[Elfsea] Debunking "Good Old Days"

[Jane Sitton]

Please go to:  http://www.snopes2.com/ and type in "raining cats and dogs"
to find the site that debunks these and many other urban legends.  This
showed up about 6 weeks ago on the cooks list.

Amicalement,
Madelina de Lyndesaye

-----Original Message-----
From: Cait & Ragnar (Rok) [mailto:james.crocker at verizon.net]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 2:44 PM
To: elfsea at ansteorra.org
Subject: [Elfsea] Fw: Old Days

After reading this, it maybe hard to say "the good old days"

Here are some facts about life in the 1500s:

1) 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 odor.

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."

2) 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 rats, and 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."

3) 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, abed with big posts and a sheet hung
over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into
existence.

4) 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 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 entry way-hence, a "thresh hold."

5) 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."

6) 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."

7) 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.

8) 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 paysan bread which was so old and hard that they could use them 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."

9) 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."

10) Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would some
times 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."

11) England is old and small and they started out 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, one 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."

Still in a big hurry to get back to "The Good Old Days?" When you hear
people talk about how terrible things are these days, email them a copy of
this and remind them that you couldn't have even sent them this in the good
old days, unless you sent it by horse.


--Or by a falcon, don't know how far back carrier pigeons are, though.  Some
cultures had runners (Roman and Mezoamerican come to mind.)... smoke
signals, mirrors, etc.-- M.