W2B-006 Brewing traditions-0.txt
The Water of Life

Close to Banbridge in Co Down lies the little village of Loughbrickland. About half a mile to the south-east, sheltered by low hills and trees, is Loch Bricleann or Bricriu's Lake, which gives the village its name. The setting takes us back almost two thousand years to one of the most famous stories in the Ulster cycle. It concerns Bricriu, a wealthy and malicious chieftain who decided to give a feast and for that purpose built a house big enough to accommodate the Ulster heroes and their wives. It was truly magnificent, a branch-red d&/un, with nine rooms overlaid with gold, modelled on the palace at Eamhan Mhaca. The feast was equally sumptuous, consisting of beef broth, roast boar, salmon, honey cakes and many other dishes; to drink the guests had the finest of ale, the choicest of mead and the rarest of wines. Bricriu promised the "hero's portion" to the Red Branch knight who would prove himself the bravest of the company, a challenge which naturally led first to bitter arguments and then to bitter blows. Their host had planned for this. Not for nothing was he named Bricriu Poison-Tongue.

In another story, The Wooing of &/Et&/ain, which was written down at Clonmacnoise around the year 1000, from oral sources, we read how the High King Eochaidh made a great feast at Tara at which mead, fine wines and barrels of ale were served. These two early tales are interesting because they tell us of the kind of food and drink served at princely banquets. Today royal Tara stands no more. All that remains of what was once the noblest residence in Ireland is a windswept hill, where archaeologists trace the outlines of the palace, and folk tales keep alive the memory of the mead banqueting-hall, where according to legend the heroes quaffed their favourite brew.

Mead was long a favourite drink, said to be both potent and delicious. It was made from honey, clear sparkling water and aromatic plants. Bragget, made by fermenting ale and honey together, was also much enjoyed for it is frequently mentioned in medieval records. Bees were kept in very great numbers, and to have a surplus of honey for mead-making was highly desirable; districts that produced mead in quantity were lauded by the poets. St Brigid, that redoubtable woman who knew how to influence prelates and princes, is said to have given the King of Leinster a cup of mead to drink when he came to visit her convent. It was of unsurpassing quality and no doubt very potent to boot. Probably as a result of her hospitality she was given a tract of land or some gift she needed for her work amongst the sick and needy. She was noted for the excellence of her kitchen, and had the reputation of brewing the best ale in Ireland. But she was not the only one of the early saints who kept a good cask or two. St Patrick had his favourite brewer who travelled Ireland with him on his missionary work.

Anyone who wished to do so was free to brew his own ale, but the Brehon laws laid down regulations for the sale of ale and for the proper running of ale-houses. Early monastic settlements were sizeable, including, as they did, not only the refectory, kitchens and dormitories for the monks but workshops, bakeries, and accommodation to house lay workers and their families, visiting penitents, students, and indeed anyone who might seek shelter. Regulations which governed everything from the hour of rising of the community to the hour when the weary monk might retire to his cell gave it as a rule of thumb that on days of high feasting laymen and clerics should get equal quantities of food, but that the tonsured monk should get only half as much ale to drink as his brother in the laity.

Much of the early ale was made from malted grain - oats, wheat or barley - together with spring water and honey. Before the introduction of hops in the 16th century, beer, like ale, made with a simple infusion of fermented malt, might be flavoured with aromatic and astringent plants. Oak bark is said to have been used for this purpose, as well as buck beans found in the neighbourhood of certain raths. It was not until around 1780 that beer began to be produced on a commercial scale by small breweries, made from a mixture of malt, grain, water, sugar, yeast and hops. In earlier times the words ale and beer were often synonymous. The Irish also drank a cider called nenadmin made from whortleberries or blackberries.
Perhaps the drink best remembered in folklore is the famous heather ale, a legacy of the years when the long-prowed Viking ships raided Irish waters, and a simple monk whose name we shall never know wrote on the margin of the manuscript he was illustrating one stormy winter night:
"Fierce and wile is the wind tonight; It turns the tresses of the sea to white; On such a night as this I take my ease; Fierce Northmen only course the quiet seas."

The story goes that the Vikings or Danes, as they are traditionally known, were superb brewers of beer, but their heather ale was unsurpassed; the recipe, a carefully guarded secret, was handed down from father to son. After the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, when the power of the Danes in Ireland was finally broken and the foreigners driven into the sea, only one family escaped. They were taken captive by an Irish chieftain near the Cliffs of Moher in Co Clare and were offered their lives in exchange for the secret of the brew. "I would be ashamed to tell you before my son," the fierce old Dane said, and watched unmoved as the young man was put to the sword. He then led his captor to the edge of the cliff and whispered long and earnestly in the other's ear.
"And is that all there is to it? The special herbs and the manner of brewing?" The chieftain hugged the old man in delight. "You have bought your life; you are free to go."
But at this the Dane tightened his grip. "Had my son lived he might have bartered the secret for his life, but now you and I alone know how the heather ale is made and we shall take that knowledge with us to our doom." And with those words the Dane jumped over the cliff, taking the Irish chieftain with him to a watery grave far below. And so was lost for ever the secret of the heather ale.

