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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #55602 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55602)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Curiosities of Ale & Beer: An Entertaining History, by John Bickerdyke
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Title: The Curiosities of Ale & Beer: An Entertaining History
-
-Author: John Bickerdyke
-
-Release Date: September 22, 2017 [eBook #55602]
-[Most recently updated: August 3, 2021]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Turgut Dincer, RichardW, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURIOSITIES OF ALE & BEER ***
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: An Ancient Brewhouſe. 1568.]
-
-
-
-
- _The Curiosities_
-
- OF
-
- _Ale & Beer_:
-
- An Entertaining History.
-
- (_Illustrated with over Fifty Quaint Cuts._)
-
-
- BY
-
- John Bickerdyke.
-
- In Part collected by the late J. G. FENNELL;
-   now largely augmented with manifold matters of singular note and
-   worthy memory by the Author and his friend J. M. D——.
-
- [Illustration: “For a quart of Ale is a dish for a King.”—_Shakspere._]
-
-
- LONDON:
- SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co.,
- PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
-
- 1889.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
- PRINTED BY
- CHAS. STRAKER AND SONS, BISHOPSGATE AVENUE, LONDON;
- AND REDHILL.
-
-
-
-
- _Dedicated_
-
- TO THE
-
- _Brewers of the United Kingdom_
-
- AND ALL WHO VALUE
-
- _Honest Malt Liquor_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-_PREFACE._
-
-
-That the history and curiosities of Ale and Beer should fill a bulky
-volume, may be a subject for surprise to the unthinking reader; and
-that surprise will probably be intensified, on his learning that
-great difficulty has been experienced in keeping this book within
-reasonable limits, and at the same time doing anything like justice to
-the subject. Since the dawn of our history Barley-wine has been the
-“naturall drinke” for an “Englysshe man,” and has had no unimportant
-influence on English life and manners. It is, therefore, somewhat
-curious that up to the present, among the thousands of books published
-annually, no comprehensive work on the antiquities of ale and beer has
-found place.
-
-Some years ago this strange neglect of so excellent a theme was
-observed by the late John Greville Fennell, best known as a contributor
-to _The Field_, and who, like “John of the Dale,” was a “lover of
-ale.” With him probably originated the idea of filling this void
-in our literature. As occasion offered he made extracts from works
-bearing on the subject, and in time amassed a considerable amount
-of material, which was, however, devoid of arrangement. Old age
-overtaking him before he was able to commence writing his proposed
-book, he asked me to undertake that which from failing health he was
-unable to accomplish. To this I assented, and at the end of some
-months had prepared a complete scheme of the book, with the materials
-for each chapter carefully grouped. That arrangement, for which I
-am responsible, has, with a few slight modifications, been carefully
-adhered to. The work did not then proceed further, as to carry out
-my scheme a large amount of additional matter, from sources not then
-available, was required. A few months later my friend was taken
-seriously ill, and, finding his end approaching, directed that on
-his decease all papers connected with the book should be placed at
-my disposal. His death seems to render a statement of our respective
-shares in the book desirable.
-
-When able to resume work on the book, with the object of hastening
-its publication, I obtained the assistance of my friend, Mr. J. M.
-D——. By the collection of fresh matter, in amplification of that
-already arranged, and the addition of several new features, we have
-considerably increased the scope of the work, and, it is to be hoped,
-added to its attractiveness. To my friend’s researches in the City
-of London and other Records is due the bringing to light of many
-curious facts, so far as I am aware, never before noticed. He has also
-rendered me great assistance in those portions of the book in which the
-antiquities of the subject are specially treated.
-
-The illustrations have been in most part taken from rare old works.
-As any smoothing away of defects in such relics of the past would be
-deemed by many an offence against the antiquarian code of morality,
-they have been reproduced in exact fac-simile, and will no doubt appeal
-to those interested in the art of the early engraver, and amuse many
-with their quaintness.
-
-As aptly terminating the chapter devoted to an account of the medicinal
-qualities of ale and beer, I have ventured to enter upon a short
-consideration of the leading teetotal arguments. In extending their
-denunciations to ale and beer drinkers, the total abstainers are, in
-my opinion, working a very grievous injury on the labouring classes,
-who for centuries have found the greatest benefit from the use of malt
-liquors. Barley-broth should be looked upon as _the_ temperance drink
-of the people or, in other words, the drink of the temperate.
-
-I have gratefully to acknowledge the kindness and courtesy accorded me
-during the preparation of this work by the authorities of the British
-Museum, by Dr. Sharpe, Records Clerk of the City of London, by Mr.
-Higgins, Clerk of the Brewers’ Company, and by several eminent brewers
-and a large number of correspondents.
-
- JOHN BICKERDYKE.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-_CONTENTS._
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-Suppression of Beer-shops in Egypt 2,000 B.C. — Brewing
-in a Teapot. — Ale Songs. — Distinctions between Ale and
-Beer. — Ale-Knights’ objection to Sack. — Hogarth and
-Temperance. — Importance of Ale to the Agricultural Labourer. — Sir
-John Barleycorne introduced to the Reader . . . 1
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-Origin and Antiquity of Ale and Beer . . . 25
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-Home-brewed Ales. — Old Receipts. — Historical Facts. — Dean Swift on
-Home-brew. — Christopher North’s Brew-house . . . 45
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-Use and Importance of Hops in Beer: Their Introduction and
-History. — Hop-growers’ Troubles. — Medicinal Qualities. — Economical
-Uses. — Hop-pickers . . . 65
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-Ancient and Curious Laws relating to the manufacture and sale of Ale
-and Beer . . . 96
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-Brewing and Malting in Early Times. — The Ale-wives. — The Brewers of
-Old London and the Brewers’ Company. — Anecdotes. — Quaint Epitaphs
-. . . 120
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-Various Kinds of Ales and Beers. — Some Foreign
-Beers. — Receipts. — Songs. — Anecdotes . . . 151
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-Ale houses: Their Origin. — Hospitality in Mediæval Times. — Old London
-Inns and Taverns. — Anecdotes of Inns and Inn-keepers. — Curious
-Signs. — Signboard and Ale-house Verses. — Signboard
-Artists. — Ale-house Songs and Catches . . . 182
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-Ancient Merry-makings, Feasts and Ceremonies peculiar to certain
-Seasons, at which Ale was the principal Drink. — Harvest Home,
-Sheep-shearing, and other songs . . . 232
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-The Ales. — Ale at Breakfast. — Bequests of Ale. — Drinking
-Customs. — A Sermon on Malt. — Excesses of the Clergy. — Anecdotes
-. . . 266
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-
-Old Ballads, Songs and Verses relating to Ale and Beer . . . 294
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-Brewing in the Present Day. — Anecdotal and Biographical Account
-of some representative London, Dublin, Burton and Country Brewing
-Firms. — Edinburgh Ales . . . 331
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-Porter and Stout. — Circumstances which led to their
-Introduction. — Value to the Working Classes. — Anecdotes. — “A Pot of
-Porter Oh!” . . . 365
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-Beverages compounded of Ale or Beer, with a number of
-Receipts. — Ancient Drinking Vessels. — Various Uses of Ale other than
-as a Drink . . . 378
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-Old Medical Writers on Ale. — Adulteration of Ale. — Advantages
-of Malt Liquors to Labouring Classes. — Temperance _versus_ Total
-Abstinence. — Anecdotes. — Gay’s Ballad . . . 408
-
-APPENDIX. — Pasteur’s Discoveries . . . 441
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{1}
-
-
-
-
-THE CURIOSITIES OF ALE AND BEER.
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-_INTRODUCTORY._
-
-
- “For a quart of ale is a dish for a King.”
-                                      _Winter’s Tale_, Act iv. Scene 2.
-
- No doubt it is a very tedious thing
-   To undertake a folio work on law,
- Or metaphysics, or again to ring
-   The changes on the Flood or Trojan War:
- Old subjects these, which Poets only sing
-   Who think a new idea quite a flaw;
- But thirst for novelty can’t fail in liking
- The theme of Ale, the aptitude’s so striking.
-                                 _Brasenose College Shrovetide Verses._
-
-_SUPPRESSION OF BEER SHOPS IN EGYPT 2,000 B.C. — BREWING IN A TEAPOT.
-— ALE SONGS. — DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ALE AND BEER. — ALE-KNIGHTS’
-OBJECTION TO SACK. — HOGARTH AND TEMPERANCE. — IMPORTANCE OF ALE TO THE
-AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. — SIR JOHN BARLEYCORNE INTRODUCED TO THE READER._
-
-Four thousand years ago, if old inscriptions and papyri lie not, Egypt
-was convulsed by the high-handed proceedings of certain persons in
-authority who inclined to the opinion that the beer shops were too
-many. Think of it, ye modern Suppressionists! ’Tis now forty centuries
-since first your theories saw the light, and yet there is not a town in
-our happy country without its alehouse.
-
-While those disturbing members of the Egyptian community were waxing
-wrath over the beer shops, our savage ancestors probably contented
-themselves with such drinks as mead made from wild honey, {2} or cyder
-from the crab tree. But when Ceres sent certain of her votaries into
-our then benighted land to initiate our woad-dressed forefathers into
-the mysteries of grain-growing, the venerable Druids quickly discovered
-the art of brewing that beverage which in all succeeding years has been
-the drink of Britons.
-
- Of true British growth is the Nectar we boast,
- The homely companion of plain boiled and roast,
-
-most truly wrote an Oxford poet, whose name has not been handed down to
-posterity.
-
-Almost every inhabitant of this country has tasted beer of some kind or
-another, but on the subject of brewing the great majority have ideas
-both vague and curious. About one person out of ten imagines that pale
-ale consists solely of hops and water; indeed, more credit is given by
-most persons to the hop than to the malt. In order to give a proper
-understanding of our subject, and at the risk of ruining the brewing
-trade, let us then, in ten lines or so, inform the world at large how,
-with no other utensils than a tea-kettle and a saucepan, a quart or two
-of ale may be brewed, and the revenue defrauded.
-
-Into your tea-kettle, amateur brewer, cast a quart of malt, and on it
-pour water, hot, but not boiling; let it stand awhile and stir it. Then
-pour off the sweet tea into the saucepan, and add to the tea-leaves
-boiling water again, and even a third time, until possibly a husband
-would rebel at the weak liquid which issues from the spout. The
-saucepan is now nearly full, thanks to the frequent additions from the
-tea-kettle, so on to the fire with it, and boil up its contents for an
-hour or two, not forgetting to add of hops half-an-ounce, or a little
-more. This process over, let the seething liquor cool, and, when at a
-little below blood-heat, throw into it a small particle of brewer’s
-yeast. The liquor now ferments; at the end of an hour skim it, and lo!
-beneath the scum is bitter beer—in quantity, a quart or more. After
-awhile bottle the results of your brew, place it in a remote corner of
-your cellar, and order in a barrel of XXX. from the nearest brewer.
-
-If the generality of people have ideas of the vaguest on the subject of
-brewing, still less do we English know of the history of that excellent
-compound yclept ale.
-
- O ale! aurum potabile!
-   That gildest life’s dull hours,
- When its colour weareth shabbily,
-   When fade its summer flowers.
-
-{3}
-
-Old ballad makers have certainly sung in its praise, but it is a
-subject which few prose writers have touched upon, except in the most
-superficial manner. Modern song writers rarely take ale as their theme.
-The reason is not far to seek. The ale of other days—not the single
-beer rightly stigmatised as “whip-belly vengeance,” nor even the doble
-beer, but the doble-doble beer brewed against law, and beloved by the
-ale-knights of old—was of such mightiness that whoso drank of it, more
-often than not dashed off a verse or two in its praise. Now most people
-drink small beer which exciteth not the brain to poesy. Could one of
-the ancient topers be restored to life, in tasting a glass of our most
-excellent bitter, he would, in all likelihood, make a wry face, for
-hops were not always held in the estimation they obtain at present.
-There is no doubt, however, that we could restore his equanimity and
-make him tolerably happy with a gallon or two of old Scotch or Burton
-ale, double stout or, better still, a mixture of the three with a
-little _aqua vitæ_ added.
-
-In these pages it will be our task, aided or unaided by strong ale as
-the case may be, to remove the reproach under which this country rests;
-for surely a reproach it is that the history of the bonny nut-brown
-ale, to which we English owe not a little, should have been so long
-left unwritten.
-
-Now ale has a curious history which, as we have indicated, will be
-related anon, together with other matters pertaining to the subject.
-At present let us only chat awhile concerning the great Sir John
-Barleycorn, malt liquors of the past and present, their virtues, and
-importance to the labouring classes. Also may we consider the foolish
-ideas of certain worthy but misguided folk, halting now and again,
-should we find ourselves growing too serious, to chant a jolly old
-drinking song, that the way may be more enlivened. If on reaching the
-first stage of our journey you, dear reader, and ourselves remain
-friends, let us in each other’s company pass lightly and cheerfully
-over the path which Sir John Barleycorn has traversed, and fight again
-his battles, rejoicing at his victories; grieving over his defeats—if
-any there be. If, on the other hand, it so happens that by the time we
-arrive at our first halting place you should grow weary of us—which
-the Spirit of Malt forbid!—let us at once part company, friends none
-the less, and consign us to a place high up on your bookshelf, or with
-kindly words present us to the President of the United Kingdom Alliance.
-
-In accusing modern poets of neglecting to sing the praises of our {4}
-national drink, we must not forget that in one place is kept up the
-good old custom of brewing strong beer and glorifying it in verse. At
-Brasenose College, Oxford, beer of the strongest, made of the best malt
-and hops, is brewed once a year, distributed _ad. lib._, and verses are
-written in its praise. Mr. Prior, the college butler, to whom is due
-the honour of having kept alive the custom for very many years, writes
-us[1] that it is proposed to pull down the old college brewery. Should
-this happen, Brasenose ale will become a thing of the past.
