Monday 8 January 2018

THRESHING OF FLAX

     The thresher as a tool for a woman can be compared with the axe for a man. Yet, it is not the central women's instrument. If a carpenter with an axe one can do a lot, then in flax processing, each case requires a unique "tool." The family had several threshers; some were personal, belonging to one woman, favourites made to order, passed by inheritance, etc. In other words, every good beater, as, indeed, the axe, has its own features (art, design, psychological).
   With a favourite instrument and handful of flax in hand, the girl goes to someone else's empty barn, the bath, or the non-residential but warm hut. This bash combined employment of economic and aesthetic needs of youth.
    Young married women gathered separately. During work, girls sang in unison, improvising, ridiculed "competitors" from other villages, laughed, fooling around. But labour at the gathering was dominated, although it didn't exclude entertainment.
 It was mandatory to scutch one "Kirby" of threshed flax during the workday. So, holding flax on the extended left hand, the girl beat it with a fine picker edge, knocking out the flax boon.
 Sometimes walls and windows were covered with gray linen dust. Girls tightly tied their faces with scarves. The work was hard and dusty. But they are young and took their own great inconvenience and hardships with a kind smile, in public, teasing each other. They laughed at times and just as they say, with no apparent reason. Such gratuitous laughter, often at a young age, forever disappears with the arrival of a significant stage of life.
 With married women: here, the person does not just burst out laughing, for no apparent reason, and wait for a suitable, informative and hilarious word or deed.

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