Nay, did she not write history, too, this noble spinster, with her spindle and loom, “Who, as she plied the distaff, In a sweet voice and low, Still sang of noble houses, And fights fought long ago”? [Illustration: TROOPS FOR THE INVASION OF ENGLAND, FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.] As Helen embroidered the combats of Greeks and Trojans, so now, two thousand years later, Queen Matilda and her maidens are seen spinning and weaving the Norman Conquest of England into the Bayeux Tapestry. Surely the muse Clio might wield spindle as well as stylus as a symbol of her patronage of history. It was no shame to those high-born women to ply the distaff and figure in the songs of chivalry as the makers of all manner of household fabrics. “My love to fight the Saxon goes, And bravely shines his sword of steel; A heron’s feather decks his brows, And a spur on either heel; His steed is blacker than a sloe, And fleeter than the falling star; Amid the surging ranks he’ll go And shout for joy of war. “Twinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle, Let the white wool drift and dwindle; Oh! we weave a damask doublet For my love’s coat of steel. Hark! the timid turning treadle Crooning soft old-fashioned ditties, To the low, slow murmur of the Brown, round wheel.” So sang an Irish maid of long ago, and to-day we still look to Ireland for some of the finest spinning and weaving in existence. It would be trite to refer to Margaret, dreaming of Faust over her spinning, were she not eminently typical. What maiden of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not sit in the garden idly spinning her allotted tasks while her thoughts were far away? It is a picture based on fact, as all great literary pictures are. [Illustration: NICY MELINDA’S WOOL WHEEL]