Barleycorn, JOHN, a personification of the spirit of barley, or malt-liquor, often used jocularly, and in humorous verse. This usage is comparatively ancient. Dr Murray's Dictionary quotes a title in the Pepysian Library, about 1620, 'A pleasant new ballad . . . of the bloody murther of Sir John Barleycorn.' Burns's ballad on John Barleycorn, 'There was Three Kings into the East,' is well known, and more popular than the verse deserves.
Barleycorn, JOHN
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 1: A to Beaufort, p. 744
Source scan(s): p. 0771