It’s hard to go wrong when you’re talking about (and singing) drinking songs to a group of amiable and lubricated folkies in a warm room on a cold, rainy night. David Ingle did a fine job providing context for English (and some Irish) drinking songs during an hour-long lecture that included short performances from no less than five musicians and a storyteller, in addition to his own singing.
Much of the material was taken from another piece that Ingle co-authored: Drinking: The Musical–The Social History of Taverns and Temperance. The hour was informative and the songs pleasant, although the lecture lacked the sort of theme that a storyteller, for example, would have included to tie the whole package together.
The venue, the Commander’s Mansion at the old Watertown Arsenal, is quietly elegant with crystal and gilt chandeliers and crown moldings on the ceilings: the sort of place that is regularly rented for weddings. Pocket-doors between two rooms were opened, and roughly 30 chairs in each room faced the middle. Ingle and the musicians had to choose to either face one room and turn their backs on the other, or face neither room and present their profile to both.
The lecture is part of a series run by Revels, and most of the crowd were regulars to Revels events. Organizer Gayle Rich explains that lectures give people a chance to explore a topic in more depth than just a straight performance. The audience is mature enough that they prefer an hourlong lecture on a Friday night to any of the performances around town. (The Boston Globe listed at least three sessions that evening.)
I’d like to thank whoever decided that the audience should be treated to beer (Whale Pale Ale), Massachusetts wines, and noshes before the lecture. It was pleasant and elegant, and very appropriate for the lecture subject.
Ingle wisely chose to start his lecture by explaining Bacchanalia, which was “a religion in every sense of the word.” Commoners and women found it particularly attractive. Storyteller Libby Franck dramatically retold the story of two out of three of Bacchus’ births.
In Greek myths, Bacchus brought wine from the East. Wine-making, says Ingle, is a hallmark of civilization. The British wine-drinking aristocratic gentlemen who made up some of the drinking songs Ingle described were familiar with Bacchus. “These 17th century gentlemen knew the story,” said Ingle, “and were grooving on it.”
The same gentlemen were grooving on the ideal of the symposium, in which aristocratic young men gathered in a room where they banned practical matters and traded stories, songs, and poetry as a chance to develop their aesthetic and intellectual tastes. Wine was an integral part of the original and revived symposia, and carried with it the belief that wine enhances wit. The symposia, Ingle said, “were much like an open mic.”
Other than mentioning its existence, Ingle didn’t delve into the class divide between upper-class wine drinkers and lower-class ale drinkers. The rough singalong “Nottingham Ale” contrasted sharply with a lovely solo of “Love and Wine.”
Ingle did, however, describe the attitudes towards drinking. Greeks were aware of the negative side of drinking, but pub songs don’t tend to be negative (as one might guess, given where they were sung). Some English street songs in the early 17th century were forerunners to the later temperance songs. And some Irish 19th century drinking songs praised whiskey and showed a progression from revelry to disorder, as demonstrated by Hall Kirkham’s rousing “Finnegan’s Wake.”
Ingle wrapped up the hour by talking about 19th century Music Hall songs. The halls were attached to pubs, so they couldn’t be too negative about drink, but they did make fun of drunks. The finest of the guest performers, Derek Lamb, sang several music hall songs, including “The Drunkard and the Pig.”
(Lecture in the Revels Salon lecture series, Commander’s Mansion, Watertown, MA, USA, October 15, 2004)
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