Rye, though a close relative of barley, was not grown in that region, being a grain principally of eastern, central and particularly northern Europe. Additionally, rye is believed to strengthen the immune system, particularly if ingested as the liquid ‘rye grass’.

As well, though distillation is an old technology — the ancient Egyptians employed it for the making of perfume, for instance — the making of whisky is ancient Celtic art, not one of Mesopotamia. Distillation didn’t spread widely through Europe until the the 11th and 12th centuries A.D. , though it is believed that the Irish monks were using it already in the 5th C. A.D. Sumer was already long, long, long and longer yet, gone.

From this interesting whisky site:

In his “Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland” published in 1577, Raphael Holinshed describes as follows the incomparable virtues of Uisge Beatha :

“Being moderately taken,
it slows the age,
it cuts phlegm,
it lightens the mind,
it quickens the spirit,
it cures the dropsy,
it heals the strangulation,
it pounces the stone,
its repels gravel,
it pulls away ventositie,
it keeps and preserves the head from whirling,
the eyes from dazzling,
the tongue from lisping,
the mouth from snuffling,
the teeth from chattering,
the throat from rattling,
the weasan from stiffing,
the stomach from womblying,
the heart from swelling,
the belly from wincing,
the guts from rumbling,
the hands from shivering,
the sinews from shrinking,
the veins from crumpling,
the bones from aching,
the marrow from soaking,
and truly it is a sovereign liquor
if it be orderly taken.”

I’m not particularly fond of scotch and whiskies either. But wine and beer, those oldest solaces for the pain of being human, I do love, particularly in company of good conversation, good friends and good food.

Salud!

Love, C.

Thank god I hate whiskey.

It is the circle of life.

Barley is what makes beer, barley is the money that pays for beer, beer attracts the money-barley that is the barley out of which comes beer.

Beer is life, in fact, if you are Vaquero, for instance.

Which may explain why I, seeming alone of the kindred, rejoice in the Buffy ep, “Beer Bad.”

Those Sumers were very sophisticated people. It’s too bad their civilization collapsed. I bet their beer was pretty good.

Love, C.

This is from page 100 of Fernand Braudel’s Memory and the Mediterranean:

[ The earliest form of currency used for payment by the Sumerians was a measure of barley. So in Mesopotamia money had its origins in crop cultivation, rather than in livestock, which wa the unit used in Rome (pecunia), in Greece (bous) and in India (rupia). Barley as currency continued to be used for ordinary transactions, since metal, when it made its first appearance (first copper, then silver, in weighted amounts), was a sort of money of account, a scale of reference. Barley continued to be the 'real' money.

. . . . Silver as soon as it appeared and began to be used as real currency for some transactions, tended, in fact, to prevail over other forms of payment. This explains one decision of the code of Hammurabi: if the proprietress of a tavern will not accept grains as the price for a drink, but recieves silver and therefore "makes the price of the drink fall below the price of grain, the proprietress will be seized and flung into the water.".... ]

What is interesting too, further than just the idea of taking in a handful of barley to get a beer — from which, presumably, the beer itself is made — is that the word for the tavern keeper in Hammurabi’s law is feminine, opening a window into the urban culture of the region, that long ago.

Love, C.

Sam who had followed and helped Frodo all the way across the world and had freaking carried him half way across Mordor and up Mount Doom got left behind! Such injustice.

I was very happy to find out the timeline shown in the appendicies has Sam board a ship after Rosie dies and is rejoined with Frodo at last.

There is a certain amount of impulse to explain how everyone lived happily ever after.

How come it’s not in Books in Print, I wonder?

Kent State University Press (March 1, 2007) — not available in bookstores, generally, then? It’s not in the NYPL collections either.

Love, C.

You might want to check out The Histories of Middle Earth. It’s a 12 volume set edited by Christopher Tolkien laying out his father’s writing process.

It is quite amazing to see where Tolkien started going with the LOTR and where he ended up taking it.