WYSIWYG
What You See Is What You Get. This is a journal blog, an explore-blog, a bit of this and that blog. Sharing where the mood takes me. Perhaps it will take you too.
Menoizikul; Midweek Musicalisms
Another traditional Gaelic singing style this week. This time it is Waulking music -which also is classed as mouth music, but the words tended to be more balladic than the nonsense rhymes of puirt-a-beul. Waulking the tweed cloth was to soften off the fibre after weaving. Traditional it was wetted and set with urine - though that practice died out pretty much by the mid-20th century, you may be glad to know! The singing helped the ladies forget their sore hands, limbs and backs as they worked.
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Ah! I hadn't realized that there were different categories of Gaelic mouth music.
ReplyDeleteAnd praise be for automatic washing machines!
Cheers, Gail.
Fulling (or waulking) by hand is a tremendously labour intensive process. Maybe there are similarities between the music developed for that and the music developed at sea for the labour intensive rope-hauling jobs, and winding capstans etc.
ReplyDeletewow, this is certainly not a job I would want, I like the singing, just more to make me glad I was born when I was born.. and we had a ringer washer when I was a child, I thought it was child abuse that I had to help. Mother should have told me about these ladies
ReplyDeleteWow, the waulking does look like hard work. The singing must help the ladies to continue to work. Take care, have a great day!
ReplyDeleteSomething new for me. In fact, the entire thing is information.
ReplyDeleteTalk about serious cardio...waulking is it.
ReplyDeleteThis was a surprise, "Traditional it was wetted and set with urine"
Hugs Cecilia
Ditto to Gail and Sandra's comment.
ReplyDeleteAt least the singing helps the chore to go by more quickly - I hope.
ReplyDelete