There are cynics among us who, on learning that Georg Friedrich Händel wrote Messiah in three weeks, would mutter: "Yes, and it sounds like it." Not me, of course - I'm all for it, especially the bits where he got his English accentuation a bit wrong - like "incorrup-TIBBLE."
But that is by the by. My researches in dusty old archives have produced this curiosity, and further investigation suggests that in 1741 GFH might (only might, mind) have frequented a particular ale-house in central Dublin not for the black stuff, but for the allure of the thrusting charms of a certain buxom barmaid, one Gladys Beaulieu.
It is amazing what you can find on the Internet, isn't it?
