A Sherry Legend

Just after the World War II there was a ludicrous episode of bureaucratic farce. It was a period of muddled government and preposterous restrictions, when Mr. John Strachey was enjoying distinguished office as Minister of Food with Dr. Edith Summerskill as his parliamentary secretary.

A literal-minded hack in the Food Standards and Labeling Division of this thankless ministry was suddenly inspired with the thought that the name Bristol Milk contravened Regulation 1 of the Defense (Sale of Food) Regulations and misled the gullible public as to the nature, substance, or quality of a food or in particular as to its nutritional or dietary value, as it had no connection whatsoever with a cow, even though, no doubt, it could be used for making a syllabub.

But that had not occurred to him. There came into the bureaucratic mind the horrific image of an inept nanny filling her charge\'s little bottle with an alcoholic beverage from distant Spain, not even a decent, British sherry. When, with unkind logic, Harvey\'s sug­gested that if Bristol Milk were illegal, then so, surely, was Bristol Cream, and if so there would have to be a general and widespread purge of shaving creams, hair creams, face creams, vanishing creams, boot creams, perhaps even Cream of Magnesia, and certainly all the lesser creams, the literal mind of the ministry could only reply that it was discussing regulations pertaining to the sale of food only.

The answer opens up an endless realm of speculation: what, for instance, of the unfortunate child who asks for a taurine optic and is given a mere peppermint confection? Warner Allen was moved to poetry:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine milk\'d from the Sherry Cow-

And Thou beside me in the Wilderness....

Who could that mysterious Thou be, the fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she? The unnamed Milkmaid of the Sherry Cow? Surely not the then reigning Ministress of Food? No, the rhyme of my delirium went off the lines.

Our National Dairy-Maid Summersilk

Was skimming the Cream off the Bristol Milk.

Doubtless she made it into honest mouse-trap cheese or churned it into better-than-butter margarine. After further correspondence, the matter was disposed of behind a curtain of public laughter. The clerk responsible was officially described as overzealous.

Harvey\'s sug