The wise Solomon once let these words be heard: “I thought in my heart, to withdraw my flesh from wine, that I might turn my mind to wisdom, and might avoid folly.”1 From these words it is clear and plain enough that men are made fools by immoderate drinking.
Faber writes in his Auctarium2 that a certain great lord kept a simple fool to amuse him. One day at dinner this lord so over-wined himself that early the next morning he complained bitterly to his Jodel3 about his head. The dolt answered, “Master dear, lay a hair of the dog on it: that is, get tipsy again today.”4 The lord took the advice. The next day he complained still more grievously of his capitol,5 and Jodel’s counsel was once again that he should drink hard a second time.
“What?” said the lord. “But what is to come of all this in the end?”
“In the end,” said Jodel, “you’ll become a fool, like me.”
Well hit!
Because Holofernes the general got himself tipsy and drunk, he lost his head by the hand of Judith.6 Most people, it is true, do not lose their heads by drinking; but they lose at least what is in their heads, namely their understanding. The poet puts it not badly:
Drunkenness has S’s three;
Mark them well, remember me:
Sin and Shame and Scathe they signify;
From them at every season fly.7
Drunkenness is a sin, since St. Paul writes in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 6: “Nor … drunkards … shall possess the kingdom of God.”8
Drunkenness is a shame. Just take a look at a sot who is full to the bung. First, he has a face like Prussian leather:9 there is Bacchus to the life, in copperplate. His nose drips like a cracked grindstone trough; he rolls his eyes like a stuck billy-goat; his mouth slobbers like a greasy skimming ladle; his tongue is as stiff as a rolling-pin; his voice booms like an old regimental drum; his feet go round like a yarn-reel; and his whole bearing is such that everyone laughs him to scorn as a fool.
Drunkenness is a scathe, for it devours and eats up a man’s means. Herod, because he had drunk himself full, offered half a kingdom for the dance of a hopping, scabby-headed wench:10 was that not a fool’s trick? Another man had drunk away all his goods and chattels, and yet at night he still burned wax candles instead of tallow. When someone saw this, he said, “My brother, since you burn wax candles on your table, I take it you are holding the exequies, the funeral office, for your departed goods.”11
Drunkenness is also a scathe to the body, for health suffers shipwreck more often in wine than in water. That is why, here in Vienna,12 an epitaph was made for a kettledrummer who for thirty whole years had been tipsy every day, and suffered sorely from the gout besides:
Here lies Frederick, the kettledrums’ boom,
A wondrous guest in his manners and all his life;
For thirty years he never once saw the sun
Sober: cruel lover of his wife, the Gout.13
Just such a sot was the Emperor Tiberius, who was nicknamed Biberius in mockery on that account,14 as the learned Jacob Balde sings of him:
Tiberius Biberius.
A good wet brother, he;
Would sit and sip and never quit;
Faugh, the devil! drunk eternally.15
Cut on the same last was that wineskin who never let a day go by without drinking at the houses of his acquaintances, and mostly at no cost to himself. Once he came to a man who found him far too great a burden, and the master of the house gave orders that dinner should wait. When the waiting went on too long for our friend, and his wine-gullet was almost turning to dust from sheer thirst, he asked, “Isn’t it dinner-time yet?”
“Not yet,” said the host. “But when you are gone, then it will be.”
From his constant swilling, this wineskin got such a salt rheum in his right eye that the doctor told him that unless he moderated his drinking from now on, he would lose the eye without fail. To which the tankard-brother replied, “Better to lose a window than the whole house.”
That was a drunken fool.
Eccles. 2:3. Abraham: Cogitavi in corde meo abstrahere a vino carnem meam, ut animum transferrem ad sapientiam, devitaremque stultitiam.↩︎
Cited by Abraham only as “Faber in Auctario”; probably the Jesuit preacher Matthias Faber (1586–1653), whose collections of sermon material were published with an Auctarium, or supplement.↩︎
Jodl, a south German pet form of Jodocus and a stock name for a simpleton or jester. The lord calls him Lapp, “dolt.”↩︎
Hunds-Haar aufflegen, “to lay on dog’s hair”: the old cure of binding a hair of the dog that bit you onto the wound, and the source of the English “hair of the dog” too. Herrl is a fond diminutive, “little master.”↩︎
Capitol, a mock-learned word for the head (Latin caput).↩︎
Judith 13:4–10: “Holofernes lay on his bed, fast asleep, being exceedingly drunk.”↩︎
Der Trunckenheit drey S. S. S. / Merckts wohl, vnd nicht vergeß; / Sünd, Schand, Schad sie bedeuten. / Flich sie zu allen Zeiten. Literally, “Sin, Shame, Harm.” “Scathe” keeps the S.↩︎
1 Cor. 6:10. Abraham: neque ebriosi regnum Dei possidebunt.↩︎
Preussisch Leder, presumably a reddish tanned leather. Kupfferstich, “copper engraving,” is a joke on the drinker’s coppery face.↩︎
Mark 6:21–23. The Gospel says only that the dancing girl “pleased Herod, and them that were at table with him”; the drunkenness is Abraham’s. Grindschüpel, “scabby-head,” a term of abuse.↩︎
Wax candles, dearer than tallow, burned at requiems and funeral offices. Besingnuß, the sung office for the dead.↩︎
Allhier zu Wien: Abraham was court preacher at Vienna, and the Salzburg printing keeps his words.↩︎
Abraham: Heic est compostus Fridericus tympana bombus. / Moribus et tota vita mirabilis hospes; / Annis triginta solem non viderat unquam / Sobrius: uxoris Podagrae crudelis amator. The print has totê for totâ. Not traced; tympana bombus, “the boom of the drums,” is a nickname.↩︎
Suetonius, Tiberius 42: as a young soldier he was called Biberius (“Tippler,” from bibere, “to drink”) for Tiberius.↩︎
Ein guter nasser Bruder / Ohn Unterlaß beym Zapffen saß / Pfuy Teuffel! stets im Luder: “A good wet brother, sat at the tap without ceasing, faugh, the devil! always in debauch.” Cited by Abraham as Jacob Balde (1604–1668), the Jesuit poet of Munich, who wrote mostly in Latin; the German lines are not traced.↩︎