HISTORY FROM THE KITCHEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20389, 21 April 1928, Page 26

HISTORY FROM THE KITCHEN

UNCHANGING MANKIND. Written for the Otago Daily Times. By Lloyd Boss. ; Every Friday evening the doors of file city open> and pour forth battalions of mothers' and fathers pushing the pram along Main street. Woe is i v to get in the way of the shopping hosts; dangerous it is to venture forth without some visible sign of paternity. Here- the cabbages are sacred, and.the Baby is king. As far hack as history goes, these have been the people who have done the world's work and felt the world's ills, but written history: has told little of their doings. A century hence their photographs will ho laughed at for their quaint fashions; a pram will be placed as a curiosity in the Exhibition of 21920 a.d. Yet Clio, who inspires all historians, can be just as interesting in her slippers in the kitchen, stirring the soup or washing the baby, as in the palaces of kings and warriors. Especially so, since the cold-blooded historian of the day fiendishly delights in poking his bony finger at romances and traditions. William Tell did not shoot an arrow into an apple in the cause of Swiss freedom. Alfred may have been king, but it is doubtful whether he let the cakes burn. Even Robin Hood appears to have been half a dozen different outlaws, combined and re-created by a poet some centuries after “his” death. Soon there will he no romance left unless we discover the cook and the baker in the kitchen.

We regard the heroes as we regard the photographs of our ancestors in the front foom, or the pieces of broken old china—s necessary to give the cold and formal atmosphere where wo answer our calls. In the kitchen, we behave as human beings. How shall wo re-create the life of the past? How would wc learn the life of to-day? From the letters, newspapers, circulars, and wrappers lying untidily about. Take a file of bills I What will the- professor of the future moralise around this? What of our habits as he reads the last peremptory warning that unless this account-is settled before. . ~ as be runs through the stock of goods we have purchased? What a lazy, impecunious, careless, greedy, people we are! Somewhere in the thirteenth century there was compiled a roll of official writs sent to the King’s Treasurer ordering the payment of money to various persons. These are the bills of Kings, but they tell much of the lives of the people. The King has bought a green double cloth for his bed, young cherry trees for his garden at Westminster, chains for his lion. All these must be paid for, whether bought by a king or by a humble serf, who, to celebrate the birth of a son, exchanges five of his lions and thirteen eggs for a few caudles. A shilling is offered for each head of a dead Welshman, and we have visions of the turbulent life on the borders, before England became a nation. The King must observe Lent, but the Rolls declare that “To tlie lord king and his wife all fish seem ineipid beside lampreys.” So John, the king’s cook, persuades the sheriff of Gloucester, whence came the best lampreys, to issue a proclamation that “ no one shall buy or sell lampreys until John shall have taken ns much as shall be necessary for the .king’s use.” Here js the lament of the parson of St. Paul’s that his church has ■ sufrcr.-d damage through work on the King’s wall, and ho wants compensation. Here, ns from the bill of a contemporary plumber, we get a glimpse of a great storm which damaged Dover Castle, poured rain through the roof of my lord the Bishop of London, and even washed away the paintings on the wall above the King s bed ! Same ills, samp -appetites, same accidents, same running to the Govern* ment for assistance! and it was a mecliaevalist philosopher who invented the eternal truth, that three things drive a man from home —-a, smoking chimney, a scolding wife, and a leaking roof. The life of our ancestors, homely, crude, and dangerous thus mirrors itself in the king's accounts. Was it so very different? Was the Welshman any more dangerous than the road “ hog ’ i Accidents have always happened, and wives have always scolded —yet the mediaeval husband had his compensations. There is an old print of a wife being hoisted up and down into a stream because she had scolded her husband! No wonder there is a movement of “ Back to the Middle Ages.” Wo turn to the newspapers. Not thafc our ancestors could read, for they lived isolated in their little villages, catching glimpses of what went on outside only when the king circulated a proclamation ordering him to pay more taxes or servo in the army. Instead of an impersonal income tax demand being sent round to every house, the king visited the great nobles in turn, living on the household supplies, then passing on as soon as the cupboard was Dare. At least the taxpayers did have the satisfaction of seeing what happened to their payments, of cursing the king behind his back, and of hearing the news of the world. Later, collectors and justices were sent round the kingdom, and in the Rolls, where they wrote down everything they heard and saw—the scandal, the births and deaths —we find the life of a daily newspaper of to-day. From this combination of a law report, municipal council minutes and conversations over the back fence, we find thrills that to-day would require the services of a special correspondent. One May morning, in 1294, Ughtred the Smith and his friend Peter Draper went pigeon shooting. Ughtred went ahead, until he reached a bill outside the wood, where he waited. ** Peter, wishing to trv his bow, shouted to Ughtred to look out for his arrow, for he was going to shoot towards the hill. So, having shot, from a longer distance than any bow was known to carry, he came to the hill,, and, asked Ughtred where, his arrow was. : * Her© it is,’ said Ughtred, ‘ stuck in my head.’ ” On this, Peter fell to the ground groaning and crying, but Ughtred hade him not to grieve,: sine© he felt no hurt, and said, Let us go to that knoll, and do you pull oiit the arrow from my head so that my wife may not see. it, for perhaps she would grieve over much.” Ughtred, in a few days, died. Peter declared that he didn’t know it was loaded. “ The jurors believe that it was by misadventure, and all the countryside witnesses the same, and Peter was pardoned. Here, in- the Rolls, is the domestic tragedy of Belechera, her husband John and her eat. The cat seizes ' her beet, John throw's his knife at it, she rushes between, and soon the king s judges are holding an inquiry. Here Cutelins, a servant of the parson of Walgrave, stands by with a burning candle, while three ruffians murder a man with whom her master has quarrelled, about the pasture in Walgrave Helds. Hlrds tlutter tinougu the pages; honest men go about their business; the monks follow their duties, and in books wo find “the dead as if they were alive,’’ as a chronicler puts it. Even the wills reveal a life homely pleasant and varied. How old is Peter Bekard, for Peter is heir to property? The “Calendar of Inquisitiones Post Mortem ” gives the evidence. Adam de Hayton, aged 66 years, thinks Peter is of age, because in the same year that the suid Peter was horn his brother, named William, in going towards the schools of Oxford was killed by misadventure, and from that time 21 years have elapsed.” Other neighbours agree “ because the same day and year bo made a hedge around him close ’’ or because “ he had an oast house with three-quarters of malt burnt, through the fault of Cicely his maid. 16 years ago.” How much more scientific and civilised is the establishment of a Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Mar riages ! Yet I seem to remember Farmer Hodge declaring that the war ended 10 years ago since the eldest son of the milkmaid, who married the manager of Browns when he returned from the front.

