‘An I.O.G.T. Idyll’

‘An I.O.G.T. Idyll’

Crusades, doggerel, idyll, I.O.G.T., drunkenness, military order, Order of Knights Templar, Order of the Temple, sobriety, Soldiers of Christ, templar, templar knights, temperance, temperance society, The International Order of Good Templars

This amusing temperance ‘ditty’ describes the adventures of “a burly Templar chief” whose carefree night of drinking turns out to be more than he expected or bargained for. The I.O.G.T. was a temperance society (The International Order of Good Templars). There were people from all walks of life and religious persuasions involved in the temperance movement in 1880s Australia, Britain, America and Sweden. Presumably the I.O.G.T. hierarchy viewed themselves as crusader knights fighting the “Good Fight,” and clearly a good fight was one that ended well for ‘true believers’ and badly for their foes (i.e. ‘winebibbers’, ‘publicans’ and ‘sinners). However, it should be noted that the Order of Knights Templar, a powerful military order and charitable organisation in the Middle Ages, was never actually forbidden the use of wine, and occasionally instances of over-indulgence were recorded (See Dominic Selwood, Knights of the Cloister: Templars and Hospitallers in central-southern Occitania c.1100-c.1300, Woodbridge, Boydell, 2001, p.205). This oversight reveals the mindset of those who supported the adoption of quasi-medieval terminology and ceremony in the nineteenth-century, without fully appreciating the history and behaviour of those whose names they had chosen to adopt.

Anon.

The Bulletin

The Bulletin

11 November 1882 (p. 8)

Public Domain

Journal (Microfilm)

English

Journal (microfilm)