North Country spider article

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Anherd
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Re: North Country spider article

Post by Anherd » Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:26 am

Mike62 wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2020 1:44 pm This is a fascinating discussion. I was a little taken aback at first by what I thought was an unnecessary broadside toward Mr. Smith, but Rob seems to have an arsenal worthy of rebutting Mr. Herd. I just finished reading McDonald's 'Quill Gordon', again, and the tone of this conversation is wonderfully similar to the way McDonald wrote of the heated discussions of antiquity over certain claims of authenticity.

The painting of the fishing monks has always been a favorite of mine, and now it's become the wallpaper for this computer. It also serves as a reminder of the back and forth between scholars over the authorship of the Book of Saint Albans. Was Julianna really a fishing prioress? Did monks fish? ...and why wouldn't they. I guess when scholars fall all about themselves over the details it can get a little pointed. I'm just glad the gentlemen here are willing to sit down and share a pint after this dust settles.

Carry on, gentlemen. Carry on.
The trouble with the Internet is that most of the content is so dull, that the moment two people don't absolutely agree with each other, it ends up getting built up into something like mortal combat. Comments that would pass between you and I in a bar as normal conversation end up being lit up like some kind of reality TV dispute between celebs, the difference being that the celebs get paid for doing it and you and I don't, fortunately!

What started this off was a question about what the Romans did for us, and Rob has put his view and I have put mine, and we are both OK with it. As Rob wrote further up this thread, he made a leap of faith that I am not prepared to take, and that is a perfect summing up of the position.

Some guy came up to me at the Fly Fair and said he was looking forward to seeing Rob and I lock horns, and he was hellish disappointed when I said that Rob was the guy I had just been talking to (-: I would imagine that Rob would have said the same of me.

So if anyone wants us to carry on, they are going to have to come up with a question for us to kick around. I am up for the Dame, but I can't speak for Rob.
wsbailey
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Location: Fort Wayne Indiana

Re: North Country spider article

Post by wsbailey » Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:18 am

I've spent a lot of time researching the colors in the descriptions of the flies in the Treatyse. Language changes greatly over time and words can't be fully understood in the way they were actually used in their time.
Anherd
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Re: North Country spider article

Post by Anherd » Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:43 am

There we go, the flies for the Treatyse:

The most frustrating thing about the Treatyse is that there are paragraphs of instruction about how to die horsehair and nothing about how to die the flies, as WSBailey has doubtless cause to chew the table over!

In 1998 Connie Feely at Rogan's tied the flies for us and Partridge made a special set of hooks, so we could have some fun playing around to show our guess at what the flies might have been like. Mary Shiels in Wicklow did the dyeing of the materials using traditional techniques and the article was published in The American Fly Fisher.

Anyway, for everyone's interest, here are the dressings of the Treatyse flies. The entertaining thing about the flies is that they may not even belong to the rest of the MS, but they are the earliest printed list in existence.

These are the twelve flies with which you shall angle for the trout and grayling; tie them the way you will hear me describe:

March

The dun fly: the body of dun wool and the wings of the partridge. Another dun fly: the body of black wool; the wings of the blackest drake mallard; and jay under the wing and under the tail.

April

The stone fly: the body of black wool, and yellow under the wing and under the tail; and the wings, of the drake. In the beginning of May, a good fly: the body of reddened wool and lapped about with black silk; the wings, of the drake and the red capon’s hackle.

May

The yellow fly: the body of yellow wool; the wings of red cock hackle and of the drake dyed yellow. The black leaper, the body of black wool and lapped about with the herl of the peacock’s tail: and the wings of the red capon with a blue head.

June

The dun cut: the body of black wool, and a yellow stripe after either side; the wings of the buzzard, bound on with barked hemp. The maure fly: the body of dusky wool, the wings of the blackest male [could equally mean 'mail'] of the wild drake. The tandy fly at St. William’s Day: the body of tandy wool; and the wings contrary either against the other, of the whitest breast feathers of the wild drake.

July

The wasp fly: the body of black wool and lapped about with yellow thread: the wings of the buzzard. The shell fly at St. Thomas’ Day: the body of green wool and lapped about with the herl of the peacock’s tail: wings of the buzzard.

August

The drake fly: the body of black wool and lapped about with black silk: wings of the breast feathers of the black drake, with a black head.
Last edited by Anherd on Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Anherd
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Joined: Sun Feb 02, 2020 4:06 am

Re: North Country spider article

Post by Anherd » Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:00 am

wsbailey wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:18 am I've spent a lot of time researching the colors in the descriptions of the flies in the Treatyse. Language changes greatly over time and words can't be fully understood in the way they were actually used in their time.
See my other post, and pitch in with some comments. I remember Mary Shiels being a delight to deal with—at one point she offered to bury a fleece in a bog to get a black! Amongst other stuff she used weld and madder, as I am sure you do. The latter, I gathered, is a PITA to get in Ireland, because the summers are usually too wet for it.

