Thanks to Peggy for this one. . .
They once used urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken to the tannery and sold…….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, they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low
The 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 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 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
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 added more thresh until, when
you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of
wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: 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 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,
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 the
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.
And that’s the truth….Now, whoever said History was boring!!!
So…get out there and educate someone! ~~~ Share these
facts with a friend.
Are you being historically nostalgic on yer own behalf … or attempting to romanticize the plight of your fellow beings? If the latter, I’m sure I speak for all my fellow being when I say … F. U.
Libs, uh, it was just funny trivia, no hidden meaning…,why the historically nostalgic and F.U.? Geez Libs it was just meant to be entertaining.
Boy Jack, Libby must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday. Hopefully, she’ll have a better day today.
I reread the historical facts again and found nothing offensive, just informative.
Did you know the song, “Ring Around A Rosie, Pocket Full of Posies” is about the great plague?
Peggy, I dunno about Libby, she’s getting more cranking as the years pass. Good thing she’s not a dog, we would have to put her to sleep for fear she might bite somebody.
In reading I realized how clever human beings can be. We are innovative and adaptive even when our circumstances bitter poor. Somehow we learned, scraped, and scratched our way out of the muck and mire. This walk down history lane is uplifting…thanks Peggy!
I soooo agree. When I read this it reminded me of how hard our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents lives were. And how much we owe them for that hardship.
When I was in high school my dad and I went and spent a month with his family in Missouri. I helped my aunts gather eggs and wash them before selling them. We fed the chickens, pigs, cows, worked in the garden for the food we ate and did the wash on Tuesdays using a ringer washer my aunt got new. I got to sleep in a four-poster feather bed that had three steps to get in to, that was made by my great-grandparents.
Beside their lives being so different than anything I had ever grown up with I will always remember their loving kindness and one of my aunts saying, Just because what you have isnt new doesnt mean it shouldnt be clean and cared for.
Funny, what one says sometimes will stay with you for a life time.
This all still smacks srrongly of romanticizing poverty, which is fine on your own behalf, but if you are using it to validate your political position re social spending you can forget all about it … which is, I admit, clearer and more defined a position than “F. U.”.
And it come on right after Mitt Romney claimed to be “unemployed” … which did make me REAL cranky. Anybody that dim cannot be allowed into the oval office. Can’t you all come up with some more evolved specimen?
As Jack sais this was meant to be entertaining…but as long as she started another conversation:
Libby: “if you are using it to validate your political position re social spending you can forget all about it…”
Would you feed a man a fish or teach him how to fish?
So far you social spenders have fed the man without teaching him much of anything except how to stay in poverty, feel entitled and petition government for more largess.
Time to stop this despicable pretense of caring…particularly on the backs of others…and encourage self sufficiency and productivity. Time to bring back the dignity of the individual.
“Time to stop this despicable pretense of caring…”
Here’s an interesting phrase. Can “caring”, sincerely or not, really be despicable?
I think you really do care about helping the poor Libs. No jokes, no wise cracks, I really do believe that you care or I wouldn’t say it. We both want to help them off welfare and help them be productive, but where we differ is the methods. I don’t think either side is out to hurt anyone or starve anyone. Can you give the right this much?
We appear to all agree that as a civilized society we should help those who can not help themselves. Children, the disables and the elderly are the ones needing our assistance. But, we differ in defining the rest of our population deserving of assistance. An able bodied, mentally capable individual of working should not qualify for aid just because they feel entitled to it.
We all know individuals who have worked the system for years, at least I have. Ive seen a grown man put his family through hell because he refused to work while screaming he was entitled to every type of aid and health care available. Hed take his $30k ski boat out on the lake and brag about spending the whole day out there, but when it came to putting $500 worth of propane in the tank to keep his wife and child warm during the winter he would beg our church for help because he said he couldnt afford to fill it. He did it twice. The second time we took the wife and child into our home. He found someplace else to live. Last I heard he was living here in Chico.
Hes an avid far left democrat who constantly justifies his behavior by saying, I just need and hand up, not a hand out. Hes an in your face advocate for everything the democratic party stands for. For the 5 years I knew this man I never saw him hold down a job, but I witnessed his never ending trips to concerts in the bay area and football games in Oregon. All financed by govt grants and student loan, financial aide, and everything else he could con his way to get.
Ill always help those who can not help themselves, but Ive given my last dime, without a fight, to guys like the one mentioned above.
I didn’t say “caring” was despicable. I said a “pretense” of caring is despicable.
A system that encourages dependence and does little to encourage able bodied people to be productive is not a caring system. It has proven to be a failure in this regard over many decades. Our failing (left dominated) education system, entitlement positions held and promoted by the left, and leftist negative attacks on positions of morality only add to this negative outcome.
I notice you didn’t answer the question, Libby. In fact you totally ignored the meat of my comment. Would you teach a man to fish or just feed him a meal? It’s an important question that goes to the heart of what I meant when I asserted the pretense of caring.
You also don’t have a problem with labeling the right as noncaring simply because we dare to suggest that doing a better job at teaching self reliance, preparing citizens to lead a productive life, and promoting moral standards would prevent people from taking what they don’t need at the expense of fellow citizens. You’re willing to make the right seem heartless for thinking our tax dollars should be better managed. You ignore reasonable arguments for improving the systems.
Why is that? Why do you choose to ignore this problem? Why do you take the easy path…demanding more and more tax money for both social programs and education without addressing the issues that are raised?
I believe lefties like you, Libby, are motivated by heartfelt concern for others. Of course you care. This is why it’s confounding that you are so quick to attack the right for wanting to make our policies and practices more effective. Instead of working with the right to improve the lot of the less fortunate, you prefer to make us the boogie man, the focus of mass hate, just to gin up political support to continue the same failed system.
It is time to create a better context; a context that supports all of the people to become educated and trained for adulthood, to be morally attuned to self-reliance, to become productive, contributing citizens.
If we accomplished that goal, measurable by the few people who need welfare services, we could claim the mantle of “caring” with a clear conscience.
This quote from Mother Teresa seemed appropriate.
We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.