500-Year-Old Manners Book Advises Kids To 'Pyke Notte Thy Nostrellys'
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Take heart, all ye parents weary of reminding your kids not to pick their noses and burp loudly. Fifteenth-century moms and dads faced the same battles to keep their tykes well-mannered.
Just take a look at the 500-year-old Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke, which taught proper etiquette to children of families aspiring to life among English royals or nobles. It's been digitized for the first time by a new British Library site.
The Little Children's Little Book manuscript, from around 1480, is written in Middle English, so there are lots of thines, thous and thys. But screens, cars and vaccines aside, kids will be kids. They dug out their boogers then and they dig out their boogers now.
"Pyke notte thyne errys nothyr thy nostrellys," reads one rule. (Don't pick your ears or nose.) "Spette not ovyr thy tabylle," reads another. (Don't spit over your table.) "Bulle not as a bene were in thi throote." (Don't burp as if you had a bean in your throat.)
This kind of a behavioral guide, known as a courtesy book, was common in parts of Europe between the 13th and 18th centuries. The author of The Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke links manners not only to social rank but to religion, saying courtesy comes straight from heaven.
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