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.
Baths equalled 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.
Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece
of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trencher 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".