ambition to emulate Our Saviour in the performance of a miracle similar to
that of Cana, spoke his cabalistic words over the water which he desired
to make potable, it may be argued that a worse product might have resulted
from the process than beer--at any rate from a non-teetotal point of view.
According to another legend, of wider currency, the inventor of beer was
not the apostate apostle, but a more or less mythical king of Brabant,
named Gambrinus. His bine-crowned visage may be seen beaming from the
walls of most tap-rooms in Germany and in those more or less German
provinces which once formed, or should have formed, or still form, that
political desideratum, the "Middle Kingdom." This is a case of _ex
vocabulo fabula_. For Gambrivium is Cambray--the Cambray of the League and
also of early brewing. And "Gambrinus" is either John the Victorious of
Brabant, who fell in a tournament held at Bar-le-Duc on the occasion of
the marriage of Henri, count of that country, with Eleanor, daughter of
our King Edward I., or else--and more probably--it is Jean Sans-Peur of
Burgundy, who, to ingratiate himself with his Flemish subjects, had a
dollar coined, showing a wreath of hop-bine encircling his head--and also
instituted the order of the _Houblon_, giving no little offence thereby to
his loyal clergy. Not that there was anything at all heretical in his act.
No; but the case was really much worse. For the clergy, it turned out, in
those days had a vested interest in beer. That was in the fourteenth
century, when the liquor was still generally brewed without hops, a
mixture of aromatic herbs being used instead, which was in most cases
supplied from episcopal forests. So it was in Brabant. The Bishop of Liege
possessed virtually a monopoly of the trade in _gruyt_, and when Duke John
favoured the cultivation of hops, the bishop's income suffered a serious
diminution. Accordingly, his Eminence remonstrated--just as in our
country, about 1400, and again in 1442, complaint was made to Parliament
of the introduction of that "wicked weed, that would spoil the taste of
drink and endanger the people." In the dioceses of Utrecht and Cologne it
was just the same thing. The bishops fought hard for their _gruyt_ or
_kruet_, using their crosiers as a defensive weapon, but had eventually to
give in. From this it would appear that what King Gambrinus really did
introduce was not beer, but the use in the brewing of it of hops, the
ingredient over which that eminent saint, Abbess Hildegardis of
Rupertusberg, had already pronounced her benediction. St. Hildegardis was
a saint of unquestionable authority, having been specially recognised at
the Council of Treves as a prophetess by St. Bernard and Pope Eugenius IV.
She recommended hops on the ground that, though "heating and drying," and
productive of "a certain melancholy and sadness" (she must have been
thinking of the effects next day), they possess the sovereign virtues of
preventing noxious fermentation and also of preserving the beer. (Burton,
in partial opposition to the saint, asserts that beer--hopped, of
course--"hath an especial virtue _against_ melancholy, as our herbalists
confess.") St. Hildegardis' opinion was given in the twelfth century. That
was not by any means the earliest age of beer; for we find it referred to
in history some centuries before. Whether the inhabitants of Chalcedon,
when they shouted in derision after the Emperor Valens, "Sabajarius!
Sabajarius!"--which has been translated, "drinker of beer"--really
referred to beer, as we now understand it, must appear doubtful. In the
same way, the reputed "beer" of the early Egyptians and Hebrews--alluded
to by Xenophon, Herodotus, and other ancient writers--may or may not have
been beer in our sense. But in the eighth century we find Charlemagne
enjoining brewing in his dominions. In 862 we have Charles the Bald making
to the monks of St. Denis a grant of ninety _boisseaux d'epeautre_ a year
_pour faire de la cervoise_. In 1042 we have Henri I. conferring on the
monks of Montreuil-sur-Marne the valuable right of brewing, and in 1268
St. Louis laying down rules for the guidance of brewers in Paris. Paris
was then, as it now is becoming again--I cannot say that I like the
idea--a very "beery" place. Its brewers, even at a very remote time,
formed a highly respected corporation, using as their insignia and
trade-mark an image of the Holy Virgin--their patron saint--incongruously
enough grouped together with Ceres, both being encircled by the
legend:--_Bacchi Ceres aemula_. No modern Pope would allow such crossing
of the two religions. Ceres was of course in olden time looked upon as the
especial goddess of beer, made of barley, which was after her named
_Cerevisia_. Juvenal mentions _Demetrius_ as its name, derived of course
from Demeter. However, Fischart, a notable German poet, who lived in the
sixteenth century, ascribes its invention to Bacchus, as an intended
substitute for wine wherever there are no grapes. Modern Germany has
produced a very pretty song, which represents Wine as a wonder-working
nobleman, making a triumphal progress in grand style, clad in silk and
gold, and Beer crossing his path as a sturdy but rather perky peasant, in
a frieze jacket and top-boots, challenging him to a thaumaturgic tourney,
as Jannes and Jambres challenged Moses. After an amusing little squabble
the two make friends, and henceforth rule the world in joint sovereignty
and happy unity. At Paris, in the reign of Charles V., we find the local
brewers, twenty-one in number, so wealthy as to be able to pay a million
_ecus d'or_ for their licenses. Under Charles VI., beer had become a
regulation drink at the French court, and we have our own Richard II.
