Meanwhile, what were medieval girls learning? Mostly fabric arts: spinning and sewing. Next to those chief occupations, herbal arts: ale brewing and home medicine.
All classes and types of girls below the aristocracy could expect to keep a distaff and drop spindle close by at all times. A craftsman’s daughter asked to watch the baby was expected to spin most of the time. Farm girls learned to spin in the half-light and even full dark, going by touch. Any time they had more than a minute to spare, it was time to pull out the spinning. By the late medieval years, weaving moved from home craft to guild industry, but weavers still bought most of their spun wool or flax from home spinners.
Women at home made most of their family’s clothes and linens, but tailors were taking over a lot of the sewing in towns. Some girls were taught fine embroidery skills and could become full-time paid embroiderers working in aristocratic households. Aristocratic girls learned fine embroidery too, but they were not required to decorate their own robes. They worked on large decorative fabrics that were given to churches and monasteries. Girls in convents, too, spent hours on these gold-trimmed wall hangings for churches.
Of course, herbal lore had to be passed from women to girls. Herbs were used for medicine, but also for daily use like scenting the laundry, keeping away flea infestations, and freshening breath.
The other major herbal market was for ale. Ale followed local and family recipes, using for flavor anything from pine needles to mint to ivy. Until the use of hops made ale last longer, it had to be brewed in batches that lasted for only a few days. To get fresh ale, your neighborhood needed at least five women who each took a turn brewing and traded jugs of fresh brew. They also supplied taverns and many town women kept up a busy ale brewing business. Until hops permitted ale to become a large-scale industry, it was never men’s work. All lower and middle class girls needed to know how to brew.