NK - Funny stuff !! (long)

[FalanMacF at aol.com]

I got this off the arts list but it is pretty interesting with why we have 
certain sayings.  I dont know how factual it is... but someone spent some 
time.

In a message dated 4/4/99 4:01:38 AM Central Daylight Time, 
MelanieWilson at compuserve.com writes:

<< This was posted on another list !
 
 Message text written by "carol and robert silver"
 >Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare.
 She married at the age of 26.  This is really
 unusual for the time. Most people married young,
 like at the age of 11 or 12.  Life was not as
 romantic as we may  picture it.  Here are some
 examples:
 
 Anne Hathaway's home was a 3 bedroom house with a
 small parlor,which was seldom used (only for company), kitchen,
 and no bathroom.
 Mother and Father shared a bedroom.  Anne had a
 queen sized bed, but did not sleep alone.  She
 also had 2 other sisters and they shared the bed
 also with 6 servant girls.  (this is before she
 married)  They didn't sleep like we do length-wise
 but all laid on the bed cross-wise.
 At least they had a bed.  The other bedroom was
 shared by her 6 brothers and 30 field workers.  They didn't have a
 bed. Everyone just wrapped up in their blanket and slept on the
 floor.  They had no indoor heating so all the extra bodies kept them
 warm.
 They were also  small people, the men only grew to be about 5'6" and
 the women were 4'8".  SO in their house they had 27 people living.
 Most people got married in June.  Why?  They tooktheir yearly bath in
 May, so they were till smelling pretty good by June, although they were
 starting to smell, so the brides would carry a bouquet of flowers to
 hide their b.o.
 Like I said, they took their yearly bath in May, but it was just a big
 tub that they would fill with hot water. The man of the house would
 get 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 pretty thick.  Thus, the saying, "don't throw
 the baby out with the bath water," it was so dirty you could actually
 loose someone in it.
 I'll describe their houses a little.  You've heard of thatch roofs,
 well that's all they were.  Thick straw, piled high, with no wood
 underneath.  They were the only place for the little animals to get
 warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice,
 rats, bugs, all lived in the roof.  When it rained it became slippery
 so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.  Thus the
 saying, "it's raining cats and dogs,"
 Since there was nothing to stop things from falling into the house
 they would just try to clean up a lot.  But this posed a real problem
 in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings from animals could
 really mess up your nice clean bed, so they found if they would make
 beds with big posts and hang a sheet over the top it would prevent
 that problem.  That's where those beautiful big 4 poster beds with
 canopies came from.
 When you came into the house you would notice most times that the
 floor was dirt.  Only the wealthy had something other than dirt,
 that's where the saying "dirt poor" came from.
 The wealthy would have slate floors.  That was fine but in the
 winter they would get slippery when they got wet.  So they started to
 spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing.  As the winter
 wore on they would just keep adding it and adding it until when you
 opened the door it would all start slipping outside.  SO they put a
 piece of wood at the entry way, a "thresh hold".
 
 In the kitchen they would cook over the fire, they had a fireplace
 in the kitchen/parlor, that was seldom used and sometimes in the
 master bedroom.  They had a big kettle that always hung over the
 fire and every day they would light the fire and start adding
 things to the pot.Mostly they ate vegetables, they didn't get much
 meat.  They would eat the stew for dinner then leave the leftovers in
 the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day.
 Sometimes the stew would have food in it that had been in there for a
 month!  Thus the rhyme:peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas
 porridge in the pot nine days old."
 
 Sometimes they could get a hold on some pork.They really felt special
 when that happened and when company came over they even had a rack in
 the parlor where they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it
 off.  That was a sign of wealth
 and that a man "could really bring home thebacon."
 They would cut off a little to share with guests and they would all sit
 around and "chew the fat."
 If you had money your plates were made out of pewter. Sometimes some of
 their food had a high acid content and some of the lead would leach out
 into the food.  They really
 noticed it happened with tomatoes. So they stopped eating tomatoes,for
 400 years.
 Most people didn't have pewter plates though, they all had trenchers,
 that was a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl.  They
 never washed their boards and a lot of times worms would get into the
 wood.
 After eating off the trencher with worms they would get "trench mouth."
 If you were going traveling and wanted to stay at an Inn they
 usually provided the bed but not the board.
 The bread was divided according to status.  The workers would get
 the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family would get the middle and guests
 would get the top, or the "upper crust".
 They also had lead cups and when they would drink their ale or
 whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of
 days.  They would be walking along the road and here
 would be someone knocked out and they thought they were dead.
 So they would pick them up and take them home and get them ready
 to bury.  They realized if they were too slow about it, the
 person would wake up. Also, maybe not all of the people they
 were burying were dead.  So they would lay them out on
 the kitchen table for a couple of days, the family would gather
 around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake
 up.  That's where the custom of holding a "wake"came from.
 Since England is so old and small they started
 running out of placesto bury people.  So they started digging up some
 coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the grave.
 They started opening these coffins and found some had scratch
 marks on the inside.
 One out of 25 coffins were that way and they realized they had still
 been burying people alive.  So they thought they would tie a string on
 their wrist and 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 to listen for the bell.  That is how the saying "graveyard
 shift" was made.  If the bell would ring they would know that someone
 was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".
  >>