At last! someone else who is aware of the correct location for the consumtion of mangoes!



Re hats - I have 3 Samba hats. A knitted Benny hat for cold weather, a wide-brimmed afair for sunny weather, and a red sequinned stetson-type for rainy weather.

nordmann wrote:

not really qualified for inclusion here, which is primarily aimed at pin-pointing that which has been lost but which still could play a modern role if reintroduced.

Right then. Stone axes ; keep up your honing skills gang for when energy fails and we have to start afresh you'll need every one you can knap.

ferv rightly said early on that most that we might list here are things that have been superceeded by modern invention. So when, say, have cured cancer totally we can restart Saloop goop sales and make a fortune - is that what your mean?

I have only one more thing to say. Hat pins, sir -and as an expletive I quite like it. Also useful for your sad sinus condition and for pin pointing.

Knapping and lithic reduction techniques in general are indeed skills which could well have some modern application - in fact it almost qualifies as an instance where supersedence by later technology and invention has actually been to the detriment of the species' survival capabilities. One can lump any modern technique or capability dependent on the provision of elctricity or the presence of magnetised media which has superseded basic but vital functionality hitherto dependent on manual manipulation of elements into that category too.

And besides, should one suddenly require the use of a hat-pin when none can be found in the vicinity, then a moderate skill in flint knapping could well be the immediate solution to one's dilemma.

This reminds me of a story I read (I think in the TLS) by a journalist who in the recent past had occasion to conduct some research in the National Library and who found himself seated next to a young man of a "certain" demeanour and dress that one would have thought might have precluded him from the ranks of the literati, least of all any of those ranks who might be found ensconsed in said library surrounded by 18th and 19th century tomes related to civic administration and social history. His curiosity thus aroused the journalist politely inquired as to the exact nature of his companion's field of research, to which he received the equally polite reply "scavenging". With all seriousness his interlocutor explained that modern scavengers had much to learn from their historic predecessors whose activities had been described and itemised by many observers and civic functionaries in the period he studied, and that through such study he had already learnt of recycling opportunities and techniques which even today were eminently available, highly practicable and hugely profitable, and which were simply not understood or even noticed by his competitors in the branch. The reward for intelligent bone-sorting, for example, could be great indeed and, in the case of that fellow target of bone collectors throughout centuries, rags could still indeed lead to riches.

Knowledge is power, as they say. And we lose it to our detriment.

Any one who can knapp a hat pin deserves an award - unless it is attached to an arrow and loosed with veerry veeeery careful aim. So what has all this to do with that Saloop goop?

Rag used to be the material for the making of banknotes ; sausage skins are made from jute in case you needed to know that.

Rags have many other uses - from being unpicked to produce shoddy and mungo, to shredding as part of the sound insulation of motor vehicles, to cleaning and oiling machinery, or for "pogging" a rug.

Can't think why I persist in finding things that might fit Nordmann's bill - there's the sock repair mushroom - just given my mother's to our local museum. In the same old heedlework box I found an odd gadget which she had told me long ago was a button hook for those longish boots that ladies wore yonks ago - and button hooks were useful for abortions, she also told me. No pussyfooting around topics, my mum.

Sugar cutters from the days of loaf sugar.

Sugar tongs, pickle forks and those funny three pronged grabbers with a plunger thing to release the walnut/onion, rather like the little cranes in the seaside arcade where you could never quite pick up the prize. You rarely see a butter knife either or a cake fork or grapefruit spoons, serrated along one side for those with no, or incompetent, kitchen staff.

Actually P a sock mushroom would probably fit the bill. Simply not used now because people choose to buy new pairs rather than darn, perfectly understandable and I can think of many better things I'd rather be doing but the mushroom hasn't gone out of use because new technology has replaced it.

Yes, but Nordmann will say it isn't needed any more and that's one of his criteria. I still darn on (rare) occasions but have to say I don't use a mushroom. I don't darn socks, but jerseys and things like that.

Some things are only needed by a very few people but they are lost without them. My quite elderly friend does a lot of typing of family history on an old typewriter, and it used to bother me a bit that she wouldn't be able to get a new ribbon for it. However recently her daughters bought her a computer, so she uses that now for word processing at least.

But a mushroom is needed if one wants to darn socks without sticking a needle in one's fingers, not needed for darning jumpers though as there is plenty of room to move inside and keep hands away from the needle.

I still darn jumpers too, but draw the line at socks!

Tinderboxes ; surely a household must have for a very long time. And may become so again as fewer have matches and lighters to hand. Intruth though I have seen flint on sale in Himalayan (foothills) villages. The damp atmosphere soaks matches pd fast.

