Life in the 1500s

[Nordic]

The next time you complain about how hard it is to get al the parts you need to make a killer amp, think about how bad our ancestors had it.
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 odour. 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, and 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 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 sheet hung 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 adding 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 thung 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 "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."

Cool huh!?!

[Tall Shadow]

Sorry!, You have been misled.
Life in the 1500's legend.........

Please.....
Always check out these emailings before you pass them along as factual things.

Tall Shadow

[Nordic]

My post was more entertaining than yours

[mikepecchio]

can you quote sources for each of those tidbits?

[Enzo]

A lot of that stuff was after the fact wishful thinking, nonetheless entertaining.

Acid in tomatoes for example will not leach out enough lead from a pewter plate to sicken one. Tomatoes came from the new world, so to consider them poisonous for 400 years means they were thought of that way until 1900. Not the case.

Tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, and for that reason they were assumed to be poisonous until someone realized the native people ate them all the time and didn't die from it.

[dnsey]

to consider them poisonous for 400 years means they were thought of that way until 1900

Quite so! Flora Thopmpson ('Lark Rise to Candleford') writes from first-hand experience of the suspicion with which 'love-apples' were viewed at the turn of the century. Probably nothing to do with pewter plates, however, and most of the rest of the esay is nonsense, but good fun

[Enzo]

Some folks did think that way. I know people to this day who will not eat the skin of a potato because it "contains nightshade."

The italians were enjoying them as far back as 1544. Even the Brits had recipes for them in cookbooks in the 1750's. Thomas Jefferson grew them in the late 1700s in the USA.

I used to grow tomatoes for local restaurants. That accords me zero knowledge of their history of course, but I have a fond relationship with them nonetheless.

[Tim__x]

Both tomatos and potatos can be poisonous. Solanine on the Wikipedia

[Enzo]

Well, sorta...

It says that the stuff CAN occur in tomatoes, but does not say it occurs in amounts that would be dangerous, let alone poisonous. it DOES say that potatoes CAN have dangerous levels under certain conditions - in their skin. But when spuds turn green, the green part tastes awful anyway, and it generally gets peeled off. Plain old every day spud skin is not much of a threat.

[dhaen]

However bad things were, we are living proof that our ancestors survived it. Each of us is an evolutionary success story.

That does not preclude the possibiblity that some of us might decide to go in for a "Darwin award".......