I remember the story from my childhood... not the spelling tho.

In France, there is one beer called Gueuze Becasse. Because becassine is a Bretagne character, I thought this kind of beer was from over there...apparently not. Thanks very much for this.

Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine

The name of the beer is sometimes spelled in France "Gueuse", obviously under the influence of the feminine form of the original word. Gueux and gueuse are no longer in use in modern French except as a conscious and usually facetious archaism.

I love the story of "We are all Gueux". (It's a similar reaction to injustice that the French students showed in 1968 when Danny Cohn-Bendit was expelled from France: "Nous sommes tous des Juifs Allemands!" (We are all German Jews!")) And what the word means still today in Flemish and Dutch. Great story.

Hats off to Helen's encyclopedic knowledge of beer, too!

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Actually I just drink it, the history is a bonus.

Of those pictured, the 3Fonteinen is the classic astringent gueze but the Boon is the nicer drink. The Lindemans Faro I've only had once and remember it as a bit too sweet. Not Mort subite sweet, but my feeling is that a mature gueze shouldn't be sweet at all.

keep to the Fen Causeway

actually there is a dutch expression now,  that something is a "geuzenaam", a "geuze name", it means you take a name that has a negative connotation, and turn it around, claim it and hence make it meaningful in a different way.

To which I imagine that in a modern context is the idea that you have a guezenaam to neuter a bad meaning used against you. Kinda like black people use the word nigger or gay people use the word queer to strip it of negativity.b

keep to the Fen Causeway

Some of the laureats of the 'Geuzenpenning':

1995. Václav Havel, President of the Czech Republic
      
1997. Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres de Plaza de Mayo)
      
2001. European Roma Rights Centre and National Sinti Organisation.
      
2002. Asma Jahangir, Pakistani lawyer and women's rights advocate.
      
2004. Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio.
      
2006. Haitham Maleh from Syria for his courageous fight for human rights.

While the Spanish inquisition is "famous" (most would say "infamous") it has an undeserved reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness, which was actually the result of Protestant propaganda, and is still the way most people in Anglo-Saxon countries think about it. The link given above tends to reflect the conventional view. But historians have shown that the reality was very different from the "Black legend". So this isn't quite an example of a complete reversal of meaning, but pretty close:

"... In 1998 the Vatican opened the archives of the Holy Office (the modern successor to the Inquisition) to a team of 30 scholars from around the world. Now at last the scholars have made their report, an 800-page tome that was unveiled at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday. Its most startling conclusion is that the Inquisition was not so bad after all. Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed. As one headline read "Vatican Downsizes Inquisition."

The amazed gasps and cynical sneers that have greeted this report are just further evidence of the lamentable gulf that exists between professional historians and the general public. The truth is that, although this report makes use of previously unavailable material, it merely echoes what numerous scholars have previously learned from other European archives... Simply put, historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth. So what is the truth?

... Compared to other medieval secular courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. Why then are people in general and the press in particular so surprised to discover that the Inquisition did not barbecue people by the millions? First of all, when most people think of the Inquisition today what they are really thinking of is the Spanish Inquisition. No, not even that is correct. They are thinking of the myth of the Spanish Inquisition. Amazingly, before 1530 the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe. There are actually records of convicts in Spain purposely blaspheming so that they could be transferred to the prisons of the Spanish Inquisition. After 1530, however, the Spanish Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth.

By the mid 16th century, Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe. Europe's Protestant areas, including the Netherlands, northern Germany, and England, may not have been as militarily mighty, but they did have a potent new weapon: the printing press. Although the Spanish defeated Protestants on the battlefield, they would lose the propaganda war. These were the years when the famous "Black Legend" of Spain was forged. Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from northern presses accusing the Spanish Empire of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World. Opulent Spain was cast as a place of darkness, ignorance, and evil.

Protestant propaganda that took aim at the Spanish Inquisition drew liberally from the Black Legend.

...In time, Spain's empire would fade away. Wealth and power shifted to the north, in particular to France and England. By the late 17th century new ideas of religious tolerance were bubbling across the coffeehouses and salons of Europe. Inquisitions, both Catholic and Protestant, withered. The Spanish stubbornly held on to theirs, and for that they were ridiculed. French philosophes like Voltaire saw in Spain a model of the Middle Ages: weak, barbaric, superstitious. The Spanish Inquisition, already established as a bloodthirsty tool of religious persecution, was derided by Enlightenment thinkers as a brutal weapon of intolerance and ignorance. A new, fictional Spanish Inquisition had been constructed, designed by the enemies of Spain and the Catholic Church.
Now a bit more of the real Inquisition has come back into view. The question remains, will anyone take notice?"

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience