Literature Archives - Brookston Beer Bulletin

John Updike’s Paean To The Beer Can

March 18, 2019 By Jay Brooks 9 Comments

Today is one of my favorite author’s birthdays, John Updike. He grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town that I did — Shillington — and we both escaped to a life of writing. Though I think you’ll agree he did rather better than I did with the writing thing, not that I’m complaining. I once wrote to him about a harebrained idea I had about writing updated Olinger stories from the perspective of the next generation (his Olinger Stories were a series of short tales set in Olinger, which was essentially his fictional name for Shillington). He wrote me back a nice note of encouragement on a hand-typed postcard that he signed, which today hangs in my office as a reminder and for inspiration. Anyway, this little gem he wrote for the The New Yorker in 1964 is a favorite of mine and I now post it each year in his honor. Enjoy.

Beer Can by John Updike

This seems to be an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements. Consider the beer can. It was beautiful — as beautiful as the clothespin, as inevitable as the wine bottle, as dignified and reassuring as the fire hydrant. A tranquil cylinder of delightfully resonant metal, it could be opened in an instant, requiring only the application of a handy gadget freely dispensed by every grocer. Who can forget the small, symmetrical thrill of those two triangular punctures, the dainty pfff, the little crest of suds that foamed eagerly in the exultation of release? Now we are given, instead, a top beetling with an ugly, shmoo-shaped tab, which, after fiercely resisting the tugging, bleeding fingers of the thirsty man, threatens his lips with a dangerous and hideous hole. However, we have discovered a way to thwart Progress, usually so unthwartable. Turn the beer can upside down and open the bottom. The bottom is still the way the top used to be. True, this operation gives the beer an unsettling jolt, and the sight of a consistently inverted beer can might make people edgy, not to say queasy. But the latter difficulty could be eliminated if manufacturers would design cans that looked the same whichever end was up, like playing cards. What we need is Progress with an escape hatch.

Now that’s writing. I especially like his allusion to the beauty of the clothespin as I am an unabashed lover of clothespins.

In case you’re not as old and curmudgeonly as me — and who is? — he’s talking about the transition to the pull-tab beer can (introduced between 1962-64) to replace the flat punch-top can that required you to punch two triangular holes in the top of the can in order to drink the beer and pour it in a glass.

The pull-tab (at left) replaced the punch top (right).

Originally known as the Zip Top, Rusty Cans has an informative and entertaining history of them. Now you know why a lot of bottle openers still have that triangle-shaped punch on one end.

So essentially, he’s lamenting the death of the old style beer can which most people considered a pain to open and downright impossible should you be without the necessary church key opener. He is correct, however, that the newfangled suckers were sharp and did cut fingers and lips on occasion, even snapping off without opening from time to time. But you still have to laugh at the unwillingness to embrace change (and possibly progress) even though he was only 32 at the time; hardly a normally curmudgeonly age.

The Hop-Picking Season By Vita Sackville-West

March 9, 2019 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Today is the birthday of English poet, novelist, and garden designer Vita Sackville-West. “She was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her lifetime and 13 novels. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the inspiration for the androgynous protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her famous friend and lover, Virginia Woolf.”

She wrote seventeen novels and a dozen collections of poetry, along with several biographies and works of non-fiction. But she was also well-known for her garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson. It was located in the Weald of Kent in England, and became one of the most famous gardens in Great Britain. It also gave her quite the vantage point to observe the hops industry in Kent, and in 1939 she wrote Country Notes, which included several entries concerned with hops and hop production. The book is a collection of small pieces she wrote for a variety of periodicals, such as the New Statesman, The Nation, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Time and Tide, Travel Nation and Athenæum. The photographs were taken by Bryan or Norman Westwood. Below are the articles about hops.

The Kentish Landscape

At the moment of writing these words, Kent is looking absurdly like itself. Cherry, plum, pear, and thorn whiten the orchards and the hedgerows; lambs frolic; the banks are full of violets and primroses; the whole landscape displays itself as an epitome of everything fresh and innocent which has drawn ridicule upon the so-called school of Georgian poets. It is a simple delight which pleases everyone, from the unsophisticated to the sophisticated. Why affect to despise it? Year after year I enjoy it more, and reflect with pride that my own county offers a fair presentment of the English scene to the foreigner travelling in his Pullman between Dover and London.
He, of course, cannot know it as we know it, though on his way up to London he is accorded a generous glimpse of the valleys of the Beult and the Medway. He sees the orchards and the hop-gardens; orchards he has seen before in his own Normandy, but the hop-gardens strike him as very peculiar and individual, opening and shutting as they do while the train flashes past. If he does not already know what they are, he is reduced to asking an obliging stranger for the explanation. Those tall bare poles, that elaborately knotted string, those ploughed acres—what does it all mean? The explanation is forthcoming: it is English beer. Of course: this is Kent. He looks out again with renewed interest, he remembers that this is called the garden of England.

Orchidaceæ

I went on such an expedition recently with two friends. We did not find much, it is true; or, rather, we found none of the real rarities. That, however, never matters, for the compensations are so rich: the small, lost, down-land churches, miles from the villages they are supposed to serve; the wide windy skies, the grassy slopes, the deep valleys with farm-buildings exquisitely composed into the group of barns, house, and oasts with steep brown roofs. I heard someone say the other day that when he saw or read about such things, nothing else seemed to matter, neither European complications, nor wars, nor threats of wars—they were all forgotten. I felt the same myself, when eventually we found the Bee orchis growing beside a partridge’s nest.

The Hop-picking Season

The hoppers are arriving in Kent. It is curious to observe that the moment the East-ender leaves his slum in Bermondsey or Rotherhithe for this annual expedition, he starts to cut quite a different figure in the public mind, ceases to be a mere and rather vulgar Cockney, and is instantly invested with all the attributes of romance. For three weeks in his drab year he is allowed to rank in picturesqueness with the gipsy. Why this should be so is a little difficult to explain. He dresses in the same way as he does in London, yet there is a difference between the Cockney and the hopper; perhaps the red handkerchief knotted round the throat looks better in a field than in the slum. The tawdry muslins of his women make a bright and oddly foreign effect among the bines. The presence of many children turns the serious business of picking into something like a pagan festival, reminding me of the Neopolitan celebration when the local little boys spray their naked sunburnt bodies with the copper-sulphate used for the prevention of Phylloxera and prance about stained in turquoise blue between the olives and the vines at dawn, a scene which Leonardo might have found it in his taste to record in paint. The Londoners’ children are neither so gay nor so pagan, but still a certain light-heartedness descends on all. It is very un-English in spite of being so essentially English. The hop-garden is a fair substitute for the vineyard, with its swags of green bunches so like the white muscat, its long leafy tunnels dappled with light, its brown canvas troughs filled with the pale flowers. Colour and gaiety reign in a way they never do at the other great country events such as hay-making or harvest.
This gaiety is reflected also in the trouble that the Cockney family takes to make its temporary home as lively as possible. The sleeping quarters provided are usually no better than a range of wooden huts—sometimes even an old railway coach—lime-washed inside, and supplied with a wooden bench and a couple of trusses of straw for bedding. Nothing more. It is all very clean, bare, and hard. Little can be said for it save that it is clean and (one hopes) weather-proof. Fortunately the families who have descended yearly upon the same hop-garden for several generations, grandmother, mother, and child, know exactly what to bring with them in order to turn the hut into a home. They bring coloured lithographs and lace curtains; bedspreads and china ornaments, and by the time they have set out their treasures their little hovel looks as attractive as a Dutch interior. Then when the working day is over they gather round bonfires and rouse the quiet night with songs and piano-accordions.
In damp sunless weather the picture is different. We remember then that perhaps thanks to our climate we are a glum race. A peddler comes round crying mackerel at five a shilling; alive they were, and swimming, this morning at sunrise, for the sea is not so very far away, but now the dead protruding eyes of fish stare at the pickers over the edge of the basket; this has to do duty for song and sunburnt mirth. The pickers then contribute nothing of jollity. Sordid, pasty bundles, sitting on camp stools or wooden boxes, their muslins hidden away beneath their mackintoshes, their babies uncomfortably asleep in go-carts beside them, they strip the bines in gloomy silence, preoccupied solely with the completion of their tally. A tally to a family; a big thing to fill, and only 1s. 5d. when you have done it. No wonder they are sometimes gloomy, especially when it rains. The grape is a fruit, the hop only a flower; perhaps that makes all the difference.
It appears also that they do not wholly like being in the country. So long as the weather is fine they make the best of it, regarding it as a holiday to be enjoyed, almost an obligation, but then as day dies a certain alarm disquiets their souls. Away from traffic and street lights, they are frightened. The silence and the darkness of the fields perplexes them. They will not go about after dusk except in little bands. Toughs though they may be at home, they are not tough enough to stand the desolation of the darkened country-side. On the whole they feel rather relieved when the moment comes for them to climb into their charabancs or cars again and return to a mode of life they understand.
Perhaps, however, they will not much longer be called upon to add their picturesque touch to the country year. The bines, it is said, will soon be stripped by machinery. Oh, brave new world!

The Garden and the Oast

It is the annual outing of the East End, but the East End cannot be expected to take any affectionate interest in our peculiarly local crops. These acres, representing several thousands of pounds, tended all the year by expert, almost instinctive, country hands, from the first training of the bine to the last fingering of the swollen flower, are turned over in the height of their fulfilment to the unskilled, unsympathetic mercies of the Cockney. Consider for a moment the care and vigilance which throughout the months of winter, spring, and summer have brought the gardens to their autumn state of fecundity. First, after the harvesting, the old bines must be cleared away; then the pruning-knife must sever and select; then, with the shooting of the new bine, up go the strings—strings reckoned by the ton; six hundred miles of string, fixed to the ground at the bottom by women and boys, and to the permanent wires overhead by men on stilts, giant figures stalking between the poles in the bleak spring day. The bine begins to grow; heavily fed, it will grow as much as two feet in a night, twining round the strings from right to left, for the hop cannot be persuaded to grow widdershins. You may think that a plant with so much energy might now be left for a little to its own devices. Make no such mistake. It has its enemies: mould and insects; it has its remedies: wash and powder; the enemy must be looked for, and the remedy applied unsparingly, even though the men with knapsacks blow hundreds of pounds sterling in fine sulphur dust into the air. The wind, too—a proper gale will do grand damage in the hop-garden. But the garden survives these dangers, and towards the end of August you are rewarded by the pale, imponderable clusters, well grown out, as you walk down the green, lovely aisles or mount your fixed ladders for a final inspection. It is then, when your expert judgment decides that the flower is ripe for picking, that London lets loose its hordes and the garden is profaned by the presence of these philistines, and the fish-peddler cries his mackerel at five a shilling.
The profanation, however, marks but a brief stage in the history of the hop from bine to bottle. At the sole moment of its picking is the hop subjected to the hands that neither love, hate, nor understand it. Once picked into the pokes, when the garden begins to assume a dirty, dejected air, with the cut bines withering in their fallen heaps, the poles sticking up gaunt and useless, the wires overhead fluffy with the fringe of cut strings—once picked, the flower is hurried to the oasts, where skilled driers receive it. These are men who have been for thirty, forty, fifty years at their job. They handle their material and their implements as though they knew what they were about. Indeed, they disregard some of their implements, with a sort of contempt, such as the thermometer and the weighing-machine, referring to them only as a concession to convention, to corroborate their human judgment, or to satisfy the overseer, when their instinct is rarely proved at fault. This is pleasing, and as it should be. The hop is once more in hands that have the mastery over it.

All day the chimneys of the kilns have been smoking blue, but the life of the kiln does not slacken with dusk, when the pickers go home to their camp; all night the process of drying goes on, to keep pace with the supply that has been pouring in from the garden. Inside the oast, we choke and cough with the sulphur; the doors of the furnaces stand open for a fresh stoking, like the entrails of a ship, the pan of sulphur blue in the midst of the fire; the men, demoniacal figures redly lit, shovel on the coal, slam the doors, throw down their shovels with horrible clang; this ground-level of the oast is a place of violence. Propped against the wall, too, are brutal shapes, sacks as big as bullocks, with the white horse of Kent prancing painted across them, and their corners tied into ears like the ears of killed beasts.

But on the upper story the hop reassumes its character of pale colour and feather weight. In the long, low, raftered loft, where everything is whitewashed, the lanterns swing from the beams above mountains of dried flowers on the floor, billowing heaps of a ghostly pallor, an exquisite imponderability. Impossible to give a name to their colour. It is a cross between ash and gold; the colour of dust-motes, of corn in moonlight, of fair hair under a lamp. All the green has been taken from them in the drying; they are crisp and airy; everything you touch is sticky with resin, even the bristles of the brooms are knobby with resin gathered in sweeping up the floor; the pungent smell is in the air. The lanterns throw the shadows of the rafters in sharp designs on roof and floor. The men, dressed in white overalls, pile the heaps higher with rake and scupper—huge scoops made of white canvas. In one corner, where a hole gapes in the boards, two men shovel the hops down the hole into the mouth of the sack which hangs below, out of sight; a great wheel spins round, the shadow of its spokes whirling over the whitewashed wall, and the weight descends into the sack, pressing, packing, till the flowers are squeezed into solidity, and one believes at last what had always seemed so unconvincing, that a ton of feathers weighs as much as a ton of lead.

This is all activity; but the hops at their drying are quiet and private. Doors along one side of the loft open on to the upper chambers of the kilns, white, circular, the roof rising to a point. The hops are spread knee-deep upon the floor. They are green still, and a faint blue smoke rises through them. It is very quiet in there, with a quality of solitude and vigil; very warm too, and heavily scented, inside the circular oast. The drier steps into the sea of hops, and slouches through them, kicking them up. Especially on the outside edges is it necessary to see that they shall be evenly dried; so he slouches round the wall, an old man in white corduroys, travelling against the white wall, stealthily as it seems, kicking up the pale green sea that faintly rustles, disturbing the smoke into little wreaths and eddies. There is a medieval flavour about it: the round chamber, the roof pointed like a witch’s hat, the white and green, the warmth, the smoke, the ancient man, the smell that creeps so soporifically over the senses. Out in the yard, as you come away, the shafts of the waggons stick up at the stars, and the cowled chimneys point in a blacker darkness at the darkness of the sky. To the left lies the ruined garden, with aisles of bare poles waiting for next year’s bine. You stumble down the lane, and at the corner turn to throw a glance at the group of kilns. A light appears in a little window, high up. You know then that the old drier has taken his lantern into the oast, and is slouching the hops, round and round the wall, in that furtive way, a mysterious rite, while in the loft the weight sinks rhythmically into the filling sack, and the overseer scribbles another ton upon his slate. There is no sleep for the men, and to-morrow the carts will come creaking up the lane with new loads from the gardens.

Humulus Lupulus

The history of the hop is not uninteresting. Guinness is good for you; but in the reign of Henry VI popular opinion took a different view, and the hop was condemned as ‘a wicked weed’. By the time of Henry VIII the wicked weed had attained quite another status, having been officially introduced from Flanders for cultivation in Kent and two or three other counties. Even so, Henry VIII ruled that the brewer should not put any hops into the ale, since this addition would ‘dry up the body and increase melancholy’. This ruling of an autocratic King did not prevent an irreverent subject of the Crown from writing, perhaps rather inaccurately,
Hops, Reformation, Bays, and Beer
Came into England all in one year.
The overwhelming proportion of those hops which came into England, never to depart, is grown in Kent, and has had its effect upon the landscape of the county in those characteristic pointed oast-houses, with their white vanes swinging to the wind. Most people must be strangely incurious. Nearly everybody must surely have seen oasts dozens of time, if only from the window of a train, yet if one lives near a group of them one is constantly asked what ‘those odd-looking buildings’ are for. During the first weeks of September, anyone can see for himself what they are for. He can climb up into the upper loft and glance into the round turret where the deep green carpet of cones is spread drying in the hot fumes. He can watch the men shovelling the dried heaps through a hole in the floor, packing them tightly into the great sacks called pockets in which they are to be driven away to the brewer—the last stage in the endlessly complicated process of the hop-grower’s year.

Departure

The pickers have nearly finished their job and will be leaving us at the end of this week. No longer shall we see the red light of their fires burning in the distance, nor, on a Saturday night, shall I be able to walk down to their huts, sit with them round the brushwood fire, and listen to their jokes and their songs. It is a scene which, with a difference, always carries me back to a ranch in California, where under the shelter of a great rock the cowboys would light their bonfire and sit round chanting endless sagas of the trail. There is no great rock here, and the stars are less enormous, but even in the lameness of my own familiar fields the sole illumination of the flames casts a wild beauty over the rough faces and the coloured scarves. The doors of the huts stand open, a little oil-lamp revealing each miniature interior; the head of a sleepy child droops suddenly; an armful of fresh brushwood makes the embers flare; the plaintive notes of the accordion continue to rise and fall. It is nearly two o’clock in the morning; the jokes, the dancing, and the ribald songs have ceased; they have stopped dancing the Lambeth Walk; the songs are all sentimental now—eternal Sehnsucht and eternal pain.
I shall miss the hoppers.

Song In Praise Of Ale

February 10, 2019 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Today is the birthday of Charles Lamb, who “was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children’s book Tales from Shakespeare, co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb.” In addition to his own works, and adapting others, he also collected works of earlier authors. One such work was entitled “Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, Selected by Charles Lamb,” published in 1803.

One of his choices has an anonymous author, and is ascribed to the London Chanticleers, and is characterized as “a rude sketch of a play, printed 1659, but evidently much older.” It’s entitled “Song in praise of Ale.”

Song in praise of Ale

Submit, bunch of Grapes,
To the strong Barley ear;
The weak Vine no longer,
The Laurel shall wear.

II.

Sack and drinks else,
Desist from the strife,
Ale’s th’ only Aqua vitae,
And liquor of life.

III.

Then come my boon fellows,
Let’s drink it around;
It keeps us from th’ grave,
Though it lays us o’ th’ ground.

IV.

Ale’s a Physcian,
No Mountebank bragger,
Can cure the chill ague,
Though ’t be with the stagger.

Ale’s a strong wrestler,
Flings all it hath met;
And makes the ground slippery,
Though ’t be not wet.

VI.

Ale is both Ceres,
And good Neptune too,
Ale’s froth was the Sea,
From whence Venus grew.

VII.

Ale is immortal:
And be there no stops,
In bonny Lads’ quaffing,
Can live without hops.

VIII.

Then come my boon fellows,
Let’s drink it around;
It keeps us from the grave,
Though it lays us o’ th’ ground.

Charles_Lamb_by_William_Hazlitt — Charles Lamb (February 10, 1775 – 27 December 27, 1834)

Lewis Carroll’s Scheme To Get People Drinking Beer At Home

January 27, 2019 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Today is the birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll. He was “an English writer of world-famous children’s fiction, notably Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He was noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy. The poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer, and Anglican deacon.” One of his lesser known books, two really, was Sylvie and Bruno and its sequel Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, published in 1889 and 1893, respectively.

In the latter, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Carroll writes about his idea on how to keep drunkards at home, drinking their beer there and not throwing away the family’s money, all to the betterment of society. It begins in Chapter V: Mathilda Jane.

When the full stream of loving memories had nearly run itself out, I began to question her about the working men of that neighbourhood, and specially the ‘Willie,’ whom we had heard of at his cottage. “He was a good fellow once,” said my kind hostess: “but it’s the drink has ruined him! Not that I’d rob them of the drink—it’s good for the most of them—but there’s some as is too weak to stand agin’ temptations: it’s a thousand pities, for them, as they ever built the Golden Lion at the corner there!”
“The Golden Lion?” I repeated.
“It’s the new Public,” my hostess explained. “And it stands right in the way, and handy for the workmen, as they come back from the brickfields, as it might be to-day, with their week’s wages. A deal of money gets wasted that way. And some of ’em gets drunk.”
“If only they could have it in their own houses—” I mused, hardly knowing I had said the words out loud.
“That’s it!” she eagerly exclaimed. It was evidently a solution, of the problem, that she had already thought out. “If only you could manage, so’s each man to have his own little barrel in his own house—there’d hardly be a drunken man in the length and breadth of the land!”
And then I told her the old story—about a certain cottager who bought himself a little barrel of beer, and installed his wife as bar-keeper: and how, every time he wanted his mug of beer, he regularly paid her over the counter for it: and how she never would let him go on ‘tick,’ and was a perfectly inflexible bar-keeper in never letting him have more than his proper allowance: and how, every time the barrel needed refilling, she had plenty to do it with, and something over for her money-box: and how, at the end of the year, he not only found himself in first-rate health and spirits, with that undefinable but quite unmistakeable air which always distinguishes the sober man from the one who takes ‘a drop too much,’ but had quite a box full of money, all saved out of his own pence!
“If only they’d all do like that!” said the good woman, wiping her eyes, which were overflowing with kindly sympathy. “Drink hadn’t need to be the curse it is to some——”
“Only a curse,” I said, “when it is used wrongly. Any of God’s gifts may be turned into a curse, unless we use it wisely. But we must be getting home. Would you call the little girls? Matilda Jane has seen enough of company, for one day, I’m sure!”

So Carroll insists that it’s not beer or drink that’s bad for them, it’s over-indulging in it. That seems a rather progressive idea for 1893, especially in the face of temperance movements of the day.

But his solution is sublime. To avoid so many people wasting their wages down at the pub, just give every household its own Kegerator and barrel of beer so they’ll instead come home most nights and drink their beer there with their family. Genius.

Later in the chapter, Sylvie and Bruno find themselves outside The Golden Lion.

“And that’s the new public-house that we were talking about, I suppose?” I said, as we came in sight of a long low building, with the words ‘The Golden Lion’ over the door.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Sylvie. “I wonder if her Willie’s inside? Run in, Bruno, and see if he’s there.”
I interposed, feeling that Bruno was, in a sort of way, in my care. “That’s not a place to send a child into.” For already the revelers were getting noisy: and a wild discord of singing, shouting, and meaningless laughter came to us through the open windows.
“They wo’n’t see him, you know,” Sylvie explained. “Wait a minute, Bruno!” She clasped the jewel, that always hung round her neck, between the palms of her hands, and muttered a few words to herself. What they were I could not at all make out, but some mysterious change seemed instantly to pass over us. My feet seemed to me no longer to press the ground, and the dream-like feeling came upon me, that I was suddenly endowed with the power of floating in the air. I could still just see the children: but their forms were shadowy and unsubstantial, and their voices sounded as if they came from some distant place and time, they were so unreal. However, I offered no further opposition to Bruno’s going into the house. He was back again in a few moments. “No, he isn’t come yet,” he said. “They’re talking about him inside, and saying how drunk he was last week.”
While he was speaking, one of the men lounged out through the door, a pipe in one hand and a mug of beer in the other, and crossed to where we were standing, so as to get a better view along the road. Two or three others leaned out through the open window, each holding his mug of beer, with red faces and sleepy eyes. “Canst see him, lad?” one of them asked.
“I dunnot know,” the man said, taking a step forwards, which brought us nearly face to face. Sylvie hastily pulled me out of his way. “Thanks, child,” I said. “I had forgotten he couldn’t see us. What would have happened if I had staid in his way?”

In Chapter VI, they decide to rescue Willie from his pub crawling ways.

He made for the door of the public-house, but the children intercepted him. Sylvie clung to one arm; while Bruno, on the opposite side, was pushing him with all his strength, with many inarticulate cries of “Gee-up! Gee-back! Woah then!” which he had picked up from the waggoners.
‘Willie’ took not the least notice of them: he was simply conscious that something had checked him: and, for want of any other way of accounting for it, he seemed to regard it as his own act.
“I wunnut coom in,” he said: “not to-day.”
“A mug o’ beer wunnut hurt ’ee!” his friends shouted in chorus. “Two mugs wunnut hurt ’ee! Nor a dozen mugs!”84
“Nay,” said Willie. “I’m agoan whoam.”
“What, withouten thy drink, Willie man?” shouted the others. But ‘Willie man’ would have no more discussion, and turned doggedly away, the children keeping one on each side of him, to guard him against any change in his sudden resolution.

Willie went home and gave all his wages to his wife, and she was pretty happy, as were his children. The only thing that would have made the ending better is if his wife had installed a barrel of beer so he could come home every day after work and have a drink of beer there, as was the earlier suggestion Carroll made.

Sylvie_and_Bruno — Sylvia and Bruno, from the inside cover of the original edition, with illustrations by Harry Furniss.

Charles Deulin’s Tales of King Cambrinus

January 4, 2019 By Jay Brooks 1 Comment

Today is the birthday of Charles Deulin (January 4, 1827–77). He was “a French writer, theatre critic, and folklorist who is most known for his contemporary adaptations of European folk tales.”

This biography of Deulin is from “The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales,” published in 2008:

Charles Deulin was the son of a poor tailor who lived in the Escaut, a region in the north of France whose folklore inspired his major works. Deulin’s early career as the secretary of an enlightened notary and patron of the arts came to a sudden end after he eloped with the daughter of a notable local merchant. Deulin relocated to Paris, where he worked as a columnist for numerous French journals and reviews. However, Deulin found his real fame writing tales that drew on regional folklore and folktales. His first tale, “Le compere de la mort” (“Godfather Death”), was based on an oral tale that he had first adapted as a song. His tales achieved both popular and critical success, so Deulin mined the rare resources and folk literature in the Library of the Arsenal in Paris for material that he could reshape into tales of his own. Contes d’un buveur de biere (Tales of a Beer Drinker, 1868) and its sequels Contes du roi Cambrinus (Tales of King Cambrinus, 1874) and Histoires de petite ville (Village Stories, 1875) constitute his most important collections of fairy tales. Les contes de ma Mere l’Oye avant Perrault (The Tales of Mother Goose from before Perrault), a scholarly work that explores Charles Perrault’s likely sources, was published in 1879, after his death. Deulin and his beer drinker remind us of his contemporary Alphonse Daudet and his windmill of Provence. Despite obvious differences between these writers, they both provide sharp yet personal evocations of the lore of their native regions, thanks to their skill at giving French language a distinctive regional twist.

His second collection of stories was called “Contes d’un buveur de bière” (“Tales of a Beer Drinker”) and was published in 1868. “Deulin based one of the stories, “Cambrinus, Roi de la Bière” (“Cambrinus, King of Beer”), on folktales about the origin of a beer-brewing mythological king called Gambrinus. In the story, a lovelorn Gambrinus makes a deal with the Devil, and Beelzebub teaches him about brewing.”

Here’s a summary of his first Cambrinus story:

In this, the seminal Cambrinus short story, Cambrinus is an apprentice glassblower in the Flemish village of Fresnes-sur-Escaut, but he believes that he lacks the skill and upward mobility to succeed in glassblowing. He becomes smitten with the master glassblower’s daughter, Flandrine. When he tells her, she rebuffs him and he leaves in disgrace. He apprentices himself to a viol master and becomes a great player. One day, he summons the courage to climb on a barrel and play publicly. He plays well, but just as he has whipped the crowd into a dance, the sight of Flandrine flusters him, and he bungles his playing. The villagers, believing Cambrinus tripped them up on purpose, pull him off the barrel to jeer and strike him. A contemptuous judge called Jocko sentences Cambrinus to a month in prison. When Cambrinus emerges a month later, he feels so ashamed that he prepares to hang himself. As he stands with the noose around his neck, a colourfully-dressed stranger appears. Cambrinus recognizes him by his horns: it is Beelzebub. As they chat, Beelzebub reveals that he has killed the judge, and now expects to collect Cambrinus’ soul, for, he says, such is his fate if he hangs himself. Not wanting to go to hell or to return to life as he knew it, Cambrinus tries to bargain. Beelzebub cannot make Flandrine love him, so Cambrinus settles for forgetting his affection for her; he also wants revenge on the villagers. Beelzebub tells him that the way to forget is if “one nail drives out another.”

Cambrinus wins a fortune in games of skill and chance. The consistent winning becomes tedious, so he returns to Flanders—but Flandrine still refuses him. Once again, he is about to hang himself when Beelzebub reappears, and tells him that drinking is the way to forget. Cambrinus drinks wine, gin, whisky, cider, and brandy, but his condition only worsens. Cambrinus is momentarily contented when Beelzebub introduces him to beer, but he seeks revenge on those who would not dance for him. Beelzebub tells him that playing the carillon will prove irresistible.

Cambrinus builds a large brewery with a carillon and a belfry, then invites the villagers for a drink after Mass. They come, but find the beer too bitter. To punish them, Cambrinus plays his carillon, and everyone in earshot is compelled to dance until they beg for a drink. This time, they find the beer delicious, and Cambrinus’ dances become an institution that transforms the village of Fresnes-sur-Escaut.

Fame of the drink and of Cambrinus’ carillon reaches the king of the Netherlands, who in return heaps titles of nobility on Cambrinus: Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders, Lord of Fresnes. But even after founding the town of Cambrai, Cambrinus prefers the villagers’ honorary title for him: King of Beer. When Flandrine finally approaches him, he rejects her.

At the end of the 30 years, Beelzebub sends Jocko, the judge, to fetch Cambrinus; but Jocko drinks too much beer and sleeps for three days. Since he is too ashamed to return to hell, he hides in a purse. Cambrinus thrives for nearly a hundred years more. When Cambrinus finally dies, Beelzebub comes for his soul, only to find that Cambrinus’ body has become a beer barrel.

Contes_d'un_buveur_de_bière_Deulin_Charles

For his third collection of stories, “Deulin made his Cambrinus character the focus,” in “Contes du roi Cambrinus” (“Tales of King Cambrinus”), which was published in 1874. This collection included at least “Cambrinus, The Devil’s Pot, Manneken-pis, Martin and Martine, The Muscades of Guerliche, The Poirier de Misère, and The Thirty-Six Encounters of Jean du Gogué.

This is a Google translation from the French Wikisource library:

I

In the old days, there was in the village of Fresnes-sur-l’Escaut a glass boy named Cambrinus, according to other Gambrinus, who, with his pink and fresh face, his beard and his golden hair, was indeed the prettiest you could see.

More than one young lady of glass, bringing her father’s dinner, was annoying the handsome Cambrinus; but he had eyes only for Flandrine, the daughter of his blower.

Flandrine was, on her side, a beautiful girl with golden hair, cheeks reouvelèmes, – It was meant to be a vermeilles, and never would a better matched couple have been blessed by the cure, had there not been between them an insurmountable barrier.

Cambrinus was not a glass race and could not aspire to mastery. He had, throughout his life, to pass the bottle sketched to his blower, without ever claiming the honor of finishing it himself.

Nobody is ignorant, indeed, that the glassmakers are all Gentiles-men by birth and only show their sons the noble profession of blower. But Flandrine was too proud to lower her eyes to a simple big boy, as they say in the language of glass.

This made the unhappy man, consumed by a fire ten times hotter than his oven, lost his fresh colors and became dry like a heron.

No longer able to hold out, one day he was alone with Flandrine, he took his courage in both hands and told him his feelings. The proud girl received him with such disdain that in despair he planted his work there and did not reappear at the glassworks.

As he loved music, he bought a viol to charm his troubles and tried to play it without ever learning.

The idea then came to him to become a musician. ” I will become a great artist, he said to himself, and perhaps Flandrin will want me. A good musician is well worth a glass gentleman. ”

He went to find an old canon of Conde’s collegiate, named Josquin, who had a wonderful genius for music. He told him of his troubles and asked him to teach him his art. Josquin felt sorry for his grief and showed him to play the viol according to the rules.

Cambrinus was soon in a position to make the girls dance on the meadow. He was ten times more skillful than the other minstrels; but unfortunately! No one is a prophet in his own country.

The people of Fresnes did not want to believe that a glass boy had become in such a short time a good musician, and it was under a rolling fire of jeers that, on a fine Sunday, armed with his viola, he mounted his platform I mean his barrel.

Although very moved, he gave a sure hand the first bows. Little by little he became animated and led the dance with a vigor and an enthusiasm that silenced the laughter. Everything was going well when Flandrine appeared.

At his sight, the unfortunate man lost his head, played against the weather and beat the campaign so well that the dancers, believing that he was making fun of them, dragged him out of his barrel, broke his rapes on the shoulders and sent him back booed, boozy and pooped eyes.

To make matters worse, there was at that time at Conde a judge who did justice like the grocers sell candles, by leaning the scales to his liking. He was a stammerer, spoke almost always in Latin, mumbled paternosters from morning till night, and looked so much like a monkey that he was nicknamed Jocko.

Jocko learned the case and called the disrupters to his court. The Fresnois went there, each bearing a couple of chickens which they offered to the judge. The latter found the chickens so fat and Cambrinus so guilty that, although the unfortunate man had been beaten in full sun, he condemned him to a month’s imprisonment for assault and night-time fury.

It was a big heartbreak for the poor boy. He was so ashamed and sorry that when he was released from prison he resolved to end life. He unfastened the rope from his well, which was brand new, and reached the wood of Odomez.

At the darkest intersection, he climbed an oak tree, sat down on the first branch, tied the rope tightly and wrapped it around his neck. That done, he raised his head, and he was going to take the plunge, when he suddenly stopped.

Before his eyes was a man of tall stature, dressed in a green coat with copper buttons, wearing a feathered hat, armed with a hunting knife, and carrying a silver horn over his carnivore. Cambrinus and he looked at each other for some time in silence.

“That I do not bother you! finally said the unknown.

“I am in no hurry,” replied the other, a little chilled by the presence of a stranger.

– But I am, my good Cambrinus.

– Here! you know my name?

– And I also know that you’re going to dance your last jig, because you’ve been thrown in prison and the kind Flandrine refuses to enlist you in the big brotherhood … ”

And so saying, the stranger took off his hat.

“What! it’s you, myn heer van Belzebuth. Well ! by your two horns, I thought you were uglier.

– Thank you!

– And what good wind brings you?

– Is it not today Saturday? My wife is washing the house, and, as I hate wassingues …

– You have decamped. I understand that. And … did you have a good hunt?

– Pooh! I only report the soul of the judge of Condé.

– How! Jocko is dead! And you take away his soul! Oh ! but do not waste time, myn heer. What are you waiting for?

– I’m waiting for yours.

– What if I do not hang myself?

– It will be hell in this world.

– Which is not much better. But that’s just right, that, godverdom! Come on, Monsieur the devil, be good devil and shoot me from there!

– But how?

Let Flandrine want to marry me.

– Impossible, good! What woman wants …

“God wills it, I know it; but what she does not want?

– What she does not want, the devil himself would lose his horns.

– So, make sure I do not love him anymore.

– I agree … on one condition. It is that you will give me your soul in exchange.

– Right now?

– No. In thirty years from here.

– My faith! start there. I am too unhappy … but you will help me, on the other hand, to avenge myself on the people of Fresnes.

Let’s first think of healing yourself, and remember this. One nail drives out another. It is not so strongsion that does not yield to a more passionate passion. Day and night plays, and replaces the game of love by the love of the game.

“I’ll try,” Cambrinus said. Thank you, myn heer. ”

He untied his rope and drew his bow.

II

There was precisely in Condé, the following Sunday, a great archery. Cambrinus went there, like all the Fresnois.

The brotherhood of the archers of San Sebastián had displayed, in price, five dishes and three tin pots, plus six teaspoons in silver for the last birdie shot. Cambrinus won four dishes, two coffee pots and six silver spoons. No one had ever heard of such an address.

As, eight days later, the ball was to be played on the Place Verte de Conde, he formed at Fresnes a platoon of players, and although until then the Fresnois had scarcely shone on the game of palm, he did not He feared not to fight against the parts of Valenciennes and Quaregnon, the two strongest in the country. The Valenciennes and the Quaregnonais were defeated by the Fresnois. They got angry, and they fisted in every street.

Cambrinus then bought a blind finch, which, in the fashion of the people of the Walloon country, he carried everywhere with him. Having heard that there must have been a great competition of finches in Saint-Amand, he took his fellow-traveler and set off.

On approaching the town, he met on the Croisette the guns that, three hundred in number, went to the place of the battle, two by two, and holding in their hands their little wooden cages, furnished with wire. The procession was preceded by a drum-major, adorned with his cane, two drums, and six hams, ornamented with flowers, worthy of the prize.

Cambrinus followed suit, and when the cages were ranged in battle, along the enclosure of the Abbey, a pretty concert was heard. Each bird shouted at the top of its cheerful chorus, while with a piece of chalk its master, under the surveillance of the commissaries, conscientiously inscribed the guns on a slate. The noise was such that the big bell of the tower had not been heard.

The Fresnois had bet three thousand florins that, without intermingling his song of p’tit-p’tit-petit-placapiau who escape the artifithese second-rate, his virtuoso would repeat nine hundred times in one hour ran-plan-plan-plan-biscouïtte-biscoriau, the true solo, the only one that can count.

The bird went up to nine hundred and fifty, and the master won the first prize and the three thousand florins, after which the Amandinois triumphantly walked the man and the beast, one carrying the other.

Cambrinus then set out to cross Flanders, beating with his tenor the most renowned gunslingers; and it is from this period that the Flemings are as passionate about finches as the English for cockfights.

From Flanders he went to Germany and traveled from town to town, playing all games of skill and chance. Everywhere he took his chance with him. He made general admiration, gained enormous sums, became immensely rich, but he did not cure of his love.

This infallible luck had at first delighted him. Later, she only amused him; then she left him cold and soon she bored him. In the end, he was so tired of this perpetual gain that he would have given everything to lose once; but his happiness pursued him with relentless obstinacy.

He was beginning to be very unhappy, when, one morning, he awoke with a luminous idea: “To something happiness is good,” he said to himself. Perhaps Flandrine will consent to marry me, now that I am all sewn with gold. ”

He returned to deposit his treasures at the feet of the cruel; but, unbelievable and well done to astonish the ladies of today, Flandrine refused.

“Are you a gentleman? she says.

– No.

– Well! win your treasures, I will marry only a gentleman.”

Cambrinus was so desperate that one fine day, between dog and wolf, he returned to the wood of Odomez, climbed the oak, sat down on the first branch, and fastened his rope securely. Already the noose around the neck was passing, when the green hunter appeared.

“Ah! fuck! cried Beelzebub, I had forgotten the proverb: Unhappy in love, happy in the game. Do you want me to tell you a way to lose? ”

Cambrinus listened.

“Yes, you will lose, and you will lose more than gold. You will lose your memory, and with it the torments of remembrance.

– And how?

– Wood. Wine is the father of oblivion. Wormmake waves of joy. Nothing beats a bottle of piot to drown human sadness.

– You might be right, myn heer.”

And Cambrinus rolled his rope and went back to Fresnes.

III

Without wasting time, he had a large cellar of six hundred feet, forty feet wide, and tall, built in broad Tournay stones. He garnishes it with the most exquisite wines.

In the lightnings, arranged on two parallel lines, ripened the warm burgundy, the sweet burgundy, the sparkling champagne, the gay malvoisie, the marsala bulletin board, the ardent sherry, the generous tokai and the tender johannisberg, which opens to the square heads of Germany the golden gates of daydreaming.

Day and night Cambrinus drank the juice of the vine in Bohemian glasses. The unfortunate thought he drank oblivion, he drank only love. Where did this phenomenon come from? Alas! that the good Flemings are otherwise built that the people of elsewhere.

At home, when the fumes of wine invade the brain, when the divine juice ends under the skull, as the lava at the bottom of the crater, it is only then that the imagination catches fire.

At the sixth glass, the Flamand invariably saw in front of his eyes, at the arms of pretty dancers, myriads of Flandrines, who made him a nique by performing interminable carmagnoles.

Then he sought oblivion in Norman cider, manceau parsley, Gallic mead, French cognac, Dutch gin, English gin, Scottish whiskey, German kirsch. Alas! cider, perry, mead, cognac, juniper, gin, whiskey, and kirsch only fueled the furnace. The more he drank, the more excited he was, the more he raged.

One evening he could no longer resist; he ran all at once to the wood of Odomez, climbed the oak, fastened the rope, and, without raising his eyes, to be sure not to return, He rushed the rope around his neck. The rope broke and the hangman fell into the green hunter’s arms.

“Do you want to let me go, damn impostor? exclaimed Cambrinus in a strangled voice. How! you will not even be able to hang yourself at your ease! ”

Belzebuth burst out laughing.

“I wanted to see,” he said, “how far the confidence of a good Flemish would go. And now, for the trouble, I’ll heal you. Here, look!”

All at once the trees parted to the right and to the left, so as to leave a large empty square, and Cambrinus saw in line long rows of large poles made of chestnut wood, where were curled frail plants which bore green and fragrant bells.

Some of the stakes were lying on the ground and three to four hundred squatting women seemed to peel a huge salad. This strange forest was bounded by a vast brick building.

“What is this, myn God? exclaimed the Fresnois.

“This, my good man, is a hopshop, and the house you see there a brewery. The flower of this plant will heal you from love sickness. Follow me. ”

Beelzebub led him into the building. There were enormous vats, stoves, tons, and boilers full of blond liquor, from which an acrid perfume was exhaled. Men in blue aprons were doing a strange job.

“It is with barley and hops,” says Beelzebub, “that, by the example of these men, you will make Flemish wine, that is, beer. re. When the millstone has crushed the barley, you will brew it in this large vat, from which the barley wine will pass into these vast boilers to be married to the hops. The hops flower will give the flavor and scent to barley wine. Thanks to the sacred plant, the beer, like the juice of the vine, can age in barrels. She will come out blonde like topaz or brown like onyx, and make good Flemings as many gods on the earth. Here, wood! ”

And Beelzebub pulled from one of the casks a great jug of foaming beer. Cambrinus obeyed and made a face.

“Drink again, again!”

The other goal, discarded and felt a sort of calm down gradually in his senses.

“Are not you happy as a god?

“Yes, sir, except that I miss the supreme pleasure of the gods.

– And which one?

– Revenge! The people of Fresnes have not wanted to dance to the sound of my viol. Give me an instrument that will blow them to my will.

– Listen, then.”

At this moment, nine knocks sounded at the belfry of Vieux-Conde.

– Well? Cambrinus said.

– Shut up and listen again. ”

The bell tower of Fresnes repeated the ring, then that of Condé, then that of Bruille.

“After? said the Fresnois again.

– You ask me for an instrument that forces you to dance. Here he is all found. Have you noticed that these bells each have their own sound? Gather several, give them, put the ringtone in motion with two keyboards, one of keys and the other of pedals, you will have the most beautiful chime …

– Carillon! This is the name of which I will baptize this marvelous instrument, exclaimed Cambrinus. Thank you, my good Beelzebub, and … goodbye!

– No. Goodbye! … in thirty years … and, as I like business, you will give me the grace to sign this paper with a drop of your blood. ”

He presented him with a feather and a parchment covered with cabalistic characters. The Fresnois pricked his fingertip and signed. At once the hops, the brewery, and Beelzebub, all disappeared.

IV [ edit ]
Returning to Fresnes, Cambrinus advised a rich and deep land sheltered from the wind. He bought it and planted some hops. He also had an immense brewery built in the very spot of the village, in all likeness to that which Belzebub had shown him. He crowned it with a belfry in the shape of a gigantic can, surmounted by a pint and a barrel, which ended with a golden rooster.

If a stranger had come into the country to perform these strange works, we would have been very careful not to laugh at them, but the builder being born at Fresnes, he was thought to be mad, as it should, and we began to laugh at him again.

He paid no attention to it, asked mechanics and bell-founders, and made the establishment of the carillon and the brewery march in front.

When it was all over, he made two great brews, one of white beer, the other of dark beer, and one Sunday morning, after mass, he invited people to have a drink.

“Ugh! how bitter! said one.

– It’s horrible! another said.

– Despicable! added a third.

– Abominable! Concludes a fourth.

Cambrinus was smiling under his breath.

In the afternoon, he arranged long tables around the square. On these tables pots and glasses full of dark beer awaited the drinkers. When the Fresnois came out of vespers, the brewer urged them to cool off again. They refused.

“You do not want to drink, boys,” thought Cambrinus, “well! you will dance! And he went up to his belfry.

“Dig, din, don,” said the chime.

Suddenly, oh prodigy! at the first blows of the bells, men, women, children, all stopped short, as if they were preparing to dance.

“Dyke, dyke, din. ”

All raised their legs, and the mayor himself shook the ashes of his pipe and sat up.

“Dig, din, gift, dike, dyke, gift. ”

All jumped in rhythm, and the mayor and the country guard jumped higher than the others.

Cambrinus then paused, then he attacked the air:

Band of beggars, would you like to dance?

The young, the old, the fat, the skinny, the big and the small, the rights, the turtles, the wobbly, the lame began to dance again, until the dogs stood on their hind legs to dance as well. . A cart passed by: the horse and the cart entered the dance. They danced on the square, in the streets, in the alleys, as far as the carillon was heard; and on the road the people of Conde who came to Fresnes were dancing without knowing why or how. Everything was dancing in the houses: men, animals and furniture. The old men danced by the fire, the sick in their beds. the horses danced in the stable, the cows in the stable, the hens in the henhouse; and the tables danced, the chairs, the cupboards, and the dressers; and the houses danced themselves, and the brasserie danced and the church; and the tower in which Cambrinus was pealing was opposite the bell-tower, giving himself graces. Never, since the world is a world, had we seen such a jerky jerk!

After an hour of this exercise, the Fresnois were swimming. Panting, exhausted, they shouted to the carillonneur:

“Stop, stop! We can not take it anymore!

– No no. Dance, “replied the carillonneur, and the more he carilloned, the more the dancersleapt. Their heads clashed, and the crowd began to moan piteously.

” To drink ! to drink! They finally shouted.

The carillonneur stopped pealing, and men, women, children, animals, and houses stopped dancing. Dancers and dancers rushed over the peas, which, surprisingly, had jumped with the tables without spreading a single drop of beer.

Thus put in taste, the Fresnois no longer found the new detestable liquor, on the contrary.

After they had emptied three or four pints each, they asked Cambrinus to let his music go. and they danced all evening and part of the night.

The next day and the following days, the rumor spread, and people came from all parts to Fresnes to drink beer and to dance in the carillon.

A crowd of chimes; music clocks, breweries, taverns, cabarets and estaminets soon settled in Fresnes, Condé, Valenciennes, Lille, Dunkirk, Mons, Tournay, Bruges, Leuven and Brussels.

Like a godmother who throws dragees, the carillon shook her silver apron full of magical notes, and the barley wine flowed in the Netherlands, Holland, Germany, England and Scotland.

They drank the dark beer, the white beer, the double beer, the lambic, the faro, the pale-ale, the scotch-ale, the porter and the stout, without forgetting the beer; however, the carillon de Fresnes remained the only enchanted carillon, the beer of Fresnes, the best beer, and the Fresnois, the first drinkers in the world.

Competitions of Frankish drinkers took place, such as finches in all the Netherlands; but it was only at Fresnes that they found some good drinkers, capable of absorbing a hundred pints in one day of a fair and twelve steins while the twelve o’clock strokes were striking at the church clock.

To reward the inventor with dignity, the King of the Netherlands made him Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders and Lord of Fresnes. It was then that the new Duke founded the city of Cambrai; but the title which he preferred to all others was that of “king of beer,” which the locals bestowed on him.

He did not delay, however, in experiencing the generous effects of the brown liquor. At first he emptied his two cans every evening. At the end of six months of this regime, his amorous delirium calmed down, the face of Flandrine appeared to him less clear and less mocking.

When he could hold his twelve pints, he felt in him only a vague and indefinable reverie.

The evening he went to twenty, he fell into a sort of drowsiness, which was not without charm, and quite forgot Flandrine. In a short time, his face again rivaled the full moon: he became very fat and was perfectly happy.

When Flandrine saw that the lord de Fresnes was not thinking of claiming his hand, it was she who came round about him; but, as he dreamed, his eyes half closed, he did not recognize her, and offered him a pint.

The king of beer was, besides, a good king’s man, who put his happiness in smoking his pipe and drinking his mug at the same table as his subjects. His subjects all imitated his example, and it is from then on that, melancholy smokers, besides stomachs and noses in bloom, the good Flemings spend their lives draining pints without speaking ill of anyone and without thinking of anything.

V

However, thirty years were over, and Belzebub thought of demanding the soul of Cambrinus. The devil will not always touch his debts in no one. Like the creditors from above, he sometimes sends a bailiff.

On the other hand, as the world gets older, becomes worse and gives more work to those below, Beelzebub, in order to suffice, is obliged, from time to time, to make recruits.

To reinforce his staff, he chooses, among the newcomers, the good people who on earth have particularly resembled him.

The judge who had formerly condemned Cambrinus had the honor of passing the devil, and, in memory of his former office, Belzebub resolved to elevate him to the rank of infernal usher.

“Come on, face of ape,” he said to him one morning. The moment has come to signal you with new feats. You will go to the village of Fresnes, and there you will claim in my name the soul of Cambrinus, king of beer. Here is the title.

– Su … Sufficiency, Do … Domine, “answered Jocko. And he took the road to Fresnes at once. He arrived there on the Sunday of the ducasse.

The king of beer had just risen in his turn. He saw the emissary of Beelzebub coming from afar, recognized him, and suspected what was bringing him.

VI

It was about six o’clock, and the people were leaving the table having drunk and eaten since midday. Some were spreading in cabarets to digest by smoking a pipe. Others played bowling or raven, or else bricotiau.

The envoy of Beelzebub addressed a circle of drinkers sitting at the door of the estaminet of the Grand St. Lawrence, patron of glassmakers.

At this moment, dig, din, don! a sheaf of notes burst into the air like a rocket, then the carillon began to play:

Hello, my friend Vincent,

Health, how is it?

The judge immediately jumped like a gigantic puppet.

“What … what do I have? He said, and nothing was a buffoon like the furious face with which he was fidgeting.

All the Fresnois gathered together, holding the ribs with laughter.

Ah! what a nose he has! ‘

then played the chime, and two hundred voices sang in chorus:

Ah! what a nose he has!

as long as the dancer fell to the ground, exhausted and out of breath. The chime was silent.

As Jocko complained of a horrible thirst, he was brought a mug of beer which he emptied at one stroke.

Having always liked to raise his elbow, he drank a second, then a third, then a crowd of others with his good friends the Fresnois.

By dint of drinking, he completely forgot his mission, and when, towards the fiftieth mug, the heads warmed up and the hops began, as they say at home, to pass the poles, he was suddenly seized with a gay access been crazy.

He got up, took the pots, the cans, and the glasses, threw everything on the pavement, threw the table and cover over it, then began to dance on his own, claiming the music loudly.

The Fresnois all ran behind him in single file: he made several rounds of the place on the air of the Codaqui, and took the band out of the village, a quarter of a league away.

He finally fell on the road, tired and completely out of action. He was laid down against a haystack, and slept there for three days and three nights without debriding.

When he awoke, he was so ashamed that he did not dare to go back to Fresnes or go back to hell. Not knowing where to go, he saw an empty purse that a poor man was tending to passers-by. He went in and hid there so well that he is still there.

And from that comes a common saying of a penniless man that he houses the devil in his purse.

VII

Lord de Fresnes continued to carillon and brew beer for nearly a hundred years, with no further news of hell. As he isthat the devil never lost anything, Belzebuth hoped to repel the soul of the duke of Brabant on the day of his death; but when the supreme moment came, in the place of his debtor, he found only a barrel of beer; he was well caught.

Was it because of the effect of the drink of forgetfulness, or did Belzébuth seek revenge for the trick Cambrinus had played him? The memory of the king of beer was soon lost in Fresnes and in all the Netherlands.

The Douaiiens still celebrate the feast of their old Gayant, but it is a long time ago that Cambrai no longer walks the wicker giant who represented Cambrinus, the royal founder of the city.

It is among the Prussians that the memory of Bacchus of hops has been preserved. There, in each tavern, you will see, in the place of honor, a magnificent image representing, sitting on a barrel, a brave knight dressed in a purple cloak lined with ermine. The left hand leans on a crown and a sword; the right raises triumphantly a mug of foaming beer.

It is Cambrinus, the king of beer, as he was in his lifetime, with his beautiful figure, his long golden hair, and his long golden beard.

Students annually appoint bierkœnig most outspoken drinker of them, and only they are entitled to this great honor of sitting under the portrait of the monarch sparkling.

The people of Fresnes will be very surprised when they read this truthful story. Just as they did not believe in the genius of Cambrinus before, they will not believe his glory today, and when he who has written these lines will go and drink a pint at the Ducasse de Fresnes, we will not hesitate to to call him an impostor, so true is it that no one is a prophet in his country!

Unfortunately, from what I can tell, most of Deulin’s works have not been published in an English translation, which is a shame. I’d love to read more of his “Tales of a Beer Drinker” and its sequel “Tales of King Cambrinus.”

Kurt Vonnegut’s Mile High Malt

November 11, 2018 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Today is the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., one of my favorite authors. I wrote about him when he passed away in 2007 in a post entitled So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut’s Beer Heritage and detailed his relationship with John Hickelooper’s father and a beer Wynkoop later made based on Vonnegut’s grandfather’s recipe. There were essentially two different beer stories involving the Wynkoop Brewing and Vonnegut, and I’ve learned a little more about them over the past decade.

The first one was in the mid-1990s, when the Denver Public Library held a special event around 1996 (sources vary between 1995-97) called Denver Public Libation to commemorate the opening of the new library. The library partnered with Wynkoop, who invited several well-known authors to write mini-stories to be printed on the labels. Some of the writers included Clive Cussler, Allen Ginsberg, and Hunter Thompson, among others. Vonnegut also wrote something for the event. His piece was 160 words and entitled “Merlin,” and tells the story of “the unfortunate events that ensue when the master wizard casts a spell that equips the Knights of the Round Table with Thompson submachine guns.” Despite its short length, I cannot find a copy of it anywhere, and it doesn’t appear to have been reprinted anywhere else. It’s listed in his bibliography as having only been “Serialized on bottles of Denver Public Libation Ale, made by Wynkoop Brewing Company.”

John Hickenlooper wrote about the story in “The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics:”

The second instance was around the same time, when Wynkoop created a beer with Vonnegut based on his grandfather’s recipe. It was called Wynkoop Mile High Malt.

Vonnegut himself detailed the experience in his 1997 semi-autobiographical novel “Timequake.”

The label artwork was based on a self-portrait by Vonnegut, who was also an artist.

And in the book “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut,” by Kurt Vonnegut and William Richard Allen, he explains more about his grandfather’s beer.

On November 11, 2007, Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver, reintroduced Kurt’s Mile High Malt to celebrate the late author’s birthday. The beer was originally created by Vonnegut’s grandfather, Albert Lieber, of the Indianapolis Brewery, using coffee as the secret ingredient. Kurt’s Mile High Malt was first brewed in 1996 thanks to Wynkoop Founder and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a friend of Vonnegut’s. At Vonnegut’s request, coffee was added to the Mile High Malt, making it a close recreation of his grandfather’s original.

Then, in 2014, they released it again for the brewery’s 25th anniversary. It was part of their “Even-Smaller Batch Series” and was even canned.

Myles na Gopaleen, Inventor Of Stout Trousers

October 5, 2018 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Today is the birthday of Irish novelist, playwright and satirist Brian O’Nolan, who was “considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. Born in Strabane, County Tyrone, he is regarded as a key figure in postmodern literature.” Under the pen name Flann O’Brien, he wrote two influential novels, “At Swim-Two-Birds” and “The Third Policeman.” In 1940, he began writing a daily column for The Irish Times entitled the “Cruiskeen Lawn,” which trasnaltes roughly as “the full little jug.” He originally started writing it under the pseudonym “An Broc” (the badger) but quickly changed it to “Myles na gCopaleen” and finally “Myles na Gopaleen,” which is the one that stuck. He continued writing it until shortly before he died in 1966. Many of them have been collected in book form, and today I was perusing “The Best of Miles,” published in 1968, and discovered this little gem in a chapter entitled “Research Bureau,” about his patented new “Stout Trousers,” that would allow a person to conceal eight bottles of stout in his pants.

“Before the leaves of autumn fall, the Research Bureau, spurred on by the exhortations of Sir Myles na Gcopaleen (the da) will have provided new patent emergency trousers for the plain people of Ireland. These garments, conventional enough in appearance, will be fitted with long eel-like pockets reaching down to the ankles. The pockets will be the exact diameter of a bottle of stout and not by any coincidence, for they are designed to deal with the nuisance of those brown-paper Saturday-night parcels. It will be possible to stow four shots in each leg. At first, walking in the ‘loaded’ position will necessarily be rather slow and straight-legged but practice will tell in the long-run, which should be undertaken only after short runs have been mastered.

What will happen if a man gets an accidental blow in the leg and has his bottles smashed? Nothing. The pockets are stout-proof and the beer will lie safely in the bottom until it can be syphoned into a guest’s mouth, in the privacy of the home. Indeed, many men, disdaining the rather precious affectation of bottles, will have their trousers filled with draught stout or porter and saunter home on their puffy, tubular and intoxicating legs. Where bottles are discarded, however, one must be careful to avoid overcrowded trams and ‘buses. Should a fat lady sit down beside you and crush you with her great girth to make way for her loud children, great cascades of stout may emerge from your pockets, ascending to the roof and drenching everybody with the frothy brew.”

I’m not really sure why nobody ever made Stout Trousers for real. This photo below is the closest I could find of what I imagine the pants would look like.

Historic Beer Birthday: John Taylor, The Bard of Beer

August 24, 2018 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Today is the birthday of John Taylor, who was nicknamed “The Bard of Beer,” although he apparently referred to himself as “The Water Poet.” (August 24, 1578-1653). He was born in Gloucester, and “after his waterman apprenticeship he served (1596) in Essex’s fleet, and was present at Flores in 1597 and at a siege of Cadiz.”

Here’s part of his biography from his Wikipedia page:

He spent much of his life as a Thames waterman, a member of the guild of boatmen that ferried passengers across the River Thames in London, in the days when the London Bridge was the only passage between the banks. He became a member of the ruling oligarchy of the guild, serving as its clerk; it is mainly through his writings that history is familiar with the watermen’s disputes of 1641–42, in which an attempt was made to democratize the leadership of the Company. He details the uprisings in the pamphlets Iohn Taylors Manifestation … and To the Right Honorable Assembly … (Commons Petition), and in John Taylors Last Voyage and Adventure of 1641.

He was a prolific, if rough-hewn writer (a wit rather than a poet), with over one hundred and fifty publications in his lifetime. Many were gathered into the compilation All the Workes of John Taylor the Water Poet (London, 1630; facsimile reprint Scholar Press, Menston, Yorkshire, 1973); augmented by the Spenser Society’s edition of the Works of John Taylor … not included in the Folio edition of 1630 (5 volumes, 1870–78). Although his work was not sophisticated, he was a keen observer of people and styles in the seventeenth century, and his work is often studied by social historians. An example is his 1621 work Taylor’s Motto, which included a list of then-current card games and diversions.

He achieved notoriety by a series of eccentric journeys: for example, he travelled from London to Queenborough in a paper boat with two stockfish tied to canes for oars, described in “The Praise of Hemp-Seed”,[2] which was re-enacted in 2006. From his journey to Scotland in 1618, on which he took no money, Taylor published his Pennyless Pilgrimage. (Ben Jonson walked to Scotland in the same year.)

Taylor is one of the few credited early authors of a palindrome: in 1614, he wrote “Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel.” He wrote a poem about Thomas Parr, a man who supposedly lived to the age of 152. He was also the author of a constructed language called Barmoodan.

Many of Taylor’s works were published by subscription; i.e., he would propose a book, ask for contributors, and write it when he had enough subscribers to undertake the printing costs. He had more than sixteen hundred subscribers to The Pennylesse Pilgrimage; or, the Moneylesse Perambulation of John Taylor, alias the Kings Magesties Water-Poet; How He TRAVAILED on Foot from London to Edenborough in Scotland, Not Carrying any Money To or Fro, Neither Begging, Borrowing, or Asking Meate, Drinke, or Lodging., published in 1618.

And this is his entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

John Taylor, (born Aug. 24, 1580, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Eng.—died December 1653, London), minor English poet, pamphleteer, and journalist who called himself “the Water Poet.”

The son of a surgeon, Taylor was sent to a grammar school but became, as he said, “mired in Latin accidence” and was apprenticed to a Thames boatman. He served in the navy and saw action at Cádiz (1596) and Flores (1597). Returning to London, he worked as a waterman transporting passengers up and down the River Thames and also held a semiofficial post at the Tower of London for several years. Taylor won fame by making a series of whimsical journeys that he described in lively, rollicking verse and prose. For example, he journeyed from London to Queenborough, Kent, in a paper boat with two stockfish tied to canes for oars and nearly drowned in the attempt. He made other water journeys between London, York, and Salisbury, and The Pennyles Pilgrimage. . . (1618) describes a trip he made on foot from London to Edinburgh without money. In 1620 he journeyed to Prague, where he was received by the queen of Bohemia. His humorous accounts of his journeys won the patronage of Ben Jonson, among others. Taylor also amused the court and the public in his paper war with another eccentric traveler, Thomas Coryate. In 1630 he published 63 pieces in All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet, although he continued to publish prolifically afterward.

When the English Civil Wars began Taylor moved to Oxford, where he wrote royalist pamphlets. After the city surrendered (1645), he returned to London and kept a public house, “The Crown” (later “The Poet’s Head”), until his death.

Here is one of his most beer-centric poems:

The Ex-Ale-Tation of Ale

Beer In “A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English”

August 24, 2018 By Jay Brooks 1 Comment

Yesterday was the birthday of William Ernest Henley, who was an English poet, critic and editor of the late-Victorian era in England.

In looking for a quotation in his poems yesterday, I stumbled upon another work of his, “A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English,” which he wrote with John Stephen Farmer, a British lexicographer, spiritualist and writer. The original dictionary ran to seven volumes and was entitled “Slang and its analogues past and present. A dictionary historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years.” It was first published in 1890, and they continued working on it until 1904.

They appear to have referenced at least 55 earlier dictionaries, published between 1440 and 1900, in compiling their work. In 1912, a single-volume abridged version was also published, and I worked from that one, further abridging it to include only a few select beer-related entries. The abridged version is only 552 pages, and I can only imagine how long the original is. There’s a number of slang terms still in use here, and quite a few I was already familiar with, but most interesting was a large number of terms I was unaware of before this. So like “The Princess Bride,” this is the good parts version, with a selection of the entries having to do with beer, brewing or drinking. There’s a lot of gems here, and I confess I got lost in the text more than a few times. Read it from top to bottom, skip around, skim it for a few tidbits, but whatever you do, I believe you’ll find a wealth of interesting beer and language history.

A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English

(The Good Parts Version)

Abraham Grains. A publican brewing his own beer.
Act of Parliament. Small beer, five pints of which, by an act of Parliament, a landlord was formerly obliged to give gratis to each soldier billeted upon him.
Ale, (1) A merry-making; and occasion for drinking. There were bride-ales, church-ales, clerk-ales, give-ales, lamb-ales, leet-ales. Midsummer-ales, Scot-ales, Whitsun-ales, and several more. (2) An ale-house. Hence alecie (or alecy), drunkenness; ale-blowm (ale-washed or alecied), drunk; ale-draper (whence ale-drapery), an inn-keeper (Grose : cf. ale-yard); ale-spinner, a brewer; ale-knight (ale-stake,
or ale-toast), a tippler, pot-companion; ale-post, a maypole (Grose); ale-passion, a headache; ale-pock, an ulcered grog-blossom (q.v.); ale-crummed, grogshot in the face; ale-swilling, tippling, etc. (1362). (3) In pL, Messrs S. Allsopp and Sons Limited Shares.
Allslops. Allsopp and Sons’ ale. [At one time their brew, formerly
of the finest quality, had greatly deteriorated.]
Angel’s-food. Strong ale. (1597.)
Apron-washings. Porter.
Archdeacon. (Oxford). Merton strong ale.
Arms-and-legs. Small beer: because there is no body in it (Grose).
Audit-ale (or Audit). A special brew of ale: orig. for use on audit days. Univ. (1823.)
Barley. In general colloquial use: thus, oil of barley (or barley – bree, -broth, -juice, -uxiter, or -wine), (1) strong ale, and (2) whisky (Grose); barley -island, an alehouse; John Barley (or Barleycorn), the personification of malt liquor: cf. proverb. Sir John Barleycorn’s the strongest knight;
barley – cup, a tippler; barley-mood (or sick) (1) drunk; and (2) ill-humour caused by tippling; also to have (or wear) a barley-hat (-cap, or -hood) (1500.)
Barrel. 1. A confirmed tippler: also beer-barrel; whence barrel-house (American), a low groggery; barrel-fever, drunkenness (or disease caused by tippling): see Gallon-distemper;
barrel-boarder, a bar loafer. 2. Money used in a political campaign (American politics); spec, that expended for
corrupt purposes : cf. Boodle; barrel-campaign, an election in which bribery is a leading feature: a wealthy candidate for office (c. 1876) is said to have remarked. Let the boys know that there’s a bar’l o’ money ready for ’em, or words to that effect. Never (or the devil) a barrel the better herring, much like, not a pin to choose between them, six of one and half a dozen of the other. (1542.)
Bass. A familiar abbreviation for Bass’ ale, brewed at Burton-on-Trent.
Beer. To drink beer, also, to do a beer. To be in beer, drunk: see Screwed. To think no small beer of oneself, to possess a good measure of self-esteem (1840); see Small-beer.
Beer and Bible. An epithet applied sarcastically to a political party which first came into prominence during the last Beaconsfield Administration, and which was called into being by a measure introduced by the moderate Liberals in 1873, with a view to placing certain restrictions upon the sale of intoxicating rinks. The Licensed Victuallers, an extremely powerful association whose influence extended all over the kingdom, took alarm, and turned to the Conservatives for help in opposing the bill. In the ranks of the latter were numbered the chief brewers; the leaders of the association, moreover, had mostly strong high-church tendencies, while one of them was president of the Exeter Hall organization. The Liberals, noting these facts, nicknamed this alliance the Beer and Bible Association; the Morning Advertiser, the organ of the Licensed Victuallers, was dubbed the Beer and Bible Gazette; and lastly, electioneering tactics ascribed to them the war cry of Beer and Bible I This so-called Beer and Bible interest made rapid strides : in 1870 the Conservatives
were at their low-water mark among the London constituencies; but, in 1880, they had carried seats in the City, Westminster, Marylebone, Tower Ham-lets, Greenwich, and Southwark. A notable exception to this strange fellowship was Mr. Bass [afterwards Lord Bass], of pale-ale fame, who held aloof from opposition to the measure
in question. Anent the nickname Beer and Bible Gazette given to the Morning Advertiser, it may be mentioned that it had already earned for itself a somewhat similar sobriquet. For a long time this paper devoted one-half of its front page to notices of publicans and tavern-keepers; while the other half was filled up with announcements of religious books, and lists of preachers at the London churches and chapels. This gained for the paper the sobriquet of the Gin and Gospel Gazette.
Beer-barrel. The human body: cf. Bacon.
Beeriness (or Beery), pertaining to a state of (or approaching to) drunkenness, intoxicated, fuddled with beer: see Screwed (1857).
Beer-jerker (or -slinger). A tippler: see Lushington.
Beerocracy, subs, (common). The brewing and beer-selling interest: a humorous appellation in imitation of aristocracy: cf. Mobocracy, Cottonocracy, etc.
Belch. Beer, especially poor beer: because of its liability to cause eructation. One of Shakespeare’s characters in Twelfth Night is Sir Toby Belch, a reckless, roystering, jolly knight of the Elizabethan period.
Belcher. 1. A neckerchief named after Jim Belcher, a noted pugilist: the ground is blue, with white spots: also any handkerchief of a similar pattern (1812). 2. A ring: with the crown and V.R. stamped upon them. 3. A beer drinker, a hard drinker (1598).
Belly-vengeance. Sour beer: as apt to cause gastralgia : Fr., pisain de clieval.
Bemused. Fuddled, in the stupid stage of drinkenness: see Screwed: usually bemused with beer (Pope).
Benbouse. Good beer (1567).
Bend. To tipple, drink hard (Jamieson) (1758). Above one’s bend, above one’s ability (power or capacity), out of one’s reach, above one’s hook: in U.S.A. above my huckleberry (q.v.).
Bilgewater. Bad beer.
Bitter. A glass of beer. To do a bitter, to drink a glass of bitter: originally (says Hotten) an Oxford term: varied by, to do a beer.
Black-and-tan. Porter (or stout) and ale, mixed in equal quantities.
Black Jack. 1. A leathern jug for beer, usually holding two gallons (1591).
Blue-cap. 1, A Scotchman (1596). 2. A kind of ale (1822).
Brighton Tipper. A particular brew of ale.
Brown. 1. A halfpenny: see Rhino (1812). 2. Porter: an abbreviation of Brown Stout.
Bub. 1. Strong drink of any kind: usually applied to malt liquor. To take bub and grub, to eat and drink (1671).
Bubber. 1. A hard drinker, confirmed tippler: see Lushington: Fr., bibassier (1653). 2. A drinking bowl (1696). 3. A public-house thief (1785).
Bubbing. Drinking, tippling (1678).
Bumclink. In the Midland counties inferior beer brewed for haymakers and harvest labourers.
Bung-juice. Beer.
Bunker. Beer: see Drinks.
Cakes and Ale. A good time: also Cakes and cheese.
Call bogus. A mixture of rum and spruce beer, an American beverage (Grose).
Cascade. 1. Tasmania beer: because manufactured from cascade water: cf. Artesian. 2. A trundling gymnastic performance in pantomime. As verb, to vomit (1771).
Cauliflower. 1. A clerical wig supposed to resemble a cauliflower; modish in the time of Queen Anne. 2. The foaming head of a tankard of beer. In Fr., linge or faux-col.
Clink. 4. A very indifferent beer made from the gyle of malt and the sweepings of hop bins, and brewed especially for the benefit of agricultural labourers in harvest time. (1588).
Cocktail. 4. (American). A drink composed of spirits (gin, brandy, whisky, etc.), bitters,
crushed ice, sugar, etc., the whole whisked briskly until foaming, and then drunk ‘hot.’ As adj., (1) under-
bred, wanting in ‘form’ (chiefly of horses). (2) Fresh, foaming: of beer.
Cold-blood. A house licensed for the sale of beer, not to be drunk on the premises.
Cooler. 1. A woman (1742). 2. A prison: see Cage. 3. Ale or stout after spirits and water: sometimes called Putting the beggar on the gentleman; also Damper (q.v.) (1821).
Copus. A wine or beer cup: commonly imposed as a fine upon those who talked Latin in hall or committed other breaches of etiquette. Dr. Johnson derives it from episcopus, and if this be correct it is doubtless the same as bishop.
Dash. 1. A tavern waiter. 2. (common). A small quantity, a drink; a go (q.v.).
Dead. An abbreviation of dead certainty. As adj., stagnant, quiet (of trade), flat (as of beer or aerated waters after exposure), cold, good, thorough, complete (1602).
Dog’s-nose. A mixture of gin and beer: see Drinks.
Drinks. The subjoined hosts will be of interest. Invitations to drink — What’ll you have? Nominate your pizen! Will you irrigate? Will you tod? Wet your whistle? How’ll you have it? Let us stimulate! Let’s drive another nail! What’s your medicine? Willst du trinken? Try a little anti-abstinence? Twy (zwei) lager! Your whisky’s waiting. Will you try a smile? Will you take a nip? Let’s get there. Try a little Indian? Come and see your pa? Suck some com juice? Let’s liquor up. Let’s go and see the baby. Responses to invitations to drink. — Here’s into your face! Here’s how! Here’s at you! Don’t care if I do. Well, I will. I’m thar! Accepted, unconditionally. Well, I don’t mind. Sir, your most. Sir, your utmost. You do me proud I Yes, sir-ree! With you — yes I Anything to oblige.
Elbow-crooker. A hard drinker.
English Synonyms: borachio, boozington, brewer’s horse, bubber, budger, mop, lushington, worker of the cannon, wet – quaker, soaker, lapper, pegger, angel altogether, bloat, ensign -bearer, fiddle – cup, sponge, tun, toss – pot, swill-pot, wet subject, shifter, potster, swallower, pot- walloper, wetster, dramster, drinkster, beer-barrel, gin-nums, lowerer, moist ‘un, drainist, boozer, mopper-up, piss-maker, thirstington.
English Burgundy. Porter: see Drinks.
Flip. I. Hot beer, brandy, and sugar; also, says Grose, called Sir Cloudesley after Sir Cloudesley Shovel.
Full. 1. Drunk: see Screwed.
Gatter. Beer; also liquor generally. Shant of gatter, a pot of beer: Fr., moussante: see Drinks.
Growler. A four-wheeled cab: cf . Sulky. English synonyms: birdcage, blucher, bounder, fever-trap, flounder-and-dab (rhyming), four-wheeler, groping hutch, mab (an old hackney), rattler, rumbler. To rush (or work) the growler, to fetch beer (workman’s).
Gutter-alley (or lane). 1. The throat. All goes doum gutter-lane. He spends all on his stomach. English synonyms: Beer Street, common sewer, drain, funnel. Gin Lane, gulf-gullet, gully-hole, gutter, Holloway, Peck Alley, Red Lane, the Red Sea, Spew Alley, swallow, thrapple, throttle, whistle. 2. A urinal.
Half-and-half. Equal quantities of ale and porter : cf. Four-half and Drinks (1824). As adj., half-drunk, half-on (q.v.): see Screwed. Half-and-half -coves (men, hoys, etc.), cheap or linsey-woolsey dandies, half-bucks (q.v.), half- tigers (q.v.).
Half-seas Over. Loosely applied to various degrees of inebriety: formerly, half way on one’s course, or towards attainment: see Screwed. [In its specific sense Gifford says, A corruption of the Dutch op-zee zober, over-sea beer, a strong heady beverage introduced into Holland from England. Up-zee Freese is Friezeland beer. The Grerman zavber means strong beer, and bewitchment.
Half-slewed. Parcel drunk: see Screwed.
Head. (2) to froth malt liquors: e.g. Put a head on it. Miss, addressed to the barmaid, is a request to work the engine briskly, and make the liquor take on a cauliflower (q.v.).
Heavy-wet. 1. Malt Hquor: specifically porter and stout: also Heavy: see Drinks (1821). 2. A heavy drinking bout.
Hedge-tavern (or ale-house). A jilting, sharping tavern, or blind alehouse (B. E.).
Hockey. Drunk, especially on stale beer: see Screwed.
Hot-pot. Ale and brandy made hot (Grose).
Hot-tiger. Hot-spiced ale and sherry.
Huckle-my-but. Beer, egg, and brandy made hot (Grose).
Huff-cap (or Huff). 1. Strong ale: from inducing people to set their caps in a bold and huffing style. (Nares) (1579.)
Hull-cheese. Hull-cheese is much like a loaf out of a brewers basket, it is composed of two simples, malt and water, in one compound, and is cousin germane to the mightiest ale in England’ (John Taylor).
Hum. 1. A kind of strong liquor: probably a mixture of beer and spirits, but also appUed to old, mellow, and very strong beer: also Hum-cap (1616).
Humming. Strong — applied to drink; brisk — applied to trade; hard — applied to blows. Humming
October, the specially strong brew from the new season’s hops, stingo (q.v.) (1696).
Humpty-dumpty. 2. Ale boiled with brandy (1696).
Jerry-shop. A beer-house: also jerry.
John-Barleycorn. Beer: see Drinks (1791).
Kiddleywink. A small village shop; and, 3. specifically (in the West country), an ale-house.
Knock-down (or Knock-me-down). Strong ale, stingo (q.v.), also, gin (1515). As adj., rowdy (1760).
Lager Beer. To think no lager beer of oneself: see Small beer.
Lamb’s-wool. Hot ale, spiced, sweetened, and mixed with the pulp of roasted apples (1189).
Legs-and-arms. Bodiless beer.
Lift-leg. Strong ale, stingo (q.v. ).
Lounce. A drink: specifically a pint of beer: i.e. allowance.
Lull. Ale (1636).
Lush. 1. Drink: from Lushington, a once well-known London brewer: see Drinks. 2. A drinking bout. 3. (Eton College), a dainty. As verb, (1) to drink, and (2) to stand treat. English synonyms: to barley-bree, to beer, to bend, to blink, to boose, to bub, to budge, to cover, to crack (or crush) a bottle (a quart, or cup), to crook, to crook (lift, or tip) the elbow (or little finger), to damp, to damp one’s mug, to dip, to dip one’s beak (or nose), to disguise oneself, to do a dram (or wet), to drown the shamrock, to flicker, to flush, to fuddle, to gargle, to give a bottle a black eye, to guttle, to guzzle, to go and see a man (or — of women — one’s pa), to grog, to have, get, or take an ante-lunch, a little anti-abstinence, an appetiser, a ball, a bead, a bit of tape, a bosom friend, a bucket, a bumper, a big reposer, a chit-chat, a cheerer, a cinder, a cobbler, a corker, a cooler, some corn juice, a damp, something damp, a damper, a dannie, a drain, a dram, a doch-an-dorroch, a digester, an eye-opener, an entr’acte, a fancy smile, a flash, a flip, a forenoon, a go, a hair of the dog that bit one, a heeltap, an invigorator, a Johnny, a jorum, a leaf of the old author, a morning rouser, a modicum, a nip, or nipperkin, a night-cap, a nut, one’s medicine, a pistol shot, a pony, a pill, a quantum, a quencher, a refresher, a revelation, a rouser, a reposer, a smile, a swig, a sleeve-button, a something, a slight sensation, a shant, a shout, a sparkler, a settler, a shift, a stimulant, a sneaker, a snifter, a soother, a thimbleful, a tift, a taste, a toothful, a Timothy, a warmer, a willy-wacht, to huff, to irrigate, to knock about the bub, to lap, to lap the gutter, to liquor, to liquor up, to load in, to look thro’ a glass, to lower, to lug, to make fun, to malt, to moisten (or soak) the chaffer (clay, or lips), to mop, to mop- up, to mug, to peg, to potato, to prime oneself, to pull, to put (or drive) another nail in one’s coffin, to read the maker’s name, to revive, to rince, to rock, to save a life, to scamander, to LashborougJi.
Lushington. A sot: also lushing man and lushing cove. English synoyms: admiral of the red, after-dinner man, ale-knight, ale-wisp, artilleryman, bang-pitcher, beer-barrel, belch-guts, bencher, bench-whistler, bezzle, bibber, blackpot, bloat, blomboll, boozer, boozington, borachio, bottle-sucker, brandy-face, brewer’s horse, bubber (or bubster), budge (or budger), bung-eye, burster, common sewer, coppernose, drainist, drainpipe, dramster, D-T-ist, elbow-crooker, emperor, ensign – bearer, fish, flag-of-distress, fluffer, fuddle-cap (or fuddler), full-blown angel, gargler, gin-crawler, (or slinger), ginnums, gravel-grinder, grog-blossom, guttle (or guttle-guts), guzzler (or guzzle – guts), high-goer, jolly-nose, lapper, love- pot, lowerer, lug-pot, moist-‘un, mooner, mop, (or mopper-up), nazie-cove (or mort), nipster, O – be – joyfuUer (or O – be- joyful-merchant), pegger, piss-maker, potster, pot-walloper, pub-ornament, sapper, shifter, sipster, soaker, sponge, swallower, swill-pot (or tub), swigsby, swigster, swipester, swizzle-guts, Thirstington, tipple-arse, toddy-cask, toss-pot, tote, tun, wet-quaker, wet-subject, wetster.
Lush-crib (or ken). A public house, tavern, hotel, club, etc. English synonyms: ale draper’s, black-house, boozer, budging-ken, church, cold-blood house, confectionery, cross-dram, devil’s-house, dive, diving-bell, drum, flash-case (drum, ken, or panny), flat-iron, flatty-ken, gargle-factory, gin-mill, grocery, groggery, grog-shop, guzzle-crib, jerry-shop, hash-shop, hedge-house, kiddly-wink, little church round the comer, lush-house (panny, or ken), lushery, mop-up, mug-house, 0-be-joyful works, panny, patter-crib, piss-factory, pot-house, pub (or public) red-lattice, roosting-ken, rum-mill, shanty, she-been, side-pocket, sluicery, suck-casa, tippling-shop, Tom-and-Jerry shop, whistling-shop, wobble-shop.
Lushy. Drunk: see Screwed.
Mad-dog. Strong ale: see Drinks (1586).
Made-beer (Winchester College). College swipes bottled with rice, a few raisins, sugar, and nutmeg to make it up (Mansfield).
Malt. To drink beer (1828). To have the malt above the wheat (water, or meal), to be drunk: see Screwed (1767).
Malt-worm (bug, or horse). A tippler, Lushington (q.v.) (1551).
Merry-go-down. Strong ale, stingo (q.v.): see Drinks (1530).
Mother-in-law. A mixture of old and bitter ales. Mother-in-law’s bit, a small piece, mothers-in-law being supposed not apt to overload the stomachs of their husband’s children (Orose).
Mughouse. An alehouse: see Lush-crib (1710).
Mumper’s-hall. A hedge tavern, beggar’s alehouse (Orose).
Nale. An alehouse.
Nap. 4. Ale, strong beer: an abbreviation of nappy (q.v.).
Nappy. Strong ale: also napping-gear. As adj. (1) strong or heady; (2) drunk (1593).
Never-fear. Beer.
Nickum. A sharper; also a rooking ale-house or innkeeper, vintner, or any retailer (JS. E.).
Nippitate. Strong drink, especially ale : also Nippitato and Nippitatum (1575).
Norfolk-nog. A kind of strong ale (1726).
Oats-and-barley. Charley.
October. 1. The best ale : spec, ale or cider brewed in October. 2. Blood. Odd. Strange, peculiar, difficult (1602.)
Oil. Used in humorous or sarcastic combination : e.g. oil of barley, beer.
P and Q. To the P. and Q, to be of the first quahty, good measure (1612). To mind one’s P’s and Q’s, to be careful and circumspect in behaviour, exact. [Of uncertain origin; amongst suggested derivations are (1) the difficulty experienced by children in distinguishing between p and q; and (2) the old custom of alehouse tally, marking p for pint, and q for quart, care being necessary to avoid over- or under-charge. Probably both in combination with the phrase, to be p and q (q.v.), have helped to popularise the expression] (1779)
Perkin. 1. Weak cider or perry (Orose). 2. Beer. [From Barclay, Perkin & Co.]
Pharaoh. 1. A corruption of faro (1732). 2. A strong ale or beer: also Old Pharaoh (1685).
Pong. Beer: also Pongdow or Pongllorum. As verb, (1) to drink; (2) to vamp a part, or (circus), to perform; (3) to talk, gas (q.v.).
Pot. 1. A quart: the quantity contained in a pot: whence as verb, to drink: also (American) to potate; potting, boozing (q.v.); potations (recognised), a drinking bout; pot-Twuse (or shop), a beer-shop, a Lush-crib (q.v.); pot-house (or coffee-house) politician, an ignorant, irresponsible spouter of politics; pot-companion, (1) a cup-comrade, and (2) an habitual drunkard : as also, potfury (also, drunkenness), -knight, -head, -leach, -man, -polisher, -sucker, loaUoper, potator, potster, toss-pot, and rob-pot; pot-punishment, compulsory tippling; pot-quarrel, a drunken squabble; pot-sick (or -shot), drunk; pot-sure (-hardy, or -valiant), emboldened by liquor: cf. Dutch courage; pot-bllied, fat, bloated in stomach, as from guzzling: also pot-belly (or guts),’ a big-bellied one; pot-revel, a drunken frolic; potmania (or potomania), dipsomania; Sir (or Madam) Pint-pot, a host or hostess; pot-boy (or man), a barscullion: whence pot-boydom.
Proof. The best ale at Magdalen, Oxford.
Purge. Beer, swipes (q.v.).
Purko. Beer. [Barclay, Perkins, and Co.]
Purl. 1. Beer infused with wormwood. 2. Beer warmed nearly to boiling point, and flavoured with gin, sugar, and ginger. Purl-man, a boating vendor of purl to Thames watermen (1680).
Red-lattice (or Lettice). An ale-house sign. Hence red-lattice phrases, pothouse talk; also green lattice; red-grate, tavern or brothel, or both combined (1596).
Reeb. Beer: top of reeb, a pot of beer.
Rob-pot. A drunkard, malt-worm (q.v.) (1622).
Rot-gut. Poor drink: generic: spec, bad beer or alcohol: also rotto (1597).
Screwed (or Screwy). Drunk, tight (q.v.). Synonyms: [Further lists will be found under Drinks, Drunk, D.T.’s, Gallon-distemper. Lush, Lush-crib, and Lushington.] To be afflicted, afloat, alecied, all at sea, all mops-and-brooms, in one’s armour, in one’s altitudes, at rest, Bacchi plenum, battered, be-argered, beery, bemused, a bit on, blind, bloated, blowed, blued, boozed, bosky, a brewer, bright in the eye, bubbed, budgy, huffy, bung – eyed, candy, canon (or cannon), chirping – merry, chucked, clear, cfinched, concerned, corked, corkscrewed, corky, corned, crooked, in one’s cups, cup-shot, cut, dagged, damaged, dead – oh! disguised, disorderly, doing the Lord (or Emperor), done over, down (with barrel-fever: see Gallon-distemper), dull in the eye, full of Dutch- courage, electrified, elephant’s – trunk (rhyming), elevated, exalted, far gone, feeling funny (or right royal), fettled (or in good fettle), fighting-tight (or drunk), flawed, floored, fluffed, flummoxed, flushed, flustered, flustrated, flying-high, fly-blown, fogged (or foggy), fou (Scots), on fourth, foxed, fresh, fuddled, full, full-flavoured, full to the bung, fuzzy, gay, gilded, glorious, grape-shot, gravelled, greetin’- fou’, groggy, hanced, half-seas-over, happy, hard-up, hazy, heady, hearty, helpless, hiccius-doccius, hickey, high, hockey, hoodman, in a difficulty (see Gallon – distemper), incog, inspired, jagged, jolly, jug-bitten, kennurd (back slang, drunk), all keyhole, kisk, knocked – up, leary, hon drunk, in Liquor-pond Street-loaded, looking lively, lumpy, lushy, making indentures with one’s legs, malted, martin drunk, mashed, mellow, miraculous, mixed, moony, mopped, moppy, mortal, muckibus, muddled, mugged, muggy, muzzy, nappy, nase (or nazy), noddy – headed, noggy, obfuscated, oddish, off (off at the nail, or one’s nut), on (also on the bend, beer, batter, fuddle, muddle, sentry, skyte spree, etc.: see Flare-up and Floored), out (also out of funds, register, altitudes, etc.), overcome, overseen, overshot, over – sparred, overtaken, over the bay, palatic, paralysed, peckish, a peg too low, pepst, pickled, piper – drunk (or merry), ploughed, poddy, podgy, potted-off, pot-shot, pot-sick, pot-valiant, primed, pruned, pushed, queered, quick – tempered, raddled, rammaged, ramping-mad, rather touched, rattled, rellng (or tumbling), ripe, roaring, rocky, salubrious, scammered, scooped, sewn up, shaky, three (or four) sheets in the wind, shot, shot in the neck, slewed, smeekit, smelling of the cork, snapped, snuffy, snug, so, soaked, sow-drunk, spiffed, spoony – drimk, spreeish, sprung, squiffed (or squiffy), stale-drunk, starchy, swattled, swiggled, swilled, swinnied, swine-drunk, swiped (or swipey), swivelly, swizzled, taking it easy, tangle-footed, tap-shackled, taverned (also hit on the head by a tavern bitch, or to have swallowed a tavern token), teeth under, thirsty, tight, tipsy, top-heavy, topsy-boosy, tosticated, under the influence, up a tree, up in one’s hat, waving a flag of defiance, wet, wet – handed, what- nosed, whipcat (Florio), whittled, winey, yappish (yaupy or yappy). Also, to have a guest in the attic, the back teeth well afloat, a piece of bread and cheese in the head, drunk more than one has bled, the sun in one’s eyes, a touch of boskiness, a cup too much, a brick in the hat, a drop in the eye, got the flavour, a full cargo aboard, a jag on, a cut leg, the malt above the wheat, one’s nuff, one’s soul in soak, yellow fever. Also, to have been barring too much, bitted by a bam mouse, driving the brewer’s horse, biting one’s name in, dipping rather deep, making M’s and T’s, paid, painting the town red, shaking a cloth in the wind. Also, to wear a barley cap, to cop the brewer, to let the finger ride the thumb, to lap the gutter, to need a reef taken in, to see the devil, to take a shard (or shourd), to shoe the goose, to see one apiece.
Shandy-gaff. Beer and ginger-beer (1853).
Shant. A quart; a pot : e.g. shant of gatter, a pot of beer.
Shanty. 1. A rough and tumble hut. 2. A public-house. 3. A brothel. 4. A quart. 5. Beer money; also as verb, (1) to dwell in a hut, (2) to take shelter. 6. See Chantey.
Shearer’s Joy (Australian). Colonial beer.
She-oak. Colonial brewed ale.
Short-pot. ‘False, cheating Potts used at Ale-houses, and Brandy-shops’ (B. E.).
Single-broth (or tiff). Small beer: see Screwed (1635).
Sir Walter Scott. A pot of beer.
Six-and-tips. Whisky and small beer (1785).
Skin-disease. Fourpenny ale.
Small beer. 1. Weak beer. 2. trifles; to chronicle small beer, (1) to engage in trivial occupations, and (2) to retail petty scandal; to think small beer of anything, to have a poor opinion of it. Also small things. As adj., petty (1604).
Sour-ale. To mend like sour-ale in summer, to get worse.
Stingo. Strong liquor: spec, humming ale (q.v.).
Stitch-back. Very strong ale, stingo (q.v.).
Stout. 1. Very strong malt-drink (B. E.). 2. In pl., Guinness’s shares. Stout across the narrow, full bellied, corpulent.
Stride-wide. Ale. [Halliwell: mentioned in Harrison’s England, 202.]
Swankey. Any weak tipple: spec, small beer: also (fishermen’s) a mixture of water, molasses, and vinegar.
Swell-nose. Strong ale, stingo (q.v.) (1515).
Swinny. Drunk: see Screwed: also swinnied.
Swipe. 1. A blow delivered with the full length of the arm; as verb, to drive (q.v.), to bang: hence swiper, a hard hitter, a slogger (q.v.), a knocker-out (q.v.): at Harrow, to birch (1200). 2. In pi., thin, washy beer, small beer: also (schools) any poor tipple: as verb, to drink; hence Swish.
Swizzle (or Swizzy). 1. Generic for drink; also, 2. various compounded drinks — rum and water, ale and beer mixed, and (West Indies) what is known in America as a cocktail. As verb, to tope, to swill (q.v.);
and stoizded, drink; also see Screwed (1850).
Taplash. 1. Bad, thick beer: cask-dregs or tap-droppings. Hence, as adj., poor, washy, trivial (1630), Hence, 2. a publican: in contempt.
Tenant at will. One whose wife usually fetches him from the ale-house (Grose).
Three-threads (or thirds). Half common ale, and the rest stout or double beer (B. E.); three-thirds, and denoted a draught, once popular, made up of a third each of ale, beer, and ‘two-penny,’ in contradistinction to ‘half-and-half’; this beverage was superseded in 1722 by the very similar porter or ‘entire’ (Chambers).
Tiddlywink. An unlicensed house: a pawnbroker’s (also leaving-shop, q.v.), a beershop, a brothel, etc. As verb, to spend more than prudence or custom will sanction.
Tiff. 1. Small beer, swipes (q.v.). Hence, a moderate draught: a tiff of punch, a small bowl of punch; as verb, to drink: tiffing, eating and drinking out of meal time (Grose).
Tipper. 1. A special brew of ale: named after Mr. Thomas Tipper: also Brighton Tipper (1843). 2. See Tip.
Tomato Can Vag. Draining the dregs of an empty beer-barrel into a tomato can.
Top-o-reeb. A pot of beer. Top-joint, a pint of beer.
Toss. As verb, to drink at a draught, to gulp: e.g. to toss a can of beer: also to toss off: cf. Toast; hence toss-pot – a drunkard: see Lushington; tossed (or tosticated), drunk: see Screwed (1660).
Trickett. A long drink of beer. [New South Wales, after Trickett, the champion sculler.]
Twopenny. 1. Beer; sold at 2d. a quart: cf. Fourpenny, etc. (1771).
Upsee-Dutch (Upsee-English, Upsee-Freese). Conjecturally a kind of heady beer qualified by the name of the brew. Hence upsee-freesy, etc., drunk: see Screwed; to drink upsee-Dutch (English, etc.), to drink deeply, or in true toper fashion according to the custom of the country named. Also Upsees (1600).
Water-bewitched. Weak lap (q.v.) of any kind: spec, (modem) tea very much watered down, but orig. (1672) very thin beer: also water-damaged: cf. Husband’s-tea.
Whistle-belly-vengeance. Bad beer, swipes (q.v.); hence indifferent lap (q.v.) of any kind: cf. Whip-belly-vengeance.
Whistle-cup. A drinking cup with a whistle attached: the last toper capable of using the whistle received the cup as a prize. Also a tankard fitted with a whistle, so arranged as to sound when the vessel was emptied, thus warning the drawer that more liquor was required.
Whistle-drunk. Very drunk indeed (1749).
Whistle-jacket. Small beer.

