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🇬🇧 Heather Honey and the Picts

In 1890, Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson published a wonderful ballad in the best traditions of neo-romanticism, which many of us still remember and love thanks to the brilliant translation by Samuil Marshak (1941).

The plot of the ballad, written in an archaic style to resemble a legend, refers to some ancient times when Scottish statehood was just beginning (probably the 9th–11th centuries). Here we hear about how the Scots, led by their king, capture two little Picts, representatives of an almost extinct indigenous people, and demand from them the secret of the "magical potion", heather honey — the legendary Pictish drink, the secret of which they kept hidden. The Picts do not reveal it and perish, along with the secret of making heather honey.

As Stevenson himself admitted in comments to his poetry collections, he took considerable poetic license with history, and the plot is fictional. The Picts — literally "painted or tattooed people" in Latin (so named by the Romans because of tattoos all over their bodies) — were tribes speaking a Celtic language, living in northern Scotland at least during the Early Middle Ages (the first reports of Pictish tribes come from the 3rd century by the Romans), and later assimilated by the Scots (generally peacefully) and incorporated into the kingdom of Alba (later Scotland).

At the end of the Middle Ages, there were even chroniclers' reports that somewhere in a deserted wilderness the Picts still lived. But who exactly they were and where they came from remains an unanswered question. On one hand, there is the opinion that they were indigenous people. On the other, they could well have split off from the Indo-European group of peoples. This secret of their origin they certainly took to the grave. But the image of the Picts in Scottish culture is a kind of embodiment of deep antiquity: mysterious and enigmatic, with its own customs and morals.

As for heather honey, things are not so dramatic. Indeed, the brew existed and was passed down from generation to generation until the 18th century, when Scottish authorities legally declared that ale was henceforth allowed to be brewed only from hops and malt. The centuries-old recipe could not be recreated until 1986, when an old recipe very reminiscent of the legendary heather honey was found, on the basis of which the drink was successfully recreated.

For its preparation, a special ale malt was used, brewed together with the tips of heather branches to obtain wort, to which fresh heather flowers were added; the mass was left to ferment for about 12 days, and during fermentation the heather gradually became darker. The result was an alcoholic, oily drink of amber color, with a mild taste, and as an addition — a narcotic effect from the moss that usually settles on certain parts of the heather stems. It is probably because of this that when consuming the honey, the Picts felt an unprecedented unity with nature.

Since 2000, heather ale has been produced in Scotland at a brewery near Glasgow by Heather Ale Ltd on an industrial scale. There is also a lighter recipe for the drink using heather honey, whiskey, cream, and oatmeal. So nowadays heather honey has come back to life, which is something to be glad about!

Source
@WeHistory

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