Lace tells

Girls at lacemaking schools chanted rhymes to the rhythm of their pinning as they made bobbin lace

Lace tells ^[a] were catchy rhymes chanted to the rhythm of bobbin lace manufacture in lace schools and workshops in Flanders, the East Midlands, and the Saxon Ore Mountains (German : Erzgebirge). ^{[b] [2] [3]} Tells helped lacemakers to count stitches, maintain a steady rhythm, and stay awake and focused. ^[4] Lace tells were also used in lacemaking schools in order to increase the speed of work and to teach discipline and lace skills to children—including basic numeracy. ^{[2] [3]} Lace tells often borrowed content from existing songs and legends, adapting familiar narratives and formulations to metaphors relying on jargon and details of lace manufacture. ^{[2] [4]} Aside from lace manufacture, lace tells often concerned death and violence, as well as expressions of resentment and vengefulness against the girls' parents, school mistresses, and lace merchants. ^{[3] [4] [5]}

The repertoire of surviving lace tells has been studied as a corpus of work songs by women and girls. ^[4] Parallels between Flemish and English tells may point to a Flemish provenance of the East Midlands lace industry, ^[3] and common elements between tells from all three regions suggest that lace telling originated at the foundation of the lace industry in the sixteenth century, and was spread across Europe by migrant lace mistresses. ^[6]

Content

As counting rhymes, lace tells sometimes featured number sequences, either counting down—often from 20 in English tells—or counting up. Some were adapted from existing songs by simply appending a number to the beginning of each line. Some lace tells did not enunciate any numbers, and it is not clear how these were used. Lace tells were often intertextual, with familiar material from various types of religious and secular song being appropriated and adapted to the form. ^{[3] [2] [4]} David Hopkin writes that the references to lacemaking in the lyrics of lace tells were made "in an elliptical manner, with references hidden in a maze of apparent nonsense." ^[6]

A lace class in Olney, Buckinghamshire in 1918

19th-century Bedfordshire lace collar

English tells

English lace tells were catchy and allusive, often appropriating familiar material from ballads, children's rhymes, games, legends, and riddles. Gerald Porter writes that the presence of well-known children's rhymes in lace tells could help promote discipline and focus among workers, many of whom were children. Lace tells which borrowed from games frequently incorporated sinister elements "to emphasize the grave consequences of breaking rhythm or looking up before the count was completed." Content from narrative ballads—also sung by lacemakers at work—was adapted into lace tells by truncating the ballad's story such that the lace tell version would only be meaningful to someone who had heard the full version many times before. ^[4]

Metaphors in lace tells often relied on jargon and references to lacemaking practice that would be opaque to outsiders, and details of the work process were integrated in lyrical narratives of lace tells. For example, a common ballad opening that described 24 boys playing ball was reworked in a lace tell to refer instead to 19 "golden girls"—a metaphor for the gold-headed pins used to attach the lace, with 19 being the number at which lacemakers often began counting down their pins. ^[4] G. F. R. Spenceley explains that 19 was "the greatest number of stitches a worker could complete in a single burst before she 'looked off' for a moment's relief." English lace tells were typically in doggerel verse. ^[7]

David Hopkin writes that the lyrics of lace tells clearly expressed a sense of occupational identity among lacemakers, and that their references to work practices created intimacy and a sense of shared experience in the work environment. ^[2] Porter identifies a retaliatory theme in lace tells, condemning the insolent lace merchants who sold the lacemakers' work. ^[4] Porter also notes a theme of revenge against the punishing mistress, and interprets tells deploying this theme as a form of resistance. ^[3] Hopkin writes that lace tells "often concerned punishments, domestic violence, sexual murder and premature death induced by work" ^{[2] [8]} —Porter identifies an element of "terror" in lace tells, for example in this tell recorded by Thomas Wright: ^[4]

Get to the field by 1,
Gather the rod [to whip her with] by 2,
Tie it up at 3,
Send it home at 4,
Make her work hard at 5,
Give her her supper at 6,
Send her to bed at 7,
Cover her up at 8,
Throw her down stairs at 9,
Break her neck at 10,
Get to the well-lid by 11,
Stamp her in at 12.

