Odd Bits of History Part 8

No doubt beer has had a good many nasty things said about it. The same school of Salerno lays it down that "cra.s.sos 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 cra.s.sior, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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, Boses 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 subst.i.tution 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 jungsten Tage wird geschaut Was jeder fur 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 bra.s.seurs_. 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, ent.i.tling 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 Stra.s.sburg (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 p.r.o.nounced 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 boses Weib und sauer Bier Behut' der Himmel dich dafur!

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 "c.o.c.kaigne," about the derivation of which so many contradictory guesses have been made. It may be interesting to note that in Stra.s.sburg 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 dic.u.n.t, 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 pa.s.s 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 c.u.m 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 quant.i.ties 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sics 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.

All this is scarcely surprising. We all knew it of the Germans long ago.

But it is a little strange to find France once more--few people know about the first time--taking her place among beer-drinking countries and placing the _honestas chopinandi_ among the precepts of the modern decalogue. The French are good enough to explain that they do this, not for their own gratification, but as a public service, as "saviours of society," to "rendre les moeurs gambrinales plus aimables." That may be. But the fact remains, that the annual consumption of beer per head of the population in France has now risen to 21 litres (about 14 quarts), which on the top of 119 litres of wine (however light), 20 litres of cider, and 4 litres of spirits, is a respectable allowance enough. For Germany the figures are said to be--93 litres of beer, 6 of wine, and 10 of spirits--and such spirits! France brews every year more than eight millions of hectolitres of beer, and consumes considerably more. To do this, of course it must import from abroad. And very rightly too, I should say. For though French beer may no longer deserve the description given of it by the Emperor Julian, who condemned it as "smelling strongly of the goat," there is still little enough that is really good. And it is drunk out of such tiny thimbles! I suspect that there is a dodge in this. The "bocks" have grown smaller and smaller, till in some places they are mere tea-cups. But then out come the _restaurateurs_ with their old disused "bocks," now re-christened _bocks serieux_, and charge double price. That promises to make France a real brewers' paradise. But, large gla.s.ses or small, there is something about the beer which you must first get used to. Accordingly, many of those gorgeous _bra.s.series_, of genuinely German type, which seem so out of place in the Paris boulevards, are supplied, not from Tantonville or Xertigny, but from Munich or Vienna, or else from Stra.s.sburg. For, of course, the attachment which Frenchmen feel for their lost provinces had a great deal to do with their new departure in the way of a liking for beer. France, as it happens, owes some reparation to Stra.s.sburg, and more particularly to its brewers. For at various times it has treated the latter most unkindly. In the first place, the Second Empire unmercifully hastened on the hour of "Bruce," making it eleven "sharp," instead of the quarter past which had been previously allowed.

This threatens never to be forgotten or forgiven. In the second place, the First Republic, though it honoured hops by a.s.signing to them, in the place of the calendar saint, St. Omer, the patronship of the 9th of September, inflicted a very grievous injury when, in the _An II._ of its era, its _tribunal revolutionnaire_ imposed a fine of 255,000 livres upon the brewing trade, as is stated in the official _Livre Bleu_, "pour les abus qu'ils ont pu se permettre sur leur comestibilite." The mulct is explained in this wise:--"Considerant que la soif de l'or a constamment guide les bra.s.seurs, il les cond.a.m.ne a deux cents cinquante-cinq mille livres d'amende, qu'ils doivent payer dans trois jours, sous peine d'etre declares rebelles a la loi et de voir leurs biens confisques." There is no talk of "compensation," as among ourselves. To be sure, the bakers, with nothing against them--except it be on the score of weight--fared worse.

For they were declared _hostes generis humani_, and fined 300,000 livres.

The brewers really paid only 188,000 livres. But that was considered heavy enough. In spite of this imposition, the brewing trade in Stra.s.sburg has made tremendous strides, and continues flourishing. And very much more beer is now consumed in the city than wine. For 1878 the figures were: 121,345 hectolitres of beer and 36,583 of wine. Paris in 1881 consumed 300,000 hectolitres of beer; in 1853 only 7,000 and in 1864 still only 40,000 hectolitres. (All this beer-drinking, it will be seen, dates from 1870.) In Paris, in spite of protection, the brewing interest appears to find foreign compet.i.tion rather formidable. At the time of the first revolution, a French general (Santerre), with the a.s.sistance of government subsidies, tried very hard to oust us from the market by brewing "ale" and "porter." This earned the veteran the nickname of "Le General Mousseux."

