Scents and Sensibilities: The Not So Smelly Middle Ages? By Catherine Hokin

Setting: one of the most important things for an author to get right. That might be the most obvious statement you read all day and no, you haven't stumbled into a 'how to write' blog but this balancing act of anchoring the reader fully in a time period very different from our own while not bludgeoning them to death under a tsunami of description is occupying a lot of my time with the current WIP.

One of the best ways to communicate a sense of place is through smell. The modern world is obsessed with fragrance: from beauty and cleaning products to the artificial bread that wafts through every supermarket, we walk through such a vanillery-bakery-flowery world that any slightly unpleasant scent feels like an assault. I am beginning to think that most of our Proustian moments will shortly be controlled by Airwick. The challenge for the writer, however, is that this most crucial sensory experience is the hardest to research and to replicate.

That the Middle Ages was a morass of stinking towns and villages filled with people whose body odours would have made a skunk weep is one of those history myths that gets peddled at school and repeated incessantly until it ends up on QI. Scrape under the mucky surface and things are rather different.

There are admittedly plenty of stories of medieval people who did not regard hygiene as a priority. Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) reputedly only bathed twice in her lifetime, once when she was born and once when she married. King Louis IX (1214-1270) was described by the Russian ambassador to his court as stinking like a wild animal. They, however, were not the norm for their class: foul odours were associated with disease, low standing in the social order and moral corruption (based on the idea of miasma). Those who could avoid smelling revolting did.

At the height of the Middle Ages, bathing was a serious business. For the wealthy this would take place in tented wooden tubs lined with cloth; the better-off town-dwellers had communal bathhouses; the peasants made do with rivers in the summer and fire-warmed water in the winter. Whatever rank you were, de-lousing with salty water would probably feature somewhere in your life. Health manuals such as the Regimen Sanitatis (c.1308) contained dozens of rules for bathing at specific times such as pregnanacy and noted the importance of bathing for getting rid of dirt and grime beyond that which was visible: “if any of the waste products of third digestion are left under the skin that were not resolved by exercise and massage, these will be resolved by the bath.” As with medicine, herbs and plants were central to the process of sweetening the body for those who had access to them. Thyme and rose petals were widely used to perfume bath water, the body could be dried using sheets sprinkled with rosewater and then dusted (men and women) with a powder made from ground rice, ground orris root  (a violet smell favoured by King Edward IV) and fragranced with cloves or lavender. Bay leaves, hyssop and sage were used to make deodorants and sachets of lemon balm and dried rose petals could be slipped into clothes already boiled in water scented with orris root and stored in chests containing 'sweet bags' which held a mix of ingredients such as musk, citrus peel and marjoram. Finally a 'pomme d'ambre' (an apple of ambergris) filled with a fragrant paste could be attached to a waist belt and, once Arabic gums and essential oil distillation methods could be combined with the discovery of alcohol distillation in the early 1300s, a perfume with notes of mint and rosemary could be added to the mix. The notion of a court filled with walking pot-pourri bowls is rather hard to escape.

 Woodcut 1489

So, if the people battled the negative associations of fetid smells rising from their bodies, where does the notion of the smelly medievals come from? For that we have to turn to place. I have always been an urbanite but I think medieval England may have forced a love of the country on me. Wood smoke, days old pottage and damp over-close animals still seem preferable to the alternative. Medieval towns stank. Clearly sanitation was an issue: towns were cramped, pavements were rare and Roman drains were long forgotten although muckrackers were well-paid. Houndsditch, which runs through London's glossy financial district, gets its name from the amount of dead dogs deposited in it when it was a great open ditch running through one of the medieval  city's main thoroughfares. In the 14th century, Sherborne Lane in the east of the capital was officially known as Shiteburn Lane and every town had its equivalent, Pissing Alley apparently being quite a favourite.

 

 Fes Medieval Tanneries

The main problem, however, was not the disposal of human waste,  it was the industries and commerce that multiplied as the towns grew. Anyone who has battled down the narrow Shambles in York can imagine how disgusting this road must have been when it was the open air Great Flesh Shambles with a drain filled with blood and offal running down its centre. Even more noxious were the great tanneries which used copious amounts of urine, dog excrement and stale beer in their processes. The smell of the tanneries in Nottingham was said to be so terrible it even repelled rats although, on the plus side, this is credited for reducing the incidents of plague in the area.

