Lace songs and chants

 

Singing songs, or chanting, while making lace seems to have been a common occurrence and Shakespeare even refers to it in Twelfth Night. It was particularly encouraged in the lace schools of the English East Midlands where songs were sung to keep the children focused on their work and encourage them to work more quickly. Many of the songs, or tells, are linked to counting rhymes, so the children could count the number of pins they put up in a certain time or count the number of pins they had worked along the edge, or footside, of the work. Thomas Wright recounts how charming it was to hear 30 or so children singing while they worked at their pillows. As well as encouraging a good work rate the lacemakers also reported that singing cheered them up in dull weather and some tells are designed to keep the children alert, rather than acting as counting aids, for example, in one tell, each child calls out the name of someone in their village until everyone has been named. Interestingly, John Yallop has found no record of lacemakers singing lace tells in Honiton or elsewhere in Devon. This may be because of the different types of lace made in the two areas. In Devon separate motifs are made while in the East Midlands the lace is generally made in continuous strips which lends itself to counting rows and pins more easily. Many of the tells involved repetitive and complicated stories of lacemakers and their lives and different counties also had different styles of tell. Those in Bedfordshire and Northampton tended to be romantic tales while the tells of Buckinghamshire often involved gruesome murders with appropriate cries and dramatic effects designed to keep the children alert.