We've all been there: Hungover in bed with a mouth drier than a camel's urethra, trying to piece together the night before - working out just how many times you got your card out even though you PROMISED yourself you'd only spend the cash you had at the beginning of the night.
You forgot to drink anything other than booze. Now you wish you hadn't passed on the quiet game of Scrabble with your grandmother before her big 90th birthday party.
The party is in a few hours. This hangover is like nothing you've ever felt before. How can you possibly turn up feeling remotely normal to what will be the oldest old person party ever? The only answer to that question is... hair of the dog.
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It's a saying (and genuine hangover cure) every lad has been forced to embrace in life, so we barely give the words a second thought. Hair. Of. The. Dog. That has nothing to do with alcohol. Where the hell did it come from?
Well, to answer the question, the first thing that needs to be understood, is that the saying isn't actually just 'hair of the dog'. The full saying is actually, 'hair of the dog that bit you'. This apparently first referred to a method of treatment for when a dog bites you which involved placing hair from the dog into the bite wound.
According to Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, writing in Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: "In Scotland it is popular belief that a few hairs of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences. Applied to drinks, it means, if overnight you have indulged too freely, take a glass of the same wine within 24 hours to soothe the nerves."
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But that's not all, apparently the first ever reference to the phrase 'hair of the dog' in connection with being twatted actually came in the mid-to-late second millennium BC. It comes from ancient texts from the Arabic port city of Ugarit, now known as Ras Shamrah, where the God Ilu becomes so hungover from drinking that the recipe to help him get better consists of 'hairs of a dog' among other things.
Credit: John Kroll via Flickr
No other country has a literal translation of 'hair of the dog', which makes me feel like the phrase is more likely to have come from the Scottish origin, rather than from an ancient God.
In Hungary, they also have a similar phrase, which literally translates as 'you may cure the dog's bite with its fur'. In Costa Rica and much of Central America, they say 'pelos de la misma chancha' which translates as 'hair of the same pig'.
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If you already knew all this shit, fair enough. If you didn't, I hope you recite this anecdote at your grandmother's 90th birthday party later today. Knowledge bombs always impress the oldies.
Featured image credit: Les Chatfield via Flickr
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Hangover