Awareness of the links between filth and disease can be seen in the regulations that were constantly passed in medieval towns. Fines were imposed for throwing waste from high windows and dumping it in clean water sources and on butchers for failing to clear waste which attracted dogs and wild pigs. But, as town populations continued to rise, the battle became increasingly hard and raw sewage continued to flow into the Thames until the nineteenth century. The towns smelled bad and, by the end of the Middle Ages, it is likely that the majority of people smelled pretty bad too. The public bath houses had long been associated with sexual activity, the Stews in Southwark for example were largely regarded as a front for brothels. The Church railed against them in vain but attitudes to communal bathing began to change after successive outbreaks of plague and the new disease syphillis, which began to make its presence felt in the late 1400s. Taking a bath became a rather risky adventure.

So back to the balancing act. No one wants to read a seduction scene where the protagonists' body odour acts like extra characters but drowning everything in herbs seems like a recipe for a cliched dish. I'm off to Glasgow's West End streets to breathe in petrol fumes and ponder.

KISSING COMFITS AND SNOW ERINGOES: APHRODISIACS, by Jane Borodale

Eryngium maritimum © Valerie Hill 

Effective, practical enhancement of the art of love has been sought after since ancient times. Roots of sea holly or Eryngium maritimum were collected on a large scale in England during the 17th and 18th centuries for candying as restorative, quasi-aphrodisiac pastilles, known as eryngoes. Old records of Colchester show that the town was famous for oysters and eryngo root, where a 17th-century apothecary called Robert Burton set up a manufactory to made these popular sweetmeats, candied with sugar and orange-blossom water. They even get a mention in the 'Merry Wives of Windsor', when Falstaff, off to meet Mistress Ford in Windsor Forest, declares; ‘…hail kissing comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation…’ 

Sea holly grows well in gardens (you absolutely wouldn’t collect it from the wild anymore – it’s far too scarce) and Mrs Grieve suggests digging up the roots at the end of the season, from plants at least two years old. Geoffrey Grigson points out wryly that, ‘careful wives grew Sea Holly in the physic garden.’ (What are you waiting for...?)

Pliny describes it as a sweet savouring root. 16th-century botanist William Turner writes of its virtues; ‘to stir up the lust of the body, and … give it to both men and women that are desirous to have childer. Some condite (candy) or keep in sugar the roots for this purpose.’ Nicolaus Alexandrinus of the late 13th century has four medicines using this herb which he ‘maketh to stir up the pleasure of the body, and to make men and women fruitful.’

Sea holly © Valerie Hill

Here’s a 17th-century recipe for Candied Eringo-roots from Hannah Woolley. I have it on good authority that it is effective – but don’t blame me for consequences of any sort whatever:

Take of your Eringo-roots ready to be preserved, and weigh them, and to every pound of Roots you must take of the purest Sugar you can get two pound, and clarifie it with the whites of Eggs exceedingly well, that is may be as clear as Crystal; it being clarified, you must boil it to the height of Manus Christi, and then dip in your Roots two or three times till they are all Candyed; put them in a Stove, and so keep them all the year.

Dorothy Hartley gives us a hand-me-down recipe for Eyringo Jelly (sometimes called Gloucester Jelly as sea holly grew in the estuary):

1 oz each of sago, hartshorn shavings, eyringo root, and pearl barley; put into a pan with 2 quarts water, and boil until reduced to 1 quart. Strain and let it set – it should be stiff. Slices of it should be put into invalid drinks (!) – or it may be flavoured and sweetened and eaten as a jelly.

She also suggests Eryingo toffee:

Boil some of the sliced root in a little water till well flavoured, and add this water to the sugar and butter with which you make the toffee: just as it is ready to set, drop the softened root chips into it.

Early purple orchid © Valerie Hill

It wouldn’t be representative of the early herbals if I didn’t include mention of them getting it perfectly wrong. A popular but useless aphrodisiac came from the orchid (or standergrasse) family. ‘Orchis’ is from the Greek orkhis meaning literally ‘testicle’, and the plant acquired attributes of sympathetic magic due to the shape of its tuber. Orchids, particularly Orchis mascula or Early Purple were cited as a vital ingredient in a sweet electuary known as a diasatyrion, which combined Orchid tubers with dates, various nuts including pistachios, galingale, peppers, musk, ambergris, grains of paradise, ash-keys, nettle seed and Malaga wine, and which was prescribed by the College of Physicians in London as ‘a provocative to venery’. Henry Lyte’s 'New Herball' of 1578 says: ‘the full and sappy roots of Standergrasses (but especially of Hares Ballocks, or Goates Orchis) eaten, or boyled in Goates milke and drunken, provoketh Venus, or bodily lust.’