-
- A fig for Horace and his juice,
-   Falernian and Massic,
- Far better drink can we produce,
-   Though ’tis not quite so classic—
-
-wrote a Brasenose poet. Alas, that both poets and ale should soon
-become extinct!
-
-Among the few prose writers past or present who have taken ale for
-their subject, John Taylor, of whom a good deal will be heard in these
-pages, stands pre-eminent. His little work, _Drinke and Welcome_,
-written some two hundred years ago, and which glorifies ale in a manner
-most marvellous, is one of the most curious literary productions
-it has ever been our good fortune to read. “Ale is rightly called
-nappy,” says the old Thames waterman and innkeeper, “for it will set
-a nap upon a man’s threed-bare eyes when he is sleepy. It is called
-_Merry-goe-downe_, for it slides downe merrily; It is fragrant to
-the _Sent_, it is most pleasing to the _taste_. The flowring and
-mantling of it (like chequer worke) with the verdant smiling of it,
-is delightefull to the _Sight_, it is _Touching_ or _Feeling_ to the
-Braine and Heart; and (to please the senses all) it provokes men to
-singeing and mirth, which is contenting to the Hearing. The speedy
-taking of it doth comfort a heavy and troubled minde; it will make
-a weeping widowe laugh and forget sorrow for her deceas’d husband.
-. . . . It will set a Bashfull Suiter a wooing; It heates the chill
-blood of the Aged; It will cause a man to speake past his owne or any
-other man’s capacity, or understanding; It sets an Edge upon Logick
-and Rhetorick; It is a friend to the Muses; It inspires the poore
-Poet, that cannot compasse the price of _Canarie_ or _Gascoign_; It
-mounts the Musician ’bove Eccla; It makes the Balladmaker Rime beyond
-Reason; It is a Repairer of a {5} decaied Colour in the face; It
-puts Eloquence into the Oratour; It will make the Philosopher talke
-profoundly, the Scholler learnedly, and the Lawyer acute and feelingly.
-_Ale_ at Whitsontide, or a _Whitson Church_ Ale, is a repairer of
-decayed Countrey Churches; It is a great friend to Truth; so they that
-drinke of it (to the purpose) will reveale all they know, be it never
-so secret to be kept; It is an Embleme of Justice, for it allowes, and
-yeelds measure; It will put Courage into a Coward, and make him swagger
-and fight; It is a Seale to many a good Bargaine. The Physittian will
-commend it; the Lawyer will defend it; It neither hurts or kils any
-but those that abuse it unmeasurably and beyond bearing; It doth good
-to as many as take it rightly; It is as good as a Paire of Spectacles
-to cleare the Eyesight of an old Parish Clarke; and in Conclusion, it
-is such a nourisher of Mankinde, that if my Mouth were as bigge as
-Bishopsgate, my Pen as long as a Maypole, and my Inke a flowing spring,
-or a standing fishpond, yet I could not with Mouth, Pen or Inke, speake
-or write the true worth and worthiness of _Ale_.” Bravo, John Taylor!
-He would be a bold man who could lift up his voice against our honest
-English nappy, after reading your vigorous lines.
-
-   [1] May, 1886. See also pp. 165; 389.
-
-It is not uninteresting to compare this sixteenth century work
-with a passage taken from _By Lake and River_, the author of which
-rarely loses an opportunity of eulogising beer. Anglers and many
-more will cordially agree with Mr. Francis Francis in his remarks.
-“Ah! my beloved brother of the rod,” he writes, “do you know the
-taste of beer—of bitter beer—cooled in the flowing river? Not you; I
-warrant, like the ‘Marchioness,’ hitherto you have only had ‘a sip’
-occasionally—and, as Mr. Swiveller judiciously remarks, ‘it can’t be
-tasted in a sip.’ Take your bottle of beer, sink it deep, deep in
-the shady water, where the cooling springs and fishes are. Then, the
-day being very hot and bright, and the sun blazing on your devoted
-head, consider it a matter of duty to have to fish that long, wide
-stream (call it the Blackstone stream, if you will); and so, having
-endued yourself with high wading breeks, walk up to your middle, and
-begin hammering away with your twenty-foot flail. Fish are rising,
-but not at you. No, they merely come up to see how the weather looks,
-and what o’clock it is. So fish away; there is not above a couple of
-hundred yards of it, and you don’t want to throw more than about two or
-three-and-thirty yards at every cast. It is a mere trifle. An hour or
-so of good hard hammering will bring you to the end of it, and then—let
-me ask you _avec impressement_—how about that beer? Is it cool? Is it
-refreshing? Does it {6} gurgle, gurgle, and ‘go down glug,’ as they
-say in Devonshire? Is it heavenly? Is it Paradise and all the Peris
-to boot? Ah! if you have never tasted beer under these or similar
-circumstances, you have, believe me, never tasted it at all.”
-
-A word or two now as to the distinctions between the beverages known
-as ale and beer. Going back to the time of the Conquest, or earlier,
-we find that both words were applied to the same liquor, a fermented
-drink made usually from malt and water, without hops. The Danes called
-it ale, the Anglo-Saxons beer. Later on the word beer dropped almost
-out of use. Meanwhile, in Germany and the Netherlands, the use of hops
-in brewing had been discovered; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth
-centuries, the Flemings having introduced their _bier_ into England,
-the word “beer” came to have in this country a distinct meaning—viz.,
-hopped ale. The difference was quaintly explained by Andrew Boorde in
-his _Dyetary_, written about the year 1542. “Ale,” said Andrew, “is
-made of malte and water; and they which do put any other thynge to ale
-than is rehersed, except yest, barme, or godesgood, doth sofystical
-theyr ale. Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall drinke. Ale must have
-these propertyes: it must be fresshe and cleare, it muste not be ropy
-nor smoky, nor it must have no weft nor tayle. Ale shuld not be dronke
-vnder v. dayes olde. Newe ale is vnholsome for all men. And sowre ale,
-and deade ale the which doth stande a tylt, is good for no man. Barly
-malte maketh better ale then oten malte or any other corne doth: it
-doth ingendre grose humoures; but yette it maketh a man stronge.”
-
-
-OF BERE.
-
-“Bere is made of malte, of hoppes, and water; it is the naturall drynke
-for a Dutche man, and nowe of late dayes it is moche vsed in Englande
-to the detryment of many Englysshe people; specyally it kylleth
-them the which be troubled with the colycke, and the stone, and the
-strangulion; for the drynke is a colde drynke; yet it doth make a man
-fat, and doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the Dutche men’s
-faces and belyes. If the bere be well serued, and be fyned, and not
-new, it doth qualyfy heat of the liquer.”
-
-The distinction between ale and beer as described by Boorde lasted
-for a hundred years or more. As hops came into general use, though
-malt liquors generally were now beer, the word ale was still retained,
-and was used whether the liquor it was intended to designate was {7}
-hopped or not. At the present day beer is the generic word, which
-includes all malt liquors; while the word ale includes all but the
-black or brown beers—porter and stout. The meanings of the words are,
-however, subject to local variations. This subject is further treated
-of in Chapter VII.
-
-The union of hops and malt is amusingly described in one of the
-Brasenose College ale poems:—
-
- A Grand Cross of “Malta,” one night at a ball,
- Fell in love with and married “Hoppetta the Tall.”
- Hoppetta, the bitterest, best of her sex,
- By whom he had issue—the first, “Double X.”
-
- Three others were born by this marriage—“a girl,”
- Transparent as _Amber_ and precious as _Pearl_.
- Then a son, twice as strong as a Porter or Scout,
- And another as “Spruce” as his brother was “Stout.”
-
- _Double_ X, like his Sister, is brilliant and clear,
- Like his Mother, tho’ bitter, by no means severe:
- Like his Father, _not small_, and resembling each brother,
- Joins the spirit of one to the strength of the other.
-
-In John Taylor’s time there seems to have existed among ale drinkers a
-wholesome prejudice against wine in general, and more especially sack.
-The water poet writes very bitterly on the subject:—
-
- Thus Bacchus is ador’d and deified,
- And we _Hispanialized_ and _Frenchifide_;
- Whilst _Noble Native Ale_ and _Beere’s_ hard fate
- Are like old Almanacks, quite out of date.
-
- Thus men consume their credits and their wealths,
- And swallow Sicknesses in drinking healths,
- Untill the Fury of the spritefull Grape
- Mountes to the braine, and makes a man an Ape.
-
-Another poet wrote in much the same strain:—
-
- Thy wanton grapes we do detest:
- Here’s richer juice from Barley press’d.
-
-        *       *       *       *       * {8}
-
- Oh let them come and taste this beer
- And water henceforth they’ll forswear.
-
-Our ancestors seem, indeed, almost to have revered good malt liquor.
-Richard Atkinson gave the following excellent advice to Leonard Lord
-Dacre in the year 1570: “See that ye keep a noble house for beef and
-beer, that thereof may be praise given to God and to your honour.”
-
-The same subject—comparison of sack with ale to the disadvantage of the
-former—is still better treated in an old ale song by Beaumont; it is
-such a good one of its kind that we give it in full:—
-
-ANSWER OF ALE TO THE CHALLENGE OF SACK.
-
- Come all you brave wights,
- That are dubbed ale-knights,
-       Now set out yourselves in sight;
- And let them that crack
- In the presence of Sack
-       Know Malt is of mickle might.
-
- Though Sack they define
- Is holy divine,
-       Yet it is but naturall liquor,
- Ale hath for its part
- An addition of art
-       To make it drinke thinner or thicker.
-
- Sack; fiery fume,
- Doth waste and consume
-       Men’s humidum radicale;
- It scaldeth their livers,
- It breeds burning feavers,
-       Proves vinum venenum reale.
-
- But history gathers,
- From aged forefathers,
-       That Ale’s the true liquor of life,
- Men lived long in health,
- And preserved their wealth,
-       Whilst Barley broth only was rife. {9}
-
- Sack, quickly ascends,
- And suddenly ends,
-       What company came for at first,
- And that which yet worse is,
- It empties men’s purses
-       Before it half quenches their thirst.
-
- Ale, is not so costly
- Although that the most lye
-       Too long by the oyle of Barley;
- Yet may they part late,
- At a reasonable rate,
-       Though they came in the morning early.
-
- Sack, makes men from words
- Fall to drawing of swords,
-       And quarrelling endeth their quaffing;
- Whilst dagger ale Barrels
- Beare off many quarrels
-       And often turn chiding to laughing.
-
- Sack’s drink for our masters,
- All may be Ale-tasters,
-       Good things the more common the better,
- Sack’s but single broth,
- Ale’s meat, drinke, and cloathe,
-       Say they that know never a letter.
-
- But not to entangle
- Old friends till they wrangle
-       And quarrell for other men’s pleasure;
- Let Ale keep his place,
- And let Sack have his grace,
-       So that neither exceed the due measure.
-
-“Wine is but single broth, ale is meat, drink and cloth,” was a
-proverbial saying in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
-occurs in many writings, both prose and poetical. John Taylor,
-for instance, writes that ale is the “warmest lining of a naked
-man’s coat.” “Barley broth” and “oyle of barley” were very common
-expressions for ale. “Dagger ale” was very strong malt liquor. The word
-“ale-tasters” will be fully explained later on. {10}
-
-The nearest approach in modern times to a denunciation of wine by
-an ale-favouring poet occurs in a few lines—by whom written we know
-not—cleverly satirising the introduction of cheap French wines into
-this country. Cheap clarets command, thanks to an eminent statesman,
-a considerable share of popular favour. If unadulterated, they are no
-doubt wholesome enough, and suitable for some specially constituted
-persons. Let those who like them drink them, by all means.
-
-MALT LIQUOR, OR CHEAP FRENCH WINES.
-
- No ale or beer, says Gladstone, we should drink,
-   Because they stupefy and dull our brains.
- But sour French wine, as other people think,
-   Our English stomachs often sorely pains.
- The question then is which we most should dread,
- An _aching belly_ or an _aching head_?
-
-Among famous ale songs of the past, _Jolly Good Ale and Old_, which
-has been wrongly attributed to Bishop Still, stands pre-eminent. Of
-the eight double stanzas composing the song, four were incorporated
-in “a ryght pithy, plesaunt, and merie comedie, intytuled, _Gammer
-Gurton’s Nedle_, played on stage not longe ago, in Christe’s Colledge,
-in Cambridge. Made by Mr. S——, Master of Art” (1575). According to
-Dyer, who possessed a MS., giving the song in its complete form, “it
-is certainly of an earlier date,” and could not have been by Mr. Still
-(afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells), the Master of Trinity College,
-who was probably the writer of the play. The “merrie comedie” well
-illustrates the difference of tone and thought which divides those
-days from the present, and it is a little difficult to understand how
-it could have been produced by the pen of a High Church dignitary. The
-prologue of the play is very quaint, it runs thus:—
-
-PROLOGUE.
-
- As Gammer Gurton, with manye a wyde styche,
- Sat pesynge and patching of Hodge her man’s briche,
- By chance or misfortune, as shee her geare tost,
- In Hodge lether bryches her needle shee lost.
- When Diccon the bedlam had hard by report,
- That good Gammer Gurton was robde in thys sorte,
- He quyetlye perswaded with her in that stound,
- Dame Chat, her deare gossyp, this needle had found.
- Yet knew shee no more of this matter, alas, {11}
- Then knoweth Tom our clarke what the Priest saith at masse,
- Hereof there ensued so fearfull a fraye,
- Mas. Doctor was sent for, these gossyps to staye;
- Because he was curate, and esteemed full wyse,
- Who found that he sought not, by Diccon’s device.