presenting the French king with a "_vaisseau a boire cervoise_." From this
it may be inferred that the famous verselet--
Hops and turkeys, carps and beer,
or, as some rigid Anglican has improved it--
Hops, reformation, bays, and beer
Came to England all in one year--
to wit, the year 1525--is a little wrong in its date, and that beer was
known earlier. After the date named, we know that it soon made its way
into the highest circles. As proof of this we have the one shoe which
Queen Bess carelessly left behind after that lunch, of which beer formed
an item, with which she was regaled on her progress through Sussex, under
the spreading oak still shown in that pretty village of Northiam--
O fair Norjem! thou dost far exceed
Beckley, Peasmarsh, Udimore, and Brede--
which shoe may still be seen, by favour, in the private archaeological
collection at Brickwall House, in company with Accepted Frewen's
toasting-fork.
Saxon descent may have had much to do with the development of our own
peculiar cerevisial taste--taste, that is, for beer with some body and a
good strong flavour of malt. There can be no doubt that, compared with the
produce of other countries, our beer is still the best--if only one's
liver will stand it--the most tasty, the most nourishing--"meat, drink and
cloth," as Sir John Linger puts it--beer which will occasionally "make a
cat speak and a wise man dumb." The Saxons always had a liking for beer
with something in it--not merely "strong water," as Sir Richard l'Estrange
calls the small stuff. The ancient Teutons, we know, were all of them
furious drinkers. Accordingly, not a few of the modern generation hold,
with Luther's Elector of Saxony, that a custom of such very venerable
antiquity ought not to be lightly abandoned. Tacitus writes that the
Germans think it no shame to spend a whole day and night a-drinking. The
Greek Emperor Nicephoras Phorcas told the ambassador of Emperor Otho that
his master's soldiers had no other proficiency but in getting drunk.
Rudolph of Hapsburgh grew vociferous over the discovery of good beer.
"Walk in, walk in!" he shouted, standing at a tavern door in Erfurt,
wholly oblivious of his imperial dignity; "there is excellent beer to be
had inside." And "good King Wenceslas" of our Christmas carol--described
as "good" nowhere else--was an habitual toper, and was "done" accordingly
by the French at Rheims, where he thought more of the wine than of the
treaty which he was negotiating. Henri Quatre would on no account marry a
German wife. "Je croirais," he said, "toujours avoir un pot de vin aupres
de moi." A modern writer, Charles Monselet, says that in Strassburg--in
this respect a typically German town--"tout se ressent de la domination de
la biere." Beer lends its colour to the faces of the inhabitants, to their
hair, to their clothes; to the soil and the houses; and the very women
seem nothing but "walking _chopes_." But the Saxons in particular--not the
modern ones, but those of the North, some of whom found their way into
England--always loved good stout nutritious drink, such as that to which
the German composer Von Flotow ascribes our sturdy robustness:
Das ist das treffliche Elixir,
Das ist das kraeftige Porterbier.
Obsopaeus says of the ancient Saxons:
Coctam Cererem potant _crassosque liquores_.
And an old rhyme, still quoted with gusto, goes to this effect:
Ein echter Sachse wird, wie alle Voelker sagen,
Nie schmal in Schultern sein, noch schlaffe Lenden tragen.
Fragt Einer, welches denn die Ursach' sei:
Er isset Speck und Wurst, und trinket _Mumm_ dabei.
"Mumm" is our own good old "mum," about the meaning of which in an Act of
Parliament there was recently some controversy, when even Mr. Gladstone
did not quite know how to explain it. It is the good, thick, stout,
nourishing beer--_nil spissius illo_--which makes blood and flesh, and
gives strength--"vires praestat et augmentat carnem, generatque cruorem,"
says the school of Salerno. Very presumably it is such beer as this, too,
of which the unnamed witty poet quoted in Percy's "Reliques" writes:
nobilis ale-a
Efficit heroas dignamque heroe puellam.
