Mark Weiss tried to slip the following past me, but I was on it
quicker than a tick on a dawg (as they say around here):
<The beverage quaffed in the Mead Hall may have been preferred to
claret either because the hairy northerners liked getting sick more
than Mediterranean types or because claret wasn't available.>
Can't speak to the relative liking of sick-making drinks among
the Hairivairi vs. the (less pejoratively termed) "Mediterranean
types," but can assure you that Claret was not on tap in Heorot,
which was a Meadhall, not a Monastery. For Claret, you need a
Monk--and vice versa, no doubt!
But mead was still the beverage of choice more for reasons to do
with hip-hops vs. hives: you have to stay in one place for awhile
to grow hops, barley, and ye olde barleycorn, of course, while
making mead required only a certain honey-gathering bravura, a pot
to put it in, and half a dozen thanes to stand around it and spit.
Nevertheless (she concluded pedantically), it's always been all
about the bier.
Professorially yores,
CanBoadicea
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|