Anno 1488
The recent discovery of fascinating old manuscripts looks likely to turn the history of the Cape on its head. The manuscripts add tangible evidence to the myth which has been popular amongst local beer brewers in the Cape for centuries, that beer brewing in the Cape in fact predated winemaking by almost two centuries, and describe a little known, but hugely significant character, known as Goa O’Drosty, or The Merry Monk.
The manuscripts are in fact the diaries of one of Goa O’Drosty’s children, Angelique , written as memoirs, and describe, amongst other things, her recollections of her parents’ life in the Cape. It also touches on how her European migrant parents came to live in the Cape in the late 1400’s, and how they survived in harmony with the local people.
Beer appears to have played an important part, and local scholars believe that it is only the fact that their mixed Portuguese, French and Belgian ancestry was not favoured by later Dutch and French settlers, who had a bias towards winemaking, which has kept their names and the seminal role of beer in the settling of the Cape, out of the history books of the last three centuries.
The story, pieced together from previous known records and the recently discovered manuscript, goes like this;
In 1487 Bartholomew Dias, explorer, navigator, and nobleman of the Portuguese royal family, set sail from Lisbon, with orders from King John II of Portugal to find a trade route to India via the southern tip of the African continent. He was also charged with finding the lands ruled over by Prester John, a fabled Christian king and ruler.
Dias’ ship, the Sao Cristovao, was piloted by legendary Portuguese explorer Pero de Alenquer. De Alenquer had travelled on earlier expeditions exploring the African coast, but had never reached its southernmost tip. Also amongst Dias’ crew was a Portuguese monk known only in the history books as Goa O’Drosty. Entries in Dias’ diaries state that O’Drosty had for many years served as a master brewer in a monastery in Belgium and was taken on Dias’ maiden voyage to Africa in order to provide the crew with a steady flow of the amber ale, which at that time was believed to prevent scurvy.
Very little is known about another crew member, Francis Velazquez, a Spanish peasant crewman, who it later transpired was in fact a woman who had disguised herself as a man, ostensibly to gain passage to India. Somewhat puzzling was the fact that Francis (real name Francesca) had long, wavy, blonde hair, something of a rarity amongst the Spanish people. Details are sketchy, but there is evidence to suggest that Francesca was in fact the daughter of French nobleman, Francis II, Duke of Brittany, and sister of Anne of Brittany, who had fled France prior to the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier in which her family were embroiled, to be with her lover, Bartholomew Dias. Dias would not have been allowed his lover on board, even as captain of his own ship, which would explain her disguise as a man, as well as the events which were later to unfold in the Cape and irrevocably alter the history of South Africa in a way so far largely unknown.
Dias’ journey is well documented. After departing Lisbon in October he rounded the Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Storms) in December 1487 and sailed along the South African east coast. However, after rounding the Cape the seas became rougher and the crew more nervous. They found a harbour from tempestuous seas on 3 February 1488, anchoring in the Bay of St Blaise (now Mossel Bay). Dias was under pressure from his crew to turn west and head back to Portugal. However, respite from the labour of the high seas, and Goa O’Drosty’s amber ale, filled them briefly with a renewed thirst for the riches of the East and the glory of achievement, and they set sail once again four day’s later, this time reaching as far as the Bushman’s River in the Eastern Cape before yet another storm, and a mutinous crew, persuaded Dias to pause for reflection. Some say that O’Drosty’s ale was just too good, and filled with a languid joy for having rounded the Cape, the crew had lost the appetite to venture further into unknown seas…
There has been speculation over the years that an intimate relationship had developed between Goa O’Drosty and Dias’ lover, Francis (Francesca) Velazquez. What has recently come to light in the unearthed manuscripts is that this is was indeed the case. Francesca longed for a return to Europe, and she had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Dias to turn homewards. It seems their relationship had soured on the voyage, and she was unable to sway him from the temptations and glories of the East. She was aware that Dias trusted O’Drosty, and she focused her attention on convincing him that the route to the east was too perilous to undertake heading into the winter season of storms. O’Drosty, whom Dias trusted implicitly, conveyed these concerns to Dias as his own, and in the end Dias relented.
A large cross, the padrão de São Gregório, was erected at their eastern-most point of travel, and the ships turned west for the Cabo das Tormentas. Relations on board the São Cristovao were strained, and events took a dramatic turn as they approached the Cape. The day before arriving at the Cape Dias discovered the nature of the relationship between Francesca and O’Drosty. Enraged, but aware of the mood amongst his crew, he let it be known that Francesca (still know as Francis to his crew) and O’Drosty were to remain in the Cape to found a victualling station for future Portuguese explorers. O’Drosty and Francesca protested, but Dias made it clear to them in private that were they to continue with him on his voyage that they would not see Lisbon ! He promised that their mission was as he had set out for the crew to hear, and that he would equip them as well as possible to survive in the wilds of Africa.
Part 3
The São Cristovao rounded the Cape heading west on 4 April 1488, and the following morning made landfall in a cove to the north of the barren, windswept sands of forested Hout Bay. O’Drosty and Francesca alighted with their personal possessions, two horses, seeds for a variety of herbs, fruit & vegetables, and O’Drosty’s copper still. Dias no longer trusted the amber ale and blamed it for the mutiny of his crew and the blossoming relationship between his former lover and his brewmaster. Much to the crew’s surprise they then immediately set off, leaving the couple to fend for themselves in the wooded sands of Hout Bay, populated by lions, leopards and other nasties unknown to the Portuguese.
Dias and his crew returned safely to Lisbon, arriving home in December 1488. He made no reference to O’Drosty or Francesca in his personal diaries, until 1499 when, with another expedition planned to the East Indies, he referred to following up on some unfinished business in the Cape. It is thought that Dias longed to reconcile with Francesca, and repair his relationship with O’Drosty, and his main motivation for organizing another expedition to find a route to the East Indies was in fact a burning desire to return to the Cape and reconcile with his past. However, this was not to be. Dias, sailing with four ships, was lost at sea with his ship on 29 May 1500. He was never to see the seeds he had planted for a new world at the tip of the African continent.
Returning to the morning of 5 April 1488, Goa O’Drosty and Francesca Velazquez believed that this was to be their end. Their first night was spent on the beach of Hout Bay, the night filled with the roar of lions in the dense forests inland from the beach (these lions were in fact to be found in Cape Town until the 1900’s, the last one being shot on the slopes of Devil’s Peak in 1906).
The story told to their daughter was that the following day, 6 April, they packed their possessions onto the two horses and made their way inland, desperate to find fresh water. This was in fact was to prove not too difficult, a portent of things to come. They discovered water just a few hundred metres inland, namely the main river running through Hout Bay valley to the beach. Once already on their way they decided to explore further, and it seems after some days came to the crest of present day Constantia Nek. Seeing a beautiful world before them, and invigorated by their relative ease in finding their way into the inhospitable wilds of Africa, they journeyed a short distance over the nek into the Constantia Valley.
Part 4
Dates are not known exactly, but the manuscripts record that on or about the 16 April they came upon what is today known as the Spaansemacht River. There were a number of natural fruits growing in the area, and with the crystal clear waters of the Spaansemacht River, Goa O’Drosty decided they need travel no further. They began building a home in the glen alongside the river, just to the north of today’s Groot Constantia. O’Drosty’s copper still was erected on a bend in the river, and he planted a variety of seeds in the late winter, including hops & barley to begin brewing beer with the waters of the Spaansemacht River.
While tending to their spring crops they encountered local people for the first time, nomadic people traversing the mountains to the south and heading for the flat mountain to the north which was rich in game. O’Drosty arranged to trade a special drink from a distant land for meat from their hunting when they returned.
Goa O’Drosty’s first beer was made in time for their first Christmas in the Cape, in December 1488. By this time they had met and befriended many of the local people with whom he indeed exchanged his carefully crafted local brew for food and other goods. Angelique records that her parents regularly engaged with the local people and their home became a meeting place for all those passing through the Constantia valley.
