O Bacchus

It is rare for me – or probably anyone else for that matter – to indulge in a jovial moment of laughter and actually feel amused at a piece of information in the course of research for an essay.

What I mean is: I’ve been working on my final music history essay, and basically it was a free topic, so obviously I chose a topic which I was interested in. (Although that sucks too, because you don’t really know what to write about, even though you’ve chosen the topic. Nothing comes for “free”, does it?) And while that topic is interesting to read and study about, the research has been a real pain and headache.

I won’t go into too much musical jargon here, but my topic is about satire in medieval manuscripts, and a bit of focus on the secular and sacred in the Middle Ages. So, anyway, if you know the Lord’s Prayer, look at this bastardization:

Father Bacchus who art in cups, hallowed be good wine. Thy ruination come. Thy turmoil be done in the cup as it is in the tavern. Give us this day our daily drink. And send forth our cups to us as we send forth to our fellow drinkers. And lead us not into drunkenness, but do not deliver us from wine.

I literally LOL-ed when I read it. Basically, a common device of satire in poems and lyric songs of the Middle Ages was the deification of wine and drinks as god, as a way to mock the Church and its liturgical practices (Bacchus was a common name for Drink, in place of Deus, for God – a Latin wordplay). I think those clerics back in the Middle Ages certainly had more fun than we do have now. Don’t you just love this Drinker’s Prayer?