to sing whilst working - esp. if the work entails sustained rhythmical movements like rowing or waulking (beating woven tweed to soften and shrink fabric), spinning, weaving and rocking the cradle, and making the bread, from corn threshing to dough kneading. These intrinsic rhythmic tunes develop easily into dances, slow or fast, and have been developed more recently into chart topping hits.
Singing to work and working better whilst singing:
We can find it in all cultures as an expression of connectedness to the elements and the cycles of life, the communal efforts of surviving in them, as a means of gossiping, telling stories, lamenting and praising, and praying.
This little song here we chose by digging through an old Hebridean Song Book, looking for a simple lilt which can aid the simple circular movements entailed in wet felting a wee picture.
Luckily Jenny and Eileen are very musical and loved improvising on the tune as they at the same time learned some wet felting basics.
It would be fabulous if we could find more Gaelic worksong specialist to teach us some stuff from our first and future culture. :-)
Here are some good links to background of Gaelic Songs in general: http://www.siliconglen.com/culture/gaelicsong.html
I love to learn the sean-nós style, and at home I get so much strength and peace out of chanting the Ceile De Fuin to my daily chores and creative woolcraft explorations.
Lets see how we fare tonight with the second exploration session and whether Alison will be there this time and we get started back again at processing our Hebridean fleeces? :-)
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| gosh - felting that fleece was more than 3 years ago!! |
More blast from the past
