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Dyer, in his poem of the "Fleece," thus alludes to this incident: "... many yet adhere To the ancient distaff, at the bosom fixed, Casting the whirling spindle as they walk. This was of old, in no inglorious days, The mode of spinning, when the Egyptian prince A golden distaff gave that beauteous nymph, Too beauteous Helen; no uncourtly gift."
On reaching the Red Castle, the prince led Helen into a room filled from floor to ceiling with hemp, and having supplied her with distaff and spinning-wheel, said, "When you have spun all this hemp into gold thread I will make you my wife." Then he went out, locking the door after him. On finding herself a prisoner, the poor girl wept as if her heart would break.
Next came a young man, blue-eyed also, with hair the colour of flax on the distaff, broad-faced and short-nosed, low of stature, but very strong-built, who cried out in a loud, cheerful voice: 'I am Strongitharm of the Shepherds, and these valiant men are of the Fleece and the Thorn blended together, for so they would have it; and their tale is one hundred and two score and ten.
'Now this is better than doing nothing! she said, catching his eye with a glance half-kind, half-arch. 'I suspect, Captain Armine, that your melancholy originates in idleness. 'Ah! if I could only be employed every day in this manner! ejaculated Ferdinand. 'Nay! not with a distaff; but you must do something. You must get into parliament. 'You forget that I am a Catholic, said Ferdinand.
Darius had longed after Greek slaves ever since he had seen a fine handsome girl walking along, upright, with a pitcher of water on her head, the bridle of a horse she was leading over her arm, and her hands busy with a distaff.
Behind one of the tents, on a primitive weaving-machine, some of them were making tent-roofing and matting. Others still were walking about with a ball of wool in one hand and a distaff in the other, spinning yarn. The flocks stood round about, bleating and lowing, or chewing their cud in quiet contentment.
This it was that the handmaid Phylo bare and set beside her, filled with dressed yarn, and across it was laid a distaff charged with wool of violet blue. So Helen sat her down in the chair, and beneath was a footstool for the feet.
In France, reduced almost to imbecility by the absence of a guiding brain during a long minority, fallen under the distaff of a dowager both weak and wicked, distracted by the intrigues and quarrels of a swarm of self-seeking grandees, and with all its offices, from highest to lowest, of court, state, jurisprudence, and magistracy, sold as openly and as cynically as the commonest wares, there were few to comprehend or to grapple with the danger.
Among the Ripuarian Franks, a free woman thus disgracing herself, was girt with a sword and a distaff. Choosing the one, she was to strike her husband dead; choosing the other, she adopted the symbol of slavery, and became a chattel for life. The ferocious inroads of the Normans scared many weak and timid persons into servitude.
And they tend our modern machinery as deftly as of old they twirled the distaff and worked the spinning-wheel; and as steadily as they used to trudge the rope walks and spin, like spiders, from the masses of flax or hemp at their waists." "The females want religion without a doubt," said Benny.
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