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Updated: June 12, 2025
To enable the people to be, to some extent, independent of mill-power, it occurred to the authorities to revive the use of the old Irish hand-mill, or quern. This very ancient and rude contrivance had been employed in many countries as well as our own; nor had it as yet fallen into complete desuetude in parts of Scotland and the Shetland Islands. Mr.
His only occupation is feeding his horses or milking his camels. The Arab girls go out to take care of the flocks while the wife performs all the domestic duties. She grinds wheat in the hand-mill; kneads and bakes bread; makes butter by shaking the milk in a leather bag; fetches water in a skin; works at the loom and is busy all the time.
In the same category one may find the songs which are peculiar to the women, "couplets with which they accompany themselves in their dances; the songs, the complaints which one hears them repeat during whole hours in a rather slow and monotonous rhythm while they are at their household labors, turning the hand-mill, spinning and weaving cloths, and composed by the women, both words and music."
"My brother has never been unjust, and is far from envying me what I must call my good fortune, for that my attack arrived just at the right time can hardly be reckoned as a merit on my part. You know he gave me this splendid sabre, a hundred thorough-bred horses, and a golden hand-mill as rewards of my bravery."
Rude stools, a hand-mill, a large Indian mortar of wood for crushing corn, and a clock, completed the furniture of the room. Chief among them was the clock. The guests would sit in expectant silence by the hour, squatted on the ground, waiting to hear it strike. They thought it was alive, and asked what it ate.
Close to the cascades so close, that they seem on the point of being swept away are mills, not much larger than goodly-sized boxes, one above the other, like rows of black beads strung upon the white torrent. These mills are primitive in their construction, closely resembling the old hand-mill; but they grind the corn, and what more could the best mill in Europe do?
It was a primitive mill, which superseded the still more primitive hand-mill, or quern; and I myself have seen it at work in the Shetland Islands, and even the north of Scotland, though it is now done away with even there, still more farther south, and its place supplied and its work done by overshot and under-shot wheel-gear, and improved machinery attached, of less or more complexity.
We stooped under a very low doorway in the farther wall, and went into a little shed-like lean-to, where the inhabitants evidently lived entirely. A boy of thirteen was lying on the ground, covered with a piece of sacking. The father squatted down beside him. Two girls were grinding beans close to them in a hand-mill the old mill of . . . "the one shall be taken, and the other left."
Then, as in the hill towns not long ago, the serving women, who were slaves, sat cross-legged on the ground in the narrow court within the house, with the hand-mill of two stones between them, and ground the wheat to flour for the day's meal. There have been wonderful survivals of the first age even to our own time.
And he lifted her up and kissed her, and bade her follow him forth. But before they could pass out of the room Polydectes came in. When Perseus saw the King, he flew upon him and cried, "Tyrant! is this thy mercy to strangers and widows? Thou shalt die." And because he had no sword he caught up the stone hand-mill, and lifted it to dash out Polydectes's brains.
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