Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/136

 112 express his friendship for his guest or for a cheery comrade. And he ate, too, till he was ready to burst—pikes' heads dressed with garlic, fish soups with saffron in them, hares' kidneys stewed in milk and ginger, strongly flavoured cookery all of it, highly spiced, that burnt the mouth and necessitated copious libations. The wines most commonly consumed came from Hungary and the Rhine, and are not always easy to recognise under their corrupted names. For Petersemen we must read Peter Simon's wein, a Rhenish vintage imported by Peter Simon, a Dutch merchant. There were French wines, red and white burgundies—amongst which the Romanée vintage no doubt figured under that name of Romaneïa now applied in Russian taverns to corn-brandy and alcohol distilled from fruits, malmsey, alicant, and other Spanish wines. French wines were more especially used by the Church. Brandy was also imported in large quantities, and so were German and French white wine vinegars. The usual drink of the common people was kvass: but Tetaldi the Italian mentions another preparation, frequently used, called tolokno, into the composition of which dry oatmeal entered. But Russian authorities only speak of this as a food.

As to the extent of the habits of intemperance thus revealed, witnesses disagree as much as on every other matter. According to Jenkinson, the English traveller, Russia would have been a drunken country whether Ivan IV. had been sober or not, whereas a memorandum drawn up at Lubeck in 1567, on the occasion of a projected embassy from Germany to Ivan's Court, points quite in the opposite direction. The Ambassadors are charged to keep perfectly sober, because drunkenness is considered the greatest of vices in Muscovy. And the author of this memorandum is a merchant who made a considerable stay in Moscow (Forsten, 'The Baltic Question,' i. 475). Michalon the Lithuanian, certainly an impartial witness, speaks in the same sense, adding, it must be confessed, a statement, thoroughly untrue, that there were no taverns in the country. Towards the close of Ivan IV.'s reign, according to Tetaldi, the sale of spirituous liquors was only allowed in one suburb of Moscow, which is also mentioned by Herberstein, Guagnino, and Olearius, though each, according to his own fashion, maims the word, the etymology of which they derive from nalivat, to pour. The real word was Nalivki, and the spot, which is within the boundaries of the present city, is marked by a Church of the Transfiguration, still called na Nalivkakh (at the Nalivki). The trade in strong drinks seems, in fact, to have been centralized, at a certain moment, in this outlying corner of the ancient capital. At the same time, however, the other towns and villages of the country