#but also this could have been captioned 'and thus my new ship is born!!!'

[guardian-angle22]

911 Lone Star | Paul and Asha's "first" meeting

[languages-and-first-world-war]

Wipers or Vipers 2

Research into the origin and indeed the authenticity of ‘Vipers’ as a slang name for Ypres continues. There are a number of leads and possibilities: was it a mistake; a transcription of a slang German name for the place; a projection by Anglophones of a slang German name for the place; a name marking bitter feelings towards the place; or something else? The appearance of the term in the Publishers’ Circular in 1920 means that this merits a thorough investigation.

 Firstly, how did people feel about vipers at the time? There is ample evidence that actual vipers were treated as pests, to be killed.  ‘At North Park, Tedburn, recently, Mr W Coldridge killed a viper which measured 2ft 6in. in length. On being opened seven young ones were found inside, as well as a fully grown mouse. The viper is regarded as a very fine specimen’ (Western Times, 9 April 1915, p14).  ‘A large snake was found in a farmhouse at Southery Ferry one day last week, and a viper has been killed in the middle of Southery village’ (Thetford and Watton Times and People’s Journal, 20 February 1915, p4). But some documentation reveals some unsureness as to the identity of the animals: ‘Mr F. and his son on one day killed eleven vipers, two snakes, and one adder. On another occasion they destroyed eight vipers and two snakes’ (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 30 April 1915, p5). 

 In this context it is easy to see how the epithet ‘viper’ would be applied to anyone hated, particularly if there was an element of deception involved: thus in Rome the Grand Master of the Freemasons described pacifism as ‘a viper which lay hidden, but whose head must be crushed’ (Dundee Evening Telegraph, 27 November 1917, p1). Turkey, in siding with the Central Powers ‘has acted like a viper to us her old friend and ally’ (Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser, 13 March 1915, p5). The submarines that sank the Aboukir, the Hogue and the Cressy in September 1914 were described by René Milan as ‘submarine vipers’ (Vagabonds of the Sea, 1919, p48).

 ‘Viper’ was a straightforward term of abuse against the enemy: a Belgian citizen living in Britain, who took his own life at the beginning of the war, left a note describing the Kaiser as ‘that ferocious human viper of Germany.’ (Newcastle Journal, 2 August 1914, p8). ‘Kaiser-Americans’ were ‘A Nest of Vipers in the States’ (Nottingham Evening Post, 3 August 1915, p3). Following the sinking of the Lusitania, the Dublin Daily Express called for ‘the stamping out of the Prussian vipers or the effective removal of their fangs’ (10 May 1915, p4). German rage against Britain was exemplified in ‘torrents of abuse, floods of fantastic falsehoods, and an ineradicable conviction that the British people are a race of vipers, dastards, bloodsuckers, liars, thieves, murderers, and traitors!’ (Liverpool Echo, 17 January 1917, p3).

 British citizens could also be vipers: professional footballers who did not enlist were ‘traitors’ and ‘vipers’. (Manchester Evening News, 7 April 1915, p7). George Lansbury, the socialist politician, condemned the Pall Mall Gazette for describing ‘all those who advocate peace as “vipers”’ (Daily Herald, 3 July 1915, p3). Elsewhere pacifism was equally treated: The critics of Sir Douglas Haig were ‘The Vipers at Work’ – ‘he treated [their] viperous attacks with the contempt they deserved.’ (Globe, 17 December 1918, p2).

 Yet the term could also be employed for the animal’s attributes of sudden striking in effective places – in 1899 the Navy’s first turbine destroyer was HMS Viper, though the Navy soon abandoned the use of snake names for ships (though the Western Mail, 11 March 1915, p8, implied that there was a still an HMS Viper in use). Thus ‘viper’ as a term could have useful connotations; but during the war it was generally a negative epithet.