was lioi'D °n the same clay as old Jess calved. The Middle Ages ’are merely so many miles from the railway line. Would you know more ? There are old psalters, old chronicles, old, songs, old laws. The Loufctrel Psalter of 1330 contains 309 leaves illuminated in gold and silver and other colours. Pilgrimages pass by pedlars, tinkers, and,' merchants go on their ways as in a moving picture'.' A tooth drawer is busily engaged; Criminals are flying to sound the sanctuary knocker. A stilt walker r and conjurer arc amusing the people on a feast day. Rustics are ploughing, cutting thistles, or breaking clods of earth with mallets. A boy is stealing cherries-—then, as now. In the Ordinance of the Cooks, ordered hy the Mayor and Aldermen of* London, it is enacted that a pig he sold for 8d ; the best roast goose for 7d; bfesfc’ roast pheasant for. 15a; 10 eggs a 14;' three roast pigeons 3ad. Very dangerous it was to try to sell above or below these prices. “On Saturday, the' 14th day of November,’’ says a London record, “the wife of Hildy and the wife of Medo were released from prison, and they were enjoined that in future they must sell their fowl according to the assize on pain ;of, punishment; from which without chastisement they should not escape.” Do we sigh for the good old days when industry was unfettered bv laws and courts, ;In 1357, Robert Porter, servant of John Gribhe, was brought before the Mayor and Aldermen and charged with “ inserting a piece of iron weighing £lb inside a Id' loaf with intent to make the said loaf weigh more in deceit of the people.” He was put in the pillory, “ there to remain upon the same for one hour of; the day, the said loaf and piece of iron being hung about his neck.” There are even statutes regulating wages, even prophecies of disaster if industry is to be controlled! The end shall bo as the beginning. Externally we have changed, but he, who looks beyond to the thoughts and feelings of the people will fin'd that, around the fleshpots, mankind has remained the same human being who fir4t cooked his food by the fires of long ago.