Captain Boycott was the agent of an estate in Ireland, and the tenants having become dissatisfied with his management asked the landlord to remove him. This he declined to do, and thereupon the tenants and their friends refused to work for Boycott, and made an agreement among themselves that none of them, their friends, or relatives should assist or work under him at harvest. His crops were thus endangered; but assistance arriving from Ulster, the harvest was gathered under the protection of troops. The tenantry then decided to still further extend their system of tabooing by including all persons who had any dealings with Boycott. All such were not only to be ignored and treated as total strangers, but no one was to sell to them or to buy of them.
Vivisection
Although cutting operations on living animals for the purpose of acquiring physiological knowledge were practised to a small extent as far back as the time of the Alexandrian school of medicine, William Harvey was the first to make any great and conclusive discoveries as the results of experiments on living animals. Harvey had a favorite dog named Lycisca, whose experience in vivisection was made the subject of a poem by a sympathizer, which is thus referred to by a recent English writer:
“This discovery of the circulation of the blood, in 1620, is attributable to our countryman Harvey, ascertained by experiments on a dog, whose name, Lycisca, and whose sufferings and whose usefulness to mankind, have been immortalized and handed down to posterity in some beautiful touching lines.”
Auld Kirk
If anyone will turn to the author of “Our Ain Folk,” he will learn why Scotch whiskey is called “Auld Kirk.” An old Glenesk minister used to speak of claret as puir washy stuff, fit for English Episcopawlians and the like; of brandy as het and fiery, like thae Methodists; sma’ beer was thin and meeserable, like thae Baptists; and so on through the whole gamut of drinks and sects; but invariably he would finish up by producing the whiskey bottle, and patting it would exclaim, “Ah, the rael Auld Kirk o’ Scotland, sir! There’s naething beats it.”
Beer
A recently published German work on the chemistry of beer, by M. Reischauer, states that the use of beer dates from very early times. Tacitus says, in his book on the manners of the ancient Germans, “Potus humor ex hordeo aut frumento, in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus;” and also that these Germans were indeed simple and moderate in their food, but less so in the use of this drink from barley or wheat. Diodorus Siculus (30 B.C.) affirms that Osiris even (1960 B.C.) introduced a beer made from malted grain into Egypt. Archilochus (720 B.C.) and Æschylus and Sophocles (400 B.C.) refer to a barley wine (vinum hordeaceum), and Herodotus (450 B.C.) relates that the Egyptians made wine from barley. The Spaniards knew beer, Pliny reports, as “celia” or “ceria;” the Gauls under the name “cerevisia.” In England and Flanders beer was commonly in use at the time of the birth of Christ; while old books represent Gambrinus, King of Brabant (A.D. 1200), as the inventor of beer. It is certain that beer was known to the Chinese from very early times. In the Middle Ages there was a celebrated brewery at Pelusium, a town on one of the mouths of the Nile.
Honeymoon
The word “honeymoon” is derived from the ancient Teutons, and means drinking for thirty days after marriage of metheglin, mead, or hydromel, a kind of wine made from honey. Attila, a celebrated king of the Huns, who boasted of the appellation, “The Scourge of God,” is said to have died on his nuptial night from an uncommon effusion of blood, brought on by indulging too freely in hydromel at his wedding-feast.