They were to discover that they were at a crossroads for those travelling along the mountains from north to south and back, and for those making the three day journey between Hout Bay, from where they had come, and the flat, sandy lands to the east.
O’Drosty’s original Belgian recipe for the brewing of his ale was passed down to his children, who in turn continued his brewing tradition, and the brew became a legend amongst local hunters, traders and travellers.
Their lineage then disappears, and there is no detailed further written history of the Cape until the arrival of the Dutch in 1652, 164 years and one day after the arrival of Goa O’Drosty and Francesca Velazquez.
With the Dutch, and later the French, bringing winemaking to the Cape, the history of the local people, Goa O’Drosty, and beer brewing in the Cape was erased to make way for the history of the new masters of the land. However, there is much in the preserved diaries of other early residents of the Cape to suggest that the Dutch were most definitely not the first to discover the Cape, and that there was a strong local tradition for the brewing of excellent ales at the time of the arrival of the Dutch settlers in the Cape.
Those who look closer, with an open mind, at the history which has been rediscovered in recent years will see that in fact the fine art of brewing beer in the Cape pre-dates winemaking by almost 200 years. They will see, Goa O’Drosty, The Merry Monk.
The Merry Monk ale
A light, amber ale
4% alcohol content
Brewed by The Merry Monk using a 700-year-old recipe from a Belgian monastery
Ordering The Merry Monk
The glasses are expensive. Please don’t break them.
In many bars around the world where yards of ale are sold it is customary to request a customer’s left shoe as a deposit on the glass, which shoe shall be returned at the end of an evening with return of the glass.
Drinking The Merry Monk
When drinking from a yard (or half yard) glass it is necessary, when approaching the last third of the glass, to twist while drinking, to avoid a beer shower when the amber ale comes bursting out of the bulb.
Yard of ale
A yard of ale
A yard of ale or yard glass is a very tall beer glass used for drinking around 2.5 imperial pints (1.4l) of beer, depending upon the diameter. The glass is approximately 1 yard long, shaped with a bulb at the bottom, and a widening shaft which constitutes most of the height.[1]
The glass most likely originated in 17th-century England where the glass was known also as a "Long Glass", a "Cambridge Yard (Glass)" and an "Ell Glass". It is associated by legend with stagecoach drivers, though was mainly used for drinking feats and special toasts.[2][3]
· Drinking a yard glass full of beer as quickly as possible is a traditional pub game; the bulb at the bottom of the glass makes it likely that the contestant will be splashed with a sudden rush of beer towards the end of the feat. The fastest drinking of a yard of ale (1.42 litres) in the Guinness Book of Records is 5 seconds.[4]Description
The glass is approximately 1 yard long, shaped with a bulb at the bottom, and a widening shaft which constitutes most of the height. In countries where the metric system is used, the glass may be 1 metre (roughly 1.1 yd) long. Because the glass is so long and in any case does not usually have a stable flat base, it is hung on the wall when not in use.
History
The glass most likely originated in 17th-century England where the glass was known also as a "Long Glass", a "Cambridge Yard (Glass)" and an "Ell Glass".[5] Such a glass was a testament to the glassblower's skill as much as the drinker's. John Evelyn records in his Diary the formal yet festive drinking of a yard of ale toast to James II at Bromley in Kent, 1685.
Yard glasses can be found hanging on the walls of some English pubs and there are a number of pubs named The Yard of Ale throughout the country.
Usage
Drinking a yard glass full of beer is a traditional pub game in the UK, and a popular drinking game in Australia and New Zealand particularly at a 21st party;[6] some ancient colleges at Oxford University have sconcing forfeits.[7] The object in all the games is to drink the contents as quickly as possible. One record-keeping source reported the fastest drinking of a yard of ale is 5 seconds.[8] Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke was previously the world record holder for the fastest drinking of a yard of beer,[9] when he downed a sconce pot in eleven seconds as part of a traditional Oxford college penalty.[10]