CONVERSATIONS ACROSS TIME - 4

Lei-tzu

I: You have been called “The Empress of Silk”…

Lei-tzu: And quite correctly, since had it not been for me, this wonderful material would never exist. Sit, and I will tell you my story. Whilst walking in my garden I saw a strange worm eating through a mulberry leaf. This happened over several days until I saw it close itself up and I thought it dead.

I: But it wasn’t; just turning itself into something else…

Lei-tzu: Allow me to finish…. It eventually burst through the cocoon as a moth. But I was interested not in the moth but what was left behind. I picked it up but it fell through my fingers into my tea. It became very soft and I was able to unwind it into a long, long thread. That was the silk. You have to understand that the silk worm lives to lay eggs. Over 40,000 small worms weigh just 25 grams. In 5 weeks each worm eats 30,000 times its own weight and then makes the cocoon. I also learned that they are strange animals; you can tell the colour of silk by the colour of its front legs and they die if their habitat changes or they are disturbed in any way.

I: Most interesting, but at that stage it was of little use.

 Lei-tzu: You are right. I had to learn how it should be spun and as I had access to all artisans, that was quite an easy task. Once I had learned, I was able to teach others until we had hundreds of skilled weavers. Now you understand why they call me “Empress of Silk” because without my skills and my command of others, silk would never have been so desired by so many all over my land and indeed as far away as Rome. I am proud of myself, and when I die, I will be placed in the sky in the home of Scorpio, the constellation Silk House….

(All her words are at best self-adulation. Lei-tzu lived about 2600 BC but silk weaving began some 1400 years before her. Also, more than 6,ooo years ago someone in a Neolithic village carved a silkworm on an ivory cup; silk from a 3^rd millennium village has been found in Turkmenistan. A lovely view of her place in developing the silk industry, but sadly lacking in substance).

Until next time (and not lacking substance),

Peripatetic Scribe