We may safely assume that by the 12th century there were many places in Ireland which enjoyed the reputation of making excellent ales and many a man who had a good palate for a fine wine. Even in early times there was considerable trade with the Continent. Furs and hides were exported to Gaul, and back came cargoes of wine, so that amongst wealthy merchants and princelings it was a well-known drink.

One of the most enigmatic anecdotes of the year AD 535 tells of dark passions and a woman betrayed. It appears that the palace of Cletty was set on fire by a certain beautiful lady, who had been scorned by the king, while the members of the court were at table. "To escape the flames," the record says, "the king plunged into a vat of wine but was drowned." And so the lady was avenged; but there the record ends, and we hall never know the fully story. Was there a still more beautiful rival for the king's heart involved, or a jealous wife waiting in the wings, or even a distracted husband who had refused to play cuckold any longer and was bent on revenge? What subsequently happened the dark lady? Did she enter a nunnery? Placate her husband as so many women before and since have done? Did she lie awake at night weeping over her dead love or did she put the past behind her? One thing is certain, human nature never changes, and crimes of passion happen in every stratum of society and in every age.

Giraldue Cambrensis, or Gerald the Welshman, who visited Ireland in the 12th century and who wrote what is probably the first travel book about the island, commented on the abundance of wine imported into the country from Poitou, France. A story is told of how in the 13th century a Munster chieftain, one Amhlaoibh &/O hEidirsceoil was given his nickname. One day, as a young boy, he was down at the harbour, watching the ships and dreaming of far distant lands as young boys do, when he was abducted by a rival chieftain and handed over to the crew of a wine ship from Gascony as a pledge of payment for a cargo. He was taken to France and put to work in the vineyards, thereby giving credence to the old belief that fruit grew without blemish if the vines were tended by those of noble blood. Later the youth was brought back to Ireland and ever afterwards bore the nickname "the Gascon."

Wine and ale flowed freely at great feasts given by princes and chieftains. A scribe named Muirch&/u writing in the 7th century describes how St Patrick came to the palace of King Laoghaire at Tara on Easter Sunday in the year of Our Lord 433. There he found kings, princes and druids feasting and drinking wine. From what we know of Patrick, he probably joined the company in the spirit of good will, before setting about converting the pagans. This custom seems not to have changed down the years. A 13th-century poem speaks of the bard going from "one feast of purple wine to another."

However, not all drink consumed was come by honestly. Not infrequently the Irish levied "blacks rents" on the Pale of Dublin and surrounding districts. In 1444 Eoghan O'Neill, Lord of Tyrone, plundered the town of Dundalk, and demanded sixty marks and two tons of wine in return for not destroying the town by fire - a demand that was quickly met by the frightened townsfolk.

By the 16th century cheap, low-quality wine had become more readily available, especially around coastal waters where Spanish and English merchant seamen traded wine, beer and bales of silk for hides, fish, salt and meat. Sometimes it was a case, not of honest trading but of treacherous intents. We read of English merchant ships arriving in ports with cargoes of fine wines and encouraging Irish chieftains to imbibe, not wisely but too well, while their followers, left leaderless were rounded by the enemy army - much the same technique as was employed by Elizabeth's minions when the captain of the decoy ship at Lough Swilly invited the young Aodh Ruadh &/O D&/onaill aboard at Christmas 1587, made him drunk on wine and took him in chains to Dublin Castle.
Fynes Moryson, that inveterate traveller and historian who came to Ireland as Lord Mountjoy's secretary in 1600 and remained with Mountjoy all through the long and bitter campaign which ended with the defeat of the great Hugh O'Neill, kept a record of his time here, entitled The Commonwealth of Ireland. He wrote that when the common Irish have money to spend they like to imbibe freely:
"Whenever they come to a market town to sell a cow or a horse they never return home until they have drunk the price in Spanish wine, which they call the "King of Spain's daughter."

A brisk trade in smuggling wine and fine brandy along the western seaboard and around the coast of Kerry Island lasted until well into the 19th century. After the defeat of Patrick Sarsfield and the signing of the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, a treaty which was broken ere the ink was dry, many of the old Irish aristocracy with their retainers fled the country for ever. Following them went the soldiers who had fought with Sarsfield, each man with a price on his head. The ships that took the Wild Geese as the members of the Irish Brigade came to be known on the battlefields of Europe, often engaged in a two-way smuggling exercise, running in wine and spiriting out wanted men.
It is no exaggeration to say that since the late Middle Ages when the art of distilling became known in these parts, Irish whiskey has always been rated the best there is. Time and again writers and travellers to our shores have commented on the excellence of our aqua vitae, or to give it the old Irish title, uisce beatha, meaning "water of life", which was indeed how many people regarded it.
In folk tales a popular motif is where the hero is put under geasa or bonds to undertake a journey to the Well and the World's End, or some other such mythical place, in search of the water of life. His journey is fraught with dangers, he performs incredible feats of valour, is often helped by fabulous animals or magical old men or women and finally succeeds in his quest and is rewarded with the hand of a princess in marriage. In all such tales we are told that the "water of life" cures all ills, but more than that, it restores youth, vigour and beauty to the old, the decrepit and the ugly.

It is perhaps no surprise to learn that our early whiskey was indeed used to cure illness and to invigorate the weak and low-spirited. It is not known for certain when the first Irish whiskey was distilled, but we do know that from the 15th century onwards it supplemented wine and beer.
