SC - Re: Butchery

[Stephen Bloch]

Ras wrote:

> ... for anyone to assume a lack of knowledge
> by medieval folk in these areas is lidicrous and ridiculous to the extreme.
> Why even a child in period could tell the time of day by the position of the
> sun and stars, practical knowledge which is sadly lacking in todays world. Me
> thinks that sometimes we look down from our in\vorytowers and determine those
> that have gone before possesed less than adequate learning in many fields.
> Perhaps this is true but in the areas of survivl knowledge it is we who are
> lacking the knowledge that our forefathers took for granted. 

I'm perfectly aware that I don't know how to butcher, and that most
people in modern Western European cultures don't know how to butcher.
Ras is correct in that we can't conclude from this that most medieval
Europeans didn't know how to butcher; neither, however, can we conclude
that most medieval Europeans DID know how to butcher.  Nobody's "assuming
a lack of knowledge," but rather looking for evidence one way or another.

For example, if we found court cases in which a man who's shot a deer
complains that the butcher, another man of the same village, took "both
haunches rather than one as is customary", this would tell us there was
a professional butcher in the village who customarily took a cut (as it
were) in exchange for his services, similar to the situation with
millers.  On the other hand, if we found frequent references to ordinary
peasants cleaning, gutting, and preserving (as somebody else pointed
out, the finer points of butchery may come out in whether the meat can
be preserved successfully) meat for their own use, we would conclude
that the skill was widespread, not confined to a few people per village.

The quotation from "Gawain and the Green Knight" is informative.  It
tells us that the task of butchering deer was not trivial, and that the
servants referred to had the skill to do it.  It also tells us that it
was recognized as a skill, that some might be much better at it than
others.  It doesn't mention whether the servants were specifically
hired for their skill at butchering, nor does it cast any light on
the prevalence and/or professionalism of butchery among the peasants.

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University