Défense de Fumer

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Finally, a defense of smoking! All you frustrated smokers can now relax and have a smoke under the protection of this sign.

But why no smoking while driving? Especially if one is driving alone? Doesn't make sense to me. Lighting up while driving doesn't distract a driver much. Not so much as sneezing, for instance. By the logic of those opposed to smoking while driving, then, if you can't light up, you also should not be allowed to sneeze! Imagine the indignity imposed on all the old sneezers forced to squeeze their left earlobe so as to stifle an imminent sneeze! As if all that attention focused on one's left earlobe weren't far more distracting than the sneeze itself!

And if we can't sneeze, what else can't we do while driving? Cough? You mean we can't even do that anymore? What's the world coming to? Is it going to Hell in a handbasket? We probably won't be allowed to smoke in said basket despite our perditious destination.

Or will even Hell find smoking forbidden? But what's Hell without all that smoking? No more ante-chamber to an eternity of smoking! Just an anti-chamber, period.

Burn in Hal!

Burn in Hal

Last Friday evening, I joined friends Seung-Tae and Kent at Burn in Hal for drinks and conversation. The proprietor -- whom you see in the above photo and who reminds me somewhat of Mr. Em in my novella -- was friendly and already knew Kent (for around ten years), so he spoke with us a bit to make the acquaintance of Seung-Tae and me. I discovered that he was born in 1957, my own birth year, so I asked him what day.

"I'm older," he said, with remarkable confidence.

"Really?" I asked. "What day?"

"January 1st," he said.

"Okay," I conceded, "but I look older."

He smiled, and we continued our more general chat. I learned that he comes from Turkey, that he's been here in Seoul a long time, but has only recently opened Burn in Hal, a smoking place for people who like to partake of fine cigars. Interesting to me was that even as the place filled up with other folk, many of them smoking cigars, it didn't fill up with smoke, so I had no difficulty breathing.

I was half considering trying a cigar myself, but I decided to wait on that, maybe next time. Instead, I drank beer and ate some of the tasty dishes available there as Seung-Tae, Kent, and I talked about politics and history here in Korea . . .

As for Burn in Hal? I recommend it for the civilized atmosphere, a place where you can enjoy a beer or other drink and indulge in conversation without having to shout over loud music.

It's likely also good for smoking fine cigars . . .

Korea's Bbali-Bbali Culture

Elderly Korean Pipe Smoker

Robert Neff Collection

One of my students in Academic English this semester is writing on the rise of Korea's hurry-hurry (bbali-bbali) culture. I suggested that she find some citable evidence of a time when Koreans moved slowly, with no rush about getting things done, and she's probably done so by now, but I came across a helpful passage that she might wish to cite:

Foreigners who came to Korea in the early 20th century . . . complained about the intolerably slow tempo of the Korean people, who always seemed to be leisurely strolling, smoking a long bamboo pipe. Today, however, Koreans are astoundingly fast and dynamic.

That's from an article by Seoul National University Professor Kim Seong-kon, "A land of mystery, contradictions, logical fallacies" (Korea Herald, May 29, 2012). I've borrowed the photograph from a different source, an article by Robert Neff, "Tobacco and Korea" (10 Magazine, November 30, 2010).

I know Mr. Neff, having shared a few beers with him, and I suspect that he might even have written something on Korea's hurry-hurry culture and how it developed. The photo borrowed from his article dates to 1953, and the place was Pusan (now Busan), which is not quite the early 20th century, but that old fellow with the pipe still doesn't appear to be in any hurry. Now, he might have been tired because of the Korean War, which was dragging to its end in 1953, or he might have been a throwback to the earlier time remarked upon by Professor Kim, or Koreans in 1953 might still have preferred a slow tempo.

Having grown up in an agricultural region myself and made my particular transition to an urban life, gradually increasing my own tempo in the process, I'm guessing that this slow tempo may have characterized Korea not only up to the early twentieth century but also up to the time that Koreans abruptly moved from the countryside to the cities, which likely came with Korea's economic 'miracle' under the dictator Park Chung-hee, which started in the 1960s, and that Koreans started moving quickly at that time.

I'll have to see what my student uncovers . . .

Drinking Tobacco: Heretical or Medicinal?

"Poor Ol' Kaw-Liga"

Lamenting the decline of tobacco...

