Shawl

“ Nunky was as pleased dressing me as though she had been dressing a doll. I had yellow stockings and satin shoes too, and Cousin Delia had given me a coloured Spanish shawl, which belonged to Mary Geraldine. It was a beautiful shawl. The colours were a little faded, but still brilliant. It had a creamy background and a quaint intricate pattern of bright flowers upon it; red and pink flowers and bright green leaves. ”

“ The wrong side of the shawl is uppermost—and not even such a wrong side as we see, which gives some notion of the pattern on the other. Previous to cutting, the wrong side of a shawl is a loose surface of floating threads of all colors; of the threads, in fact, which are thrown out of the pattern, and destined to be cut away and given to the papermakers to make coarse gray paper. One pities the weaver, who sits all day long throwing the shuttle, while the boy at the end of his loom pulls the cords which make the pattern, and throw up nothing but refuse to the eye. ”

“ Eustace Bright compared it to a huge, headless Sphinx, wrapped in a Persian shawl; and, indeed, so rich and diversified was the autumnal foliage of its woods, that the simile of the shawl was by no means too high-coloured for the reality. In the lower ground, between Tanglewood and the lake, the clumps of trees and borders of woodland were chiefly golden-leaved or dusky brown, as having suffered more from frost than the foliage on the hill-sides. ”

“ The tartan was of just such a pattern as one may see on scores of shoulders about the Cowgate on a Sunday afternoon. I seemed to see the whole shawl in that shred—a little square thing, folded across, and just big enough to cover the shoulders. By mentally picturing the shawl on a woman’s shoulders, and gauging her height by that treacherous nail, I could guess her to be a person rather under than above medium height, and immediately began to ask myself which of my “bairns” given to “snow-dropping” had been lately displaying such a grand shawl. Useless! ”

“ It was in the height of the horse distemper, and his own valuable beast stood in the stall, looking very interesting, with his legs in red flannel bandages, an old shawl round his neck, his body well covered by blankets, and a pensive expression in his fine eyes as he coughed and groaned distressfully. ”

“ Colonel Gardner’s Begam said to me one day, at Khāsgunge, “Look at these shawls, how beautiful they are! If you wish to judge of an Indian shawl, shut your eyes and feel it; the touch is the test of a good one. Such shawls as these are not made at the present day in Cashmir; the English have spoiled the market. The shawls made now are very handsome, but so thick and heavy, they are only fit for carpets, not for ladies’ attire.”
26th.—The Nawāb Hakīm Menhdī called, bringing with him his son, a man about forty years of age, called “The General.” ”

“ The farmer’s daughter buys a white cotton shawl, with a gay border, for her wedding; and it washes and dyes until, having wrapped all her babies in turn, it is finally dyed black to signalize her widowhood. The maiden aunt, growing elderly, takes to wearing a shawl in the house in mid-winter; and the granny would no more think of going without it at any season than without her cap. When son or grandson comes home from travel, far or near, his present is a new shawl, which she puts on with deep consideration, parting with the old one with a sigh. ”

“ Instead of a bonnet, all women here, ladies and commonalty, wear a muslin shawl, which is pinned on the top of the head, and descends down behind to the waist: it is most pleasing and graceful. They are, besides, often good looking, and have a natural breeding and look of blood about them which seems quite extinct in France. ”

“ They wear their hair in two plaits, which are sometimes coiled into a turban and interlaced with flowers, and at others flows from 198a slight fillet, quite down to the heel. They use no stays; the tide of nature ebbs and flows without constraint. The rich shawl which covers the neck and shoulders, neglects at times its occupation, and the silk stocking forgets now and then that it has taken the veil. ”

“ The bundles of weaving-strings and netting which regulate the pattern, are called “flowers.” From the quantity of labor and skill wrought up in their arrangement, they are very valuable. A pile of them, on a small table, were, as we were assured, worth one thousand pounds. We may regard each as the soul or spirit of the shawl—not creating its material, but animating it with character, personality, and beauty. We have said that it takes a man a week to weave a shawl: but this means a “long” shawl, and not a “square.” The square remain our favorites ”

“ Here we have the usual human substratum. Two gentlemen, wearing rubbers, place themselves in the position represented, while the foremost one holds something in his hands. This is a grey shawl or table-cover, rolled up to represent the elephant's trunk, which the performer swings about to produce a life-like effect. All that now remains to be done is to procure another grey shawl and spread it over the united operators, fastening two pieces of round paper, with black dots on them, in the proper places, for eyes, and a couple of rags or old gloves for ears. ”

“ Shawl, shawl, n. a wrap made of wool, cotton, silk, or hair, used particularly by women as a loose covering for the shoulders: a kind of mantle.—v.t. to wrap in a shawl.—ns. Shawl′-dance, a graceful Oriental dance in which the dancer waves a scarf; Shawl′-matē′rial, a textile of silk and wool, soft and flexible, usually with Oriental designs, employed for dresses and parts of dresses for women; Shawl′-patt′ern, a coloured pattern, supposed to resemble an Eastern shawl, and applied to material of plainer design; Shawl′-pin, a pin used for fastening a shawl ”

“ While the washing and drying, and the dyeing and drying again, are proceeding, the higher labor of preparing the pattern is advancing.
But how much of the lower kind of work can be done during the slow elaboration of the higher? It really requires some patience and fortitude even to witness the mighty task of composing and preparing the pattern of an elaborate shawl. Let the reader study any three square inches of a good shawl border ”

“ The corpse of a man is carried in an open bier, with merely a shawl thrown over the body, through which the form is painfully visible. The body of a woman is carried in a covered bier, over which a shawl is laid; and an upright piece of wood, covered also with a shawl, and decorated with ornaments belonging to the female head-dress, rises from the forepart. ”

