The Warwickshire Herald. — 1890-01-09 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

THB ANTIQUITY OF WHISKY.  There is good evidence for supposing that se less s person than Osiris, the great god of Egypt, was the first distiller of whisky on record; for the , Egyptians had, from time immemorial. • distil- , lstion or brewage from barley, called by the Greeks barley wine, not inferior, they say, in flavour, and superior in strength, to wine. Allusion is made to thin liquor in several passages of ancient writers. The poor people of Egypt drank it in. steed of wine, and were wont to intoxicate them. selves with it. It seems also to have been no stranger to the Hebrews, for reference is certainly made to it in the Old Testament under the name of "strong drink," stronger than wine, and resorted to by determined drinkers for the sake of inebriation. Among the Celts In Spain and France,it seems to have been common as a substitute for wine. Polybius speaks of • certain Celtic king of part of Iberia, or Spain, who affected great court pomp, and had in the middle of his ball golden and silver bowls full of this barley wine, of which his guests and courtiers sipped or quaffed at their pleasure a custom which, it is said, for many a century prevailed among his Celtic de. scendants, the mull chiefs of the Scottish Highlands. The antiquity of this distillation is proved by the Egyptian tradition which ascribed its invention to Osiris. It may not improbably be sup. pared that the Egyptians communicated the invention to the Babylonians and Hebrews, who transmitted it northwards to the Thracians and Celts/ of Spain and Gaul, who in their migrations northwestwards carried it along with them into Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Aristotle entertained an extraordinary notion of this potation. Those intoxicated with it, he says, fall on the back parts of their heads; whereas those drunk with the wine fall on their faces!  The prejudioe which is expressed in the adage at to "a whistling woman and a crowing hen" is not only widespread, but very ancient. In Cornwall, whom many an old belief has been long cherished, a whistling woman is called "one of the unluckiest Wogs under the inn." The dislike, and in some regions the horror, which a women', whistling Called is as great as the hatred of sailors, °under certair enrcumstanoes, forth, whistling, which, in then opinion, mar be followed by • gale. On the other hand, the idea of whistling for a wind in a calm ie of very ancient date. 'Yet even two hundred ran ego,. as appears by Macaulay's mention of Garth Implying its folly to " the stupid judge" presiding at the trial of Cowper, the barrister, for the alleged murder of Hannah Stout, the wiser mind perceived the superstition. Superetitions, however. are long lived, and several have clustered round whistling. Even now in remote corners of the West of Eng. land, not to speak of other localities, the Seven Whistlers are bold to be uncanny to hear. Indeed, on a dark stormy night, on road or moor, *Moll is lonely eras ig the daytime, the belated traveller hearing the shrill mournful whistle sounding un. expectedly above and around him, might feel a thrill of fear. Very old, indeed, is this belief. By some it has been held that the whistle, usually produced by green plovers, sometimes by curlews, MA the signal note of witches proceeding to their dark rmr desirous ; by others the cry of phantoms most perilous to bear. Spencer, in the "Ifaery Queen," Book IL, alludes to the tradition. Even when it is ad. mitted that the sound is only produced by plovers or curlews, these birds are held unlucky much as are stormy petrels or single magpies.