"We will also tell you about something that happened here on one occasion. A man and his wife were going home in the evening after one of these drinking bouts when the wife squatted down to urinate. The cold was so intense that the hairs on her thighs froze and stuck to the grass, so that she could not move for the pain and cried aloud. Then the husband, stone drunk and taking pity on his wife, stooped down and began to blow, hoping to melt the ice with his warm breath. But as he blew the moisture in his breath froze, and so the hairs of his beard got stuck to the hairs on his wife’s thigh. So he, too, was unable to move on account of the excruciating pain; and there he stayed, bent over in this position. And before they could budge from that spot they had to wait for some people to come along and break the ice."

• The Travels of Marco Polo c.1300