NK - Funny stuff !! (long)
FalanMacF at aol.com
FalanMacF at aol.com
Sun Apr 4 19:58:03 PDT 1999
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".
>>
More information about the Northkeep
mailing list