THIS
SECTION (Robert Burns and Irvine) |
|
Flax
growing in the 1780s |
|
OTHER
SECTIONS |
Flax
the wonder crop of the 1780s
 |
|||
|
Based
on research by Bruce Lenman for Irvine Burns Club, published in
the Burns Chronicle 1974; illustrations by David K Ramsay also on this page: the political term 'heckling' |
|||
Flax is the fibre used to make linen. Flax fibres come from the annual plant Linum usitatissimum ('the most useful flax') or Common Flax, with erect slender stems about 50 cm high, and large purplish-blue flowers. It is a fairly demanding crop needing well-watered and fairly heavy soils. When the seeds are beginning to ripen, the crop is pulled up by the roots. In the days of Robert Burns, agricultural labour was still cheap enough for harvesting to be economic, but as the 19th century went on, Britain increasingly imported flax from the Baltic. A by-product is linseed oil.
After harvesting,
combing or rippling the flax stems removed the seed heads.
The stems were then tied up in stooks, and placed in water-filled pits
for retting (meaning 'rotting'), decomposing through
bacterial action for a week or two, producing the most awful stench, but
softening the glue between the plant fibres. 
The
next stage took place at the local mill, where scutching,
beating the stems with a hinged batten to free the individual fibres,
separated the useful fibres from the outer bark and the central woody
stem. At this stage the flax is still full of impurities, so heckling
removed any remaining non-fibrous material by drawing the stems through
a big comb consisting of a bed of nails in a wooden board. Carding
parted the fibres, breaking any natural locks, and laying the fibres absolutely
parallel to one another, in a form suitable for spinning. At this point,
the process passed to the womenfolk on the farm for them to spin the fibre
on treadle-operated spinning wheels.
This building, at no.10 Glasgow Vennel ('the narrow street which carried the trade from Irvine to Glasgow') was restored in the 1980s. In Burns' time, the premises were divided into a but-an-ben, the but end being used to store flax, and the ben end being where the flax was dressed. It is recorded that, even in this confined space, work horses belonging to the neighbour were also stabled, most probably during the night when the heckling was finished. Here Robert Burns worked for ten hours a day in the ill ventilated building, drawing the rough flax through the heckles. It was indeed dull, monotonous work for a man like Burns; the dust from the flax was stifling and the odious smell sickened him.
Burns, as his brother Gilbert wrote, began "to think of trying some other line of life. He and I had for several years taken land of my father for the purpose of raising flax on our own account. In the course of selling it, Robert began to think of turning flax-dresser, both as being suitable to his grand view of settling in life, and as subservient to the flax raising. He accordingly wrought at the business of a flax-dresser in Irvine for six months, but abandoned it at that period, as neither agreeing with his health nor inclination." (Gilbert Burns, in a letter to Mrs Dunlop, 1797)
Robert Burns mentioned flax in his first letter to Willie Niven, in July 1780: "I have three acres of pretty good flax this season; perhaps in the course of marketing it I may come your way."
Irvine Burns
Club possesses a copy of the 'Glasgow Mercury' for the
week Thurs Jan 16 - 23, 1783 [Vol VI, no. 264, price 3d], on the front
page of which appears the following public notice:
Premiums
for flax-raising
Trustees Office,
Edinburgh, Dec. 18, 1782
The Commissioners and Trustees for Fisheries, Manufacturers, and Improvements
in Scotland, do hereby advertise, that they have determined the Gainers
of the Premiums for Flax-raising, crop 1781; and that the persons preferred
are as follows, viz.:
First Class
Being Twenty Shillings [£1] per acre [to a max.of six acres]
...................... here follows a long list of farmers, arranged per
county
Second Class
Being for Lintseed saved for sowing
..................... here follows a shorter list, and under Ayrshire
we see
Robert Burns Lochlee Tarbolton £3
0s
This document, thought then to be the only surviving copy of that edition of the 'Mercury'*, was exhibited at "The Burns Exhibition" in Glasgow in 1896, and afterwards returned to Thomas Wilson, Glentane Cottage, West Kilbride. At some point it then passed to Burns Cottage, Alloway, and was later acquired for Irvine Burns Club in 1976.
* We have since learned that copies are also held by Glasgow City Council's Mitchell Library and the University of Strathclyde's Andersonian Library.
Linen established textile working in Scotland (though it swung to cotton on the west and hemp and jute in the east), contributing to Scotland's self-sustained industrial growth.
Robert
Burns' own comments about those months
[1781-82, aged 22-23]
'My twenty
third year was to me an important era. Partly through whim, and partly
that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined with a flax-dresser
in a neighbouring town, 
to
learn his trade and carry on the business of manufacturing and retailing
flax. This turned out a sadly unlucky affair. My partner was a scoundrel
of the first water who made money by the mystery of thieving; and to finish
the whole, while we were giving a welcome carousal to the new year, our
shop, by the drunken carelessness of my partner's wife, took fire and
was burnt to ashes, and left melike a true Poet, not worth sixpence.'
('O why the deuce should I repine, and be an ill-forboder? I'm twenty-three,
and five-feet-nine, - I'lI go and be a sodger!') 'I was obliged to give
up business [this flax-dressing scheme]: the clouds of misfortune were
gathering thick round my father's head, the darkest of which was, he was
visibly far gone in a consumption; and to crown all, a belle-fille whom
I adored [? Ellison Begbie], and who had pledged her soul to meet me in
the field of matrimony, jilted me with peculiar circumstances of mortification.
The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file, was
my hypochondriac complaint being irritated to such a degree that, for
three months, I was in diseased state of body and mind, scarcely to be
envied by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittimus - "Depart
from me, ye cursed".' [autobiographical letter to Dr John Moore,
1787].
