• Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled relatively good by June. However, as they were just beginning to smell ripe, brides would carry a bouquet of flowers to hide the odor.
• 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 other men, then the sons, then the women, the children and finally 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 rats, and 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, then, 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 one's nice clean boudoir. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet draped 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 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 begin blowing outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entry way — hence, the “thresh-hold.”
• These good people 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 again 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 a 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.
• Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were made from stale paysan bread which was so old and hard that they could use them for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and oftentimes worms and mold would get into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy moldy trenchers, one would get trench mouth.”
• Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom “upper crust.”
• Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would some times knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. The “deceased” would be laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait to see if they would wake up — hence the custom of holding a “wake.”
• England is a small country, so in time they began out running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and take the bones to a “bone-house” and re-use the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 were found to have scratch marks on the inside, leading them to realize they had been burying people alive. So they began tying strings around the wrists of corpses and leading it through the coffin and up through the ground to a bell. Someone would then sit out in the graveyard all night (the “graveyard shift”) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be “saved by the bell” or considered a “dead ringer.”
