When Princess Elizabeth - as she then was - visited Ulster in March 1946 her itinerary included Enniskillen where the local RUC Head Constable David Murray presented her with an unusual gift - as the caption above says it was "a bottle labelled mountain dew after her inspection of an illicit still in operation at a police depot in Enniskillen". One of the articles below says it was in a special box labelled "Made In Ulster - Mountain Dew".
At first glance I thought this meant that a rogue remote police station was distilling its own spirits, but a visit to the British Newspaper Archive showed that "in a corner of the depot the police had constructed a typical hideout of heather, gorse, moss and turf to give the Royal visitor an idea of the kind of place in which illicit stills were concealed" (The Scotsman, 22 March 1946).
The report also said that, to add a bit of drama to the occasion, some policemen had dressed up as "mountain bandits".
0 comments:
Post a Comment