390 THE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 



THE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 



It is generally believed that the textile art had its origin in plaiting, and 

 the implements used for weaving among savage 

 Origin of the races seem to confirm this belief. The w^ay to manu- 

 Textile Art. facture some kind of cordage out of rushes or grass 



must have been very early discovered, and it must 

 have been soon found out that cordage could be turned, by plaiting, into a 

 thin, flexible sheet of material capable of being used for a great number of 

 purposes, and of being richly ornamented. Weaving, in the proper sense, 

 occurs when there is a fixed warp held in a state of tension while a weft 

 consisting of a contmuous thread is carried backwards and forwards across 

 and among the strands of the warp, forming a selvage at the side of the 

 web. It may also, perhaps, be considered as essential to the true concep- 

 tion of weaving (as distinguished from " darning ") that there should be 

 the device known as the " heddle-leaves," for separating the strands of the 

 warp so as to permit the thread of the weft to pass between them, and then 

 re-crossing them so as to grasp that thread and form an opening or, as it 

 is technically called, a " shed " for the next one. 



But before we deal with weaving we have to consider how the thread 

 intended to be woven is produced, or, m other words, 

 r, . ' . . the art of spinning. To obtain the fibre and to bring 



^ °' it into a proper state for spinning, it is necessary, in 



the case of vegetable materials, such as flax or cotton, 

 that some process of maceration should be gone through, while wool has 

 to be cleansed and separated from dirt ; and, whatever the material be, it 

 has to be " carded " in order to reduce it to a soft, fluffy state, without 

 lumps or knots, so that it can be readily twisted into an even thread. The 

 " cards " consist of two implements, something like wire hairbrushes, be- 

 tween which the wool is combed out and then by a dexterous movement 

 turned off in the form of a little fluffy roll, which, under the manipulation of 

 the spinner, resolves itself into an even thread. In machine-carding, rollers 

 set with wire bristles take the place of cards, but the principle is quite the 

 same. 



Spinning can be done by the hands alone by merely taking up some of 

 the fibres of the material and twisting them. But at some period, far earlier 

 than any record can help us to fix, two devices were introduced to meet the 

 two grand requirements of the spinner — a means of making the rotary or 

 twisting action more or less continuous, and a means of readily winding up 

 the spun yarn. These were provided by means of the combined spindle 

 and whorl, of which an illustration is here given (p. 391). The spindle is 

 simply a piece of wood about a foot long, and the whorl a circular disc of 

 stone, clay, or metal with a hole in the centre into which the spindle is 

 firmly inserted. A piece of yam twisted with the fingers is first attached 

 to the spindle, a twirl is then given to the apparatus which hangs 



