Medieval Childhoods

All right, this week on the members feed, we had a reading of a couple of those crazy Anselm letters.

And also, Dr.

Z came into the studio and she walked me through medieval childhoods.

The conversation was a bunch of fun and went on for over an hour.

Here's a short sample.

We also see musical instruments, and music was probably a little more prominent than it is today.

Like, we'd consider it an elective.

And we start later.

But music, again, was foundational to even a top-level education.

So you would have been handed musical instruments, people playing music was a much more, as like just evening entertainment

was a much more common thing.

What's a good example of a childhood musical instrument?

They have little drums that we see.

They have little cymbals.

And

little flutes was very common, like the penny whistle type flute.

Right, right, right.

And then presumably they would move up from there.

But, I mean, we give our children these things now with no expectation that they would learn.

But because music was...

probably a much more everyday activity rather than we have official musicians more now.

Right.

Those were the sort of things that you would probably learn to play an instrument and learn music.

Same with singing.

Singing was a constant thing that people were doing.

Entertainment wasn't something that a class did like we have now.

It's something everyone is doing all the time for each other.

And so music education started young.

And so we find child-size instruments.

Well, that's cute.

I mean, it also makes me think that medieval life sounded like out an absolute cacophony of recorders, basically.

Very possible.

You know, it's the sort of thing where you send them outside to go do that, probably.

You're like, oh, God, I got such a hangover from last night at the meat hall.

Do you have to?

We also see kids like making their own fun in the marginalia.

So we see kids building seesaws, building swings,

swimming.

Here's a weird thing.

Swimming was considered like a noble pursuit and a normal pastime up until the 11th century, and then it falls out of favor amongst nobility.

Why?

No idea.

And I'm not saying that because nobody knows.

I'm saying I could not figure that out.

I think that's a separate topic, but it remains a kids' activity.

So kids were absolutely, especially boys, we know, were out there skinny dipping when it was warm enough.

And so we've got actually pretty detailed marginalia in some cases of like little boys like shivering in the little pond

while they're messing around.

That was every summer for me.

It was that.

And it's always boys, and there's two ways to interpret this: is either it was just considered entirely too indecent for girls to be skinny dipping, and so they just didn't.

Or what I think is more likely is it was considered decent for monks to be depicting girls skinny dipping.

So my guess is that

kids are kids.

And also

we know even in a lot of patriarchal cultures is

that sort of thing is done by women.

It's just that the women go off and do it themselves with each other.

One of my favorite bits from an anthropologist's series of work, she was working with a, I want to say it was North African, but an Islamic Arabic local culture.

And, you know, she's not as covered up as the women around her who were fairly heavy covered according to their religion and culture,

including almost being veiled.

And one day they invited her to go to a local sort of like natural swimming hole that they could go down to.

And she's like, obviously, yes, I'll go join you guys.

And they all get down to the watering hole.

And these women just strip down to the birthday suit, no hesitation.

And she's like, what the hell?

And they're like, aren't you going to go swimming?

And she's like, well, not that naked.

And they're like, oh my God, God, you're such a prude.

And so when we talk about cultures, concepts of what is prude or not or acceptable or not can really change.

And often it's about if it's a homo-social environment that is like single-sex social environment.

Right.

The rules are very different, even to the point where we would be a bit shocked in our context.

So that's my guess is that girls probably were out there swimming.

But the monks weren't anywhere near it.

And the monks would probably get some side-eye if they were doing that in the marginalia of the Bible, you know?

Yeah.

That's my guess.

Hiding in the bushes, just doing research.

Yeah.

Kids were also playing games.

Some of the things that we know that they were played, there was a game that was called, they called Cherry Pit or Cherry Pits.

And like I call it a game, but it's one of those things that you do when you're real bored and like stuck somewhere.

So you take little cherry pits and you like flick them at things, like in a small little hole or through a goal and that's what you're doing for.

So it's like tabletop football.

Less like that.

We actually have a description of knuckle bones that sounds exactly like tabletop football.

So knuckle bones is a similar one.

Knuckle bones you play like jacks where you actually take knuckle bones so they're the of animals usually sheep or pigs or a saint.

Too small.

Anyway, you toss one up and before that one comes down you have to catch it.

You scoop up the other knuckle bones and then you catch the thing.

Okay, yeah, that's that's very jacks.

But that's not tabletop football.

