Got this in an email the other day...don't know how accurate it all is, but it's interesting reading...I do know that in the 16th century, people didn't bathe very much--Katherine of Aragon once bragged she had had only 2 baths in her entire life--the day she was christened, and her wedding day.

Strange facts:

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. Here are some facts about the 1500's:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so 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 wa s 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 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. 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, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying "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".

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. 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 ! ! !

nice

I am now forever spoiled for a fantasy novel or movie. How in the world could the medieval period be anything glamorous, when you couldn't pass a night without a bird shitting on your head? Thanks, Rendova, for stealing all my innocence away!

Lol, sorry Nap---here's something else I remember reading--the average life span of men and women in those days was around 25 to 30 years. Of course, many lived longer, but they had no teeth--they'd all fallen out by that ancient age.

Women used makeup made out of sulpher and other poisonous stuff, besides plucking their eyebrows to nonexistence--men wore shoes that were so curled, they had to be tied to their breeches (1400's fashion) ,besides dyeing their hair and beards.

The infant mortality rate was close to one-third. I think I recall that something like 6 out of 10 kids never made it beyond age 10.

Yes, the "good old days."!

Rendova,

When I came to the one about the tomatoes and lead poisoning I knew this was just another of those urban legend type things. Any leaching of lead from pewter by tomatoes would be very slow and what would be even slower would be death by lead poisoning. The death would be so far removed from the time the tomato was on the plate that there would be no way to associate the two.

I looked up dead ringer and here is what I found.

A ringer is a horse substituted for another of similar appearance in order to defraud the bookies. This word originated in the US horse-racing fraternity at the end of the 19th century. The word is defined for us in a copy of the Manitoba Free Press from October 1882:

"A horse that is taken through the country and trotted under a false name and pedigree is called a 'ringer.'"

As for raining cats and dogs, that is again an impossibility. Dogs could not have lived in the thatching of a house. While cats could supposedly climb the walls to the thatch dogs would be unable to do so. Besides, the underside of thatch isn't slippery. In order for the animals to slide off they would have to be living on the outside of the roof, hardly something they would do.

If I have some spare time I will try to find out about the other parts of the post.

That's probably so, Frogger.

I questioned some of that myself, especially about the dead people and people sitting up with them to make sure they were dead...I'd always heard that they sat with them just in order to show respect or to keep evil spirits away.
Some most likely true tho--esp about the food and the bathing.
Lord, people were filthy in those days...that, combined with their nonstop dawn to dusk work and poor diet, contributed to their early deaths.

Brides carrying bouquets far antecedes the 1500's. Brides in Ancient Egypt, a nation noted for cleanliness and frequent bathing, carring a bouquet of strong smelling herbs to keep away evil spirits. Roman brides carried a bouquet of Rosemary to symbolize fidelity and fertility. Greek brides carried ivy, spanish brides orange blossoms and the Victorians, roses.

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not an English expression but a translation of a German proverb, Das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten

Canopy beds originallh had more than simple canopies. They were also surrounded by g who left the dust bowl.auzey material whose purpose was to keep out flying insects, not to keep things from dropping onto the bed.

Dirt poor is an American expression, not an English one. It refers to the poor farmers of the depression who migrated from the dust bowl.

That's a collection of urban legends and myths:

http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.htm

Entertaining stuff, though.

I love Snopes. I'm trying to teach my mother-in-law about it, but the e-mails continue unabated.

ROFL! My first mother-in-law was like that. I was constantly amazed by her vast and certain knowledge of the world (living, as she did, in the middle of nowhere on the Canadian border).