medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
concealed shoes, as they are called by the folks who study them are an old
practice, and were still buried in the 19th cent. in the US. my house is
from the 1820s and i have found 2 of them in areas near one of my chimneys.
you can find out more about them on the web site for the Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities, but they are more wide spread than
New England (i live in New York.) the museum of London also has on display
an collection of "good luck charms" taken out of a 16th cent. London house.
from personal experience i can tell you that these aren't shoes forgotten
when drying them out, in both cases i found only 1 shoe and neither were in
locations that would have facilitated drying. the interesting thing is that
my house was "re muddled" in the early 1990s by a local real estate agent
who worked extensively in the cupboard where one of the shoes was. it was
only concealed by a corner, not blocked up. he would have found it. he took
much of the old and cool stuff out of my house, but left the shoe--he seems
to have known that it would have created 'bad ju-ju.' but my point, lest i
get too far from the middle ages is that this is a long-lasting practice,
and one that some still seem to know about and even observe.
as for bath tub Maries that seems like a similar practice in another way.
many of the shoes found in other houses were children's shoes, presumably
available because children had out grown them. so whatever charm or magic
they worked would not actually cost extra money. bathtubs are difficult to
dispose of--at least they were until the latest house renovation
craze--and Victorian ones could be used for a different purpose when the
bathroom was remodeled. they look like a niche, so one wouldn't necessarily
need much formal education to make a visual link between what one saw in
church and what one used of a saturday night to bathe in. interesting how
frugality and piety/superstition blend nicely together.
kit french
At 07:33 AM 6/26/2004 +0100, you wrote:
>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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>
>___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo!
>Messenger - sooooo many all-new ways to express yourself
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