“At vos quo lubet, hinc abite lymphæ
Vini pernicies.”[a]
Pernicious water, bane to wine, be gone.
One should certainly be very much in the wrong to put in the number of those who had an aversion to wine the duke of Clarence. His brother, Edward the Fourth, prejudiced with the predictions of Merlin, as if they foretold, that one day that duke should usurp the crown from his children, resolved to put him to death, he only gave him the liberty to choose what death he would die of. The duke being willing to die a merry death, chose to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey. Not unlike him on whom this epigram was made.
“[1]In cyatho vini pleno cum musca periret;
Sic, ait Oeneus, sponte perire velim.”
In a full glass of wine expir’d a fly;
So, said Oeneus, would I freely die.
But let us come in earnest to those who have really had an antipathy to wine. Herbelot[2], in his Bibliotheque Orientale, says, that there are some Mussulmans so superstitious, that they will not call wine by its true name, which is Schamr and Nedibh; and that there are some princes amongst them that have forbidden the mentioning of it by express laws. The reason of all this is, the prohibition of Mahomet to his followers, which enjoins them not to drink wine. The occasion of which prohibition is as follows: “[3]They say, that passing one day through a village, and seeing the people in the mirth of wine embracing and kissing one another, and making a thousand protestations of friendship, he was so charmed with the sight, that he blessed the wine, as the best thing in the world. But that, at his return, observing the same place full of blood, and having been informed, that the same men whom he had seen before so merry, had, at last, changed their mirth into rage, and been fighting with their swords, he recalled his benediction, and cursed wine for ever, on account of the bad effects it produced.”
It is one of the chief commandments amongst the Siameze, to drink no wine, nor any liquor that will procure drunkenness[4].