medieval matters

The following snippets about the 1500s may or may not be true, but whether they are or not, I'm happy to be here and now rather than there and then:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still generally smelled decent by June. However, they were starting to smell a bit so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. That's where the custom came from.

When taking a bath the man of the house had first privilege of the big tub of hot, clean water. After him the other sons and menfolk bathed, followed by 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."

Did you ever wonder where the term 'raining cats and dogs' came from? It turns out small animals often slept in the straw of thatched roofs. When it rained it sometimes became slippery enough that they fell off.

The fact there was nothing to stop things from falling from the thatched roof into the rooms of the house posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could make a nasty mess on the bed. Then someone came up with the idea of making tall posts with a cloth hung over the top for some protection. Apparently, that's how canopy beds came into existence.

Most people had floors made from compressed dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt and looked down on others, who they said, were 'dirt poor'. The wealthy had slate floors but these 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 kept adding more thresh until opening the door would let it all start slipping outside. A piece of wood placed in the entranceway made a 'thresh hold'.

Sometimes poorer people 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'. After cutting off a little to share with guests they would all sit around and 'chew the fat'.

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 'upper crust'.

Lead cups were used for ale or whisky - a chemical combination that would sometimes knock a person out for a long time. As often as not being taken for dead they were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days where the family gathered around to eat and drink while waiting to see if they would wake up. This lead to the custom of holding a 'wake'.

England being old and small, places to bury people often ran short. After a certain time had passed coffins were dug up and the bones were taken to a 'bone house' for storage in order that the grave could be reused. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 of them were found to have scratch marks on the inside indicating they had been burying people alive. In order to prevent future incidents they thought to 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'.

and now for something not so completely different - but still relevant:



♡ :)

considering memory

Every so often I find a song stuck in my mind. It might be one I haven't heard for years but all at once the whole thing is there - music, phrasing, lyrics, everything. I know it's not an unusual experience, lots of people mention such things and if they tell you which song has been haunting them you'll find yourself singing it to yourself hours later. It can be annoying but if you think about it for a minute it's also very interesting.

For most of human existence on Earth people didn't have written languages. A large part in our pride of modern culture is the fact we are literate and there's hardly any worse insult than to call someone illiterate. Nevertheless, even up until fairly recently the larger part of humanity was illiterate since only the wealthy, the monastics or the very determined had access to any books at all. Yet it's inarguable that architecture and shipbuilding thrived as did every aspect of a growing civilized culture long before people were able to read a morning paper before they headed off to work on the building site of the local cathedral.

It's generally understood among archeologists that the first forms of written language were the hieroglyphs developed in Egypt around 2500BC. Socrates reported the ancient Egyptians said that writing had been invented by the mythical god-man Thoth who took his new system to Amon 'the god-King of all Egypt' and urged him to introduce it to the populace saying: 'Oh King, here is something that once learned, will make Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory'. It's said that Amon replied:

'Oh, most expert Thoth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who use them. And now since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they they will know nothing.'

From what I can understand there was an even more ancient tradition that was adamant that certain things not be written down. Even now archeologists have been unable to decipher the Indus Valley script in spite of having found thousands of small tablets, all of which appear to be in reference to trade goods. Lengthy works of Indus cuneiform might allow the texts to be deciphered but none have ever been discovered, a fact that might lead one to think they didn't trust the medium of writing for anything more important that the strictly mercantile.

The oldest elements of the ancient world's oral traditions are the Hindu Vedas, essentially hymns and very very long ones at that - the Rig Veda has 1028 hymns made up of more than 10,580 verses (and there are three other Vedas). The interesting thing is that they're in a very old form of the Sanskrit language and weren't written down until about 1200 years ago. Before that, for thousands of years they were memorized in their entirety. Really. It's hard to imagine, isn't it? But then I come back to those songs that stick in my head from time to time - the silly ones mostly - and I wonder if that penchant we all have might just be a little reminder of just how powerful our minds might be.

The Australian Aboriginals have a recognized 60,000 year history in Australia (although they say it's much longer). When groups met one another in the vast landscape they would sing the story of the path they'd travelled to each other, a memorized history known as the Song Lines. That story goes all the way back to their memory of walking the unfinished landscape with the gods singing the world we know into existence.

But obviously things are better now that we have the Google. I think I'll go find that song that keeps returning:

the meaning of life

Every morning I walk to work and today the sun was actually visible as it rose above the distant mountains and I found myself singing this song in my head. Really, it's better that way since I can remember Eric Idle's voice and not listen to my own or have anybody staring at me or dialling 911 on their cellphone.

I also remembered a talk I had with a doctor friend a few years ago when he was stressing the importance of stability. Easy for him to say. At the time I couldn't help but point out the fact that although we tell ourselves day and night follow one another in regular patterns as the seasons change that what is really happening is this: The earth is spinning around fast as hell and also wobbling back and forth while our entire galaxy is heading for an eventual tug of war with another that will cross our path in a couple of billion years. So where's the stability? The only place I can think of is in our hearts.