How Beer Saved the World

Mad Gus Missteps From the ‘Legends of Beer’ Catalogue: Volume 17, Canto 210 ^{Mark J. Ferrari & Shannon Page}

The following is transcribed from an interview with extremely aged (1) German pig farmer Gustavo Dourtmundschtradel, conducted in English(2) by Roland Halifax, an oral history researcher from Bisonford University in Littleville, Iowa, (3) originally recorded on November 22nd, 1993 at Gustavo’s ancestral farmhouse in the hamlet of Frauschlesundmunster. (4)

RH: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Herr Dourtmundschtradel.

GD: A man of my age is of no further use with the pigs, Herr Halifax. It is good to have some other occupation—and to hope, of course, that some of my ancestral lore may be preserved… For some more appreciative audience, perhaps, than my dummkopf (5) son, who never believes a word I speak… and his even dimmer offspring with their video games and little music players. (Thoughtful pause) I must confess to fearing that the Dourtmundschtradel line is failing. Soon, our stories may be all that remains of us.

RH: Ah… Well then… What story would you like to start with?

GD: It is always best to start at the beginning, ja?(6) So I will tell you first, Herr Halifax, the oldest story in my family’s possession. A tale of the liberation of Durn in Schkerrinwald—the place from which my line originates, too many centuries ago to count now.

RH: Can you give me even an approximate century in which to place this account?

GD: Ach du Lieber Himmel. (7) No, lad. My tale comes from a time before centuries had been invented. This is from the… How is it in English?… The Jahren sehr lange Geschichten. (8)

RH: Good heavens! (9) That’s quite an old story! However did you come by it?

GD: I had it from my father.

RH: And… do you know how he came by it?

GD: Had it from his father, of course—who had it from his father, and so on. I am 91 years old, Herr Halifax. The time we have is maybe short to waste on such trivialities, ja?

RH: Sorry. Do go on.

GD: Well, as you will no doubt have heard, Europe was a dark place to be living in those days. But even by such standards, the isolated village of Durn was darker than most. It had many nicknames then, all of them words for misery of one kind or another.

RH: I’ve never heard of any Durn Village.

GD: Of course not. It was gone not long after this story transpired. The meager valley to which it clung was but an inhospitable rent in the high mountains of Schkerrinwald.

RH: Where is Schkerrinwald, exactly?

GD: Gone as well—a mere century or two after Durn. The whole empire of Vorkenfast was never more than one of many tenuous experiments in kingdom-craft back then.

RH: I must confess, I’ve never heard of an empire named Vorkenfast either.

GD: How could you have? I would never have heard of it myself, were my people not descended from the place. (10) And yet, out of Durn, meanest village of Schkerrinwald, least kingdom of the tenuous Vorkenfast Empire, came the greatest blessing ever bestowed upon Europe.

RH: Which was…?

GD: Why, beer, of course! (11) And my own many-times-great-grandfather was the man who first brought that golden gift into the land of Germany.

RH: I’m sorry… Did you just say… that your family introduced beer to Germany?

GD: Ja. (12)

RH: (Unintelligible sounds of surprise and/or confusion.)

GD: Before you inform me once again that you have never heard of this, Herr Halifax, allow me to concede that any tangible evidence of this claim vanished with my ancient ancestors, which is why I have never elected to tell even my disappointing son of this secret handed down through so many of my forefathers. I have no doubt of the tale’s veracity. Neither my father, nor any of his fathers were liars—or fools. (13) My son, alas, is the first of us for that. But I am German,(14) and my people do not so much enjoy playing the laughingstock as do those of your young country, so I have kept silent until now. You seem a pleasant fellow, wise enough to value the past more than most, but if you think my tale too improbable, let us leave it and proceed to some other.

RH: No, no! Please, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, continue. I’m quite fascinated.

GD: Very well, then…

The valley of Durn, as I was saying, had been oppressed for decades by a tyrant who styled himself Lord Augustus Stephenson of the Brown Feather; (15) a paranoid bombast who kept a small army of henchmen stabled like cattle in his heavily fortified manse upon a steep rise at the valley’s southern end. This pretense of a castle squatted like a guardhouse between the village and a great waterfall that marked the valley’s only navigable passage to the outside world. No one came or went from Durn without Lord Stephenson’s leave, which is to say that almost no one ever came or went from Durn at all—except as prisoners or exiles. (16)

This self-styled ‘Lord’ was universally referred to by the valley’s unfortunate inhabitants as Mad Gus—never within his hearing, of course—for few in Durn had not suffered frequent outrages at his unpredictable whim. Mad Gus saw punishment as a preventative measure. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was not just his favorite Bible verse; it was the only one he knew. He liked it so well that he had it carved upon his coat of arms. (17) A week did not go by without someone’s wife dragged from the house and sold to slavers in remuneration of some petty debt to Stephenson, real or imagined—or someone’s home or barn torched in the middle of the night as warning against whatever wrong Mad Gus imagined was being contemplated in their hearts—or someone’s child abducted and caged up at the castle until he or she grew old enough to serve Mad Gus as yet another henchman or kitchen drudge—or someone’s husband beaten just for entertainment in the fields or village square by the tyrant’s ‘peacekeepers.’ Neither loitering, truancy, gossip, nor public play or celebration were allowed in Durn. Only labor was tolerated there, and Mad Gus took all of whatever anyone’s labor produced beyond the little required by them to starve through another winter without actually dying. (18)

RH: What a grim situation… Why did these people not revolt? It doesn’t sound as if they had much to lose.

GD: It was the beer, Herr Halifax.

RH: The beer? I… don’t quite see—

GD: The one exception to Mad Gus’s insane selfishness and cruelty was the beer. Or so it seems, at first glance, ja?

RH: Ah. Right… First glance at… what, exactly?

GD: Understand, Herr Halifax, the people of Durn were allowed one male goat or cow and one female. Any kids or calves produced were confiscated just as soon as they were weaned, and taken off to grace the royal table—as was any milk not used for making cheese. Mad Gus’s subjects were encouraged to make all the cheese they wished, but not allowed to eat a bite of it. Off to the castle with that too, straight from the molds. Folk kept just half a bushel of whatever produce they might eke out of the rocky soil. All the rest was seized as ‘tax’ upon harvest and sent up to the tyrant’s bulging granaries and cellars against some rainy day. His rainy day, of course, not theirs. BUT! Strangely enough, folk were allowed to keep all the hops and grain that they might wish—just as long as it was brewed straight into beer. You would expect that once the work of brewing had been done, all that beer would vanish up into the castle with the rest, ja? But to everyone’s carefully suppressed astonishment, no! Mad Gus allowed the folk of Durn to keep their beer as well. As much as they could make and store and drink.

RH: Why?

GD: Mad Gus claimed to hate the stuff. With a passion—as one might expect of such a tyrant, ja? What other kind of man could hate such divine elixir? One might even surmise that this deviant abhorrence was the very cause of his degraded character. But the truth is otherwise, I think. Mad Gus was likely not so mad as that.

RH: But still… why then? It makes no sense.

GD: Does it not?

RH: Why are you smiling that way?

GD: All in good time, young man. First, you must know something about how beer came to be, for, as I said, it came to be right there in Durn. No one else had ever tried—or thought of trying—to make beer then. (19) Why would they have? Beer begins as pretty noxious stuff prior to the miracle of fermentation. Its first manufacture in Durn was just an accident—the result, in fact, of Mad Gus’s own relentless greed.

It is said that some poor farmer, whose name is sadly lost to us, had tried to cheat Mad Gus out of his excessive ‘tax’ by hiding a few scant ingredients for bread and herbal soup within his little hovel, thinking that the tyrant’s henchmen would not notice such a small omission. But Mad Gus had trained his men quite… passionately, let us say, and they were not deceived. So, when the poor man saw them ride into his yard, he poured all his illicit grain and herbs and yeast into the only hiding place at his disposal, an extremely large urn of water, unfortunately still half full, then jammed a rag into its mouth in hopes that his assailants would not look inside. They did, of course. That urn was likely the only object in the hovel worth examining. When they saw the soupy mess he’d made of his ill-gotten grain, they shoved the rag back into place and left the mess to rot. The man himself was left to rot as well, inside Mad Gus’s dungeon.

Somehow, though, the hapless man survived Mad Gus’s hospitality, and three months later, was released—which was not so great a favor as it may seem at first. Winter was well arrived by then. The valley was all hunkered down to starve until the spring, and the paroled farmer, already weak and hungry from his ordeal, had no one to assist him. Amidst the snowdrifts that had blown into his open hovel since they’d taken him away, he found nothing but the water urn they’d left, still containing all the food he had possessed. Without much hope, I imagine, he removed the rag and peered inside. Have you ever seen the afterbirth of fresh beer, Herr Halifax? (20)

RH: I fear I haven’t.

GD: It does not smell too bad, and it gives off a certain heat in fermentation, so it was not likely frozen, which was doubtless fortunate, but it is otherwise a most unappealing sight. Still, a man starving in winter might try anything. It seems he drank some of the fizzy, clotted broth into which all that grain and yeast had composted in his absence, likely hoping it might still provide at least a trace more nutritional value than could be derived from the frozen clay of his packed-earth floor, or the weathered wooden lintel of his doorway. (21) It must not have tasted too badly, for it seems he drank enough of it to experience a strange and wonderful euphoria.

RH: You’re not telling me that no one had ever been drunk before this, are you?

GD: Not in Durn, they hadn’t. And no one ever anywhere, not from beer. (22)

RH: Good heavens.

GD: Indeed. The urn was apparently large enough to provide a bit more of the miraculous substance to share with neighbors, who, in exchange for this transcendent experience, gave him enough food to delay his death from excessive starvation for several more weeks.

RH: He still died—after all that?!

GD: Alas. It seems he did. Martyred to bring beer into the world. I am told that one could find shrines dedicated to him throughout Schkerrinwald for centuries afterward.

RH: I’m sorry, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, but I feel compelled to ask: does this story of yours get any happier?

GD: Has beer ever made you… happy, Herr Halifax?

RH: Well… er… I suppose it… may have… Once or twice.

GD: Then you have your answer. This is the story of beer, young man, which has not just one, but many millions of happy endings. (23)

RH: I’m not sure that’s exactly what I—

GD: Returning to the point, however, they say that when Mad Gus was informed of the poor man’s struggle to survive on rotted grain in spoiled water, he laughed long and loud, then ordered one of his henchmen to bring him a small flask of the substance to examine. It is further said that he found the sample so revolting, he killed the man who’d brought it to him. (24)

RH: What a monster.

GD: As I’ve said, what else can be expected of a man who dislikes beer? After that, it amused him to invite the rest of his subjects to drink all the rotten grain and bitter, spoiled water they wished—which is, ostensibly, how the limitations on retention of certain staples became so liberalized. ‘If these ungrateful subjects find my provision for them insufficient,’ Mad Gus is said to have announced, ‘then they may drink all the bread they want.’

RH: Er… Well, all right. But it could not have taken long for him to notice that they liked the stuff. Wouldn’t he have changed his mind then?

GD: Oh, they were no doubt careful to pretend dislike of this new concoction, and that they drank it purely out of dietary desperation—as may well have been the case at first. But I suspect the real reason they persisted in drinking it, and the real reason Mad Gus went on letting them, were one and the same: beer’s effect. Left so little else to eat, they must have pinched their noses and endured this new ‘liquid bread’ for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, ja? No doubt they found the drunken state this left them in as… engaging, shall we say, as so many of us still do. But can you not see how useful Mad Gus may have found this unintended consequence as well?

RH: I’m… not sure I can. Assuming most of them were happy drunks, I’d still expect a man like that to have put a stop to it, just on principle.

GD: Think of them not as ‘happy,’ Herr Halifax, but as ‘pacified,’ for I suspect that is how Mad Gus saw them. He must have known—as you yourself have pointed out—that he was in danger should they ever decide they’d had enough. But while a people always pleasantly drunk or at least partially hung over may clearly still get angry, they are far less likely to get very motivated, much less organized, ja? (25)

RH: Why, that’s… diabolical. Your father told you all this?

GD: The outlines, young man, the outlines… And this is where my story really starts. Or where the story starts being mine, at any rate. My family’s ancestral founder was a man named Gundar Dourtmund. The schtradel portion of our surname was not added until many centuries later. Young Gundar was technically a barley farmer in Durn, though, like all the others in that benighted valley, he lived as little more than a miserable serf. He too had lost crops, cattle, property, and family members to Mad Gus’s vindictive whims. But he too subsisted largely on beer, and so had simply drifted like the others into a state of muddled resignation.

One autumn morning, as he was pulling a great cart of freshly harvested barley from his fields through the village on his way to Mad Gus’s castle granaries—without benefit of any oxen, for his only animals had been stolen by Mad Gus’s men the previous week (26)—he chanced to see his good friend, Horning Brock, the village innkeeper, standing outside his establishment. After more than a millennium, of course, none can say exactly what passed between them there, but one can well imagine how their conversation must have gone.

“Where are your oxen?” Brock would surely have asked.

“Where do you suppose?” Gundar probably replied.

They would likely have glanced up wearily at Mad Gus’s hulking manse.