“ A proper fire is revealed every time the crude door swings on its creaking hinge to admit another fish to the council of its peers. A little farther along, an old squaw sits crouched on a shawl on a float under the wet pier-head, cleaning, opening and splitting salmon from a loaded kayak. ”

“ One of the mammas poured out from a paper package of assorted candy and small toys about as many pieces as the number of players, making the tempting heap, as nearly as possible, in the middle of the shawl within easy reach of all. After one of the children had been blindfolded, one of the ladies touched an article in the pile in the shawl, in order to point it out plainly to all excepting the one whose eyes were closed. ”

“ A white shawl, called a haik, is thrown over the head and extends to the knees or lower; the legs are encased in very voluminous trousers tied at the ankles, and setting in a way which gives them the appearance of being stuffed full. ”

“ The handsomest printed shawls, meantime, can be had for two pounds, and they will last two years; by the end of which time, probably, the wearer has a mind for something new. The time required for the production answers pretty accurately to these circumstances. It takes a week to weave a shawl of the genuine sort—in the same time, ten or twelve of the tartan or plaid, and twenty or thirty of the printed can be produced. ”

“ Forbes Watson gives among Kashmīr shawls: "Jamewars, or striped shawl pieces"; in the Punjab they are of a striped pattern made both in pashm and wool (Johnstone, Mon. on Wool, 9) , and Mr. Kipling says, "the stripes are broad, of alternate colours, red and blue, &c." (Mukharji, Art Manufactures of India, 374.) ”

“ A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported what the rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong general resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion. ”

“ Avenues, and long walks under hedges, and pasture-fields, and mown meadows where cattle graze, are her delight, especially if there are trees interspersed; because in such spots insects most abound. When a fly is taken a smart snap from her bill is heard, resembling the noise at the shutting of a watch- case; but the motion of the mandibles are too quick for the eye.
The swallow, probably the male bird, is the excubitor to house- martins, and other little birds, announcing the approach of birds of prey. ”

“ Swallows and sparrows not only build their nests on my roof, but even enter my rooms without concern—one swallow has actually built its nest in the ceiling of the bathroom—and the weasel purloins fish under my very eyes without any scruples of conscience. ”

“ A shag (I think the female bird) is sitting on her nest with the young ones, whilst the male stands on a higher ledge of the rock a yard or so away. He now jumps down and stands for a moment with head somewhat erected and beak slightly open. Then he makes the great pompous hop which I have described before, coming down right in front of the female, who raises her head towards him and opens and closes the mandibles several times in the approved manner. ”

“ But there are water-fowl here at any rate, if of a less elusive and more clamorous kind; for the osier beds by the chalk streams are strident by day with the various notes and boisterous antics of the breeding moor-hens, and often melodious by night with the song of the reed-warbler. The willow-wren keeps you company in the pollards, the rare kingfisher loves the chalk stream, and there is nothing in which the corncrake more delights than to grind out his monotonous love notes—for all the world like a gigantic salmon reel—in a water-meadow put up for hay. ”

“ Again, when one first sees a shag throw itself down before another one, and go through a variety of strange gestures to which the latter makes no response—if not by a caress of the bill—it is impossible not to feel sure that the bird thus acting is the male shag, and the other the female. But when one afterwards sees two birds at the nest—male and female beyond a doubt—mutually or alternately performing some portion of these antics, though without the primary prostration, [1] what is one to think then? ”

“ The swallows returned in due time to their nest, the male full of joy, which showed itself in the brightness of his eye, and [Pg 318] in the nervous kind of motion in his flight; the female rather languid, and heavy with the approach of laying. You can imagine their surprise at finding the nest, on which they had bestowed so much care, occupied. The male, moved with indignation and anger, rushed upon the nest to chase away the usurpers, but he found himself face to face with the formidable beak of the sparrow who, at that moment, guarded the stolen property. ”

“ After these young birds were able to take care of themselves they still kept about the house, and were joined by more swallows and martins from the neighbourhood. One bright sunny morning, when not fewer than two or three score of these birds were flying about the house, gaily twittering, I went into the garden to get some fruit. All at once a swallow uttered his loud shrill alarm cry overhead and at the same time darted down at me, almost grazing my hat, then mounting up he continued making swoops, screaming all the time. ”

“ A well-grown young shag now, distinguishable only by its brownness, is fed on the rocks by the old bird. The manner of it is just the same as when on the nest. It flaps its wings the whole time it is being fed, as young rooks do, and the parent at last shakes it off and flies down into the sea. I cannot follow these shags for any distance under the water. They seem to strike deep from the moment they plunge, and the way they plunge, indeed, suggests this; but guillemots often swim for a long time, not far below the surface. Contradicted again! to my very face, by some shags in the pool here. ”

“ So science leagues itself with death, and the museums roar, one against another, "Kill!"
A young shag, now, to take these unpleasant reflections out of my mind, is being fed by one of the parents on a great slab of rock, which has no nest « 149 » upon it that I can see. Now this young bird is nearly, if not quite, as large as the grown one, and only to be distinguished from it by its unadorned brown plumage and the paleness of the skin where naked. There is no doubt at all, I think, that it must long have been swimming, since I have seen smaller and younger-looking birds doing so. ”

“ Small crows and hundreds of swallows are on eager wing, darting into the smoke and out again, seizing fugitive flies. Scores of insects, in their haste to escape from the fire, jump into the river, and the active fish enjoy a rare feast. ”

“ It is an owl that has been trained by the Graces. It is a bat that loves the morning light. It is the aërial reflection of a dolphin. It is the tender domestication of a trout." That is, no doubt, very poetical, but it would be absolutely useless as a scientific description, and, I must confess, would never have suggested, to me at least, the idea of a swallow. ”