Gall and Wormwood - Muldoon Elder

...And when she'd meet her brother, Jack,
She used to smack him on the back
So sharply as to make him jump
Then cry, "What-Ho, you've got the hump!"
A phrase which more than any other
Was gall and wormwood to her brother,
For, having an agnostic mind,
He was exceedingly refined.
—Hilaire Belloc 1870-1953

Wormwood is a bitter tasting herb-like plant (Artemisia absinthium), used in the making of a green alcoholic drink called absinthe. Absinthe, which is actually good stuff, got a bad name from being produced with an inferior type of alcohol that made people act a little weird and thus it became outlawed in many countries. Some say that it has mild psychotropic properties but in any case I've noticed that it gives you a rather different kind of buzz than vodka by itself. It's easy to make. All you do is to go down to the nearest Chinese vegetable market and buy a clump of wormwood to add, along with a little sugar and a few drops of green food coloring, to a bottle of vodka. Remove the wormwood anytime within twenty-four hours or the taste will be too bitter. Presto, you've got yourself some high-class absinthe! If you like complexity, you can also add all sorts herbs to suit your taste but be sure to remove the dregs before you serve it. If you're lazy and don't want to go to the trouble of making it, you can always Google absinthe and buy it on the web but you have to buy it as an individual and not as a business.

To the slogan, Candy is dandy, wine is fine, but liquor is quicker!, an old English wag added, "Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder." And by the way, in case you're not British, "the hump" is a slightly raucous expression for a fit of depression or sulking.

Gall, among other things, is a substance, used in the tanning of leather, which comes from a swelling of plant tissue usually due to fungi or parasites. I'll bet you didn't know that definition of gall. Since we were talking about vegetation, I thought I'd plant that one on you. Gall can also mean a skin sore caused by chronic irritation. Thus we have the expression, "It really galls me," meaning "It really irritates me." But the gall in the expression gall and wormwood isn't limited to these two. It is also a very nasty substance called "bile." Bile is the bitter greenish fluid that your liver secretes to help in digestion, especially in the breakdown of fats. Well, not just your liver, but anyone's liver.

Gall and wormwood have two things in common; they're bitter and they're green although sometimes gall can find itself moving in a rather cowardly yellowish direction absent the absinthe.

Around the beginning of the last century, gall and wormwood was a common expression meaning "something quite irritating and unpleasant."

And while you're at it, how about crossing the Atlantic and reinstating The hump?

_______________________________o__________________________________
Note: In case you were wondering; as I remember it, Belloc's cautionary verse begins:

John Henderson, an unbeliever,
Was lately lacking joie de vivre.
From reading far too many books,
He went about with gloomy looks.
Dispair dwelt within his breast,
And made the man a perfect pest.

Not so, his sister, Mary Lunn,
She had a wacking lot of fun,
Though unbelieving as a beast,
She didn''t worry in the least,
But drank as hard as she was able,
And danced and sang upon the table.

Then, following the verse up at the very top, it concludes:

The Christians (a declining band)
Would point with monitory hand,
To Henderson, (his desperation),
And Mary Lunn, (her dissipation),
And often murmured,"Mark our words,
Something will happen to those birds!"
Which came to pass, though quite sedate,
They suddenly died at ninety-eight.

But who knows, maybe I just imagined the whole thing.