Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 285, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1910 — “Bonnyclabber. [ARTICLE]

“Bonnyclabber.

The popularity of barley water in West end clubs was mentioned in the course of evidence collected by the royal commission on the licensing laws nearly 20 years ago, says the London Chronicle. The Inner Temple, too, is very proud of its particular decoction of barley water, which is served at both lunch and dinner in Hall. And though the Inner Temple also brews its own ale, it is the barley water which, particularly during recent years, has been in the greater demand.

New drinks have sometimes a glorious and brief popularity. Lord Strafford, writing to Lord Cottington in 1635, extols “Bonnyclabber,” which he says “is the bravest, freshest drink you ever tasted. Your Spanish don *would, on the heats of Madrid, hang his nose and shake his beard an hour over every sop he took of it, and take it to be the drink of the gods all the while.” No one, however, seems to know the exact composition of the seductive “bonnyclabber," although from an allusion to it by Ben Jonson in “The New Inn,” it would seem to have been a mixture of beer and buttermilk.