Lil’ snippets of my new book Kitchen Witch: Food, Folklore, and Fairy tale
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Ale Wives
The stories of the beer goddess offer us a glimpse of just how essential a role beer and ale have played over many thousands of years of feasting, ritual and daily life—and how women have always played a central role in its production. The word "alewife" appeared in common use in England from the end of the 1300s in various medieval texts describe women who brewed and sold ale. Brewing was something done at home for the household, but especially for widows and spinsters, brewing a little extra for sale was a good way to earn some income. And many were familiar with herbs and flavourings that might make the ale taste better as well as containing healing properties. Apparently, ale was particularly useful after The Black Death (around 1346 – 1352, wiping out from one-third to one-half of Europe's population). As it was boiled, ale was more likely safer to drink than water in some areas, it provided some nutrition and hydration, and selling it was profitable for women who'd learned the craft.
Professional alewives would have broomsticks in their kitchen to keep things clean, cats often scurried around their' bubbling cauldrons, killing mice that liked to feast on the grains used for brewing or warm themselves by cauldrons of cooling wort. The frothing yeast from the pot might be skimmed and added to flour, for the baking of bread that day. If this image is sounding familiar, it's because this is all iconography that we now associate with witches. While there's no definitive historical proof that modern depictions of witches were modelled after alewives, there are some uncanny similarities between alewives and anti-witch propaganda. And as brewing gradually moved from a cottage industry into a money-making one, this connection to witchcraft proved useful for men to remove women and their roles with demonization and character assassination. Other skills such as lay healers suffered a similar fate, and women were being stripped of their ability to claim a profession or have their skills recognised. Medicinal knowledge or natural remedies were considered impossible for a woman to possess or skills begotten by the devil. As the idea that women were inherently corrupted spread, societies implemented strict laws that ever increasingly regulated and removed women from brewing. Brewing Guilds were set up in cities and excluded women as they were considered unfit to brew or sell ale and beer, or worse; that they might use their feminine charms to lure men into drunkenness. And through Europe the founding of these guilds often forced women out of the brewing industry - according to Essex witch trial record accused witches were quite often blamed for spoiling beer. Or using powers to ’bewitch’ beer, which could among other things, mean it was watered down. Connecting brewers with both witchcraft and general untrustworthiness. Away from the big cities, it was still possible for women in rural villages to continue their craft, albeit more surreptitiously.
This again sounds a lot like healers, cunning folk, herbalists and midwives whose good work was twisted and undermined. The link between female brewers and pagan practices became a convenient weapon in the campaign to remove women from various professions and ultimately proved successful.
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It's not that all alewives were witches or that all witches were also alewives, or even that the alewives cauldron and outfit created the stereotype image of the Witch. I believe many images combined and amalgamated to make that image. But there is a kinship here - the Church went out of their way to demonise these women. I do not doubt that more than one alewife has been called a witch in her time. And alewives, along with many women of the time and all the way through to professional women today - can certainly relate to being belittled and having their skills dismissed.
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Kitchen Witch: Food, Folklore, and Fairy tale will be released Ostara 2022
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