DEATH TO JOHN BARLEYCORN!

There is a song about the death of John Barleycorn, describing the poor bugger being cut, thrashed and generally mammocked.  But up he springs again!  Now, I understand that he held sway in Europe until, under the name of Silenus, until Bacchus rolled in from the East.  Prior to that he ruled jointly with the apple, the gathering of which did not entail annihilation, as with barley.  How did wine gain a superior position, maybe classwise?  Maybe the new bosses rolled in complete with Bacchic cult, for if wine can take you into space, heaven knows beer can ! (I cite Newcastle Brown, poor mans journey into space)  Silenus thereafter acquired the image of potbellied old man, maybe rustic.  This persists, for wine in bed is sybaritic, beer in bed is gross, as with my memory of  a bottle of Newkie embedded in someones spotty fizog, in Newcastle.  Can beer ever look dainty?

The making of wine involves the plucking of the fruit, as does cider.  The parent remains, alive for the next year, and many more.  Beer, though entails complete annihilation, as, by the way does its most popular flavourer and clarifier, the hop. the hopvine can remain, its corpse to be seen through the winter, like the gamekeeper's warning crow or magpie, hung on a post.  The resemblance of the hop leaf to the grapevine leaf is curious, with the unstoppable advance of the hop once it gained currency.  This may be food for thought, or it may be as a rice cake to the nourishment of the intellect...

Rambling on from John Barleycorn to whatever deity governs the hop, I note that it is botanically akin to cannabis and the elm.  That the former is narcotic is unquestioned, but the only consciousness-altering effect known of the elm is its habit of dropping the odd branch onto the heads of boy scouts encamped beneath.

To return from my ramble, let us celebrate the generosity of John Barleycorn in dying to assuage our troubles, and his eternal rebirth.  By getting somewhat, or totally,  out of it.