Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Mum. Ale brewed with wheat at Brunswick.
“Sedulous and stout With bowls of fattening mum.”
J. Phillips, Cyder, Vol. ii. p. 231.
22nd April 1661
Pepys and Sir William Batten celebrate the great royal procession preceding Charles II’s coronation with a drink of mum.
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)
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”.
Pedro ye be late, OED:
1540….1663 T. PORTER Witty Combat IV. i, Hear me it is no laughing matter mums the word.
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 A kind of beer brewed from wheat malt and flavoured with aromatic herbs, originally made at Brunswick (Braunschweig) in Germany.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:
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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;
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