But the speculation did not pay, and had to be abandoned. Having become so popular, beer has, of course, found many fervid apologists in France. "La biere fait en ce moment le tour du monde. Mieux que tous les raisonnements et quoi qu'en disent les esprits chagrins, sa vogue prouve que la boisson en houblon est utile, que l'humanite l'apprecie et en a besoin." So says M. Reiber. "La bonne biere n'est pas une boisson malsaine; elle est tonique et nourrissante." So says Dr. Tourdes.

But really this is nothing new. Old inscriptions, dating from the Gallo-Roman era, show that Pliny was correct in setting down, at his period, the Gauls as a largely beer-drinking race. They had earthenware beer-pots, some of which have been exhumed, bearing the inscription, "Cerevisariis felicitas!" An old Gallo-Roman flagon is preserved in Paris, on which is engraved--"Hospita reple lagenam cervisia!" The oldest beer-song extant is Old-French, dating from the thirteenth century. It is as follows:

LETABUNDUS Or hi purra; La _cerveyse_ nos chauntera Alleluia!

Qui que aukes en beyt Si tel seyt comme estre doit Res miranda.

The prohibition which Charlemagne issued against keeping St. Stephen's Day too zealously by the consumption of beer and wine, applied to France no less than to Germany. The French were, in truth, great respecters of saints' days in a bibulous way. St. Martin's Day was with them a favourite occasion for drinking. Hence _martiner_ still currently signifies drinking more than one ought. Another suggestive popular term is "Boire comme un Templier." France then has really only returned to her _premier amour_.

But in doing so she has set upon it a seal of domination, which is significant, as meaning that it is not likely to be readily surrendered.

No doubt beer, having held its own so long, though much a.s.sailed, will still continue to maintain its position. There is too much of human nature in man to admit of its being effectually proscribed. "Abusus non tollit usum." The same school of Salerno which praises beer as a wholesome drink adds this wise proviso:--"Hic unic.u.m de cervisiae usu praeceptum traditur: nempe ut modice sumatur, neque ea stomachus praegravetur vel ebrietas concilietur." Sebastian Brant writes in old German:

Eyn Narr muosz vil gesoffen han, Eyn Wyser maesslich drincken kann.

There is great virtue in the _modice sumatur_. The wine-trade has pa.s.sed through a similar change. Though four-bottle men have died out, the wine-trade is doing better than it did in olden days. So it will probably be with beer. However temperance advocates may regret it, it is not to be got rid of by railing. In truth it is now indeed making _le tour du monde_. And, unless mankind changes its character altogether, it will probably go on drinking--more or less _modice_--to the end of the chapter, a beverage which stands commended by so exemplary a Father of the Church as the whilom Bishop of Bath and Wells, Polydore Virgil, who p.r.o.nounces it

Potus tum salubris tum jucundus.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Blackwood's Magazine, August, 1894.

[2] The church encloses, in addition to one of the "true" pebbles with which was stoned, says M. Bellot-Herment, the chronicler of Bar, "_St Etienne, cure de Gamaliel, bourg du diocese de Jerusalem_," that boldly original sculpture from the chisel of the great Lorrain artist, Ligier Richier, whom we so undeservedly ignore, the famous "_Squelette_"--the mere name of which frightened Dibdin away, as he himself relates. Durival terms this sculpture "_une affreuse beaute_"--but "_beaute_" it undoubtedly is.

[3] Patriotic Frenchmen derive this name from the Latin _fascinatio_. But quite evidently it is a gallicised form of the German _fastnacht_, which in Alsace is p.r.o.nounced _fasenacht_, or very nearly _fasenocht_; in a French mouth it would naturally become _faschinottes_.

[4] Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1891.

[5] National Review, February, 1892.

[6] Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1893.

[7] See the _Memoirs of the Family of Taaffe_, p. 13.

[8] Westminster Review, May, 1892.

[9] National Review, May, 1892.