"From
the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far then honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground."
A
long time agone it was, before one kenned recorded history, in the
days called Neolithic, upon the Isle of Rhum, some brave warrior
(perhaps) hoisted the clay vessel, and quaffed of a beverage that
may well have been old even in his time. Perhaps not finishing it,
perhaps capping it for a future celebration -- somehow the vessel
was lost, or perhaps this brave (or not-so-brave) warrior (if he
was indeed a warrior) was himself lost.
That
was nigh on four thousand years ago; within the last few meager
decades, a shard of the vessel has turned up, still shining with
the signature of fermentation and heather.
325
BCE to 843 CE the Cruithni/Pretani were in ascendancy in the heather-laden
moors of Alba, and the Romans acknowledged them as brewers, According
to the Scottish Dictionary, "The Picts brewed some
awful grand drink they ca't heather ale from heather and some unknown
kind of fog". Did they mean it was awful compared
to what they were used to, or that it was grand, simply grand?
"There
rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Picts in battle,
He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain
He hunted as they fled,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead.
Summer
came in the country,
Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
Was none alive to tell.
In graves that were like children's
On many a mountain head,
The Brewsters of the Heather
Lay numbered with the dead."
So,
what's a poor Scots conquerer to do? According to this 19th century
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, seeped in the romanticism of its
time, Picts were stunted people, and effectively wiped out by the
Scots. We know now, of course, that the strong history of the Cruithni
play out in the blood of today's inhabitants of Scotland; the Cruithni
were not laid so low. However, the tale goes on:
"The
king in the red moorland
Rode on a summer's day;
And the bees hummed, and the curlews
Cried beside the way.
The king rode, and was angry,
Black was his brow and pale,
To rule in a land of heather
And lack the Heather Ale.
It
fortuned that his vassals,
Riding free on the heath,
Came on a stone that was fallen
And vermin hid beneath.
Rudely plucked from their hiding,
Never a word they spoke;
A son and his aged father --
Last of the dwarfish folk.
The
king sat high on his charger,
He looked on the little men;
And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
Looked at the king again.
Down by the shore he had them;
And there on the giddy brink --
'I will give you life, ye vermin,
For the secret of the drink.'"
In
843, the Picts and the Scots unified into Alba, under the hands
of Kenneth MacAlpin, descendant of both illustrious lines.
Heather
ale, this leann fraoch, was oftimes mentioned in medieval tales.
In fact, leann fraoch figures in the legendary discovery of distillation:
A clan warmed itself and its heather ale over a fire under a stone
enclosure. Some of the beverage evaporated, only to condense overhead
against this roof. Drops would fall back down, and oh, certainly,
a reveller or two of more steady hand would catch the drops back
into their cups. More potent, this! Perhaps this became the first
whisky?
"There
stood the son and father,
And they looked high and low;
The heather was red around them,
The sea rumbled below.
And up and spoke the father,
Shrill was his voice to hear:
'I have a word in private,
A word for the royal ear.
'Life
is dear to the aged,
And honour a little thing;
I would gladly sell the secret,'
Quoth the Pict to the king.
His voice was small as a sparrow's,
And shrill and wonderful clear:
'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.
Take him, O king, and bind him,
And cast him far in the deep;
And it's I will tell the secret
That I have sworn to keep.'"
But
how and why was heather ale lost? The answer is more modern than
any event from the era of Kenneth MacAlpin.
We
come now to 1707, the year Scotland became a part of Great Britain,
after years and years of conflict with that nation and (indeed)
alien culture to its south. In order to subdue Scotland, the rulers
seated in London began to pass many a rule to limit the expression
of Scottish culture. Bagpipes, the tartan, the Gaelic language were
to be exterminated. Along with this, and for the same reason, brewers
of Alba/Scotland were prohibited from using ingredients other than
the "true" ingredients: malt, hops. Since hops cannot
grow so far north, a livelihood was wiped out, and a drink passed
no doubt reluctantly into history and folklore.
They
took the son and bound him,
Neck and heels in a thong,
And a lad took him and swung him,
And flung him far and strong,
And the sea swallowed his body,
Like that of a child of ten; --
And there on the cliff stood the father,
Last of the dwarfish men.
While
both language and heather ale were lost from much of the Scottish
lands, it was more difficult for the English to control goings-on
in the Highlands and on the Scottish western isles, and so both
Gaelic and leann fraoch continued on, albeit in their attenuated,
less-known, forms.
While
likely there was many a recipe for that proud beverage, heather
ale, the renaissance for this semi-lost and legendary brew began
in 1986. A Gaelic-speaking informant passed on an old family recipe
to a Glasgow shopkeep. Intrigued, the latter began to experiment,
developing a remarkable and contemporary heather ale, and named
it in Gaelic, Fraoch Leann, based on the information of old.
The
rest, as they say, is history, or not exactly, since today you can
find a couple notable distilleries of Heather Ale.
Brewers
make this ale using flowers from the ubiquitous heather of Scotland,
alongside malt. The finished brew is fully malted, comes with a
heather-like floral aroma, and a finish similar to that of a dry
wine. The old recipe that has been adapted for current-day production
also contains both ginger and myrtle (gale), although the latter
has been dropped in commercial preparations due to its somewhat
medicinal taste. The old recipe also used ocean water, dropped in
the favor of fresh. Inland Picts and Scots no doubt used fresh water
anyway. Today's commercial product also contains a small amount
of hops, which is not a part of the original.
"'True
was the word I told you:
Only my son I feared;
For I doubt the sapling courage
That goes without the beard.
But now in vain is the torture,
Fire shall never avail:
Here dies in my bosom
The secret of Heather Ale.'"
And, so, where is Wallace?
" 
