Gambrinus
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 Gambrinus facts

• Traditional songs, poems, and stories describe him as a king, duke, or count of Flanders and Brabant
• Typical representations in the visual arts depict him as a rotund, bearded duke or king, holding a tankard or mug, and sometimes with a keg nearby
• Gambrinus is sometimes erroneously called a patron saint, but he is neither a saint nor a tutelary deity
• In one legendary tradition, he is beer's inventor or envoy
• Although legend attributes to him no special powers to bless brews or to make crops grow, tellers of old tall tales are happy to adapt them to fit Gambrinus
• Gambrinus stories use folklore motifs common to European folktales, such as the trial by ordeal
• Some, of course, imagine Gambrinus as a man who has an enormous capacity for drinking beer
• The often-heard theory for the origin of Gambrinus that he is patterned after John the Fearless (1371–1419) and/or John I, Duke of Brabant (c
• 1252–1294) and that by this reckoning, the name Gambrinus is a corruption of Jan Primus ("John the First"), is however without foundation, as Gambrinus was originally called Gambrivius, which was derived in the 16th century from the mythical German people of the Gambrivii mentioned by Tacitus