No doubt beer has had a good many nasty things said about it. The same
school of Salerno lays it down that "crassos humores nutrit cerevisia,
ventrem quoque mollit et inflat." It also affirms that ebriety resulting
from beer is more hurtful than that produced by wine. But, notwithstanding
this, it endorses the advice given by Matthew de Gradibus, which is, to
drink it in preference to wine at the beginning of, or even throughout,
meals, and above all things after any great exertion. "Cerevisia vero
utpote crassior, et ad concoctionem pertinacior, non tam avide rapitur:
quare ab ea potus in principio prandii vel coenae utilius inchoatur.
Cerevisia humores etiam orificio stomachi insidentes abluit, et sitim, quae
ex nimia vini potatione timetur, praeterea et quamlibet aliam mendosam
coercet ac reprimit." To say nothing of the censure pronounced by Crato,
Henry of Avranches, and Wolfram von Eschenbach--that pillar of the Roman
Church, Cardinal Chigi, charitably suggests that if beer had but a little
sulphur added, it would become a right infernal drink. And Moscherosch,
joking on the admixture of pitch with beer, common in his time--possibly
copied from a similar practice applied to wine in the days of ancient
Greece--speaks of "la biere poissee qui habitue au feu de l'enfer." "Pix
intrantibus" used to be a familiar superscription placed for a joke over
tavern doors. Then, again, we have Luther barely qualifying the old German
rhyme--
Gott machte Gutes, Boeses wir:
Er braute Wein, wir brauen Bier--
by laying it down that "Vinum est donatio Dei, cerevisia traditio humana."
And he went so far as to pronounce the leading brewer of his time "Pestis
Germaniae." But this same Luther was himself a zealous beer-toper. He
drank beer, it is on record, when plotting the Reformation with
Melanchthon at Torgau. He called for _Bierseidel_ when Carlstadt came to
the "Bear" at Jena to discuss with him the subject of consubstantiation.
And the two divines used their pewters very freely by way of accentuating
their theological arguments, and, towards the close of the sitting, even
in substitution of them. Luther records with satisfaction, in his "Table
Talk," that many presents reached him from France, Prussia, and Russia, of
"wormwood-beer." And at Worms, where he was pleading the cause of the
reformed faith before a hostile Diet, the one ray of comfort which
pierced through the gloom of his imprisonment was the arrival,
particularly mentioned in his letters, of a small cask of "Eimbeck" beer
from one of the friendly princes. Like our modern M.P.'s annually
exercised about the matter, the German reformer had a fervent zeal for the
"purity of beer"--so fervent, that he actually threatened adulterating
brewers with Divine wrath. He wrote these lines:
Am juengsten Tage wird geschaut
Was jeder fuer ein Bier gebraut.
On the other hand, Cardinal Chigi's Roman anathema is more than
neutralised by any number of benedictions, expressed or implied, from holy
men of his Church. There are the regulations of St. Louis, of St.
Hildegardis, the enlisted interest of the Bishops of Cologne, Utrecht, and
Liege, the patron-saintship of St. Amandus, St. Leonard, St. Adrian, and
the Irish St. Florentius, and, moreover, the very close connection which
from time immemorial monks and religious houses have maintained with
brewing. In olden days they were the brewers _par excellence_. In Lorraine
our English Benedictines of Dieulouard, who maintained themselves in their
monastery near Pont-a-Mousson down to the time of the Revolution, long
possessed an absolute monopoly of brewing, and were famed for their
produce. And M. Reiber will have it that there are still in Germany, at
the present day, _des congregations de moines brasseurs_. Then there is
St. Chrodegang, a near relative of Charlemagne, the great reformer of
monastic orders, who particularly directed--and the rule is still
observed--that monks should be allowed the option of either beer or wine.
And sensible monks, a communicative Carthusian confided to me the other
day, prefer good beer any day to bad wine.
If, in face of all this, neither Romanists nor Protestants can say
anything against beer, much less are Mussulmans in a position to do so.
For Mahomet actually, though he expressly forbids wine, never says a word
in prohibition of beer--thus leaving a convenient loophole to thirsty
Mahommedans, of which French writers tell us that bibulous Algerians
eagerly avail themselves.