(Image from Wikipedia)

One doesn't see many cigar-store Indians anymore, and I haven't heard the original Hank Williams version of "Kaw-Liga" in a long time. I guess that's progress, and the Cherokee part of me partly agrees, but as Paul Vitti says in Analyze This, I'm 'conflicted about it,' especially about the song "Kaw-Liga." Sort of like my Uncle Harlin, who once told me, "I like that song 'Kaw-Liga,' but somebody should've punched Hank Williams in the nose for writing it."

Speaking of violent reactions, the introduction of tobacco to Europe incited some to threaten violence, especially in Russia, where 'drinking' tobacco was associated with ecclesiastical reform and other innovations from the West.

For example, J. B. Buky, in volume 5 (The Age Of Louis XIV), chapter 16 ("Russia") of The Cambridge Modern History (planned by Lord Acton, edited by Adolphus W. Ward, Cambridge: University Press), tells us of Russians' unhappiness in the mid-17th century when Patriarch Nikon of the Russian Orthodox Church attempted some church reforms, mostly minor ones such as instructing "that the sign of the Cross should be made with three fingers" rather than with the traditional two fingers characteristic of Russian Orthodoxy.

Nikon's attempts at reform met with resistance by schismatics, called the Raskolnïki (from "raskol," or "schism," the root meaning behind Dostoevsky's character Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment). For the Raskolnïki, anything foreign was heretical, including the evil weed:

Tracts were published against "tobacco, that devilish herb, cursed and abhorred of God." It was believed that the Redeemer and His mother appeared to some Russian women, and warned them that, as soon as Christians began to "drink" tobacco, lightning and thunder, frost and ice would be their punishment.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. The 'Mother of God' says it will end in a puff of smoke. Make that a drink.

Did Patriarch Nikon "drink" tobacco? Who knows? That pressing issue aside, I infer from Buky's quotation marks that the Russian expression for smoking used the same idiom that we have found in 16th- and 17th-century England, though I wonder if this reflected a traditional Russian idiom or an idiom that migrated with the spread of tobacco.

Closer to home, back in merry old England, we learn from G. L. Apperson, in The Social History of Smoking (London: Ballantyne Press, 1914), that the English of the 16th- and 17th-century reacted in more practical ways to those who were 'smoking':

Every one knows the legend of the water (or beer) thrown over Sir Walter by his servant when he first saw his master smoking, and imagined he was on fire. The story was first associated with Raleigh by a writer in 1708 in a magazine called the British Apollo. According to this yarn Sir Walter usually "indulged himself in Smoaking secretly, two pipes a Day; at which time, he order'd a Simple Fellow, who waited, to bring him up a Tankard of old Ale and Nutmeg, always laying aside the Pipe, when he heard his servant coming." On this particular occasion, however, the pipe was not laid aside in time, and the "Simple Fellow," imagining his master was on fire, as he saw the smoke issuing from his mouth, promptly put the fire out by sousing him with the contents of the tankard. One difficulty about this story is the alleged secrecy of Raleigh's indulgence in tobacco. There seems to be no imaginable reason why he should not have smoked openly. Later versions turn the ale into water and otherwise vary the story.

But the story was a stock jest long before it was associated with Raleigh. The earliest example of it occurs in the "Jests" attributed to Richard Tarleton, the famous comic performer of the Elizabethan stage, who died in 1588 -- the year of the Armada. "Tarlton's Jests" appeared in 1611, and the story in question, which is headed "How Tarlton tooke tobacco at the first comming up of it," runs as follows:

"Tarlton, as other gentlemen used, at the first comming up of tobacco, did take it more for fashion's sake than otherwise, and being in a roome, set between two men overcome with wine, and they never seeing the like, wondered at it, and seeing the vapour come out of Tarlton's nose, cryed out, fire, fire, and threw a cup of wine in Tarlton's face. Make no more stirre, quoth Tarlton, the fire is quenched: if the sheriffes come, it will turne to a fine, as the custome is. And drinking that againe, fie, sayes the other, what a stinke it makes; I am almost poysoned. If it offend, saies Tarlton, let every one take a little of the smell, and so the savour will quickly goe: but tobacco whiffes made them leave him to pay all."

In the early days of smoking, the smoker was very generally said to "drink" tobacco.

