DIYbanter - View Single Post - An Interesting Historical Story About Woodworking

Andy Dingley

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:35:42 -0400, (J T)
wrote:

It was once the custom in Wales that young men's hands should be kept
busy when they came courting. Therefore, they were required to carve
spoons for their young ladies' parents.

And does it say how many came prepaed with an already carved spoon,
and carving chips, concealed in a jacket pocket?

They all did. A good spoon is a significant amount of work - prospective
suitors were judged on the basis of their offerings. Welsh love spoons
are serious pieces of carving, with many technical flourishes such as
caged balls or chain links. Carving one isn't an overnight task. They
were also given to the girl, not her parents.

I've never heard this "keeping the hands busy" malarkey. None of my
spoon books, nor my spooning books, make any mention of this bogus
claim.

There's also the issue that Wales practised "bundling" as a form of
courtship [1], something that's known in America (and Tim Burton's film
"Sleepy Hollow) but are in England. There's little point in carving
spoons whilst both being bundled into a sewn-up sack, you'd get shavings
everywhere...

[1] A History of Courting, E. S. Turner, 1954

--
'Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Evesham wagn'nagl fhtagn'