The bundles of grass are opened up, shaken out, and put through a willowing machine.
The order of the manufacturing processes is as follows:—mixing, willowing, teasing, scribbling and carding.
Old English welig, from Proto-Germanic *walg- (cf. Old Saxon wilgia, Middle Dutch wilghe, Dutch wilg), probably from PIE *wel- "to turn, roll," with derivatives referring to curved, enclosing objects. The change in form to -ow (14c.) paralleled that of bellow and fellow. The more typical Germanic word for the tree is represented by withy.
