Wine writing in newspapers and wine programmes on TV is often notable for flavoury, spicy, word-play as much as for the liquors dealt with. In the days before wine became so universally appreciated, there were enthusiasts who kept the flame going and one more entertainingly than Maurice Healy, whose better known book is probably On the Old Munster Circuit. He was a notable barrister whose thesis on wine, Stay Me With Flagons, grips you from the very title.
Indeed he starts off with a puzzle or wrangle. For in the Vulgate (Canticle of Canticles or Song of Solomon as you wish) there is no mention of flagons. The text reads "Fulcite me floribus" - "Stay me up with flowers", as it was translated at Douai. Then Healy goes on: "I do not know from what text those responsible for the Authorised Version were translating when they produced the familiar and sonorous `Stay me with flagons; comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love'. The Revised Version changed flagons to `raisins' and put a note to say that the Hebrew would be more exactly translated by `raisins' and put a note to say that the Hebrew would be more exactly translated by `raisin-cake'; which probably was ground upon which some enthusiastic Pussyfoot suggested during the tyranny of Prohibition that the whole Bible should be rewritten, substituting raisin-cake for wine wherever that blasphemous word occurred."
Healy then notes that the Jewish Encyclopaedia states that the Hebrew texts differ and are in places corrupt. Writes Healy: "I dutifully accept Vulgate and Douai . . . and let not sectarian controversy mislead us over this. If the Catholic seeks to draw a teetotal moral from the translation of verse five, let him correct himself by reading verse four. Both Protestant versions read: `He brought me to the banqueting-house and his banner over me was love', but the Catholic rendering is: `He brought me into the cellar of wine . . .' So whatever textual differences there may be between the creeds, they agree in giving us a Song in which the use of wine is praised and exalted the whole way through".
End of Theology. The rest of the book is about wines, by an expert. First published in 1940.