- When all things were tumbled and cleane out of fashion,
- Whether it were by fortune, or some other constellation,
- Suddenlye the neele Hodge found by the prychynge,
- And drew out of his buttocke, where he found it stickynge,
- Theyr hartes then at rest with perfect securytie,
- With a pot of Good ale they stroake up theyr plauditie.
-
-The song, _Jolly Good Ale and Old_, four stanzas of which occur in the
-second act, is a good record of the spirit of those hard-drinking days,
-now passed away, in which a man who could not, or did not, consume
-vast quantities of liquor was looked upon as a milksop. It is given as
-follows in the Comedy:—
-
-    Back and syde go bare, go bare,
-      Booth foote and hande go colde;
-    But belly, God send thee good ale ynoughe,
-      Whether it bee newe or olde.
-
-    I can not eate but lytle meate,
-      My stomache is not goode,
-    But, sure, I thinke, that I can drynk
-      With him that wears a hood.[2]
-    Thoughe I go bare, take ye no care,
-      I am nothynge a colde;
-    I stuffe my skyn so full within
-      Of jolly good ale, and olde.
-          Back and syde go bare, go bare, &c., &c.
-
- [3]I love no rost, but a nut-brown toste,
-      And a crab layde in the fyre;
-    A lytle bread shall do me stead,
-      Much bread I not desyre. {12}
-
-    No froste nor snow, no winde, I trow,
-      Can hurte mee if I wolde,
-    I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt,
-      Of joly good ale and olde.
-          Back and syde go bare, go bare, &c., &c.
-
-    And Tyb, my wife, that as her lyfe
-      Loveth well good ale to seeke,
-    Full ofte drinkes shee, tyll ye may see,
-      The teares run down her cheekes;
-    Then doth she trowle to mee the bowle[4]
-      Even as a _mault worme_ shuld
-    And sayth, sweet hart, I tooke my part
-      Of this joly good ale, and olde.
-          Back and syde go bare, go bare, &c., &c.
-
-    Now let them drynke, tyll they nod and winke,
-      Even as good fellowes shoulde doe,
-    They shall not misse to have the blisse
-      Good ale doth bringe men to:
-    And all poor soules, that have scoured boules,
-      Or have them lustely trolde,
-    God save the lyves of them and their wyves,
-      Whether they be yonge or olde.
-          Back and syde go bare, go bare, &c., &c.
-
-   [2] Alluding to the drunkenness of the clergy.
-
-   [3] _Cf_:
-
-      “And sometimes lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
-       In very likeness of a roasted crab.”
-                              _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act ii. Scene 1.
-
-   [4] The word “trowle” was used of passing the vessel about, as appears
-   by the beginning of an old catch:
-
-      _Trole_, _trole_ the _bowl_ to me,
-      And I will _trole_ the same again to thee.
-
-Charles Dibdin the younger has, in a couple of verses, told a very
-amusing little story of an old fellow who, in addition to finding that
-ale was meat, drink and cloth, discovered that it included friends as
-well—or, at any rate, when he was without ale he was without friends,
-which comes to much the same thing.
-
-THE BARREL OF HUMMING ALE.
-
- Old Owen lived on the brow of an hill,
- And he had more patience than pelf;
- A small plot of ground was his labour to till, {13}
- And he toiled through the day by himself.
- But at night crowds of visitors called at his cot,
- For he told a right marvellous tale;
- Yet a stronger attraction by chance he had got,
-     A barrel of old humming ale.
-
- Old Owen by all was an oracle thought,
- While they drank not a joke failed to hit;
- But Owen at last by experience was taught,
- That wisdom is better than wit.
- One night his cot could scarce hold the gay rout,
- The next not a soul heard his tale,
- The moral is simply they’d fairly drank out
-     His barrel of old humming ale.
-
-For the sake of contrast with the foregoing songs, if for nothing
-else, the following poem (save the mark!) by George Arnold, a Boston
-rhymster, is worthy of perusal. The “gurgle-gurgle” of the athletic
-salmon-fisher, described by Mr. Francis, is replaced by the “idle
-sipping” (fancy sipping beer!) of the beer-garden frequenter.
-
-BEER.
-
-       Here
-       With my beer
- I sit,
- While golden moments flit:
-       Alas!
-       They pass
- Unheeded by:
- And, as they fly,
- I,
- Being dry,
-       Sit, idly sipping here
-       My beer.
-
-The new generation of American poets do not mean, it would appear, to
-be confined in the old metrical grooves. Very different in style are
-the verses written on ale by Thomas Wharton, in 1748. _A Panegyric on
-Oxford Ale_ is the title of the poem, which is prefaced by the lines
-from Horace:—
-
-               Mea nec Falernæ
- Temperant vites, neque Formiani
- Pocula colles.
-
-{14}
-
-The poem opens thus:—
-
- Balm of my cares, sweet solace of my toils,
- Hail, Juice benignant! O’er the costly cups
- Of riot-stirring wine, unwholesome draught,
- Let Pride’s loose sons prolong the wasteful night;
- My sober evening let the tankard bless,
- With toast embrown’d, and fragrant nutmeg fraught,
- While the rich draught with oft repeated whiffs
- Tobacco mild improves. Divine repast!
- Where no crude surfeit, or intemperate joys
- Of lawless Bacchus reigns; but o’er my soul
- A calm Lethean creeps; in drowsy trance
- Each thought subsides, and sweet oblivion wraps
- My peaceful brain, as if the leaden rod
- Of magic Morpheus o’er mine eyes had shed
- Its opiate influence. What though sore ills
- Oppress, dire want of chill-dispelling coals,
- Or cheerful candle (save the makeweight’s gleam
- Haply remaining), heart-rejoicing Ale
- Cheers the sad scene, and every want supplies.
-
-There exist, sad to relate, persons who, with the notion of promoting
-temperance, would rob us of our beer. Many of these individuals may
-act with good motives, but they are weak, misguided bodies who, if
-they but devoted their energies to promoting ale-drinking as opposed
-to spirit-drinking, would be doing useful service to the State, for
-malt liquors are the true temperance drinks of the working classes. The
-Bill (for the encouragement of private tippling) so long sought to be
-introduced by the teetotal party, was cleverly hit off in _Songs of the
-Session_, published in _The World_ some years back:—
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
- If with truth they assure us that liquors allure us,
-   I don’t think ’twill cure us the taverns to close;
- When in putting drink down, sirs, you’ve shut up the Crown, sirs,
-   You’ll find Smith and Brown, sirs, drunk under the rose.
-
- “Men are slaves to this custom,” you cry; “we can’t trust ’em!”
-   Very good; then why thrust ’em from scenes where they’re known
- If the daylight can’t shame ’em, or neighbours reclaim ’em,
-   Do you think you can tame ’em in haunts of their own? {15}
-
- And if in Stoke Pogis no publican lodges,
-   It don’t follow Hodge is cut off from good cheer;
- In the very next parish the tap may be fairish,
-   And the vestry less bearish and stern about beer.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Men in time will refrain when that goes with their grain;
-   Till it does ’tis in vain that their wills you coerce;
- For the man whom by force you turn out of his course,
-   Without fear or remorse will soon take to a worse.
-
-Of course, in asserting malt liquors to be the temperance drink, or
-drink of the temperate, it must be understood that we refer to the
-ordinary ales and beers of to-day, in which the amount of alcohol is
-small, and which are very different from the potent liquor drank by the
-topers of the past, who were rightly designated malt worms.
-
-It has been said that even pigs drank strong ale in those days, but
-the only evidence of the truth of that statement is the tradition that
-Herrick, a most charming but little read poet, succeeded in teaching a
-favourite pig to drink ale out of a jug. Old ale is now out of fashion,
-its chief strongholds being the venerable centres of education. We all
-know the tale of the don who, about once a week, reminded the butler
-of a certain understanding between them, in these words: “Mind, when I
-say ‘beer’—_the old ale_.” Ancient writers are full of allusions to the
-potent character of the strong ales of their day. Nor are more modern
-authors wanting in that respect. Peter Pindar, who wrote during the
-reign of George III., when ale was still of a “mightie” character, thus
-sings:—
-
- Toper, drink, and help the house—
-   Drink to every honest fellow;
- Life was never worth a louse
-   To the man who ne’er was mellow.
-
- How it sparkles! here it goes!
-   Ale can make a blockhead shine;
- Toper, torchlike may thy nose
-   Light thy face up, just like mine.
-
- See old Sol, I like his notion,
-   With his whiskers all so red;
- Sipping, drinking from the ocean,
-   Boozing till he goes to bed. {16}
-
- Yet poor beverage to regale!
-   _Simple stuff_ to help his race—
- Could he turn the sea to Ale,
-   How ’twould make him mend his pace!
-
-[Illustration: BEER STREET.]
-
-Hogarth, who was perhaps the most accurate and certainly the most
-powerful delineator of mankind’s virtues and vices that the world
-has ever seen, has left us in his pictures of “Beer Street” and “Gin
-Lane” striking illustrations of the advantages attending the use of
-our national beverage, and the misery and want brought about by dram
-drinking. In _Beer Street_ everybody thrives, and everything has an
-air of prosperity. There is one exception—the pawnbroker, gainer by
-the poverty of others. He, poor man, with barricaded doors and {17}
-propped-up walls, awaits in terror the arrival of the Sheriff’s
-officer, fearing only that his house may collapse meanwhile. Through
-a hole in the door which he is afraid to open, a potboy hands him a
-mug of ale, at once the cause and consolation of his woes. The bracket
-which supports the pawnbroker’s sign is awry, and threatens every
-minute to fall. Apart from this unfortunate all else flourishes. The
-burly butcher, seated outside the inn with no fear of the Sheriff in
-his heart, quaffs his pewter mug of foaming ale, and casts now and
-again an eye on the artist who is repainting the signboard. The sturdy
-smith, the drayman, the porter and the fishwife—all are well clad and
-prosperous. Houses are being built, others are being repaired, and
-health and wealth are visible on every side.
-
- Beer! happy produce of our isle,
-   Can sinewy strength impart,
- And wearied with fatigue and toil,
-   Can cheer each manly heart.
-
- Labour and art upheld by thee,
-   Successfully advance,
- We quaff thy balmy juice with glee;
-   And water leave to France.
-
- Genius of Health! thy grateful taste
-   Rivals the cup of Jove,
- And warms each English generous breast
-   With liberty and love.
-
-Look now at the noisome slum where the demon Gin reigns triumphant.
-Squalor, poverty, hunger, wretchedness and sin are depicted on
-all sides. _Here_ flourish the pawnbroker and the keeper of the
-gin-palace—but the picture is too speaking a one to need comment.
-
-GIN.
-
- Gin! cursed fiend with fury fraught,
-   Makes human race a prey,
- It enters by a deadly draught,
-   And steals our life away.
-
- Virtue and truth, driven to despair,
-   Its rage compels to fly,
- But cherishes with hellish care,
-   Theft, murder, perjury. {18}
-
- Damn’d cup that on the vitals preys,
-   That liquid fire contains,
- Which madness to the heart conveys,
-   And rolls it through the veins.
-
-[Illustration: GIN LANE.]
-
-A medical writer of some thirty years ago says:—
-
-“There are well-meaning persons who wish now-a-days to rob, not only
-the poor, but the rich man of his beer. I am content to remember
-that Mary, Queen of Scots, was solaced in her dreary captivity at
-Fotheringay by the brown beer of Burton-on-Trent; that holy Hugh {19}
-Latimer drank a goblet of spiced ale with his supper the night before
-he was burned alive; that Sir Walter Raleigh took a cool tankard
-with his pipe, the last pipe of tobacco, on the very morning of his
-execution; and that one of the prettiest ladies with whom I have the
-honour to be acquainted, when escorting her on an opera Saturday to the
-Crystal Palace I falteringly suggested chocolate, lemonade and vanilla
-ices for her refreshment, sternly replied, ‘Nonsense, sir! Get me a
-pint of stout immediately.’ If the ladies only knew how much better
-they would be for their beer, there would be fewer cases of consumption
-for quacks to demonstrate the curability of.”
-
-The question of beer drinking as opposed to total abstinence, is one
-intimately connected with the welfare of the agricultural labourer.
-The lives of the majority of these persons are, it is to be feared,
-somewhat dull and cheerless. From early morn to dewy eve—work; the only
-prospect in old age—the workhouse. Weary in mind and body, the labourer
-returns to his cottage at nightfall. At supper he takes his glass of
-mild ale. It nourishes him, and the alcohol it contains, of so small
-a quantity as to be absolutely harmless, invigorates him and causes
-the too often miserable surroundings to appear bright and cheerful.
-Contentedly he smokes his pipe, chats sociably with his wife, and
-forgets for awhile the many long days of hard work in store for him.
-Soon the soporific influence of the hop begins to take effect, and the
-toiler retires to rest, to sleep soundly, forgetful of the cares of
-life.
-
-Then there is Saturday night, when the villagers meet at the alehouse,
-not perhaps so much to drink as to converse, and, with church-wardens
-in mouth and tankard at elbow, to settle the affairs of the State.
-The newspaper, a week old, is produced, and one, probably the village
-tailor or maybe the barber, reads passages from it. “A party of fuddled
-rustics in a beer-shop,” exclaims the teetotaler, with a sneer. Not
-so; one or two may have had their pewter tankards filled more often
-than is prudent, but the majority will be moderate, drinking no more
-than is good for them. Drunkenness and crime are not the outcome of
-the village alehouse; for them, go to the gin-palaces of the towns.
-Nothing, we feel certain, more tends to keep our agricultural labourers
-from intemperance than the easy means of obtaining cheap but pure beer.
-What we may term temperance legislation (unless it be of a criminal
-character, punishing excess by fines) will always defeat its own
-object. Shut up the alehouses, Sundays or week-days, and the poorer
-classes at once take to dram drinking. This subject will be found fully
-considered in the last chapter. {20}
-
-One does not hear much now-a-days of that gallant Knight, Sir John
-Barleycorn. The song writers of the past were, however, loud in his
-praises, and Sir John used to be as favourite a myth with the people of
-England as was our patron saint, St. George. Elton’s play of _Paul the
-Poacher_ commences with the following charming verses:—
-
-ODE TO SIR JOHN BARLEYCORN.
-
- Though the Hawthorn the pride of our hedges may be,
-   And the rose our gardens adorn,
- Yet the flower that’s sweetest and fairest to me,
-   Is the bearded Barleycorn.
-
-               Then hey for the Barleycorn,
-               The Bonny Barleycorn,
-                 No grain or flower
-                 Has half the power
-               Of the Bearded Barleycorn.
-
- Tho’ the purple juice of the grape ne’er find
-   Its way to the cup of horn,
- ’Tis little I care—for the draught to my mind,
-   Is the blood of the Barleycorn.
-               Then hey, &c.
-
- Tho’ the Justice, the Parson and eke the Squire,
-   May flout us and hold us in scorn,
- Our staunch boon friend, the best Knight in the shire,
-   Is stout Sir John Barleycorn.
-
-               Then hey for John Barleycorn,
-               The merry John Barleycorn,
-                   Search round and about,
-                   What Knight’s so stout
-               As bold Sir John Barleycorn?
-
-A whimsical old pamphlet, the writer of which must have possessed
-keen powers of observation, is “_The Arraigning and Indicting of Sir
-John Barleycorn, Knight_, printed for Timothy Tosspot.” Sir John is
-described as of noble blood, well-beloved in England, a great support
-to the Crown, and a maintainer of both rich and poor. The trial takes
-place at the sign of the “Three Loggerheads,” before Oliver {21} and
-Old Nick his holy father. Sir John, of course, pleads not guilty
-to the charges made against him, which are, in effect, that he has
-compassed the death of several of his Majesty’s loving subjects, and
-brought others to ruin. Vulcan the blacksmith, Will the weaver, and
-Stitch the tailor, are called by the prosecution, and depose that after
-being first friendly with Sir John, they quarrel with him, and in the
-end get knocked down, bruised, their bones broken, and their pockets
-picked. Mr. Wheatley, the baker, complains that, whereas he was the
-most esteemed by Lords, Knights and Squires, he is now supplanted by
-the prisoner. Sir John, being called on for his defence, asks that
-his brother Malt may be summoned, and indicates that the fault, if
-any, lies mostly at Malt’s door. Malt is thereupon summoned, and thus
-addresses the Court:—
-
-“My Lords, I thank you for the liberty you now indulge me with, and
-think it a great happiness, since I am so strongly accused, that I have
-such learned judges to determine these complaints. As for my part,
-I will put the matter to the Bench—First, I pray you consider with
-yourselves, all tradesmen would live; and although Master Malt does
-make sometimes a cup of good liquor, and many men come to taste it, yet
-the fault is neither in me nor my brother John, but in such as those
-who make this complaint against us, as I shall make it appear to you
-all.
-
-“In the first place, which of you all can say but Master Malt can make
-a cup of good liquor, with the help of a good brewer; and when it is
-made, it will be sold. I pray you which of you all can live without it?
-But when such as these, who complain of us, find it to be good, then
-they have such a greedy mind, that they think they never have enough,
-and this overcharge brings on the inconveniences complained of, makes
-them quarrelsome one with another, and abusive to their very friends,
-so that we are forced to lay them down to sleep. From hence it appears
-it is from their own greedy desires all these troubles arise, and not
-from wicked designs of our own.”
-
-_Court._—“Truly we cannot see that you are in the fault. Sir John
-Barleycorn, we will show you as much favour that, if you can bring any
-person of reputation to speak to your character, the court is disposed
-to acquit you. Bring in your evidence, and let us hear what they can
-say in your behalf.”
-
-_Thomas the Ploughman._—“May I be allowed to speak my thoughts freely,
-since I shall offer nothing but the truth?”
-
-_Court._—“Yes, thou mayest be bold to speak the truth, and no {22}
-more, for that is the cause we sit here for; therefore speak boldly,
-that we may understand thee.”
-
-_Ploughman._—“Gentlemen, Sir John is of an ancient house, and is come
-of a noble race; there is neither lord, knight, nor squire, but they
-love his company and he theirs: as long as they don’t abuse him he will
-abuse no man, but doth a great deal of good. In the first place, few
-ploughmen can live without him; for if it were not for him we should
-not pay our landlords their rent; and then what could such men as you
-do for money and clothes? Nay, your gay ladies would care but little
-for you if you had not your rents coming in to maintain them; and we
-could never pay but that Sir John Barleycorn feeds us with money; and
-you would not seek to take away his life? For shame! let your malice
-cease and pardon his life, or else we are all undone.”
-
-_Bunch the Brewer._—“Gentlemen, I beseech you, hear me. My name is
-Bunch, a brewer; and I believe few of you can live without a cup
-of good liquor, nor more than I can without the help of Sir John
-Barleycorn. As for my own part, I maintain a great charge and keep a
-great many men at work; I pay taxes forty pounds a-year to his Majesty,
-God bless him, and all this is maintained by the help of Sir John; then
-how can any man for shame seek to take away his life?”
-
-_Mistress Hostess._—“To give evidence on behalf of Sir John Barleycorn
-gives me pleasure, since I have an opportunity of doing justice to so
-honourable a person. Through him the administration receives large
-supplies; he likewise greatly supports the labourer, and enlivens his
-conversation. What pleasure could there be at a sheep-clipping without
-his company, or what joy at a feast without his assistance? I know
-him to be an honest man, and he never abused any man if they abused
-not him. If you put him to death all England is undone, for there is
-not another in the land can do as he can do, and hath done; for he
-can make a cripple go, the coward fight, and a soldier feel neither
-hunger nor cold. I beseech you, gentlemen, let him live, or else we
-are all undone; the nation likewise will be distressed, the labourer
-impoverished, and the husbandman ruined.”
-
-_Court._—“Gentlemen of the jury, you have now heard what has been
-offered against Sir John Barleycorn, and the evidence that has been
-produced in his defence. It you are of opinion that he is guilty of
-those wicked crimes laid to his charge, and has with malice prepense
-conspired and brought about the death of several of his Majesty’s
-loving subjects, you are then to find him guilty; but, if, on the
-contrary, you are of {23} opinion that he had no real intention of
-wickedness, and was not the immediate, but only the accidental cause of
-these evils laid to his charge, then, according to the statute law of
-this kingdom you ought to acquit him.”
-
-Verdict—Not Guilty.
-
-A somewhat lengthy extract has been given from the report of the trial,
-because the facetious little narrative contains a moral as applicable
-at the present time as on the day on which the worthy Knight was
-acquitted.
-
-And now, dear reader, your introduction to Sir John Barleycorn being
-complete, it is for you, should the inclination be present, to become
-acquainted with all that pertains to him, from the barley-wine of the
-Egyptians and other nations of the far past to those excellent
-beverages in which the people of this country do now delight. On the
-way you will meet with strange things and strange people, queer customs
-and quaint sayings and songs; you will watch malting and brewing as it
-was carried on five hundred years ago; you will stand by while the
-Flemings, who have just come to London, brew beer with the assistance
-of a “wicked weed called hoppes;” meanwhile Parliament will re-enact
-strange sumptuary laws and order that you brew only two kinds of ale or
-beer; you will be at times in the bad company of dissolute alewives who
-will whisper sad scandals in your ear; fleeing from them, you will find
-yourself in a solemn place where lines on stone tell how, when he
-lived, he brewed good ale; then being perhaps sad at heart, you shall
-pass into the village ale-house and join the ploughboys in their merry
-chorus, or sit awhile with the roystering blades in some London tavern;
-later you shall see the sign and learn its signification and history,
-and delay a moment to read the verses over the door and admire the
-quaint architecture and curious carving. In the ale-house you will have
-tasted and drank wisely, let it be hoped, of London or Dublin black
-beer, of Plymouth white ale, of old Nappy and Yorkshire Stingo, and as
-many more as your head can stand.
-
-Then you shall take part in ancient ceremonies—wassailing, Church ales,
-bride ales, and the like; the merry sheep-shearers will sing for you,
-and for you the villagers shall dance round the ale-stake; then the
-old ballad-writers will lay before you their ballads praising ale, and
-headed with wood-cuts, humorous, but sometimes fearful to look upon.
-Having rested awhile in perusing these relics of the past, the doors of
-John Barleycorn’s greatest palaces will fly open before you, and while
-exploring these wonders of the present, you will chat pleasantly with
-{24} their founders, Dr. Johnson joining in with ponderous remarks on
-the brewery of his friend Thrale. The history of porter shall then be
-unfolded to you, after which you shall be introduced to the college
-butler, who is in the very act of compounding a noble wassail-bowl,
-and who, good man, whispers in your willing ear instructions for the
-making of a score or more of ale-cups; then the old Saxon leeches and
-their successors shall be summoned, and, in a language strange to
-modern ears, they shall relate how ale and certain herbs will cure all
-diseases; then shall you see a curious but not a wondrous sight—water
-passing through holes in teetotal arguments; and lastly the great
-French savant shall take you into his laboratory, and shall make you
-see in a grain of yeast a world of wonders. Last of all we beg you to
-treasure up in your memory these old lines:—
-
- He that buys land buys many stones,
- He that buys flesh buys many bones,
- He that buys eggs buys many shells,
- _But he that buys good ale buys nothing else_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{25}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-
- “What hath been and now is used by the English, as well since the
- Conquest, as in the days of the Britons, Saxons and Danes.”—_Drinke
- and Welcome.—Taylor._
-
- “Not of an age, but for all time.”—_Ben Jonson._
-
-_ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF ALE AND BEER_
-
-We must go back several thousand years into the past to trace the
-origin of our modern ale and beer. The ancient Egyptians, as we learn
-from the _Book of the Dead_, a treatise at least 5,000 years old,
-understood the manufacture of an intoxicating liquor from grain. This
-liquor they called _hek_, and under the slightly modified form _hemki_
-the name has been used in Egypt for beer until comparatively modern
-times. An ancient Egyptian medical manual, of about the same date
-as the _Book of the Dead_, contains frequent mention of the use of
-Egyptian beer in medicine, and at a period about 1,000 years later, the
-papyri afford conclusive evidence of the existence even in that early
-age, of a burning liquor question in Egypt, for it is recorded that
-intoxication had become so common that many of the beer shops had to be
-suppressed.
-
-Herodotus, after stating that the Egyptians used “wine made from
-barley” because there were no vines in the country, mentions a
-tradition that Osiris, the Egyptian Bacchus, first taught the Egyptians
-how to brew, to compensate them for the natural deficiencies of their
-native land. Herodotus, however, was frequently imposed upon by the
-persons from whom he derived his narrative, and no trace of any such
-tradition is to be found elsewhere. Wine was undoubtedly made in Egypt
-two or three thousand years before his time. {26}
-
-It is maintained by some that the Hebrew word _sicera_, which occurs
-in the Bible and is in our version translated “strong drink,” was
-none other than the barley-wine mentioned in Herodotus, and that the
-Israelites brought from Egypt the knowledge of its use. Certain it is
-that they understood the manufacture of _sicera_ shortly after the
-exodus, for we find in Leviticus that the priests are forbidden to
-drink wine or “strong drink” before they go into the tabernacle, and in
-the Book of Numbers the Nazarenes are required not only to abstain from
-wine and “strong drink,” but even from vinegar made from either; and
-in all the passages where the word occurs it is formally distinguished
-from wine. It may be mentioned in passing, that this word _sicera_ has
-been regarded as being the equivalent of the word cider. The passage in
-Numbers is translated in Tyndale’s version, “They shall drink neither
-wyn ne sydyr,” and it is this rendering that has earned for Tyndale’s
-translation the name of the cider Bible.
-
-It seems highly probable that the word _sicera_ signified any
-intoxicating liquor other than wine, whether made from corn, honey or
-fruit.
-
-In support of the theory that beer was known amongst the Jews, may be
-mentioned the Rabbinical tradition that the Jews were free from leprosy
-during the captivity in Babylon by reason of their drinking “_siceram
-veprium, id est, ex lupulis confectam_,” or _sicera_ made with hops,
-which one would think could be no other than bitter beer.
-
-Speaking of this old Egyptian barley-wine, Aeschylus seems to imply
-that it was not held in very high esteem, for he says that only the
-women-kind would drink it.[5] Evidently the phrase, “to be learned in
-all the learning of the Egyptians,” had no reference to a competent
-knowledge of brewing. Before leaving the land of the Pharaoh, it may be
-mentioned that in that country the labourers still drink a kind of beer
-extracted from unmalted barley. A traveller in Egypt some years ago
-recorded in one of the London daily papers that his crew on the Nile
-made an intoxicating liquor from the fermentation of bread in water; he
-says that it was called _boozer_, but whether by himself or crew is not
-clear. {27}
-
-   [5] Aesch. Supp. 953.
-
-A goodly number of instances may be found in various old Greek writers
-of the mention of barley-wine under the various terms of κρίθινον
-πεπωκότες οινον,[6] ἐκ κριθῶν μεθυ, βρῦτον ἐκ τῶν κριθῶν, but it does
-not appear that beer was ever a popular beverage in Hellas. Further
-north, the Thracians, as Archilochus tells, brewed and drank a good
-deal of beer.
-
-   [6] Hipp. 395. 1, Athen. 1 & 10, Aesch. Fr. 116, Archil. 28.
