Even as Charon fetches him, he drinks a mug of ale, a liquid that is ascribed almost magical properties; it runs down his clothes, so that before death Fredman is baptised in beer, recalling to scholars the sponge soaked in sour wine that refreshes Jesus on the cross.

[5] The epistles, written and performed in different styles, from drinking songs and laments to pastorales, paint a complex picture of the life of the city during the 18th century.

A frequent theme is the demimonde, with Fredman's cheerfully drunk Order of Bacchus,[6] a loose company of ragged men who favour strong drink and prostitutes.

At the same time as depicting this realist side of life, Bellman creates a rococo picture, full of classical allusion, following the French post-Baroque poets.

The women, including the beautiful Ulla Winblad, are "nymphs", while Neptune's festive troop of followers and sea-creatures sport in Stockholm's waters.

Charon his horn is sounding, Storm winds commence their howling, Hawsers, ropes, sails start bounding and come loose apace; Moon's nightly round is ending Stars gleam with dismal cowling, To its great change is bending Life's allotted space; Soon will my hour-glass have emptied, Charon's oars all have attempted, Purling they burrow Deep in each furrow, Through bright waves sliding, Death's bark is gliding, Jet-black the funeral ferry down the river strokes To dust and smoke :||: And ghosts' loud bays.

Bellman's biographers, the scholar of literature Lars Lönnroth and Carina Burman, both devote substantial sections of their respective accounts of Fredman's Epistles to No.

The boundary between what Lönnroth calls "hallucinatory fantasy" and reality is quite unclear; in the second verse, Fredman tries to adjust his tavern credit note with the landlady, a seemingly earthy matter, but it might symbolise his book of sins, a serious concern that Bellman makes comic.

The fourth stanza is tragicomic, as in epistle 23, Ack du min moder (Alas though my mother), Fredman despairs over the condition in which he is going to face death.

In the final stanza, the doomsday mood returns, and Fredman stands in Charon's ferry in a tremendous thunderstorm, before the stars go out and death's agony begins.

Burman writes that just as Shakespeare lets the whole of nature react to Macbeth's regicide, so Bellman has the storms, the moon and the stars revolve around Fredman.

79's farewell is dark and apocalyptic, epistle 82's is its bright counterpart, with music, green grass, and Ulla Winblad's beauty around the dying Fredman.

She noted that the literary and theatre critic Åke Janzon [sv] had suggested in the 1960s that the reason for this was that Fredman had already crossed the Styx and had returned to haunt his favourite places; Charon had then come to take him back to the underworld where he belonged.