Synonyms for beer (including stout). Act of Parliament; artesian, barley, belch, belly-vengeance, bevy or bevvy, brownstone, bum-clink, bung- juice, bunker, cold-blood, down (see Up); English burgundy (porter), gatter, half-and-half, heavy-wet, John Barleycorn, knock-down or knock-me-down, oil of barley, perkin, ponge, pongelow, or ponjeUo, rosin, rot-gut, sherbet, stingo, swankey, swipes, swizzle, up (bottled ale or stout)

Historic Beer Birthday: Emile A.H. Seipgens

August 16, 2018 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Today is the birthday of Emile Anton Hubert Seipgens (August 16, 1837-June 25, 1896). Seipgens was born in Roermond, the Netherlands. He was the son of a brewer, and after school and some failed jobs, joined his father at the brewery in 1856. By 1859, he was running the brewery along with his brother. But apparently he wasn’t happy there, and in 1874 decided to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. Throughout his life, he wrote poetry, novels, plays and much more.

Here’s a translated biography of his literary career, from Literary Zutphen:

Emile (Anton Hubert) Seipgens, born August 16, 1837 in Roermond, from 1876 until 1883 teacher of German at the Rijks HBS in Zutphen. He founded a literary reading companion for his disciples and was a member of the “Circle of scientific maintenance. He lived Nieuwstad A128-2. Seipgens was an outspoken Limburg author. His work – theater, novels and novellas village – is invariably located in Limburg, and sometimes – his songs – even written in Limburg dialect. Some of his best known and most read titles he wrote in his Zutphense period: The chaplain Bardelo (1880), from Limburg. Novellas and Sketches (1881). In this period made Seipgens, who was first trained to be a priest, then was brewer, then teacher, to eventually become a writer, definitively separated from the Catholic Church. He started on the assembly line to write stories, which he published in magazines such as The Guide , Netherlands and Elsevier . One of those stories, Rooien Hannes , had worked to folk drama and staged by the Netherlands Tooneel great success. Later titles are: In and around the small town (1887), along Maas and Trench (1890), The Killer Star (1892), Jean, ‘t Stumpke, Hawioe-Ho (1893), The Zûpers of Bliënbèèk (1894) and A wild Rosary (1894). In 1892 Seipgens secretary of the Society of Dutch Literature in Leiden, and in that place he died 1896. Posthumously published yet his novel on June 25, Daniel (1897) and the beam A Immortellenkrans (1897). Seipgens, which is one of the earliest naturalists of the Netherlands became completely into oblivion, until the late 70s of the last century actually was a small revival. Which among other things led to reprint the novel The chaplain Bardelo and stories in and around the small town , and to the publication of his biography, written by Peter Nissen: Emile Anton Hubert Seipgens (1837-1896). Of brewer’s son to literary (1987), and the placing of a memorial stone at Seipgens birthplace. But this revival was short-lived. If Emile Seipgens remembered voortleeft, it will have to be on the legend of the rovershoofdman Johann Bückler based ‘operabouffe’ Schinderhannes (1864), which to this day in Roermond is staged!

And here’s another account from “The Humour of Holland,” published in 1894.

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