A feather bed was a prized possession: no wonder, as fifty pounds of feathers had to be saved from the plucking of numerous geese. Sometimes female servants in the kitchen were allowed to keep the feathers of the birds they’d plucked for the table as a kind of dowry, and saved them up for a marital feather bed. Such a bed needs constant punching, turning and shaking to keep it fresh and to disperse the lumps, and a new one was not necessarily more desirable than an old one because of the farmyard scent it would emit.
