Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1893 — Something Big In Sausages. [ARTICLE]

Something Big In Sausages.

In former times it was the custom in many German towns to manufacture sausages of enormous length, and carry them on festive occasions in solemn procession through the streets. On New Year’s Day in 1558 a giant sausage 108 ells in length was carried in triumph by forty-eight persons. But in the year 1583 it took ninety-one persons to carry a sausage 596 ells long and weighing 434 pounds. The chronicles of the period says: “The butchers’men were all neatly attired in white blouses. The first man wound one end of the sausage several times round his neck with a portion of it hanging down in front, the rest followed at equal distances carrying the trophy on their shoulders, and the last one had the other end wound round his neck like the man at the head of the procession." In the year 1601 we are told that the sausage attained a length of 1,005 ells, 130 of which were presented to their Serene Highnesses at the castle. All this happened in Konigsberg. In 1613 the Emperor Matthias regaled the Princes of the House of Austria with a tournament, at which the butchers of Vienna gave a representation of a peasant’s wedding, and paraded the streets with a sausage measuring 999 ells.—[Duisburger Zeitung.