This mail tells of where various sayings come from by describing life in the 1500s. To be honest it seems a pretty acurate description of life in the sticks down south today :-) esp the bit about the women and their bathing habits :lol:
Some little facts for you!
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 1500's:
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.
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 rooves (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 with a sheet hanging over the top to afford 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 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!!
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 whisky. 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 to 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 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 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)?