No, but we do have a description of using those to play something that sounds exactly like tabletop football where you flick them through a friend who is having a

goal in their hands.

So 100% tabletop football with the knuckle bones.

That's fantastic.

Absolutely playing that.

Hell yeah.

They also play games that we'd completely recognize Plindmen's Bluff they played.

So that's when you take one person in a group, you blindfold them or put a hood.

They seem to be putting a hood over their entire face, unless like a blindfold when it's depicted and you kind of encircle them and you run out and try to slap them and they try to grab you back you never played this

no

all right

forget you were raised in a british household americans still kept this around for a while that would piss me off

Another word for this, again, because they were using hoods is hoodman's blind.

Okay.

There's another one that we don't play today, but I feel like we should bring it back because it sounds really fun called Prison Base.

And so you have a group of people, you split them up into two opposing teams, and you give them each a goal.

Each team has like a goal that they're like they're trying to accomplish or a literal space to get to.

Like a space to get to.

Okay.

And they

you have one person from one team, one person from the other, and they both.

They're trying to get to that goal, but also try to tag the other person before they get to that goal.

That sounds awesome.

Yes, right?

That also sounds a lot.

Do you remember during the pandemic where there's a whole suite of videos that people were making about the things that they were doing with their cluster?

It was often like a lot of frat boys were doing this and it was just silly games.

And there was one group that were always doing like four on four

group games where they're trying to like wrestle each other across basically like a slip and slide covered in baby oil or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That sounds yes.

We all went during the pandemic, we all got medieval.

Honestly, we learned how to make proper fun.

Like, some of these things are just so much more fun than the things we actually do for downtime that we've forgotten to play.

Yeah.

No, we should bring that game back.

That sounds really fun.

And speaking of that, this is not just necessarily a kids' game.

We do have depictions of adults playing these games.

So this is sort of the thing, especially during the summer months when the days are long, you know, everyone's going outside and probably spending a couple hours of prison base with each other, which that sounds so wholesome and awesome.

Right?

Yeah.

There are also...

Wait, let's let's get to the best thing I found before I move to board games.

I like board games.

Okay, yeah, but you're going to like this better.

Okay.

Two words.

Water jousting.

Okay.

I'm immediately imagining water polo, but I'm assuming that's not it.

It's kind of like water polo, but it's awesome.

So you take a boat, right?

Narrow boat.

You have people who are rowing that boat.

You stick someone in the back of that boat and you give them a javelin or lance.

Yes.

And then you take another boat, have that one being rowed, and someone with a lance in the back of that.

I love this.

Yes.

And then you row towards each other, and the people with the lances try to pop each other up off of the boat and into the water.

Why is Red Bull doing the fluke tog and not this?

My question exactly.

That's so crazy.

This thing was so popular.

It was done every summer.

It was done at like every civil festival where there's any body of water.

And they even had like water jousting quintains.

So those are those like dummies that you practice jousting.

So that you like twist around after you hit them and all that.

Yeah.

So while the nobility was actually trying to kill each other with their like admittedly awesome sounding tournaments, everyone else was having a good old grand time just knocking each other into the water.

This almost feels like it's like subversive, like it's undercutting what is happening with the nobility.

Cause it feels, it feels like I get that farcical sense too.

Like it's like

it's it reminds me of like with rodeos where you have the rodeos and there's guys riding bulls and it's dangerous and scary, but you also have kids riding sheep, and everybody's cheering it on just as hard, and it's called mutton busting.

I love mutton busting.

Yeah, we strap your the five-year-old to the back of a sheep, and we'll see how far they can run on top of the sheep.

The whole thing feels like very subversive, and kind of like, I mean, let's be honest, what we're all cheering on is a little bit silly, so we're just gonna emphasize the silliness.

I do, when I read it too, I had this immediate sense of like, this feels like it could get critiquey in a fun way real fast.

And I'm sure people are doing it mostly because it was fun, but I'm sure that there must have been like a little bit of a side eye to the people who were dominating them basically while they were doing this.

But yeah, water jousting.

Let's bring it back.

I'd spend all summer doing that.

Absolutely.

In the winter months, they would do ice skating.

So you would do this by taking a long bone of an animal.

sort of polishing it up, cutting it to the right size, and then strapping it to your shoes, your normal shoes.

Did they sharpen it or?

No, it was more polished.

So it was a broader base.

Okay.