 As previously discussed, Ypres occupied a special place in British sentiment, typifying stubborn resistance, loyalty to an ideal, and the projection of these onto a place. But the Ypres League, the Ypres Times, Ypres Day, were post-war constructs. While there is a string tendency to interpret The Wipers Times as lightheartedness in the face of death, it can equally be read as cynical gallows humour, a shout of rage at the futility of the soldier’s situation: there is no love for Ypres in its pages. The patriotic bombast of The War Illustrated might announce that the ashes of Ypres were ‘impregnated with the spirit of Albion’s immortal glory’, but it was still ‘The Dead City’ (p1180, July 1915), a place that ‘smells of lilac and of death’ (S Macnaughtan, A Woman’s Diary of the War, 1915). Already by June 1915 people in Britain were aware that Ypres held a special place of fear for the soldier: David Lloyd George made a speech in Manchester on 3 June, in which he urged the need for greater efficiency in the manufacture of weaponry; particularly the labour force had to work where it was needed, not where it desired, just as was the case for soldiers – ‘The enlisted workman cannot choose his locality of action. He cannot say, “Well, I am quite prepared to fight at Neuve Chapelle, but I won’t fight at Festubert, and I am not going near the place they call ‘Wipers’”’ (The Times, 4 June 1915, p9).

 Looking again at the documentation we have for the use of ‘Vipers’ for the place-name, we have the following:

 Thanet Advertiser, 23 January 1915, p3, reporting a speech given by a vicar during an evening of talks: ‘Mr Tonks remarked that in connection with this town one was reminded of the optimistic humour of the British “Tommy”. For him, the pronunciation of the town is “Vipers”, and the spirit of lightheartedness revealed by such nick-names must surely assist our men in their struggle for victory.’

 The Middlesex Chronicle 26 June 1915, p3: ‘Private E. W. Smith, of Whitton, who writes, under date of June 13th, sends two verses composed by a member of his brigade, … He says “I know those at home are only too delighted to hear and know what ‘Tommy’ sings, even if it only light parody.”

Far far from Ypres (vipers) I long to be.

Where German snipers can’t pot at me.

Think of me crouching where the worms creep

Waiting for something to put me to sleep.

The Manchester Guardian, 29 December 1915, p7: ‘Frenchmen who call Ypres ‘Wipers’. This includes the statement: ‘The gallant army of France has for generations pioneered military progress, yet today the poilu is assimilating British ways and British methods in an extraordinary manner. He is even carrying it to the length of pronunciation. When the French soldier speaks of “Wipers” in the most natural manner imaginable as though he had never called it anything else and sings “Tipperary” as frequently as his own glorious anthem, we may be prepared for anything.’

Imagine how ‘Wipers’ would be pronounced in a French accent: it would probably depend whether the speaker were imitating spoken English, in which case it would be more like ‘ooïpers’, or speaking from the written form, more likely to be ‘vipers’ (as in ‘wagon-lits’).

 Evening Despatch, 14 February 1916, p1: a cartoon of German soldiers, with the caption ‘It is stated that German soldiers have a dread of being sent to the Ypres front [see Lloyd George’s speech above]. Some have committed suicide rather than face it. Soldiers’ chorus on being ordered to Ypres :-

O Faderland, my Faderland,

Thy face I never more shall see;

The Englishes at Vipers vos-

Dis is der place for me.

The Publishers’ Circular, 3 January 1920, p7: ‘Ypres, or “Vipers,” as Tommy called it, is a name which will long be remembered by the families of the men from all parts of the Empire who fought and died there. …’

 So we see a projection of the term as German pronunciation – critically, no slang name for Ypres in German has been found -, as a projected French pronunciation, one military and two civilian documentations of ‘Vipers’, one of the civilian usages being post-war. There is a possibility that any of the last three were mistakes or individual usages; it is likely that the two civilian usages were acquired from soldiers, the Publishers’ Circular one possibly being from a former soldier. There is also the residence documentation of Private E. W. Smith, Whitton, near Hounslow, now part of Greater London, but then a village to the west of London.

