Don't throw the baby out with the bath water

2007-07-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

Bathtime was 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".

Sol Squire insisted: Bathing was not conducted this way in the 16th Century. There were public bathhouses, as few homes had the means to heat a substantial amount of water at one time. There is no literature stating that people bathed in the manner of man-of-house down to baby and the practical considerations of keeping that much water warm during such a ritual are not plausible.

Lastly, children of the 16th Century were bathed far more often than adults (see numerous works by J. Brundage, F. Braudel, M. Block, and many others) and anyone who has ever been charged with the care of an infant knows personally the obvious requirement to clean them daily. The notion that a mother of any century would lose her child in a bath of clouded, cold, and filthy water is laughable. The idea that this was part of a yearly infant cleansing ritual, as suggested above, is simply nonsense

Sol betrays his comfortable background here; yes, bath houses existed - but to suggest that poor people - often living in isolated hamlets or miles from any settlement - caught the bus to the nearest bath house is simply too fanciful for words - and besides, the limit on their credit cards would have stopped them using Public Baths. Bathing in the river was one possibilty, but for those lucky enough to possess a large tub, then filling that in front of the fire was a time honored tradition until very, very recent times in England (and almost certainly continues elsewhere).

Logic suggests the cleanest folk would use the water first - and throwing it away after just one person was a waste people were much too sensible to think of. So others went in the same water. If they were lucky, they got some of the water thrown out, and replaced with fresh hot water - but water would have boiled quick enough for all. And in practice, The Man of The House almost certainly went first, older brothers preceding younger siblings by whatever force they required. You'd be pretty stupid to bathe the baby in clean water, as his bodily functions could foul the water for all - and any 'peeing' would be rewarded by a clipped ear.

Throwing the baby out with the water is what used to be known as 'a joke' - but if dad was a miner, or even a farm worker, not far from the truth.

Ian Moseley submitted: When the proverb "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water" or its parallel proverbial expression "To throw the baby out with the bath water" appear today in Anglo-American oral communication or in books, magazines, newspapers, advertisements or cartoons, hardly anybody would surmise that this common metaphorical phrase is actually of German origin and of relatively recent use in the English language.

It had its first written occurrence in Thomas Murner's (1475-1537) versified satirical book Narrenbeschwörung (1512) which contains as its eighty-first short chapter entitled "Das kindt mit dem bad vß schitten" (To throw the baby out with the bath water) a treatise on fools who by trying to rid themselves of a bad thing succeed in destroying whatever good there was as well. In seventy-six rhymed lines the proverbial phrase is repeated three times as a folkloric leitmotif, and there is also the first illustration of the expression as a woodcut depicting quite literally a woman who is pouring her baby out with the bath water.

Murner also cites the phrase repeatedly in later works and this rather frequent use might be an indication that the proverbial expression was already in oral currency towards the end of the fifteenth century in Germany.

Honeymoon

2007-07-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month or what we know today as the honeymoon.

Rick adds: Not pure fiction, just misguided. Legend had it that the consumption of mead (honey based) for one month (one moon) would result in the conception of a male child. Because of this the happily married couple would quaff the beverage until the next full moon when they could conceive a male child. You may consider this hogwash, but those of us keeping mead alive in one form or another will continue to believe in it. It gives us higher purpose!

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Legends of Language

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water

Honeymoon