Poteen

Last night he had put down too much Potheen / (A vulgar blend of Methyl and Benzene) / That, at some Wake, he might the better keen. / (Keen—meaning ‘brisk’? Nay, here the Language warps: / ’Tis singing bawdy Ballads to a Corpse.)

The Irish peasantry practice the distillation of that illicit spirituous liquor, so well known by the name of poteen whiskey, with a most unaccountable infatuation.

[A] detachment, consisting of a subaltern’s party, was on its road to Head Quarters, from a still hunting in the mountains, or hostile excursion after contrabandists, or distillers of that delicious fluid, Potheen whiskey, […] It is related that when he [George IV of the United Kingdom] had drained the first glass that was presented to him, he declared that he could now understand why the Irish peasantry were willing to risk life and liberty in its illegal production—it was the real elixir vitæ—the only stuff fit to fuddle a prince with—royal in its flavor, royal in its odor, and super-royal in its effects! That Poteen!

“Make haste now and go up and tell your mother to hide the poteen”—his mother used to sell poteen—“for I’m after seeing the biggest party of peelers and yeomanry passing by on the rocks was ever seen on the island.”

Past the split tree three-quarters of the way in, where a man has tucked a small bottle of Rot under the bark for his workmate to collect as he passes. Such narcotics and poteens are illegal in the encampment, and cannot be risked passing within the huts.

He began to rove the country at night, trudging out to shebeens or crossroads dances, to the ceilidhs and poteen sessions that sometimes followed Fair Days in the small towns of Connemara.

Kildrumferton … Pop. 9,687 […] There are nine licensed public houses; poteens many more. Illicit distillation prevails to a very great extent, the district being rarely visited by the revenue police, not indeed for years past; the presence of the excise officer in a neighbouring town is the only check.

The whisky shops and poteens of Scotland and Ireland, the gin-palaces and beer-shops of England, are an incubus that is dwarfing the good in every section of the community, and forcing out the evil.