 A change of direction: also in the Globe, on 19 January 1916, p2, there appears this:

The “vipers” alluded to in a morning paper as circulating traitorous and disloyal leaflets and circulars must be a kind of pen-viper, as Mr. Sam Weller would say.’ What the writer is alluding to here is the by then centuries-old phenomenon in the London accent of the v/w merger, whereby ‘v’ was pronounced as ‘w’ and vice versa: Sam Weller in Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers is the most well-known exponent of this (“All good feelin’, sir—the wery best intentions, as the gen’l’m’n said ven he run away from his wife ‘cos she seemed unhappy with him”).

 There has been considerable argument over the authenticity of this transcribed accent. William Matthews in Cockney Past and Present ([1938] 1972) quotes B Smart (Walker Remodelled, 1836) as saying that it was outmoded in the 1830s, and that A W Tuer, author The Kawkneigh Awlminek  (1883), claimed that Weller was ‘exceptional in his pronunciation’ (p180); Ernest Weekley, born in 1865, claimed that though he had heard ‘weal’ for ‘veal’ and ‘wittles’ for ‘victuals’, he had never heard the reverse substitution of ‘v’ for ‘w’. Comedians such as Gus Elen were using the ‘w’ for ‘v’, as in ‘wery good’, well into the 1930s. Peter Wright quotes Henry Wyld as hearing people say ‘vild’ for ‘wild’ as a joky imitation of speech from about 1850 (Wright P, Cockney dialect and slang, London: Batsford, 1981, p137). Supposed to have died out in the nineteenth century, there were remnants of the accent still to be found in the south-east of England: George Bernard Shaw in a note to Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (1900), wrote: “When I came to London in 1876, the Sam Weller dialect had passed away so completely that I should have given it up as a literary fiction if I had not discovered it surviving in a Middlesex village, and heard of it from an Essex one.” Note ‘in a Middlesex village’.

 Peter Trudgill in Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics (Cambridge, 2010, p65) offers the following: ‘Wakelin [1972: 95-6] writes that the Survey of English Dialects (SED) materials from the 1950s and 60s) show that “in parts of southern England, notably East Anglia and the south-east, initial and medial [v] may appear as [w]’. One of the examples given is ‘viper’. Thus, well into the twentieth century in parts of southeast England ‘viper’ was being pronounced as ‘wiper’.

 Now, going back into the nineteenth century, the example frequently given to show the use of this merger of sounds is ‘an old cockney conundrum’ (Wright, p137). This is to be found in Errors of Pronunciation, and Improper Expressions, Used frequently, and chiefly by The Inhabitants of London, published in 1817. On page 34 we find, under V:

 V, for W; and W, for V. This error is constantly committed by the vulgar. Veal and Vinegar are by them pronounced Weal and Winegar; whilst, Wine and Wind are sounded Vine and Vind. There is an old cockney conundrum which exemplifies this error:

Why is a pocket-handkerchief like a species of serpent? Answer – Because it’s a viper.

 So a) there is anecdotal evidence of the v/w merger surviving in the southeast of England into the twentieth century, often but not always as joke or performance;

b) its exemplary form appears in a joke which specifically mixes ‘wiper’ and ‘viper’;

c) the cockney/London/southeast England accent was recognised as the dominant accent of the British Army on the Western Front: much evidence supports this claim, from ‘Ole Bill to the large number of London street names used as trench names. As an example of how this was translated to the Home Front, the boys’ comic The Dreadnought marked its recognition of the importance of the war to its readers with the announcement, (29 August 1914) 25 days after the declaration of hostilities, that it would be printing a war story every week, followed on 3 October with the beginning of its first war serial, which is centred on the main character of ‘Bill Stubbs, the Cockney Hero’.  

 Thus it is possible that the use of ‘Vipers’ for ‘Ypres/Wipers’ was an application, self-conscious perhaps, of a vestigial phenomenon in the all important wartime London/southeast England accent.

