Thought this was very interesting!
-----Original Message-----
From: BLnLLWHITE(a)aol.com <BLnLLWHITE(a)aol.com>
To: SIMONDS-L(a)rootsweb.com <SIMONDS-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Date: Friday, May 07, 1999 5:15 PM
Subject: [SIMONDS-L] Genealogy Tid Bits
Life in the 1500s
This is really interesting (and TRUE!!)
Most people got married in June because they took their
yearly bath in May
and were still smelling pretty good by June. However, they
were starting to
smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the
b.o.
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Baths equaled 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."
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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
pets ... dogs,
cats
and other small animals, mice, rats, 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."
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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. So, they found if they made beds
with big posts and
hung a sheet over the top, it addressed that problem. Hence
those beautiful
big 4 poster beds with canopies. <<< I wonder if this is
where we get the
saying
Good night and don't let the bed bugs bite........LOL
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The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other
than dirt, hence
the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors which
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 at the entry way, hence a "thresh hold."
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They cooked in the kitchen in a big kettle that always hung
over the fire.
Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot.
They mostly ate
vegetables and didn't 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
in there for a
month.
Hence the rhyme: peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas
porridge in the
pot nine days old."
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Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really
special when that
happened. When company came over, they would bring out some
bacon and
hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a
man "could
really
bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share
with guests and
would all sit around and "chew the fat."
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Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a
high acid content
caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This
happened most often
with
tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes ... for 400 years.
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Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers --
a piece of wood
with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trenchers were
never washed and
a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off
wormy trenchers,
they would get "trench mouth."
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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."
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Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The
combination would
sometimes
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."
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England is old and small, and they started running out of
places to bury
people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their
bones to a house
and reuse the grave. In 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 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.
Hence on the "graveyard shift" they would know that someone
was "saved
by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer."