RULE OF THUMB
How would you care to be beaten with a stick as thick as a thumb?
No doubt you'd end up black and blue, very sore and numb!
Well, in the fourteen hundreds, a husband had the right
To beat his wife in this very way; the law said that he might.
However, the stick must be 'slender', bigger than a thumb was banned,
Although he could beat her as hard as he liked, just with his open hand!
And the women had nowhere to run to and so they had to stay!
That's how arose 'The Rule of Thumb' we hear about every day!
The Good Old Days? I think not! For us, those days have gone,
But in some parts of this sad old world something similar still goes on!
*
Another look back, but not so far, here:
4 comments:
Of course those kind of things keep happening, and a lot more than we thing they do. The thing is that with violence inside the family people are embarased to ask for help and therefore make it public for others that they have that problem, so they choose to hide it, and try to appear as normal as they can. That violence is no more frequent in hier than in lower classes, among cult and illiterate people, the problem is not related to that kind of factors.
The important think is to teach the suffers that there is nothing embarrasing about showing what is happening to them, indeed that it is very brave.
I learned something today! And you're so right about some parts of this sad old world.
Brilliant play of words, excellent rhyming pattern! It reminds me of the old book of poems and limericks by one poet(whose name I forgot).But the depth of the emotion and the meaning stayed intact and hit home despite your seemingly playful use of words.
God... the 'thumb rule' origin is from this, is it? Shocking.
wifefolks are nice people, surprising why the husbands in those days wanted to beat them ?
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