- 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 body odor.
- 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."
- 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."
- 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.
- 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".
- 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."
- 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."
- 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. This also
was the foundation of the legend that tomatoes were poison. 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."
- 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 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".
- 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 re-use 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".
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