|
Here are some facts about the 1500s
Most people got married in June, as they took their yearly
bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June, however they were still starting to smell so the brides carried a bouquet
of flowers to hide the smell.
Baths were a large tub of water, and the man of the house had
the privilege of the first bath, then followed the sons and other men , then the women then finally the children, last of
all the babies, hence the saying ' Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater'
As by then the water was so dirty.
Houses had thatched roofs, straw pile high, with no wood underneath.
It wa the only place for animals to keep warm, so all the cats and other animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained,
it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip off the roof. Hence the saying ' Its raining cats and dogs'
There was nothing to stop things falling into the house. This
posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. So a bed with big posts and
a sheet hung over afforded some protection, this is how canopy beds came into existence.
In the houses, the floor was dirt, only the wealthy
had something other than dirt, so the saying 'dirt poor'.
The wealthy had slate floors, which in winter got wet and slippery,
so they used to spread it with thresh (straw), to stop them slipping, as winter wore on they added more thresh until when
you opened the door it would start slipping outside, a piece of wood was placed in the entranceway, so the saying 'thresh
hold'
In the kitchen they cooked with a pot that hung over the fire,
which , they added food too, mostly vegetables, they ate the stew for dinner leaving the leftovers to get cold overnight,
then they started again the next day, sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there quite a while, hence the rhyme
'pease pudding hot pease pudding, pease pudding in the pot nine days old'
Sometimes they could get pork, which they hung up to show off
too visitors, it was a sign of wealth if the man could ' bring home the bacon'.
They would cut off a little to share with guests, and they
would sit around and ' chew the fat'.
Those with money had plates made out of pewter, which would
react with foods with a high acid content, like tomatoes, which caused the lead to leach out and kill people, so people
thought for tomatoes were poisonous.
Bread was divided according to their status, the workers got
the burnt bottom, the family got the middle, and the guests got the top or 'upper crust'
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination
would sometimes knock out the imbibers for a couple of days. They were sometimes mistaken for dead, so the family would
lay them out on the kitchen table and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up., holding a 'wake'
People started to run 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 opening these coffins, 1 out of 25 had scratch
marks on the inside, and they realized that they had been burying people alive.
So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the
coffinn, and up through the ground and tie it to a bell, someone would have to sit in the graveyard all night ' graveyard
shift' to listen for the bell; thus someone could be 'saved by the bell' or was considered a 'deadringer'
|
