A HISTORY LESSON

[janine]

Ah, the good old days...

[Fate]

A friend of mine sent this to me. I just had to share...

                               A HISTORY LESSON
            (Author unknown....and probably for good reason) :D

 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 1500s:

 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 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 dogs, 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 really  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 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 in the entranceway - hence, a "thresh hold."

 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 the 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
 and 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 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 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 thought 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... (who said that History was
  boring)?

[spurly]

Fate,

Thanks for digging up all of that information.  I love learning about the history behind some of the phrases in our language.  Do you have any more where that came from?

Kevin