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A SPIRITUOUS DISCOURSE
79
century, but in the beginning it was worked
solely in the monasteries by the jovial monks.
What a good time those monks of old would
seem to have had ! According to the popular
prints they were usually engaged either in fish
ing, eating oysters, drinking out of flagons,
catching beetles, confessing pretty women, or
being shaved ; and we know that their abiding-
places were built, for the most part, on the banks
of a river which absolutely swarmed with salmon
or trout, in the midst of a district teeming with
game. Any how the monks made spirits, or
"strong waters" as they were called in those
days, first.
Pure malt whisky is, and has been, made
almost exclusively in Scotland. In Ireland they
use about one-third of malt to two-thirds of oats
and maize. In England they make whisky of
pretty nearly everything, including German spirit,
petroleum, and old boots; whilst in gallant little
Wales —well the only acknowledged Welsh
whisky I have tasted was excellent in quality,
and apparently liiade from pure malt. Distilling,
as a trade, commenced in England during the
Tudor period, and from the reputation bluff"
King Hal bore for feathering his nest, it is
probable that the industry was fully taxed. In
1579 Scotch distilleries were taxed for the first
time. In Ireland as far back as the eleventh cen
tury the natives made uisge beatha—now called
potheen—without interference from landlord or
ganger, and continued at it until the sixteenth
century, when licenses were enforced in the cases
of all but the gentry^ and to run an illicit still was