-
-Among the Greek writers, Xenophon gives the most interesting and
-complete account of beer in the year 401 B.C. In describing the retreat
-of the Ten Thousand, he tells how, on approaching a certain village in
-Armenia which had been allotted to him, he selected the most active of
-his troops, and making a sudden descent upon the place captured all the
-villagers and their headman. One man alone escaped—the bridegroom of
-the headman’s daughter, who had been married nine days, and was gone
-out to hunt hares. The snow was six feet deep at the time. Xenophon
-goes on to describe the dwellings of this singular people. Their houses
-were under ground, the entrance like that of a well, but wide below.
-There were entrances dug out for the cattle, but the men used to get
-down by a ladder. And in the houses were goats, sheep, oxen, fowls and
-their young ones, and all the animals were fed inside with fodder.
-And there was wheat, and barley, and pulse, and barley-wine (οἶνος
-κρίθινος) in bowls. And the malt, too, itself was in the bowl, and
-level with the brim. And reeds lay in it, some long, some short, with
-no joints, and when anyone was thirsty he had to take a reed in his
-hand and suck. The liquor was very strong, says Xenophon, unless one
-poured water into it, and the drink was pleasant to one accustomed to
-it. And whenever anyone in friendliness wished to drink to his comrade,
-he used to drag him to the bowl, where he must stoop down and drink,
-gulping it down like an ox. The inhabitants of the Khanns district of
-Armenia, through which Xenophon’s world-famed march was made, still
-pursue much the same life as they did more than two thousand years ago.
-They live in these curious subterranean dwellings with all their live
-stock about them, but, alas! modern travellers aver that they have lost
-the art of making barley-wine.
-
-Enough has been said as to the use of beer among Eastern nations to
-disprove the theory of the old author of the _Haven of Health_, who
-asserts, quoting “Master Eliote” as his authority, that ale was never
-used as a common drink in any other country than in “England, Scotland,
-Ireland, and Poile.” {28}
-
-Ale or beer was in common use in Germany in the time of Tacitus, and
-Pliny, who may have tasted beer while serving in the army in Germany,
-says, “All the nations who inhabit the west of Europe have a liquor
-with which they intoxicate themselves, made of corn and water (_fruge
-madida_). The manner of making this liquor is somewhat different in
-Gaul, Spain, and other countries, and it is called by various names;
-but its nature and properties are everywhere the same. The people of
-Spain in particular brew this liquor so well that it will keep good for
-a long time. So exquisite is the ingenuity of mankind in gratifying
-their vicious appetites, that they have thus invented a method of
-making water itself intoxicate.” Among the many various kinds of drink
-so made were _zythum_, _cœlia_, _ceria_, _Cereris vinum_, _curmi_, and
-_cerevisia_. All these names, except _zythum_, are probably merely
-local variations of one word, whose British representative may be found
-in the Welsh _cwrw_.
-
-Turning to the earliest records of the use of malt liquors in this
-country, we find that, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Britons made
-use of a very simple diet which consisted chiefly of milk and venison.
-Their usual drink was water; but upon festive occasions they drank a
-kind of fermented liquor, made of barley, honey, or apples, and were
-very quarrelsome in their cups. Dioscorides wrote in the first century
-that the Britons, instead of wine, use “curmi,” a liquor made from
-barley. Pytheas (300 B.C.) said a fermented grain liquor was made in
-Thule.
-
-The drinks in use in this island at the time of its conquest by
-the Romans seem to have been metheglin, cider, and ale. Metheglin,
-or mead, was probably the most ancient and universally used of all
-intoxicating drinks among European nations. Cider is in all probability
-the next in order of antiquity of the drinks in use amongst our Celtic
-predecessors. It was made from wild apples, but its use was probably
-not so wide-spread as that of either mead or ale.
-
-The two drinks, mead and cider, are appropriate to nations who have
-made but slight advances on the path of civilisation. Tribes of nomads,
-or of hunters, would find the wherewithal for their manufacture—the
-honey in the hollow tree, the crabs growing wild in the woods. The
-manufacture of ale, however, indicates another step forward; it implies
-the settlement in particular districts, and the knowledge and practice
-of agriculture. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that the
-Celtic inhabitants of the midland and northern parts of this country,
-at the time of the first Roman attack, knew no drink but mead and
-cider; while, in the southern districts, where contact with {29} the
-outer world had brought about a somewhat more advanced civilisation
-and a more settled mode of life, agriculture was practised, and
-_cerevisia_, or ale, was added to the list of beverages.
-
-Given below is a metrical version of the origin of ale. It is put in
-this place between the account of the use of ale by the Britons and its
-use by the Saxons, because our anonymous poet does not seem to have
-quite made up his mind whether he is recording a British or a Saxon
-myth. The name of the king would seem to point to a British origin,
-whilst some of the gods on whom he calls are Teutonic.
-
-THE ORIGIN OF BEER.
-
- In a jolly field of barley good King Cambrinus slept,
- And dreaming of his thirsty realm the merry monarch wept,
- “In all my land of Netherland there grows no mead or wine,
- And water I could never coax adown this throat of mine.
-
- “Now list to me, ye heathen gods, and eke ye Christian too,
- Both Zernebock and Jupiter, and Mary clad in blue;
- And mighty Thor the Thunderer, and any else that be,
- The one who aids me in my need his servant I will be.”
-
- And as this sinful heathen all in the barley lay,
- There came in dreams an angel bright who soft these words did say—
- “Arise, thou poor Cambrinus, for even all around,
- In the barley where thou sleepest a nectar may be found.
-
- “In the barley where thou sleepest there hides a nectar clear,
- Which men shall know in later times as _porter_, _ale_ or _beer_.”
- Then in terms the most explicit he “put the monarch through,”
- And gave him ere the dream was out the recipe to brew.
-
- Uprose good King Cambrinus and shook him in the sun.
- “Away, ye wretched heathen gods—with you I’m quit and done!
- Ye’ve left me with my subjects in error and in thirst;
- Till in our dreadful dryness we scarce know which is worst.”
-
- It was the good Cambrinus unto his palace went,
- And messengers through all the land unto his lords he sent,
- “Leave Odin, under pain of death!”—his orders were severe,
- Yet touched with mildness—for he sent the recipe for beer. {30}
-
- Oh, then a merry sound was heard of building through the land,
- And the churches and the breweries went up on every hand;
- For the masons they were hard at work where’er a spot seemed pat,
- And some had bricks within their hods, and some within their hats.
-
-In the sister Island are to be found very early references to ale. The
-_Senchus Mor_, which contains some of the oldest and most important
-of the ancient laws of Ireland, has the following passages in which
-mention of this drink occurs:—
-
-“What is a human banquet? The banquet of each one’s feasting-house to
-his chief according to his due (_i.e._, the chief’s), to which his
-(_i.e._, the tenant’s) deserts entitle him; viz., a supper with ale, a
-feast without ale, a feast by day. The feast without ale is divided; it
-is distributed according to dignity; the feeding of the assembly of the
-forces of a territory, assembled for the purpose of demanding proof and
-law, and answering to illegality. Suppers with ale, feasts without ale,
-are the fellowship of the Feini.” It is difficult to understand the
-ideas contained in these old Erse laws and customs, but the main thing
-for the present purpose is the evidence they give that ale was known
-and commonly used in Ireland as early as the fifth century.[7]
-
-From the Brehon law tracts it may be gathered that the privileges
-of an Irish king included the right to have his ale supplied him
-with food;[8] he was also to have a brave army and _an inebriating
-ale-house_. The Irish chief is always to have two casks in his house,
-one of ale, another of milk; he should also have three sacks—a sack of
-malt, a sack of salt, and a sack of charcoal.
-
-   [7] The _Senchus Mor_ was composed in the time of Lœghaire, son of
-   Niall, King of Erin, about A.D. 430, a few years after the arrival
-   of St. Patrick in Ireland.
-
-   [8] Doubtless an allusion to the old _food rents_ once common in
-   Ireland.
-
-Wales was also to some extent an ale-producing country, and we find in
-Anglo-Saxon times Welsh ale frequently alluded to as a luxury. When
-_Offa_ renders the lands at _Westbury_ and _Stanbury_ to the church
-of Worcester, he accepts at _Westbury_ these _services_: 2 tunne full
-of clear Ale, and a cumbe (16 _quarts_) full of smaller Ale, and a
-cumbe of Welsh Ale, besides other services. There was a payment to the
-said church also out of the lands at _Breodune_ of 3 cuppes full of
-Ale, 111 _dolea Brytannicæ cervissiæ_ (_i.e._, casks of British Ale),
-and 3 hogsheads of {31} Welsh Ale, _quorum unum fit melle dulcoratum_
-(_i.e._, of which one was to be sweetened with honey). Henry, in his
-_History of England_, in treating of the drinks used in England and
-Wales during five centuries before the Norman Conquest, remarks on
-the rarity of the use of ale in Wales at that time. “Mead,” he says,
-“was still one of their favourite liquors, and bore a high price; for
-a cask of mead, by the laws of Wales, was valued at 120 pence, equal
-in quantity of silver to thirty shillings of our present money, and in
-efficacy to fifteen pounds. The dimensions of a cask of mead must be
-nine palms in height, and so capacious as to serve the King _and one
-of his counsellors_ for a bathing tub.” By another law its diameter is
-fixed at eighteen palms. The Welsh had also two kinds of ale, called
-_common ale_ and _spiced ale_, and their value was thus ascertained
-by law—“If a farmer hath no mead (to pay part of his rent) he shall
-pay two casks of _spiced ale_, or four casks of _common ale_ for one
-cask of mead.” By the same law, a cask of _spiced ale_, nine palms in
-height and eighteen palms in diameter, was valued at a sum equal in
-efficacy to seven pounds ten shillings of our present money; and a cask
-of _common ale_, of the same dimensions, at a sum equal to three pounds
-fifteen shillings. This is a sufficient proof that even _common ale_ at
-this period was an article of luxury among the Welsh which could only
-be obtained by the great and opulent. Wine seems to have been quite
-unknown even to the Kings of Wales at this period, as it is not so
-much as once mentioned in their laws; though Giraldus Cambrensis, who
-flourished about a century after the Conquest, acquaints us that there
-was a vineyard in his time, at Maenarper, near Pembroke, in South Wales.
-
-Before leaving the subject of the British use of ale, it will perhaps
-amuse some of our readers to find that the very name of Britain has
-been derived by some from the word βρῡτον, the Greek for beer. The
-following extract from Hearne’s Discourses is a good instance of that
-reckless ingenuity in guessing derivations, for which our older school
-of philologists was ever so justly famed:—“There is one thing,” he
-says, “which upon this occasion the antiquaries should have observed,
-and that is our Mault Liquor, called βρῡτον in Athenæus. Which being
-so, it is humbly offered to the consideration of more judicious persons
-whether our Britannia might not be denominated from βρῡτον, the whole
-nation being famous for such sort of drink. ’Tis true, Athenæus does
-not mention the Britains among those that drunk mault drink; and
-the reason is, because he had not met with any writer that had {32}
-celebrated them upon that account, whereas the others that he mentions
-to drink it were put down in his Authors. Nor will it seem a wonder,
-that even those people he speaks of were not called Britaines from the
-said liquor, since it was not their constant and common drink, but was
-only used by them upon occasion, whereas it was always made use of in
-Britain, and it was looked upon as peculiar to this Island, and other
-liquors were esteemed as foreign, and not so agreeable to the nature
-of the country. And I have some reason to think that those few other
-people that drunk it abroad did it only in imitation of the Britains,
-though we have no records remaining upon which to ground this opinion.”
-
-It is rather unfortunate that, in the cause of science, our author did
-not inform us what that “some reason to think” of his in fact was.
-However, let us honour his patriotism if we may not his learning.
-
-It would appear that ale and beer were different words signifying
-the same thing, ale being the Saxon _ealu_ and Danish _öl_, probably
-connected with our word oil, and beer being the Saxon _beor_. Horne
-Tooke, in his _Diversions of Purley_, says that “ale” is derived from a
-Saxon verb _ælan_, which signifies to inflame.
-
-The word “beer” has been the occasion of some ingenuity and not a
-little diversity of opinion among the philologists. Goldast derived
-it _a pyris_, because (he asserts) beer was first made from pears;
-Vossius from the Latin _bibere_, to drink, thus: _Bibere_, _Biber_ and
-(_extrito b_) _Bier_; Somner from the Hebrew _Bar_, corn. Probably
-the true derivation is that which connects the word with the root
-of the verb, to _brew_. However this may be, the connection of the
-word barley with the word _beere_—denoting a coarse kind of barley—is
-unmistakeable. _Beer_ was originally used to denote the beverage and
-also the plant from which it was brewed. _Beere_ or _bigge_ is still to
-be found growing in some parts of Scotland and Ireland, but in England
-it has given place to the more refined _barley_ (_i.e._, _beer-lec_ or
-beer plant).
-
-The attempt to connect the word “yule” with “ale” is probably fanciful,
-and may have originated from the use of the word “ale” as denoting not
-only the liquor, but also any festival at which it formed the principal
-beverage (_e.g._ the Whitsun Ale). Yule or Jule is probably derived,
-along with the festival it represents, from the Celts. It was a feast
-in honour of the sun, the Celtic name for which was _heol_ or _houl_
-and was designed to celebrate the time when the Sun-god, after sinking
-to his lowest point in the heavens in mid-winter, begins again to
-ascend the sky, ushering in a period of warmth and plenty. When the
-Saxons {33} were converted to Christianity, their teachers, instead of
-entirely doing away with the older forms of religion, allowed them to
-remain, adapting them to the new faith. This was very usual in early
-days of Christianity, and thus we find the heathen “Yule” merged in the
-great Christian festival of Christmas.
