medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
In
> Ralph Merrifield's
> The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, he has a whole chapter on the
> practice of
> enclosing old shoes, dead chickens and other odd things in cavities
> in the chimneys
> of English houses of the apparent age of your presbytery. Once
> again, we don't
> know exactly why, but you might just have a look!
I have, I suspect, a number of dead pigeons in the cavity of my
chimney, but I don't think there would be any any religious motive for
their being there! One might put meat in the cavity of a chimney for
the obvious purpose of smoking it. I don't know if people tried to
preserve chickens in this way, before the arrival of fridges. As to
shoes, could someone have been trying to dry them out after getting
them soaking wet?
Bill.
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