Feasts and Feats of Drinking

Midnight Modern Conversation ca 1732
Loretta reports:

Though Easter Tuesday comes rather later this year, I’m working with Hone’s date, since it seems equally applicable to all feast-days. I think, too, this offers a good example of phrases that sound modern, but actually have been around for a long time. Unlike so many other expressions, “hair of the dog” is as familiar to us as it was to Hone’s readers in 1826.  The OED traces it to the 16th century.

As to the “feats of potation”—given the level of drinking in Hone's time, one can only imagine what his ancestors might have consumed, to impress him so deeply.
Easter Tuesday
Image:
Unknown artist after William Hogarth, A Midnight Modern Conversation ca. 1732 courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Accession No. B1981.25.351

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