well there is the problem of parasites thoThe optimal nourishment one can furnish to felines and canines mirrors that of mankind: exclusively, raw carnage.
Important info on cats:
This mirthful observance recalls a time when spinning was the occupation of almost all women who had not anything else to do, or during the intervals of other and more serious work�a cheering resource to the solitary female in all ranks of life, an enlivenment to every fireside scene. To spin�how essentially was the idea at one time associated with the female sex! even to that extent, that in England spinster was a recognized legal term for an unmarried woman�the spear side and the distaff side were legal terms to distinguish the inheritance of male from that of female children�and the distaff became a synonym for woman herself: thus, the French proverb was:St. Distaff's Day; Or, the Morrow after Twelfth-day
Partly work and partly play
You must on St. Distaffs Day:
From the plough soon free your team;
Then cane home and fother them:
If the maids a-spinning go,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the maids bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff' all the right:
Then bid Christmas sport good night,
And next morrow every one
To his own vocation.'
Now, through the change wrought by the organized industries of Manchester and Glasgow, the princess of the fairy tale who was destined to die by a spindle piercing her hand, might wander from the Land's End to John O' Groat's House, and never encounter an article of the kind, unless in an archaeological museum.'The crown of France never falls to the distaff.'
It was admitted in those old days that a woman could not quite make a livelihood by spinning; but, says Anthony Fitzherbert, in his Boke of husbandrie 'it stoppeth a gap,' it saveth a woman from being idle, and the product was needful. No rank was above the use of the spindle. Homer's princesses only had them gilt. The lady carried her distaff in her gemmed girdle, and her spindle in her hand, when she went to spend half a day with a neighbouring friend. The farmer's wife had her maids about her in the evening, all spinning. So lately as Burns's time, when lads and lasses came together to spend an evening in social glee, each of the latter brought her spinning apparatus, or rock, and the assemblage was called a rocking:'Deceit, weeping, spinning, God hath given
To women kindly, while they may live.'
It was doubtless the same with Horace's uxor Sabina persuta solibus, as with Burns's bonnie Jean.'On Fasten's eve we had a rocking.'
'About the 20th year of Henry VIII, Anthony Bonvise, an Italian, came to this land, and taught English people to spin with a distaff, at which time began the making of Devonshire kersies and Coxall clothes.' Again, Aubrey, in his Natural History of Wiltshire, says: 'The art of spinning is so much improved within these last forty years, that one pound of wool makes twice as much cloath (as to extent) as it did before the Civill Warres.'
Spinning with the Distaff |
The change from the distaff and spindle to the spinning-wheel appears to have been almost coincident with an alteration in, or modification of, our legal phraseology, and to have abrogated the use of the word spinster when applied to single women of a certain rank. Coke says:'In the old time they used to spin with rocks; in Staffordshire, they use them still.'
Blount, in his Law Dictionary, says of spinster:'Generosus and Generosa are good additions: and, if a gentlewoman be named spinster in any original writ, etc., appeale, or indictmente, she may abate and quash the same; for she hath as good right to that addition as Baronesse, Viscountesse, Marchionesse. or Dutchesse have to theirs.'
In his Glossographia, he says of spinster:'It is the addition usually given to all unmarried women, from the Viscount's daughter downward.'
'I am unable' (says Mr. Akerman) 'to trace these distinctions to their source, but they are too remarkable, as indicating a great change of feeling among the upper classes in the sixteenth century, to be passed unnoticed. May we suppose that, among other causes, the art of printing had contributed to bring about this change, affording employment to women of condition, who now devoted themselves to reading instead of applying themselves to the primitive occupation of their grandmothers; and that the wheel and the distaff' being left to humbler hands, the time honoured name of spinster was at length considered too homely for a maiden above the common rank.'It is a term or addition in our law dialect, given in evidence and writings to a femme sole, as it were calling her spinner: and this is the only addition for all unmarried women, from the Viscount's daughter downward.'
SERMON TO THE JEWS'The art of spinning, in one of its simplest and most primitive forms, is yet pursued in Italy, where the country-women of Cilia still turn the spindle, unrestrained by that ancient rural law which forbade its use without doors. The distaff has outlived the consular fasces, and survived the conquests of the Goth and the Hun. But rustic hands alone now sway the sceptre of Tanaquil., and all but the peasant disdain a practice which ones beguiled the leisure of high-born dames.'
CATTLE IN JANUARY'They are constrained to sit till the hour is done, but it is with so much malice in their countenances, spitting, humming, coughing, and motion, that it is almost impossible they should hear a word from the preacher. A conversion is very rare.'
He urges the gathering up of dung, the mending of hedges, and the storing of fuel, as employments for this mouth. The scarcity in those days of fodder, especially when frost lasted long, he reveals to us by his direction that all trees should be pruned of their superfluous boughs, that the cattle might browse upon them. The myrtle and ivy were the wretched fare he pointed to for the sheep. The homely verses of this old poet give us a lively idea of the difficulties of carrying cattle over the winter, before the days of field turnips, and of the miserable expedients which were had recourse to, in order to save the poor creatures from absolute starvation:'Who both by his calf and his lamb will be known,
May well kill a neat and a sheep of his own;
And he that can rear up a pig in his house,
hath cheaper his bacon and sweeter his souse.'
'From Christmas till May be well entered in,
Some cattle wax faint, and look poorly and thin;
And chiefly when prime grass at first doth appear,
Then most is the danger of all the whole year.
Take verjuice and heat it, a pint for a cow,
Bay salt, a handful, to rub tongue ye wot how:
That done with the salt, let her drink off the rest;
This many times raiseth the feeble up beast.'