 As a note here, an article in the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette 13 June 1917 (p2), not only indicated that the use of ‘Wipers’ was disappearing, but that it was seen as ‘uneducated’: ‘Now that there are more educated men in the ranks the pronunciation “Wipers” is dying out; in fact it is almost resented’. This is the reverse of what is implied by most of the evidence, that ‘Wipers’ was officers’ pronunciation, and had educated class connotations. ‘Educated’ men may have been more equipped to pronounce Ypres using the French pronunciation, but resentment was more likely to have been at civilians, and especially journalists, using the term.

 The three instances, the Thanet Advertiser of January 1915, the Middlesex Chronicle of June 1915, and the Publishers’ Circular of January 1920, are the most noteworthy. The first two document local SE England pronunciation – the Rev Tonks in Thanet may have heard it from a local soldier on leave or convalescing, and though this can never be more than conjecture, he does link it with the well-documented terms ‘Jack Johnson’ and ‘Black Maria’. Recently another instance has emerged in the Publishers’ Circular, in an article published on 25 September 1915 (p271) in a review of S Macnaughtan’s A Woman’s Diary of the War: ‘… relating experiences in Antwerp during the siege, Furnes, the first battle of Ypres – or “Vipers,” as our “Tommies” call it.’ Compare this with the 1920 text: ‘Ypres, or “Vipers,” as Tommy called it’. Close reading of Macnaughtan’s A Woman’s Diary of the War shows there is no instance throughout that book of the use of ‘Wipers’ or ‘Vipers’ or slang names for any Belgian or French towns, though she does self-consciously use slang terms, such as ‘it “bucked one,” as schoolboys say’ (p44) or ‘with “Jack Johnsons” still whizzing overhead’ (p46). So this use of ‘Vipers’ is clearly an inclusion by a Publisher’s Circular editor, quite possibly the same person using a close variation five years later. After reading through every issue of the Publisher’s Circular from August 1914 to July 1916, I think it is unlikely that the source for this usage will appear.

[beertengoku]

{:en}If we were to give out awards for the nicest people in brewing in Japan, then husband and wife team Kyohei and Monami Nakajima of Songbird Brewery would be contenders for the gold prize. BeerTengoku was thirty minutes late for a three o’clock interview due to some confusion with the express bus out from Tokyo and a thirty minute walk from the bus stop. This meant an interruption of their brew day, but they were both incredibly genial, welcoming and also apologetic.

Both of them have a long experience in craft beer, in particular the Japanese craft beer scene, with both of them working at Popeye’s [add link] in Tokyo. Having seen the bar grow from around 20 taps to over 50, they took the plunge and decided to open their own craft beer brewery in Kisarazu, Chiba, in 2012. Why Chiba (not exactly a craft beer mecca), and why Kisarazu, which is mainly known for its outlet mall? Like many other brewers, they wanted somewhere close to their home, and with a newborn baby born in June 2016, the brewery is also close for the family members, one of who turned up towards the end of the interview to look after the baby.

If you’ve ever seen a large scale brewery, then stepping into the brewing area at Brewery Songbird is akin to going back a few hundred years into the early industrial age. Some brewers use high-tech homebrewing equipment that can automate the process, while larger breweries use specially designed state-of-the-art equipment worth millions of dollars. At Songbird, there is no high-tech equipment emblazoned with LEDs and computer panels, besides a couple of pumps used to make moving 100 litres of boiling wort easier. The whole brewery is simple and functional, how both Kyohei and Monami like it. The hot liquor tank, mash tun and boil kettle are 100L stainless steel drums with a simple tap installed at the bottom, and all three are perched on some bricks with a roaring gas burner underneath. Kyohei-san was also proud to show off his homemade sparge arm, a device made from a coil of copper with holes drilled in it. It’s used to trickle water from the hot liquor tank over the mash, thus maximising the amount of sugars drawn out from the crushed malts.

The fermentation room, while small, has plenty of space for different techniques, something Kyohei was effervescent about to explain. Yeast is one of the driving forces behind the flavours of beer, with the conversion of sugar to alcohol well understood by drinkers, but few understand the importance of different kinds of yeast and the impact they have on the flavours of the beers produced. You can have two beers made with exactly the same base ingredients but different yeast, and the flavours can vary greatly. For this reason, Kyohei-san is trying to use a minimum of different yeasts to ensure that the flavour profiles stay the same throughout brewing. Moreover, the water used in brewing does not contain any chemical additives such as brewing salts, and nor is it filtered through any charcoal or other kinds of filters, something Monami was very proud of saying.