-
-The very ancient Anglo-Saxon poem entitled _Beowulf_, a poem which may
-be said to be the earliest considerable fragment of our language now
-extant, shows that ale was the chief drink amongst our Anglo-Saxon
-ancestors in the far-off days, before they had seized upon this land
-of England. It contains a mythological account of the rescue by the
-hero Beowulf of his friends from the Grendel, a monster who was
-constantly slaughtering and carrying some of them away. The feast is
-thus described: “Then was for the sons of the Geats, altogether, a
-bench cleared in the beer-hall; there the bold in spirit went to sit;
-the thane observed his office, he that in his hand bare the twisted
-ale-cup; he poured the bright sweet liquor.” Further on, the Danish
-queen comes in to greet the victors. “There was laughter of heroes,
-the noise was modulated, words were winsome; Wealtheow, Hrothgar’s
-queen, went forth; mindful of their races, she, hung round with gold,
-greeted the men in the hall; and the freeborn lady gave the cup first
-to the prince of the East Danes; she bade him be blithe at the service
-of beer, dear to his people. He, the king, proud of victory, joyfully
-received the feast and hall-cup . . .”
-
-That it was customary among our ancestors for the lady of the house
-herself to fill the guests’ cups after dinner, may be gathered from the
-poem called the _Geste of Kyng Horn_, which in its present form is of
-thirteenth century date, but is probably founded upon a much earlier
-work. The poem thus describes Rymenhild, the queen and wife of King
-Horn, performing this duty:—
-
- Rymenhild ros of benche
- Wyn for to schenche;[9]
- After mete in sale,[10]
- Bothe wyn and ale.
- On horn he bar in honde.
- So laye was in londe,[11] {34}
- Knightes and squier
- Alle dronken of the ber.
-
-   [9] _Schenche_ = to pour out.
-
-   [10] _Sale_ = hall.
-
-   [11]
-      A horn she bare in her hand,
-      So was the custom in the land.
-
-These lines also show that ale and beer were used at that time as
-interchangeable words.
-
-Our Saxon ancestors seem to have made use of several kinds of beverage;
-they had wine and mead, cider, which they called _æppelwin_, and
-piment, which was a compound of wine, honey, and spices. Ale and beer,
-however, seem, to use the quaint words of old Harrison, to have “borne
-the brunt in drincking,” and to have formed the national beverage of
-the English people from the earliest times to the present day. Ale,
-honest English ale, was the general drink, and wine was a luxury of the
-rich, as may be gathered from the old Anglo-Saxon dialogue, entitled
-_Alfric’s Colloquy_, in which a lad, on being asked what his drink is,
-replies, “Ale, if I have it, water, if I have it not.” To the question
-why he does not drink wine his answer is, “I am not so rich that I can
-buy me wine; and wine is not the drink of children or the weak-minded,
-but of the elders and the wise.”
-
-The _Exeter Book_, which contains a collection of Anglo-Saxon songs and
-poems, and was presented to the church at Exeter by Bishop Leofric in
-the eleventh century, contains one of those curious rhyming riddles so
-popular among the Saxons, which were known as _Symposii Ænigmata_. It
-is as follows:—
-
- A part of the earth is
- Prepared beautifully,
- With the hardest,
- And with the sharpest,
- And with the grimmest
- Of the productions of men,
- Cut and . . . .
- Turned and dried,
- Bound and twisted,
- Bleached and awakened,
- Ornamented and poured out,
- Carried afar
- To the doors of the people,
- It is joy in the inside
- Of living creatures,
- It knocks and slights
- Those, of whom while alive {35}
- A long while
- It obeys the will,
- And expostulateth not,
- And then after death
- It takes upon it to judge,
- To talk variously.
- It is greatly to seek,
- By the wisest man,
- What this creature is.
-
-Those who remember the more elaborate legend of _John Barleycorn_ will
-not have far to seek for the solution of this somewhat ponderous riddle.
-
-The Anglo-Saxons, before their conversion to Christianity, believed
-that some of the chief blessings to be enjoyed by departed heroes were
-the frequent and copious draughts of ale served round to them in the
-halls of Odin. Even after the spread of Christianity had dispelled
-this heathen notion, all the evidence available seems to point rather
-to an enlarged than a diminished consumption of malt liquors. Whether
-our forefathers, practically-minded like their descendants, resolved
-to make up here upon earth for the loss of the expected joys of which
-their new creed had robbed them, it is impossible at this distance
-of time to determine; but certain it is that the popularity of our
-national beverage has gone on increasing from that day to this.
-
-In these early days rents were not infrequently paid in ale. In 852 the
-Abbot of Medeshampstede (Peterborough) let certain lands at Sempringham
-to one Wulfred, on this condition, amongst others, that he should each
-year deliver to the minster two tuns of pure ale and ten _mittans_
-(measures) of Welsh ale. The ale-gafol mentioned in the laws of Ine was
-a tribute or rent of ale paid by the tenant to the lord of the manor.
-By an ancient charter granted in the time of King Alfred, the tenants
-of Hysseburne, amongst other services, rendered six church-mittans of
-ale.
-
-Ale was also in olden days frequently liable to the payment of a toll
-(_tollester_) to the lord of the manor. In a Gloucestershire manor it
-was customary for a tenant holding in villeinage to pay as toll to the
-lord gallons of ale, whenever he brewed ale to sell. At Fiskerton, in
-Notts, if {36} an ale-wife brews ale to sell she is to satisfy the
-lord for _tollester_. In the manor of Tidenham, in Saxon times the
-villein is to pay to the lord at the Martinmass six sesters of malt;
-and in the same manor, in the reign of Edward I., we find the rent
-changed into a toll, the tenant at the later period being bound to
-render to the lord 8 gallons of beer at every brewing.
-
-Similarly, wages were in some manors paid in kind. At Brissingham,
-Norfolk, the tenants, amongst other services, might perform 125
-_ale-beeves_ in the year, _i.e._, carting-days, on which attendance
-was not compulsory, but on which the tenants, if they did attend, were
-entitled to bread and ale in lieu of wages. The word “bever” still
-occurs in some places, denoting a harvest-man’s drink between breakfast
-and dinner.
-
-The Saxons and Danes were of a social disposition, and delighted in
-forming themselves into fraternities or guilds. An important feature of
-these institutions was the meeting for convivial purposes, and their
-object was to promote good fellowship among the members. The laws for
-the regulation of some of these bodies are still in existence, and
-it seems were enforced by fines of honey, or malt, to be used in the
-making of mead or ale for the use of the members of the confraternity.
-It seems that both clergy and laity were members of certain of the
-guilds, at any rate at one period of their history, and allusion is
-probably made to these mixed fraternities in the Canons of Archbishop
-Walter, A.D. 1200, in which he directs “that clerks go not to taverns
-and drinking bouts, for from thence come quarrels, and then laymen beat
-clergymen, and fall under the Canon.”
-
-During the Middle Ages ale was the usual drink of all classes of
-Englishmen, and the wines of France were a luxury, in general only
-consumed by the upper classes. In France, however, wine was the common
-drink, and ale a luxury. William Fitz-Stephen, in his Life of Thomas
-à Becket, states that when the latter went on an embassy to France,
-he took with him two waggons laden with beer in iron-bound casks, as
-a present to the French, “who admire that kind of drink, for it is
-wholesome, clear, of the colour of wine, and of a better taste.”
-
-As an instance of the fame which English ale had attained abroad in
-the twelfth century, may be cited the reply of Pope Innocent III. to
-those who were arguing before him the case of the Bishop of Worcester’s
-claims against the Abbey of Evesham. “Holy father,” said they, “we have
-learnt in the schools, and this is the opinion of our masters, that
-there is no prescription against the rights of bishops.” His Holiness’s
-reply was blunt and somewhat personal: “Certainly, both you and your
-masters had drunk too much English ale when you learnt this.” {37}
-
-A curious extract may here be added as indicative of the fame of
-English ale amongst foreigners in the fourteenth and fifteenth
-centuries. It is taken from a work entitled “_A Relation; or rather
-a true account of the Island of England_, A.D. 1500, translated from
-the Italian by C. A. Sneyd.” “The deficiency of wine, however,” says
-our author, “is amply supplied by the abundance of ale and beer, to
-the use of which these people have become so habituated, that at an
-entertainment where there is plenty of wine, they will drink them
-in preference to it, and in great quantities. Like discreet people,
-however, they do not offer them to Italians, unless they should ask
-for them, and they think that no greater honour can be conferred,
-or received, than to invite others to eat with them, or be invited
-themselves; and they would sooner give five or six ducats to provide an
-entertainment for a person, than a groat to assist him in any distress.
-They are not without vines; and I have eaten grapes from one, and wine
-might be made in Southern parts, but it would probably be harsh. The
-natural deficiency of the country is supplied by a great quantity of
-excellent wines from Candia, Germany, France, and Spain; besides which,
-the common people make two beverages from Wheat, Barley, and Oats, one
-of which is called beer, and the other Ale; and these liquors are much
-liked by them, nor are they disliked by foreigners, after they have
-drank them four or six times; they are most agreeable to the palate,
-when a person is by some chance rather heated.”
-
-The regulations of the religious houses nearly always make reference to
-ale; and it may be inferred from the evidence we possess, that the holy
-fathers, who were always strong sticklers for the rights and privileges
-of their order, would brook no interference either with the quantity
-or quality of their liquor. In the Institutes of the Abbey of Evesham,
-drawn up by Abbot Randulf about the year 1223, the directions as to
-the diet of the inmates of the Abbey, are of great particularity. The
-Prior is to have one measure of ale at supper (except when he shall sup
-with the Abbot). Each of the fraternity shall every day receive two
-measures of ale, each of which shall contain two pittances, of which
-pittances six make up a “sextarium regis.” In the same rules it is laid
-down that the monks are to have “two semes of beans from Huniburne,
-to make _puddings_ throughout all Lent.” Bean-pudding seems indeed a
-mortification of the flesh! Further on we find: “On every day every
-two brethren shall have one measure of ale from the cellar, but after
-being let blood they shall have one for dinner and another for supper.
-The servant who shall let the monks’ blood shall have bread and ale
-{38} from the cellar, if he have blooded more than one.” A further
-account of the monks as brewers will be found in the succeeding chapter.
-
-The Proverbs of Hendyng (thirteenth century) give good advice as of the
-duties of charity and hospitality:—
-
- Gef thou havest bred and ale
- Ne put thou nout al in thy male[12],
-   Thou del hit sum aboute.
- Be thou fre of thy meeles,
- Wherso me eny mete deles,
-   Gest thou nout with-oute.[13]
- “_Betere is appel y-geve then y-ete,_”
-                        _Quoth Hendyng_.
-
-In the fourteenth century taxes seem to have been occasionally levied
-on ale for certain specific purposes. In 1363 the inhabitants of
-Abbeville were granted a tax on ale for the purpose of repairing their
-fortifications. For each _lotus of ale of gramville_ the tax was one
-penny _Parisien_; for each _lotus of god-ale_ the tax was ½d. (Rhymer
-2. 712.).
-
-In a curious old poem of the early part of the fourteenth century
-entitled _De Baptismo_, by William of Shoreham, it appears to the
-poet, necessary to lay down that ale must not be used for purposes of
-baptism, but “kende water” (_i.e._, natural water) only. The verse is
-as follows:—
-
- Therefore ine wine me ne may,
- Inne sithere ne inne pereye,
- Ne inne thing that neuere water nes
- Thory cristning man may reneye,
-            Ne inne ale;
- For thei hight were water ferst,
- Of water neth hit tale.[14]
-
-   [12] Male = bag or wallet.
-
-   [13]
-      Whether men give any meat away or no,
-      Go thou not without (giving).
-
-   [14] See p. 401.
-
-This old English requires some little explanation, and may be rendered
-thus:—Therefore man may not renounce (his sins) through christening in
-wine, in cider, nor in perry, nor in anything that never was water,
-nor yet in ale, for though this (_i.e._, ale) was water first, it is
-acounted water no longer. {39}
-
-Whilst Christmas, as far as eating was concerned, always had its
-specialities, its liquor _carte_ seems even in the thirteenth century
-to have been of a very varied character. An old carolist of the period
-thus sings (we follow Douce’s translation):—
-
- Lordlings, Christmas loves good drinking,
-   Wines of Gascoigne, France, Anjou,
- English ale that drives out thinking,
-   Prince of liquors, old or new,
- Every neighbour shares the bowl,
-   Drinks of the spicy liquor deep;
- Drinks his fill without control,
-   Till he drowns his care in sleep.
-
-_Piers the Ploughman_, a poem by William Longland, written towards the
-close of the fourteenth century, contains a curious confession of the
-tricks played by the ale-sellers upon their customers:—
-
- I boughte hire Barly heo breuh hit to sulle;
- Peni-ale and piriwhit heo pourede to-gedere
- For laborers and louh folk that liuen be hem-seluen.
- The Beste in the Bed-chaumbre lay bi the wowe,
- Hose Bummede therof Boughte hit ther-after,
- A galoun for a grote, God wot, no lasse,
- Whon hit com in Cuppemel; such craftes me usede.
-
-This, being interpreted, in modern English would read somewhat as
-follows:—I bought her barley they brew it to sell; Peny ale (_i.e._,
-ale at a penny a gallon) and small perry she poured together for
-labourers and poor folk that live by themselves. The best lay in the
-bed chamber by the wall, whoso drank thereof bought it (_i.e._, the
-penny ale) by the sample (_i.e._, of the best) a gallon for a groat,
-God knows, no less, when it came in by cupfulls; such craft I used.
-
-Piers the Ploughman, in describing the scarcity of labour after the
-great plague in the fourteenth century and the independence of the
-labouring men that arose from the high wages they were enabled to
-demand, says that after harvest they would eat none but the finest
-bread,
-
- Ne non half-penny Ale In none wyse drynke,
- Bote of the Beste and the Brouneste that Brewesters sullen.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Mai no peny-Ale hem paye ne no pece of Bacun, {40}
- Bote hit weore Fresch Flesch or elles Fisch y-Friyet,
- Both chaud and plus chaud for chele of heore mawe.[15]
-
-   [15] As we should say, “hot and hot,” for chill of their stomach.
