Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...: Norman's (hemp) Rope ...

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NORMAN’S ROPE by John Fitzhugh Millar

I worked as a Tavern Entertainer (balladeer) at Colonial Williamsburg for many years, but I began my folk-singing career in the 1960s at Newport, Rhode Island. I attended the Newport Folk Festival, and was introduced to Norman Kennedy (born 28 August 1933), a soft-spoken Scotsman with a twinkle in his eye, and shoulder-length flaming red hair, who sang the Gaelic songs of the Hebrides Islands off the west coast of Scotland that he had learned at his grandmother’s knee.

I was delighted to find that Norman had a “day job” as the official weaver of Colonial Williamsburg – he had also learned traditional Hebridean weaving at his grandmother’s knee -- so I promised that I would look in on him the next time I visited Williamsburg.

A few months later in the early 1970s, I made good on my promise.

Now, Norman was an honest, honorable fellow with few vices. He liked a glass of Scots whiskey now and then, but not to excess. His idea of a joke was that while he was out of town he would put the pot of a prickly house-plant in the toilet to keep it watered, but one time a lady friend of his, who had a key, sat down on that toilet without bothering to turn on the light.

Colonial Williamsburg Balladeer
(2015)
©CathyHelms

On my visit, however, I could see that Norman was troubled, so I asked him what was wrong, and this is the story that he told me...

He was at work in the weaving shop about a year before my visit, when a very senior Colonial Williamsburg official (I will call him [VIP] because members of his family still live in the Williamsburg area) entered the shop. [VIP] was showing around the president of Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut and giving him a tour of Colonial Williamsburg.

[VIP] had been belittling Mystic Seaport all through the tour. “You see, here at Colonial Williamsburg, we do everything from scratch, and we’re the only museum that does this. The silversmith doesn’t buy a half-finished teapot and then finish it off; he takes a bar of silver from the mine and bashes it out into a sheet and then forms the sheet into a teapot.”

He paused for effect, and then continued. “Take Norman, here. He grows his own flax to weave into linen cloth, he grows his own sea-island cotton (the only kind of cotton available in 18th-century Virginia), and he shears Colonial Williamsburg’s black-faced sheep to get his wool.”

At that point, the man from Mystic blurted out that Mystic Seaport not only built and repaired boats, but also made rope from scratch in a rope-walk. [VIP] was not to be put off. “I bet Norman here could make a rope, too, couldn’t you, Norman?”

Norman quickly replied with his strong Scots accent, “Och, aye, I could make a rope.”

[VIP] pressed on: “I tell you what, Norman. You make a rope. Anything you need, my office will vouch for it. Then we’ll send it up to Mystic to see if it’s as good as their rope.” The two men then departed in good humor and presumably forgot all about the incident, but Norman had been given an order and had no luxury of forgetting the assignment, so he carefully planned how to go about making the rope.

Many months later, the calm of Duke of Gloucester Street just after 9AM was shattered by a police squad car roaring down the street with lights flashing and siren wailing. The car screeched to a halt in front of Norman’s shop, and even though the shop door was open the two policemen approached with guns drawn and kicked in the door.

“All right, where’s the stuff?” asked one of them.

“Where is wot?” replied Norman.

It seems that a US Navy sailor had been arrested for smoking a joint in Newport News. Usually, when asked where he obtained it, a sailor would answer that he bought it from some sailor in Norfolk, and that would be the end of the story, but this time the sailor said that it was growing in a field out behind Colonial Williamsburg. The police had then gone to investigate the field, only to find that the crop had all been harvested. I should say that this field’s contents were an open secret. The late Tayler Vrooman, Colonial Williamsburg’s premier balladeer, told me that he regularly went to that field during a period of a few months to help himself to a pinch or two or three.

hemp

Once the police had explained what they wanted, they said, “We’re going to open the trunk of the squad car, and you’re going to put it all in there.”

“Och, I couldna do that!” said Norman. “It will take a whole trailer truck.” Norman is now in a heap of trouble: he has said no to the police; he’s a foreigner; he has long hair, so he’s obviously a hippy; it’s the South; it’s the ‘60s; and he is associated with a large amount of hemp or marijuana.

Norman took the police to the barn where the hemp was hanging up to dry. They duly brought a trailer truck to the barn, and they used industrial vacuum-cleaners to make sure that every last seed had been collected. Then they took Norman to arraign him in front of the magistrate.

When the magistrate read the charges, Norman replied, “But I was ordered to do this by [VIP].”

“[VIP]?” said the magistrate. “I know him well; I play golf with him all the time. I’ll give him a call.” The magistrate picked up the phone and dialed the private number from memory. Norman heard the magistrate’s end of the call: “I have in front of me one Norman Kennedy who works for you. He said you ordered him to grow hemp… No, of course I didn’t think you had! That’s all. Thanks.”

In [VIP]’s defense, it is likely that he thought that rope comes from nylon trees. However, that left Norman hanging in the wind. The magistrate told Norman that he was facing ten years in prison, followed by deportation to Scotland. Norman quickly made a deal with the judge. Norman would have 48 hours under armed guard while he made a rope, and if the judge liked the rope he would drop the charges.

So, relays of policemen with carbines across their knees sat and watched Norman at work. Finally, he was satisfied with the rope and brought it to the judge. The judge approved it as an excellent job, and dropped the charges. Norman never learned whether the rope was then sent off to Mystic Seaport Museum to fulfill the original order.

What was troubling Norman was that [VIP] had given him an order and had not stood behind him when he was accused of a crime as a result of having done no more and no less than following [VIP]’s instructions. He therefore did not feel comfortable continuing to work for Colonial Williamsburg, so after a few months he resigned in 1972 to take a job with the Mansfield School of Weaving in Vermont that demonstrated traditional weaving practices from all over the world. Norman retired from that job in 1995, but he is still in demand to perform Gaelic folk-songs at folk festivals.

For many years after Norman’s departure, Colonial Williamsburg’s official position was that there never had been a separate shop for a weaver in colonial times, so it was a good thing that Norman’s shop had closed. All weaving was done as part of regular household work in such places as the Wythe House out-buildings, and so that was how it was exhibited for many years. However, in recent years, a fully-fledged separate weaving shop has been re-opened. Presumably, the new weavers will not be ordered to make a length of rope.

A further note is that the black-faced sheep that Norman used to sheer for his wool were replaced in 1983 by Dorset-Wiltshire-cross sheep (a rare historic breed) and then in 1985 by Leicester Long-wool sheep. The Leicesters, because it is often thought that they cannot be herded (and therefore, who would want them?), are also a rare historic breed, and Colonial Williamsburg now subscribes to the Rare Breeds Program for most of its publicly-seen farm animals.

However, that means that the Leicesters are often kept behind fences in fields, whereas the previous sheep were regularly herded back and forth across Market Square every day by Robin, a diminutive girl with blonde hair so long that she could sit on it – the most colorful activity regularly presented at Colonial Williamsburg in those days. Robin was a graduate of the College of William & Mary. Shortly after Robin lost her job in a bureaucratic shuffle, she joined the US Army as an officer and built up an impressive record of service until she retired recently as a colonel. Had Robin held an advantage over her fellow officers because she had once herded sheep?

Helen and a friend enjoying breakfast,
hosted by John,
at Newport House

Visit John at Newport House, Williamsburg for an entertaining, comfortable and enjoyable B & B stay located just outside Colonial Williamsburg. Highly Recommended!