Another interesting technique, and not often found in Japan, is using open “ships” to ferment the beer using “coolships”. Coolships are wide, shallow open fermentation vessels [add pic] that allow the wort to cool quicker and also be imparted with wild yeasts and bacteria in the area. You wouldn’t want to do this in a city or suburban area though. It also depends on the weather – if it’s raining or snowing, then you could get additional chemicals that have been brought over from the industrial or busy city areas.

The area around Songbird Brewery could be considered the countryside of Kisarazu. With the nearest industrial area more than a 30-minute drive away, the area is full of open spaces that have plenty fresh air and lots of wind.  After walking for 40 minutes between the bus stop and the brewery, I can easily confirm that too. On the day we visited, Kyohei was brewing a 20L starter of a weizen to take home and put into a coolship near their house; however, he was unsure of when to use his coolship. January and February tend to bring the coldest weather, with temperatures varying from 1c to about 6c during the daytime, and also the lowest amount of monthly rainfall to Chiba, but December was relatively warm for the time of year. The plan is to take the wild fermented starter and then produce a sour beer later on in the year. Kyohei also showed us some of the previous samples Songbird Brewery had made and stored in the fermentation room.

If you’ve seen the list of beers Songbird Brewery have made [add link to list] then you could argue they’re one of the more ambitious breweries in Japan. Traditional beer styles such as blondes, wheat ales, and pale ales line up alongside brett table sours, smoked milds, peated IPAs, bier de garde (beers for keeping such as strong pale ales), franconia weisse, and bruins. At last count, they had upwards of 20 different styles of beers in their lineup with more planned. Both Kyohei and Monami are interested in different beer styles and the book has been one of founding resources they’ve used, and found many of the new styles. Moreover, their ideas come from everyday situations – with food pairings being the driving force behind new styles and combinations of adjuncts.

Their beer lineup, with it being so varied, has produced some interesting and unique beers such as an orange and ginger beer, yuzu and vanilla, and perhaps the most unusual, a lavender beer. The last one has provoked perhaps the most diverse reactions to it. Monami laughed at my response on asking for my opinion of the beer (I said it reminded me of the air freshener my wife uses in the toilet). Monami said that overall, female drinkers had a positive response to the beer, while male drinkers have generally had a negative response to it.  While the beer will appear in their 2016 winter lineup, Kyohei did say that less lavender would be used in this years’ edition.

Most of their beers do not take so long to make, with most of them bottled and kegged by hand; however, 2016 saw Brewery Songbird take on their first collaborative beer with one of our favourite beer shops, Liquors Hasegawa in Tokyo. The peated black IPA was a limited edition collaboration that almost never saw the light of day. While brewing the beer, the pump broke down and started pouring out hot fresh wort across the floor. Quick thinking meant a quick break down of the piping and pouring it back into the kettle, saving what was left. Speaking of problems Songbird has had, high alcohol beers and those with large grain bills also cause difficulties due to the much longer time needed, and the lack of guarantee of quality beer coming out as well.

Though Songbird Brewery is very much a husband-and-wife environment, there’s one thing that they didn’t do- design the labels. Their friend, who specialises in fashion and designs from the 30’s, had the task of designing the logo and the labels for the regular range of beers. Each label contains some reference to the name (Songbird), the area (Kisarazu), the beer, and sometimes a small location in the local area. Monami challenged us to find the little details in the blonde label, and while we’re not going to give you the answers, it was great to finally realise the meanings of the subtle hints. (OK, we’ll tell you one – take a look at the front wall of the temple on the Songbird Blonde and you’ll see the katakana character for so ソ).