-
-Chaucer has many references to ale. The Cook, who was no mean
-proficient in his proper art, was a judge of ale as well:—
-
- A coke thei hadde with them for the nones,
- To boyle the chickens, and the marrie bones,
- And pouder marchaunt tarte, and galengale,
- Well coude he know a pot of London ale.
-
-The Miller prepares himself to tell his tale aright by swallowing
-mighty draughts of the same liquor. He knows he is drunk, and is not
-ashamed, thinking it quite sufficient excuse to lay the blame upon that
-seductive fluid, “the ale of Southwerk”:—
-
- Now herkeneth, quod the miller, all and some
- But first I make a protestatioun,
- That I am dronke, I know it by my soun;
- And therefore if that I misspeke or say,
- Wite it the ale of Southwerk, I you pray.
-
-The two Cambridge students who lodge a night at the miller of
-Trompington’s are feasted by their host in this wise:—
-
- The miller the toun his daughter sent
- For ale and bred, and roasted hem a goos,
-        *       *       *       *       *
- They soupen and they speken of solace,
- And drinken ever strong ale at the best.
- Abouten midnight wente they to rest.
-
-Before they went, however, they had “dronken all that was in crouke,”
-and the miller, who appears to have had the lion’s share, had decidedly
-imbibed too much.
-
- Well hath this miller vernished his hed,
- Full pale he was, for-dronken, and nought red.
-        *       *       *       *       *
- This miller hath so wisely bibbed ale,
- That as an hors he snorteth in his slepe.
-
-Geoffrey Chaucer, along with other poets and writers of his times, was
-unsparing in his denunciations of the vices of the clergy, their sloth,
-gluttony, drunkenness and other grievous lapses.
-
- Thei side of many manir metes,
- With song and solas sitting long; {41}
- And filleth their wombe, and fast fretes,
- And after mete with harp and song,
- And hot spices ever among;
- And fille their wombe with wine and ale.
-
-Piers the Ploughman, in his _Crede_, which is a satire upon the clergy,
-makes the Franciscan say, in contrasting his own order with other
-religious bodies:—
-
- We haunten not tavernes, ne hobelen abouten
- At merketes and miracles we medeley us never.
-
-The frequent directions to the monks and clergy to abstain from
-taverns, from drinking bouts and revels, all point to the necessity
-then felt of tightening the bonds of church discipline, and show the
-laxity that had prevailed.
-
-John Taylor, the Water Poet, frequently selected ale as his theme, and,
-when once mounted on his favourite hobby, soon travelled into such
-realms of marvellous history and miraculous philology, that it almost
-takes away one’s breath to follow him. The chief work in which he
-glorifies our English Ale has for its full title,
-
-                          DRINKE AND WELCOME
-                                OR THE
-                            FAMOUS HISTORIE
-       OF THE MOST PART OF DRINKS IN USE NOW IN THE KINGDOMES OF
-      GREAT BRITTAINE AND IRELAND, WITH AN ESPECIALL DECLARATION
-                OF THE POTENCY, VERTUE AND OPERATION OF
-                           OUR ENGLISH ALE,
-          WITH A DESCRIPTION OF ALL SORTS OF WATERS, FROM THE
-                 OCEAN SEA, TO THE TEARES OF A WOMAN.
-                               AS ALSO,
-      THE CAUSES OF ALL SORTES OF WEATHER, FAIRE OR FOULE, SLEET,
-      RAINE, HAILE, FROST, SNOWE, FOGGES, MISTS, VAPOURS, CLOUDS,
-                STORMES, WINDES, THUNDER AND LIGHTNING
-     COMPILED FIRST IN THE HIGH DUTCH TONGUE BY THE PAINEFULL AND
-       INDUSTRIOUS “HULDRICKE VAN SPEAGLE, A GRAMMATICALL BREWER
-        OF LUBECK, AND NOW MOST LEARNEDLY ENLARGED, AMPLIFIED,
-              AND TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH PROSE AND VERSE
-                            By JOHN TAYLOR.
-                                LONDON
-                     PRINTED BY ANNE GRIFFIN 1637.
-
-{42}
-
-After speaking of cider, perry, &c., the author goes on to speak of
-ale, which “hath been and now is used by the English, as well since the
-Conquest as in the times of the Brittains, Saxons, and Danes (for the
-former-recited drinks are to this day confined to the Principality)
-so as we enjoy them onely by a Statute called the courtesie of Wales.
-And to perfect any discourse in this I shall onely induce them into
-two heads, viz., the unparalleled liquor called Ale with his abstract
-Beere; whose antiquity amongst a sort of Northerne pated fellowes, is,
-if not altogether contemptible, of very little esteeme; this humour
-served the scurrilous pen of a shamelesse writer[16] in the raigne of
-King Henry the third; detractingly to inveigh against this unequal’d
-liquor. Thus
-
- ‘For muddy, foggy, fulsome, puddle, stinking,
-  For all of these, Ale is the onely drinking.’
-
-   [16] Henry D’Avranches.
-
-“Of all the Authors that I have ever yet read, this is the only
-one that hath attempted to brand the glorious splendour of that
-_Ale-beloved_ decoction; but observe this fellow, by the perpetuall
-use of water (which was his accustomed drinke) he fell into such
-convulsions and lethargick diseases, that he remained in opinion
-a dead man; however, the knowing Physicians of that time, by the
-frequent and inward application of _Ale_, not onely recouvered him to
-his pristine state of health, but also enabled him in body and braine
-for the future, that he became famous in his writings, which for the
-most part were afterwards spent with most _Aleoquent_ and _Alaborate_
-commendation of that admired and most superexcellent Imbrewage.”
-
-“Some there are,” he says, “that affirme that Ale was first invened
-by _Alexander the Great_, and that in his conquests this liquor did
-infuse such vigour and valour into his souldiers. Others say that
-famous Physician of Piemont (named _Don Alexis_) was the founder of it.
-But it is knowne that it was of that singular use in the time of the
-_Saxons_ that none were allowed to brewe it but such whose places and
-qualities were most _Eminent_, insomuch that we finde that one of them
-had the credit to give the name of a _Saxon_ Prince, who in honour of
-that rare quality, he called _Alle_. Some _ale_adge that it being our
-drinke when our land was called _Albion_, that it had the name of the
-countrey; _Twiscus_ in his _Euphorbinum_ will have it from _Albanta_ or
-_Epirus_, _Wolfgang Plashendorph_ of _Gustenburg_, saies that _Alecto_
-(one of the three furies) gave the receipt of it to _Albumazar_, a
-Magician, and he (having _Aliance_ {43} with _Aladine_, the Soldan at
-_Aleppo_) first brew’d it there, whereto may be _Aleuded_, the story
-how _Alphonsus_ of _Scicily_, sent it from thence to the battell of
-_Alcazar_. My Authour is of Anaxagoras’ opinion, that _Ale_ is to
-be held in high price for the nutritive substance that it is indued
-withall, and how precious a nurse it is in generall to Mankinde.
-
-“It is true that the overmuch taking of it doth so much exhilerate the
-spirits, that a man is not improperly said to be in the _Aletitude_
-(observe the word, I pray you, and all the words before or after for
-you shall find their first syllable to be _Ale_), and some writers are
-of opinion that the Turkish _Alcoran_ was invented by Mahomet, out
-of such furious raptures as _Ale_ inspired him withall; some affirme
-Bacchus (_Al’as Liber Pater_) was the first Brewer of it, among the
-_Indians_, who being a stranger to them they nam’d it _Ale_, as brought
-by an _Alien_: in a word, _Somnus altus_ signifies dead sleepe: _Quies
-alta_, Great rest; _Altus_ and _Alta_, noble and excellent: It is (for
-the most part) extracted out of the spirit of a Graine called Barley,
-which was of that estimation amongest the ancient _Galles_ that their
-Prophets (whom they called _Bards_) used it in their most important
-prophesies and ceremonies: This Graine, after it had beene watered and
-dryed, was at first ground in a Mill in the island of _Malta_, from
-whence it is supposed to gaine the name of Malt; but I take it more
-proper from the word _Malleolus_, which signifies a Hammer or Maule,
-for _Hanniball_ (that great _Carthaginian_ Captaine) in his sixteene
-yeeres warres against the Romans, was called the _Maule_ of _Italie_,
-for it is conjectured that he victoriously Mauld them by reason that
-his army was daily refreshed with the Spiritefull Elixar of _Mault_.
-
-“It holds very significant to compare a man in the _Aletitude_ to be
-in a planetarie height, for in a Planet, the Altitude is his motion
-in which he is carried from the lowest place of Heaven or from the
-Center of the Earth, into the most highest place, or unto the top of
-his circle, and then it is said to be in _Apogee_, that is the most
-_Transcendant_ part of all, so the Sublunarie of a Stupified Spirit,
-being elevated by the efficacious vigour of this uncontrolleable
-vertue, renders him most capable for high actions.”
-
-After much more in the same vein, sufficient to astonish the most
-reckless of modern punsters, our author winds up his account of the
-antiquity of ale as follows:—
-
-“I will therefore _shut up_ with that admirable conclusion insisted
-upon in our time by a discreet Gentleman in a Solemne Assembly, who
-by a Politick observation, very aptly compares _Ale_ and Cakes with
-Wine and {44} Waters, neither doth he hold it fit that it should stand
-in competition with the meanest wines, but with that most excellent
-composition which the Prince of Physicians _Hippocrases_ had so
-ingeniously compounded for the preservation of Mankinde, and which (to
-this day) speakes the Author by the name of _Hippocras_. So that you
-see for Antiquity—_Ale_ was famous amongst the _Troians_, _Brittaines_,
-_Romans_, _Saxons_, _Normans_, _Englishmen_, _Welch_, besides in
-_Scotland_, from the highest and Noblest Palace to the poorest and
-meanest Cottage.”
-
-Other curious details with respect to the use of ale in the Middle Ages
-and in modern times will be found in their appropriate places, and
-having established clearly enough the highly respectable antiquity of
-the Prince of liquors, old or new, it is time, in the elegant language
-of the Water Poet, to “shut up” this portion of the subject; and so
-we pass on, concluding here with an extract from the _Philosopher’s
-Banquet_, on the pre-eminence of ale:—
-
- Ale for antiquity may plead and stand
- Before the conquest, conquering in this land;
- Beere, that is younger brother of her age,
- Was not then borne, nor right to bee her page;
- In every pedling village, borough, town,
- Ale plaid at football, and tript all lads down;
- And tho’ shee’s rivall’d now by beere, her mate,
- Most doctors aiwt on herthis shewes her state.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{45}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-
- Heap high the fire, and, O ye Lares, smile;
- And, Innocence, with plenty hither bring
- Hilarity; while Friendship brims the cup
- With home-brewed Ale, and every welcom’d guest
- Forgets the storm . . .
-                              _Booker’s Sequel Poem to the Hop Garden._
-
- I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year,
- With your pockets full of money, and your cellar full of beer.
-                                                           _Old Carol._
-
-_HOME-BREWED ALES. — OLD RECEIPTS. — HISTORICAL FACTS. — DEAN SWIFT ON
-HOME-BREW. — CHRISTOPHER NORTH’S BREW-HOUSE._
-
-Hogarth’s _Farmer’s Return_ represents the worthy man just come in from
-his morning round or from distant market town. As he rests awhile in
-the farmhouse kitchen he draws sweet solace from the pipe brought him
-by his daughter, while he eyes with keen expectance the jug of foaming
-home-brew which his buxom wife, in her hurry to serve her lord, is
-spilling on the tiled floor. These two old friends, firm supporters
-of each other, the farmers and home-brewed ale, have almost parted
-company. Home-brew, indeed, has become, in some places, an extinct and
-almost forgotten beverage. It is a curious fact, however, that between
-the years 1884 and 1886 there was a slight increase in the number of
-persons brewing their own ale. {46}
-
-[Illustration: THE FARMERS RETURN.]
-
-The late Mr. Wm. Cobbett, writing in 1821 on the subject of brewing,
-says, “To show Englishmen, forty years ago, that it was good for them
-to brew beer in their houses, would have been as impertinent as gravely
-to insist that they ought to endeavour not to lose their breath; for in
-those times, to have a _house_ and not to brew was a rare thing indeed.
-Mr. Ellman, an old man and a large farmer in Sussex, has recently
-given, in evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, this
-fact: that forty years ago there was not a labourer in his parish that
-did not brew his own beer; and that now there is not one that does it,
-except by chance the malt be given him.”
-
-The decadence of the art of domestic brewing is, for some reasons,
-a matter for regret. The causes are not far to seek. The improved
-machinery of the modern brewer, which enables him to make an uniformly
-excellent beer, and to sell it at a low price; and the railways which
-now traverse every part of the country, carrying his single, double,
-or treble X, as the case may be, to places where half a century back
-no one dreamt of purchasing ale for home consumption—to these great
-changes is undoubtedly due the partial downfall of home-brew that has
-taken {47} place. Not only has the practice of domestic brewing much
-declined, but from the same causes there has been of late years an
-extraordinary and lamentable decrease in the numbers of small country
-brewers.
-
-Although the name of home-brew carries with it many old associations
-and sentiments which we abandon with regret—memories of bright March
-beer and mellow old October, of snug ingle-nooks and raftered ceilings,
-and of kind, if homely, welcome—we cannot but admit, as on a hot day
-we drain our tankard of Burton bitter, or of world-famed London stout,
-that life has still its compensations.
-
-“To make barley-water was an invention which found out itself with
-little more than the joyning the ingredients together,” said old
-Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_; “but to make mault for drinke,
-was a master-piece indeed.” This old writer would seem to give the
-maltster more credit than the brewer. In his day, however, the
-distinction between the two was slight, for nearly every country
-gentleman or farmer was both his own brewer and his own maltster.
