Editing Textiles in folklore (section)

==Later European folklore==
"When Adam delved and Eve span..." runs the rhyme; though the tradition that [[Eve]] [[spinning (textiles)|span]] is unattested in [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]], it was deeply engrained in the medieval Christian vision of Eve. In an [[illuminated manuscript|illumination]] from the 13th-century [[Hunterian Psalter]] (''illustration. left'') Eve is shown with distaff and spindle.

In later European folklore, weaving retained its connection with magic.  [[Mother Goose]], traditional teller of [[fairy tale]]s, is often associated with spinning.<ref>Tatar, Maria (1987). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=lTtMH_ezI4UC The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales]''. p. 114. {{ISBN|0-691-06722-8}}</ref> She was known as "Goose-Footed Bertha" or ''Reine Pédauque'' ("Goose-footed Queen") in French legends as spinning incredible tales that enraptured children.

The daughter who, her father claimed, could spin straw into gold and was forced to demonstrate her talent, aided by the dangerous earth-daemon [[Rumpelstiltskin]] was an old tale when the [[Brothers Grimm]] collected it.  Similarly, the unwilling spinner of the tale ''[[The Three Spinners]]'' is aided by three mysterious old women.  In ''[[The Six Swans]]'', the heroine spins and weaves [[starwort]] in order to free her brothers from a shapeshifting curse.  ''[[Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle]]'' are enchanted and bring the prince to marry the poor heroine.  [[Sleeping Beauty]], in all her forms, pricks her finger on a spindle, and the curse falls on her.<ref>Tatar, Maria (1987). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=lTtMH_ezI4UC The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales]''. pp. 115–8, {{ISBN|0-691-06722-8}}</ref>
[[File:Holman-Hunt, William, and Hughes, Edward Robert - The Lady of Shalott - 1905.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[The Lady of Shalott (William Holman Hunt)|The Lady of Shalott]]'' by [[William Holman Hunt]], painted from 1888 to 1902]]
In [[Alfred Tennyson]]'s poem "[[The Lady of Shalott]]", her woven representations of the world have protected and entrapped [[Elaine of Astolat]], whose first encounter with reality outside proves mortal. [[William Holman Hunt]]'s painting from the poem (''illustration, right'') contrasts the completely pattern-woven interior with the sunlit world reflected in the roundel mirror. On the wall, woven representations of Myth ("[[Hesperides]]") and Religion ("Prayer") echo the mirror's open roundel; the tense and conflicted Lady of Shalott stands imprisoned within the brass roundel of her loom, while outside the passing knight sings "'Tirra lirra' by the river" as in Tennyson's poem.

A high-born woman sent as a hostage-wife to a foreign king was repeatedly given the epithet "weaver of peace", linking the woman's art and the familiar role of a woman as a dynastic pawn. A familiar occurrence of the phrase is in the early English poem ''[[Widsith]]'', who "had in the first instance gone with Ealhild, the beloved weaver of peace, from the east out of Anglen to the home of the king of the glorious Goths, Eormanric, the cruel troth-breaker..."