Here we continue our discussion on this amazingly erroneous 1999 email titled “Life in the 1500s” from people who don’t know from research.
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to g et 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.
Obviously, this person has not made a study of thatching. The thatchers art is remarkable. Long straw as well as Norfolk reeds are bundled together very tightly, tied to the roof framework, and sparred to each other with hazel spars (resembling giant bobby pins) before it is cut and trimmed to just the right contour for the roof. It becomes a very tight seal indeed, providing excellent insulation to keep warmth in during the winter and out during the summer. Nothing—not rain or snow—is going to get through it. Houses are still thatched in this same method today in England and other parts of Europe, and it is very expensive in modern times because the art is all but lost except for a few hard-working artisans. The idiom “raining like cats and dogs” comes in around the 17th century “raining dogs and polecats”, and later by Jonathan Swift of Gulliver’s Travels fame, who writes, "I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs". So once again, the mysterious emailer has the wrong information and the wrong century.
Canopies and bed curtains. Well, in Northern Europe, it can get mighty cold at night. For a little warmth and to avoid drafts (also for some privacy if your servants slept in the same room with you) you had curtains and overhead coverings. Mystery solved. But they go on:
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 entranceway. Hence the saying a thresh hold. (Getting quite an education, aren't you?)
Quite. The expression “dirt poor” comes from around 1937 and most likely refers to Depression era dirt farmers of the Dustbowl.
Thresh on the stone or more often wood floor kept the dirt and dust down before carpets came into play. To the thresh was sometimes added strew, herbs and flowers like lavender and rosemary to sweeten the air. The threshold or the piece of wood lying across one’s doorway may have been the older meaning of “tread” rather than keeping the thresh inside.
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.
1762. That’s when the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes says this rhyme shows up.
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.
Let’s see. Speculation on this one ranges from the American Civil War (oh those goober peas!) to Cockney Rhyming Slang: “Chew the fat”-- "have a chat". You won’t find this sort of rhyming slang any earlier than around WWI.
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.
Oy! Okay, pewter was something still relegated to the wealthy and not in wide use until about the 15th century. Wooden plates were more often used in common households. In very wealthy homes, silver plates. Plates made of precious metals were in fact used as currency. You’d keep your plate under lock and key. If you ever had to make a hasty departure, grabbing your plates was a convenient way to carry your wealth away with you.
More common fair for drinking cups were made of ceramic, horn, leather, and goblets or bowls of silver. It takes a lot to leach lead from pewter. And lead poisoning doesn’t knock you out. The symptoms of lead poisoning may include: irritability, aggressive behavior, low appetite and energy, difficulty sleeping, headaches, reduced sensations, loss of previous developmental skills (in young children), anemia, constipation, abdominal pain and cramping (usually the first sign of a high, toxic dose of lead poison). Very high levels (meaning you’d have to be eating the stuff in large quantities) may cause vomiting, staggering gait, muscle weakness, seizures, or coma.
Bread. Honestly. Trencher loaves were cooked specifically for their use as plates for food. After it soaked up the juices you could eat it, but more often than not, your servants ate it or it was donated to almshouses to pass out to the poor. Why would you want to eat just the crust? If you were rich, in fact, you prided yourself on being able to afford well-milled wheat for light, fluffy loaves of bread. The poorer folk actually ate healthier bread, made with husks and oats and other dark products (that we pay more for today in the supermarket. Ain’t that a kick in the head?) "Kutt the vpper crust [of the loaf] for youre souerayne" from the 15th century merely means "serve him first".
The “wake” derives from the term “watch” as in vigil. One would pray all night over the corpse, or watch them. The practice of this being a time for consuming food or drink and visiting with others during the watching time or wake, came as people traveled over long distances to stay for the funeral.
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 w as considered a .dead ringer.. And that's the truth...Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !
One out of twenty-five huh? A statistic with as much currency as the rest of this “information.” Pretty hard to bury people alive when the wake went on for days. After two days a body begins to decay. No mistaking that odor! They were really most sincerely dead. And “dead ringer”? That means an exact duplicate, doesn’t it? As in, “He’s a dead ringer for my uncle.” Does that mean he was sitting in the coffin making sure your uncle was dead? A “ringer” in this sense is a “horse substituted for another of similar appearance in order to defraud bookies.” It’s 19th century US horse-racing jargon. Add the adjective “dead” as in “dead sexy” and you’ve got “dead ringer.” See more about reuse of graves in this article from The Guardian.
And no, history isn’t boring. Especially the real history. Caveat: Don’t believe everything you read on the Web. And don't take strange emails from strangers.
This is truly an era passing away. Dutton's in Brentwood, CA (Los Angeles) that used to have two locations in swanky areas has to close its doors after twenty years. It's one of those places I dreamed of doing a signing in some day. Unfortunately, now I won't get that chance. They are closing up shop in April well before my book can hit the streets. Their Beverly Hills store closed in December over rent disputes and now the Brentwood store will close because the developer who owns the property is going to refurbish and rebuild the shops in that area. The new, smaller bookstore he is putting in at "ridiculously low rent" may be too small for Dutton's culture, says Doug Dutton. 
When I was a teenager, we journeyed to Westwood by UCLA to go into their multi-floored bookstore. We perused the used bookstores in Long Beach--Acres of Books, and all the other stores we came to love. Recently, I've come to love Warwick's in La Jolla as the sort of standard independent bookstore; cozy, knowlegdable staff, a little of this, a little of that. Sure, we all buy books on Amazon, too. It's inevitable, the convenience. But it is no substitute for thumbing down the shelves, picking up something that looks interesting, and making that discovery. 
