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More wacky English idioms

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English is a very creative language. It’s so creative the origins of some of our idioms are lost or at least difficult to trace.

‘Skeleton in the closet’ for one. Skeleton is an old word, 16th century at least, from German. It was coined in the UK in the early 1800’s. Skeleton in the closet is used in America; apparently in England it has undergone a change and is now a ‘skeleton in the cupboard’.

How about ‘air your dirty laundry’? Obviously from a time when people hung their laundry out to dry. But when? So far, haven’t found that date. This idiom is one I think of as from a woman’s experience since women have always been charged with doing the wash.

‘Baptism by fire’, another one of my mother’s favorite expressions. First mentioned in the Bible (Matthew 3:11) the OED lists its English use as beginning in 1822, as referencing a soldiers first experience in battle.

‘Pooh’, a more genteel expression than the one we use to day.  This is also from the 16th century, from the Scots, and it has taken on a variety of spellings and connotations.

As one would expect, a lot come from sports or activities related to sports. Having a ‘chip on one’s shoulder’ was actually a popular method of settling quarrels in the nineteenth century. A boy would place a chip on his shoulder and dare his opponent to knock it off. Carrying a ‘chip on one’s shoulder’ comes from the same thing. Really? This is how they settled quarrels?

‘Loaded for bear’, one I use all the time. From the 1880’s and was used to describe a player in a baseball game.  I would have expected it to be from hunting.

Most of the idioms seem to arise from male activities and male interests, but not all. Before it took on a perjorative connotation, spinster was a description of almost every woman; everybody but the richest woman spent significant time spinning for her family.  I commented in an earlier post about the loss of knowledge about weaving words. Coincidence? Well, a year or two ago Archaeology Magazine commented that some digs were now concentrating upon the world of women and slaves. I’ll just bet their view of the world was different from the men!

Our English language – new and old idioms

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English as a language has been around for centuries. We still enjoy Shakespeare’s plays and they’re from the mid-1500s. So it should be easy to write about 1796; we’re all speaking the same language, right?

Well, yes and no. English is a living language and as such keeps changing. Think about all the new terms that have arrived on the heels of the computer revolution. And there are changes in speech patterns too. My mother frequently decried the increasing informality of conversation and the use of nouns as verbs. Just think of ‘texting’ from text. Or “I must netflix that movie.”

Medical terms like ‘mastitis’, an inflammation in the breast, wasn’t used until the mid 1800’s.  And Rex, as a name for a dog. wasn’t used before about 1820. A writer, therefore, has to be careful not to add too many anachronisms to the manuscript. Sometimes, thought, it is necessary just for the sake of clarity.

What I think is surprising is the longevity of some of the idioms we still use. ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ is one common expression. No, it doesn’t mean your mother is going to whip out the iron. It is a blacksmithing expression. Iron was shaped while it was hot and pliable by pounding upon it. If you wanted to create something like a sword from an iron rod, it would need to be heated and pounded, over and over.

How about ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ ? This one is very old. It’s been traced back to Chaucer, although the sentence structure was different and of course the spelling to a modern eye is crazy: sleepyng at least is quickly apparent. By the late eighteen hundreds both spelling and structure were the same as they are now. That’s why we can still easily read a writer like Dickens. Another old term is ‘cracker’, a derogatory term used for southern whites by the British by the 1760’s. What is the origin? Still working on that.

Then there is ‘spinning in his grave?” So evocative. But it is relatively new. The first use I can find is ‘turn in his grave’, by Thackeray in 1848.

The term ‘ne’er do well’ just turned up in a lyric by the band Incubus. It is of course a contraction of ‘never do well’. According to a blog post from the UK, Ne’er has been used in that shortened form since the 13th century, notably in the North of England and in Scotland. ‘Ne’er do well’ itself originated in Scotland and an early citation of it in print is found in the Scottish poet and playwright Allan Ramsay’s A collection of Scots proverbs, 1737.

