Before and after Prohibition, bock beer was a favorite ale that was available for only a short time every year around March and April (hence, it was called the Easter beverage). A goat was almost always featured in bock beer posters (“bock” is a “billy goat” in German).
The Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps, the City of Dreams. The city so nice, they named it twice has its share of nicknames. One of my favorites is perhaps its most obscure nickname: Gotham.
Gotham is reportedly tied to Washington Irving, author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.” Irving was the ringleader of a group known as the Lads of Kilkenny, a group that author Edwin Burrows describes as “a loosely knit pack of literary-minded young blades out for a good time” in his book “Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.”
The Lads established a literary magazine called Salmagundi in 1807, in which they published essays concerning events in “the thrice renowned and delectable city of Gotham.” It was reportedly these references that led to the city’s nickname.
According to the New York Public Library, the word “Gotham” actually dates back to medieval England. English proverbs tell of a village called Gotham or Gottam, which means “Goat’s Town” in old Anglo-Saxon. Old folk tales from the Middle Ages suggest that Gotham was the village of simple-minded fools, perhaps because the goat was considered a foolish animal.
The goat in the following animal tale of old Gotham may have been foolish, but he was known more for his beauty – if one can call a goat beautiful.
The Bock Beer Goat Beauty Contest
For hundreds of years, perhaps even going back to fifteenth-century beer signs in the town of Einbeck in the old Kingdom of Hannover (now Saxony), a goat has been featured on bottles, posters, and advertisements for bock beer (Einbeck bier was pronounced “ein bock” by Munich beer drinkers).
The beer and its goat disappeared in the United States during Prohibition, but it made a grand comeback in 1934. That year, all five city boroughs and the city of Newark, New Jersey, held competitions to find a goat whose portrait would grace the posters announcing the return of what was once the recognized Easter beverage. The contests were sponsored by the Brewers Board of Trade, which sought beautiful billy goats to adorn their advertising posters (no nanny goats need apply).
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