Whitbread

Another snippet from the Whitbread book last noticed at reference 1.

It seems that maybe ten thousand years ago, back in the days of the fertile crescent, shortly before Egypt and then Greece got going, experiment had homed in on whitecorn and barleycorn as the grains to go with. Whitecorn, aka wheat, to make bread with and barleycorn, aka barley, to make beer with. The two staples of life as we know it. Certainly a pair of consumables of which I have taken a good deal over the years, with beer now making something of a comeback. And with bread starting mainly bought white and ending mainly DIY brown. Sourdough off-limits.

Which I thought was a nice story, even if OED is not much help. It does not allow whitecorn as a word although it does, as a bit of an afterthought, suggest that wheat might be related to an old German (or perhaps an old Norse) word for white. Or is it all just a pun on Whitbread?

Barleycorn does rather better with the Wikipedia page about an old song at reference 2. Bing turned up a lot of different versions, three of which are offered at reference 3, 4 and 5 below. Jethro Tull being the people noticed recently in connection with a public house at Gerrards Cross. Very appropriate.

PS: to which I add a bit of information gleaned from the back of a receipt on its way to the mincer. W H Smith have registered offices in Swindon, the Isle of Man and Jersey. Now I dare say they have the odd shop in the last two places, but it seems unlikely that that is the only reason they need to be registered there. Are all significant businesses at it?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/trolley-755.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barleycorn.

Reference 3: https://youtu.be/81XjuIyDwuk. English.

Reference 4: https://youtu.be/Obg_IExUD-s. Scottish.

Reference 5: https://youtu.be/lD7bZ54oh6Y. Jethro Tull.