Flax goes through a long process before it becomes the lovely fabric we call linen. The production process has a vocabulary all if its own to describe what takes place at each stage.
Flax seeds are planted and it takes about one hundred days before they are ready to harvest. The plant is ready to harvest once it has flowered and begun to turn brown.
The flax is then "retted". This means that it is put in water and left to rot before it is taken out and dried. During the retting process the flax fibres begin to separate themselves from the woody stem.
The flax is "beetled" in the next stage. Beetling consists of beating the flax with a wooden mallet to loosen and separate the fibres.
Once the flax has been beetled, it is then "scutched". It is beaten again, this time with a long wooden blade. At this stage any pieces of woody stem that remain on the fibres are removed. The person who carried out the scutching was called a "hackler".
The spinner
A spinner seperates flax fibres which will be spun into thread before being used to woven into linen.
Granard - Its History, Our HeritageThe spinner
Granard - Its History, Our Heritage
Granard - Its History, Our Heritage
The spinner
A spinner seperates flax fibres which will be spun into thread before being used to woven into linen.
Granard - Its History, Our HeritageThe scutched fibres were sorted and then spun on a spinning wheel. After spinning the flax was finally yarn. The yarn was taken to the market and purchased by weavers. The weavers wove the yarn into lengths of linen fabric. The fabric was once again taken to market where it was sold to linen merchants. The merchants often had the fabric bleached before they sold it on again. Unbleached linen is known as brown linen.
Linen from Cavan was exported to England and even as far afield as America.