Glossary
Please go to Glossary Welcome Page for more information about this resource: http://linenireland.org/history/glossary/
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List of Terms & Phrases
- acetate
- beetled
- bleaching
- blind drawing
- block printing
- Cootehill linen market
- cottage industry
- First and Second World Wars
- flax hole
- Great Famine
- hackler
- hanks
- Huguenot
- Lagan Valley
- local bleach green
- Louis Crommelin
- Plantation of Ulster
- projection
- retted
- scutching
- shous
- spinner
- weaver
- Weddings
- Williamite wars
Definitions
acetate
Clear plastic sheets, also called transparencies. Comes in A4 sheets which can be printed on with an inkjet printer.
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beetled
Beetling was the process of beating the beets of flax with wooden mallets to loosen and break the stems before they were scutched.
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bleaching
Linen was green or brown in its natural state after being woven. In order to give it its attractive white colour, it had to be bleached or whitened. Bleaching was a long and slow process in the early part of the eighteenth century but it became much faster in the nineteenth century as a result of scientific advances.
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blind drawing
This means you look closely at the object you are drawing- and not at the paper. You move the pen or pencil on the paper as you move your eye over the contours and lines of your object. Sometimes the parts don’t join up- but the images are often great representations of surface and shape. It is also good practice for your hand-eye drawing coordination. It gets you to focus on LOOKING at your object, and not worrying about making a perfect picture.
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block printing
First this you make a raised surface; sometimes by either deductive processes- like cutting into linoleum sheets or potatoes- and sometimes by additive process- like gluing string or cut-out thick sheets of card. Next, you layer thick ink or paint onto the raised surfaces, and press onto paper. When you pull up you see only those parts which were raised in your design.
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Cootehill linen market
Linen was sold at special markets called linen markets. Buyers known as linen drapers came from the large cities to purchase the linen cloth. Cootehill in County Cavan, emerged as one of the sixth most important linen markets in Ulster at the start of the nineteenth century. The webs (long folds) of linen cloth were sold in the street and later examined and stamped at the Market house. Special linen inspectors were employed by the Linen Board to check for quality.
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cottage industry
This refers to the pre-industrial age when goods were manufactured in the homes of people instead of in specially built factories. The linen industry in Ireland was a cottage-based industry until the 1820s when the first factories opened in the Lagan Valley near Belfast.
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First and Second World Wars
World War I took place between 1914-1918 and World War II between 1939-1945. During the wars, raw materials became very scarce because many of Britain’s traditional supply routes were cut off. Linen was used as part of the war effort in the production of many essential items such as; cloth for the fuselage (the cloth which covered the body of the plane) of aircraft, in the production of parachutes, as material for uniforms, tents, haversacks, linen hosepipe, thread and twine and hospital equipment.
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flax hole
This was a pool of water which was usually man-made. It was used for soaking bundles or beets of flax for up to two weeks. Flax holes were smelly and dangerous places and children were warned to keep away from them. Removing the sodden and smelly flax was men’s work.
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Great Famine
This was the period between 1845-50 when millions of Irish people died as a result of hunger and disease when the potato crop failed. Most Irish people lived on potatoes at that time.
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hackler
This was a person who combed the flax fibres using special combs with a range of metal teeth or pins. Hacklers were specialists at their job and they were usually highly paid for their work. Hackling helped to straighten the fibres which were then ready for spinning into fine yarn. The long fibres were called line flax and they were used to produce fine yarn while the short fibres were known as tow and they were used in the production of coarse yarns. In Cavan folklore, there is a famous ballad featuring a hackler called The Hackler from Grousehall.
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hanks
A hank was a length of flax thread which had been spun into yarn. 120 revolutions of the spinning wheel produced 300 yards of yarn and this was called a cut. Twelve cuts made a hank. Hanks of yarn were boiled in soapy water before being taken to market for sale. Four hanks were known as a spangle.
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Huguenot
Huguenots were French Protestants from the Picardy region of France who were expelled from their area by King Louis XIV, who was a Catholic King. Some of these people moved to England. A group of Huguenots came to the North of Ireland after being invited to live here by King William III towards the end of the seventeenth century.
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Lagan Valley
The river Lagan is one of the principal rivers in Ulster. The area in which the river flows through is called the Lagan Valley and it includes Belfast, Lisburn and Dromore.
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local bleach green
Bleaching was a skilled process carried out by a person called a bleacher. Bleachers operated in a special workplace called a bleach green or a bleach yard. The brown linen was mixed with chemicals and then boiled in water. It was then placed out on the grass slopes of the bleach green to dry in the sun before the process was repeated until the cloth was pure white.
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Louis Crommelin
Louis Crommelin was the leader of the Huguenots who came to live in Ulster. King William III invited him to develop the Irish linen industry and he settled in Lisburn in 1698.
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Plantation of Ulster
This refers to the land settlement which followed the Nine Years War in Ulster. Many Gaelic landowners lost their lands because they had rebelled against the Crown. Loyal English and Scottish settlers were given these lands and many new people settled here from Britain in the early decades of the seventeenth century.
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projection
Playing with shadows and projection- Using an OHP (overhead projector), a slide projector or other bright, directed light source you can get great shadows. You can place people in front of them, and trace their bodies on paper on the wall, or with OHPs, you can lay shapes on the surface and trace their shadows on paper on the wall, or take photographs.
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retted
This refers to a process where flax was placed in a pool of water called a flax hole and it was left there to rot for up to two weeks before being taken out to dry. The rotting process helped to divide the flax fibres from the woody stem which were known as shoves (pronounced shous in Ulster).
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scutching
This involved striking the beetled flax with a long wooden blade. This helped to separate the fibre from the unwanted woody stem. The stems known as shoves were later burned as fuel. The scutcher was left with a tangled mass of flax fibres known as stricks. Scutching was done by hand until special scutch mills were developed in the later part of the eighteenth century.
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shous
This is how Ulster people pronounced the word shoves. Shoves were the woody stems of the flax plant. They were usually gathered from the scutch mills and used as fuel for domestic fires when other traditional fuels like turf and timber became scarcer.
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spinner
A spinner was a person who spun raw flax into thread. Spinning took place on a spinning wheel and it was mostly carried out by women. The thread was wound into bundles called hanks which were sold to weavers at the local market.
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weaver
A weaver was a person who wove flax thread into linen cloth. Weavers were skilled workers and they were mostly men.
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Weddings
Friday 26th March – Primary 4 Class
The children found the wedding dress the most interesting part of their visit to the Lisburn Museum. They suggested that their next piece of work was based on this theme. We looked at old family photographs of wedding clothes and tore paper to create wedding dresses. I discussed and compared a Sri Lankan wedding with an Irish wedding, both past and present.
“It was fun to design your own wedding dress. It was fantastic putting the dresses on the projector and then drawing them on a big sheet of paper with lots of colour”. (Maeve Stewart P4)
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Williamite wars
These wars refer to the period in the late seventeenth century in Ireland when the Protestant King William III fought against the Catholic King James II to take control in Ireland.
The most famous battle was the battle of the Boyne, when King James’ army was defeated. King William was victorious.
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