Songs sung by [textile] Spinners

Subject: Songs sun by Spinners
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 07:24 AM

I am a spinner at a local Renn Fair and would love to hear about songs that traditionally were sung by spinners.

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Noreen
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 07:34 AM

Sorry can't help- I thought this thread was going to be about those famous sons of Liverpool... (no, the other ones...)

Noreen

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: bill\sables
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 07:40 AM

There is tht Jute Mill Song in the Digitrad and of course The Spinning Wheel.
Mellow the moonlight to shine is begining
Close by the windoe young Eileen is spinning
Bent o'er the fire her blind grandmother sitting
Is crooning and moaning and lazily knitting
Bill

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Wolfgang
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 09:04 AM

Dance around the spinning wheel

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: LR Mole
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 09:14 AM

Well, there's all that dervish stuff...

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 09:26 AM

Isn't that whirling LR.....?

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 09:38 AM

Sorry Guest..I didn't mean to be unhelpful...there are quite a few songs about spinning but here in the North West of England the Spinning (cotton) songs are usually based on Mule or Ring spinning becasue it was pioneered here (Arkright spinning jenny etc.) hence the songs would not reflect the kind of spinning you were talking about. They are mostly about the social effects of powered spinning on the workers.

Another source worth investigating would be Wales..(UK) they have a history and tradition of hand spinning wool on treadle spinning wheels.

Spot

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: MMario
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 09:58 AM

there is this french song La laine de moutons - there is a sound file at http://home.worldnet.fr/lasseron/real/laine.rpm

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 10:08 AM

Hi guest

I'm a spinner too (but not at ren fairs). I've got a Joy portable, and a customised traditional style wheel. Also loads of drop-spindles. It's very therapeutic I find. I've never sung & spun at the same time, but thinking about it I imagine it would be very good for the sense of rhythm (there was a toe-tapping thread a while back & I posted that I'd suddenly automatically started to toe-tap & now I'm beginning to wonder whether that was because of the treadling - but I digress).
Anyway - I did pull a load of songs off the database once by searching using spinning & weaving terms. Never got around to learning them yet - but perhaps I'll be inspired now its back at the forefront of the brain.
Best of luck finding some suitable songs - I'll dig out the ones I found & let you know the titles.
Do you make authentic costume from the yarn? Do any dyeing and weaving?

Kris

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 10:24 AM

Presumably, you're looking for songs sung when spinning, rather than songs about spinning or spinners.  Again, presumably, you're talking about solo spinning rather than the industrial variety, so the Belfast, Lancashire and Dundee traditions -for example- won't be much use to you.  Mostly, a spinner would sing any popular song of the day that was rhythmically helpful, though there will have been more specific songs; these seem to turn up more often in non-Anglophone traditions where the industrial revolution came later.

It was suggested in a discussion here some time ago that The Frog in the Well, in its early forms, showed strong signs of having been a song used in spinning.  I have no idea if there's any real foundation for that, but you can see staff notation and text modernised from Thomas Ravenscroft's Melismata of 1611 at Greg Lindahl's  The Music of Thomas Ravenscroft:

The Marriage of the Frogge and the Mouse

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 11:31 AM

Pop goes the weasel was sung by spinners when winding seins of yarn onto a swift. The weasel is a device that is used to tell the spinner when a certain amount of yarn has been wound on. The weasel is a sort of disk shaped piece of wood with a ratchet in it. There is a tab of wood that presses against the edge of the disk, and it snaps when it goes over the edge of the ratchet, making a popping sound. Thus, "pop goes the weasel".

The rest of the song is sung as the yarn is being wound on, and the "pop goes the weasel", part when the weasel snaps on the ratchet.

Carol

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 11:32 AM

That should read "skeins".

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 03:30 PM

Spindle, bobbin and spool away... tomorrow is my holiday.

Can't remember the rest of it, pity, because I love it, it was one of my favourites....

Ho hum

LTS

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: mousethief
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 03:40 PM

When I saw the thread I thought it was about those four guys with the satin suits that recorded for Motown.

I know nothing, alas, about the other kind of spinners.

Alex

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Elise
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 04:09 PM

I have an album called Spin the Weaver's Song by Carla Sciaky. I bought it at the Handweaver's convention a few years ago. Might be available from one of the spinning and knitting vendors. I can't remember the full name, but a place called something Wool Works sometimes carries it.

It's put out by Green Linnet Records, Inc. 43 Beaver Brook Rd. Danbury, CT 06810

It has 30 tracks of songs on shearing, spinning, and weaving. I've learned several of them, and sing as I sit at my wheel. I do a lot of demonstrating, so I seldom get through a whole song!

It's an interesting album, and beautifully sung. I truly reccomend it.

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: MMario
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 04:19 PM

Liz - you're thinking of serving girl's holiday posted in 97

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: nutty
Date: 07 Feb 01 - 01:00 PM

Poverty Knocks is the song that comes into my mind - I'm not sure how traditional it is but the tune is modal

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: nutty
Date: 07 Feb 01 - 01:00 PM

Poverty Knock is the song that comes into my mind - I'm not sure how traditional it is but the tune is modal

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Feb 01 - 03:11 PM

Fine song, but Industrial Era; probably late 19th. century.

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 07 Feb 01 - 03:40 PM

Yup, that'd be the one, I wasn't around here in '97....

LTS

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 07 Feb 01 - 05:54 PM

Ewan McVicar's 'Shift and Spin' is about a spinning-mill as well. Lovely song, though!

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: spinlass
Date: 08 Feb 01 - 07:30 AM

Kris

I spin, dye, weave, knit and crochet...I make my costumes but not from my weaving. I would love to know more about your spinning.

spinlass

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Feb 01 - 09:24 AM

An interesting sidenote... the word "spinster" used to refer to spinners. A long time ago, spinners were pretty much always women. This was work that a woman could do to support herself if she did not marry. Consequently there must have been a high percentage of women who were beyond what was considered "marriagiable age" who were spinners, giving rise to the term "spinster" to refer to an unmarried woman who was beyond marriagable age.

I learned this, and the information in my first post, while I was an apprentice weaver at an historical artisans' village.

Carol

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Snuffy
Date: 08 Feb 01 - 12:57 PM

Putting -st- in a word was one way of forming the feminine of a noun:

Male: spinner, female: spinster
Similarly brewer/brewster, baker/baxter, weaver/webster

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: Elise
Date: 08 Feb 01 - 03:12 PM

It's true, the title of this thread could easily be Songs sung by Spinsters (if the spinners are female). I've always been told that when a woman was particularly good at spinning her family would be reluctant to have her marry, since she was a good source of income. Thus an unmarried woman is a spinster.

Subject: RE: Songs sun by Spinners
From: MMario
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 11:40 AM

a site that might be of interest spinning songs and stories