Barony of Dreiburgen - Article - Out of The Myths of Time: Wheat for the Market, Barley and Rye for the Table

Barony of Dreiburgen

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Gallavally
Steinsee
Mons Draconis
Sancti Geronimi

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Out of The Myths of Time
Wheat for the Market, Barley and Rye for the Table

by Lord Darius "Reap what you've sown" von Tannenburg

With the end of summer, and the fall in full swing, many people of the modern era set about getting their homes ready for winter. In some parts of the country people are removing the screens from their houses and replacing them with storm windows, an annual chore that brings fond memories of my youth to mind....NOT! Those things were heavy and for some reason each window in our house was a slightly different size than all the others. I quickly reasoned that the process might be less of a drudge if I numbered them all. This might have worked if only I could have remembered from year to year if the count went clockwise or counter clockwise. By the time I got all the kinks worked out of the system, I was eighteen and off to the Marine Corps. OORAH!

But what of our forebears? What sort of things did they do to prepare for the onslaught of winter? Repairs to one's dwelling and other tasks would have been tended to. No doubt they dried fish or eels, chose which animals to keep alive and which ones could not be spared grain beyond a certain point. These animals then supplied much needed and often lacking protein in the peasants' diet. Yes, with winter snows covering the forests and fields, the contents of the root cellar had to last until spring. Even then people were creative with devising ways of making their meager stores stretch just a little farther. Smoked and salted meats might be hung from the rafters, away from rats and mice.

Wheat was a big cash crop in the middle ages. It made a finer flour and a better tasting bread. The poorer folk made their bread from barley and rye "maslin," which produced a dark, coarse loaf. It was dense and heavy and everyone ate lots of it. Another way fiscally challenged members of society could extend their resources was "pottage." Pottage was sometimes preferred over bread as more cost effective, since nothing was lost in the milling process and the miller did not have to be paid. Barley used for pottage was allowed to sprout, then boiled in a pot (hence, pottage). Water could be siphoned off and sweetened with honey, and drunk as barley water, or allowed to ferment and become barley beer. Any scrap of vegetable or meat that could be of use was thrown in the pot. Whether thick and hearty, or bland and thin, pottage was the mainstay for many people. The church also helped, intentionally or not, with its custom of fasting before certain holidays.

For all those wonderful images of shining knights, castles and beautiful ladies, tournaments and heroic tales of daring-do, the actual Middle Ages had a darker side as well. The constant threat of hunger and cold were the easy things to deal with. A more sinister and more difficult problem came to the people from within their own minds. In northern Europe, the long cold kept many indoors where there was little to do. With clean drinking water scarce, a lot of ale and beer served to wash down the meals. You now have intoxication working hand in hand with cabin fever. But, wait, it gets better. Remember all that barley and rye people kept using for bread? Ever heard of "ergot?" It's a fungus which produces toxic alkaloids known to cause serious poisoning (ergotism or "St. Anthony's Fire"). This fungus (ergot) also produced psychotropic compounds that were not harmed by the baking process. Also the fungus closely resembled a grain of rye. So, here you have a group of drunken, illiterate and superstitious peasants, possibly suffering from cabin fever with the wolf literally at the door, and they were busy stuffing themselves with bread that may cause hallucinations. Quite a party, huh? I heard a researcher talk once about a connection between wet rainy spring weather and a jump in the number of reported sightings of werewolves, ghosts, witches and whatever else passed for the local boogie-man.

Thankfully, modern methods screen out such fungi from our food. But for those in the actual Middle Ages, fall and winter held hidden challenges and terrors whose source was not always easy to see. Think on this, as you put away extra canned goods and spare flashlight batteries, and get ready for your journey through the long, cold dark.

Darius von Tannenberg has granted permission for all of his articles that were previously on the Dreiburgen web site to continue to appear on the site, 9 Oct 2006.

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