Also it was the time of year when butter
and eggs, chickens and ducks were so cheap that it was a humiliation not
to buy. There were other things on sale also, not for eating and
drinking, but for wear and household use--from pots and pans to rag-
carpets and table-linen, from woollen yarn to pictures of the Virgin and
little calvaries.
These were side by side with dried apples, bottled fruits, jars of maple
syrup, and cordials of so generous and penetrating a nature that the
currant and elderberry wine by which they were flanked were tipple for
babes beside them. Indeed, when a man wanted to forget himself quickly
he drank one of these cordials, in preference to the white whisky so
commonly imbibed in the parishes. But the cordials being expensive, they
were chiefly bought for festive occasions like a wedding, a funeral, a
confirmation, or the going away of some young man or young woman to the
monastery or the convent to forget the world. Meanwhile, if these
spiritual argonauts drank it, they were likely to forget the world on the
way to their voluntary prisons.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57