FREE ESSAY ON LIFE OF A PEASANT

LIFE OF A PEASANT

1
When you think of the Middle Ages you think of Kings
and castles, knights in shining armor saving the princess,
and savage warfare to coincide with horrible diseases and
plagues taking lives. For the most part that was true, but
we are forgetting about the majority of the population,
otherwise known as "the commons". These people can easily be
compared to you and I living in these times. The peasants
were not a part of the noble class or associated with the
clergy, but just lived plain and simple lives and tried to
get by with what they had. In those times they did not have
a lot. Since all of us would be considered peasants in those
times, I am going to take us back to that era and compare
the life of a peasant to our lives now. From the day they
are born all the way to their death. I will go over the
different types of commoners, go over how they grew up, what
they ate, and even what they did for fun back in those days. 
Childbirth in Medieval times were much of the same as
they are now. I say this in the biological way only of
course. Birth was not in the hands of a physician, but
entirely up to a midwife. The only reason there would be a
doctor there is if there was a pathological complication.
The setting for childbirth was different as well. All of the
childbirth's would take place at the home, as compared to
2hospitals in today's times. Hospitals were predominantly
used for long-term care for the poor. Another huge
difference in childbirth was the risk to the mother. The
closest estimate of childbirth deaths was about 14 deaths
for every 1,000 childbirth's. This is very high in modern
standards. In 1988, Nigeria was reported to have a rate of 8
deaths in every 1,000 births, which was unusually high even
for a Third World country.(Singman,McLean p40)
The first formal event that an infant had to go through
was the ceremony of baptism. This is true for Christians in
today's times as well. This was the single most important of
the rituals administered by the Church. Without baptism the
child could not enter into heaven. In those times Baptism
was so important that everyone was encouraged to learn the
basic words of the ritual. In Middle English the words were,
"I crystene thee in the nome of the Fader, and the Son and
the Holy Gost. Amen. The Christening would usually take
place a week within the birth of the child. It all depended
on how healthy the child was. In today's times, everyone is
invited to the Baptismal celebration of their newborn. Back
then the godparents were summoned and the rest of the family
would proceed to the church without the mother being
present. The reason for that was because it was custom for
her not to enter the church prior to her own ceremony of 
"purification", which is supposed to cleanse her from the
3spiritual stain of childbirth. Today we are given two
godparents. They were given two godparents of the same sex
and one of the opposite. The godparent's role in the child's
life was a very important one. They were to play the role as
the religious instructors towards the child. (Singman,McLean
p41)
For the most part Baptism marked the child as part of
the church as well as society. Church and society were
considered to be equal. After this ceremony the child would
receive the most important symbol of its public identity: a
name. Just like today people had a wide variety of names to
choose from. Most of the names, however, were ones of saints
or those that had a French origin. The girls had very few
saints names to choose from so they choose anything
excluding the names of Mary or Martha.
Just like in any society during any period, the shape
of an infants life depended on its social background. The
mothers had no option of weather to get baby formula so all
medieval mothers breast fed for the first two or three
years. There was an interesting technique that was practiced
in medieval times. It was called "swaddling". This was done
because of the tenderness of the limbs, the child may easily
and quickly twist and bend and take abnormal shapes. To
prevent this the child's limbs would be bound with strips of
cloth and other suitable bonds. This also kept the infant
4warm as well as out of trouble. During the first few years
of life the child was almost always under female
care.(Singman,Mclean 43)
Childhood in the Middle Ages was a time of great
danger, due to the ever present risk of illness or disease.
It definitely was not like today when you have all these
vaccinations you can give to a child to prevent disease and
the cleanliness for today's standards. Infants are at a much
lower risk to develop illnesses, at least opposed to those
times. Another issue in infants was accidental death. These
occurred with more of a risk to poorer families because
household duties would leave the infant unattended on many
occasions. Just like today when you leave an infant left
alone dangerous things can occur. some statistics that I
have to throw at you are in the latter half of the
fourteenth century, nearly 300 of 1,000 children died in
their first year of life. This compared to a Third World
countries rate of 125 in 1,000. (exceptionally high in
today's standards). These figures could have been worse or
better when you put in the factor of the Black Plague. 
Early childhood consisted of a combination of learning
and play. This was no different then today. Kids today go to
Kindergarten to learn, but they also receive recess and most
of the learning activities are based around having fun so
they get the idea that learning is fun. The Middle Ages
provided only one form of education, and that was their
5religious instructions. This was the primary responsibility
of the godparents to teach the child by the age of five the
basic elements of Christian belief. Just like today, the
children would have to learn good manners such as, not to
pick their nose, scratch or rub themselves, or swear. The
most important thing that a child learned was its mother's
language. It was also important for the child to know the
significance of keeping their hands and faces clean and to
cut their nails. In the commoners class, a child of four or
five might be put to do some small household chores such as
acquiring water or watching a younger sibling. Sure they
might have done some work, but the majority of a child's
life was devoted to play and exploration of the world around
him or her. 