“Ah,” Brock sighs. “Just so with my dear Marya.”

“No!” Gundar gasps. “They took your wife?”

Brock nods sadly. “Two weeks ago. And my sweet daughter, Hester, just last Tuesday. Had you not heard?”

“Sadly, no,” Gundar answers. “I’ve been busy in the fields with harvest for some weeks now, as you see.”

“And poor Lily just last night.”

“Your five-year-old?!” Gundar gasps. “Whatever have you done to piss them off so, Horning?”

“They’ve not told me yet,” Brock answers. “They’re clearly very busy at the moment, but I’m sure they’ll get around to explanations just as soon as there’s a lull in all this kidnapping.” The two men likely turned another wistful glance up at the tyrant’s fort. “At least they’ve left my little Kamber,” Brock adds, trying to seem stoic. “It’s true he’s only three; but he can fair well reach the stove already, if he stands upon a box. Should they come for me as well, I’m sure he’ll make a fine innkeeper just as soon as he can lift more than his nose above the counter from behind the bar.” (27)

Or, if not these words exactly, I am sure their conversation would have been something very like this. It’s how things were in Durn back then.

At any rate, it is passed down that Brock invited Gundar inside to share a stein of beer; and given all the sadness both men had to process, it would have been extremely rude of Gundar to refuse him. He removed the yoke from his shoulders, and left his barley wagon in the street.

It is never a good idea to drink beer quickly, of course. There were no antacids in those days. (28) So they lingered over that first stein, as one does. It turned out that many other calamities had been suffered recently by various townsfolk, of which Gundar had heard nothing, being preoccupied with harvest. So another stein or two were had as Brock brought Gundar up to date on all of Gus’s latest shenanigans.

To that point, they had been drinking a light and pleasant lager, (29) as one did then in the mornings after breakfast, but before they knew it, lunchtime had arrived, and being an hospitable man by both trade and nature, Brock could hardly have sent Gundar back to his long slog without some meal to sustain him. So he brought out a potato, (30) and poured them each a pint of pale ale(31) to wash it down with. Of course, Gundar was not the sort of man to accept another fellow’s largess and then just rush off without so much as a fare-thee-well. Even peasant manners dictate that one linger after such a meal for at least the minimal pleasantries and small talk.

This courtesy occasioned another stein or two, and, it being afternoon by then, they moved to hearty oatmeal stout.(32) As the sun slanted lower through the inn’s bottle-glass windows, and the air began to chill, the two men finished off their very satisfying visit with a pint or two, or five perhaps, of Brock’s fine late-season porter.(33) Then Gundar stood at last, with relatively minor difficulty, and thanked Brock warmly, while insisting that he really must be off to finish his delivery.

They stumbled outside together, and soon had the barley wagon’s yoke untangled from the ground and firmly settled onto Brock’s stout shoulders. It took just a minute more to have it off again, and onto Gundar’s shoulders. Then, with a determined heave or two, my many-times great-grandfather was off again toward Mad Gus’s hilltop granary—even by Durn’s standards, quite profoundly ‘shitfaced’, as you Americans say. Little did he know what was about to come of such a mundane visit with his friend.

RH: Herr Dourtmundschtradel, I really must congratulate you on such clarity of memory at your age. (34) How long has it been since you last heard this tale from your father?

GD: It is difficult to be certain. He told it to me many times, but the last I can recall was during a long train ride to visit one of his mistresses when I was… eight years old, perhaps. He died not long after that. Of a gunshot wound. To the back. Quite a tangle at the time…

RH: My condolences, Herr Dourtmundschtradel.

GD: Thank you, Herr Halifax, but I assure you it is all ancient history to me now.

RH: Well, I must say, this tale of yours is really… very long. Perhaps I ought to change the tape before we go further.

(Tape two)

RH: All right. I think we’re ready to continue. You were saying…?

GD: Yes. Well. By all accounts, Gundar was so drunk, the fact he ever even reached the granary gates is yet another sign of divinity’s hand in this affair. It was near twilight when Gundar finally wheezed and wobbled to a halt within the castle courtyard. And who was he astonished and dismayed to find there waiting for him, but Mad Gus himself.

RH: Uh-oh.

GD: (Wheezy laughter, followed by a fit of coughing.) The brevity of which your language is so capable never ceases to astonish me, Herr Halifax. It is just so… laughable. (35)

But yes. Just as you say, ‘Uh-oh.’ From what my father handed down to me, the ensuing conversation between Mad Gus and Gundar went something more or less like this:

Mad Gus says, “You’re late, you drunken sot! We’ve been waiting for you here all afternoon and into dinner!”

All Gundar’s inebriated brain can manufacture in reply is, “Why?”

“You dare ask me WHY?!” Mad Gus bellows. “What an impertinent question! Are you too drunk to see who stands before you?”

“Before me?” Gundar looks around, bewildered. “I didn’t mean to cut in line. If someone was here first, I’m glad to wait.”

“I’m talking about ME, Barrel Brains!” says the tyrant. “Your KING stands before you—WAITING for a wagonload of barley that should have been here before lunch!”

“You’re before me?” asks Gundar, even more confused. “But… why would you be made to wait in line… in your own courtyard? You’re the king.”

“There is no line, you idiot!” Mad Gus shouts. “You’re the only one in line!”

“Then… what’s the problem?” Gundar pleads.

“YOU’RE LATE!!!” screams the tyrant.

“For what?” whines Gundar. Even he can tell this isn’t being managed well, but granary deliveries were never ‘by appointment.’ If there’d been some schedule here, he had never been informed of it… Then again, his friend, Brock, still hadn’t been informed of why they’d kidnapped his two daughters and his wife…

“I sent men to your farm this morning for the barley,” Mad Gus growls, (36) clearly struggling to regain his composure. “They were informed by a neighbor of yours—since imprisoned—that you’d already left to drag your little wagon here—where we’ve been WAITING for you all damn day!”

“Waiting?” Gundar asks again. “For a cart-full of barley…?”

“When you failed to show up as expected, I’d have bet my second pair of pants that you were trying to flee the valley with my barley! In fact, I still think that’s what you tried to do. So what went wrong, dummkopf?”

“I wasn’t trying to flee anywhere,” Gundar protests. “You know the only way out of Durn leads right through here. Where else could I have gone? Up a cliff? With a cartload of barley?”

“Call me stupid one more time,” says Gus, “and you can laugh it up down in my dungeons with your insolent neighbor. If you weren’t trying to run away, where have you been all day? It should not have taken you two hours to get here from your pathetic little farm.”

