PHIL ITALIANO

Before it was something your uncle muttered after three beers and an episode of Naked and Afraid, the word bunghole was a serious piece of medieval technology.

In the 1400s, long before Uber Eats or OnlyFans, everything that mattered came in barrels—booze, whale oil, salted meat, powdered wigs, you name it. And yes, even sailors came in barrels.

We’ll get to that in a second.

Barrels were the lifeblood of trade, and at the heart of every barrel was its most sacred orifice: the bunghole. This was the small round opening where liquids were poured in or out. To seal it up, you used a bung — a wooden plug that made sure nothing leaked, especially not during long voyages across dangerous seas.

But while merchants and monks might’ve seen the bunghole as utilitarian, lonely sailors saw opportunity.

That’s right. It’s long been whispered among maritime historians (and loud-mouthed drunks at port taverns) that certain desperate crewmen—adrift at sea for months with nothing but grog and each other—may have explored the barrel’s bunghole in more ways than one. As the legend goes, some bungholes were more than just loading ports… they were love holes of the glory kind. And some bung plugs had… let’s just say, suspicious amounts of friction wear.

In fact, it’s said that in 1692, a ship’s cooper named Ephraim Tiddle was court-martialed for “misusing the company’s Madeira cask in a manner unbecoming a Christian.” History quickly buried the incident under layers of rum and shame, but the damage was done. The association stuck.

By the 1800s, “bunghole” had crept from the shipyards into sailor slang as a crude reference to the human backside. More specifically, the asshole. From there, it sailed into drinking songs, bar jokes, and bawdy limericks sung after hours in pubs from Liverpool to Limerick.

One particularly infamous sea shanty—banned by the Crown and shouted proudly by every toothless bastard west of Cork—was called “The Ballad of Bold McGroin” and went a little something like this:

Oh I sailed from the cliffs of Kilkee,
With me bollocks as free as the sea,
And I met a young lass with a bucket o’ sass,
Who said, “Lay on your back, love, and see!”

Lick-a me balls, lick-a me bung,
Lick-a that sweet patch where the devil’s begun,
From the shaft to the crack, don’t you dare leave a gap,
And do it all proper — use-a your tongue!

She knelt with the grace of a nun,
And sucked like the pipes at the pub,
Then slid to me gránbealach — sweet taint o’ the gods —
And she hummed like a saint with a grub.

Lick-a me balls, lick-a me bung,
Where the moon never shines and the angels won’t come,
It’s the bridge o’er me hole, it’s me heart and me soul,
So pucker up, darling — and give it a run.

Now the priest says I’m cursed and unclean,
And the bishop won’t look me in the eye,
But the barkeep still pours, and the lass still adores,
This taint-lickin’ lad ’til I die!

Lick-a me balls, lick-a me bung,
Raise a pint to the tongue and the songs that we sung,
For the devil may wait, but the taint won’t stay dry,
When you’re bold McGroin of the I–I–I–Rye!

By the 1960s, the ever-so-classy President Lyndon B. Johnson officially went on-the-record referring to his asshole as his bunghole in a recorded phone call while ordering custom pants from Haggar:

“Down where your nuts hang…[belch]…back to my bunghole.”

And in 1993, Beavis of Beavis and Butt-Head fame brought it to the masses with his immortal line:

“I am Cornholio. I need TP for my bunghole.”

Full circle, baby.

So the next time you hear someone giggle at the word bunghole, just remember:
It started as serious maritime terminology…
But somewhere between the barrels of rum and the long, lonely nights at sea…
Like everything else good in this world that ultimately gets ruined…
Some motherfucker had to go and put his dick in it.

Well, at least we’ll always have our dignity.
Oh wait.

—P.