— Thomas Wright, Romance of the Lace Pillow vol.2 (1930)

19th-century Flemish bobbin lace

Flemish tells

Some surviving Flemish tells are several hundred lines long, ^[3] though most ranged from dozens to a hundred. ^[6] Hopkin compares Flemish lace tells to sea shanties, in that both forms of song are performed in direct relation to the labor process. ^{[3] [9]} He describes Flemish tellingen as "bizarre composites of songs, hymns, [and] prayers." Though the content of tellingen were more overtly religious (due to Flemish lace schools being often overseen by nuns or beguines), the general themes were similar to their English counterparts: "the workers are hungry, exhausted, given mouldy bread, thrown in a hole… Mothers complain about their daughters' lack of work; fathers are even more threatening figures." ^[2] While some Flemish tells refer explicitly to the experiences of lace schools, most do not. Direct mentions of lace manufacture in Flemish tells were most often positive. Themes of death, violence (particularly between fathers and daughters), incest, infanticide, and "drawn-out executions" were common in Flemish tells. Some Flemish lace tells were open expressions of complaint and resentment at the girls' parents—particularly their fathers—for sending them to work such long hours at lace schools, which were associated with ill health and premature death. ^[3] For example: ^[3]

Flemish original	English translation
Mijnheere, mijn kinders en willen niet werken, Wat doe ik er al mee? Steek ze al in een duister kot, En geef ze daar wat van haver en zop, En wat letter eten. Mijnheer, die kinderen zullen wel beteren. Fraai, fraai, kinderen, werkt maar zeere, Er komt t' avond een schoone mijnheere, Een mijnheere die u wat brengen zal, Vijgen uit het peerdestal Corinthen van de schapen, Dat zal u wel smaken. Fraai, fraai, kinderen, werk maar gauw, 't Avond komt er eene schoone mevrouw, Een mevrouw met wat roeien (roeden), Zij zal slaan dat handen en voeten zullen bloeien (bloeden).	Sir, my children do not want to work. What shall I do with them? Stick them in a dark hole and give them oat gruel and only light food to eat. Sir, the children will do better. Good, good, children, work harder. In the evening comes a nice man, a man who will bring you figs from the stable, currants from sheep. You'll like that. Good, good, children, work faster. In the evening comes a nice woman, a woman with some canes. She'll strike your hands and feet till they bleed.
—Lootens and Feys (1879)	—David Hopkin (2019)

Some tells expressed vengeful desires toward the parents. For example: ^[3]

Flemish original	English translation
Zij steekt haar moeder met naalden dood, En haar vader met spellen	She stuck her mother dead with needles, and her father with pins.
—Lootens and Feys (1879)	—David Hopkin (2019)

Another common theme in Flemish tells is the dream of escaping lace school. Hopkin interprets these songs as cathartic rather than resistant, considering that no material resistance by lacemakers is documented, and that some Flemish tells about punishment may have served to condition girls to accept the mistress's authority. ^[3] Isabelle Peere writes that Flemish lace tells followed a principle of "assembling lines without significant concern for continuity of meaning", leading to "absurd punchlines and highly unexpected transitions". ^[10] She gives as an example this tell, collected by Lootens in 1879:

Flemish original	English translation
Zij zitten te naaien aan Jesutjes baaitje, Zonder naaldetje of zonder draadje. 'k Zou gaan bidden aan sinte Katrine, Om een naaldetje of een draadje te winnen. Sinte Katrine, 'k en ben 't niet weerd, Al was het maar een bezemsteert, En een hoedje van biezen. 'k Zou 't nog wel verliezen, Verliezen in de grippe, 'k Zoud er wel tegen schippen. 'k Passeerde voorbij een koningsdeure, Er lag een wittebrood voor de deure. 'k Pakte dat wittebrood op, 'k Lei het van achter op den disch; Zij brochten mij drie pateelen met visch. De drie pateelen met visch en mogt ik niet, Zij brochten m'een droogen haring. Den droogen haring en mogt ik niet, Ze brochten m'een vorte palings kop. 'k Nam de vorte palings kop in mijn vuist, 'k Smeet z'al tegen 't kraai huis. De kraaien begonnen te daveren. Er sprong een kraai al uit zijn nest, Met een marbel in zijn bek. Hij en had maar een blauw' ooge. Hij liep naar Gent om looge (ter logie?) Als hij te Gent om looge kwam, Zijn ooge was nog blauwer. Hij liep naar Onze Vrouwe. Als hij te Onze Vrouwe binnen kwam, Zij zaten daar te zingen: Gloria Pater, en Domini. Wie zal er mij t'eten brengen? — Ik, zei den goen Sint Jan. Goen Sint Jan, waar is uw moeder? Mijn moeder is in den hemel, Hooger als een kemel, Hooger als een bonte koe.	They are sitting, sewing the little Jesus' bodice, Without seams and without thread. I would go and pray to Saint Catherine, To get a small needle or a bit of thread. Saint Catherine, I am not worthy, Even if I were just a broom handle, And a little straw hat, I could still lose it, Lose it in the gutter, I could even kick it away. I passed in front of a king’s door, There was a white loaf of bread at the door. I picked up the white bread, I put it behind the stall; They brought me three plates of fish. The three plates of fish did not please me, They brought me a dried herring. The dried herring did not please me, They brought me a rotten eel’s head. I grabbed the rotten eel’s head, I smashed it against the ravens’ house. The ravens began to tremble. A raven jumped from its nest, A marble in its beak. It had only one blue eye. It fled to Ghent to find shelter (?) Once in Ghent, looking for a home (?) Its eye was even bluer. It went to Notre Dame, Once inside Notre Dame, They were there singing: Gloria Pater, et Domini. Who will bring me food? — I will, said the brave Saint John. Good Saint John, where is your mother? My mother is in heaven, Higher than a camel, Higher than a spotted cow.
—Lootens and Feys (1879)

