Todays lesson, from the Book of..

St. Myles, patron saint of the Public Service.
Confined to barracks, pleuresy, the Plague, not sure yet. It must be fatal, I'm a Man, after all.

So, a "found items" Myles blip, then....

STIN
In this brief discourse I intend to be, after my fashion, serious; and I expect attention.
Now! (turns to scrub blackboard, suddenly clasps hand to back of neck and wheels around scarlet)
Stand up the boy with the catapult!
(Silence)
If that happens again there will be wholesale finings! Now consider this word here:
ZYTHOS

That means a fermented drink made from barley. Make a note of it. It is the Greek for Guinness. The Latin is, of course, this
CERVISIA
It is from that you get the Spanish for Guinness - cerveza. I hope that all that is clear. Cervisia sounds like what a villianous Continental waiter mutters every time he serves you with a Guinness. He is looking for money so pay no attention.

There is a notion - but current only in Ireland - that the wittiest people in the world are the Irish. Wrong, of course. The wittiest are the French. Only the French could devise the word they have for "stout". They call it "porter"!
Here, now is perhaps the most important word of all:
BARLEY
Barley is nothing more, believe me, than a form of grass. Latin "gramen". I remember when I was a young chap at College, a friend complained bitterly to me that his girlfriend had repeatedly been late keeping dates, and he put this unpunctuality down to secret stoutbibbing. I almost forgot to mention by the way, that the Greek for yeast is
Zelos
and I regret to say that this word otherwise means passion, ardour, desire. However, I consider myself a poet of sorts - you have, of course, read "Leaves of Grass" by Malt Whitman?- and I reproved my young friend in the following lines;
Appointments not kept
Tempt some men to say
That ladies should rigidly
Stick to their tay.
Its alleged they delayed
Before they came out
Inside in the kitchen
To scoff a large stout-
Varium et mutabile femina
Cannot fairly be blamed on the gramena.

He did not like it, I need hardly tell you, nor a subsequent joke about "grass widows". But that, I think, is all I have to say.

Heavens, I nearly forgot! That word STIN in the title may puzzle some people. Divil a mystery about it at all. STIN is something many good people are partial to during Lent.

STIN is the opposite of STOUT.