{434}Be that as it may, the manufacture of thread for lace alone employed five hundred machines, each machine occupying thirty-six persons: the value of the thread produced annually £175,000. Loch adds, that in consequence of the cheapness of provisions, Scotland, as a country, is better adapted to lace-making than England. In consequence of Loch's remarks, his Majesty's Board of Trustees for the Fisheries and Manufactures, after asking a number of questions, determined to give proper encouragement and have mistresses for teaching the different kinds of lace made in England and France, and oblige them to take girls of the poorer class, some from the hospitals, and the mistress for five years to have the benefit of their work. A girl might earn from 10d. to 1s. per day. They gave a salary to an experienced person from Lisle for the purpose of teaching the making of thread; his wife to instruct in lace-making. With the records of 1788 end all mention of lace-making in Scotland.[1216] {435}CHAPTER XXXV. IRELAND. "The undoubted aptitude for lace-making of the women of Ireland."--_Juror's Report, International Exhibition._ 1862. "It is peculiarly interesting to note the various foreign influences which have done their part in the creation of Irish lace. Italian and Flemish, Greek, French and English, all have lent their aid."--A. Loyd. _The Queen_, Feb. 6th, 1897. Little is known of the early state of manufactures in Ireland, save that the art of needlework was held in high estimation. By the sumptuary laws of King Mogha Nuadhad, killed at the Battle of Maylean, A.D. 192, we learn that the value of a queen's raiment, should she bring a suitable dowry, ought to amount to the cost of six cows; but of what the said raiment consisted history is dark. The same record, however, informs us that the price of a mantle, wrought with the needle, should be "a young bullock or steer."[1217] This hooded mantle is described by Giraldus Cambrensis as composed of various pieces of cloth, striped, and worked in squares by the needle; maybe a species of cut-work. Morgan, who wrote in 1588, declares the saffron-tinted shirts of the Irish to contain from twenty to thirty ells of linen. No wonder they are described-- "With pleates on pleates they pleated are, As thick as pleates may lie."[1218] It was in such guise the Irish appeared at court before Queen Elizabeth,[1219] and from them the yellow starch of Mrs. Turner may have derived its origin. The Irish, however, {436}produced the dye not from saffron, but from a lichen gathered on the rocks. Be that as it may, the Government prohibited its use, and the shirts were reduced in quantity to six ells,[1220] for the making of which "new-fangled pair of Gally-cushes," _i.e._, English shirts, as we find by the Corporation Book of Kilkenny (1537), eighteenpence was charged if done with silk or cut-work. Ninepence extra was charged for every ounce of silk worked in.