Reinventing the wheel

Paul Rondelez in Cork drew our attention to a paper from the Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland from 1886 which spoke to us through the centuries. A kindred spirit and direct descendent of Daniel O’Connell, one Gabriel Redmond M.D., musing on the function of Fulachta Fiadh in the aforementioned paper, posited that the sites may have functioned as brewing places….

The relevant passage from page 404:

“The Irish, we know, were not good cooks… but good or bad as their cuisine may have been, they required to wash it down with liquid of some sort, and the old Irish, we are told, partook of mead or metheglin. Now it is known that they used heath as hops, and these mounds, being situated in the midst of heath, we may infer that some of them, at least, were used as brewing places, as well as cooking hearths. “

I’ve pasted the piece below.

Thanks very much to Paul for forwarding the paper to us. Just goes to show that nothing in archaeology is new!

Reference: Redmond, G., 1886. History, Antiquities, Archæological Remains, and Legends Connected with the Western End of the County Waterford, The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, Fourth Series, Vol. 7, No. 65 (Jan., 1886), pp. 394-405, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 12:01 pm. It is filed under About the Beer, Fulacht fiadh and tagged with ale, Beer, Fulacht fiadh, heather ale, mead. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.