A charming story on the practicality of the English. Smoke from the devilish weed can be doused with simple water -- no need even for holy water or apocalyptic threats from the Virgin Mary!

Apperson takes the clause "And drinking that againe" to refer to Tarlton relighting his pipe (presumably) and smoking it again. Hence Apperson's reference to the early idiom about 'drinking' tobacco.

Even closer to home -- assuming your home is North America, which it might not be, but I'm writing this from my perspective as an expat American so far away from home -- anyway, even closer to my home is the story of the Lorillard Tobacco Company, told by Maxwell Fox (researched by Carl W. Drepperd) in the book The Lorillard Story (1947), which has a great deal of interesting information on early beliefs about tobacco and its uses, including the attempt by King James I of England to severely punish those who used it and thereby prohibit its use:

However, it is interesting to note that prohibition in those days had about the same effect on the population that liquor prohibition had in our day, in our own country. Bootleggers promptly took advantage of the situation; sold tobacco in back rooms. Likewise, their customers took home the expensive adulterated stuff and enjoyed it as best they could in secret gatherings or in their homes behind shuttered windows. Probably it was King James, more than any other one man, who promoted the custom of snuff-taking. The furtive tobacco-user hardly dared to risk smoking a pipe and letting the evidence of his crime filter out through the cracks of his doors and windows to the nostrils of the police or a nosy neighbor. So the snuff-taking habit, easily practiced without detection, spread by leaps and bounds.

But it was a Dr. Cheynell of Oxford University who probably did as much as any one man to put a stop to all this foolishness. In 16o3 he dared to engage in a public debate on tobacco at the University. King James himself sat in the audience as Dr. Cheynell heroically held a tobacco pipe in his hand while he extolled the golden weed. There is no record that the King punished the daring doctor for his seeming impudence. Perhaps His Majesty could see which way the wind was blowing.

At any rate, pipe smoking started to make a comeback soon after; and the tobacco trade increased until by 1614 there were 7,o0o different London houses (companies or families) trading in tobacco. One London shop, and perhaps more, adopted a forerunner of the Cigar Store Indian as a trade mark. "The Smoaking Age," a book published in 1617, carried an engraved frontispiece illustrating the interior of a tobacconist's shop. The shop's advertising sign was a small effigy of an American Indian smoking a fat cigar.

You may be interested in some 17th century sales tips sent out by a wholesaler to his retail tobacco customers:

"-- Set a picture of a blackamoor or a Virginia man, that will draw custom, upon the front-piece of the door. Make a partition in thy shop if some come to bathe rather than to drink tobacco." The dealer was advised to concentrate his sales efforts on scholars, lawyers and poets, particularly, but not to forget possible sales to the ladies.

You may wonder at the term "tobacco drinking." This gained currency because of an early belief that tobacco smoke had therapeutic qualities. When that superstition took hold, everybody made sure that he got the full benefit. Smokers inhaled the smoke so that it would circulate and "fume the innerds;" then they exhaled the smoke as slowly" as possible out their noses. Somehow, this manner of smoking came to be known as drinking. Midway in the 17th century the term faded out of use and "smoking" came to be the common term.

Here, our author Fox is admitting that he doesn't know where the expression "tobacco drinking" originated. Based on the evidence that I found in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by T. Northcote Toller (1921), I wonder if the expression goes all the way back to Anglo-Saxon. If that early Medieval expression about drinking smoke indicated a medical context, then the belief that tobacco acted as a sort of medicine might reflect this old expression.

Now if I could just find some example of drinking smoke from sources in Middle English...

"A Chaw Of Tobacco And A Little Drink"

Nicotiana rustica

For rustics like me...

(Image from Wikipedia)

As a boy growing up in the Ozarks, I must have been one of the few who refused to undergo that otherwise nearly universal rite of passage to hillbilly manhood: trying a 'chaw' of tobacco.

Most boys didn't get it right the first time, accidentally swallowed a bit of the 'juice,' repeatedly yawned in living color, and learned to spit better the next go-around.

I turned down every offer of chewing tobacco proffered. Hearing anecdotes of those who had gone before persuaded me not to go there at all. Another old boy that I worked with had drawn the same conclusion, and if offered a chaw, he'd retort:

"No thanks, I don't even chew horsesh*t."