The trouble with the tying instructions is that they don't specify whether feathers should be wound as a hackle or put on as a wing, and so while they probably made perfect sense to whoever wrote the fly tying instructions in the mid 15th century (or whenever) they are pretty opaque now. I was all for tying the flies three different ways, but I remember Ola Bjerke (which I think was his name) who ran Partridge back then only had the capacity for making a couple of dozen hooks. Which was fine, because the alternative was converting an existing set of hooks and that did not appeal!
wsbailey
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Re: North Country spider article

Post by wsbailey » Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:33 am

I don’t want to be like Johnson in his definition of oatmeal, but dyeing wasn’t much of a thing in Ireland. While dyeing in Scotland is well documented; the same can’t be said of Ireland. I think Donegal tweed would well represent the Irish tradition. Wool that was dyed would be boiled until it felted. It would be snipped into bits and blended with the wool from sheep of natural colors. I have a chart of some these blends and they were extensive. The Irish excelled at getting the most from what they had.
wsbailey
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Location: Fort Wayne Indiana

Re: North Country spider article

Post by wsbailey » Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:43 am

Black in the Middle Ages was an expensive color. Of course a cheap black could be made of tannin and iron but the amount of iron needed to get black would eventually rot it. Black silk thread was once known for breaking easily, probably for the same reason. In some countries these iron tannate blacks were actually illegal. I once dyed some yarn black the way the best blacks were dyed in the Medieval era. It took three whole days and three different dyes; woad, weld and madder. No serf could afford this color and, more than likely, wasn’t allowed to.
Anherd
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Re: North Country spider article

Post by Anherd » Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:52 am

wsbailey wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:43 am Black in the Middle Ages was an expensive color. Of course a cheap black could be made of tannin and iron but the amount of iron needed to get black would eventually rot it. Black silk thread was once known for breaking easily, probably for the same reason. In some countries these iron tannate blacks were actually illegal. I once dyed some yarn black the way the best blacks were dyed in the Medieval era. It took three whole days and three different dyes; woad, weld and madder. No serf could afford this color and, more than likely, wasn’t allowed to.
I've never come across any restrictions on what colours could be dyed in that era in Britain, although there were restrictions on what sort of clothes could be worn, which may well have amounted to the same thing. As far as I know logwood wasn't available, which would have made the whole thing a stage easier, so bearing in mind the difficulties you have had, I can see why burying fleeces in bogs had its attractions! The easiest source of black would have been 'black' sheep, which are dark brown, and we used that for the Treayse flies. I will confess that I picked the wool off a distinctly non-medieval barbed wire fence.
wsbailey
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Location: Fort Wayne Indiana

Re: North Country spider article

Post by wsbailey » Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:13 pm

The Treatyse was supposedly written by a nun. In those days priest’s vestments were made by nuns so they would have access to silk thread and dyed wool for embroidery. Guilds were very powerful and for someone to be dyeing wool then would similar to a non-union actor working on a movie set today. Wool was a major industry in those days and natural color sheep would be more likely found in the hinterlands. Just a few dark hairs would contaminate all of white wool where found. Even today we have black sheep in the family and the word coloured still has negative connotations. The reason the black yarn took so much time to dye is not due lack of experience on my part (25 years) but to the repeated dips it takes to get dark blue. Even in an 1860 dye book; this black is considered too time consuming to be profitable.
Anherd
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Re: North Country spider article

Post by Anherd » Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:19 pm

wsbailey wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:33 am I don’t want to be like Johnson in his definition of oatmeal, but dyeing wasn’t much of a thing in Ireland. While dyeing in Scotland is well documented; the same can’t be said of Ireland. I think Donegal tweed would well represent the Irish tradition. Wool that was dyed would be boiled until it felted. It would be snipped into bits and blended with the wool from sheep of natural colors. I have a chart of some these blends and they were extensive. The Irish excelled at getting the most from what they had.
I had better put myself more clearly.

The reason we used Mary was not because we wanted the flies dyed using a traditional Irish method, it was because we wanted to use a traditional method full stop.

Mary just happened to be in Ireland. If she had been in England it would have made the project a whole lot more convenient, that's for sure.

In those days, the other problem was colour control—no digital remember. Mary really had a feel for dyeing (I am not certain if she is still around, if so, she was wonderful) and I recall saying to her that near enough was going to be good enough, because once we got on press 20% of the black was coming straight out and nothing she did was going to look quite the same on the page.

That being said, not much is documented about many things until relatively recent times in Ireland, because folk like you and I went to such lengths to ensure that the population stayed illiterate—and controlling access to printing presses for the people who could read. So I have always been wary of deprecating the Irish culture--because they weren't able or allowed to record very much of it. Fortunately we didn't have to come up with a 15th century Irish source for dyeing, or we would never have got the project finished.
Anherd
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Joined: Sun Feb 02, 2020 4:06 am

Re: North Country spider article

Post by Anherd » Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:27 pm

wsbailey wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:13 pm The Treatyse was supposedly written by a nun. In those days priest’s vestments were made by nuns so they would have access to silk thread and dyed wool for embroidery. Guilds were very powerful and for someone to be dyeing wool then would similar to a non-union actor working on a movie set today. Wool was a major industry in those days and natural color sheep would be more likely found in the hinterlands. Just a few dark hairs would contaminate all of white wool where found. Even today we have black sheep in the family and the word coloured still has negative connotations. The reason the black yarn took so much time to dye is not due lack of experience on my part (25 years) but to the repeated dips it takes to get dark blue. Even in an 1860 dye book; this black is considered too time consuming to be profitable.
I am absolutely sure it would have taken you forever to dye black, WS. That's why we decided that they wouldn't have bothered using it—they would have gone for the next best alternative, which was a black sheep... but even they aren't truly black. However, very fortunately, fish aren't as fussy as folk.
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