[Ads-l] _Mother's milk_ "German beer"

[Laurence Horn]

> On Sep 7, 2016, at 12:30 PM, Margaret E. Winters <mewinters at WAYNE.EDU> wrote:
> 
> GB Shaw in Pygmalion (Act III, 1916) has Eliza, trying to make polite small talk say "gin was mother's milk to her".
> 
> 
Preserved in My Fair Lady (1964), which I where I remembered it from:

Mrs. Eynsford-Hill [Freddy's mother, re Eliza's own mother]: 
But it can't have been right for your father to be pouring spirits down her throat like that, it could have killed her. 
Eliza Doolittle: 
Not her, gin was mother's milk to her. Besides he poured so much down his own throat, he knew the good of it.

LH
> ----------------------------
> MARGARET E WINTERS
> On Leave
> Office of the Provost
> Wayne State University
> Detroit, MI  48202
> 
> mewinters at wayne.edu
> 
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 7, 2016 12:33:27 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: _Mother's milk_ "German beer"
> 
> Not sure the Berliner Kindly connects to Kris Kringle, which comes out of
> the tradition of the old man (Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, St. Nicholas) who
> gives presents.
> 
> The Christkindl tradition is about a child who gives presents. It was a
> Protestant move to reject the above St. Nicholas tradition.
> 
> On Sep 6, 2016 9:58 PM, "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Subject-line of a letter to a military "alumni association":
>> 
>> "[78thASA] _Mother's Milk_ - Berliner Kindl"
>> 
>> The 78th U.S. Army Security Agency Special Operations Unit was station in
>> Berlin and _Berliner Kindl_ was one of the local brews. "Mother's milk" was
>> the common term for German beer, in general. It was applied to Löwenbräu,
>> the first time that I heard it used, in 1961.
>> 
>> Some may recognize _Kindl_ as the source of "[Kris] Kringle."
>> 
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> -----
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -Mark Twain
>>  u
>> 
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>> 
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