How about mind your Ps and Qs, one of my mother’s favorite expressions. No one seems to know the origin of this one so I will list a few possibilities:

1. Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practice of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks.

2. Advice to printers’ apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs, or the same advice to children who were learning to write.

3. Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine the need for an expression to warn people to avoid confusing them.

4. Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. It seems doubtful this began as a French expression.

5.  Another version of the ‘advice to children’ origin has it that ‘Ps and Qs’ derives from ‘mind your pleases and thank-yous”. OK, this sounds somewhat plausible.

So no one really knows where this one comes from but it is old enough to have been used in 1795.

Other terms I’m still working on: ‘she rules the roost.” That sounds agricultural and therefore old. How about ‘tar with the same brush.” That sounds like it comes fromt he days of tarring and feathering but I don’t know for sure. Another one I am curious about is ‘heads will roll’. From the days of the French Revolution perhaps. Stay tuned and when I find the origins I will report.

Dyes and Dyeing in Peru

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The cochineal beetle is a native of Peru. When one visits the Highlands, all the prickly pear cacti are covered with a grayish bloom. That gray, that looks like fungus, is actually colonies of these beetles.

Crushing a beetle results in a deep red color, the insect’s blood, and this blood when mordanted creates a beautiful and intense red. Think the Pope’s robes. Until the invention of the aniline dyes, this color was the standard for red. (Madder was also used but the color was not always as intense.) The Spanish kept a tight grip on this dye for several centuries.

But the Peruvian Highlands are home to many other wonderful natural dyes as well.

Although green was difficult to obtain in Europe and Early America, the Peruvians used the leaves of a plant called Chilka (Baccharis caespitosa (family: Asteraceae).

Kiko flowers result in yellow and nogal (or walnut) in dark brown or black.

One natural dye they did not grow themselves was indigo, for the bright blues. Indigo was available but it was expensive.

Other plants surrendered their roots, leaves, berries and fruits to make dyes. One lichen, called Qaqasunkha (family Usneaceae) comes with a caution. Although natural dyes tend to be less toxic (but not always) and better for the environment, gathering large amounts of lichen could actually be detrimental to the environment. So here is another example of the dangers of making a general statement about using only natural dyes.

Communes – and the Shakers

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The communal style of living which is now so much a part of our picture of the Shakers was actually not a part of their beliefs. When they moved to the Colonies, however, relocating around Albany, financial stresses compelled them to living in a communal setting

f you have begun thinking of tie-dye, put it out of your mind.

Their belief in the dual nature of God; a masculine half and a feminine half, led directly to the equality between the sexes. However, the celibacy that marked them from most of the other new faiths sprang directly from Ann Lee and her experiences in childbirth. She believed that all sin came from the sexual act between Adam and Eve and that only by overcoming fleshly desires could true salvation be attained. The sexes therefore were separated, living on separate sides of the Dwelling House. Personal property was abolished as well, all the property being held communally. New converts brought with them and gave to the order all of their worldly possessions. Even though they accepted anybody, including those who were penniless, the Church became quite wealthy.  Of course when the economy in the United States shifted from farming and handcrafts to factories, the Shakers couldn’t compete and their numbers began to dwindle. Celibacy was part of the problem. Once there were governmental agencies that cared for the poor and for the abandoned children and the number of converts declined, the number of Shakers diminished rapidly.

The Millenium Church, as they named themselves, was not a democracy. All decisions came from the top down. Obedience was a strict requirement.

However, they remain once of the most successful ‘communes’ ever established.

Communes – and the Shakers

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The communal style of living which is now so much a part of our picture of the Shakers was actually not a part of their beliefs. When they moved to the Colonies, however, relocating around Albany, financial stresses compelled them to living in a communal setting

f you have begun thinking of tie-dye, put it out of your mind.

