ORIGINS

Buster

Well-known member
Interesting Origins

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 and Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "P!ss 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 P!ss in" & were the poorest of the poor.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:


Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell .
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...

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.


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 entrance-way.

Hence: a thresh hold.



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 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 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.


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.

 
1. Families that pee together -- stay together
2. Don't waste the bath water
3. I like thathched roofs
4. If my slaves let anything fall on me - it only happened once!!
5. My slaves kept the floor dry (they actually worked)
6. I hung signs outside the door - Do not disturb - Meal Ongoing'
7. We used pure silver or gold -- screw the pewter.
8. My bread was good from one end to the other - or the cook got #()($
9. I made millions re-using graves -- the dead never complained.


Have a great weekend everyone !!
 
When I first got acquainted with Snopes years ago, we could copy the whole of the report and put into my `Reply All' and then add a personal note. Most of the time I got a `thank you' but sometimes it was a bit more vicious....
...maybe because I would occasionally add a lecture or two! But those were usually from strangers whose addresses I would add in from all the way down each forward! :D-
It took awhile, but I rarely get chain-letter e-mails anymore -

As for Buster's - that one was funny, fun to read, and who would take it with more than a grain of salt, anyway? You would have laughed, well, maybe you would have laughed, if it had been posted elsewhere.....

(my laptop is new to me; the keyboard feels like it is offset and the whole things is weird - so please excuse typos, and anything else you'd like to yak about....)
 
I just got about half way through the snopes report. Geez, the expert they have about the 1500s must be pretty old. Snopes employees are likely happy to have a job and to be considered the final word.

No dirt floors? What about some of the old houses I've seen in Scotland? What about the sod houses described by our own intrepid settlers of the praries? I guess someone tore up the teakwood before I got there.

Cats never go on/in thatch roofs? Wish I had taken more photos while I was in Europe. Yes, there are still thatched roofs in Europe. Some are declared historical so the residents have to live with them. Some are just still there by owner preference.

Buster's post makes as much sense as anything. Jim's' post was his desire to get the "truth" out there. I love it and enjoyed both of them. Thanks to both of you.

What are the origins of the expression "pissed off"? I'm not, nor should I be. Just wondering if anyone knew?

Grandma, you will get used to that keyboard, sorta. Buying a cheap used lap top was the best thing I've done in the last few years. Now I can sit on my patio and "stay tuned". The problem is the keyboard will get pretty grodie and is hard to clean.
 
Well I'll end on this....

When I saw 'Origins' -- I could hardly wait to get on :nuts:


Anyway -- it turns out 'our origins' are from burnt out stars and the exhaust and debrie they sent out in space.

Yeah it's kind of amazing -- but it turns out it was this 'waste' God used to make us and all.

So I wondered -- what 'origins' was about.


Buster -- gets the Copy and Paste award this week.

Next week --- who knows???
 
Speaking of origin stories that may or may not be baloney, I’d like to share one of my favorites with you. And it’s the right time of year for this one. As all good stories do, this one starts out, “Once upon a time….”

“Once upon a time there was a wise woman who lived in a cave in a wood. The crone had outlived her family, so Mother Earth took a special interest in her and helped the woman out when it was sensible to do so. The crone worked hard each summer and autumn preparing foodstuffs, gathering wood, and plucking stray bits of wool off the thorny branches of the wood, so that she would have food, warmth, and spinning materials over the long winter.

Each year at the time when Father Sun was beginning to spend more and more time each day with His children and as the crone’s supply of wood began to run low, she would unblock the door of the cave and go out into the wood to forage for more sticks and branches to keep her warm the rest of the winter.

If Mother Earth needed a longer rest before she melted the snows of winter, she would work with Father Sun to give the old woman a bright sunny day so that the crone could gather lots of wood to keep her warm for the rest of the winter. But if Mother Earth was ready to start showing the first fresh green signs of spring, she gave the old woman a stormy cold day so that the crone would know to stay in her cave and not tire herself out gathering sticks and branches she would not need that year.”

Now, do I know that story is the origin of Groundhog day? No I do not. But I think it is a lot more charming than Puxatawny Phil seeing his shadow. However, your mileage may vary. <grin>
 
Speaking of origin stories that may or may not be baloney, I’d like to share one of my favorites with you. And it’s the right time of year for this one. As all good stories do, this one starts out, “Once upon a time….”

“Once upon a time there was a wise woman who lived in a cave in a wood. The crone had outlived her family, so Mother Earth took a special interest in her and helped the woman out when it was sensible to do so. The crone worked hard each summer and autumn preparing foodstuffs, gathering wood, and plucking stray bits of wool off the thorny branches of the wood, so that she would have food, warmth, and spinning materials over the long winter.

Each year at the time when Father Sun was beginning to spend more and more time each day with His children and as the crone’s supply of wood began to run low, she would unblock the door of the cave and go out into the wood to forage for more sticks and branches to keep her warm the rest of the winter.

If Mother Earth needed a longer rest before she melted the snows of winter, she would work with Father Sun to give the old woman a bright sunny day so that the crone could gather lots of wood to keep her warm for the rest of the winter. But if Mother Earth was ready to start showing the first fresh green signs of spring, she gave the old woman a stormy cold day so that the crone would know to stay in her cave and not tire herself out gathering sticks and branches she would not need that year.”

Now, do I know that story is the origin of Groundhog day? No I do not. But I think it is a lot more charming than Puxatawny Phil seeing his shadow. However, your mileage may vary. <grin>


clear?

crystal.

or salt, both of equal value.
 
i don't get it. it's a trick question right?

i can think of things she has a couple of, actually i can't stop thinking about a couple of things, but several? really?

there's no right answer, correct?
 
I was going to post the one where she explains the origins of the word jump. She has several more "origins" videos. Maybe we should post them all. :nuts:
 
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