PARTLY work and partly play
You must on St. Distaff’s Day:
From the plough soon free your team;
Then come home and fother them;
If the maids a-spinning go,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the maids bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff all the right;
Then bid Christmas sport good night,
And next morrow every one
To his own vocation.
Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
Today is January 7th, known to many fiber artist communities around the world as Saint Distaff’s Day. It falls on the Catholic ecclesiastical calendar the day after the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the end of the 12 days of Christmas. In much of Medieval Europe, the twelve days following Christmas were intended to be a time of celebration and spiritual reflection during which the typical work of the rest of the year was put aside in favor of religious observances and revelry. On the first Monday after the Epiphany, jokingly nicknamed Plough Monday, people returned to work. For women, whose work was often symbolized by the spinning distaff, that day was January 7th.
As with so much of women’s history and textile history, we have very little information on Distaff day: the exact places where it was celebrated, the classes of people who celebrated it, the seriousness of the description in Robert Herrick’s 1648 poem ‘Saint Distaff’s Day’ which is the only widely known pre-modern source in which the holiday is mentioned. The general consensus is that St. Distaff’s Day and Plough Monday were joking companions to the ecclesiastical calendar, naming the end of the Church festivities and the reassumption of the usual labor of everyday life. It is also hard to imagine medieval women putting down their spindles for twelve days: for women of all social classes, the work of textile making was constant and unending. Ptolomy of Lucca (c. 1236-1327) wrote that even Charlamange was said to have “mandated that his daughters take up the distaff and spindle and be industrious with them.”
At its most basic, the distaff is a stick onto which combed or carded unspun fiber is wound for ease of drafting small amounts of fiber into the twist of a drop spindle or spinning wheel. If you have ever tried spinning, you know how necessary it is to keep the fiber raised and separate from the twist of the yarn. It gets tangled, sticks together, and requires the spinner to stop and undo the most recent ply. Without a distaff, a spinner can only hold a small amount of the fiber in one hand to draft. When mounted on a distaff, a spinner can carry a day’s worth of unspun material balanced securely above her shoulder.
The distaff as a symbol of women’s industry in Europe can be found throughout pre-modern history to the beginning of the early-modern age. In the 12th Century, Gerald of Wales wrote (rather disparagingly) of Feast Day customs not sanctioned by the Church in which young men and women performed circle dances in cemeteries, miming the work of daily life. While scandalizing to the Priest, the association between plough work and spinning work mirrors that in the Saint Distaff’s day poem. Gerald wrote of the dancers:
“ You might see this one put his hand to the plough; another as if goading oxen…. You might see this one imitate a cobbler, that one, a tanner; or a girl, as if she were carrying a distaff, now pulling out the thread at length with her hands and arms, and then, when it is out, winding it back on to the spindle. One, as she walks, seems to work fibre on the loom; another sits as if all is ready and tosses a shuttle from side to side, from hand to hand, and with flourishes and rhythm she seems to weave.”
As with most feminine symbols in the European Middle Ages, the image of the distaff was complicated. At the same time that it was a symbol of piety and industriousness for wealthier women (such as Portrait of A Lady With Spindle and Distaff) it was used to indicate sexual licentiousness and feminine aggression. Images abound in early Medieval marginalia of women beating men with their distaffs and late Medieval to early Modern illustrations feature working class women pulling fiber seductively from its pile. Israhel van Heckenem’s late 15th-early 16th century painting, The Fish to the Spinner, shows a solicitous young man with his dagger placed suggestively between his legs watching a woman engaged in spinning. The primary reason for this disparity is that wealthy women generally spun out of piety, charity, or to showcase accomplishment while the working class and poor women spun for subsistence and income. Women who sold their labor tended to be associated with sex workers, especially those who worked outside of the home such as those who worked in communal spinning rooms.
When men were associated with the distaff, it was generally as a form of humiliation. In Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 1532 painting, Hercules and Omphale, the Greek hero Hercules is depicted being dressed in women’s clothing and set to work with a spindle in his right hand pulling from a distaff at his left as the women dress him in a whimple, gown, and jewelry. Despite the image showing amusement and joy on the faces of Hercules and the women, the painting would have been understood to represent a punishment. In the myth, Hercules spent a year enslaved to the princess Omphale as penance for the accidental murder of an Oechalian prince. Among his penitential duties was spinning, a woman’s task meant to humble him. The distaff as a symbol of male degradation continued into the early modern era, when, in 1792, French revolutionary Jean-Baptiste Louvet complained that his more radical colleague Robespierre was too popular among women, stating: “the French Revolution is a religion and Robespierre is making it into a cult; he is a priest who has his devotees; but it is evident that all of his power lies in the distaff (quenouille).”
Hans Cranach Hercules at the Court of Omphale 1537 Oil on panel. 57.5 x 85.3 cm Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Of course, the concept of the gendered industry is as complicated as gender itself. Men and women alike have both engaged in the making of textiles throughout history in Europe as well as the wider world. Most notably, the idiom ‘to spin a yarn’ (meaning to tell a long and often fanciful story) is thought to come from sailors whose long voyages required them to spin, weave, sew, and mend everything from clothing to nets and sails. Saint Distaff may never have existed, but her daughters and sons still spin and tell each other stories. Distaff Day has become a celebration of exactly that for fiber communities, guilds, and artists around the world. On January 12th, the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Association will be hosting a virtual Distaff Day celebration. Hand spinners and curious non-spinners of all levels of experience are welcome to join. Sign up below and have a very Happy Saint Distaff’s day!
Sign Up for the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Association’s Distaff Day
REFERENCES:
VAN THIEL, PIETER J.J. “On ‘AEN.’” The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 58, no. 2 (2010): 110–17.
Shusterman, Noah C. “ALL OF HIS POWER LIES IN THE DISTAFF: ROBESPIERRE, WOMEN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.” Past & Present, no. 223 (2014): 129–60.
Owen-Crocker, Gale R. “Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles.” In Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15, edited by MONICA L. WRIGHT, ROBIN NETHERTON, and GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER, NED-New edition., 1–32. Boydell & Brewer, 2019.
Caciola, Nancy. “Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture.” Past & Present, no. 152 (1996): 3–45.
HEATH, JOHN. “Women’s Work: Female Transmission of Mythical Narrative.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 141, no. 1 (2011): 69–104.
Grewe, Cordula. “Shaping Reality through the Fictive: Images of Women Spinning in the Northern Renaissance.” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review 19, no. 1/2 (1992): 6–19.