Their belief in the dual nature of God; a masculine half and a feminine half, led directly to the equality between the sexes. However, the celibacy that marked them from most of the other new faiths sprang directly from Ann Lee and her experiences in childbirth. She believed that all sin came from the sexual act between Adam and Eve and that only by overcoming fleshly desires could true salvation be attained. The sexes therefore were separated, living on separate sides of the Dwelling House. Personal property was abolished as well, all the property being held communally. New converts brought with them and gave to the order all of their worldly possessions. Even though they accepted anybody, including those who were penniless, the Church became quite wealthy.  Of course when the economy in the United States shifted from farming and handcrafts to factories, the Shakers couldn’t compete and their numbers began to dwindle. Celibacy was part of the problem. Once there were governmental agencies that cared for the poor and for the abandoned children and the number of converts declined, the number of Shakers diminished rapidly.

The Millenium Church, as they named themselves, was not a democracy. All decisions came from the top down. Obedience was a strict requirement.

However, they remain once of the most successful ‘communes’ ever established.

To dye for – Red

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Madder (rubia tinctorum) has been used for centuries as a red dye. It is well known as the dye for Turkey Red or, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the red coats for the British during the eighteenth century. Wild madder yields a subtler pinky brown. Unlike many natural dyes, madder contains natural mordanting agents and does not need to be mixed with iron or tin or other materials.

When Spain entered the New World, another source of red dye became available to Europe; cochineal. ((Cochineal was already known to and used by the Aztecs and the Maya people as well as the Incas and pre-Incas in Peru.) Insects similar to small beetles live on the cactus found at the higher altitudes in countries such as Peru. A visitor to Peru will see this grayish bloom on the cacti growing wild in the Sacred Valley. It looks like some form of fungi but is actually an insect colony. Cochineal is  the blood of the female of this species and dyes vibrant red, pink and purple. I have read that the Pope’s robes were dyed with cochineal. Without a proper mordant, cochineal is not colorfast.

Spain held a monopoly on cochineal for years, making the bright scarlet very much sought after and very expensive. It was the color of the rich and paintings from this era contain frequent splashes of red clothing, wherein the subjects demonstrate their wealth and high status. Similar to the use of Tyrian purple in earlier times. This dye was discovered in antiquity and traded by the Phoenicians. It is made from the shells of the common Mediterrean Sea Snail. It was both rare and expensive (the Phoenicians held on to their monopoly for years) and became the color of royalty. It has never been produced synthetically commercially. Efforts to transport the insects to Europe failed. They were transported successfully to Australia where they caused a whole new raft of problems.

Cochineal is still used as a dye and appears in both candy and lipstick. Think of that every time you put something red on or in your mouth.

To Dye For – The problem with green and Napoleon’s death

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Green is just about the most common color in nature so finding a great green dye should be easy, right? Well, despite the fact that green leaves and plants are all around us, a beautiful green is hard to find.

Many plants yield a light celery green or yellow green with the proper mordant. (A mordant makes the dye stick to the fabric. Otherwise the dye would wash right out.) Lily of the Valley and hydrangea both give a celery green dye. But Lily of the valley is highly poisoness; roots, leaves and flowers. Queen Anne’s lace gives a pale green and foxglove an apple green. The colors are not the vibrant shades we expect. In Peru the women use leaves that they gather in the forest from the chilla (spelling?) plant. When mordanted with copper carbonate it produces a sage green, sometimes light and sometimes dark.

A word about mordants. Iron, copper, alum, lye, tin, mercury urine; just about every substnace imaginable has been used as a mordant. In the middle ages the men who dyed hats used mercury, a very poisoness heavy metal. The Mad Hatter from “Alice in Wonderland” wasn’t just a creation of Carroll’s imagination.

The other problem with natural dyes is consistency. It is difficult to use plants and achieve the same result time after time. Dyers quickly learned to cultivate dye plants as an aid to controlling the brightness of the colors. Even then, dye plants dyed in a wide range of hues. Madder, which dyed the British red coats red, dyes bright red unless it dyes pink. It is very difficult to achieve the same color over and over.

