Trivia Patchwork Trivia Quiz

Answer: Potted plants

Midsummer men are plants (also called Live-long) of the Sedum family. In Medieval England, on midsummer eve, a young woman would plant Live-long as a means of finding out whether her young man was faithful to her. She would hang the potted plant in the house and keep an eye on the leaves. If the leaves bent to the right, it indicated her sweetheart's fidelity.

However, if the leaves bent to the left, he was just stringing her along. It's a pretty chancy way of choosing a husband, in my opinion.

Answer: A proposal of marriage

In the Middle Ages, a young man would give his intended bride a pair of gloves as a way of declaring his honourable intentions. I guess engagement rings came along later. In the days of chivalry, a knight would wear a lady's glove on his helmet to indicate that he was her champion. Gloves had a variety of uses in Medieval England - a folded glove was offered as a pledge to meet a commitment (either financial or legal), clergy wore gloves to show that their hands were clean and therefore they couldn't be bribed, Bishops were given new gloves when they were consecrated, and judges were not allowed to wear gloves while on the bench, presumably as a sign that they were not covering up anything or showing favouritism. If a judge was presented with a pair of gloves, it was a subtle way of relieving him of his duties.

However, if the sheriff of a county presented the travelling judge with a pair of white gloves as he went into court it meant that there were no cases to be tried. Who would have thought that gloves could send so many signals?

Answer: She soaked it in dew

In a book of household hints compiled by my great-great-great-great-great grandmother Myfanwy (dated 1768), she wrote that one should take the newly washed bed linen and spread it out on the grass at dawn so that the morning dew would 'bring it to fairness'. From that same book, I learned that my antecedents did the laundry about twice a year (and it took up to a week to do it). I assume that the dew thing would have to do with the fact that dew falls as the sun rises, and the sun is a relatively good bleaching agent.

It would have to be, to bleach linen that had been in use for six months.

Answer: A castrated cat

When Chaucer (at least, some scholars presume it was Chaucer) translated 'Le Romaunt de la Rose' from French into English in the 14th century, he translated the line 'Thibert le cas' as 'Gibbe, our cat'. That suggests to me that Geoffrey was in dire need of a French/English dictionary.

In Medieval France, le cas could mean 'the icon'. It is unfortunate that 'Thibert/Tybalt the icon' in France became 'Gibbe our cat' in England, because a gib cat is a cat which has been castrated, while a tom cat is a cat which retains all its faculties.

Answer: A society of equals

Pantisocracy is a word coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge for a Utopian settlement he planned to establish with his fellow poets Robert Southey and Robert Lovell on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. The plan was that they would engage in necessary toil - farm chores, cutting firewood, hunting, etc. - for two to three hours a day, and then spend the rest of their time in enlarging their knowledge and developing their minds. Nothing came of the idea, partly because the group didn't have the necessary funds to buy the land or even to pay their fares over to Pennsylvania, and partly because of ideological differences between the partners. I've no doubt that their wives, knowing that a woman's work is never done - particularly on the frontier - raised some serious objections to the silly scheme, too.

When Coleridge came up with the idea, he must have been on the same stuff that influenced his very strange poetry.

Answer: False

The Pennsylvania Dutch should properly be called the Pennsylvania Deutsch, since they are the descendants of the first German colonists who immigrated to Pennsylvania, starting in 1683. The first Germans to arrive were encouraged to settle in Pennsylvania by William Penn, the founder of the colony. Those early German settlers were mostly Mennonites, and they were followed by the Amish in the early eighteenth century.

The Amish still speak the form of Deutsch (German) spoken by their ancestors.

Answer: An English sailor's expression

The term is an English nautical expression and describes those days on which the sailors received no meat in their rations. The term was also used in Australia in the late eighteenth century, and on Australian out-stations Banyan Days occurred when the meat rations had run out.

As to why they're called Banyan Days - the term stems from the name of a strict Hindu caste called Banyans whose members engaged in trade and moneylending. They were noted for their style of dress and their custom of abstaining from meat in any form.

Answer: January 7

In pre-Industrial Revolution England, the distaff - the staff that was used to draw the thread for spinning - was the symbol of woman's work (it's where we get the term 'Distaff Side of the family', meaning maternal descent, and also the word 'spinster' for an unmarried woman). Twelfth Night (January 6) brought to an end the feasting and jollification that had marked the Twelve Days of Christmas, and it was back to work on January 7 - hence, St. Distaff's Day.

Another common term for January 7 was Plough Monday (even if it didn't fall on a Monday), signifying that the men got back to work on that day, too. From 1649 to 1660, any celebration of Christmas - and especially the Twelve Days - was banned by Cromwell, who frowned on anything that smacked of pleasure, it seems.

He also banned Maypole dancing and other such carryings-on (he must have been a barrel of laughs.) NB: Don't bother looking up St. Distaff - there is no such saint.

Answer: Go fishing

A gudgeon is a small fish used as bait. Hence, it came to be a synonym for a snare, a lie, or deception of any kind. Over time, one who was taken in by such snares, lies, or deceptions came to be known as a gudgeon. Readers of Georgette Heyer's novels set in Regency England will recognize the term in this latter meaning, I'm sure.

Answer: A spoilt child

In Middle English, the word is cokeney, and it was used to described the small malformed eggs that are sometimes laid by very young hens. Along the way, it was used to describe a spoilt child or a foolish person, and later it was a derisive term used by country folk to describe townspeople, who were generally held to be ignorant of rural life, customs and habits.

The use of the word to describe one born within the sound of the bells from the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow (Bow Bells) dates from the seventeenth century.

In 'King Lear', Act II, scene iv, Shakespeare uses the word to mean a squeamish woman: "Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put them i' the paste alive."