At the moment, Songbird Brewery supply 20 bars that regularly get their kegs on tap, and their bottles can be found in Tokyo and on their online store with shipping across Japan. If you do find them on tap, try some. {:}{:ja}日本版：ロブソン由加里ソングバードビールは、千葉県木更津市で中島夫妻が経営している。この夫婦は自分が今まで出会ってきた日本のブルワリー経営者の中で、一番と言えるほどとても親切な2人だった。 今回自分は交通事情により約束時間から30分も遅れて到着してしまったのだが、中島夫妻は嫌な顔一つみせず、むしろ自分の事を歓迎して出迎えてくれた。 ソングバードビールブルワリーを開く前は2人とも東京にある麦酒倶楽部ポパイで働いていた。タップの数を20から50タップ程に増やすなど、クラフトビールの人気が広まっていく様子を目の当たりにした2人はやがて、自分たちのブルワリーを開く事を決心した。場所は自宅から近い方がいいとの事から、千葉県木更津市を選んだ。

ブルワリーは、他の大規模なブルワリーと比べるとだいぶ違う印象を受ける。全てが中島さんによるデザインのシンプルな構造をしており、ここにはいわゆるハイテク機器というものはない。キョウヘイさんはホームメイドの設備を誇りに思っている。 ブルワリーの中にある発酵部屋は決して大きくはないが、それでも様々な技術を行うには十分な広さである。ソングバードビールのレシピはキョウヘイさんによって慎重に調整されていて、製造工程中あまり多くの種類のイーストを使用していない。さらに水も添加物を使用していない ソングバードでは更に日本では珍しいクールシップというテクニックを施している。クールシップとは浅く平たい発酵に使う容器だ。麦汁は速く冷やされ、さらに天然酵母とバクテリアに晒される。この技術は混みいった都会には向かないが、木更津にあるソングバードでは素晴らしい製造法となった。

ブルワリー周辺は木更津市の中でも街からは離れていて、空気がきれいなところだ。自分がソングバードブルワリーを訪ねた時、キョウヘイさんはちょうど自宅近くで20ℓもの小麦のスターターでクールシップを行なっているところだった。ここで自然発酵させたあと、年内にはサワービールを完成させる予定だという。 ソングバードは多くの種類のビール揃えている。彼らの作るビールは今の所20種類強といったところだが、まだまだ増え続けている。中島さんは日々の食事の食べ合わせなどから、新しいビールのアイデアを得ているという。 彼らのビールの中には面白いコンビネーションをもつビールがある。生姜とオレンジ、ゆずとバニラ、さらにはラベンダーのビールもある。そのなかでもラベンダービールは最も多様な反応があった。自分が試飲した時、思わず芳香剤が頭をよぎったが、それを話すともなみさんは笑った。ラベンダービールは、男性よりも女性に好まれているという。キョウヘイさんによると、次回は使用するラベンダーの量を減らすらしい。 2016年、ソングバードビールは東京のはせがわ酒店と初めてコラボしてビールを作った。ピートブラックIPAである。実はこのビール製造過程でポンプが壊れ、熱いビールが床に噴���されてしまうという大きなアクシデントに見舞われていた。製造を中止するところだったが、幸運にも余ったビールを残すことができた。 ソングバードブルワリーは全て中島夫妻によって作られているが、���ールのラベルデザインは1930年代のファッションやデザインを得意とする地域のバーのオーナーによって描かれている。それぞれのラベルはソングバード、木更津やビールそのものを連想させる。 現在は、20軒のバーにビールを供給していて、ソングバードのボトルビールは東京や彼らのオンラインストアで手に入れることができる。もしソングバードビールを飲める機会に出会ったら、迷わず飲んでみることだ。飲むたびにうまくなっていく。{:}

Interview with Brewery Songbird / ブルワリーソングバードのインタビュー #craftbeer #beer #beerinjapan #クラフトビール ビール #地ビール #ソングバードビール {:en}If we were to give out awards for the nicest people in brewing in Japan, then husband and wife team Kyohei and Monami Nakajima of Songbird Brewery would be contenders for the gold prize.