SPINNING IN FAIRY TALES

by K.C. Shaw

or most of us it's easy to forget how important spinning used   to be. Before the Industrial Revolution's mills made cheap cloth available in quantity, most women spun and wove all the cloth their families needed. Spinning wasn't an occasional task, but a constant chore. It's no surprise that so many fairy tales mention spinning, sometimes as the central theme.

These days, however, many people have never even seen a working spinning wheel. A lack of knowledge about spinning can make it hard to interpret some tales, so here is a translation of three common spinning motifs for modern readers.

Sleeping Beauty

The most common question I get as a spinner is "Where did Sleeping Beauty prick her finger?" (In the story, Sleeping Beauty was cursed to prick her finger on a spindle and fall asleep for a hundred years.)

Modern spinning wheels (and by modern, I mean about sixteenth century) don't have a spindle, so we have to look back a bit, to around the 13th century (dates are hard to pin down), and the first spinning wheels. These were simple but elegant machines, consisting of a wheel several feet in diameter and a small spindle (essentially a stick held horizontally), linked together with a drive band.

When the spinner turned the wheel slowly with one hand, the spindle spun very quickly; the spinner released small quantities of wool at a time (called drafting) and let the spindle twist it into thread.

The danger--to Sleeping Beauty and to real-life spinners--is the end of the spindle. It is often made of metal, and after years of wool passing over it daily, the end can be sharpened to a deadly point.

 

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