The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1916-01-07
BACK TO YOUR SPINNING,
GIRLS, FOR THIS IS
ST. DISTAFFS DAY

Well, girls, you have had a merry
Christmas and Happy New Year,
and a glorious Twelfth-Night, and
now it is St. Distaffs Day again, and
you must needs return to your spin
ming wheel, which has been neglected
during the holiday season.
It was in language to this general
effect that the paterfamilias of the
eighteenth and earlier centuries ad-
dressed his daughters on the morning
of the seventh of January. The pres
ent-day father of a feminine family,
if he INDUCED in such an admonition
this morning would be greeted with
what we moderns call the merry ha-
ha," if. indeed, his commissioning
daughters did not tap their foreheads
and say, Nobody home!"
Truth to tell, there never was any
st. Distah, but his festival was a stern
reality, and the seventh of January
was a doleful day for our feminine an-
cestors. The. return to the distaff-
but hold, for the twentieth century
young person, who, if she tolls. GER
calmly does not spin anything N..t
webs for the reluctant feet of mar
riagea Bile young men, probably doesn't
know what a distam if.
The writer of these lines has the
honor of the acquaintance of very
old woman-so old that she looks as
if She wouldn't have much trouble in
tracing her genealogy directly back to
Adam and Eve-who owns spinning
wheel, and knows how to use it. Not
many people have hat great good for
tune, however, and so it may be ex-i
planned that a distaff is the staff of a
spinning-wheel, to which punch of
flax or tow is tied, and from which
the thread is drawn.
To continue, the return to the dis
taft, although made the occasion Tor
much ribald mirth on the part of the
men-folk who viewed the proceedings
with hi1arity and often enlfvened them
by setting dre to the fax, was not a
particularly joyous festival for the
maidens. After the merriment of the
holiday season. with it's innocent fun
and freedom from work, the girls of
olden times were just about as enthu-
siastic about the spinning-wheel as
the youngsters of to-day are about
their books when school opens after
a holiday.
In the sgood old times spinning
was the occupation of nearly all wo-
men, of whatever degree. When the
housewife was through with her more
urgent duties she did not take up a
novel, but instead made her idle mo-
ments productive by recourse to the
dfstaff. The lady carried her distaff in
her girdle and her spindle in her
hand when she called on a friend. So
universal was this occupation that
''distaff'' became a synonym for wo-
man, ana the QlSIaH S1Qe became
a legal term in distinguishing the
inheritance of male and female chill
dren.
The ancient monuments of Egypt
show that the distaff and spindle were
the insignia of womanhood. Since
mankind first donned clothes the art
of spinning has been practiced by wo-
men, and it has remained for modern
invention to relieve the sex of that
universal burden. The fair spinners
of to-day are factory girls who labor
at machines invented and built by
men. The primitive art of spinning,
which has endured through the ages,
is now almost forgotten, and the dis
taft and spindle have been consign-
ed to museums of antiquity. In some
remote parts of Europe and of South
America the spinning wheel is still to
be found in regular operation by fem
mime hands, but for the great masses
of modern wonankind the significance
of st. Distaf's Day has been forgot
ten.