Castle Life
In French the expression “La vie du chateau” (The life in the castle) stands for a life in luxury. A castle was the dwelling for the lord and the lady and their family. This is how lords and knights in the Middle Ages used to live in their ornate palaces.
The centre of the castle is the main hall:
It was heavily decorated. Everyone but the lord of the castle sat there on benches. The toilet was called “the garderobe,” and usually the waste went straight into the moat. Except for its shocking hygiene, this practice was also a neglect of safety. One way to capture the castle was to climb up the pipe.
Most people got engaged and married in June. That’s because they took their yearly bath in May, and they were still smelling pretty okay by June.
Men’s fashions were as gaudy as women’s.
In medieval times, nice clean water was a privilege of the Lord of the House. Next, in the bathtub got all his sons and men in the household, then the ladies, and eventually the children. Last of all were the babies. When they bathed the babies, the water was already so dirty that you could actually lose someone in it. So this is where the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” came from. That’s an idiom for getting rid of the good parts as well as the bad parts when you are trying to improve on something.
At dawn, the Lord of the Castle heard the Mass. Afterwards, he had a huge breakfast consisting of white bread and wine. Cooks and other servants roasted meat, prepared stews, soups, and sauces in a large cauldron over an open fire. The Lord of the House organized festivities and great banquets on special occasions. The guests ate from silver and golden plates and had individual cups. Each course served in the castle consisted of many kinds of meats such as swan, magpie, peacock, porpoise and boar.
In summer, villagers were running out of grain, but the new crop wasn’t ready. So they had to use old rye to make bread. Unfortunately, it was often infected with ergot – a fungus with LSD like effects. It causes hallucination, gangrene, and in extreme cases, death. So medieval bread could get you high or end you. What to expect from people who convict animals of crimes?
Football was violent and illegal.
