Oh, Dear. Sacred Beer.

Everybody loves the prayer attributed to Saint Brigit about serving ale to Jesus and his crew. I love it. But maybe this new product is going a tad too far. (AND it is an odd "translation". Although, who knows, maybe they had a different original than the one I'm familiar with. To be fair.) But I bet I will be in the minority on this one. Even sober I can't help cracking a bit of a smile at it.

That is:

I’d like to give

A lake of beer to God.

I’d love the Heavenly

Host to be tippling there

For all eternity.

I’d sit with the men,

The women of God

There by the lake of beer.

We’d be drinking

Good health forever

And every drop

Would be a prayer.

And now the "real" translation. (Of course, I have not read the Old Irish, myself, so what do I know?)

Aengus Cèile Dè

“I should like a great lake of ale

For the king of kings;

I should like the family of heaven

To be drinking it through time eternal.”

                             (8^th century)

Translation found in Beith, M., (1995) Healing Threads: Traditional Medicines of the Highlands and Islands. Thanks to Morgan Daimler, Pagan Portals: Brighid for this.

***

If you would like to purchase, or simply gawp at, this plaque, go to The Catholic Company site:

Saint Brigid "Lake of Beer" Tin Sign

Product Description

•     Creative tin sign themed for Ireland's faith and drink of choice 
•     Original gift idea
•     Easy to feature in a den or office 
•     Features poem by St. Brigid, Patroness of Ireland 
•     Exclusive to The Catholic Company

•    Item #: 9850126
•    Price: $16.95

Details

How about an aluminum sign that instantly enhances the character of a room? This one rouses authentic faith and good spirits.

Saint Brigid's timeless words are captured on a Guinness-inspired pint, and set against a map that traces the geography of Ireland's roving hills.

The size makes it easy to feature in home or office, and has layers of rich meaning and substance every bit as cool as St. Brigid herself.

Dimensions & Specifications

•     8" (W) x 12" (L)
•     2 side holes for easy hanging 
•     Material: Aluminum

A Blessed Little Beer

Well, I should not be surprised by this, but I guess I was (I haven't tasted it--if anyone does, let me know what you think):

Cycle Saisonnier – Seasonal Saisons

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Mary of the Gael

Spring Saison

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

St. Brigid’s Day is celebrated in Ireland at the time of Imbolic, a once pagan celebration of ‘summer in the belly of winter’. This release in our series of seasonal saisons is a refreshingly hoppy take on saison for springtime. Mary of the Gael has a simple base of pilsner malt, a touch of honey malt and is dry-hopped with a copious amount of floral hops

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Alc. by Vol. 6.5% |  21 IBUs | 14 °Plato  | Light foods/Fish/Artisan Cheese/Asian | Best  at cellar temperature (55 °F)

Cover Art: St Brigit and Her Ale by Anna Pierlot

The cover art here is from the February 2013 issue of Catholic Insight, depicting St Brigit pouring ale from a barrel into a pitcher, with a straw cross swinging from her belt. The artist, Anna Pierlot, is a student at Campion College in NSW, Australia.

She says, about her painting,

"This piece depicts St. Brigid, patron of Ireland (along with St. Patrick). She is often shown holding a reed cross, a crozier of the sort used by abbots, along with some source of fire or light. Fire is a central image connected with St. Brigid; nuns at her monastery are said to have kept burning a sacred eternal flame. She is said to have had the power to multiply such things as butter, bacon, and milk; she is shown here brewing beer."

Brigit & Beer Baths: Notes on a Tale by Cogitosus from the Perspective of a Beer Historian

"St Brigid's Lake of Beer," Michael O'Neill McGrath*

As often happens, while searching an unrelated topic I stumbled across an interesting article connected to Brigit. It tells a tale from Cogitosus regarding Brigit and beer. No self-respecting Brigit-Beer article should go without the famous poem attributed to her. So let us begin there:

I should like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I should like the angels of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal.
I should like excellent meats of belief and pure piety.
I should like the men of Heaven at my house.
I should like barrels of peace at their disposal.
I should like for them cellars of mercy.
I should like cheerfulness to be their drinking.
I should like Jesus to be there among them.
I should like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I should like the people of Heaven, the poor, to be gathered around from all parts.

excerpt from 
St Brigid and the Bathwater

by Martyn Cornell

...While I was putting together the order of service, I even found a suitably beery quote fromThe Life of St Brigid the Virgin, written by a Kildare monk, Cogitosus Ua hAedha, around AD650, to use as one of the readings:

On another extraordinary occasion, this venerable Brigid was asked by some lepers for beer, but had none. She noticed water that had been prepared for baths. She blessed it, in the goodness of her abiding faith, and transformed it into the best beer, which she drew copiously for the thirsty. It was indeed He Who turned water into wine in Cana of Galilee Who turned water into beer here, through this most blessed woman’s faith.

Cogitosus, of course, was keen to chalk the bathwater-into-beer event up as a miracle, just like the one at the wedding at Cana, but there is, in fact, a possible non-miraculous explanation for how St Brigid was able to make the thirsty lepers happy. A record of a fire at the monastry of Clonard in Ireland around AD787 speaks of grain stored in ballenio, literally “in a bath”, which seems to mean the grain being soaked as part of the initial processes of malting. What St Brigid drew off, I’d suggest, may have been water from the ballenium where the grain was steeping in the first stage of malt-making.

Quite possibly, if the grain had begun to sprout wild yeasts had already started multiplying in the water, and making alcohol. Cogitosus heard the story, already more than a century old, about Brigid giving the lepers water from the ballenium to drink and, presumably because he knew nothing about brewing, thought this ballenium was an ordinary bath for washing in. While water from the grain steep might have made a passable ale substitute if you were a thirsty leper, for “bath water” to taste like ale must have seemed a miracle to the confused Cogitosus.

Ale was an important part of Irish society: the Crith-Gablach, an Irish law book compiled about the middle or end of the 7th century AD, declared that the “seven occupations in the law of a king” were:

Sunday, at ale drinking, for he is not a lawful flaith [lord] who does not distribute ale every Sunday; Monday, at legislation, for the government of the tribe; Tuesday, at fidchell [a popular Iron Age board game]; Wednesday, seeing greyhounds coursing; Thursday, at the pleasures of love; Friday, at horse-racing; Saturday, at judgment.”

Who’d be an Irish king, eh?

For the full article, including an old Irish poem on the best ales of the country, go to Martyn Cornell's Zythophile: Beer Now and Then. Click here for his article "Ancient Irish Ales". Martyn is the author of Amber Gold and Black: The History of Britain's Great Beers.

* "St. Brigid's Lake of Beer" by Bro. Mickey (Michael O'Neill McGrath) an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales.