" … Coffee began to spread as a way for religious devotees to remain alert and worship until the early hours of the morning
Coffee’s long journey to London started hundreds years earlier in the hills of north-east Africa.
According to Jeanette M Fregulia’s book,
A Rich and Tantalizing Brew: A History of How Coffee Connected the World, in the 9th Century, an Ethiopian goatherder named Kaldi noticed his animals became particularly frolicsome once they’d nibbled on a certain berry bush, so he decided to try it himself.
Once Kaldi tasted the plant, legend has it “poetry and song spilled out of him.
”According to Judith Hawley, professor of 18th-Century literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, other variants of the tale describe an imam or monk coming across Kaldi after he’d eaten the berries, and noticing the plant’s stimulating effects. After sampling the berries himself, the religious man stayed up and prayed long into the night.
Soon, coffee began to spread as a way for religious devotees to remain alert and worship until the early hours of the morning.“ ……
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The beans that keep the world awake and the devoted pious.
Cheers,
