Spare a thought for them.
They use urine to tan animal skins, so families have to all pee in a pot & then once a day it is taken & sold to the tannery. If you have to do this to survive you were “piss poor.”
But worse than that are the really poor folk who can’t even afford to buy a pot; they “don’t have a pot to piss in” & are the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing your hands & complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things are in Yorkshire.
.
Most people getmarried in June because they take their yearly bath in May, and they still smell pretty good by June. Since they are starting to smell, however, brides carry a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consist of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house has 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 is so dirty you can actually lose someone in it … hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water!”
Houses havet thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It is the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) live in the roof. When it rains it became slippery and sometimes the animals will slip and fall off the roof, resulting in the idiom, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
There is nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This poses a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings can mess up your nice clean bed, therefore, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top affords some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor is dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, leading folks to coin the phrase “dirt poor.”
The wealthy havet 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 wears on, they add more thresh until, when you open the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way, subsequently creating a “thresh hold.”
They cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hants over the fire.. Every day they lightnthe fire and add things to the pot. They eat mostly vegetables and do not get much meat. They eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew has food in it that had been there for quite a while, and thus the rhyme, “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”
Sometimes they can obtain pork, which makes them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they hang up their bacon to show off. It is a sign of wealth that a man can, “bring home the bacon.” They cut off a little to share with guests and all sit around and “chew the fat.”
Those with money have plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content causes some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happens most often with tomatoes, so for the last 400 years or so, tomatoes remain considered poisonous in Yorkshire.
Bread is divided according to status. Workers get the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family get the middle, and guests get the top, or the “upper crust.”
Lead cups are used to drink ale or whisky. The combination will sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road can take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They are laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up, creating the custom of ‘holding a wake’.
Yorkshire is old and small and the local folks are running out of places to bury people. So they dig up coffins and take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins are found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realise they had been burying people alive, so they 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 has to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone can be, saved by the bell or is considered a ‘dead ringer’.
They use urine to tan animal skins, so families have to all pee in a pot & then once a day it is taken & sold to the tannery. If you have to do this to survive you were “piss poor.”
But worse than that are the really poor folk who can’t even afford to buy a pot; they “don’t have a pot to piss in” & are the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing your hands & complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things are in Yorkshire.
.
Most people getmarried in June because they take their yearly bath in May, and they still smell pretty good by June. Since they are starting to smell, however, brides carry a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consist of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house has 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 is so dirty you can actually lose someone in it … hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water!”
Houses havet thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It is the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) live in the roof. When it rains it became slippery and sometimes the animals will slip and fall off the roof, resulting in the idiom, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
There is nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This poses a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings can mess up your nice clean bed, therefore, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top affords some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor is dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, leading folks to coin the phrase “dirt poor.”
The wealthy havet 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 wears on, they add more thresh until, when you open the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way, subsequently creating a “thresh hold.”
They cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hants over the fire.. Every day they lightnthe fire and add things to the pot. They eat mostly vegetables and do not get much meat. They eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew has food in it that had been there for quite a while, and thus the rhyme, “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”
Sometimes they can obtain pork, which makes them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they hang up their bacon to show off. It is a sign of wealth that a man can, “bring home the bacon.” They cut off a little to share with guests and all sit around and “chew the fat.”
Those with money have plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content causes some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happens most often with tomatoes, so for the last 400 years or so, tomatoes remain considered poisonous in Yorkshire.
Bread is divided according to status. Workers get the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family get the middle, and guests get the top, or the “upper crust.”
Lead cups are used to drink ale or whisky. The combination will sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road can take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They are laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up, creating the custom of ‘holding a wake’.
Yorkshire is old and small and the local folks are running out of places to bury people. So they dig up coffins and take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins are found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realise they had been burying people alive, so they 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 has to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone can be, saved by the bell or is considered a ‘dead ringer’.
