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Very interesting &
informative
They used to use urine to tan
animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was
taken & sold to the tannery. If you had to do
this to survive you were "piss poor."
But worse than that were the
really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot; they "didn't have
a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing
your hands & 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 they still smelled pretty good
by June. Since they were starting to smell, however, brides carried a bouquet
of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet
when getting married.
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 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, resulting in the idiom, "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 mess up your nice clean bed, therefore, 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, leading folks to coin the phrase
"dirt poor."
The wealthy had slate floors that
would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on
floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh
until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece
of wood was placed in the entrance-way, subsequently creating 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 stew had
food in it that had been there for quite a while, and thus 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 high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto
the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes,
so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
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 the "upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale
or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers 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, creating 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
reopening 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
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. Now, whoever said History was boring?
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