1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

A SPIRITUOUS DISCOURSE 79 century, but in the beginning it was worked solely in the monasteries by the jovial monks. What a good time those monks of old would seem to have had ! According to the popular prints they were usually engaged either in fish ing, eating oysters, drinking out of flagons, catching beetles, confessing pretty women, or being shaved ; and we know that their abiding- places were built, for the most part, on the banks of a river which absolutely swarmed with salmon or trout, in the midst of a district teeming with game. Any how the monks made spirits, or "strong waters" as they were called in those days, first. Pure malt whisky is, and has been, made almost exclusively in Scotland. In Ireland they use about one-third of malt to two-thirds of oats and maize. In England they make whisky of pretty nearly everything, including German spirit, petroleum, and old boots; whilst in gallant little Wales —well the only acknowledged Welsh whisky I have tasted was excellent in quality, and apparently liiade from pure malt. Distilling, as a trade, commenced in England during the Tudor period, and from the reputation bluff" King Hal bore for feathering his nest, it is probable that the industry was fully taxed. In 1579 Scotch distilleries were taxed for the first time. In Ireland as far back as the eleventh cen tury the natives made uisge beatha—now called potheen—without interference from landlord or ganger, and continued at it until the sixteenth century, when licenses were enforced in the cases of all but the gentry^ and to run an illicit still was