And another - but really what ferv defines as a loss to progress, car starting handles. There must be a load of technical things that I never knew were needed so cannot note their loss.

Well, the "Trench Lighter" in this is pretty much a stretched out tinder box.

http://survivaltek.com/?tag=lighter

Lots of car related items, leather upholstery as standard and running boards for a start and a feature that distinguished my first car, a 1948 Rover, cost £25.00; an ebonite knob on the dashboard which, when pulled (or when you had pulled), lowered a blind over the back windscreen.

Somewhere recently someone wondered what the use of those leather helmets and gloves drivers used to wear was. I thought they were to make young men look cool, but perhaps there was a more practical reason.

A box for having peat for the stove.

In my sleeping room I have one such, a relict from my mother's home, which, she told me, then was kept not far from the stove itself, in order that the peat might dry further and thus make better heat.

When my mother got it, was when the old farm-kitchen was renovated, and my mother's brother, who then owned the farm, had a gas stove installed - mid 60'es I think, at least I remember that, as a young lad I was taken by my cousins to help turning the peat in order for it to dry out.

The box itself was properly cleansed then, and then painted in a sad grey-brown colour which it still have. Nowadays it serves as a summer retreat for gloves, scarves, and caps.

Much the same thing as a wood box that sat next to the fireplace then Nielsen. I miss a proper wood fire, something very comforting in it. Never seen a peat fire though, are they warmer than wood?

But I know you can still buy wood boxes, although they are usually more ornamental these days than the ones of old.

There are a number of ways this doesn't quite fit Nordmann's criteria - it's not a product and I don't think it's only found in antiquarian writing - but still it is something which seemed to be used automatically and then wasn't, but could still fill a function.

In the book I'm reading set in the American Civil War there is mention of wet nurses. They were quite a significant part of European life too. But they just don't seem to be part of western life any more. In fact a year or two ago there was quite a big media fuss here when a woman breast-fed someone else's baby. I can't seem to find those details but the bits I have come across certainly treat the idea as weird at the least. One comment said, "I'd rather another woman slept with my husband than breast-fed my baby." And somewhere else there was a story about a baby being swapped at the hospital (temporarily and accidentally) and the first thing mentioned was that the baby was breast-fed by the wrong mother (with exclamation marks) as if that was the biggest worry in such a situation.

And yet for decades (centuries?) it was accepted as normal and helpful and the baby lived with its wet-nurse for quite a few years, I seem to remember. Did this become abnormal when servants became less popular, or was it before that? I would think there would still be situations where wet-nursing could be useful. (I gather there is something called milk-sharing now, with expressed milk.)

Product and antiquarian weren't really strict criteria and yes, as far as western society is concerned at least, wet nursing is something which very rapidly went out of use. Not only that but as you say it went from something quite common and natural an option to one which was quite vehemently discouraged and even considered "dangerous".

A wet-nurse was really only a position by appointment in a certain layer of society that involved an activity in which all layers lower engaged, whether it carried a job title or not. In an era of high infant mortality and of high mortality among women giving birth it was not even questioned that the suckling of another's child should be critically examined in the slightest, so I suppose the real swing against it as a practise can be timed in retrospect to have coincided with the significant medical and surgical improvements in facilitating childbirth in the 20th century in the west, and of course the introduction of effective food alternatives which militated not just against wet-nursing but breastfeeding in general. However this really only explains its lack of requirement as a necessary measure to ensure a child's early nutritional intake. It does not explain its transition to the realms of the "disgusting" or the "unthinkable", which is where it more or less lies now.

I agree also that a relaxation of the recent taboo against this practise should be given serious consideration, and though there are many reasons for so doing one which is not generally recognised at all anymore deserves special mention in my opinion. When wet-nursing was the general practise, regardless of class, one benefit which was broadly recognised was the helpful and therapeutic effect it had on women whose baby had been stillborn or had died quite young. Nurturing a child, even if it wasn't their own, had such obvious a beneficial effect on so many such women that it was even the practise to assign a child to them whether its natural mother was experiencing difficulties with feeding or not. Our modern society has effectively cut off this potential avenue of rehabilitation after such a trauma and I wonder was it totally sane to have done so.

it seems to be the physical contact involved in wet nursing that has retained the taboo, supplying donor expressed milk to maternity units is relatively well established.

While thinking about children, the development of gender specific clothes for small children is relatively recent, what's that all about?

According to QI, and I do wonder about their sources sometimes, the practise in 18th century Europe was to dress little girl babies in blue (Virgin Mary) and little boys in pink (watered-down red, red being a manly "Martian" colour).