Like me, he preferred not to become one of the many who'd had a chaw of tobacco and a little drink along with the chaw, which reminds me of an old song title, though I don't know if the song relates the same experience.

I therefore found myself surprised yesterday to discover during my tobacco investigations that really drinking tobacco juice has been a cultural practice among some groups. I say "my tobacco investigations," but the legwork was done by others, for Michael Gilleland, of Laudator Temporis Acti, has again come to my aid. Not that Michael had much searching to do either, for he had help from one of his readers, Roger Kuin, who found a fascinating passage in an article "Tobacco: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced the World" from the February 8, 2002 edition of The Washington Post, which apparently reprints the first chapter of Iain Gately's book La Diva Nicotina: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced the World (Simon & Schuster, 2001):

Turning to the methods by which tobacco was consumed in South America, the astonishing diversity of tobacco habits reflects not only the multitudinous purposes it served, but also the different climatic conditions in which the weed was employed. For instance, it was hard to smoke in the thin, dry air of the Andes, so snuffing tended to prevail. Similarly, in the swamplands of the Amazon, where fires could not be kindled readily, tobacco was taken as a drink. Different methods of tobacco consumption often existed side by side -- one form for everyday use, another for magic or ritual.

Probably the oldest way of taking the weed, and the most straightforward, was chewing it. Cured tobacco leaves were mixed with salt or ashes, formed into pellets or rolls, then tucked into the user's cheek, or under a lip. The juices thus released then dissolved in saliva and slid down the masticator's throat. Tobacco chewing could be recreational, or magical. The next method of consumption, in terms of complexity and pedigree, was drinking tobacco, in a sort of tea. Tobacco leaves were boiled or steeped in water and the resulting brew drunk via the nose or mouth. This was a popular method of consumption among shamans, as the strength of the brew could be adjusted to deliver the massive doses they preferred. The provenance of the tobacco used in making tea was a matter of great importance. For instance, Acawaio men would travel to a special stream to collect 'Mountain Spirit' tobacco, which was steeped in the water of the stream to enhance its potency. Drinking tobacco also presented the opportunity of mixing other narcotics into the brew. Novice shamans would sometimes add a dash of the fluids they collected from a dead shaman, and a qualified shaman's tea was often loaded with other hallucinogenic plant extracts. Tobacco was drunk in sufficient quantities at shamanic initiation ceremonies to induce vomiting, paralysis and, occasionally, death. Even everyday tobacco drinkers attributed mystic powers to their brew. Hunters of the Mashco tribe drank to communicate with the game animals that they wished to kill. Hunters in some tribes would apply tobacco juice as eye drops in order to help them see in the dark. In several cases this privilege was extended to their hunting dogs. (Gately, Tobacco, chapter 1, paragraphs 20-21)

Interesting that one aim of chewing on tobacco was that of swallowing the "juices . . . dissolved in saliva," precisely what people aimed not to do back in the Ozarks -- and with good reason, too, since too much tobacco imbibed could "induce vomiting, paralysis and, occasionally, death"!

But let us return to metaphorical drinks of tobacco. Edward Pettit, of The Bibliothecary, alerted me to an anthro-ling blog enty by linguistics student David Kaufman for June 26, 2006 on "Drinking Tobacco," in which Kaufman remarks:

In the last couple of days I've discovered the Biloxi [Indians] used to say

yani(ksoni) įni
tobacco(pipe) drink

While at first the idea of "drinking" tobacco seemed odd, I've since discovered that it is not so unusual. I'm told that "drink" for smoke also occurs in Crow (another Siouan language), some eastern Algonquian languages, and even Japanese:

tabako wo nomu
tobacco OBJ drink

Kaufman then asks: "Anyone know of other languages that have this idea of 'drinking' for smoking?" A couple of readers responded on June 29, 2006 with examples in Hindi and Arabic:

Nick Emlen said: The Hindi word for smoking tobacco:"Tumbako piina", literally "to drink tobacco".

arabicgeek-bot said: In Egyptian Arabic they say both "yišrab sagaayir", and "yidaxxan" both meaning "to smoke" but "yišrab sagaayir" literally means "to drink cigarettes."

I then chimed in, many months later (February 21, 2007) to note that "It also appears in Elizabethan English and Old English," directing Mr. Kaufman to my blog. I haven't heard from him yet, so perhaps he hasn't seen my comment.

