Perhaps you remember the old German oom-pah band drinking song, “In Heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here.” I read some potential bad news for the near future. It seems that there is a serious shortage of carbon dioxide gas – the ingredient that makes the little bubbles, creates the head, and allows the froth to run over the rim. If there is a shortage, there will be a beer shortage. Now, don’t get your lederhosen in a twist just yet. It might not happen. Then again, some of our readers might want to think about stocking up and hoarding. You know, just in case – or several cases.
We humans have been drinking beer for several thousand years. For example, we know all those fellows who worked on the pyramids and tombs in ancient Egypt drank copious amounts of it. It was safer than drinking the water from the Nile – the same river where animals and people bathed, (and a lot more) and beer kept them hydrated. It is believed that while the men were busy shifting big blocks of limestone, women became the brewers of beer.
Skip ahead to Europe’s Dark and Middle Ages, and people drank a lot of beer, for many of the same reason as the ancient Egyptians. It was safer to drink that water, and far less expensive than the wine poured down by the upper classes. The Romans learned about beer making from the Egyptians, and when the Romans moved into Europe, they took the knowledge with them and set up breweries.
By about 400 AD, the barbarians gave the Romans the heave-ho out of Europe, but the thirst for beer remained. During most of the Dark Ages the men were so busy slaughtering one another or going off on Crusades, women stepped into the void and became brewers. Many of them impoverished widows, and like most widows across Europe, many of them dressed in cheap black broadcloth.
One problem with this cottage brewing was all that barley and the sweet smell of yeast doing its thing, would attract mice. Some of the mice were a bit too thirsty and fell into the cauldron and drank themselves to death. For people who were very content to bathe once or twice a year, whether they needed it or not, pulling a drowned rodent out of their tankard down at the local tavern was cause for a good laugh. However, dead mice do not improve the flavor, so the brewers tried to keep this ingredient to a minimum. Meanwhile, household and feral cats began to hang around the cauldron, eager for some small rodent protein. To keep both mice and cat from the beer, the brewers kept a straw broom nearby.
On market day the women would take their beer to their stall or the tavern to sell to the thirsty shoppers. One problem was that the women were shorter than their male competitors, so to appear taller and catch the eye of the thirsty, they wore hats. Not just any old hat, but a wide-brimmed, tall, pointy hat.
Their success caught the attention of the Church. Even an unbathed bishop, abbot, or cardinal could smell money from a few furlongs down the track, and they wanted in on that money, just like a several centuries later Big Al and the Chicago Outfit broke out the Tommy guns to take-over their rival’s turf. With voices dripping of piety, the top tier churchmen justified their own hostile takeover by claiming some sort of divine right of monopoly. They were good at its ploy, having already cornered the market on the wool trade and converting wheat into flour at the local gristmill, as well as inventing the idea of toll roads and toll bridges. Henceforth, their own boys, the friars and monks, would be running beer business.
When women brewers objected, and the church went to work on a negative advertising campaign worthy of any low life politician. “See those old women over there making beer?” the clerics would ask. “That’s the clothing of a witch! And if you go out at night when there is a full moon, you’ll see these witches flying around on their broom sticks with their cat riding shotgun. Witches, I tell you! Wanton women in league with the devil himself. Something must be done about this!”
The Church got its latest monopoly. As for the former women brewers, they were hunted down by the bully boys of the Inquisition, hounded out of small towns and villages, and many were executed. They made easy targets for abuse – poor, no one to defend them, and let’s face it – if they knew how to make a good brewsky, they ‘just had to know’ a lot of other black magic secrets. That paranoia and repression made it to the Americas
It might not have been the first record of the abuse and repression of women, but it is certainly not the last. Salem, Massachusetts is infamous for its abuses during the Witch Trials. Politicians and Puritan clergy went right along with it so long as it served their quest for power and control. It was only when the accusers turned on their political and ecclesiastical leaders that it was brought to a fast end.
Even all the chaos in Salem wasn’t an end to the repression and abuse of women. It continued, morphing in more subtle ways, into new forms. Women weren’t allowed into some colleges and universities, much less some professions. Others were not allowed to rise past a certain level in their profession. The Constitution was not amended giving them the right were not to vote until the 1920s. Or, they might be arrested for smoking a cigarette in public, choosing shortened hair styles (known as the “bob”), or bathing suits that didn’t go from throat to ankle. Often, they were not allowed to have a checking account or credit cards in their own name. Legally, they could be paid far less than a male counterpart doing the same work.
Even the early Girl Scout manuals only added to it. Apparently, the authors did not believe young women were sufficiently athletic to run or jog long distances. Instead, they advised their members to run ten paces, walk ten more, and repeat.
It continues today, most notably, in all of the attempts to control a woman’s medical care, especially reproductive rights and health care.
There is another, far more insidious method men, and even other women, have used to repress women. It happened to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She had a long and successful tenure until one of her opponents publically said he thought she looked tired. It instantly changed the conversation because the news media and other rivals picked up on the comment. It became the news, and it wasn’t long after that Mrs. Thatcher became Baroness Thatcher in the House of Lord.
We don’t have a House of Lords here, so I wouldn’t recommend it. You never know, not all modern witches wear the traditional beer-maker’s uniform, and you might find yourself wearing your next pint of ale if you tell she looks tired.
