Wine, women and song

"Who does not Love Wine Wife & Song will be a Fool for his Lifelong!"

"Wine, women, and song" is a hendiatris that endorses hedonistic lifestyles or behaviors. A more modern form of the idea is often expressed as "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll," a phrase popularized by British singer Ian Dury in his song of the same title.

Linguistic variations

Similar tripartite mottoes have existed for a long time in many languages, for example:

Not all hendiatris including women are positive: in Greek – "Πύρ, γυνή και θάλαττα" ("fire, women and the sea") instead suggest three dangers rather than pleasures, and Turkish At, Avrat, Silah ("horse, woman, weapon") offers the three essentials of quite another culture.

The following "tetrad" (using four concepts rather than three) predates all of the above :

"Two sweethearts,
Two flasks of old wine,
A book of verse
And a cosy corner in the garden."

Possible origins

The English couplet "Who loves not woman, wine, and song / Remains a fool his whole life long" appears in print as early as 1837, translated from German verse attributed to Martin Luther.[1] John Addington Symonds used the phrase "Wine, Women and Song" as the title for his 1884 book of translations of medieval Latin students' songs.[2] Ironically, Symonds is largely known today for his passionate writings about male homosexual love.

The phrase in German is apparently older than in English. Symonds and the anonymous 1837 writer both provide the German text, attributing it to Luther. The attribution to Luther has been questioned, however,[3][4] and the earliest known reference in German is to a folksong first printed in 1602.[5] Bartlett's Familiar Quotations cites Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826) as a likely source,[3] but any use by him would have to be a later use of the phrase.

The waltz "Wine, Women and Song" (Wein, Weib und Gesang) is Op. 333 (1869) of Johann Strauss II.

The lines Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue, / Deutscher Wein, und deutscher Sang (German women, German loyalty, / German wine, and German song) are found in the second verse of Das Lied der Deutschen, the third verse of which is the German national anthem.

Omne mundi trinum,
mulier, tabacum, vinum,
et qui curat de pluribus,
maximus est asinus!

References

  1. ↑ Anonymous "On Luther's Love for and Knowledge of Music"] in The Musical World. Vol VII, No. 83 (Oct 13, 1837) Google free ebook
  2. ↑ Wine, Women, and Song. Medieval Latin Students' Songs (1884) by John Addington Symonds.
  3. 1 2 Entry in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
  4. ↑ Philip Schaff History of the Christian Church, Volume VI. Modern Christianity. The German Reformation. New York:Charles Scribner's Sons (1892) p 465 Google free ebook
  5. ↑ Fred R Shapiro The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press (2006) p 477-478
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