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So there it is. A day in the life of a medieval European peasant. The itching wool. The rotten teeth. The boiling water and cold fires. The pottage and the plague. The bells and the whip and the priest at the bedside. Still want to go back? Still dreaming of knights and castles and damsels in flowing gowns? The fairy tale version of the Middle Ages, polished for us by Hollywood and high fantasy novels, is a beautiful fiction. The reality was gritty, painful, and relentlessly unfair.