The Distaff

       The first day after the twelve winter holidays used to be known as St. Distaff's Day, for then the women renewed the work that play had so long interrupted. It was still, in real fact, only another holiday, for the men made a point of leaving their own work to set fire to the flax the women were bringing out, and the women, in turn, provided themselves with buckets of cold water to dash over the depredators, and all was good humor.

'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,'

sang Herrick ; by which we may judge the custom to have been tolerably prevalent.

       It is observable that the occupation of the distaff and the spinning-wheel has associated itself with women even to the point of contempt, our first pictured memorials of the race on Egyptian and Hindostanee monuments showing women with the useful toy in hand the toy despised by all men but Achilles and Hercules. "On the side of the spear" was an old legal phraseology to signify a descent in the male line, "on the side of the distaff" to indicate female descent. In the early times, when rapine and all violence were the distinguishing masculine traits or, we may say, employments, honor was held to come only from such work as bloodshed, conquest and plunder; there was none given for the quiet performance of the duties at home; and as women stayed at home pursuing their quiet duties, preparing food and clothes and nursing the wounded, the distaff became disdainfully associated with them. "The Crown of France never falls to the distaff," said the contemptuous French proverb; but it is more than a French proverb that woman's wit cannot overreach, and the distaff has in reality frequently and secretly been the sceptre there, the power behind the throne, making and unmaking the for-tunes of the nation.

       It was not till the fourteenth century that the distaff was superseded by vile spinning wheel, and not till about a hundred years later that the wheel appeared at which the spinner could sit instead of stand; and almost immediately afterward the term spinster in our language was modified so as to be descriptive only of an unmarried woman below the rank of a viscount's daughter, and not of all unmarried women though why unmarried at all is a question we leave for Rosa Dartle; for although the farm-wives of good condition were wont to hire their spinning done by any spinner in need of the work, there was never a farm-wife who did not know how to do it herself.

 What is St. Distaff's Day?