JOE LYONS,
Madam,- It is encouraging to see that from the very earliest stages of your stewardsip of The Irish Times you have identified the things that matter to the Irish people. On this page last Saturday, John Cussen cut through the reams of paper expended on the Nice referendum and the Labour Party leadership to lament the imminent disappearance of the pint bottle.
As a callow youth I served many a pint bottle in my grandmother's licensed premises in North Kerry. As many such transactions were on a deferred payment basis, she recorded them in a ledger in her copperplate handwriting as "bojanter" .
The bottles themselves were similar in shape and design to whiskey bottles. Patrons who had ventured across county boundaries from Rockchapel in North Cork referred to this commodity as a "Sergeant".
Half-pint bottles were simply referred to as "a bottle bottled". - Yours, etc.,
JOE LYONS, Barnakyle, Patrickswell, Co Limerick.