Gundar opens his mouth to say he’d just been visiting with Brock, but some lonely, semi-lucid synapse in his finally sobering mind suggests that Brock has already suffered too much at Gus’s hands. Sadly, this brief window of lucidity then closes up again as quickly as it had popped open, and Gundar is so pie-eyed that he can’t quite distinguish at that moment between thoughts and words—which is how the thought, I should just have turned this Gottdamn (37) barley into beer, (38) becomes so inconveniently audible.

“You should have… what?” says Mad Gus very quietly.

“What?” Gundar replies, still only half aware that he had thought aloud.

“Leave your wagon when you go, cur,” Mad Gus tells him, very quietly indeed. “I will have that with the barley for your insolence.”

“But… but without the cart, how am I to bring you next year’s harvest?” Gundar stammers.

“Shut your bung hole, peasant,” Mad Gus answers as quietly as Gundar has ever heard him speak, “and leave here. Now. Or I will have your worthless head to decorate the cart with.”

Well, as you might imagine, Herr Halifax, all this distressing banter had finally cleared Gundar’s mind enough to understand that it was time to run—and not back to his farm where who knew what fate might await him. Where Mad Gus was concerned, displays of quiet restraint were never known to be propitious.

RH: Very ominous indeed. But since you’re here today, I must assume your ancestor survived this misstep.

GD: Indeed, for, though Gundar did not realize it, he had just induced Mad Gus to a commit an even greater misstep of his own.

Unsure that anywhere within the village would be safe for him, Gundar slept out in the forest, wrapped in his cloak against the cold. Early the next morning, he snuck back, hoping to find sanctuary underneath the inn kept by his friend Horner Brock. There was a secret second cellar there, you see, dug out just spoonfuls of dirt at a time over many years by a wide conspiracy of barroom patrons. This small space was used to hide important things or people in times of extraordinary need if Brock deemed it could be done without arousing suspicion in the castle. We will never know whether Brock would have deemed Gundar’s need qualified, for he arrived to find an hysterical mob gathered in Brock’s barroom.

“Gus’s men have emptied all the brewing vats, and carted off the beer!” they cry when Gundar enters. “Every barrel, bottle, and bota bag in the entire village!”

“Gott in Himmel!” (39) Gundar exclaims, quite hungry by that hour, and having hoped to get a stein or two of breakfast there, if not even a potato to scrub it down with. “Why would they do such a thing?”

“They came last night,” he is angrily informed, “claiming you’d spat into Mad Gus’s face and told him no one ought to pay his grain tax anymore! He thinks we are ungrateful now!”

Gundar gapes at them in utter disbelief, then slaps his forehead.

“Can this be true, Gundar?” Brock asks him. “Were you so insane?”

“I do vaguely remember that Mad Gus and I misunderstood each other when I went to offer up my harvest,” Gundar tells them. “That much is true, I think. But if I’d spit at any part of him, would I be living now to speak of it? And why would I have dragged a whole cart full of barley up that Gottdamn hill just to tell him I’d not pay his tax? I was certainly not that drunk.”

“It does sound hard to swallow,” someone in the mob concedes.

“Everything is hard to swallow now,” someone else complains, “without our beer.”

“They burned your farm last night, you know,” Brock tells Gundar gently.

“I’m not surprised,” sighs Gundar.

“Well, we’re not just going to stand for it, are we?” someone else insists.

“Please, don’t cause yourselves more trouble on my account,” Gundar replies stoically. “Winter’s not for several weeks yet. I can build another farm.”

“Who cares about your farm?” protests the other man. “I meant our beer! Winter’s only weeks away, as Herr Barrel Mouth has just observed, and that beer’s all we had to eat!”

This remark is met with cheers of outrage from the mob.

“With winter upon us and all our grain already tucked away up in the castle granaries, we have no way of brewing more!”(39) complains a third man.

“And even if we could,” a fourth man groans, “how would we survive the months required to brew it?”

“Where’s he keeping it all?” asks someone else. “That’s what I want to know. Mad Gus can’t stand beer, so he won’t have many barrels up there.”

“I have it from Hans Schloser, the carpenter,” confides a fifth man, “that Mad Gus has turned one of his granaries into a giant vat!”

“So that’s why they tore down my barn last night!” exclaims another fellow. “Without a word of explanation when they carted off the lumber!”

“Same with my tanning shed!” complains the village taxidermist.

“They’ve made a beer vat from your tanning shed?” someone asks, aghast.

“He’s poured all our different kinds of beer into a single vat?” gasps the man behind him.

“Has he no conscience?” cries a balding man with bandied legs.

“Has he no taste buds?” demands another.

“He has no soul!” booms out a third.

“It’s… sacrilege!” sputters a fourth.

“It’s psychotic sociopathy!” shrills a fifth. (40)

“It’s just too much!” shouts a nearly toothless geezer near the front. “For decades now, that monster steals our cattle with impunity! He burns our barns and houses! He drags our very wives and children from their beds at night and sells them into slavery! Okay, we can live with that stuff; life is never easy. But marching in and grabbing our beer? That crosses the line! I say the time—has come—to take—this FÜCHENMEISTER (41) DOWN!!!”

(Sudden silence, punctuated after some time by a spate of quiet throat clearing from Mr. Dourtmundschtradel.)

My… apologies, Herr Halifax, for that… outburst. Always, at this point in the story, I… This is the moment of liberation awaited by my longsuffering forefathers since even before their own births. The emotion… It is… rather distressing, ja? I… hope you will consider, possibly, deleting this embarrassing lapse in discipline from your recording?

RH: I will certainly consult my superiors, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, but I assure you, there’s no need of apology. I sympathize completely. (42)

GD: Danke, (43) Herr Halifax. Your understanding does you credit.

RH: The honor is mine, sir. Shall we continue?

GD: Of course, of course. Where were we?

RH: Er… at the, uh, dawn of Durn’s liberation, I believe?

GD: Ja, ja. Well. A respectable civic leader like Herr Brock would, of course, have found that old man’s disturbing emotional outburst as unseemly as you and I do, Herr Halifax, and perhaps have worried also about potential consequences for himself and his establishment should any of Mad Gus’s men happen to be lurking near enough to overhear the indecorous display of seditious sentiment developing inside. He quite properly insisted that the discussion be suspended immediately and taken “elsewhere.”

Now, everyone in Durn, except, of course, for Mad Gus and his various agents, knew very well what ‘elsewhere’ meant. In times of extremis, one was likely to hear that so-and-so had gone ‘elsewhere’ for a while, or that ‘the thing in question’ might be looked for ‘elsewhere.’ In Durn, elsewhere meant that secret second cellar, which I have mentioned, underneath Herr Brock’s inn. Thus, with knowing looks and crafty nonchalance, the hysterical mob sidled furtively down Brock’s cellar stairs, and passed in single file through the slyly sequestered slot behind the curtain, cleverly concealed inside a false-backed barrel into Brock’s secret second cellar to resume their rabble-rousing in greater safety.

