"Waulking"

The Ohio Scottish Arts School is always amazing fun. We had Ann and Charlie Heymann, Jo Morrison,  Seumas Gagne, and Sue Richards as instructors. This year, one of the highlights for me was learning about “waulking” songs from Seumas Gagne from Seattle. “Waulking” is the process by which woven cloth is processed to tighten the weave, remove the natural lanolin, and soften the fibers. In Scotland, the women (or women and men in Nova Scotia) would sit at a table beating wet, newly woven cloth in time to the music and rotate the loop of cloth around the table. Each morning, Seumas taught us the chorus in gaelic for several songs while he sang the verses in gaelic. Seumas gave lots of historical and social contexts for the songs and the language, but he also gave the warnings. For, you see, while woven cloth is being “waulked” you cannot repeat any verse. Otherwise the cloth would be cursed and could never be used. So, you had to pay attention to what you were doing. Seumas wanted us to be able to experience the process in a hands-on way. He wished he had an old Indian blanket so he could fasten the ends together for us to sing as we beat the fabric in time to the “waulking” songs. Luckily, I had a grey army blanket in my car. We had a blast as Seumas showed us how to position our hands as we grabbed the cloth, beat it against the table, and then passed the cloth clockwise around the table as we sang these wonderful songs. Then, Seumas would measure the cloth with his knuckles, and declare in gaelic that the cloth was “not ready yet”. Since this had been a group project, I decided to cut the blanket into strips so everyone could take a piece home. They could weave the strip of wool blanket into their harp strings to mute the sound for a special effect. And then, an idea blossomed. Jen, Mark, and I wove the fabric strips together. In our final gathering today, each person came up and removed one strip from the weaving as Seumas played his harp and lead us in gaelic song. The fabric was made wet again, but this time by the tears of friends saying their fond farewells until we  meet again.