I may have to smoke him out of his bloghole...

To 'Drink' Tobacco...

Thirsty? Drink a cigarette.

(Image from Wikipedia)

In yesterday's post, I noted this odd expression used in Milton's time, when people 'drank' rather than smoked tobacco.

Michael Gilleland, of Laudator Temporis Acti, cites my post in blog entry of his about "Tobacco" and tells us that he had, coincidentally, encountered the same expression the previous day in an Elizabethan poem:

By coincidence, just yesterday I happened on the same expression in a poem by Robert Wisdome included in Norman Ault's anthology of Elizabethan Lyrics (1949; rpt. New York: Capricorn Books, 1960), pp. 19-20:

A Religious Use of Taking Tobacco

The Indian weed witherëd quite,
Green at morn, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay;
All flesh is hay:
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

And when the smoke ascends on high,
Think thou behold'st the vanity
Of worldly stuff,
Gone with a puff:
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

But when the pipe grows foul within,
Think of thy soul defiled with sin.
And that the fire
Doth it require:
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

The ashes that are left behind,
May serve to put thee still in mind
That into dust
Return thou must:
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

An apt memento mori for anyone who smokes religiously. But were Wisdome's words wise? Were they even in earnest? The Oxford Book of Comic Verse, edited by John Gross, includes it (on page 14 of the 1994 edition), ostensibly as a comical poem. Marco Graziosi, who informs us that Wisdome himself met his mortality in 1568, links this poem to the limerick, with which it very nearly shares a rhyme scheme (aabbc; cf. aabba), though Graziosi doesn't state outright that the poem was intended as humor.

The poem gave rise to a popular song whose tune you can hear on The Kitchen Musician Website, courtesy of Sara L. Johnson, who writes a feature "In Tune with the Times: Musical Rambles Through History." Johnson tells us more:

The words to this song can first be traced to a Presbyterian satirist of his day, one George Wither, who published it in his "Abuses stript and whipt," which got him sent to Marshalsea prison. One of his verses is:

Why should we so much despise,
So good and wholesome an exercise,
As, early and late, to meditate?
Thus think, and drink tobacco.

The earthen pipe, so lily white,
Shews that thou art a mortal wight;
Even such - and gone with a small touch:
Thus think, and drink tobacco.

In the times of Elizabeth and James I, the English inhaled and swallowed the smoke, explaining the phrase "to drink tobacco."

Johnson seems unaware that Reverend Wither (1588-1667) must have derived his song from Wisdome (d. 1568), so I wonder if she is correct in her explanation for the origin of the expression "to drink tobacco."

An older source some Elizabethan one might be at hand. On page 158 of the supplement to An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by T. Northcote Toller (1921), we find this entry at the top, which continues the entry from page 157 on drincan (i.e., "to drink"):

(4) to inhale smoke (cf. to drink tobacco) :-- Lege on hátne stán, drinc þurh horn þone réc, Lch. ii. 316, 11.

The line "Lege on hátne stán, drinc þurh horn þone réc" translates into modern English as something like "Fire arises from heat, drink the smoke through a horn," the "horn" being a pipe, I suppose. Experts in Old English should feel themselves invited to correct my translation. I'm guessing that "Lch." refers to the abbreviation "Lchdm." in "abbreviations for the source texts":

Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of early England, edited by O. Cockayne, Master of the Rolls Series, 3 vols. London, 1864-1866. Quoted by volume, page and line.

That's certainly an intriguing title. According to a review in Medical History (1963 January; 7(1): 96), the book "contains almost the entire corpus of scientific writings from the Anglo-Saxon period of English History." Such being the case, I suspect that 'drinking smoke' was a medical remedy of some sort -- though not one using that 'good' medicine, tobacco. Old friends from my history-of-science days might be able to tell us more, but I've lost touch with them all (unless they are among my lurking readers).

For now, at any rate, I can take us no further into the history and prehistory of tobacco drinking...

UPDATE: Edward Pettit, of The Bibliothecary, has graciously corrected my poor translation:

Lege on hátne stán, drinc þurh horn þone réc
Lay on (a) hot stone; drink through (a) horn the smoke.

Much better -- and much more obvious than my effort. So much for the Gypsy's linguistic skills...