This information was taken from a variety of sources, mainly the books, J. L. Campbell's "Hebridean Folksongs", and Margaret Mac Phail's "The Bride Of Loch Bras D'Or".

Waulking or milling songs (orain luadhaidh) are traditional labour songs used in the ancient method of preparing wool for tailoring. Surviving only in the Outer Hebrides and Cape Breton, waulking songs were sung to accompany and to give rhythm to the labour of the fulling of home spun cloth by hand. Home spun cloth is slack and uneven in texture and would need to be wind and water tight before clothing could be made. This process is known as "waulking" in Scotland and "milling" in Cape Breton.

In earlier times songs accompanied many types of manual labour, such as spinning, weaving, milking, churning, reaping, grinding corn, and rowing. The songs lightened the labour and made the communal work less tedious. It seems only the waulking songs have survived to any extent.

The waulking process and orain luadhaidh accompanied the immigrant settlers to new lands, one being Cape Breton, where the tradition changed a little. Traditionally in Scotland, it was the women who waulked the cloth, while in Cape Breton both men and women shared the work. This was perhaps due to the harsher winters where men were unable to fish and farm year round. In later years it became more of a social gathering (milling frolics) and men would eagerly participate and sing. In Cape Breton now it seems there are more male singers than women at the Milling Frolics. This is slowly changing, as young people, male and female are learning more about their Gaidhlig heritage.

In the Hebrides the cloth was soaked in sheep or human urine. The ammonia loosened the waxy lanolin in the new cloth so that it could be removed by the milling process. The urine acted as a mordant and also gave the cloth a soft texture. It set the colour, especially indigo. I've been told that indigo was called "pisspot blue". In Cape Breton the cloth was commonly pre-soaked in water and oatmeal which may have had a soap-like effect.

In Margaret Mac Phail's book, "The Bride Of Loch Bras D'Or", she recounts: "First a small oak barrel with a tight cover was placed in the stone cellar where it would remain cool, yet would not freeze, until spring. Every bed had a chamber pot under it, and each day the urine was emptied into the barrel which was well covered with old mats to keep out the fumes. My mother prepared the yarn. The warp, also of wool, was made from the longest fibres of the fleece and carefully carded by hand, then the rolls were spun soft. Following that the skeins were carefully and painstakingly washed to pure whiteness. When spring was well advanced, the eel-grass that banked the house for warmth against the chilly frost, was removed and then used for compost fertilizer. The cellar door could be opened, and by this time the barrel was full and gave off no fumes under its tight cover. After the potatoes were planted and early farm work started, Father carried the old iron chimney boiler, so huge that it almost contained a barrel, into the cellar. The contents were emptied into the boiler. I must say that then fumes escaped during the process' but no one minded for it was a necessary thing. The boiler was carried to an open field near the pond. Every farm had a pond or brook. There the boiler was left still well covered to keep out the rain, yet in the strong sunlight to become stronger as it warmed, for indigo required a strong ammonia mordant. It was literally rotten when a crushed cake of indigo was stirred into it with a special ladle made from ash and carefully smoothed of every splinter. This was called the "indigo stick" and I think every household had one carefully kept in the cellar for years."

The women would sit at a table, or something with a rough ribbed surface, and repeatedly knead and pound the cloth to a steady rhythm, squeezing and folding and rubbing the cloth hard. Sometimes a door was taken off its hinges and used as the work surface.

The cloth was always passed around the table in a clock-wise or sun-wise direction. The Gaels were very superstitious and believed it was unlucky to do anything in an anti clock-wise direction. They also believed singing any song twice over the same piece of cloth would make it imperfect. The cloth was pulled towards you and passed to the left before pushing it back. This way, the cloth turned around the table in a clock-wise manner as it was evenly processed. At milling frolics in Cape Breton the cloth is not always passed around the table.

The earlier waulking songs were mostly composed by women and provide a vivid picture of life in the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries from a woman's point of view. They are completely unsophisticated and spontaneous.

In general, orain luadhaidh are classified according to the structure of the chorus. Nearly always the chorus consists of "vocables" or meaningless syllables, although they were carefully chosen to fit the rhythm of the tune. The songs are generally divided into the main verses sung by the lead singer, and the choruses, which were sung in response by the rest of the women. The songs are often compared to dreams, the constant repetition and rhythm having a hypnotic effect.

Genuine waulkings of home spun cloth seem to have died out in the 1950s. And although the actual practice of waulking has faded into history, the milling tradition and accompanying songs have been preserved and handed down from generation to generation.

In Cape Breton many songs that are sung at milling frolics are not true waulking songs, but have been traditionally sung at milling frolics. They have the same rhythm, but they are more complicated and have longer choruses (not necessarily vocables), and longer verses.

Milling ceased to be essential as the Gaelic speaking people moved away from self-sufficiency and began to purchase factory produced clothing. Today, milling survives as a social event and cultural performance.

Mary (taigh solas) MacLean

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