[Sca-cooks] Giant butt

[Decker, Terry D.]

No wonder his calculations are off, he's making an assumption about
hogsheads and converting between dry measures (pints, pecks and bushels) and
wet measures (pints, gallons and hogsheads).  The four gallon difference can
be attributed to the volume differences between wet and dry pints in the
traditional measures.  (As I understand it, in the Imperial system the
volume of the pints are the same)

The pre-Imperial standards set the hogshead at 48 gallons for ale, 50
gallons for beer, 60 gallons for cider, 63 gallons for wine, honey or oil
and 100 gallons for molasses.  The U.S. currently fixes the hogshead at 63
gallons.  The butt and the tun are not generally used, but they are
understood to be 126 U.S. gallons and 252 U.S. gallons respectively.  Of
course the U.S. still uses the Elizabethean wine gallon.

Traditionally, a butt (476.91 liters) is half a tun (953.82 liters).  The
500 liter butt is modernly used in metric system countries.  And the
Imperial butt is 108 Imp. gallons or about 490.98 liters.  By any measure,
it is Homeric consumption.

Bear

> I have to forward this in its' entirity- it is intereting, 
> and the subject
> line was hysterical!
> 
> 'Lainie
> 
> >Sender: Chaucer Discussion Group <CHAUCER at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
> >From: "Brian S. Lee" <brianlee at XSINET.CO.ZA>
> >Subject: Giant butt
> >To: CHAUCER at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
> >
> > This is the somewhat ambiguous heading to an article I saw 
> quoted from the
> >London 'Daily Telegraph' -- in full the heading is "Giant 
> butt to spark
> >poetry in Motion".  It begins:
> >
> >"In accordance with a 300-year-old tradition, Britain's Poet 
> Laureate,
> >Andrew Motion, has been presented with a giant butt -- 500 
> litres --of
> >Spanish sherry each year to help summon the muse."
> >
> >This reminded me of Chaucer's annual tun of wine, and made 
> me wonder just
> >how much it contained.  The OED obliges with the information 
> that a "tun"
> >(sv., 2.) was "a cask of definite capacity ... usually 
> equivalent to two
> >pipes or four hogsheads, containing 252 old wine-gallons."  
> Early on in my
> >schooldays, getting on for a long time ago, weights and measures were
> >printed on the back of exercise books, from which I remember 
> learning that
> >there were 8 pints to a gallon, eight gallons to a bushel, 
> and 8 bushels to
> >a hogshead.  This at long last useful instruction works out 
> to just four
> >gallons more than what the OED suggests.  
<clipped>
> >
> >Brian
> >
>