[MR] About that "They die Young" myth

[EoganOg at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/11/01 6:51:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
RowanwaldCentral at msn.com writes:


> I read an interesting list of ages at death of some well-known medieval
> persons, and thought you'd be interested. We all know that the life
> expectancy was considerably lower than in modern times, but I, for one, need
> a reminder that it didn't mean it was lead to the perception of as "being
> old" at 45 (except in the minds of teenagers and children, of course! )
> 

In a private conversation I had with the late Dr. D. Gordon Teal of Teallach, 
Baron of Huntly (mundane Baron), who was working on his PhD thesis on a small 
medieval English town (forgive me if I can't forget which one), we discussed 
this very topic.  A large part of his research was examining the vellum 
sheets where the death records were kept.  These records could tell him a lot 
about the people in the village, household possessions, general health, etc.  

He talked about the myth that people in the Middle Ages lived to 35 or 45 
then died.  What he found were lots of people dying in infancy, or before the 
age of 5.  But if you made it into your teen years, most people, he said, 
lived into their 70s, just like today.  It was just the lage number of people 
who did not make it to their teen years that caused the "average" lifespan to 
be 35 or so.  Remember, it is just an average.  But to think of an Middle 
Ages where no one lived past their 40s would be an incorrect image.

BTW, he said that these death records for the village usually fit on one 
peice of vellum per year, with maybe 10 to 20 deaths.  But when he came to 
one year in the 14th century, andsaw an entire sheet filled with names, then 
picked it up and found that it was sewn to another sheet, and another, and 
yet another, etc., in accordian fashion, he realized this was the year the 
Black Death hit that village.  He read out all of the hundreds of names, and 
said he literally wept for all of those people.  Even though he had studied 
the plague, it had never hit him like that before.

Aye,
Eogan

Tighearn Eoghan Og mac Labhrainn, OPE, CP
Sacred Stone Pursuivant
Web Master et A&S Minister, Hawkwood
sennechie na hAlba agus Atlantia
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