Breast feeding was also used as a form of birth control, not effective in every woman but there are many who do not ovulate whilst lactating. And women would happily breast feed a child for anywhere up to several years to delay another pregnancy. This could also be a reason why the responsibility of breast feeding a child not their own was so willingly undertaken.

What with the season that's in it, and all that - maybe it's a good idea to spare a thought for frumenty. Or if you prefer, furmity or firmity. Or maybe even fromity. Or if you want to be posh, frumentee. Of all the traditional Christmas foods in Britain this one in fact far exceeds the rest in terms of its longevity in association with the festival, though I would wager there are few nowadays who would even hazard a guess as to what it might have been.

Fromity (as the bulk of us peasants were wont to call it) has very ancient roots indeed in Western Europe having arrived, it is believed, along with the Romans who in turn had picked up the recipe from their association with Persians. At least a consistently similar dish is known to have been made in Persia as far back as when Rome itself was just a village of belligerent anti-Sabinians on an insignificant river far beyond the bounds of civilisation.

By the time it arrived in Britain it had more or less acquired the recipe by which it was to be cooked throughout the earliest days of Christianity and which would then remain virtually unchanged as a traditional Christmas dish right up to the 19th century (and beyond in some quarters).

Basically it's a cross between a porridge and a pudding, though not really a precursor of the traditional "Christmas pud" - the two co-existed for some centuries. Its name, derived from "frumentum" (grain), explains both its popularity and its longevity, it being made from that most basic and available ingredient throughout the Roman world and later. Wheat grain was the most common variety used, being parboiled, strained, boiled again in milk, sweetened with fruit or sugar and then flavoured with spices, cinnamon being the popular choice in latter centuries. In Britain egg yolks were included in the boiling stage which allowed the porridge to set. Gelatin was also used, giving the finished dish a jelly-like consistency. During the 19th century the dish became so popular a mainstay of the Christmas table that "creed wheat" (grain already parboiled and jellied) was sold in great quantities in the run-up to the festival just for the preparation of the dish in those households where "hulling", "creeding" and other specialised treatment of wheat was beyond the capabilities of the kitchen.



In some parts of Britain the dish was resurrected to celebrate "Mothering Sunday" and in other parts it enjoyed a year-round popularity, especially when laced with alcohol, rum being the favourite. Furmity "drinkers" and "dealers" are to be found in Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casteridge", Mrs Goodenough's recipe as sold at the fair playing a pivotal role in the novel's plot;

The young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture, steaming hot, and sat down to consume it at leisure. This was very well so far, for furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a food as could be obtained within the four seas; though, to those not
accustomed to it, the grains of wheat swollen as large as lemon-pips, which floated on its surface, might have a deterrent effect at first.

More basic versions, essentially just spiced porridges, are still standard Christmas fare in many parts of Europe. However their more illustrious and ancient ancestor, the Christmas pudding that had lasted so long that it pre-dated Christmas itself, seems finally to have met its demise in the early 20th century.

http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-groaty-pudding

Bonfire night without Grorty Dick would have been incomplete in my young days. (btw - to the "3 hours or more" you really need to add another 12.) I suppose the demise of the coal fire and the oven over it makes proper Grorty Dick uneconomic. Gray pays un baycun seems to be going the same way, as do pig's feet. Still like to do the last occasionally, to produce and then freeze the jelly for later use. Just avoid the "Southern soul food" version.


Bostin fittle!

If this is the wrong thread and anyone can think of a more appropriate one please let me know.

I've been compromising and playing the songs of the Auvergne in the background while I iron.  But I did look at the video of this version of 'Bailero' and noticed the work clothes of the shepherds and shepherdesses in the various paintings accompanying the video.  The paintings are lovely (to my eyes at least) but I thought that probably shepherds don't wear such attire these days.  Of course the paintings are of somewhat idealised ideas of work clothes.  Also the paintings may not necessarily depict shepherds/shepherdesses in the Auvergne.  In England we associate the smock with shepherds of days gone by I think.  I guess people who do pottery or painting seriously as a hobby still wear something maybe like a smock or at least an oversize shirt.  I know there are threads about clothing in particular but with something like 'Dress to Impress' I wasn't sure if work clothes would fit the thread properly.

I'm forgetful today - this is the second time I have had to edit a post because I forgot to post the link in first instance.  

Edited out of the broadcast of "Brian" -
Robert Robinson "Mr so-and-so, what region of France inspired the following piece of music?"
Mr So-and-so (without waiting for the music) "The Auvergne. It's either Canteloube's 'Bailero' or I won't know anyway"
(Bailero plays)
Mr So-and-so "The Auvergne"