Weaver

“ To watch a weaver at work is to acquire a new respect for Indians. As one sees the crude, home-made appliances, and then watches the yarn climb up, thread by thread, battened down by hand so that the garment will hold water, until the article is finished, artistically designed, and perfectly fitted for its required purpose, he comes to the conclusion that the Hopi weaver, at least, is a skilled artificer. ”

“ There was a tale that once an Indian, whom the weaver had made an enemy, had come there in the night seeking to kill the white man who was so bold as to dwell by himself. The weaver, a man of mighty strength, had overpowered the Indian, had cut the web from his loom and had bound his struggling foe to the great armchair that stood by the fire. Then he had calmly mounted once more to his high bench, had set up his weaving and had toiled busily the whole night through, singing as he worked. ”

“ In captivity one of the weaverbirds, the red-billed weaver, was studied at its nest building and it was found that the strong, intricate, and beautiful weaving of this species actually included knots of several sorts.
TAILORING The tailoring is done by birds of quite another group. They are Old World warblers of several sorts, some in southern Asia and some in Africa. The tailoring consists of sewing the edges of leaves together to form a place for their tiny nests. ”

“ You saw a little fellow taken from school at about the age of eleven and put to hard work at weaving; now you see one of the world's great ornithologists, who had traversed some ten thousand miles of comparative wilderness—an imperishable figure, doing an imperishable deed. I love to think of him as being in the end what he most hated to be in the beginning—a weaver: he wove a vast, original tapestry of the bird-life of the American forest. ”

“ The world was to the weaver all a desert, wherein only one resting-place existed—customer-wark!
The poor weaver’s workshop is a miserable-looking place, and so damp that the walls have a yellow tinge, which also affects the three-paned window, through which the light finds its way with difficulty. The family pig is disposed in the same place,—an unusual mark of squalor and poverty. The weaver tells that his loom now occupies the precise spot on which the tent of Montrose formerly stood ”

“ One variety of weaver, though a pretty little bird, is no great favorite with the African farmers. It is very numerous in the cultivated regions, and does not scruple to help itself to the produce of the gardens. Hence the owners are obliged to keep a close watch if they would secure a fair share of the crops.
Another weaver, the yellow-capped, is remarkable for the extreme neatness and compactness of the nest it builds. The body of the nest is of seed-stems, so closely interwoven that it may be roughly handled, or even kicked about like a football, without being destroyed. ”

“ Stories of the weaving birds, particularly the African weaver, are interesting. It is said that two birds work together, one on the inside of the nest and the other on the outside, passing the grass and twigs in and out, until the home is completed. The children will enjoy, too, stories of weaving in other lands, material for which can be easily obtained. ”

“ His father, a handloom weaver, soon removed to the country, and there combined weaving with agriculture, distilling and smuggling — conditions which no doubt helped to develop in the boy that love of rural pursuits and adventure which was to determine his career. At first he was placed with a tutor and destined for the church, but afterwards he was apprenticed as a weaver. ”

“ In joining a new weaver lay it across the end of the old one, back of a spoke (see Fig. 19) .
The weaver at first should not be drawn too tight, but allowed to go easily, though it must be pressed closely down upon the row beneath it. When about three-quarters of an inch has been woven up the sides, the spokes are drawn gradually closer together by a slight tightening of the weaver, and this should be continued until an inch more has been woven. ”

“ The weaver on the left holds a spool in her hand, evidently a piece of stick with the weft thread wound round it, which she is pushing through with her fingers. The weaver on the right holds a beater-in as shown in the Beni Hasan drawing. The breast beam is held in position by two pegs near the right one of which there is a curved article of indeterminate use.
Fig. 12.—Study of a Bedawin Arab weaving, from a sketch taken in the Forties of last Century, by Frank Goodall, R.A. The original sketch is in Bankfield Museum. The weaver appears to be provided with one heddle and a beater-in. ”

