and "gischt;" in Anglo-Saxon, "gest," "gist," and "yst," whence our
"yeast." Again, in Low German and in Anglo-Saxon, there is another
name for yeast, having the form "barm," or "beorm;" and, in the
Midland Counties, "barm" is the name by which yeast is still best
known. In High German, there is a third name for yeast, "hefe," which
is not represented in English, so far as I know.

All these words are said by philologers to be derived from roots
expressive of the intestine motion of a fermenting substance. Thus
"hefe" is derived from "heben," to raise; "barm" from "beren" or
"bären," to bear up; "yeast," "yst," and "gist," have all to do with
seething and foam, with "yeasty waves," and "gusty" breezes.

The same reference to the swelling up of the fermenting substance is
seen in the Gallo-Latin terms "levure" and "leaven."

It is highly creditable to the ingenuity of our ancestors that the
peculiar property of fermented liquids, in virtue of which they "make
glad the heart of man," seems to have been known in the remotest
periods of which we have any record. All savages take to alcoholic
fluids as if they were to the manner born. Our Vedic forefathers
intoxicated themselves with the juice of the "soma;" Noah, by a not
unnatural reaction against a superfluity of water, appears to have
taken the earliest practicable opportunity of qualifying that which
he was obliged to drink; and the ghosts of the ancient Egyptians were
solaced by pictures of banquets in which the winecup passes round,
graven on the walls of their tombs. A knowledge of the process of
fermentation, therefore, was in all probability possessed by the
prehistoric populations of the globe; and it must have become a matter
of great interest even to primaeval wine-bibbers to study the methods