Working, singing and telling in the 19th-century Flemish pillow-lace industry

The female lacemaker who sings at her work is a European literary trope from Shakespeare to Nerval. However, there is considerable evidence from many countries that pillow lacemakers did sing while working, and that their repertoire of songs was in part learnt in the lace schools which many of them attended from about the age of six. Such schools were often under some kind of religious authority. In the English Midlands, the Erzgebirge region of Saxony, and Flanders, trainee lacemakers learnt “tells” which provided a rhythm to the production process; many of these tells were noted down in the nineteenth century. This article examines the corpus of Flemish tells to explore lacemakers’ own responses to the strict environment of the lace school. Singing together helped establish a corporate identity which lacemakers were proud to proclaim, and reinforced bonds of mutual sympathy between workers. But tells in particular were meant to foster competition. Tells could be used to voice resistance to, or at least the fantasy of escape from, the lace mistress as well as the parents who forced their children into this occupation. But lace mistresses also used tells to teach moral and religious lessons, and to break young girls to the discipline of the school and the relentless expectations of production