394 THE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 



threads of the warp going through each leaf, the only cloth that can be 

 woven is plain flannel, without pattern of any kind. But if the number of 

 leaves is multiplied it is evident that by throwing up now some, now other 

 threads of the warp, and doing this in a certain order of succession, patterns 

 of much variety can be produced. When warp and weft are of different 

 colours, these patterns of course are much accentuated. It is in this way 

 that twills, herring-bones, hopsacks, and other varieties of textile patterns, 

 including the elaborate designs of damask weaving, are produced. 



Secondly, there has to be some convenient means of conveying the thread 

 of the weft from side to side of the warp. This is done by means of a 

 shuttle. A shuttle is really a huge needle, hollow in the centre, and having 

 in that hollow a bobbin or " pirn " on which the thread of the weft is wound, 

 unwinding as the shuttle goes on its journey. The old way of passing the 

 shuttle from side to side of the warp was simply by throwing it from hand to 

 hand, and this method can be seen in the old-type hand-loom in the West of 

 Ireland. The new and much superior and quicker method of jerking it 

 across by means of a cord, attached to pieces of wood or horn that strike the 

 shuttle from side to side, has now been introduced there. The weaver uses 

 one hand only in this operation, and keeps the other for the sley. 



The latter is simply a sort of swinging frame in which a comb is set. 

 The threads of the warp pass through the teeth of this comb or " reed," and 

 when each thread of the weft has passed across the warp the reed is swung 

 up against it so as to press it firmly home and make the texture sufficiently 

 close. When a few inches of cloth have been thus woven they are rolled up 

 on the " cloth-beam " which is placed under the web close to the weaver's 

 knees, and a corresponding amount of yarn is unrolled from the " yam- 

 beam " at the other end of the loom. In the type of hand-loom intro- 

 duced into Donegal in 1894 by the Irish Industries Association, with the aid 

 of the Congested Districts Board, this combined rolling and unrolling action 

 is performed by means of an attachment which enables it to be done auto- 

 matically by the mere motion of the sley without stopping the loom. 



The explanation already given of the way in which patterns are produced 

 by working a number of heddle-leaves will enable the 

 The Jacquard reader to understand the principle of the great inven- 

 Loom. tion of the Jacquard loom — the greatest stride in 



advance that weaving has taken since the very origin 

 of the art. It dates only from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and 

 the discovery must be largely credited to the French Government, which 

 commissioned M. Jacquard, a well-known inventor in the textile industry, to 

 produce an appliance which would enable patterns of any degree of com- 

 plexity to be produced by one single unvarying action on the weaver's part, 

 just as a tune is ground out by turning the handle of a barrel-organ — the old 

 method of weaving patterns being comparable to the way in which a tune 

 is played on the piano, only with the drawback that a single wrong note, 

 that is to say, a single thread going where it ought not, meant the irre- 

 trievable defacement of the pattern. The Jacquard invention consists 

 simply of a number of perforated cards which are pressed in succession, by 

 the action of throwing the shuttle, against a number of points of wires con- 

 trolling the raising or depressing of the threads of the warp. The perfora- 

 tions are different in each card, and in these perforations and the proper 

 succession of them, the pattern is contained, as a tune is contained in the 

 arrangement of spikes on the cylinder of a musical box. Wherever a wire 



