Lessons From our Ancestors About the Countryside(Five Experts Ran a Welsh farm using 17th C methods)

BBC ^ | Friday, 19 August 2005 | Megan Lane

[Mind-numbed Robot]

That was also before antibiotics. The slightest wound, scrape, scratch, cut, or broken bone could become deadly. Lockjaw (tetanus) and blood poisoning (ordinary infections in the blood stream), were common killers.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

the 45 stuff is still a figure combining higher childhood death rate vs. a lot of people who made it into their 60s and 70s.

Yep all these things were true. Life was hard. Some things were different. Women had a higher death rate in childbirth, particularly after doctors started taking over childbirth rather than skilled midwives.

Other things were also true. Clothing of working class people of the past is comfortable and useful. Things were more brutish after the enclosures of common grounds began in Scotland and England. The 18th and a lot of the 19th century was harder for people than many times earlier (one result is that heights of people dropped in England due to poor nutrition during this period.)

It's not all collectivist silliness. There is some truth to a lot of what they say...Given the choice, I prefer to live now, but I make a hobby/avocation/passion of studying the way things were in the 18th century in America. If a person thinks that life in the past was all brutish and hellish, they are wrong. If a person thinks that those days were some idylic period before industrialization, they too are wrong.

[little jeremiah]

Not too long ago I read quite an interesting history of the Middle Ages (a bit earlier than the period the article is talking about) and one of the points was that the idea that people in the Middle Ages (or what to speak of a few hundred years later) rarely lived past the 40s or 50s is actually erroneous, that historians have been quite wrong for a long time. The authors researched many, many contemporaneous records and came to the conclusion that there were indeed many who lived up into their 70s.

You may think that you possess the sum total of all there is to know about history, but perhaps there's a little more you haven't learned yet. Or maybe some things that you think you know might need to be updated.

[elmer fudd]

Actually, many cancers and other diseases really are modern phenomenons that were exceedingly rare until recently. On the other hand we don't have to worry much about diseases like polio or tuberculosis nowadays and in the past they and many others were endemic.

[VeniVidiVici]

Tales from the Green Valley will be broadcast weekly on BBC Two from Friday, 19 August, at 1930BST.

Hey, I used to watch that show. A couple from NYC move out to the country and have all sorts of run-ins with country bumpkins.

Lisa and Oliver Douglas. Funny show.

[LauraleeBraswell]

Actually, many cancers and other diseases really are modern phenomenons....

Or the medical technology to even know that Cancer existed was- wasn't there in 1650. Everything old died of a "heart attack."

[FreedomCalls]

Sounds like a hippy commie group to me...

Quite the contrary, it sounds like people relying on themselves and each other rather than sucking welfare checks or agricultural subsidies out of the government teat.

[nopardons]

Add another word...FIRE.

[FreedomCalls]

Where is the logic? Mutton is available all year around. They chose to shear and eat it in the Spring.

If food for the sheep is scarce, why would you continue to feed it if it no longer produces wool (which is why you have it in the first place)? Do poultry farms keep elderly chickens around after they have stopped laying eggs?

[nopardons]

One of THE best lullabies of all times is Welsh. It goes like this:

"Sleep my child and peace attend thee, all through the night

Guardian angels GOD will lend thee, all through the night...."

[sassbox]

the 45 stuff is still a figure combining higher childhood death rate vs. a lot of people who made it into their 60s and 70s. Very true. The life expectancy figures of the past are greatly skewed by the high rate of infant and childhood mortality. From what I've read about the middle ages and pre-Industrial period, if a person survived until puberty, he or she had a fairly good chance of living til 65 or so. I imagine that the high death rate among children "weeded out" the weakest people, so those who survived childhood tended to be hardier to begin with. But even then, healthy adults in their 20s and 30s could drop dead of minor things like infected wounds or the flu. And of course childbirth was a very dangerous experience for many women. It is really something to reflect on just how fragile life used to be for everyone. It's hard to imagine what it would've been like to have been a mother hundreds of years ago and know that half of your children would die before 10 and you might very well perish yourself while bringing them into the world. It's unfathomable to most of us today, but it's what the majority of humans throughout history had to confront. It makes you realize just how much we take for granted today.

[nopardons]

They live in rushes ( which is what herb and grasses strew floors are ), as do other bugs. And you obviously didn't read the article...THE FLOORS WERE NOT BARE, THEY WERE RUSH COVERED.

[elmer fudd]

Not too long ago I read quite an interesting history of the Middle Ages (a bit earlier than the period the article is talking about) and one of the points was that the idea that people in the Middle Ages (or what to speak of a few hundred years later) rarely lived past the 40s or 50s is actually erroneous, that historians have been quite wrong for a long time. The authors researched many, many contemporaneous records and came to the conclusion that there were indeed many who lived up into their 70s.

Even back in biblical times they refer to the human lifespan as being 3 score and ten, or 70 for those of you in Rio Linda. If you survived to adulthood you had a reasonable chance of seeing old age.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Psalms 90:10

[elmer fudd]

The technology is there today and many diseases just don't seem to exist in primitive societies until they adopt modern diets and lifestyles.

[dixiechick2000]

I know that lullaby!
It was sung to me when I was a child.
I didn't know it was Welsh, though.
It's a beautiful song, and I have wonderful memories of it.
Thanks for the history lesson. ;o)

[Freedom is eternally right]

People who worked in the Welsh coal mines used to spend all day there, and they'd get bored. So, they started singing hymns to pass the time. That's where the Welsh choirs come from.

One of my favorite movies is How Green Was My Valley.

[Hoof Hearted]

'Where is the logic? Mutton is available all year around. They chose to shear and eat it in the Spring. What a bunch of dumb collectivists."

What would you do, oh brilliant one? Shear them in the winter? Summer?? You obviously know less than nothing about raising sheep!

Sheep are sheared in the spring because that's when their wool is at its finest.

It's also the time of year when the vast majority of lambs are born. I guess them dumb collectivist sheep don't know no better. (sarcasm off)

[nopardons]

I was just about to write you a letter ( shall do, after I post this ! ) and here you are. LOL

I was sung that as a wee one and I sang it to my daughter, when she was a baby. It's one of THE most beautiful lullabies ever written; IMO.

[garandgal]

One plot is especially sobering: a young mother and twins, all died during childbirth

That happened to my Grandpa's first wife (and twins) about 1930. There is a plot in our local cemetery with parents and five children; wiped out in the late 1800's (dates within one week) by some disease.

[dixiechick2000]

Please...don't sweat writing the letter.
I want you to enjoy yourself on the forum tonight.


"I was sung that as a wee one and I sang it to my daughter, when she was a baby. It's one of THE most beautiful lullabies ever written; IMO."


My experience is exactly the same!
It was sung to me, and I sang it to my daughter as a baby.
To me, it is THE most beautiful lullabies ever.
One more commonality. ;o)

I am off to bed, now.
You take care of your sweet self, fair lady.
Nitey nite!