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Home >> Anything else >> urban legends

06.10.2006, 15:01 quote

Anonymous

okay so i found these urban legends wondering if anyone has any more , i must be boring lolz i find this stuff interesting Very Happy

Quote:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. 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 dogs, 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 really 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 the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway-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 the 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 and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get "trench mouth."

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 "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock them 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 thought 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."

 
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06.10.2006, 17:17 quote

Hungryone
Hungryone Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Posts: 264 Location: United Kingdom, England, Birmingham
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I prefer the older "don't tell the kids before bedtime" urban legends. One of my favourites is the crow sitting on your window ledge. Apparently crows are the "scouts" of the afterlife. If you find one sitting outside your home at night and depite all the rocks you throw at it the damn bird keeps coming back...someone in your household is about to kick the bucket!!!

 
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06.10.2006, 17:29 quote

Anonymous

Ohhhhhh thats horrible - i hate things like that Crying or Very sad

 
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06.10.2006, 21:19 quote

Anonymous

apparently...if you stand in frount of a mirror, and say candyman three times..you look like a right pillock and start to show your age..

cheers for the legands mouldypips..they are cool and new a couple of them..

Breaking mirrors = 7 yrs bad luck..

well, back in the day..lol..mirrors were very expensive items..usually only the rich could afford them..(explains there bad sense of style..)..It took the average family 7yrs of savings before they could afford such an item..
so hence ..if you broke it, when you finally saved up enough money to buy the sodding thing, then it was considered bad luck...as you had to start saving again...

bet also, this was the start of the famous phrase ' I didnt do it! honest..'

 
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