Alcohol and drinking are key motifs in the novel, appearing frequently. Alcohol also functions as a symbol of hospitality and inebriation. Sir Patrick was “said to be the inventor of raspberry whiskey” and also possessed the exaggerated reputation for being able to drink everyone in both Britain and Ireland under the table (10). He is generous with the alcohol he gives to his guests and solicitous of the needs of his drunk friends, to the extent that he fits up the chicken house to accommodate them after nights of carousing. Stripped of his ancient, Irish name, Sir Patrick declares his fidelity to drinking before he dies, singing “he that goes to bed […] mellow, Lives as he ought to do […] and dies an honest fellow” (11). The meanness of his successor, Sir Murtagh, is shown by the fact that his cellars “were never filled,” indicating his lack of investment in the pleasure and well-being of his subjects(12).

Sir Condy’s relationship with alcohol begins as a means of social ingratiation: “there was not a cabin at which he had not stopped some morning or other along with the huntsman, to drink a glass of burnt whiskey out of an egg-shell, to do him good, and warm his heart” (39-40).