From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):
THE HISTORY OF BEER
Beer, of course, was brewed in Bridelow long before the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ale was the original sacred drink, made from the water of the holy spring and the blessed barley and preserved with the richly-aromatic bog myrtle from the Moss.
Nigel Pennick writes, in his book Practical Magic in the Northern Tradition:
'Cakes or bread and ale are the sacrament of country tradition. The runic word for ale – ALU – is composed of the three runes As, Lagu and Ur. The first rune has the meaning of the gods or divine power; the second water and flow, and the third primal strength. The eating of bread and drinking of ale is the mystery of the transmutation of the energy in the grain into a form where it is reborn in our physical bodies.'
It follows, therefore, that, to some local people, the sale of the Bridelow brewery and the detachment of the beer-making process from its ancient origins, would seem to be a serious sapping of the village's inherent strength, perhaps even a symbolic draining away of its lifeblood.