Notes

On a Water-mill

Cease from grinding, you women who toil at the mill ; sleep late, even if the crowing cocks announce the dawn. For Demeter has ordered the Nymphs to perform the work of your hands, and they, leaping down on the top of the wheel, turn its axle which, with its revolving spokes, turns the heavy concave Nisyrian mill-stones. We taste again the joys of the primitive life, learning to feast on the products of Demeter without labour.

pistrines

Boulangeries.

pistrines

C’est-à-dire, vu la peine étonnante qu’on avoit à moudre le blé et le réduire en farine. Pistrines, de pistrina ou pistrinum, moulin, boulangerie, lieux où l’on piloit anciennement le blé.

pistrines

Boulangerie ou l’on pilot le blé.

Mills

Urquhart has a curious mistake here, taking pistrines (pistrinum) for pristines: “and the immense labour, which without it, they did undergo in their pristine elucubrations.”

pistrines

Moulins; du Lat. pistrinum.

pistrines

Latinisme: moulins. L’invention du moulin à eau a été un progrès énorme; les moulins antiques etaient actionnés pas les esclaves; c’était le châtiment le plus dur.

meules … pistrines

Les Anciens neconnaissaient pas le moulin à vent,qui sait capturer ces «substances invisibles» que sont les vents et, grâce à eux, faire tourner les meules («moles»).

mills

The oldest reference to a water mill is by one of the three Greek poets called Antipater, around 85 BC, in which he celebrates the liverateion of toil of the maids who operated the querns (primitive hand mills) for grinding grain. In 65 bC Mithridates, king of Pontus in Asia, was using a hydraulic machine in a park, according to the Greek geographer Strabo; the reference is believed to be to a water mill.

hemp

1722 Sewel Hist. Quakers vii. (1795) II. 10 Committed to Bridewell and required to beat hemp.