Do you know where it comes from?

[+Erik 1,812]

 

Where did piss poor come from ?

• Tanneries used to use urine to tan animal skins, so poor families used to all pee in a pot to make money. Then once the pot was full it was taken and sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor".
  
• 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 poorest of the poor.

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 1500's.

• Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, so they still smelled pretty good in June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the smell of 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 with those straw roofs. 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 the 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 bacon 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 into 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 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 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 and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When opening 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?

 

 

[MigBuster 2,884]

-  guess they had something to moan about

 

 

 

 

[+Dave 2,322]

Wow.

[Caesar 305]

Well, a lot of this seems to fall into one of two categories: false common knowledge or 19th century RUMINT//BUNK.  Notice, however, I did not say all.  When you say "1500 Europe" you have far too broad a scope, since different kingdoms/empires/countries had different standards, different economic circumstances, more or fewer cities, etc.  One of the first issues I have is with the "yearly bath."  Believe it or not, bathing in medieval Europe (or, more precisely given the example year, Early Modern Europe) was not some yearly thing.  There was a lot of technology that went into bathing, scented soaps, for example, were common ground by this point.  The sites which follow includes examples from both before and after the turn of the 16th Century, but should give you an idea of the kind of stuff they were dealing with, the types of baths and bathing taken in the middle ages to Early Modern times and some of the things which caused periods of lack of bathing.

 

http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html

http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/scents.html

http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/black_death.html

 

The thatched roof cottages (reminds me of TROGDOR!) may have been on the country side, but look at any medieval tapestry, painting, artwork, or surviving structure of a city and you'll see wooden roofing, windows, stone or wooden walls.  So the idea of animals falling willy-nilly through a roof is a generalization which was probably more accurate during the Early to early High Middle Ages, but not so much the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern times (1500).  The example of the origin of "raining cats and dogs" might have been accurate...maybe, but then only for those people living under those conditions in completely rural areas.  City dwellers, merchants, or anyone with a little bit of money could have afforded to live in a non-thatched-roof-cottage.  Fun fact, while I was at Thule, I saw a temp-living housing probably made by some hunters during seal season - its roof was made of the moss and peat on the ground.  Stuff like this still exists!

 

The section on flooring has some accuracy, but it seems to be specific to areas of England during the 16th century, based on the writings of Erasmus.  You will note that he compares these floors to alternative designs used in other areas in Europe.  Again, believing the RUMINT that this is how things were in "1500 Europe" is to believe a blanket statement which in reality was a caveat, or set of caveats to other designs.  I could just as easily say "in 1500 Europe, people had maple floors, which looked particularly attractive and were an easy medium to walk on in either Summer or Winter" and have as much accuracy as the dirt floor or slate floor statement.

 

With respect to the food, again, you're talking about small-scope here.  Nobility, merchant class and successful mercenaries didn't have to worry about eating stuff from a kettle that had been there for 9 days.  During famine periods, drastic measures are taken.  Did you know that here, in America, people ate each other while travelling out West?  What a terrible place to live!  (Blanket statement taken out of context).

 

Some of the later things listed have varying degrees of accuracy, and the "dead ringers" was not a medieval thing.  Apparently, it has nothing to do with death at all:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dead%20ringer.html

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/graveyard-shift.html

 

So, I think the biggest takeaway here is, be careful what you believe on the internet.  I'm guessing this came from one of those e-mails that gets out there that say things like "margarine is one molecule from plastic" or the origin of the word "shit" is from "Store in High Transit" rather than its actual roots in German.  When the original writer wrote "That's the truth," you'd expect some truth to be there.  Another favorite of mine is "in fact," because most of the time, it is followed by a non-factual statement.  "In fact, the F-14 was designed as an interceptor..." is a non-factual statement I run into a lot.  "In fact, a knight's armor was so heavy, he couldn't get up when knocked from his horse" is BOTH a non-factual statement, and a blatant lie pulled out of someone's ass.  If one is to use the term "in fact" it would be nice to see it followed by a fact, rather than fiction.

 

Erik, none of this is aimed at you, so please don't take it that way.  What it is aimed at is the misconceptions such write-ups generate.  Is there information in there that has applicability?  Yes.  That said, it is too general, not limited to 1500 (some of it pre-dates that year and is under very specific circumstances) and can lead people to believe that the information provided is blanket truth about life in the middle ages, and it just ain't so!

 

EDIT: I think one way with which I can help illustrate the point is with the following example -

 

"People who lived in 20th century American cities didn't bathe, but by happenstance that it rained, lived in cramped houses, sometimes with 20 or 30 people in them, and had to eat what little food was available in the form of bread, rarely meat, and whatever they could scrounge or steal.  They did not have electricity."

 

This is a blanket statement which applied specifically to the poorest immigrants who happened to be living in specific segments of New York City during the early 1900's.  The statement is certainly not un-true, but it is not a good statement to discuss either people living in America in the 20th century or people living in America in the year 1910, because it is too specific to a sub-set of people living in a particular place in America at a certain time.  Verily, there is application to this day, but again, it is incredibly small scope.  What I'd say, especially with Medieval Europe, is: be skeptical of what you read, and of blanket statements about life, science, technology, and religion in the Middle Ages.

[+Erik 1,812]

There's a reason I dropped this into "The Pub" as it was designed for entertainment purposes only. A bar story and just something fun to read without any fact checking. Where it came from I have no idea it was a link I ran across when doing some research on a more morbid topic. Never-the-less it did link me to the exact site you referenced (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/life%20in%20the%201500s.html) which I read and laughed about as the original article did it's job because there I was researching and debunking the noise. Now if I thought that everyone at CA had only 2 brain cells which fired on a random pattern I would have definitely made it extremely clear that the intent of my post was for entertainment only. I can't even imagine the amount of content, from stories to screenshots, that would have to be removed as disinformation on this site because it has no basis in reality. I stand by my post as I've heard far worse sitting at my local pub and will be happy to go into detail if the need becomes apparent. If life doesn't include some fun mixed into the daily grind then I'm thinking about getting a lead cup and a couple bottles of spirits so I can call it quits. Thank you for clearing up any misconceptions and falsities I posted.

[Caesar 305]

I think this is a touchy subject for me because Medieval Europe seems to get a pass on physics, metallurgy, chemistry, etc. to rumor and false "common knowledge" even among highly educated persons.  You'd be surprised the level of education of folks who actually believe some of this stuff.  They're a hell of a lot smarter than me (this isn't a feat), much better educated, but somehow don't quite grasp that, say, an object made of steel is going to weigh the same if it was made in the 1400's or if it was made today.  I've had to correct PhD level folks on this stuff before - these are not stupid people!  

 

The objective of my post was not as an attack, nor some challenge to you to stand by what was written, but instead to remind people to think critically of what they're reading so that they don't fall into the trap of taking some of this stuff at face value, which even particularly well educated and intelligent people (either of which, I do not consider myself to be) are prone to do .  Thinking about it from the stand point of absurdity, it is funny - I failed to think about it in this way, but then, I'm not the brightest bulb out there.  I'm also the type of person who, the last time I was drunk in a social situation, got into a discussion on heat-treatment of steels used in armor, the effects of manganese on the formation of martensitic micro-structures, and the maximum resiliency in kJ of such armors vs. lead shot, pointed and blunt iron arrowheads, compared to untreated ones.  A bit bland, and prone to miss a joke.  If you feel offended, I apologize.

[+Erik 1,812]

Not a ruffled feather here.