1893 text
Mum. Ale brewed with wheat at Brunswick.
“Sedulous and stout With bowls of fattening mum.”
J. Phillips, Cyder, Vol. ii. p. 231.
This text comes from a footnote on a diary entry in the 1893 edition edited by Henry B. Wheatley.
Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
Mum. Ale brewed with wheat at Brunswick.
“Sedulous and stout With bowls of fattening mum.”
J. Phillips, Cyder, Vol. ii. p. 231.
This text comes from a footnote on a diary entry in the 1893 edition edited by Henry B. Wheatley.
Log in to post an annotation.
If you don't have an account, then register here.
Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.
8 Annotations
First Reading
Mary • Link
22nd April 1661
Pepys and Sir William Batten celebrate the great royal procession preceding Charles II's coronation with a drink of mum.
Pedro • Link
Mum's the word!
A strong beer made in Brunswick; so called from the Christian Mummer, by whom it was first brewed.
(Brewer's Phrase and Fable)
Anders • Link
Mum is indeed connected to the Mumme brewed in and imported from Braunschweig. The connection to Christian Mumme (sometimes spelled Mummer) is more dubious, since the beer is mentioned more than a century before Mumme was supposed to have invented it in 1492 (note that several years have been listed). It is more likely that Mumme developed or changed an existing style, and combined it with a marketing talent. Anyway, by Pepys's time, a copy of the heavily spiced Mumme would be brewed locally in England - probably in parallel to the imported "real stuff".
Cumsalisgrano • Link
Pedro ye be late, OED:
1540....1663 T. PORTER Witty Combat IV. i, Hear me it is no laughing matter mums the word.
Cumsalisgrano • Link
from OED: 2 Pepsian citations.
1662: S. PEPYS Diary 28 May (1970) III. 94 Thence we three to the *Mum-house at Leaden hall.
1662: S. PEPYS Diary 23 June (1970) III. 119 A glass of mum.
Forms: 16 mumme, 16, 18 mumm, 16- mum; Sc. pre-17 mum, mumm. [< Middle Low German mumme, mum, mume (15th cent.), of unknown origin. Cf. Dutch mom (mid 17th cent.; a1518 in Middle Dutch as momme), German Mumme.]
I. Simple uses.
1. A kind of beer brewed from wheat malt and flavoured with aromatic herbs, originally made at Brunswick (Braunschweig) in Germany.
c1623 Welsh Embassador (1921) 48 Ile pledge it in Ale..Cider..manglum, purr, in hum, mum, Aquam, quaquam, Clarrett or sacum for an english man is a horse that drincks of all waters.
1630 in Catal. Prints: Polit. & Personal Satires (Brit. Mus.) (1870-83) I. 69 Liquors..As Ruby, water Whore-hound, Cloue on Hum, Hot Nutmeg, faire Angelica, and Mumme.
1639 H. GLAPTHORNE Albertus Wallenstein III. iii. sig. Fiiiv, I thinke you'r drunk With Lubecks beere or Brunswicks Mum.
cost:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1667 in M. Wood Extracts Rec. Burgh Edinb. (1950) X. 26 Eatch barrell of *mum beare, tuo shilling.
Then there be Mum, or be it Mom;
.
Second Reading
Bill • Link
MUM a strong Liquor from Brunswick in Germany.
---An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. N. Bailey, 1675
Bill • Link
“and there drunk mum”
Mum was a wholesome kind of malt liquor prepared in Germany. The receipt for making it is given in Rees's Encyclopedia. One of Andrew Yarranton's wild schemes, at this time, was to bring the mum trade from Brunswick, and fix it at Stratford-on-Avon. See his England's Improvement.
---Diary and correspondence of Samuel Pepys, the diary deciphered by J. Smith. 1854.
Bill • Link
MUM, a kind of malt-liquor, much drank in Germany; and chiefly brought from Brunswick, which is the place of most note for making it, The process of brewing mum, as recorded in the townhouse of that city, is as follows: Take sixty-three gallons of water that has been boiled till one-third part is consumed, and brew it with seven bushels of wheaten-malt, one bushel of oat-meal, and one bushel of ground beans; when it is tunned, the hogshead must not be filled too full at first; as soon as it begins to work, put into it three pounds of the inner rind of fir; one pound of the tops of fir and beach; three handfuls of carduus benedictus; a handful or two of the flowers of rosa solis; add burnet, betony, marjoram, avens, pennyroyal, and wild thyme, of each a handful and a half; of elder-flowers, two handfuls or more; seeds of cardamum bruised, thirty ounces; barberries bruised, one ounce; when the liquor has worked a while, put the herbs and seeds into the vessel; and, after they are added, let it work over as little as possible; then fill it up; lastly, when it is stopped, put into the hogshead ten new-laid eggs unbroken; stop it up close, and drink it at two years end. Our english brewers, instead of the inner rind of fir, use cardamum, ginger, and sassafras; and also add elecampane, madder, and red-sanders. Mum, on being imported, pays for every barrel 11. 5 s.
---Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. 1741.