62 The Spinning-wheel. 



and fright. Cattle, on the other hand, love to stand 

 in water on a warm day. 



In rubbing together and struggling with the shep- 

 herds and their assistants' a good deal of wool is torn 

 from the sheep and floats down the current. This 

 is caught by a net stretched across below, and finally 

 comes into the possession of one or two old women 

 of the village, who seem to have a prescriptive right 

 to it, on payment of a small toll for beer-money. 

 These women are also on the look-out during the 

 year for such stray scraps of wool as they can pick 

 up from the bushes beside the roads and lanes much 

 travelled by sheep also from the tall thistles and 

 briars, where they have got through a gap. This 

 wool is more or less stained by the weather and by 

 particles of dust, but it answers the purpose, which 

 is the manufacture of mops. 



The old-fashioned wool mop is still a necessary 

 adjunct of the farmhouse, and especially the dairy, 

 which has to be constantly ' swilled ' out and mopped 

 clean. With the ancient spinning-wheel they work 

 up the wool thus gathered ; and so, even at this late 

 day, in odd nooks and corners, the wheel may now 

 and then be found. The peculiar broad-headed nail 

 which fastens the mop to the stout ashen ' steale,' or 

 handle, is also made in the village. I spell ' steale ' 

 by conjecture, and according to pronunciation. It is 

 used also of a rake : instead of a rake- handle they 

 say rake-steale. Having made the mops, the women 

 go round with them to the farmhouses of the district, 

 knowing their regular customers who prefer to buy 

 of them, not only as a little help to the poor, but 

 because the mops are really very strongly made. 