Unfortunately, this space is said to have been no larger than eight feet in any direction, so one must assume the hysterical mob was packed inside quite tightly. The smell alone of all those rustic fellows jammed together in the darkness must have been appalling, (44) though they were likely far too angry at that moment to care much about such trivialities, ja?

At any rate, once all were pressed inside, their rebellious conversation was resumed.

“So,” Brock commences sensibly, “how exactly do you bravos think that we, without any weapons, can hope to overthrow Mad Gus with all his henchmen and that cannon he is always polishing?” (45)

“Anybody ever seen him fire it?” asks a voice from near the back. “I’ll bet it doesn’t even work, or he’d have fired it at us long ago.”

“You are volunteering, then,” Brock counters, “to stand between it and the rest of us while we find out?”

“Our cause is just!” cries the old man with hardly any teeth. “God will surely supply us with whatever weapons are required.”

I do not doubt Brock rolled his eyes, though no one would have seen it in the darkness. “And what kind of weapons do you imagine God would send us?” he asks wearily, having watched this kind of theater come and go in Durn too many times before.

A consternated silence fills their crowded refuge.

“Beehives!” someone exclaims.

“Beehives?” Brock asks. “Mad Gus’s beekeepers will have many more of those up at the castle than we’re likely to assemble here. What would we do with them anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter,” says another voice. “Don’t need the hives—just a couple tubs of honeycomb, and take it to the castle as an offering to make amends for Gundar’s blunder.”

“I told you,” Gundar protests. “I did nothing!”

“Hold your tongue, Gundar,” scolds the first voice. “I’m not finished yet. Being such greedy bastards, I bet they’ll tear into that honey right in front of us and shove it all into their faces while we look on, hungry, ja?”

“Which will accomplish what of any help to us?” asks someone else.

“Nothing,” says the first voice, ‘‘til we set the bears loose on them!”

“What bears?” asks Gundar, backed by many a concurring grunt.

“The woods are full of hungry bears this close to winter,” he replies. “We just catch five or six of them, and sic ‘em on Mad Gus and his collaborators when their greedy faces are all covered in our honey. They’ll be torn to pieces.”

“How are we to trap these bears without being mauled ourselves?” scoffs Gundar.

“And how are we to sneak them up into the castle?” asks another voice as scornfully. “Shall we hide them in our breeches while presenting Mad Gus with the honey, or just whistle for them once he has indulged this bestial sweet tooth you describe?”

“We could use weasels, then,” says a new voice. “They’re easier to catch, and small enough to hide—even in our breeches, if we have to.”

“Are you seriously proposing that we kill Mad Gus with weasels?” Brock asks crossly.

“Just ‘cause they’re small don’t mean their claws and teeth aren’t just as sharp as any bear’s,” says this latest idiot, near drowned out by boos and raspberries from the others.

“Weasels care for sausage, not for honey,” Gundar laughs. “So I think we know what they will use their teeth on first if any of us tries hiding them inside their pants.” (46)

“A peace offering of goats then,” says yet another voice, “with beehives stuffed inside them, (47) so that when the castle butcher cuts them open—”

“—all the kitchen staff is stung to death!” Gundar roars with mirth. “That will show Mad Gus who’s boss in Durn. And how are we to get these beehives into goats?”

“Just wrap them up in trash, and leave them in the goat pen,” says yet another man. “There’s nothing goats won’t eat.” (48)

“Are we finished with this nonsense?” Brock snaps. “It’s getting rather close in here.”

But they weren’t even near to finished, Herr Halifax. Someone next suggested they send a cauldron of soup up to Mad Gus, filled with poisoned parsnips, but everyone agreed that no one in the valley, least of all Mad Gus, could stand parsnips, (49) so not only would Mad Gus not eat them, but the village would be punished further just for sending him such an insulting vegetable. Another man suggested they persuade Mad Gus’s own henchmen to insurrection by offering up the village women as a bribe. But a brace of others reminded him that the only women in their village not already kidnapped were the very ugly ones, suggesting he’d have thought of that if his own wife were not still safe at home.

It didn’t help their progress any that with every passing hour each man there was becoming soberer than he had likely been in years. As things got hotter under everyone’s collars, Brock began to fear they’d simply kill each other right there in the secret cellar without anyone the wiser. His only reassurance lay in the fact that there wasn’t room to draw so much as a butter knife—which Durn’s peasants were allowed to own and carry.

It was then that Gundar finally bellows, “Silence!” And, to Brock’s amazement, silence falls. “Men of Durn,” Gundar growls, “is it not time we all stopped living like Mad Gus’s children here?” The silence stretches. “You know as well as I that there’s no silly circus act by which to overthrow Mad Gus. If we truly care about our beer, then we must make whatever weapons we are able from our farming implements and from the branches of our trees and the sharp stones of our fields. Then we must march as one to Gus’s gates, and fight like men until not one of his hired scoundrels is left standing to defend him. Are there not many more of us than there are of them?”

None of them were skilled enough at math to provide him with an answer. But, remembering, perhaps, how handily Gundar had managed to drag a fully loaded barley wagon clear across the valley and up to Gus’s castle—or moved by how he’d walked away alive after whatever insult he had offered Gus to cause them all of these problems—they enthusiastically declared Gundar leader of their imminent rebellion.

Thus inspired, everyone rushed home and quickly fashioned bludgeons out of tree limbs, slingshots out of harnesses, scythes and pitchforks out of, well… scythes and pitchforks, and reassembled early the next morning at the village inn, where Gundar got them all formed up in rows, as befits a fighting force that fancies itself fearless in the face of any foe. When this was done, he shouted, as any good commander must, “Forwaaaaard MARCH!” Whereupon, they all turned sharply, if in numerous directions, and, after just a few collisions and a minor shouting match or two, managed to get headed all in more or less the same direction.

Probably because they hadn’t taken care to march up to the castle quietly enough, they arrived to find Mad Gus’s gates shut tight against them. Atop the walls stood Gus himself, flanked by several dozen henchmen armed with swords and cudgels. Frowning down at them, Mad Gus yelled, “Whatever are you nitwits doing now?”

Gundar stepped forward and called up with great ferocity, “We’ve come for our beer, Your Highness.”

“No, seriously,” Gus called back down. “What are you up to?”

