Dandy Shandy

A Desnoes & Geddes soft drink, and the odd one out on this list: the shandy is what you hold when you are not drinking. The name is older than the Jamaican product — the Oxford English Dictionary traces "dandy shandy" to 1906, probably punning on the dandelion in an early Manchester recipe advertised alongside sarsaparilla and nettles — and it arrived in Jamaica as a brand of non-alcoholic fizzy drink before coming to mean a beer mixed with ginger beer or lemonade.

In the dance it was also a period drink with a readership. Through the 1980s and into the 90s Dandy Shandy and Babycham were what a woman was handed while the men worked through a crate of beer, and both have since dropped out of the dance almost entirely — not banned, just out of fashion, in the way a bar has a style and the style moves on. That side of the account is community recollection contributed to this archive rather than documented trade history.

In Jamaica the phrase belongs to a children's street game as well, played with a ball and two throwers, which is why it reads as native rather than imported. Its place in this collection is as the counter-example twice over: the dance is not only a place where liquor is sold, and what it sells does not stay the same.