Ale-Wives: The Original Wicked Witches

For as long as we can remember, humans have done just about everything they can to get drunk. Some happy accident, occurring a VERY long time ago, produced a frothy, mostly delicious and nutritious, beverage that, when imbibed in quantity, got us all feeling a little less twitchy and a whole lot nicer to each other. The earliest alcoholic drinks were likely made up of a combo of honey, barley, fruit and spices, but for this blog, we’ll focus on the beer part of things.

Beer had some other benefits, too. It was easy and quick to make, which meant practically anyone could brew a small pot of beer, sell it and earn steady, extra income. Because it was boiled, it was also free of harmful bacteria that caused little nuisances like the Black Plague. And because people loved it so much, it was often used as payment instead of actual money. In fact, there’s some belief that the Sumerian word “kas”, (their word for beer) is now where the word “cash” comes from.

But because it’s almost Halloween, we’re going to take a look at some of these things as they relate to ale-wives, (the original female beer brewers) and how they informed our current impression of the modern day witch.

It’s unclear if Mona Lisa knew she was posing for this inevitable recreation. Could be why she’s smiling.
Photo courtesy of sammydavisdog on flickr.

I love telling this story. The more I dive into the politics, religious views and economics of this particular part of history, the more evidence I find to corroborate what I think is a fascinating evolution of how, over many centuries, practical solutions are spun into morbid fantasy. And, in this case, all because the Church needed a “villain” to blame the Black Plague on. We’ll get to that, and I promise it won’t take TOO long.

Basically, from the time human feet hit the earth and could wield a boiling pot of water and barley, women made the beer. It was a house-keeping task and that’s where women’s responsibilities were at in the beginning. In fact, the brewing of beer was looked down upon as a menial task that was only fit for the “fairer” sex. So women brewed the bulk of the ale right up until around the beginning of the 17th century, after yet another outbreak of the Black Plague, (Europe endured many such outbreaks over five centuries!)

Before we dive into that, though, let’s talk about what a typical Late Medieval Period ale-wife looked like and did to ply her trade. Again, the brewing of beer was quick and easy, and, being a highly sought-after clean beverage, allowed the ale-wife to bring in a steady amount of extra cash for herself or her family. Brewing was done in her home, (although I suspect there may have been some clandestine brewing going on out in surrounding forests to avoid taxes - the image of which calls to mind many a delightful tale of women dancing drunkenly around a pot in the woods, cackling away) and done in a large cauldron over hot coals. She would have stirred the boiling wort as it bubbled and sent up delightful, heady aromas of barley and herbs, (hops were not used or widely used at this time) and her loyal cats would have been on hand to chase away any mice or rats from her grain stores. The fermenting ale would bubble away in a corner until it was done, and then it was time to sell the stuff.

If the ale-wife was selling out of her home, she set an “ale-pole” outside of her front door. This is now what we would call a broom. It was a long stick, with some barley stuck to the end of it to notify passers-by that there was ale for sale inside. She could also stick the pole above the entrance, and this is likely where our hanging signs originated! If the ale-wife went to the market with her ale, she wore the trendy hat of the times: a conical thing called a “hennin” and the color black would have made her stand out in a crowd of similar head ware.

Brooms

For all your beer-selling, mice-shooing, grain-sweeping needs.

Photo by Marijke van den Krommenacker on Unsplash

For all her ingenuity, though, the ale-wife never enjoyed a fine reputation, unless she was growing her brewing business alongside her husband. That was just the times. Many a poem, anecdote, and church mural depicted them as ugly old women in league with all sorts of evil. I can only imagine this was because, as entrepreneurs, they bucked the system by not needing a man to support themselves or land to live on, and that meant they were a lot of seemingly loose cannons that paid less taxes and enjoyed some independence at a time when that was definitely not a thing for women to do.

Hmmm…

Not the prettiest likeliness of Ms. Rummin, I’m sure. Photo courtesy of Wellcome Images.

It’s clear that the Church acknowledged some concept of “sorcerer” or “witch” before the 1600s, but their standpoint up until then was the utter denial that anything like that existed. As the Black Plague continued to ravage the population of Europe, however, the idea of an “evil” causing the illness was too attractive a scapegoat to pass up. Ale-wives were already in league with the devil somehow, and they had a very clear “look” about them. That “look” was simply transferred to town healers, (another unregulated and frowned-upon woman-dominated enterprise) and a tall tale was fostered to wrap their medicinal practices into those of the dreaded ale-wife/witch seen depicted in many a church mural, galivanting around with demons. Convenient, indeed.

When Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, came out in 1606, (which he wrote while he self-quarantined from the Black Plague) the modern concept of the witch was firmly ingrained in society. The “Scottish Play”, as it is known to superstitious folk, surely helped solidify the overall aesthetic, as Shakespeare was over a decade into the play production side of his career and would have been well-known and well-praised at the time.

Since then, advances in things like refrigeration, transportation, glass bottles, etc. have taken the brewing of ale from women and put it firmly into the hands of those who could legally own large-scale property, sit on public forums and write laws. And in the meantime, it’s reputation, and the reputation of those who brew it, have been widely lauded and praised, a 180 from centuries ago. But even though our modern brewing industry is still largely male-dominated, there are efforts to bring women back around to one of the oldest businesses in the world.

Pink Boots Society Seattle Chapter inaugural meeting 2014. Photo Courtesy of the Pink Boots Society.

And just for fun, maybe this Halloween you should ask any woman dressed up as a witch if she can brew you a batch of beer. Just for the confused looks, really.

Happy Halloween everyone!