Gundar exchanged uncertain glances with his men, unable to think of any answer clearer than the one he had just given. Looking back up at Mad Gus, he called, “With due respect, Your Highness, you tend to make even the simplest conversations very complicated.” (50)

“Well, let me try to be a little clearer then,” Gus said. “What…” he started making bizarre hand gestures, which may have been some proto-attempt at sign language—or at Italian— “are… you… NITWITS,” he cupped both hands around his mouth for added volume, “UP TO?”

Gundar rolled his eyes, having had it up to here by then with Gus’s poor communication skills. Instead of answering again, he grabbed a four-foot length of tree branch from a stout lad nearby, walked to Gus’s lavish gates, and started pounding on them with it.

“Stop that!” Mad Gus shouted. “Stop that immediately! You’re damaging the finish!”

Gundar kept on banging, having already knocked some impressive chips out of the fancy carving there.

“I said—” Gus started to repeat.

“I heard you,” Gundar cut him off. “Did you hear me? We’ve come to get our beer back! Now open up this gate, Your Highness, or we will knock it down—one small chip at a time, if that’s what it takes. Could make it very hard to sleep in there tonight!”

“Open my gates?!” Mad Gus shrilled. “Is that your wish, you lout? My gates open?” He directed an outraged wave at his henchmen, who turned as one and disappeared. “Fine then, I’ll be glad to open up my gates, moron! Hope you’re ready! Here it comes!”

Of course, Mad Gus could just have had his henchmen fire arrows down at Gundar’s band, and slaughtered everyone in minutes, had he not years earlier declared bows illegal in his kingdom, even in the hands of his own men, fearing any weapon with the speed to reach him faster than he felt able to react. Given his own laws, however, it was now necessary for Gus’s men to come down in person to dispatch the rabble. (51) Gundar and his men braced themselves as Gus’s gates swung open and dozens of men in mismatching armor (52) swarmed out with a mighty hue and cry, bristling with weapons in various states of repair, but still more than equal to the job.

After decades of encountering nothing but the flaccid (53) resignation of hopeless, half-drunken serfs, however, Mad Gus’s men were not at all prepared for the inconceivable sobriety and determination which Mad Gus’s misstep had suddenly engendered. Nor, it turns out, is a standard, pre-owned sword or cudgel as effective as you’d think against heavy branches two or three feet longer, wielded by men who’ve been required, lo those many years, to use their arms for work more strenuous than drinking wine and whoring. (54) Gundar and his men were increasingly mystified by the strange clumsiness of all these so-called ‘seasoned fighting men,’ until they started noticing the stench of stale beer on their breath.

“Why, they’ve been making themselves free with all our stolen beer!” somebody shouted, which made the village men even more irate and formidable. Before the castle’s tipsy henchmen quite had time to realize how badly they were losing and retreat, Gundar and his peers had forced their way inside the gates, and moved the brawl into Mad Gus’s courtyard.

Once inside, strangely little effort seemed required to fend off half-assed feints and forays aimed tentatively at them from time to time by Gus’s discombobulated force, now trying—rather badly, it seemed—to improvise guerilla tactics inside their own stronghold. More urgent for Gundar and his band was the blessedly bitter, yeasty smell of beer that hung upon the air around them. Their heads swam with it, their mouths salivated, as they gazed about, trying to triangulate the lovely odor’s source. It took their veteran noses hardly any time at all to home in on the second of Mad Gus’s three huge granaries, built against the courtyard’s farthest wall.

“Our BEER!” shouted several men at once, as Gundar’s motley army charged together toward the open granary entrance. The sad fact that none of them had thought to bring their steins along would not likely have impeded them from simply kneeling down and lapping it out of the vat. These were men more practical than proud. But here is what they found as they raced through the granary door:

Directly before them, filling more than half the room up to the ceiling nearly thirty feet above, stood an unimaginably large beer vat, its hastily constructed walls groaning audibly in the sudden silence. In front of this stood nearly every henchman Mad Gus employed, which helped explain the odd lack of resistance they’d encountered in the courtyard. And finally, dead center, out in front, stood Mad Gus beside his cannon, staring right at Gundar’s rebel band, and smiling blandly.

In one hand Gus held a white lace handkerchief, with which, it seemed, he had been giving his beloved cannon a last-minute polishing. Without shifting eyes or smile from Gundar’s men, Gus gave the cannon one last swish, and said, extremely quietly, to a henchman standing just behind the cannon, “Fire at will.”

Of all the müdder füching (55) dirty tricks, thought Gundar, certain that he and his brother peasants were completely had. But in that instant, a lifetime of bottled rage fountained up inside him, and, no longer caring how few minutes long his life might be, he tucked his head defiantly, and charged straight at the cannon with a bullish roar.

Fortunately, Gus’s fussy cannon was of the kind ignited by those silly six-inch fuses that burn down so slowly and dramatically in movies—which provided Gundar just sufficient time to close the gap and shoulder the cannon’s barrel upward as it went off with a deafening boom. Gundar felt his hair part on one side as the cannonball whizzed past on its way to hit a heavy metal plate bolted just above the entrance to support a hanging pulley system, then bounce back to fly with nearly as much speed across the chamber toward the high vat wall, into which it slammed and stuck, not ten feet above the heads of Gus’s startled henchmen. All of them turned now, looking up with open mouths to where the leaden ball hung half-embedded in the splintered wood. An instant later, with a tinny pinging sound, the cannonball popped loose and fell onto the upturned head of one unhappy henchman, who went down like a sack of sand. Where the cannonball had been lodged, a little fountain now appeared, spitting out a slender golden arc of beer, which splashed down onto other upturned faces among Gus’s corps—igniting momentary envy in Gundar and his crew. Then, an ominous grumbling sound issued from the vat’s straining wooden walls, rather like that of a stomach filled too full.

“RUN!!!” Gundar screamed, already racing for the granary entrance.

Being so near the door already, Gundar’s men just made it out as the awesome vat gave way. Only Gundar failed to make it through in time, though he was so few feet inside that the tidal wave of beer just picked him up and spat him through the straining entrance like an olive pit. Gundar’s wide-eyed men backed rapidly away, sure the granary’s quaking front wall would collapse at any moment. But it held, causing most of that unthinkable tide of beer to rebound off its inside face and surge back toward where Mad Gus and his henchmen lay broken and scattered now amidst the ruins of their ruptured vat. Afterward, it was surmised that the rebounding flood had gathered up all in its path and flung the load so forcefully at the already shaken building’s rear wall that it gave way at once.