“ In weaving with the draw loom two persons are required—the weaver, who works over the ground treadles, throws the shuttle, beats up the weft, &c.; and the drawboy, who takes the lashes in succession as he draws them down by the bridle, and by pulling out the simples raises the harness and holds it in this position till the weaver has worked as many shots as are required to be given to each draught. ”

“ There are two classes of weavers, the sedentary and the nomadic. The former weave in their houses during the Winter, and in their courtyards during the Summer. The nomads spend the Winter in mud villages, and in the Summer go to the mountains with their flocks and [Pg 27] live in tents made of goat's hair. The manner of life of the sedentary weaver works havoc with her constitution even in her youth ”

“ Like the Weaver Bird, they build regular settlements, suspending their artistically woven cradles in large numbers from the same tree, and very frequently in the immediate vicinity of other species. As with the Weaver Bird, these nests are inhabited from year to year, and repaired every season for the reception of a new family. ”

“ Weavers were a universally popular element of the community. The travelling weaver was, like all other itinerant tradesmen of the day, a welcome newsmonger; and the weaver who took in weaving was often a stationary gossip, and gathered inquiring groups in his loom-room; even children loved to go to his door to beg for bits of colored yarn—thrums—which they used in their play, and also tightly braided to wear as shoestrings, hair-laces, etc.
The hand-loom used in the colonies, and occasionally still run in country towns to-day, is an historic machine, one of great antiquity and dignity. ”

“ The frame for the weaver is a simple wooden one, which stands upright in a corner of the house, where the women work at it when they have the cotton spun, by twisting it suspended from the hand to a ball, the thread being wound on a slight stick; both spinning and weaving appear to us very slow work, but time is never considered by the Indian ”

“ When she looked down into the well she saw the face of the princess reflected. She said, "Well now, isn't it a great shame that I, such a beautiful girl, should be living with an old weaver!" and with that she dashed down the pitcher and walked away. By-and-by the weaver's wife wondered why the daughter did not come in; so she went out with another vessel. When she looked into the well she wondered how it could be that such a beautiful woman as her should be the wife of a weaver, and down she dashed her vessel and went off. ”

“ She lived in a world of men, lean, wide-shouldered fellows, who moved and had their being in conditions that made hickory withes of them physically, hard close-mouthed citizens mentally. But even by the frontier tests of efficiency, of gameness, of going the limit, Weaver stood head and shoulders above his neighbors. She had lifted her gaze to meet his, quite sure that her answer was not in doubt, but now her heart was beating like a triphammer. ”

“ Some of the weavers, which inhabit Africa, Malayana and Australia, are "communal" nest-builders. They build colonies of nests, close together. Imagine twenty-five or more Baltimore orioles massing their nests together on one side of a single tree, in a genuine village. That is the habit of some of the weaver birds;—and this brings us to what is called the most wonderful of all manifestations of house-building intelligence among birds. ”

“ Weaver is an old and well-known Americana, once one of the most popular of its species because of its hardiness and productiveness. It is still listed by many nurserymen and is widely distributed throughout the country but it is now rapidly passing out of cultivation, being superseded by sorts producing larger and better colored fruits.
This variety was found growing wild on the Cedar River, in Iowa, by a Mr. Weaver. In 1873, Ennis and Patten, Charles City, Iowa, began its sale to fruit-growers. ”

“ It left him feeling a little off-balance, like a man who has hurled himself at his enemy and found him suddenly not there. This reminded him of ju-jitsu, and this in turn of the ancient Japanese—to whom, indeed, his Terranovans seemed to have many resemblances. Weaver's uneasiness increased. Savage peoples were notoriously devious—they smiled and then thrust knives between your ribs. ”

“ The power of the woman was upon him; meek and dazed as a tired babe he lay upon the twisted withies; he heard the sound of the twigs as she twisted them in and out in her weaving. He could neither move nor speak; he wondered dreamily whether he lay in a trance or swoon, or whether this was death, and thus the problem of his vanishing was solved without effort of his own. He felt either the light cold touch of her finger tip or the touch of a willow withy between his brows. Suddenly, how and when he did not know, he saw that other country of which the Willow-weaver spake ”