The medieval idea of childhood development says that
infancy ends at the age of seven. Now the child can be more
integrated into society. A child, by the age of seven has
learned the basic elements of religious belief and thus
receives the sacrament of Confirmation. This ceremony is
administered by the bishop to mark the child's full entry
into the Christian community. In today's times kids do not
receive Confirmation until around the age of twelve or
thirteen. My theory of why they rushed this sacrament upon
the kid's is because of the shortened life expectancy of the
people in that era. As the kids grew older they would start
6to get their place in society and begin to practice certain
traits that their parents would teach them. Girls would
learn different tasks then the boys. Girls of commoner
status would have to learn such chores as cooking, spinning,
sewing, laundry, healing, and other, needful domestic
skills. The sons of commoners would be set off to learn how
to fish, herd, and care for larger livestock. Over the years
they would continue practicing their line of work and one
day would grow up to do that specialty for the rest of their
lives.
During the adolescence years the children are now
becoming integrated in the world of adults. At the tender
age of fourteen a child was subject to a national poll tax
that was initiated in the late fourteenth century. At
fourteen nowadays, the best you can get a child to do is to
clean his room every now and then. I could not imagine
having to pay a tax at that age. A peasant girl would be
doing exactly what her mother was doing. She would be
performing things such as, carding wool, spinning thread,
cooking, cleaning the home, tending the garden and dairy,
and looking after the younger children. That meant that
there was little time for "Barbies" or experimenting with
make-up. The boys had to grow into their jobs because their
bodies were not ready to do the heavy field work. When they
7did mature, however, they did exactly what their elders did
in the fields. 
For the most part of a peasants teen life they remained 
subordinate to the economy of adults. Most economic classes
were able to go from subordinate to independent at the age
of twenty one, which was the legal age of inheritance.
Peasants remained semi-dependent until he inherited a
holding, until which he continued to work for his family's
holding. For laborers or servants, coming of age would not
be very beneficial for the at all. They would probably be
forced to semi-dependent for the rest of their lives. Women
on the other hand were treated as though they were
adolescence until they were married. 
The most important step to independence for both the
man and the woman was marriage. Marriage fell under the
jurisdiction of the church. Marriage was delayed until the
proposed couple had a place to live beforehand. This is a
lot like today, because no mother or father wants to live
with their newly married daughter or son. This a way to get
the kids out of the house. This simply meant that most
peasants would not get to marry until later in life. Men
usually would not marry until their late twenties. Women
would get married usually in their late teens. Marriage in
the Middle Ages was fairly an involved process. It begins
with an arrangement between the two families involved. They
8would discuss what property was being settled on the
prospective spouses. The next step was called a "betrothal",
where for three successive Sundays, the marriage had to be
publicly announced in church. This was done to see if anyone
who saw that the marriage should not go on they should say
so. This is like today when the priest says "if anyone knows
why these two should not be joined in marriage, speak now or
forever hold your peace". Someone only says something in the
movies though. The wedding itself is held at the door of the
church. The man gives his wife a ring as part of the
ceremony, which is followed by a feast. No difference then
today's weddings. Sure the ceremony takes place in the
church, but there is a ring involved and we have a reception
which is the equivalent to the large feast of a medieval
wedding. Another way that people got married in the Middle
Ages was by having sex. It was considered to be a legal
marriage if a promised marriage was followed by sex. The
difference between the Middle Ages and modern times is that
back then marriage was pretty much a permanent thing. Once
you chose your partner there were not too many choices of
getting a divorce. They had divorces, but only if the either
partner had been tricked into the marriage or if the man was
found to be sexually impotent. It is not like today when
everyone gets at least one divorce in their life time for
the most senseless reasons too.(Singman,McLean p53-54)
9 Now that we are all grown up and have a wife to share
our life as a simple peasant with, let us take a look at the
lovely home in which we get to live in. The peasant home had
very few rooms, usually one to three rooms. In some cases
the structure not only held the family, but also held the
livestock as well. The frame of the house was made of
timber, and the walls were commonly filled with wattle and
daub. Wattling was long stakes fixed upright between lateral
beams, with flexible sticks woven densely between them. The
daub was a clay or loam mixed with straw or some similar
fiber for strength. This reminds me much of a beavers damn
the way the walls are put together with the sticks. The roof
was put together with straw or reeds. The floors were
usually packed dirt. The houses were only one story. In the
back there might also be additional buildings for animal
storage. There usually was also a garden for herbs,
vegetables, and any other household plants. The peasants
house was not a very comfortable place to live. I think they
would love to trade places with us and be a peasant in these
times where everyone has a home and is comfortable with all
the luxuries it provides. Back then they were lucky to have
a place to cook with in their homes. 