As a sodden Gundar climbed back onto his feet out in the courtyard, his men and the remaining castle staff stood frozen, staring in shocked silence. Then, when it seemed certain that the front wall would stand, they began to move—first slowly, then with greater speed—back toward the granary door. Inside, they found nothing left but a giant frame for open air where once the granary’s back and the castle wall behind it had stood. Rushing to the vast gap’s edge, Gundar and his men looked down—a long, long way—at the still roiled and foaming waterfall, which plunged even more precipitously than usual into the valley’s sole outlet ravine, beside the steeply switch-backed trail that led one out of Dorn and down into the wider world. There was no sign of Mad Gus and his henchmen. The great tide of beer, in combination with the waterfall’s usual raging torrent, had washed them all away.

“Mein gott in himmel!” (56) Gundar murmured. “We are free.” He turned, beaming at his brave companions. “We are free at last! To live however we wish! To eat all the food we grow! All the milk and cheese our cattle give us! To sleep nights without fearing for our homes or wives or children! To drink all the beer that we can make again—without fearing that some dummkopf in this castle might come take it all away! Do you hear me, brothers? WE ARE MAD GUS’S SLAVES NO LONGER!”

(Another lengthy pause, broken by the sounds of quiet weeping from Mr. Dourtmundschtradel. Then, after further sniffling, in a broken voice:)

As you may imagine, Herr Halifax, a great cheer went up at this. Not just from the village men, but from the castle staff as well.

There were many weeks of celebration after that, for there was no end of food and drink stored up in Gus’s remaining granaries and storerooms… I have no doubt it was… a very… beautiful time to be alive…

RH: What a tale, Herr Dourtmundschtradel! I’ve heard nothing more astonishing in all my years of research. I assume they all lived happily ever after?

GD: Ach, no, Herr Halifax. Regrettably, they did not.

RH: Oh dear. Did Mad Gus come back after all? Had he survived somehow?

GD: No, no. Nothing half so dire as that. They sent a party down the riverbed to look, of course. Wanting to be sure. But all they found were planks of wood, several dead henchmen, and a lot of inebriated fish, still flipping onto shore in drunken confusion. It is presumed all other bodies, including mad Lord Stephenson’s, lay tangled in the rocks and roots below the river’s countless rapid shoots and pools. Mad Gus was never seen again.

RH: Then what went wrong for them?

GD: Alas, they could not bring themselves to end their celebration, Herr Halifax. They had been so miserable for so long, and risked so much to free themselves, that no one thought they should be made to work again—on anything. Without a dictator to organize their labor and keep the valley’s complex civic logistics in motion, the peasants just ran out of goals, and food, and reasons to get up each day. (57)

RH: That’s… so sad.

GD: Not entirely, Herr Halifax. Not ultimately, at least. Their inability to live without a dictator forced them all to leave in search of another one to give some order to their lives again. This search for new enslavement caused them to disperse all over Europe, (58) bringing the previously secret knowledge of beer’s manufacture (59) with them everywhere they went. As I mentioned when we started, Gundar Dourtmund’s journey ended here, in what would much later come to be Germany. It was here that Gundar met my many-times great-grandmother, and we have been enjoying what he taught this country about brewing ever since. There are no better brewers in the world than ours, Herr Halifax. (60)How much more happiness can one demand of any ending, ja?

--

(1) At the time of this interview, Mr. Dourtmundschtradel was 91 years old and largely confined to a wicker wheelchair. He died just two years later, having fallen, somehow, from his chair into an old well more than 500 meters from the house.

(2) Mr. Dourtmundschtradel’s English was quite good owing to a lifetime of extensive international travel and very active participation in American commodities markets, trading primarily in pork bellies.

(3) Not to be confused with Oxford Community College in the unincorporated town of Verylittleville, Ohio—or with Deerford Vocational School in Teenytinyville, Idaho, both commonly confused with Bisonford in Littleville, Iowa.

(4) Since this interview was conducted, the hamlet of Frauschlesundmunster has been leveled to accommodate an industrial bio-engineering facility and shopping complex. The Dourtmundschtradel ancestral farm now lies largely beneath the new development’s seventeen-acre parking structure. Hence the value in preserving oral history.

(5) An uncomplimentary German term referring to someone of questionable analytic skills.

(5) German term for ‘ya.’

(6) German phrase roughly translated into English as, ‘Akk to God in heaven!’

(7) Roughly translated: ‘The Age of Rather Long Stories;’ a very brief and obscure period between the Teutonic Age of Legends and the subsequent Time of Succinct Essays, which, in turn, ended some seven centuries prior to The Moment of Memos preceding what we now refer to as ‘recorded European history.’

(8) An English phrase roughly translated into German as, ‘ach du Lieber Himmel!’

(9) Subsequent research has confirmed that the village of Durn, the kingdom of Schkerrinwald, and the Vorkenfast Empire are certainly quite gone, and apparently unheard of by anyone other than Mr. Dourmundtschtradel.

(10) This assertion is disputed by some scholars.

(11) As is this one.

(12) And this one.

(13) This assertion is both verifiable and undisputed.

(14) In conversation with Mr. Dourtmundschtradel after the recording of this interview, the interviewer learned that the ‘brown feather’ referred to was on display in Stephenson’s so-called throne room, where he made loud and frequent claims that it had been plucked by his father from the tail of a phoenix, and thus somehow proved his divine right to rule—though, to virtually all others, Dourtmundschtradel asserts, it looked an awful lot like the feather of a common owl.

(15) This policy might go a long way toward explaining the dearth of any reference to Lord Augustus Stephenson or Durn Valley in the known historical record.

(16) If not apocryphal, this detail places the origins of Mr. Dourtmundschtradel’s tale sometime after the introduction of Christianity to Europe, and thus well after The Age of Rather Long Stories—not to mention the first known invention of beer—casting potential doubt upon the rest of his tale, though Durn may conceivably have been the cradle of modern beer for that part of Europe—whatever part of Europe that was, exactly.

(17) The practice described here was actually fairly common in medieval Europe, often referred to in official documents as ‘managing the tax base.’

(18) As Mr. Dourtmundschtradel attributes his tale to The Age of Rather Long Stories, a period by definition outside the historical record, it is impossible to ask, much less determine, whether the historical record corroborates or contests his claim that no one else had made or heard of beer prior to its creation in Durn. (See footnote 16.)

(19) Mr. Dourtmundschtradel’s description of the process by which this particular mixture came into being engenders some doubt as to whether the ‘beer’ described bore much if any resemblance to the modern libation so named.

(20) A sound assumption, even under scrutiny by modern investigative methods.

(21) Again: a claim impossible to test from any tale attributed to The Age of Very Long Stories, etc.

(22) More rigorous analysis places this figure closer to 14.6 billion happy endings to date, though this result must be balanced against an estimated 9.375 billion unhappy endings to date. Individual results may vary.

(23) This practice too was fairly common in medieval Europe, commonly referred to as ‘information management.’

