It was autumn 1981. I was living in suburban Lisbon and took a weekend camping trip with two dear friends: David, a Brazilian‑American scholar researching for his PhD, and Nucha, a recent history graduate from the University of Lisbon. We spent Friday night on sleeping bags inside the ruins of Abrantes Castle, and on Saturday morning drove north toward the medieval city of Tomar.
It was there , while driving along a wooded tributary of the Tejo that we spotted a tiny stone grist mill. Our curiosity got the best of us so we pulled over our Fiat and waded beside the riverbank to the stone riverside structure.
The mill was abandoned, its cool stone interior empty except for a single wooden paddle leaning against the base of one wall. Having inspected the object and speculated on its use, we carried it away, with the thought that the mill was no longer in use.
The object itself is modest in dimensions and weight: light wood, finger holes for grip, leather or hide patches nailed on each side as reinforcement for a central split repaired years earlier.
The paddle’s purpose is debated. While one AI site sees in it a flax tool, used in preparing the plant that becomes linen, I thought it was for use in pushing swaths of grain, and another site stated that this was plausible.
The argument for this as a ‘flax scrutcher’ goes like this. After flax stalks were soaked in water to loosen their fibers, workers had to knock away the brittle woody bits clinging to the stocks. A bundle of stalks would have been held against a board, and this paddle then swung down in quick, repeated strokes. The blows would have freed the soft fibers, which could then have been combed and spun into thread.
As for the other view, I’d suggest this was a grain paddle, for stirring or shifting grain as it was processed in the small mill. Both readings are plausible, I think, and maybe the paddle served more than one role in its previous rural Portuguese life.
From what I’ve read, hand-held paddles like this were common in rural Europe from the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century, when flax was still processed by hand before being woven into linen. Even as mechanized mills spread during the industrial era, small communities in Portugal continued to rely on simple wooden blades for everyday textile and grain work. Tools of this kind often remained in use well into the early twentieth century, repaired many times over, until rural mills were finally abandoned in favor of industrial production.
What matters now, I think, is this tool’s survival. Patched, worn, and adapted, it embodies the ingenuity of subsistence work—whether that was in linen or in grain. Like the Afghan carpet I last described or the Colima parrot pot described earlier, this wooden paddle is a witness to everyday craft traditions, retrieved by chance and now part of a personal collection that spans continents and centuries.
* The soundtrack for this post -- with medieval Andaluscian music -- is here: https://www.mixcloud.com/Dadd.../espa%C3%B1a-antigua-dpe118/
