They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery. 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.
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. Since they were starting to smell, however, 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, resulting in the idiom, “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, therefore, 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, leading folks to coin the phrase “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, subsequently creating a “thresh hold.”
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.”
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, creating 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?
Ah well, it sounded like a good story.
How much of this is true?
Virtually none. This is a 1999 viral email of invented folk etymologies, long debunked. Urine was used in tanning and some details have loose historical basis, but the claimed origins for the phrases (piss poor, raining cats and dogs, saved by the bell, etc.) are false. Most sayings are far more recent or have unrelated roots.
Thank heavens for the last few sentences – as I was reading I was rolling my eyes so much it was becoming dangerous.
Were you looking like a goggle eyed loon?
No more than usual …
Have to say I was talking to my mate during the week and we were discussing our local history and he said there was a house on his land that had a dirt floor.
So there.
…..”Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.”……
I don’t doubt it. House painters of the 50s were regarded as alcoholic madmen & for good cause. Rather than prising the top off a 4 litre of Dulux or Taubmans they mixed their own paint on the job site. You could choose any colour you wanted & so long as your preferences ran no further than white, duck egg blue, dark green or red, all was well.
The ingredients were lethal. Arsenic, asbestos & worse, huge amounts of white lead were used as a base. The lead alone caused countless deaths among the workers who manufactured it & the house-painters who handled it.
Before death the painters went quite mad & in the absence of psychiatric help hit the bottle & hard. Even by the standards of the time they were considered a weird mob.
Did their off spring become liarbour greens and TPM voters?
Had to come from somewhere
I can verify that as i was a house painter in the 70s an we still had lead based paint, grandfather and father as well, all quite mad lol
I’d never considered the connection between white lead & socialism. You might be onto something.
I hear they liked using lead to solve any opposing views about their communist stupidity back in the day
Sparkies, now there is a weird lot!
According to her step-sister and step-brother their father’s second wife smoked something that smelt like burnt wire while she was pregnant with Sparkles.
Probably ‘crack’ (meth)?
Ah fuck, spoilt it for everyone….