Which brings us to green. A bright emerald green was not developed until 1778. It was created by a Swedish chemist named Karl Scheele and contained arsenic. Green was a popular color for wallpaper then. (George Washington himself took time from his busy political life to plan two green rooms at Mount Vernon.) Many many people fell ill. The cause was frequently misdiagnosed since the symptoms were general and came on gradually. One theory is that arsenic may have been made into a gas by the mold living in the wallpaper paste in damp rooms. (Mmm, this sounds safe.) This dye was even used for candy for children. In 1875 the ‘Lancet’, a British medical journal, spearheaded a campaign to abolish the arsenic greens. By then the aniline dyes were being created from coal tars. These dyes created vibrant colors that were much more colorfast.

So what does this have to do with Napoleon? When imprisoned on the island of Elba, he spent much of his time in a room with the fashionable green wallpaper. When his hair was tested in modern times, it revealed a high level of arsenic. At first, it was theorized he’d been poisoned.  A more recent competing theory suggested he’d been poisoned all right, by the arsenic in his wallpaper.

Natural is not always safer and while I wouldn’t use cooking utensils for my dyestuffs at least I am assured that none of them contain arsenic.

To Dye for – Indigo

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Indigo is probably the most familiar dye in the world and has a long history of use. It is thought that India was the first place indigo dyeing began use of the dye quickly spread. From the Tuaregs in the Sahara to Cameroon, clothing dyed with indigo signified wealth.

In the United States, of course, indigo gave the characteristic blue to denim (although most of the dye now used is synthetic.) Woad also yields a blue dye (yes, the same woad used by the Celts) but it is not usually as deep a blue.  Asian indigo, Indigofera sumitrana, yields true indigo.

Indigo is not water soluable and so has to be treated to make it useable. One of the pre-industrial processes  was  soaking it in stale urine. Many accounts do not mention this particular fact but the pungency of the process is regularly described. The result is known as indigo white. Fabric dyed in the indigo white turns blue with oxidation. Indigo is also toxic so there is plenty of opportunity for indigo workers t become sick. And despite the processing, indigo fades slowly over time.

I saw items dyes with indigo in the highlands of Peru. The hanks of wool were all different colors from a light royal blue to such a deep blue it was almost navy.

During the Colonial period, there were indigo plantations in South Carolina. Three harvests, the last in early December, was the goal and contemporary accounts describe both the pungency of the smell and the toll the harvests took upon the slaves. Indigo was synthesized in the late 1890’s and within twenty years or so had almost completely replaced the natural substance.

Weaving Words

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Until the Industrial Revolution weaving, and the words associated with the equipment and materials, was probably as familiar to most people as the words we now use to describe our cars.Now most of the terms sound like a foreign language unless, of course, you are a hand weaver who loves the craft and still weaves in the traditional European manner. I clarify with European because a different style of weaving, still practiced in Peru and other such countries, employs the backstrap loom. Instead of a beam, the warp goes around the weaver’s back. Using memorized patterns, their fingers pick up the threads and press the weft through. (It is truly amazing to see their fingers blur as they pluck the threads, similar to watching a good guitar picker.)

However, the ‘weaver’s cross’ is still obvious and as my weaving teacher once told me there is no weaving without the cross.

Anyway, I would venture to guess that most people know maybe three or four words that pertain to weaving : warp, weft, shuttle and loom. I would also bet that there is some confusion in most people’s minds between warp and weft. (Just so we’re clear, warp is the the skeleton of fibers that runs from beam to beam in a loom. The weft is the fiber sent crossways through the warp on the shuttle.)  The loom, on the other hand, is not a static piece of equipment but has many pieces that work together to take two strands of fiber and make them into finished cloth.

A loom can be warped back to front or front to back so, depending upon the method, the steps would be slightly different. But the basic process is the same.

