During rehearsals for Timeline Choir's performance of Sussex and Surrey folk songs (Sing a Song o' Sussex 2015), Carol Fisher found herself reflecting on the rather frequent references to beer, found not only in the folk songs we encountered, but also in Henry Burstow's memoirs, Reminiscences of Horsham, and Hilaire Belloc's Sussex-inspired songs and poems. Here she discusses Belloc's West Sussex Drinking Song and some of its more archaic terminology...

Beer & folk songs must always have been linked!

Where better to come together to sing, than in front of a roaring log fire, with one arm around the shoulder of your neighbour & the other carefully balancing a glass of the landlord’s finest? And what better drink than a beer to moisten the vocal chords and stiffen the reserve before launching into the first song of the evening? So it should be no surprise then , that, through the ages, many folk songs have celebrated the drinking of beer!

Hilaire Belloc, poet, politician and lover of the odd pub crawl, also wrote folk songs. And, in his West Sussex Drinking Song, having begun by asserting: ‘They sell good beer in Haslemere…’ he goes on, later in the song, to talk of ‘the swipes they take in at Washington Inn…’ For those unfamiliar with the term, the dictionary definition of ‘swipes’ is: “washy or turbid or otherwise inferior beer”. Other sources have dated the word, which is always written in the plural, as first appearing in the eighteenth century. As for its usage , an American visitor to London in 1869 wrote the following:

“Everybody drinks beer in London. You can see labourers and dockmen sitting outside of public houses, swilling what they call ‘swipes’, at two pence a pot.”

The stated price for ‘swipes’ should be set against his next para, which contains the following:

“A quart bottle of good beer or porter can be got anywhere for sixpence…a man may procure as much good beer as he can drink at a draught for three pence a pint…”

In another example, an Australian writer & ‘beer expert’, David Downie, says on his website australianbeers.com, that:  “Throughout the nineteenth century, colonial beer was variously called…’swipes’, ‘sheepwash’ [and other slang names]. He underpins his statement by quoting its usage in a poem called “The Brewer’s Lament”, dated 1857, where the writer complains about the impossibility, at that time, of brewing a decent beer in Australia.

But surely Hilaire Belloc didn’t mean to use the word pejoratively? Well certainly not, since his ‘swipes’ is described as “the very best beer I know”.

So, let’s just assume he was talking of beer of a strength that meant it could be drunk in volume, so that he could continue “singing the best song ever was sung” and which, best of all “ has a rousing chorus”…

 

West Sussex Drinking Song

By Hilaire Belloc

VERSE 1: They sell good Beer at Haslemere

And under Guildford Hill.

At Little Cowfold, as I’ve been told,

A beggar may drink his fill:

There is a good brew in Amberley too,

And by the bridge also;

But the swipes they take in at Washington Inn

Is the very best Beer I know, the very best Beer I know.

CHORUS: With my here it goes, there it goes,

All the fun’s before us;

The tipple’s aboard and the night is young,

The door’s ajar and the Barrel is sprung,

I am singing the best song ever was sung

And it has a rousing chorus.

VERSE 2: If I were what I never could be,

The master or the squire:

If you gave me the hundred from here to the sea,

Which is more than I desire:

Then all my crops should be barley and hops,

And should my harvest fail

I’d sell every rood of mine acres, I would,

For a bellyful of good Ale, a bellyful of good Ale.