Not all hendiatris including women are positive: in lit=fire, women and the sea instead suggest three dangers rather than pleasures, and lit=horse, woman, weapon offers the three essentials of quite another culture. The following "tetrad" predates all of the above :
دویار زیرک و از باده کهن دو منی فراغتی و کتابی و گوشه چمنی a popular Ghazal by Hafez :
Omar Khayyam addressed the trio in 1120 in his . For him singing was replaced by a book, but he acknowledged its importance for others.
Possible origins
The Englishcouplet "Who loves not woman, wine, and song / Remains a fool his whole life long" appears in print as early as 1837, translated from German verse attributed to Martin Luther. John Addington Symonds used the phrase "Wine, Women and Song" as the title for his 1884 book of translations of medieval Latin students' songs. Symonds is largely known today for his passionate writings about male homosexual love. The phrase in German is apparently older than in English. Symonds and the anonymous 1837 writer both provide the German text, attributing it to Luther. The attribution to Luther has been questioned, however, and the earliest known reference in German is to a folksong first printed in 1602. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations cites Johann Heinrich Voss as a likely source, but any use by him would have to be a later use of the phrase. The waltz "Wine, Women and Song" is Op. 333 of Johann Strauss II. The lines Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue, / Deutscher Wein, und deutscher Sang are found in the second verse of Das Lied der Deutschen, the third verse of which is the German national anthem.
Amber Moore, protagonist of the 2017 Netflix original movie A Christmas Prince, uses the phrase "wine, women, and song" to describe the hedonistic lifestyle of the Prince of Aldovia.
The single "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" by Ian Dury, mentioned above, popularized the modern English-language form of the phrase.
The British poet and mysticAleister Crowley, in his work Energized Enthusiasm, suggests that "wine, women, and song" may be utilised towards the development of genius in the individual or the attainment of mystical states.
AC/DC quotes the motto in the title song of their album, High Voltage.
In The Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, the phrase is uttered by road manager Norm, in reference to Ringo, who has escaped from the studio to go gallivanting after tiring of being teased by his bandmates: "God knows what you've unleashed on the unsuspecting South. It'll be wine, women, and song all the way with Ringo when he gets the taste for it."
In a wagon scene in Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin asks Hobbes if he thinks the secret to happiness is "money, cars and women" or "just money and cars".
Science fiction series Babylon 5 episode "Born to the Purple" reveals that the password to the hedonistic ambassador Londo Mollari's "Purple Files" is "Wine, Women, Song".
American jam bandUmphrey's McGee uses a variation of the phrase in the song "Women, Wine, and Song" on their 2006 album Safety in Numbers.
"Wine, Women an' Song" is the name of the fifth song on Come an' Get It by Whitesnake
The song "I'm a Member of the Midnight Crew" by William Jerome and Jean Schwartz contains the verse, "I always spend my evening where there's women, wine and song."
The Bee Gees' song "Wine and Women" starts with the sentence "wine and women and song will only make me sad". It was released as a single in 1965 in Australia and was their first top 20 on the local charts and ever in their career.
American rock bandHarvey Danger include a song titled "Wine, Women and Song" as the first track of their 2005 album Little by Little...