“ To make the weft, the weaver threw a shuttle between them, from one hand to the other. Since one loom could provide work for about six spinners, he had his wool spun by other spinners in their cottages. Sometimes the master weaver had an apprentice or workman working and living with him, who had free board and lodging and an annual wage. Then a fuller made the cloth thick and dense by washing, soaping, beating, and agitating it, with the use of a community watermill which could be used by anyone for a fixed payment. The cloth dried through the night on a rack outside the cottage. ”

“ As the work progressed the web was rolled up gradually toward the weaver, and the pattern, if there was one, lay under the warp and was rolled up on a separate roller. Every skilled weaver had a number of simple patterns in his head, as a knitter has, but for a tapestry picture a pattern was drawn and colored on parchment ruled in squares, and a duplicate pattern made without the color, showing all the arrangement of the threads and used in “gating” as the arrangement of the warp in the beginning was [204] called. Every weaver had his own way of gating, and his own little tricks of weaving. ”

“ This is the heavy thwacking sound heard in hand-weaving. [221]
On the accurate poise of the batten depends largely the evenness of the completed woof. If the material is heavy, the batten should be swung high, thus having a good sweep and much force in its blow. The batten should be so poised as to swing back itself into place after each blow.
The weaver, with foot on treadle, sits on a narrow, high bench, which is fastened from post to post of the loom. James Maxwell, the weaver-poet, wrote under his portrait in his Weaver's Meditations, printed in 1756:—
"Lo! ”

“ Like other Finches, the Weaver Birds are extremely social, living, as we have said, in large settlements during the period of incubation, and flying over the country in company with thousands of their feathered brethren during the remainder of the year. ”

“ The weaver then fixes it in the loom, and procures the “weft” thread, which is spun differently from the warp, and is wound upon wooden bobbins; having wetted these in water, he fixes one in his shuttle, and the threads of the warp being lifted alternately, and the shuttle shot between them, the beam of the loom strikes each thread home, and in due time the piece is woven. A good weaver with a sound warp can weave in a hand-loom from six to nine yards of cloth in a day, but with the new power-loom he can weave twenty. ”

“ One of the great difficulties of the weaver is the shading off or gradation of the colours, which is rendered more difficult by the design being reproduced on the wrong side from the position of the weaver. Hatching and stippling are resorted to in order to prevent a harsh or mosaic-like appearance, and it is here that the great skill and artistic knowledge of the weaver are most required. ”

“ They do not build nests, as other birds, but actually weave them, in a most ingenious manner.
You are not to suppose that there is but one species of weaver-bird—one kind alone that forms these curious nests. In Africa—which is the principal home of these birds—there are many different kinds, forming different genera, whose hard names I shall not trouble you with. ”

“ This cicerone of Philiphaugh is a very singular-looking man, and well merits the little attention which you may feel disposed to pay him. He is what is called a country weaver—that is, a person who converts into cloth the thread and yarn spun by the industrious female peasantry of his neighbourhood. It is not perhaps generally known—at least among our southern neighbours—that the common people of Scotland in general manufacture their own clothes, and that from the first carding of the wool to the induing of the garment. The assistance of the weaver and the dyer is indeed required ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that weaver-birds are only found in Africa and the Old World, as stated in the works of many naturalists. In tropical America, birds of this character are found in many species of the genera Cassicus and Icterus, who weave pensile nests of a similar kind upon the trees of the Amazon and Orinoco. But the true weaver-birds—that is to say, those which are considered the type of the class,—are those of the genus Ploceus; and it was a species of this genus that had hung their pendulous habitations upon the weeping-willow. ”

“ When the weaver wishes the diagonal ridges to run upwards from right to left, she opens the sheds in regular order from below upwards thus: First, second, third, fourth, first, second, third, fourth, &c. When she wishes the ridges to trend in the contrary direction she opens the sheds in the inverse order. ”