And they look more effective than you would think, having that described to you.

They're a little broader than what we use today.

So you're not going to go as fast or make the crazy tight turns or whatever.

But they are going to do what a skate does and you're going to be able to glide.

Depictions of this are pretty funny.

Fall, probably.

Yes, the pictures of this are pretty funny because you have both people gliding and going fast and being really graceful.

And you also, in the same scenes, have people like falling all over themselves and and dragging each other down and basically cracking their skulls open.

That's me, the rare times that I go out to somewhere like Lloyd Center and go ice skating.

The good stuff doesn't change.

That's all I'm getting from this.

Snowball fights, similarly depicted.

So when it snowed, obviously go out there and pummel your friends.

Awesome.

That has not changed.

On quieter days, when you're not dunking each other into the drink or falling on your head and on the ice.

Or putting a bag on your friend's head and trying to slap him.

I feel like you should play this game.

I do not want to play that game.

I bet Rowan would want to play that game.

Yes, I still do not want to play that game.

Board games were popular.

They had droughts, so that's checkers.

They called it droughts.

Drafts.

Droughts.

Drafts.

Drafts?

Drafts.

Okay.

Like a draft beer.

It's spelled D-R-A-U-G-H-T?

Drafts.

Drafts.

Well, I can see why I change it to checkers.

Anyway,

the British are really going to hate me for that one.

There's a board game that we no longer play called Tables.

It's some sort of chase game where you're chasing each other across the board,

a grid.

There is a game called Nine Man Morris, which is apparently a more strategic version of Tic-Tac-Toe.

So I'm not sure why we are playing the less strategic, less fun version of that game.

So how many squares?

Same number squares.

So how is it more strategic?

I'm not sure, but apparently it's more strategic.

There's more shapes or something that you're trying to get.

And we get the dumb one?

Yeah.

That sucks.

Right?

Yeah.

Don't know what that's about okay um

they continue to play a game that has its origins at least as far far back as the roman era which is called fox and geese this kind of feels a little like neftafel oh um the geese are trying to surround the fox and the fox is trying to get off the board and snatch goose So the geese have unionized.

I mean, have you met geese?

That is true.

Geese don't need an excuse.

They'll do that.

Those are mean animals.

We need to get a copy of this game.

Yes, yeah.

Let's actually, let's absolutely do that.

If we, if it's interesting enough, we can report back.

That one's really popular across class levels, and we do find like really fancy pieces, like fancy geese and fancy fox pieces from high nobility.

Cool.

The nobles loved board games, but they had a couple that were like kind of exclusive to them.

Backgammon was a little more popular amongst them.

They called it Trick Track back then.

But we do find like peasant boards.

So that's...

Everyone was playing it, but but I think the nobility liked it a little more.

And then chess seems to be pretty exclusively for the nobility.

I don't think there's any laws telling peasants not to play chess, but I assume they're just having more fun playing water jousting.

And so

and face slap.

Yeah, yeah.

Face slap.

Blind men's bluff.

Kind of like water jousting and ice skating.

You do have a bunch of ball games that start.

And so again, this is a in the afternoons.

People are going out and playing.

People would have played of all ages again.

So, this is a thing that kids would have been doing, but also the adults.

Okay.

Football is one.

Like, which football?

European, like, football when you're in Europe or football when you're in America?

I'm going to make people sad, and it's more like the Americans.

Really?

Yes.

And it is called football at this point.

So, one thing that I found interesting was like American, current American football, it's a game that's most popular in the fall, partly because the ball is made out of bladders.

So, that was the butchering season and so you'd grab the animal's bladders sort of stuff them they would blow them up with air let them dry out

and then often they were filled with dry peas or sometimes stuffed with like i would have imagined hay fluff yeah peas peas i think there might have been something to the rattling and stuff uh and it gave some weight interesting okay so you're not gonna have a like uh any kind of like punting element to it then like it's that heavy unfortunately with these these ball games we have depictions so we can see the equipment we can kind of see vaguely what the goal was but we don't know like really firm what the rules are we

so do you even know about passing like can you go downfield or like it's are we looking at american football or rugby or is it just fucking melee and then it's aussie rules football i think this looks like aussie rules football all right and there's a bunch more in there it's not just face slap and water jousting but if you'd like to hear more you can sign up for membership over at the BritishHistory Podcast.com.

Thanks for listening.