Ever heard of heather ale, the tastiest drink ever brewed in the world?
“It was sweeter that honey,
was stronger far than wine.”
If you haven’t yet, I am sorry. The drink is history. The most you can get near to it now is by reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, Heather Ale.
“They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground.”
Heather (a sort of shrub) ale, the first beer in the British Isles, was considered to be the most delicious drink the world had ever known. Heather was used for fermentation. It was home to a white substance named Fogg, which had hallucinogenic properties.
So heather ale not only helped people get boozed, but also aided the users with happy trips. What a beer!
The Picts, a Viking race, were blissfully brewing and drinking it, when the King of Scots set his heart on their land and the cherished drink. But the valiant picts were more than a match in their will to protect the secrets of heather. They would rather lay down their lives than part with their traditional wisdom.
The poor picts were soon hounded out in large numbers all across Scotland until there remained only a father and his son. Only they knew how to make heather beer.
One day the king and his men cornered them at the top of a cliff.
“I will give you life, ye vermin,
For the secret of the drink.”
The poor father seeing no other way to escape replied:
“Life is dear to the aged,
And honour a little thing
I would gladly tell the secret.”
The king was happy at this sudden change of tidings. At last, he was going to know the secret behind the greatest drink in the world. The old man continued:
“I would gladly sell my secret,
Only my son I fear.
For life is a little matter
And death is nought to the young
And I dare not sell my honour
Under the eye of my son.”
He did not want to reveal the secret, and thereby compromise his honour before his son. So he pleaded with the king to take his son and throw him down the cliff to the sea. He would tell his secret after his son’s death.
The king immediately gave orders and the son was pitched to the churning waters below. Now, the king turned to the old man who smiled and said:
“True was the word I told you:
Only my son I feared;
For I doubt the sapling courage
That goes without the beard.”
He was afraid that the kind of torture the king was going to inflict upon his son would ultimately draw the truth. With his son killed, the old man had nothing else to fear. He told the king:
“Here dies in my bosom
The secret of Heather Ale.”
With that, the old man leapt to the rolling waves deep below.
Sincere efforts were made in all ages since then to recreate the lost drink which died with the old man, to invoke the old muse without of course its hallucinogenic agents. Perhaps the closest to the lost wonder is the Fraoch heather ale born in 1993.
The heather ale came back when a Glasgow homebrew shop owner named Bruce Williams had a Gaelic heather recipe translated. He perfected the recipe, and Fraoch Heather ale was born.
With a nice flowery scent, the beer now sold the world over hearkens back the drink “which was sweeter than honey and stronger than wine”.
The heather ale; for which a father sacrificed his son and then laid down his own life. Does Fraoch do justice to the lost treasure? Who knows!
(Manu Remakant is a freelance writer who also runs a video blog - A Cup of Kavitha - introducing world poetry to Malayalees. Views expressed here are personal)
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