Chapter 3 - Drinking Like a Man

Summary

Youngsters, now that you are sick

And don't taste the alcohol anymore,

Drink to the health of the bride and groom.

Take it from me.

Drink to the bottom

Others will follow

You drink too slowly.

When 25-year-old Hobbe van Baerdt and his 22-year-old bride, Apollonia van Viersen, married on March 16^th, 1617, the wedding guests sang this verse composed by Jan Jansz. Starter. The song was later included in his popular songbook, Friesche Lust-Hof, which was published in 1621. Drinking songs composed for marriages were common in the early seventeenth century, and drinking songs also stimulated young wedding guests to drink too much. Moralists warned parents and young men of the dangers of wijntje, trijntje – the Dutch expression for drunkenness leading to sex. Wijntje, trijntje summed up excessive drinking and promiscuity. For health reasons, children and young people were strongly discouraged from consuming alcohol, or at least urged to drink in moderation. In the tradition of Plato and Galen, the Dutch physician Levinus Lemnius warned about children drinking alcohol. He feared that drinking alcoholic beverages like wine would ‘setteth their bodies in heat, filleth their heads with fumes, and bringeth great annoyance to their mindes’. Youngsters around the age of 14 or 15 should only be allowed to drink wine sparingly,

because it carryeth them headlong into anger, maketh them prompt and ready to pursue licencious lusts, and inordinate affections, and also duleth and troubleth that part of the minde which is rationall.

Rite of passage

However, consuming excessive amounts of alcohol was an ambiguous matter for young men in the early modern period. In the social and cultural construction of manhood, wine, women, and song were rites of passage. They symbolized the transition from boyhood to manhood. Consuming large amounts of alcohol represented a liminal rite which men had to endure. Moreover, there was also an element of risk involved. For one, young men endangered their lives by getting drunk. Too much drink (alcohol poisoning) could lead to a sudden death. Secondly, it put a young man in an inebriated state where he lacked reason and was no longer in control.