For those who are intrigued by the historical side, I highly recommend this documentary: What Was It Like To Live In 17th Century Britain? | Tales From The Green Valley | Retold - YouTube in which a team of historians and archaeologists attempt to recreate daily life on a 17th century farm on the Welsh borders. Almost 6 hours long and yet it flies by! (Be aware there is period accurate butchering and other general farm-related grossness)
Highlights:
-- high-class cabbages grown in arsenic! This may explain a lot about the British upper classes.
-- the fad for food shaped like other food!
-- I am very grateful we've moved past cough remedies such as strips of linen smeared with honey tied around the chest.
-- the fishing method of just tossing the pole into the lake and letting the fish tire itself out.
-- a statute that you had to wear a knit cap! It was a legal mandate.
-- they quote a "Puritan killjoy" who complained of how the young people would go into the forest to collect flowers for May Day, and a "third of the virgin girls" would not return from the forest in the same condition as they went in. To be honest, if the 17th century men were as attractive as the shirtless archaeologists chasing their sheep in the field, I can readily believe this one.
If you, like myself, have colonial American ancestry, it's quite humbling to watch this show and catch glimpses of the world our ancestors left behind. If they came from Britain of this period, everything you see here would have been quite normal for them (although they might have been irked by the mistakes made by the historians who didn't grow up on farms), and even if they came from elsewhere in Europe at least some of it would have been applicable to them as well.