Peere interprets this "nonsense" typical of tells in opposition to the conventions of other popular Flemish song forms of the time, with religious songs emphasizing family, ballads emphasizing loyalty, and comic songs parodying both, while lace tells "stand in direct opposition to any moral or familial norms ... reveling in staging bloody murders, grotesque and extraordinary verbal and behavioral violence, and near-sadistic scenarios." Peere writes that the uproarious subversion and disorder in lace tells "suggests release rather than hatred." ^[10] She offers a number examples of subversive, disordered, and violent scenarios found in lace tells, including that of a girl receiving a gift from her father by leading him to her bedroom, forcing him to kneel, beheading him, and throwing his head in the cellar and his body in the canal. Peere characterizes this sensibility as "a deconstruction of the real world and its norms in favor of a fantastical universe", which she links to ideas in the works of Roger Caillois and Sigmund Freud. ^[10]

Performance

Lacemakers at an Ore Mountains workshop, 1936

Bobbin lacemaking in Amsterdam, 1934

Porter notes that lace tells are unconventional as work songs, which are typically "dominated by images of male physical labor" and feature shouted refrains. In contrast, lace tells precisely described the work of lacemaking and served to "excite [the lacemakers] to regularity and cheerfulness." Lace tells were chanted to the rhythm of work, helping lacemakers to count their pins—knowing how many pins corresponded to each tell—and maintain a regular, quick pace. ^[4] Lace tells were also used in lacemaking schools to increase the speed of work and to inculcate discipline and lacemaking skills in the children, including basic numeracy. ^[2] Students who lost rhythm or failed to keep pace with the tells were punished with a "glum" or "time of gloom" ^[11] —a period of enforced silence during which they could neither speak nor participate in lace telling. ^{[7] [12]} Workshop-wide glums could also be initiated for non-punitive reasons. For instance, a verse ending with the line "for thirty-one speak or look off for sixty-two" triggered a mandatory silence in the workshop until each girl had placed 31 pins—or 62 if the silence was broken. ^[5] David Hopkin writes that both English and Flemish lace tells were chanted rather than sung. ^[2] In 1864, W. H. Oakes wrote that "it is only the very old people [in Olney] who remember anything about these 'Lace Tellings'[ sic ], as they have not been used in the schools about Olney for many years." ^[13]

Flemish lace tells were primarily a feature of lace schools, and it is not clear if adult lacemakers continued to use tells to time their work, even as they recalled and occasionally performed them. ^[3] Flemish children in lace workshops were apprenticed to a lace mistress for five years, and "heard the same pieces sung morning and evening for three or four years, under the strict surveillance of older workers who did not permit the slightest change in the way they were sung." David Hopkin attributes the "archaic" quality of the repertoire of Flemish tells documented by Adolphe Lootens to this strictness of tradition. ^[2] Lootens noted that most tells he documented were chanted to the same tune. ^[3] Lootens also wrote in his collection of Flemish tellingen that each line always corresponded to one pin done, but Hopkin argues that lace patterns more complex than netting are "too irregular" for such a regular rhythm. ^{[2] [3]} Manfred Blechshmidt wrote the same in his study of German lace counting rhymes, writing that "there are no work rhythms that serve as templates for work songs." ^{[14] [6]} Albert Bylau describes tells being slowed at lace schools in Ypres and Poperinge to fit the pace of workers, and distinguishes between tellingen and telseltjes, with the latter directly involving counting for competitive games of speed between students. ^[3] Telseltjes were especially likely to refer to lace manufacture. ^[3] Lootens records one tell, called "Mi Adel en Heer Halewijn", which is performed by three girls in different roles—a Crusader, his resilient wife, and her abusive mother-in-law—assigned by drawing bobbins, similar to drawing straws. ^[10]

