A WEE LITTLE HISTORY LESSON
Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the
water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things
used to be....
Here are some facts about the 1500s: Most people got married in June, because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of
the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons
and men, then the women and finally the children-last of all the
babies.
By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in
it-hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath
water."
Houses had thatched roofs - thick straw - piled high, with no wood
underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all
the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the
roof.When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip
and fall off the roof-hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs"
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house.
This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other
droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than
dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor."
The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter
when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep
their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more
thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A
piece of wood was placed in the entranceway -hence, a "thresh hold."
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle
that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added
things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat.
They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot
to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew
had food in it that had been there for quite a while - hence the rhyme,
"peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot
nine days old."
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite
special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show
off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon."
They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and
"chew the fat."
Those with money had plates made of pewter Food with a high acid
content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead
poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece
of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were
made from stale bread, which was so old and hard that they could be used for
quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms
and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy
trenchers, one would get "trench mouth."
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt
bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or
"upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination
would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking
along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.
They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and
the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they
would wake up - hence the custom of holding a "wake."
England is old and small and the local folks started running out
of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the
bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When re-opening these
coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they
would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the
coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the
bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a
"dead ringer".
And that's the truth...(and whoever said that History was
boring?!) (Author Unknown)