BEATING FLAX or HEMP, is an operation in the dressing of these matters, contrived to render them more soft and pliant. When hemp has been swinged a second time, and the huds laid by, they take the strikes, and dividing them into dozens and half dozens, make them up into large thick rolls, which being broached on long strikes, are set in the chimney corner to dry; after which they lay them in a round trough made for the purpose, and there with beetles beat them well till they handle both without and within as pliant as possible, without any hardness or roughness to be felt;
that done, they take them from the trough, open and divide the strikes as before; and if any be found not sufficiently beaten, they roll them up and beat them over as before.