As with every other aspect of medieval life, a person's
social and economic status determined the food they ate. It
turned out that the diet of a peasant was much better than
10that of the aristocracy. The only reason was because the
peasant's could not afford to indulge themselves in the
finer foods of red meats, sugar, and fat. The commoners had
to eat more fiber and vegetables. Bread was the staple food
for all people as it is for everyone today. Beans and bacon
was the well-known food of the peasant. A prosperous peasant
might be able to eat 2-3 pounds of bread, 8 ounces of meat
or fish, and 2-3 pints of ale per day. The poorer peasants
drank water instead of ale and boiled their grains into
puddings or gruel rather than bread. We are commoners and we
all have food to eat in healthy portions, so we should be
thankful for what we have and pray for those who do not have
anything. They would be the poorer peasants, who just have
enough to get by. 
Even though peasants worked almost all the time, they
did have time to get away from their drudgery for
recreational activities. They had approximately eight weeks
a year for leisure time because of Sundays and holy days.
What they did with that time was entirely up to them and
varied from family to family. There was an old saying about
how the peasants looked upon leisure time. It is said that
the peasant lived in memory of the last festival and in
anticipation of the next. Through their games and
festivities, they expressed their values and their sense of
identity. The games they played express how they saw the
11world. It turned out that many of the games they did play
were the same types of games the nobility played only with
less fancy equipment or less space. I can compare this to a
major league baseball team who gets to play in a large
stadium with all the best equipment that the world has to
offer. They of are representing the nobility class. Now,
just across the street in an alley, there is a group of
youngsters who also want to play baseball. They do not have
the luxury of all that fancy equipment and space, so they
make the best of what they are given. They find a stick in
the dumpster and find a tennis ball nearby and play in that
confined alley with just as much enthusiasm and joy as the
professional team.(nobility class). Recreation time really
did not vary from class to class. Even boys and girls took
part in all the same activities. As the girls turned into
women, they did not participate in the physical games, but
did attend them as spectators. Women were very active in
other games such as table games and dancing. A favorite
pastime among the commoners was wrestling and chicken
fighting. These activities are the same as today. We do
these activities in high schools, colleges, and chicken
fight in swimming pools. Other activities that we enjoy
today and the medieval people did include foot races,
skating in the winter with skates made out of bone, and
exhibitions of strength by throwing heavy stones. There many
12forms of ball games that can be comparable to today's
forms of baseball, football, soccer, or field hockey. Most
of the games played by the commoners were discouraged
because they encouraged rough play and gambling. The only
activity that was encouraged was archery. This was because
it would help in military purposes. The kids kept themselves
busy with games that could be equivalent to today's "Marco
Polo" called Hoodmans blind. This is were one child is
blindfolded with his hood and the other kids go around
hitting him with their sleeves or even sticks and he has to
guess who made the last hit. There were also less physical
games such as chess or playing dice. These are both things
we do today. We play chess and we also shoot craps at
casinos, so everywhere we go we bring a piece of history
with us. They also played the simple "heads and tails" game
with a coin. There is evidence that the first form of cards
were from the Italian deck of swords, coins, cups, and
batons. I've played Italian cards and it is fun once you
learn the point system and all the rules of the game.
Everything back then besides the physical activities and
chess involved some sort of betting. The people would gamble
on all the animal fights, dice games, card games, most all
table games.(Reeves 74-80)
These games that involved more risk and danger for a
humans life, might suggest that the value of life was much
13lower, but it might also contribute to the importance of
the game. The games gave meaning to the person who was
playing the game.
Being a peasant in the Middle Ages really meant that
you did not belong to yourself. In reality everything you
owned belonged to the lord of the manor. The peasants were
required to work for their lord and in return for the work
the peasant got to farm his own land. All in all to be a
peasant could be a little step above slavery. At least they
were considered to be humans. I still would not want to be a
commoner in the Middle Ages because of all the threats of
disease and warfare and death around every corner. That does
not sound like fun. We say that we have it rough with
technology moving to fast. I would rather have all this
technology then have none whatsoever. The only technology
they had was all the new farming equipment and methods that
the peasants came up with. Sure they might have had fresh
air to breath back then and the world was probably the most
beautiful thing without us ruining it like we have in modern
times, but again I have to say that I would not want to be a
peasant for the simple fact that you have to work constantly
without a choice of what you want to do or when you want to
do it. Oh Yeah, and if you do not like what the lord says
then he can simply have you killed. I'll take my chances
here.