Posted on 10/31/2013 10:07:26 AM PDT by harpu
Have you ever wondered where the expression "piss poor" come from?
Interesting history.
Way back when, ‘they’ used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot.
And then once it was full it was taken and sold to the tannery, and 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.
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The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature Isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500's.
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.
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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!"
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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," given there was nothing to stop things from falling into the house.
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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.
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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 the 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.
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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."
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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.
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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; “holding a wake."
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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.
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Now, whoever said history was boring!!! So get out there and educate someone! Share these facts with a friend. Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, "What the heck happened?"
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We'll be friends until we are old and senile, then we'll be new friends. Remember, smiling, gives your face something to do!
Loved it—and certainly didn’t know most of it!
Thanks!
A ‘pot to piss in’ is also known as a commode. The saying that you ‘don’t have a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out’ refers to how people would pee in their commodes and then throw it out their windows - typically at night.
This also led to the chivalrous tradition of men walking closest to buildings when walking with a lady. The intent was that if someone threw out their toilet waste into the street it would land on the man and not the lady.
Mr. Megan owns the pewter commode, wash basin, and matching pitcher with a very nice cabinet that has been in his family for generations. Thus I’ve heard about this a few times.
Ping to increase your knowledge—LOL!
During the battle of Escargot, back in the eleventyhundreds, a French Commander of a catapult unit saw that he was out of boulders to use as ammunition. Looking around, he quickly realized that chickens were of the right size and weight to use as ammunition for the catapults. He loaded a chicken and let fly. It worked fabulously! The problem was that the other chickens had seen the first hen take to the air, and they didn’t want anything to do with becoming feathery shrapnel. They all ran away. So, the French realized that the only way to catch the chickens was to nab them while they were snoozing. Snoozy chickens made the best ammunition. This is how we got that famous old phrase, “Let sleeping chickens fly!”
Tradition in America has been that men walk on the street side to prevent the woman from getting “splashed” by mud from the horses and wagons that rode by.
Which is a good thing, because most of it, if not all of it, is false.
Threshold etymology dates further back than the English word we use today. And the "thresh" they were talking about meant "to trod upon". Basically a threshold was a boundary, not something to hold something in/out.
Throwing out the baby with the bath water originated in Germany as a way of saying don't throw out the good with the bad.
Dirt Poor originated in the US in the early 1900s, and simply meant really poor. Not that they had dirt floors.
Piss-poor originated during WWII in the US, as well. It meant really bad.
Tomatoes were brought to Europe from Mexico by early Spanish explorers. They were known to be edible, and were consumed by the French and Spanish, but some thought them poisonous because they were related to nightshade, and contained minor amounts of poisonous Tomatine (mostly in the leaves and green tomatoes), not because they reacted with pewter. Most folks probably ate from wooden plates/bowls anyway. Usually not enough to kill you.
Saved by the bell originated with boxing in the late 1800s.
Dead Ringer is defined as a look-alike or exact duplicate, and nowhere except here is defined as someone who rang a bell on a safety coffin.
And the men protected their women. Now it is the women who protect the metrosexual males [I don’t refer to them as men]. We haven’t hit bottom yet, but we are rapidly headed in that direction.
Reminds me of an old joke;
The proprietor of a local British pub lived above his establishment with his wife.
One night, a lout was banging on the door of the pub shouting, "Open up! I must 'ave me 'alf 'n' 'alf!"
The racket woke the pubman so he leaned out the bedroom window on the second floor and informed the lout that they were closed and he was waking up the house.
"But I've got to 'ave me 'alf 'n' 'alf!"
"But we're CLOSED!" insisted the pub owner. Still the noise maker would not relent.
The owner said, "'Old on..I've just the thing." and left the window and came back moments later with his commode.
He unceremoniously dumped its contents down on the head of the troublesome drunk and shouted, "There! That's 'alf mine and 'alf me Old Lady's!"
This is still the case in Hong Kong. If you want a burial plot, especially on Hong Kong island, you can lease a space for 7 years. I remember walking by one during a hike, and seeing disinterred bones set out in the sun to dry. Creepy.
Then there’s this one that I heard years ago....don’t know if it’s true, but here goes....
The term “cat house,” i.e., a house of prostitution.....
In the early mining towns during the California Gold Rush and elsewhere in the American West, there was a problem with mice and rats in these early mining communities. The miners had one or more cats in their homes to catch the rodents.
When the miners left their homes for a period of time to go prospecting in the hills, they brought their cats to the local whore house and the ladies of the night would look after the felines for a small fee while the miners were away. Hence the term, “cat house.”
Also, the term “bull market” and “bear market.” The miners would entertain themselves by staging fights between bulls and bears.
A bull would fight by thrusting its horns upwards, hence a “bull market” when the stock market is going up.....
A bear would fight on it’s hind legs and thrust it’s paws downward, which would be a “bear” market or a down market.
Agreed-the threshold and tomato references gave it away, if nothing else did-and while thatch usually did not have a solid sub-roof to rest on, houses did have wooden roof trusses spaced as closely as one could afford-they were needed to bridge/tie the walls in the top corners, and keep the thatch from falling in, never mind the cats.
Thatch was/is at least partially bundled and/or tied before it goes on a roof-otherwise it would just fall in or blow away-it certainly wouldn’t keep out any rain or snow. But it was an entertaining and imaginative article...
BTTT
And thresh is/was a verb, not a noun. Thatch could be made from the threshed straw once the wheat was separated from it, but it was also made from other grasses and vegetable matter, as well.
My contractor compadre has an instructional CD on thatching a roof that he got from a friend stationed in the UK-it is really interesting to watch how it is done. The longer stuff-like reeds, tall grasses, etc is apparently easier to work with in the bundling process-they were tying the stuff up pretty tight with heavy twine before attaching it to the roof trusses.
I've seen a documentary on it. It's really quite interesting, and when done right, good protection from rain/snow and good insulation.
As usual, there are many differing opinions—and I find all interesting.......
Thanks for adding this to the discussion.
Some of these are wrong. A “thresh hold” was a board placed on a threshing floor to contain the valuable grain. And “saved by the bell” describes a boxer who is nearly knocked out but who gets a reprieve because the round ends (at the sound of the judges’ bell).
Colorful stories though ...
Then there was the snake, Mrs. Pott, who did not have a pit to hiss in.
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