Very interesting . . .
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee
in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery.
If you had to do this to survive you were "piss poor."
But worse
than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a
pot; they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the
low.
The next time you are washing your hands & 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 1500s.
Most
people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May,
and they still smelled pretty good by June. Since they were starting to
smell, however, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body
odor. 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 roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no
wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all
the 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, resulting in the idiom, "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
mess up your nice clean bed, therefore, a bed with big posts and a
sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds
came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, leading folks to coin the phrase "dirt poor."
The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when
wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing.
As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened
the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was
placed in the entrance-way, subsequently creating 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 stew had food in
it that had been there for quite a while, and thus 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 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 the "upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale
or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers 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, creating 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 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. Now, whoever said History was boring?
