Wine, women and song
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The cliché "Wine, women, and song" is a rhetorical figure of a triad or hendiatris. Similar tripartite mottoes have existed for a long time in many languages, e.g.:
- Danish "Vin, kvinder og sang" (wine, women and song)
- also "Øl, fisse og hornmusik" (beer, a slang word for female genitals, and horn music)
- also "Tjald og lal og lir" (slang words for cannabis, fooling around, and being sexually aroused)
- German "Wein, Weib und Gesang" (wine, women and song)
- Swedish "Vin, kvinnor och sång" (wine, women and song)
- Turkish "At, Avrat, Silah" (Horse, women, gun)
- India "Kabab, Sharab aur Shabab" (meat, wine and women/beauty)
- Bengali/Hindi/Sanskrit - "Sur, Sura, Sundari" (music, wine and woman)
- Polish - "Wino, kobiety i śpiew"
"Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll" is a modern variation of it. In the 20th Century, particularly in Western usage, the expression "drugs, sex and rock and roll" often is used to signify essentially the same thing. The terms correspond to wine, women and song with edgier and updated vices. The term came to prominence in the sixties as rock and roll music, opulent and intensely public lifestyles, as well as liberal morals championed by hippies, came into the mainstream.
"Rum, bum, and concertina" is a British naval equivalent.
The following "tetrad" (using four concepts rather than three) antedates all of the above:
- Persian "دویار زیرک و از باده کهن دو منی فراغتی و کتابی و گوشه چمنی" a popular rubaiyyat (quatrain) by Omar Khayyám: "Two sweethearts, two flasks of old wine, a book of verse and a cosy corner in the garden"
The lines are more freely translated, and more familiar in Edward FitzGerald's final synthesis (1889):
-
- "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
- A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
- Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
- Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"
-
-
-
- —Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Quatrain xii.
-
-
The phrase may have originated with the following couplet:
- "Who does not love wine, women and song / Remains a fool his whole life long." Variations on this quote have been attributed to Martin Luther, although Bartlett's Familiar Quotations names Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826) as a more likely source.[1]
The waltz Wine, Women and Song ('Wein, Weib und Gesang) is Op. 333 (1869) of Johann Strauss II.
The lines Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue/Deutscher Wein und deutscher Sang (German women, German loyalty/Germany wine, and German song) are found in the (never sung) second verse of Das Lied der Deutschen, the third verse of which is the German national anthem.
