… is from page 206 of Frances and Joesph Gies’s 1990 book Life in a Medieval Village:
Village life for men and women alike was busy, strenuous, unrelenting, much of it lived outdoors, with an element of danger that especially threatened children. Diet was poor, dress simple, housing primitive, sanitary arrangements derisory.
Before modern industrial capitalism, life for ordinary men and women and children – to use the technical term – sucked, everywhere and always.
