HOME |
RSS | 
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
How straight-laced were the Pilgrims? They tried to be, but you know how it goes. A shoe gets unbuckled, a bonnet becomes unlaced, and suddenly your hormones go into overdrive. The next thing you know, your horn of plenty hath spilled forth with wicked abundance.
Pretty much everything we “know” about the Pilgrims is untrue. Our modern-day image of the stern, clean-living, God-fearing residents of Plymouth Colony is largely mythical. It’s an illusion that took shape in the nineteenth century, as some overzealous American attempted to construct an official, more respectable history of our growing nation.
Historians cannot even determine exactly how many of the approximately 100 passengers on the Mayflower were Puritans and how many were just leaving to find better lives away from the gripping poverty that plagued England at the time. It is generally believed there were more of the latter than the former.
First off, they never referred to themselves or thought of themselves as “the Pilgrims.” The term “pilgrim” was reserved for Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Pilgrims referred to themselves as “the Saints” or “the Separatists.”
They also referred to themselves as “Old Planters” or “Old Comers.” Draw your own conclusions from that. The name “the Pilgrims,” as we call them today, caught on around the time of the American Revolution.
Yes, they were notorious beer drinkers. They weren’t even headed for Massachusetts; they aimed for Georgia or a place further south, because of the milder weather. One of the reasons they ended up in Massachusetts in the first place was the lack of beer. According to one of the diaries of a Mayflower passenger, “We could not take time for further search …our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.”
One of the first structures built when they landed was a common brewery for the colonists. Many of the Pilgrims were brewers, this being done primarily in the home at the time.
While we don’t have the details about their private lives, we do know that by 1636, the colonists had a published set of rules that listed capital offenses. Among them were sodomy, rape, buggery, and some cases of adultery. So they were certainly concerned with sex, if not necessarily always having it.
However, court records from the colony indicate that sex-related crimes were common transgressions. Fornication, which was defined as sex outside of marriage, was a frequently committed crime, one that often resulted in a fine. Sometimes the evidence of a conviction was solely of the birth of a child in the early months of a marriage.
The only recorded execution for a sex crime occurred in 1642, when 17-year-old Thomas Granger was convicted of buggery. The young man had engaged in unfortunate, intimate relations with some local sheep, and he paid the ultimate price for it.
Less severe penalties (relatively speaking), often consisted of whippings. And like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, adulterers were sometimes required to wear the capital letters “AD” on their clothing.
No, the Pilgrims weren’t exactly saints. But they definitely took their sins seriously!
By popular request, here are the neatolicious fun facts for ... beer:
1. Beer is old stuff: Recipe found in 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet
The first references to beer dates to as early as 6,000 BC. The very first recipe for beer is found on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet containing the Hymn to Ninkasi, a prayer to the goddess of brewing. It tells how to brew beer from barley:
The filtering vat, which makes
a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, the filtering vat,
which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
a large collector vat.
If you're curious as to how the world's oldest beer tastes like, the Anchor Brewing Company produced a limited edition beer (under the Ninkasi label) based on the recipe.
2. Beer is not mentioned in the bible
Wine was mentioned - many times, but not beer. Instead, the Bible mentioned "strong drink," which some translated as fermented beverage made from grain (i.e. beer). (Source)
3. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock Because It
Ran Out of Beer
The Mayflower was supposed to sail to the mouth of the Hudson River, near
present-day New York City - but the Pilgrims decided to head to Plymouth
Bay because they were low on beer.
Colonists William Bradford and Edward Winslow wrote this first-hand account: "We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer ..."
Why did the ship carry beer? It's because unlike water, beer don't go bad on long ocean voyages - but lest you think the shipmates were all plastered all the time, the type of beer they carried was "ship's beer," which wasn't very alcoholic. (Source: The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams - though consider this rebuttal by Bob Skilnik, author of Beer & Food: An American History)
4.
World's Strongest Beer: Sam Adams Utopias MMII
The strongest beer in the world was the Sam Adams Utopias MMII, a limited-run (only 3,000 bottles were made) production by Boston Beer Co. It weighs in at 24 percent alcohol by volume in a mini, old-school, copper-brewing kettles. If you want to get one, be prepared to shell out at least $100.
For
flavors, aroma and stability. Hop is the flower of the hop vine (a cousin
of the hemp, actually).
Early beers didn't use hops - instead, they were flavored with wild rosemary, coriander, ginger, anise seed, juniper berries and even wood bark.
Hop was used as flavorings as early as 400 BC by captive Jews in Babylon, but historians think that the real reason it was used as additive was for its antiseptic properties. By adding hops, brewers didn't have to have high alcohol content to prevent spoilage. This meant less grains and therefore more profit. (Source)
6. Beer in a Bag
Photo: indy2kro
[Flickr] - not sure if this is the original photographer
Quick - how many different ways of transporting beer can you think of? Bottles, glass, cans and kegs? You've missed one: in China, you can buy beer in a plastic bag!
7. St. Arnold: Patron Saint of Brewing
In
the 11th century, Arnold of Soissons, a bishop in the Benedictine St.
Medard's Abbey in Soissons, France, began to brew beer.
He encouraged the locals to drink beer instead of water for its health benefits (beer was healthier than water mainly because it was boiled and thus sterilized from pathogens). No wonder they made him a saint!
8. How do you say Beer in Zulu?
Utshwala.
This website will help: here's how to say Beer in 78 Languages. Or if you want to order a beer in 50 languages.
9. "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" That's what Benjamin Franklin said, anyhow.
That was fun - but we barely scratched the potential with beer. Got any trivia about beer? Add them to the comment! And what should we do for "C" (no cats, mmmkay?)
