Origins of the terms “Scotch” & “Irish” tension.
According to Elsie G. Davenport in her 1953 book, Your Handspinning, she makes reference in chapter 6 titled, The Spinning Wheel , bulletpoint #11 (p.70) headed “Scotch Tension”, she explains thus.
Some spinning wheels, particularly old one of the upright type, have no tension screw (not be confused with the tension peg as she is referencing the screw used in the previous discussions for adjusting the mother-of-all closer or further from the drive wheel.) and the old Scottish woollen spinners overcame this in the following ingenious way:
The driving band passed round the wheel and thence round the spindle whorl only, not round the bobbin whorl. As the flyer revolved, the bobbin on the same shaft naturally revolved at the same speed so that although the yarn was spun, it could not wind on. By means of a thin cord, passed round the bobbin whorl and attached to some convenient part of the spinning wheel, the bobbin was still further retarded. This meant that the flyer, putting in the spin, revolved considerably faster than the bobbin and so wound the spun yarn on to it in the reverse direction; i.e. when the wheel was running clockwise, the yarn wound on to the bobbin anti-clockwise and vice versa.
She then goes on to explain further about where this brake-band is placed and says something I hadn’t heard of, or perhaps I had but had forgotten and dismissed due to hearing a different definition commonly assumed.
First that this brake-cord which passed around the bobbin, both ends are passed thought the hole in the tension peg and secured by a knot with sufficient length of cord to allow it to wind at least once around the peg. The amount of tension is so slight, that if too much is applied, neither the bobbin nor flyer will move at all. I have a feeling that this was later developed to have one end secured by a spring and then later by some of us with the use of a rubberband.
Here comes the part I found interesting. She then goes on to describe an alternative:
In many old Irish linen wheels, the same kind of brake control was used, not on the bobbin, but on the flyer. The drive band was used on the bobbin only.
There is then a diagram showing the brake-cord over the flyer pulley and the drive band on the bobbin. To me this makes sense in the evolution of how the brake-band was used, though now we have almost completely eliminated the need for it on the flyer and thus call such a wheel “bobbin-driven” or may be sometimes referred to as “Irish Tension”, but to truly be Irish Tensioned, it should have the brake-band on the flyer, not because of either it was either before or after the Scottish woollen spinners, but because this is what the history has shown us how the Irish linen spinners used their tools.
Ms. Elsie then closes this chapter by giving what I consider her thumbs up approval by saying:
By a slight turn of the peg the relative rates of wind and spin can be adjusted as perfectly as by use of the tension screw and spinners who are accustomed to this method of control prefer it to any other.
I then turned to Peter Teal’s 1976 book, Hand Woolcombing and Spinning (ed.2005) and Alden Amos’ 2001 book, Big Book of Handspinning (ed.2) and found information that may and may not supported Ms. Davenport’s statements and raised additional questions.
Mr. Teal cites the first illustration of the flyer principle wheel to the Saxony Wheel printed in 1480, fifteen years prior to Da Vinci’s sketchbook drawings, but notes that Da Vinci shows a much more advanced design. The 1480 drawings are in the Waldburg Hausbuch or more correctly, Mittelalterliches Hausbuch von Schloss Wolfegg, which being of a German household makes sense when Mr. Amos refers to a flyer-driven wheel as German-tension (ch.8, p.211,ed.2).
Neither of them refers to when or where the double-drive wheel evolved to bobbin or flyer-driven, so I can live with Ms. Elsie’s descriptions and reasoning for how Scotch-tension was named after the Scotch woollen spinners which converted the double-drive to flyer-driven/bobbin-break, the Irish-tension being named after how the flax spinners of Ireland used their wheels by converting the double-drive to bobbin-driven/flyer-break, and how the double-drive originated in German, hence Amos calls it so.
In short,
Scotch = bobbin brake
Irish = flyer break
German = double drive
but bobbin driven does not equal Irish.
I think this covers all our wheels now. Did I forget anything?
Thanks for making me think, pull the books off the shelf again and making me restart Ms. Elsie’s work. I love her use of language as she explains how to spinning cotton.
All the best,
D.