But there were plenty of other options if you couldn’t get your hands on either of these. Pliny suggests that artichokes ‘taken in wine stirreth up the lust of the body… but likewise as this herb provoketh lust in women, so it abateth the same in men.’ As ever it depends on whom you read, and Henry Lyte disagrees on the finer point; ‘the first springes or tender impes of the Artichoke sodden in good broth with bytter, doth mightily stirre up the lust of the bodie both in men and women, causeth sluggish men to be diligent in Sommer…’ Aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) is a traditional aphrodisiac, a sweet, warming stimulant herb. Turner says of anise that ‘it stirreth men to the pleasure of the body.’ There was lovage, and garlic. Ayurvedic medicine still regards garlic as rejuvenative and aphrodisiac. Turner says that it ‘stirreth men to venery, drunken with green Coryander and strong wine.’

Ash keys © Valerie Hill

Anyone could obtain a bit of ash out in the woods or on the roadside – its seeds according to Dioscorides, ‘provoke lust’ or ‘render a man more spirited with ladies’. Lyte says, ‘The seed of the ashe-tree increaseth naturall seed, and stirreth by Venus, especially being taken with a Nutmeg, as Isaac, Rhasis, Damascenus, and many other Arabian Physitions doe write.’

Other traditional spring tonics like watercress (nasturtium) and parsley feature often in the herbals as having aphrodisiac virtues. Turner claims that ‘Persely… stirreth up appetite to cold women’, and it’s notable that parsley oil is used today in perfumes for men. There was saffron, or coriander seeds, or leeks and onions; in some regions of France there was a custom of preparing onion soup for newly-weds after their wedding night. Pliny suggested that if southernwood (also called lad’s love) ‘…be layed under the bed, pillow or bolster, it provoketh carnall copulation, and resisteth all inchantments, which may let or hinder such businesse, and the inticements to the same.’

The opposite effect.

Just in case, I should point out one or two easy-to-find antidotes or anaphrodisiacs: such as mallow, hops and lettuce. The Pythagoreans knew lettuce as the 'eunuch’s plant', but luckily you need more than a bowlful of salad for it to have an effect, it’s the concentrated milky juice or sap, the 18th-century 'lettuce opium' that has the sedative power.

And while I’m in this bodily vein (it’s all sex and death today) – there are still tickets left for the upcoming Medicine and Mortality weekend at the Weald and Downland Museum in Sussex, 21-22 Sep. Historians including Ian Mortimer, Clare Gittings and Owen Davies will talk about health, fatal illnesses, magic, medicine and funeral rituals; medical herbalist Christina Stapley will demonstrate historical herb recipes – ask her about eryngoes! – and much more.

And that, people, is my very last post. I’ve absolutely loved being a History Girl and will go on reading HG posts galore, but right now must bury myself and do nothing but write, write, write, for a while.

Thank you for having me, and adieu… 

www.janeborodale.com

FLEAS, by Jane Borodale

From Robert Hooke's Micrographia, 1665

My friend has fleas. Of course I mean that her puppy has fleas, because that’s what you catch at puppy-school, but they seem to be generously dispersed and multiplying about the house and it looks like a bit of a nightmare to me, endless washing and vacuuming, shaking of bedding, testing of proprietary brands of flea-zapper, not to mention all the jokes… By now it is the tail end of fleas that she is suffering from; the worst is over now that cold weather’s on its way and the halcyon days of prime flea-time are numbered…

G M Crespi, 'Searcher for Fleas', 1720s

Fleas in the past were a habitual problem for any householder. The Goodman of Paris, in 1393 when advising his new wife on the chief ways to keep a husband content (I should quickly say that my friend’s spouse took a day off work to assist with flea-warfare) suggested, ‘I beseech you thus to bewitch your husband … have a care in winter he have a good fire and smokeless and let him rest well and be well covered between your breasts. And in summer take heed that there be no fleas in your chamber, nor in your bed, the which you may do in six ways. If the room be strewn with alder leaves, the fleas will be caught thereon. If you have at night one or two trenchers [of bread] slimed with glue or turpentine and set about the room, with a lighted candle in the midst of each trencher, they will come and be stuck thereto…’