(24)This strategy has been a staple of good governance in nearly every empire known to history, though means have varied widely from vodka in Russia and gin in Britain, to opium in China and the Middle East, to marijuana, chocolate Ding Dongs, cheeseburgers, television, and, of course, handheld video games in the US.

(25) Given the situation described in Durn, it does seem plausible that Gundar might have gone to such trouble in transporting his harvest to Mad Gus’s granaries, desperate not to leave Gus’s men any excuse to visit him at home and perhaps burn down the place while they were there.

(26) There were no laws at this time forbidding minors to serve or sell alcohol.

(27) There were, of course, antacids in those days. They just hadn’t been discovered yet.

(28) A standard lager of medieval vintage would likely have weighed in at 4.7% alcohol.

(29) This passing reference may be even more startling than Dourtmundschtradel’s assertion that beer was invented in Durn—as potatoes are not thought to have been introduced to Europe from the New World until sometime around 1500AD. This apparent anachronism now has some scholars speculating that if Durn Valley was the lowly potato’s actual cradle, and some of the tubers made their way to Scandinavia, (which could not have been far away given the naming conventions prevalent throughout this narrative), they might well have been transported from there to North America by seafaring Nordic explorers, whom we now know visited the New World many centuries before Columbus did, where they could have flourished and spread, only to be rediscovered and brought back to Europe centuries later just in time to catalyze Ireland’s great potato blight! How ironic would that be?

(30) A standard pale ale of the time would be estimated at approximately 5.2%.

(31) A hearty oatmeal stout of the time, estimated close to 6.4%, though batches doubtless varied widely.

(32) Quality late-season porter of the day: 8.9% at very least.

(33) By this point in the narrative, any wary historian will likely have begun to question such an extraordinary volume of detailed dialogue woven through an account ostensibly one or more millennia old. It does seem that some degree of apocryphal embellishment may reasonably be posited.

(34) As any competent linguist will confirm, to translate a sneeze into German requires at least two paragraphs of text. German words and syntax are renowned for their length and complexity. Apparently, Mr. Dourtmundschtradel finds American linguistic minimalisms equally absurd.

(35) Alas for Gundar’s considerable effort to avoid just this kind of attention.

(36) Colloquial expletive.

(37) Recall that villagers were permitted to forgo surrendering their grain to Mad Gus if it was surrendered instead to one of Durn’s many beer distillers for immediate brewing.

(38) German phrase roughly translated into English as ‘Holy cow!’ More literally as ‘God in heaven!’

(39) Most beer scholars agree that the real issue being skirted here by this exclusively male group is that most early brewers of beer were female (known as brewsters). The abduction of so many village women may have been a much bigger impediment to new emergency brewing than the late season or sequestered grain harvest.

(40) An intriguing interjection for two reasons. First, such concepts of clinical psychosis would not appear in the rest of Europe until around the 19th century with the work and writing of Sigmund Freud. (Was he too, perhaps, descended of the Durn Valley?) Secondly, the speaker here makes this accusation of psychosis even as he and his companions exhibit such clear symptoms of full blown cenosillicaphobia, (fear of an empty beer glass.)

(41) Another colloquial expletive.

(42) Deft sidestep by a consummate professional who, with all deference to German sentiments about displays of sentiment, clearly understands the value of uncensored authenticity in oral history. Our respectful apologies to the late Mr. Dourtmundschtradel, and any surviving family members.

(43) German term for ‘thank you,’ not to be confused with ‘dunken’ which pertains in Germany, as in America, primarily to warm, soft, mouthwatering, God-I-wish-I-had-one-right-now, donuts.

(44) Some scholars theorize that men and dogs were brought into partnership in ancient times by the fact that they smelled much the same when wet. Further research suggests that when dry, ancient men smelled worse, but this was likely no deterrent for dogs, who, as any layman knows, are only too glad to shove their noses into any heap of dung they pass.

(45) This detail too, if not apocryphal, suggest the tale’s origin must be much later than Mr. D has indicated.

(46) This reference continues to confuse historians as it seems to suggest carrying sausage in one’s pants was common practice at this time—an assertion supported by no other known medieval reference, and made all the more mysterious in light of the fact that the men in question here have made it clear they possess no food at all.

(47) An idea likely inspired by accounts widely published at that time of the famous Trojan Horse, though it’s puzzling that they didn’t just adopt the Greeks’ tried and true approach without alteration—unless perhaps the construction of Mad Gus’s vat had left in its wake a village-wide lumber shortage.

(48) There is, in fact, a firmly established if rather brief list of items which goats won’t eat, including, but not limited to, bathroom cleanser, granite, jet fuel, haggis, marshmallow peeps, and any object larger than the goat which cannot be broken into smaller portions. Pretty much anything else though.

(49) This detail is indisputably apocryphal. Parsnips are delicious.

(50) Being new to the science of leadership, Gundar was clearly still unacquainted with standard diplomatic syntax used by seasoned leaders everywhere expressly to make even the simplest conversations complicated for the very prudent purpose of discouraging anything so reckless as decisive action.

(51) Lord Augustus is credited earlier with having a cannon, which one must imagine capable of delivering its lethal payload faster than any man could react, if not with nearly the silent stealth of a bow. However, it appears that Gus had allowed just one such weapon in his domain, and reserved access to himself alone.

(52) Further evidence of Lord Augustus’s penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to leadership.

(53) Unclear whether this refers to the villagers’ limp resistance to harassment, or their general digestive condition, as either one might be consistent with a regular diet consisting almost entirely of beer.

(54) Lord Augustus’s men were also regularly required to beat up villagers, burn down buildings, and kidnap women and children, of course. But given the hitherto general flaccidity of response denoted earlier, it seems likely that none of those activities had required much more in the way of muscular exertion than drinking and whoring normally do. Quite possibly less.

(55) An archaic colloquial term for ‘mean,’ or in some cases, ‘mean to mother.’

(56) Yet another variation of the German phrase for ‘Holy Cow’—more literally translated as, ‘My God in Heaven!’

(57) A common syndrome easily observable at smaller scale whenever adolescent children are left home alone for longer than a day by too-trusting parents.

(58) Where, happily, even minimal further research suggests they had little difficulty finding what they sought.

(59) Again, doubt is cast upon this assertion by some scholars who point to evidence such as one 4,000 year-old Sumerian stone tablet inscribed with the words ‘Drink Elba Beer, the beer with the heart of a lion.’ Then again, maybe Elba’s franchise had simply never branched out into Europe…

(60) This assertion is vigorously contested by most British scholars, though it must be noted that the oldest acknowledged functioning brewery in the world is 900 year-old Bayerische Staatsbrauerie Weihenstephan near Munich. Coincidence? We think not!