From all this it will be seen that, despite teetotal disparagement, beer
comes before the world, so to speak, with very respectable credentials,
entitling it to a fairly good reception. Brillat-Savarin, it is true,
admits to its detriment that "l'eau est la seule boisson qui apaise
veritablement la soif." But "l'eau," says another French writer, M.
Reiber, "est la prose des liquides, l'alcool en est la poesie." Speaking
more particularly of beer, among alcoholic drinks, M. Dubrunfaut writes:
"La biere occupe incontestablement le premier rang parmi les boissons
hygieniques connues." And he goes on to say that among the beer-drinking
nations one finds, as a rule, manly qualities most developed--as among the
English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Northern French.
Brillat-Savarin only objects that beer makes people stout.
Of course there is beer and beer. The wise doctors of Salerno very rightly
gave particular attention to this subject--as well they might, for beer
was adulterated in their days with no more scruple than it is in ours. The
Minnesinger Marner, in the thirteenth century, bitterly complains that
brewers make beer even without malt. There was no minnesinging to be done
on such drink. Then there was the manufacture of the aroma. Before there
were hops--and even after--people had a violent fancy for spices, the
indulgence in which was carried to such a point that the Church, meeting
in Council at Worms in 868, and at Treves in 895, felt bound to take
notice of the matter, and in a special canon laid down the rule that beer
spiced after the manner then prevalent should be allowed, as a luxury,
only on Sundays and saints' days. What those spices were may be gathered
from the following recipe for making beer, which appears to have been
first published at Strassburg (from early days a cerevisian city) in 1512,
and which was twice re-issued, under special approbation--namely, in 1552
and 1679. "To one pound of coloured 'sweet-root' (probably liquorice) add
seven ounces of good cinnamon, four ounces of the best ginger, one ounce
each of cloves, 'long' pepper, galanga, and nutmeg, half an ounce each of
mace and of cardamom, and two ounces of genuine Italian saffron." Whatever
might be added in the shape of malt, who would recognise in this decoction
anything remotely worthy of the name of beer? It is of such stuff that
Cardinal Chigi must have been thinking when he pronounced beer "infernal
drink." For brewing beer the school of Salerno give the following good
advice:
Non acidum sapiat cerevisia, sit bene clara.
Ex granis sit cocta bonis satis, ac veterata.
It must not, above all things, be sour. For acidity "ventriculo inimica
est. Acetus nervosas offendit partes." As the Germans have it--and they
ought to know--
Ein boeses Weib und sauer Bier
Behuet' der Himmel dich dafuer!
It should be clear, because "turbida impinguat, flatus gignit, atque
brevem spiritum efficit." "Bene cocta" it should be, for "male cocta
ventris inflationes, tormina et colicos cruciatos generat"--which Latin
speaks for itself. As for good grain, the doctors appear to prefer a
mixture of barley and oats. They allow either wheat, barley, or oats.
Wheat, they say, makes the most nourishing beer, but heating and
astringent. Barley alone makes the beer cold and dry. A mixture of barley
and oats renders it less nourishing, but also lighter on the stomach, and
less confining and distending. The Germans nowadays brew beer of every
conceivable grain and no-grain, even potatoes. But according to the
material so is the product. Lastly, say the doctors, beer, like wine,
should be old, or you will feel the effects in your stomach.
We cannot at the present period dissociate from beer the idea of hops. But
it was comparatively late in history before hops were regarded as an
indispensable ingredient. The Sclav nations are reported to have had them
early; also the Mahommedans of the East. Haroun-al-Rashid's physician
states that in his day they were given as medicine. In France, the first
record of their cultivation is of the year 768, when Pepin le Bref gave
some directions as to the hop-grounds belonging to the monastery of St.
Denis. In Germany they are known to have been successfully cultivated
about Magdeburg in 1070. We are supposed to have received them over here
in 1525. In Alsace, beer-drinking country as it is, they were not
cultivated till 1802. The soil being very suitable, they then made way
with such rapidity that they soon crowded out completely madder and woad,
which had previously been considered the most profitable crops--so
profitable, that from the _coques de pastel_ (woad), which were looked
upon as the emblem of prosperity and well-being, the Lauraguais, and
indeed the whole country round Toulouse, came to be christened _le pays de
Cocagne_. Hence our own word of "Cockaigne," about the derivation of which
so many contradictory guesses have been made. It may be interesting to
note that in Strassburg the bakers at one time used to put hops into their
yeast, and that in some foreign countries the young shoots of the hop-bine
furnish a favourite vegetable, dressed like asparagus.
