Old Tavern Signs: An Excursion in the History of HospitalityEndell, Fritz August Gottfried
History
Old Tavern Signs: An Excursion in the History of Hospitality
Endell, Fritz August Gottfried
Inn signs; Taverns (Inns)
Nobody has admonished us so heartily as Doctor Martinus to hold
ourselves as pious guests in this inn of Life, to live honestly and
decently in it as it becomes a guest. “If you wish to be a guest, be
peaceful and behave yourself as a Christian; otherwise they will soon
show you the way to the tower.” It is characteristic for Luther to
remind the unruly guest of the tower, i.e., the prison. In other
connections too he readily refers to Master John the Hangman who is to
his mind a very useful, nay, even charitable man.
Since we did not hesitate to threaten the landlord with the ghastly
musician of the “Dance of Death,” it will seem only fair to remind the
guests of the tower, which in the old days was used as prison for the
peace-breakers. Luther, like all good Germans, was not a
prohibitionist; he recognized “a drink in honor,” “einen Trunk in
Ehren,” but he was a fierce enemy of all “drunkards and loafers” who
lie in taverns Sunday and week-day and pour the beer down their
throats as cows gulp water, saying: “What do I care about God, what do
I care about death? You miserable hog, you shall get what you are
striving for, you shall die too and be swallowed up by the mouth of
Hell.” To every decent landlord such guests are a curse. To chase them
from his threshold the owner of the “George and Dragon” in Great
Budworth (Cheshire) invented the fine rhyme which should stand over
every tavern door:--
“As St. George in armed array
Did the fiery dragon slay,
So may’st thou, with might no less,
Slay that dragon drunkenness.”
A decent behavior surely, but no melancholy teetotalism, such is
Luther’s standpoint. “Those have not been of the devil who drank a
little more as their thirst required and became joyful.”--“It is not
the fault of the eating and drinking, that some people degrade
themselves to swine.” Just as dancing in itself is no sin: “Why not
admit an honorable dance at a marriage feast? Go and dance! The little
children dance too without sin; do the same and be like a child whose
soul is not injured by dancing.”
The whole world appears to Luther like an inn in a strange town, in
which the pilgrim lies. In his nightly dreams he does not think of
becoming a citizen or a major of this town, his thoughts wander away
through the gate to the far city where his home is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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