Extra-oral imbibing

Ben Jonson, Benito Pérez Galdós, and a Catalan entrepreneur.

Trevor @ Sunday March 13th 2005 20:48

I always enjoyed the following Ben Jonson lines as a classy prelude to John Denver’s Please Daddy, don’t get drunk this Christmas:

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.

Now it turns out that there’s more of this bastardly bevying going on. Here, from Benito Pérez Galdós’ Zumalacárregui (1898), a liberal army has been lured to certain slaughter in the mountains of Navarre by the Carlist general of the title:

And at night they were afflicted not only by loss of heart, but also by thirst. At those altitudes there was no water. A humorist said that they would have to be content with drinking via their ears, because they heard noises of frothy torrents under their feet, at depths attainable only by the imagination, not by their gaze.

Some pillock has started up a chain of English theme pubs around here called The City Arms, one example of which I was dragged into last night. Even more miserable and inadequate than their “Irish” predecessors, I hope he’ll be able to find an orifice in which to stick them.


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