They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and once a day it was taken and 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" and were the lowest of the low.
The next time you
are washing your hands and complain because the water
temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how
things used to be. Most people got married in June because they
took their yearly bath in May,
and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However,
since they were starting to smell, 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...Hence the saying "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. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence. And to think, we thought they were only for looks! Who would have thought they were practical, (at one point and time), also!
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "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, outside. A piece of
wood was placed in the entrance-way.
Hence: a thresh
hold. (Getting quite an
education, aren't you?)
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. Hence 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.
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. Hence 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
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