Cwthing in your siol fagu
#babywearing is culturally significant for me. This might surprise some, as my heritage is 100% British. Or, to be more accurate, Welsh, Scottish and English!
Around the time the British were invading this land they called Australia, an ancestor of mine (wonderfully named Jinkin Jenkins) crossed the border from Wales into England and established the family in that country. It is likely Jinkin was carried in a Welsh nursing shawl as a baby, as his mother went about her daily work. You can still buy these siol fagu today - I really must order one from Wales to add to my collection!
Siol = shawl
Fagu = bringing up
The Welsh for the practice of using one is cwtch = cuddle
My Scottish ancestors would have used a plaid, another versatile woollen blanket-like garment used as a garment (eventually re-invented as the familiar kilt, which is actually the term for wearing it with a belt "kilting" it at the waist.) If a woman needed to keep her baby close (and warm) while she went about domestic or farm work, she would have used her plaid.
In England, it is likely mothers did something similar. Eagle-eyed babywearers noted Demelza using a woollen shawl to carry her baby in the most recent dramatisation of Poldark, set in Cornwall. Cornish women might have used similar methods to their Welsh neighbours.
Evidence of baby carrier use in Europe is found in art from medieval times. But because everyday textiles of the working classes rarely survive to be collected in museums, we have no physical examples. And the industrial revolution changed forever the lives men and women, and carrying babies while working in mines, mills and factories would be impossible. Babies were often watched by older siblings while their mothers worked from dawn to dusk, fed dubious substitutes for breastmilk unless lucky enough to be wet nursed. Mortality rates in early childhood were high.
Books About Babywearing are few. Find our list here
Image: Rock and Co, no 8 ‘Gwisgiadaw Cymreig – Mode of Carying infants’ One of a set of 16 numbered prints dated 1.5.1