Hyssop (copyright Valerie Hill)

Strewing herbs, from the Middle Ages until the 18^th century, played a large and efficacious role in control of fleas and other vermin, mixed in with the rushes, reeds or straw that would have covered every earth or flagstone floor as a thick layer, in rich or poor households alike. Periodically the floors were swept clean of these rushes and herbs, which were then burned, ridding the household of many of the fleas and larvae that would have collected there. I don’t need to remind anyone in the North of England about rush bearing, which was a formal celebration of this ritual.

Thomas Tusser (1524-1580) listing twenty-one strewing herbs altogether in his instructional poem Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandry; includes costmary, cowslips, daisies, germander and winter savory.

‘While wormwood hath seed, get a handful or twain,

To save against March, to make flea to refrain:

Where chamber is sweeped, and wormwood is strown,

No flea, for his life, dare abide to be known.’

Fleabane (copyright Valerie Hill)

I imagine your strewing herb of choice would have been largely dictated by what you could get locally, or the type of environment you lived in. Those on sandy, well-drained soils might grow hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis); if you were in a marshy or clayish area then fleabane (Pulicaria dysenterica) would be handier to go out and pick by the wayside, or watermint (Mentha aquatica).

The Niewe Herball of 1578 says ‘Of Fleawurt, or Flebane … some hold, that if this hearbe whiles it is yet greene, be strowed in the house, that Fleas will not come not ingender where it is layd.’

Mint, with its volatile oils and sharply cooling aromatic pungency was also excellent against mice, which detest the smell and will not touch food that has either fresh or dried mint laid around it. Pennyroyal or pudding grass (Mentha pulegium) was brought to market by poor women to sell for a variety of uses, including specifically against fleas, and its effectiveness is clear, being used like this since antiquity. This is the Pulegium of the Romans, named by Pliny (pulex being Latin for flea). John Pechey in 1694 says of pennyroyal; ‘The fresh Herb wrap’t in a Cloth, and laid in a Bed, drives away Fleas; but it must be renewed once a week.’

Lady's bedstraw (copyright Valerie Hill)

The scent of other herbs lasts much longer than a week; foliage of the bedstraw family, such as Lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum, also known as fleaweed), and woodruff (Asperula oderata) contain asperuloside which produces coumarin; the leaves when freshly gathered have little scent at all, but when dried give out a sweet smell of newly-mown hay that can last for years. 

Sweet woodruff (copyright Valerie Hill)

Fleas do not, apparently, like coumarin at all, which is also in the pretty melilot (Melilotus altissima) another strewing herb. Mrs Grieve tells us that, in June, on St Barnabas day, bunches of box, woodruff, lavender and roses were traditionally put inside churches; fleas were clearly a problem in the house of God too. There are so many other kinds of potent, aromatic herbs used for strewing that I haven’t time to go into here, but a fleeting mention is due for meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), well-known for being the favourite strewing herb of Queen Elizabeth the first.

Georges de la Tour, 'Woman Catching Fleas', 1630s

It would seem though, from these genre paintings, that sometimes direct action was the only way, and the only way to really kill a flea by hand is to crack it (sorry) between the nails. During an infestation this would have been rather laborious. With animals occupying human living quarters, cats and dogs running in and out, (rabbits hanging before skinning could have come into the kitchen crawling with fleas), and so on, I wonder whether every poor household struggled with fleas all of the time, especially in the warmer months.

Gerard ter Borch, 'Boy Ridding his Dog of Fleas', c1665

Even the toughest flea needs certain conditions to flourish; adequate warmth and humidity, plus delicious warm-blooded morsels (us, puppies) to feast on. Lucky, then, for my beleaguered friend up the hill, that the dark nights are drawing in now, and regular frosts should see off any laggardly critters. The bad news is that flea larvae can successfully over-winter in the house, to wake up in the warmth and vigour of the spring (another reason to burn your strewing herbs before the year is out). 

But I’ll leave you with one last image that shows how very intricate and time-consuming one’s flea-revenge could be…