Niddy-noddie

Niddy-noddies were tools used to coil thread spun on a spindle or reel and to calculate the length. The loose hanks formed this way would be then washed and sometimes dyed. They were used not only by weavers but also by fishermen's wives to make a thread for nets. The niddy-noddies were known in all Slavic countries and elsewhere. Their popularity is reflected in their numerous occurrences in literature – niddy-noddy was used by Jagna from Władysław Reymont’s The Peasants to wind the yarn; sliver and niddy-noddy were given to the daughter of the beggar from Grimm’s fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to make gold from straw; the same tool was also used by the thrifty dwarves in Maria Konopnicka's well-known children's story. The Polish language also has a number of idioms and proverbs related to niddy-noddy. We can mention here for example the phrase referring to the shape of this specific weaving tool Świecie, świecie, tyś kulaty jako motowidło, which could be translated as “World, you are rounded as a niddy-noddy”. There are also some proverbs, such as: “do not spin yarn on someone else’s niddy-noddy”, meaning that you should not seek profit at someone else’s expense, or a proverb in which the woman talks only about the awl, and the man is all about the niddy-noddy, which is a conceptualization of a situation where they are not able to reach an agreement. In the collection of the Department of Ethnography of Pomerania of the National Museum in Szczecin, there are several dozens of niddy-noddies. An interesting variant of this tool is the presented stand niddy-noddy from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, made of wood with woodworking techniques. It consists of four parts: stand, gear, propeller and counter. It has a mechanism in the form of appropriately set wooden cogs and a hammer with an anvil placed on the side, which, after winding a certain number of threads, signals the measured metres by hitting the anvil. The niddy-noddy is decorated with a cut-out heart motif.

Agnieszka Słowińska