LA COLADA

[Marta Elena Díaz García]

Hi,
My mother says that when she was a little girl, her mother (my grandma) made the “colada” (washing) to get the linen more white. It was common to make the “colada” when a high amount of dirty clothing was washed (bed linen, towels, table linen, etc). The colada was made placing the clothing in a big wooden washtub (similar to a wine barrel) and then covering the clothing with a piece of cloth that served as a sieve (a “colander”). Onto this sieve, wooden white ashes were placed and hot water was poured over them.
The linen was thus drenched in that hot liquid, the lixiviate (lixivia, lejía, in Spanish; bleach, in English). After soaking in it for some time (5-10 h), the linen was washed in the river using home-made soap. The linen was in this manner whiter than white and had a pleasant smell to clean cloth. This is the origin of the Spanish phrase “hacer la colada” (make the washing, washing-day).
A popular song that refers to the water that was being heated to make the colada is:

Tres calentines
tres calentando
tres esplumines
tres esplumando
tres fervochines
tres fervochando
tres tibines
tres tibiando
tres calentines
tres calentando
tres bullerines
tres bullerando

It is not an easy task for me to translate this song . I could not find the corresponding English word that may picture the process of boiling : start to warm, start to steam, get lukewarm, become more warm, wormer and boiling. Besides, in the song a word is an adjective (and what is worse, it is a diminutive! ) and the next it is a verb.
Can somebody translate it?
Marta.

[Art]

Oh, boy, that would be hard to translate. Are those Asturian words?

Did the clothes smell like bleach? Or was it a different smell?

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Vaya, tienes razón que sería difícil traducir. ¿Son palabras asturianas?

¿Olió las ropas a lejía? ¿O era otro olor?

[Marta Elena Díaz García]

Oh, no, Art, the clothes did not smell like bleach. It is a clean smell dificult to explain, it smells like the river, like the sun .....I don't know....
Marta

[Ron Gonzalez]

Marta
I know that smell , my mother would dry her wash outside ,I could smell the outside in them. What a good smell that was.

[Bob]

I, too, remember the smell of laundry dried in the sun (and a wonderful smell it was), but the smell of wood ashes as a step in washing clothes is something I have no experience with. I can only assume that it is akin to a very mild lye solution.

[Eli]

huh aunque habia escuchado al paso historias de como se hacia la lavanderia en siglos anteriores nunca habia leido un relato historico. Hice una busqueda y me dio esta pagina http://www.tinet.org/~vne/CC06.htm historia de cosas cotidianas, al final habla sobre la lavanderia.

[Marta Elena Díaz García]

Hola Eli:
He visto el enlace que sugieres. Está bien aunque he leído en alguna parte que el origen del jabón fue, como muchas cosas, algo derivado de la observación del mundo que nos rodea. En este caso, al parecer en epocas remotas los hombres observaron que después de asar un animal al fuego, las cenizas que quedaban, mezcladas con la grasa que caía encima era un material magnífico para quitar manchas.

Esto tiene su fundamento: las cenizas son alcalinas y cuando se mezclan con las grasas (ácidos grasos) se forma el jabón.
La reacción química se conoce con el nombre de saponificación (de ahí la palabra jabón).
El uso de las cenizas se debe a la alcalinidad de la mismas, por lo que la colada también tiene su justificación química.
La actual lejía es una solución alcalina de hipoclorito sódico.
Marta.

[Berodia]