The warp is wound upon a warping board, a board or free standing rack with pegs. Ties are put at each end of the cross and then at each end of the warp at about one yard intervals. These ties are called choke ties; these are released once the warp is put on the loom. Long thin sticks called lease sticks are inserted on either side of the cross to hold it while the warp is wound around the rear apron rod. The warp is spread and the fibers are brought forward and threaded through the heddles. These are slim metal pieces that hang down from on rod on the castle. Each heddle has an eye and each thread must be pulled through a heddle. Then the strands are pulled through another piece that slips into the loom, a piece that resembles a comb although closed on both sides, and is called a reed. This step is called sleying the reed, I am not sure why. The reeds have slits of varying thicknesses depending upon thickness of the threads: cotton, linen, wool or silk, that is drawn through them and how closely woven you want the cloth to be.  Each handful of finished strands are knotted loosely to keep them tidy. When all the warp is finished, it is tied to the front beam.

Confused yet? Every loom has a certain number of  shafts from 2 on up. The more sheds, the more complicated a pattern can be woven. What is a shed you ask? The framework that holds the heddles. The space between the upper and lower warp is call a shaft and it is through this space that a shuttle goes. The treadles, foot pedals on the floor, are attached to the bar that connects these shafts. Stepping on the treadles raises and lowers different shafts, different warp threads in other words, and it is this interaction that creates a pattern.

At its most basic, stepping on a treadle lifts a certain number of threads. The shuttle with the weft thread passes through to the other side. Then you push a piece of the framework called the beater that pushes the weft tight. Step on another treadle, lift another set of threads, and pass the shuttle back to the first side.

Problems can arise at any point. Your warp threads can break. The tension of your warp may not be even. You may have missed threading a strand through a heddle or the reed.

Sounds complicated doesn’t it? And it is. Another quote from my weaving teacher: weaving is a process of constant problem solving. Although looms are now mechanized, this basic design: the cross, the sheds, the shuttle has not changed. The big difference is that a hand weaver, such as Rees, would use his feet to raise and lower the sheds and it would take him a lot longer to finish several yards of cloth.

A traveling weaver, such as Rees, would have to reassemble his loom at every stop, make a warp and put it on the loom, thread the heddles and so on before he even began weaving. Then the loom would have to be disassembled at the end of his job. No wonder weavers were considered skilled craftsmen and completed an apprenticeship of several years.

As complex and labor intensive as this process seems, a weaver was still able to keep 9 to 11 spinners busy.

The wooly facts

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So, my last post concerned flax and linen. I forgot to mention that flax was also grown for its seed. The seeds produce an oil. I’ve never heard of that, you say. But you have, under the name linseed oil. Linseed oil has a long history of human use, right down to cleaning artists’s brushes.

The fibers for wool are shorter than for linen but still has to be aligned the same way. Usually that was done by carding. Some of the prints from this period show very little girls carding wool. The carded wool was then spun into yarn.

Linen was actually more commonly worn than wool; sheep were expensive and many households didn’t own the equipment with which to process the wool. Also, handling the flax and  the sheared wool took time and skill.

But what about cotton, you ask? Cotton, because of the seeds which need to be picked out of the cotton boll, is very labor intensive as well. Unlike linen and wool, it requires a hot climate. It is also a ‘heavy feeder’, and rapidly sucks the nutrients from the soil. So cotton was not commonly worn, especially by the middle and lower classes. Lawn, a very finely woven cotton, was a fashionable fabric during the Regency period and as expensive as silk. It was not until Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin that cotton became more economically feasible to produce. Because of the gin’s impact not only on cloth production but also on slavery (many many slaves were now required to grow cotton), I think a case could be made that the gin changed the world.

Cloth was consequently very valuable. Every piece of clothing was worn, by the average person anyway, until it was literally rags and then those scraps were used for other things like pieced quilts. The wealthy could purchase many changes of clothing and unlike today, when it is frequently difficult to tell who is wealthy and who is not by looking at them, in earlier times someone’s wealth and status was immediately apparent. Maybe that is why some people know crave the designer labels; it speaks to the trappings of wealth and status? What do you think?