The Flemish lace tell "Min Adel en hir Alewijn" consists of only two melodic phrases, separated here by a short rest—to place a pin and breathe.

Collection and scholarship

Bucks point lacemakers chanted gruesome tells.

According to David Hopkin, "[lace] tells are the one genre in English lacemakers’ song repertoire that has been documented." ^[2] Gerald Porter wrote in 1994 that the repertoire of English lace tells—comprising over 50 songs or fragments—is among the largest surviving bodies of women's work songs in English. ^[4] David Hopkin wrote in 2019 that the text corpus of English lace tells includes "about 80" tells, which were recorded by "folklorists and other visitors to Midlands lace villages from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth century". ^[16] Very few audio recordings or musical transcriptions of lace tells survive, and thus few lace tells documented in verse have known tunes to go with them. ^{[16] [17]} Lace tells have never been systematically collected and were only compiled and published in romantic early 20th-century volumes by "enthusiasts." No known lace tells from the eighteenth century have survived. ^[4] Many English lace tells sung by children are recorded with attribution only to "a child," without further specification. ^[4]

Porter writes that English lace tells, "deemed insufficiently narrative", have been "rendered silent" in traditional song scholarship. ^[4] Hopkin writes that Flemish tells "have received some attention from folklorists and textile specialists, but not from labor historians, or from literary scholars, despite the fact that many significant Flemish writers either made use of, or themselves attempted to contribute to, the corpus of lacemakers' work songs." No collectors of Flemish lace tells explain precisely how the tells corresponded to the rhythm or counting of lacemaking. ^[3] Adolphe Lootens recorded dozens of Flemish tells in the mid-19th century, ^[2] and David Hopkin calls the English collection of lace tells "meager" in comparison to the much longer Flemish corpus, whose individual tells are also longer and less fragmentary. ^[3]

Across Europe

Hopkin notes that while French lacemakers' songs exist, there appears to be no French equivalent to lace telling. ^[2] German lace counting rhymes, called Zählgeschichten (lit. 'counting stories') and Klöppelmärschen (lit. 'bobbin marches') have not attracted the same scholarly attention that Flemish and English lace tells have. ^[6]

David Hopkin writes that the parallel lace telling traditions the East Midlands and Flanders may be evidence for the "the frequently asserted but actually undocumented Flemish origins of the Midlands lace industry"—that the Midlands industry was founded by Flemish migrants of war and persecution in the 1570s. ^{[2] [3]} He raises these two tells—the Flemish Lisa's Terechtstelling and an untitled English tell—as an example of the similarities between both traditions, which may offer evidence for a Flemish provenance of the Midlands lace industry. ^[3]

Lisa's Terechtstelling (English translation)	Untitled English tell
Twenty. I take Lisa into custody. At nineteen. In the hands of justice. At eighteen. Her death knell sounds. At seventeen. She is woken. At sixteen. She is shown before all the lords. At fifteen. She is going to die there, as if she was of fine red gold. Fourteen. On the scaffold. At thirteen. My first bird is half dead. At twelve. I take a rod in my hand. At eleven. I lashed her for the first time. At ten. I lashed her for the second time. At nine. The death bonnet is put before her eyes. At eight. I will let her die. Seven. I chop her head off. Six. Both her arms are off. Five. Both her feet are off. Four. Her head is put on a stake. Three. Her body is laid in her grave. At two. For such a young daughter, what a scandal this makes! At one. I make a pit. At not one. I stick her in.	One o'clock and my scholar aint come, Two o'clock and my scholar aint come, Get a rod and nettle by four, And whip her well by five, And send her to bed by six, Lay her in salt and water by seven, And threw her down stairs by eight, And break her neck by nine, Put her in coffin by ten, And screw her down by eleven, And put her in ground by twelve, One o'clock and Old Dainty's hung!
—Blyau and Tasseel (1962) [Translated Hopkin (2019)]	—Stewart (1908)

