davaroo
Lovin' The Homestead
These common words and phrases stem from the 1500's. I don't know if this stuff is true - but it sure sounds good. Someone will research it and let us know if there are errors, I'm certain. For now, have fun:
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & 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, hence, they "didnt have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.
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 going first, in the nice clean water.
Then all the other sons and men would bathe, then the women and finally the children. Last of all went 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 of thick straw, piled high, with no wood slats underneath. Since the house was full of people and livestock, this thatching was a convenient place for small animals to get warm in the winter. This meant that the cats, small dogs and other critters (mice, bugs) lived in the roof and rafters. When it rained, the roof became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof as they went to and fro. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
With all those critter living overhead, there was nothing to stop "things" from falling down 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.
The floor in most such homes was dirt, too. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. This is where the saying, "dirt poor" originated.
The wealthy had slate floors, though. But, these would get slippery in the winter damp, 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 fal out the door into the mud outside. To stop this, a piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence the term, "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, though, 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 a little money had plates made of pewter, an amalgam of tin and lead. Food with high acid contents caused some of the lead from this metal to leach into the food, causing eventual lead poisoning deaths. This happened most often with tomatoes, which is why, for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread, the staff of life, was divided according to status. Workers and servants got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and the lord and his guests got the top, or "the upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey, in copious amounts. The lead-alcohol 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 and the family would gather around them, eating and drinking, waiting to 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, 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!
Once this was widely known, they would tie a string onto the wrist of the deceased, lead it up through a small hole bored in the coffin lid and on up through the ground... then tie it to a bell.
Once the body was entombed in the ground, someone would sit out in the graveyard day and night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell.
Thus, someone could be, "saved by the bell," or if they were really dead, they would be considered "a dead ringer..."
Ahhhh, the good old days!
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & 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, hence, they "didnt have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.
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 going first, in the nice clean water.
Then all the other sons and men would bathe, then the women and finally the children. Last of all went 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 of thick straw, piled high, with no wood slats underneath. Since the house was full of people and livestock, this thatching was a convenient place for small animals to get warm in the winter. This meant that the cats, small dogs and other critters (mice, bugs) lived in the roof and rafters. When it rained, the roof became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof as they went to and fro. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
With all those critter living overhead, there was nothing to stop "things" from falling down 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.
The floor in most such homes was dirt, too. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. This is where the saying, "dirt poor" originated.
The wealthy had slate floors, though. But, these would get slippery in the winter damp, 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 fal out the door into the mud outside. To stop this, a piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence the term, "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, though, 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 a little money had plates made of pewter, an amalgam of tin and lead. Food with high acid contents caused some of the lead from this metal to leach into the food, causing eventual lead poisoning deaths. This happened most often with tomatoes, which is why, for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread, the staff of life, was divided according to status. Workers and servants got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and the lord and his guests got the top, or "the upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey, in copious amounts. The lead-alcohol 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 and the family would gather around them, eating and drinking, waiting to 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, 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!
Once this was widely known, they would tie a string onto the wrist of the deceased, lead it up through a small hole bored in the coffin lid and on up through the ground... then tie it to a bell.
Once the body was entombed in the ground, someone would sit out in the graveyard day and night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell.
Thus, someone could be, "saved by the bell," or if they were really dead, they would be considered "a dead ringer..."
Ahhhh, the good old days!
