Hello again! As I promised in my last blog in October, I’m back! My internship is continuing, after its brief interlude, and I look forward to sharing events from the Archive with you again along with interesting items and stories that I’m sure I will come across in the continuation of my project on roller mills. Today’s blog subject is poetry.
This week as I have been re-acquainting myself with the project, I have begun to do further research on the history of roller milling throughout the world to understand the differences and similarities in the development of the processes in different countries. This research led me to discovering digitised copies of The Canadian Miller and Grain Trade Review online. As I was looking through these editions, I became struck by the amount of poetry I came across. I had previously looked through editions of The Northwestern Miller which also features poems, and had even included some of them in articles for the website. However, I had never really given much thought as to why poetry on mills and by millers was so common.
Fortunately, the December 1892 edition of The Canadian Miller helped me answer this question in an article on ‘The Miller in Literature’. The editor suggested that ‘there is a picturesqueness and suggestiveness in the operations of a mill and the quiet-going complacency of the miller that gives to the place and the man a kinship to literary and artistic thought’. Indeed, the romantic idea of a miller in the countryside or by the river grinding the corn to flour was a common theme picked up on by poets. For example ‘The Miller of Dee’ presents a jolly miller claiming:
‘I envy nobody – no, not I,
And nobody envies me!’
Whilst Longfellow’s Windmill stands proud and tall knowing that he makes his master, the miller, ‘lord of the lands’.
This nostalgic image of mills and the miller may have changed with the advent of roller milling so may have seen a decline in the use of poetry to describe the industry and structure. However, if the pages of the journals are anything to go by, millers themselves were more than happy to turn their hand to writing poetry, albeit it was often ‘not of the highest order of poetry, rather of the rhymist order’. Nevertheless, the image of the jolly miller plying his trade, with the occasional reminiscence about the past, can be found throughout the different journals. Indeed, although not of the ‘highest order’ they still produced fun and enjoyable and even informative poetry if, like Katie in the following poem, you too wish to know how flour is made so white and pure:
Caught in the Gearing by T. W. Graham
(from The Canadian Miller, December 1892, p.10)
“I long to know,” cried Katie Moore,
“How flour is made so white and pure.
I’ll wed the man who will explain
The secret that I would obtain.”
A miller heard the maiden’s threat
And vowed her wishes should be met,
That all the mysteries of the art,
To gain her hand he would impart.
He showed her first how wheat was cleaned
By passing o’er a shaking screen,
Which carried off the oats and straw
And sifted out fine dirt below;
Then dropping down a suction spout,
The wind drew chaff and light stuff out;
How smutters then complete the work
By beating off remaining dirt,
And scouring all the berries bright,
The air draft taking what is light;
For wheat, like men, is always found
Mixed good and bad, diseased and sound;
Impurities, however small,
Degrade, discolour products all;
No miller ever had the power
Without clean wheat to make good flour.
Thus moralized our miller friend,
And Katie did his words attend.
He then proceeded to explain
A roller mill receives the grain,
And through the crease the berries split,
(Not perfectly he would admit,)
An elevator takes the meal
And dumps it in a scalping reel.
This reel is clothed with woven wire
Which sifts out all the germs of flour.
Some middling also with them pass.
Another reel receives the mass,
Bolts out the flour and fine crease dirt,
(Which all the other flour would hurt).
The broken wheat again reduced,
More flour and middlings are produced,
Thus roll and scalper alternates –
One breaks, the other separates,
Till only bran is left intact,
(In theory but not in fact).
The purifiers then give aid
To dress the middlings that are made,
They travel o’er a silken sieve
That vibrates rapidly to give
Air rushing to a suction fan,
A chance to draw off fluff and bran,
And grade the middlings, large and small,
All ready for the burrs or roll,
To which they go to be reduced
That patent flour may be produced.
Who needs instruction manuals when a simple poem describes the roller milling process so well!!
(Due to its length, I had to shorten the poem but for those concerned about the fate of Katie and her miller, you’ll be pleased to hear that by the end of poem, the two are engaged to be married, despite her brief jealousy of a ‘centrifu-GAL’!)