Hopkin also writes that common elements exist in lace tells from all three regions where they have been observed, suggesting that lace telling was "already present at the foundation of the industry in the sixteenth century and spread by migrant lace mistresses." ^[6]

See also

• Military cadence  – Work song sung by armed forces during training
• Waulking song  – Scottish folk songs sung while fulling cloth
• Yan tan tethera  – Counting system used by British shepherds

Notes

1. also lace tellings; tellingen and telliedjes in Flemish; Zählgeschichten (lit. 'counting stories') and Klöppelmärschen (lit. 'bobbin marches') in German. ^[1]
2. All English-language sources on Saxon lace tells use the name Erzgebirge.

References

1. Hopkin, D. (2024). "Lace songs and culture wars: a nineteenth-century Flemish village soap opera". Folk Music Journal. 12 (4). ISSN   0531-9684.
2. Hopkin, D. (2015). "Lacemakers and old songs, in Olney and elsewhere". Cowper and Newton Journal. 5 (2014). ISSN   2046-8814.
3. Hopkin, David (2020-01-02). "Working, Singing, and Telling in the 19th-Century Flemish Pillow-Lace Industry". Textile. 18 (1): 53–68. doi:10.1080/14759756.2019.1646499. ISSN   1475-9756.
4. Porter, Gerald (1994). ""Work the Old Lady out of the Ditch": Singing at Work by English Lacemakers". Journal of Folklore Research. 31 (1/3): 35–55. ISSN   0737-7037. JSTOR   3814509.
5. Korczynski, Marek; Pickering, Michael; Robertson, Emma (2013). "Voice". Rhythms of Labour: Music at Work in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/cbo9781139030311. ISBN   978-1-107-00017-9.
6. Hopkin, D. (2024). "Lace songs and culture wars: a nineteenth-century Flemish village soap opera". Folk Music Journal. 12 (4). ISSN   0531-9684.
7. Spenceley, G. F. R. (1976-10-01). "The Health and Disciplining of Children in the Pillow Lace Industry in the Nineteenth Century". Textile History. 7 (1): 154–172. doi:10.1179/004049676793691784. ISSN   0040-4969.
8. Horn, Pamela L. R. (December 1972). "Pillow Lacemaking in Victorian England: The Experience of Oxfordshire". Textile History. 3 (1): 100–115. doi:10.1179/004049672793692200. ISSN   0040-4969.
9. Korczynski, Marek; Pickering, Michael; Robertson, Emma (February 2008). "The last British work songs: Music, community and class in the Kent hop fields of the early-mid 20th century". Management & Organizational History. 3 (1): 81–102. doi:10.1177/1744935908090999. ISSN   1744-9359.
10. Isabelle Peere, ‘Comptines de dentellières brugeoises (1730-1850): entre travail, école et jeu, colère et prière’, Acta ethnographica Hungarica 47: 1-2 (2002), pp. 111-126.
11. Bullock, Alice-May (1981). Lace and lace making. New York, New York: Larousse & Co., Inc. p. 67.
12. Sharpe, Pamela (2010-04-01). "Lace and Place: women's business in occupational communities in England 1550–1950". Women's History Review. 19 (2): 283–306. doi:10.1080/09612021003634109. ISSN   0961-2025.
13. Oakes, William Henry (1864). Olney, and the lace-makers. London: W. Macintosh. p. 67.
14. Blechschmidt, Manfred (1986). ""Ich bi e Klippelmaadel..." Zur Spezifik der erzgebirgischen Klöppelverse und Klöppellieder". Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung. 31: 73–79. doi:10.2307/848277. ISSN   0075-2789. JSTOR   848277.
15. Freedgood, Elaine (2003). ""Fine Fingers": Victorian Handmade Lace and Utopian Consumption". Victorian Studies. 45 (4): 625–647. ISSN   0042-5222. JSTOR   3829530.
16. Hopkin, David (12 May 2019). "Prudence Summerhayes and the hunt for tunes for lace 'tells'". By the Poor For the Rich: Lace in Context. Retrieved 2025-03-11.
17. Hopkin, David (19 February 2017). "'One Moonshiny Night': A Riddle becomes a Lace Tell". By the Poor For the Rich: Lace in Context. Retrieved 2025-03-11.