bunnyjadwiga

Does anyone have a copy of this:

The distaff gospels
By Fouquart (de Cambray, maistre.), Antoine Duval, Jean (d'Arras), Madeleine Jeay, Kathleen E. Garay
http://books.google.com/books?id=mDX2_0Qb03EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Evangiles+de+quenouilles&client=firefox-a

Edition of Evangiles des Quenouilles a 1475 collection of either women's or spinning superstitions.

According to Natalie Zemon Davis,, "Women in the Crafts in Sixteenth-Century Lyon," it includes information like this:

A good day's work could be helped by spinning thread first thing in the morning, before praying and with unwashed hands (still part of the magic of the night), and throwing it over one's shoulder. Washing one's thread, one must not say to one's gossip, "Ha, commere, the water's boiling," but rather "the water's laughing," or else the thread would turn to straw.

(Curiously enough, other sources suggest that doing work or anything else in the morning before washing one's hands exposed one to the vagaries of witchcraft and demon-mischief.)