Drinking habits are of course by far the most developed in Germany, where
beer has really become the object of a cult. Blessed with a healthy
thirst, which made our own poet Owen exclaim--
Si latet in vino verum, ut proverbia dicunt,
Invenit verum Teuto, vel inveniet--
the nation has seized upon beer as a second faith, "outside which there is
no salvation." Fischart, indeed, in his verses bade people who _must_
drink beer, and would not be satisfied with German wine, "go to
Copenhagen; there they would find beer enough." Denmark truly was of
old--we know from "Hamlet"--a grand country for drinking. But in respect
of beer, in the present day, it is not "in it" with Germany. Tacitus wrote
about German drinking. Emperor Charlemagne felt bound to pass a law
against it. The earlier Popes, before consenting to crown a German
emperor, exacted from him an affirmative reply to the standing question:
"Vis sobrietatem cum Dei auxilio custodire?" Of the old Palsgraves it
used to be said: "Potatores sub coelo non meliores;" and "bibere more
palatino" became a byword. Maximilian I. felt called upon to pass
stringent laws. In the sixteenth century Germany went by the name of "Die
grossen Trinklande." And Luther, when resting from his _seidels_
accompanying theological disputations, expressed a fear "lest this devil
(of thirst) should go on tormenting Germany till the day of judgment." The
modern Germans have remained true to the custom of their forefathers, and
have developed it scientifically.
Um den Gerstensaft, geliebte Seelen,
Dreht sich unser ganzer Staat herum.
The whole commonwealth literally "hinges" upon beer. The Emperor has drunk
it as a student at Bonn, and presumably still drinks it--in moderation.
The German Chancellor, instead of the parliamentary full-dress dinners
customary among ourselves, invites the members of the Diet to
"beer-evenings." If a learned professor discover a new bacillus or
antidotal lymph; if an African traveller annex a new province; if a
statesman attain his jubilee--there is but one form of public recognition
for all varieties of merit and distinction, and that is a _biercommers_.
No doubt the great extension of university education has a great deal to
do with the spread of regulated beer-drinking. The learned classes set the
tone, and the many follow it.
Cerevisiam bibunt homines, animalia caetera fontes.
That has become the general motto. It sounds very filthy to hear of the
astounding quantities of liquor consumed. But, in the first place, where
much is drunk, it is only very light stuff. And, to make it less trying,
the drinkers adopt the Socratic maxim of "small cups and many," by
frothing the beer up incredibly. Altogether they follow good classical
rules, which it is curious to trace, and which make their symposia rather
interesting. Drinking is not the end, but only the natural means for
attaining hilarity. And there is a good deal of rough geniality about it.
Like the ancient Greeks, these organised drinkers fix a well-recognised
[Greek: tropos tes poseos]. They have their absolute ruler, the
symposiarch, their accepted order of drinking, their proper scale of
fines. And also, as in Greece, only too often drinking is not a voluntary
act, but [Greek: anagkazesthai], and it is made to be [Greek: apneusti
pinein]--drinking without taking breath. There is the [Greek: propinein
philotesias]--drinking to one another--which _must_ be answered. There are
songs and jokes--though no _taeniae_ and, fortunately, no kisses. And the
small cups are duly followed up with the large horns, the [Greek: kerata],
and the huge vessels which the Greeks called [Greek: phreata]. Nay, these
modern classics even imitate the Greeks in respect of the [Greek: hales
kai kyminon]. For in many places the well-salted and carawayed [Greek:
epipasta] forms a standing accompaniment to the liquor. And next day, if
they are a trifle "foxed," they copy the Greeks in [Greek: kraipalen
kraipale exelaunein], or, as Sir John Linger calls it in better
"understanded" language, they take "a hair of the same dog," with a
pickled herring covered with raw onions for a companion, which is supposed
to set all things right. There are beer-courts to adjudge upon disputes,
there are indeterminate beer-minutes to settle the time--everything is
"beer." In all this joking there is no harm. As little harm is _meant_ to
be in the _missoe cerevisiales_ which tradition has handed down from the
time when monks were both the greatest brewers and also the greatest
drinkers, and, probably, in their refectories and misericords made as much
fun of the service over their cups as do now--or did until lately--German
students. There is the genuine chanting of versicles and responses, but
the words have reference to beer. This practice, I am glad to say, is now
very much on the decline.