Posted on 08/20/2005 9:03:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Interesting article. Thanks for the ping. Wish I could see the show, but we don't get BBC.
I've heard it sung in Welsh and it's beautiful. All in all, it is really one of THE best lullabies ever. It also really does put a baby to sleep quickly.
My favorite one was the BEEB's live in the late Victorian ages; though that family was terrible and the mother was a whinging shrew. The Edwardian one, was also pretty good. But most of the people who go on these shows, both British and American, are all horrible complainers. I always wonder WHY they do it.
The best of the US versions was the Plymouth Plantation one.
I loved the original captain who was from Texas. He and his family had to leave because of the death of his daughters boyfriend.
They made this real liberal the head of the plantation after that. The place really went to hell after that.
Well my family must be an anomaly ...I just check my family genealogy I have going back to arrival in Plymouth Col in 1635
Father lived to 70,
Grand Father lived to 87,
2GF 81,
3GF 63,
4GF 77,
5GF 73,
6GF 86,
7GF 78,
8GF 76
In the early 17th century, eucalyptus was unknown to Culpepper, whose HERBAL, is the best known book of that time dealing with herbs and their uses. Lavender was used as both as medicine and cleaner but not for a flea repellent. Fleabane was used as a flea repellent.
If you don't mind figures from 40 years hence, I can give you the life expectancy of someone born in 1660...it was 35. That's because so many people died from disease, childbirth, and accidents. Those who escaped all that, could expect to live into their early 60s.
Yes, to all of that. :-)
I told you to read the article, wherein it talks about "scattered ( which does NOT mean that herbs were thrown about but here and there sparsely! ) herbs" being in the floor, ergo, the floors were NOT bare. And as a matter of fact, in 1620, in middle to low class homes, wood floors would have been a LUXURY! Most probably, floors would be made out of stone or dirt.
And BTW, TAadams went to bat for you against me, when two other posters had already told you that you were wrong, that fleas can and do live in wooden floors. So why didn't she go after the others...hmmmmmmmm? Because she ALWAYS goes after me and is ALWAYS damned dead wrong in her smarmy, incorrect stabs at refutations and putting me down.
Anyone who has done even the smallest amount of readings about this time period knows what I do about what was on floors. Try sticking to what is said in thread articles and then not lying, when called on your posts. ;^)
Nope -- they were there. They appeared to be rare because of (1) inability to diagnose -- e.g. cancers that did not erupt externally. Breast cancer was one of the ones that got picked up because it tended to erupt from the lymph nodes under the armpit. Lady Anne Hyde (mother of Queen Mary II and Queen Anne) died of it; and (2) other things, especially epidemic infections, tended to get you first.
(I read a lot of history in college, and medical history has always been a hobby of mine. Although diagnosing people when they're sitting in front of you is hard enough, let alone when they've been dead a few hundred years.)
Ring around a rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes we all fall down.Actually, I believe that that is an urban legend.Accding to herblore I have read, the rings and rosies were the symptoms of bubonic plague (black death), and the posies were the herbs people packed in their clothing to ward off the plague (turns out, fleas). Ashes were part of quicklime preps to scatter over the contagious corpses. We all fall down...and die.
Man...I have an urge to go visit Berkeley>>>
"9. Biodiversity protects against unforeseen calamity. While the developed world no longer counts the cost of crop failure in starvation and mass migration - the result of Ireland's Great Potato Famine in 1845 "
Sorry ... but the English lords took and sold all the other diverse products from these farms and left only the potato for the people to survive.
But the herb was used in religious ritual, so I'm inclined to credit the nursery rhyme to a certain extent. Several nursery rhymes have odd histories.
Rue means "regret"--it was also the most effective flea repellant of the renaissance, which means it really wasn't that effective. Nicotiana was used from the New World as an effective mothball additive to linen closets, however.
I was asking for now but thanks for the HERBAL lead....I'll try to find it, sounds very interesting as is this historical (sometimes hysterical)thread.
grandma mac
If you'd like info herbals written today and what they have to say about eucalyptus and lavender uses today, I'll have a look see and get back to you. :-)
Hooray for her Irish part!
You have to like that she grew up in a town called Mumbles, though.
I'd be very interested in what you know about lavendar, especially. It is so plentiful here--we have fields and farms that look like the sound, they are so blue & full of lavendar!
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