, one end 

 of which is also keyed to 

 the upright shaft Q, and 

 the other is provided with 

 a wood sole, and is pressed 

 by a strong spring against 

 the yarn wound upon the 

 beam B. It will be seen 

 that, as the yarn is taken 

 off the beam B, and its 

 diameter consequently re- 

 duced, the lever p moves 

 the lulcrum of the weighted 

 lever o, and thus regulates 

 the pressure upon the 

 clamps M and N, causing 

 an equal tension upon the 

 yarn from the full to the 

 empty beam ; a, treddles, actuated by the cams b, driven by the wheels c, d, e, from the 



1390 