-
-In 1610, the justices of Rutland, in settling the rate of domestic
-servants’ wages, adjudged that a chief woman, who could bake and brew
-_and make malt_, should have the sum of 24_s_. 8_d_. by the year; while
-a second best, who could brew but not malt, was to have 23_s_. 4_d_.
-
-The earliest connected account of domestic malting and brewing which
-we have been able to find, occurs in a poetical work of the thirteenth
-century, called the _Treatise of Walter de Biblesworth_. The treatise
-deals with most matters of domestic concern and every-day life, and
-the passage in which the malting of barley and the brewing of ale are
-described, is so curious that it is given below in full length from the
-text to be found in _National Antiquities_, vol. i. (priv. pub. Th.
-Wright, Ed.).
-
- “Seyoms ore entour cerveyse,
-  Pur fere gens ben à eyse.
-  Alumet, amy, cele lefrenole,[17] {48}
-  E kaunt averas manges de brakole,
-  En une cuwe[18] large e leez,
-  Cel orge là enfoundrez;
-  E kaunt sera enfoundré,
-  E le ewe seyt escouloé,
-  Mountez cel haut soler,
-  Si le festes nette baler,[19]
-  E là cochet votre blée,
-  Taunke seyt ben germée,
-  De cele houre appelleras,
-  Brès, ke blée avant nomas.
-  Le brès de vostre mayn muez
-  En mounceus ou en rengeés;[20]
-  Pus le portez en un corbel,
-  Pur ensechier au toral.[21]
-  Le corbel e le corbiloun
-  Vous serviront au fusoyn.
-  Kaunt vostre brez est molu,
-  E de ewe chaude ben enbeu,
-  Des bertiz[22] ver cervoyse
-  Par art contrové teise.
-  Ky fet miracles e merveyles,
-  De une chaundelie deus chandelis,
-  De homme lay fet bon clerc,
-  A homme desconu doune merk,
-  Homme fort fet chatoner, {49}
-  E homme à roye haut juper,[23]
-  Taunt de vertu de la grees
-  De servoyse fet de brès,
-  Ke la coyfe[24] de un bricoun
-  Teyndre seet sanz vermilloun.
-  Ceste matyre cy repose,
-  Parlom ore de autre chose.”
-
-   [17] Some old Englishman has written in the MS. over difficult
-   words his interpretation of them; an interpretation frequently of
-   great assistance, but occasionally in itself not a little puzzling.
-   This word _lefrenole_, however, he much elucidates by annotating it
-   “kex;” in Gloucestershire and in other parts of the country the word
-   is still used to signify the hemlock, and may be found in many old
-   writers. Lygones, in _A King and No King_, refers to his legs as
-   “withered kexes.” The word was probably occasionally used to denote
-   a candle, and this is the meaning assigned to it here. Langland, in
-   the _Vision of Piers Ploughman_, says that glowing embers do not
-   serve the workman’s purpose so well,
-
-     “As dooth a kex or a candle
-      That caught hath fire and blazeth.”
-
-   Allusion is also made to the use of stalks of hemlock as candles in
-   _Turn. of Tottenham_, 201.
-
-   [18] Our annotator says “a mikel fat.” The word “kive” is found in
-   later English for the same utensil.
-
-   [19] Suepet klene.
-
-   [20] “On hepe other on rowe” is the quaint gloss.
-
-   [21] _Toral_ is noted “kulne.”
-
-   [22] _Bertiz_ is probably a form of _bertzissa_, which seems to be a
-   barbarous rendering of _wort_.
-
-   [23] _Juper_ is annotated _houten_, _i.e._, to hoot or shout.
-
-   [24] The word _coyfe_ here seems to signify not _cap_, but _head_ or
-   _face_; another such use of the word is to be found in the _Chron.
-   de Nangis_ (1377), and is mentioned in Sainte-Palaye’s _Hist. Dict.
-   of the French Language_.
-
-It is believed that no translation of this curious old poem has been
-published, and a rendering is accordingly added in which literal
-accuracy rather than poetical elegance has been aimed at.
-
-  Ale shall now engage my pen,
-  To set at rest the hearts of men.
-  First, my friend, your candle light,[25]
-  Next of spiced cake take a bite;
-  Then steep your barley in a vat,
-  Large and broad, take care of that;
-  When you shall have steeped your grain,
-  And the water let out-drain,
-  Take it to an upper floor,
-  If you’ve swept it clean before,
-  There couch,[26] and let your barley dwell,
-  Till it germinates full well.
-  Malt now you shall call the grain,
-  Corn it ne’er shall be again.
-  Stir the malt then with your hand,
-  In heaps or rows now let it stand;
-  On a tray then you shall take it,
-  To a kiln to dry and bake it.
-  The tray and eke a basket light
-  Will serve to spread the malt aright. {50}
-  When your malt is ground in mill,
-  And of hot water has drank its fill,
-  And skill has changed the wort to ale,
-  Then to see you shall not fail
-  Miracles and marvels; Lo!
-  Two candles out of one do grow;
-  Ale makes a layman a good clerk,
-  To one unknown it gives a mark,
-  Ale makes the strong go on all fours,
-  And fill the streets with shouts and roars.
-  The good ale from the malt at length,
-  So draws the barley’s pride and strength,
-  That a royster’s figure-head
-  Needs no dye to make it red.
-  Here, then, let the matter rest,
-  To talk of other things were best.
-
-   [25] _i.e._, you must rise betimes.
-
-   [26] The word “couch” has still a technical meaning in malting.
-
-As everybody knows, the monks of old were famous for their home-brewed
-ales, and the brewer and cellarer, whether in mitred abbey or in the
-less distinguished religious houses, were officials of considerable
-importance. The office of cellarer was one held in especial
-estimation. An old glossary describes his position in the monastery as
-follows:—“_Pater debet esse totius congregationis_,” and in the priory
-of St. Swithin at Winchester special prayers were offered up for this
-functionary. Such a person is depicted on this page. The monk whose
-anxious eye proclaims the sad fact that in tasting the liquor entrusted
-to his charge he is exceeding his duty, is a cellarer who evidently
-makes the most of his opportunities. The drawing is taken from a
-manuscript in the Arundel collection.
-
-[Illustration: “Is it in condition?”]
-
-{51}
-
-[Illustration: Mediæval Cellarer.]
-
-Some curious entries relating to home-brew are to be found in the
-registry of the priory of Worcester, A.D. 1240. At each brewing “_VIII.
-cronn: de greu_ and x _quarteria de meis_” were used; which probably
-signifies eight cronns or four quarters of growte (here meaning ground
-malt), and ten quarters of mixed barley and oat malt. A long list then
-follows of the allowances of beer amongst the different officials of
-the house. The beer was of three different kinds, _prima_ or _melior_,
-_secunda_, and _tertia_. The cellarer is to have one measure of prime
-and one of second. In the brewhouse four measures of the prime are to
-be distributed, and two measures on the day on which the ale is to
-be moved. The servant of the church is to have the holy-water bucket
-full of “mixta,” _i.e._, part prime and part second, or, it may be,
-a mixture of all three sorts. This “mixta” seems to have been an
-anticipation of the “half-and-half” and “three threads” of more modern
-times. Each of those who help to carry the ale are to have two measures
-of the first and second mixed, and so the list proceeds through all
-the officers and servants of the priory. Ale, indeed, seems to have
-been their chief drink, and even the invalid (_potionandus_) about to
-undergo a course of physicking was allowed his measure of ale. Our
-doubts as to the wisdom of this dieting hardly require the confirmation
-they receive from the further direction that he was to have pork, fowl
-with stuffing, cheese, and eggs.
-
-Sometimes the records tell sad tales of the poor monks being robbed of
-their beer by reason of the malt failing.
-
-This misfortune is recorded in the annals of Dunstable as having
-happened in 1262. The annalist ruefully mentions that “in this year,
-about the Feast of John the Baptist, our ale failed.” Very soon after
-this, however, they made provision for the deficiency by purchasing
-from H. Chadde £20 worth of malt; the quantity is not mentioned, but
-at the rates of the day it would no doubt considerably exceed 100
-quarters, so that for some time the monks could have known no want. In
-1274 the same disaster occurred:—“At the Feast of Pentecost our malt
-failed.” This time the holy fathers were equal to the occasion. “We
-drank,” so run the annals, “five casks of wine, and it did us much
-good.” {52}
-
-The crimes and misdeeds of Roger Noreys, the wicked abbot of Evesham
-at the end of the twelfth century, seem to have culminated when he not
-only called the monks “puppies, vassals, and ribalds,” but, adding
-injury to insult, compelled them to live for many days on hard bread
-and “ale little differing from water.” This was too much, and the monks
-petitioned the archbishop against such ill-treatment. The abbot, it may
-be remarked, appears from the records of the House to have taken very
-good care of himself, though he treated the monks so ill, and it might
-have been said of him as it was of another ecclesiastic whose name,
-unfortunately, has not accompanied the verse:—
-
- Bonum vinum cum sapore
- Bibit abbas cum priore
- Sed conventus de pejore
-     Semper solet bibere.
-
-John of Brokehampton, who became abbot of Evesham in 1282, had himself
-filled the office of cellarer, and amongst many other benefits
-conferred by him upon the House during his abbacy, he built a bakehouse
-and a brewhouse “not only strongly but sumptuously.”
-
-On certain special days set apart for “_doing the great O_,”[27] which
-was a facetious way of saying that they were holidays when nothing was
-done, a more liberal allowance of ale was made, and on the occasion
-of the election of a Canon for St. Paul’s, foreign wine and other
-delicacies were added to the feast.
-
-   [27] “Facere O” in some places had reference to the introit
-   beginning “O Sapientia.”
-
-Some slight idea of a monastic feast in the thirteenth century may be
-gathered from the accompanying illustration. The presence of women is
-significant, and the quaint spit, and the round-bottomed glass which
-one of the monks holds in his hand and which cannot be set down until
-empty, are noteworthy.
-
-What a gentleman’s cellar ought to contain is thus described by
-Alexander Neckam, a twelfth-century writer:—“In promptuario sive
-in celario,” he writes, “sunt cadi, utres,[28] dolea, ciphi,[29]
-cophini, . . . vina, scicera, cerevicia, sive celia, mustum, claretum,
-nectar,[30] medo {53} sive ydromellum,[31] piretum, vinum rosetum,
-vinum feretum, vinum falernum, vinum girofilatum.” Some old scribe
-has noted this work in the same way as the annotator of the _Treatise
-of Walter de Biblesworth_, and taking up the hints he has given, the
-passage may be translated:—“In the cellar are barrels, leather bottles
-or wine skins, tuns, beakers, baskets, . . . wines, cyder, ale, new
-wine, claret, piment, meed or ydromellum, perry, Mount Rose wine,
-Falernian, garihofilac, &c. . . .” Not a bad assortment of liquors
-for an Early Englishman! Our cut, taken from the Roxburghe ballads,
-represents a well-stocked cellar of the olden times.
-
-   [28] Utres is noted ‘coutreus.’
-
-   [29] Ciphi = anaps, cophini = anapers. On this word anaps, or
-   hanaps, see page 395.
-
-   [30] Nectar or Piment was a luscious kind of drink compounded of
-   wine, honey and spices; it was called after the pigmentarii, or
-   apothecaries who prepared it, and was in fact a liqueur.
-
-   [31] Ydromellum is explained in the _Ortus_ as _potus ex aqua et
-   melle_, _Anglice mede or growte_ (Growte = wort in an early stage
-   of the brewing). In _Alfric’s Colloquy_, however, it is said to be
-   _beor_, or _mulsum_. The true explanation of this discrepancy seems
-   to be that ydromellum, while properly signifying an inferior sort of
-   mead, was also used by analogy to denote the sweet liquor _wort_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{54}
-
-The requisites of a brewhouse of the fourteenth or fifteenth century
-are described in a Latin-English Vocabulary of the period:—
-
- Brasiatrix, a brewster (a female brewer).
- Cima, a kymnelle (a mash tub). Fornax, a furnasse.
- Alveum, a trogh. Brasium, malte. Barzissa, wortte.
- Dragium, draf (grains). Calderium, a caldron.
- Taratantarum, a temse (sieve). Cuvella, a kunlion (small tub).
- Ydromellum, growte. Mola, a quern (handmill).
- Pruera, ling (a broom made of ling).
-
-That graphic old writer, Harrison, in his Preface to _Hollinshed’s
-Chronicles_, 1587, gives a capital description of home-brewing as it
-was carried on at the end of the sixteenth century; and “once in a
-moneth practised by my wife,” as he informs us.
-
-It may be remarked incidentally, that brewing seems to have usually
-fallen to the share of the housewife, whose duties in this respect are
-indicated in the old Durham rhyme:—
-
-   I’ll no more be a nun, nun, nun,
-   I’ll be no more a nun!
- But I’ll be a wife,
- And lead a merry life,
-   And brew good ale by the tun, tun, tun.
-
-To return to old Harrison and his home-brew. “Nevertheless,” he says,
-“sith I have taken occasion to speake of bruing, I will exemplifie in
-such a proportion as I am best skilled in, bicause it is the usuall
-rate for mine owne familie, and once in a moneth practised by my wife
-and hir maid servants, who proceed withall after this maner, as she
-hath oft informed me. Having therefore groond eight bushels of good
-malt upon our querne, where the toll is saved, she addeth unto it half
-a bushel of wheat meale, and so much of otes small groond, and so
-tempereth or mixeth them with the malt, that you cannot easily discerne
-the one from the other, otherwise these later would clunter, fall into
-lumps, and thereby become unprofitable. The first liquor which is full
-{55} eightie gallons according to the proportion of our furnace, she
-maketh boiling hot, and then powreth it softlie into the malt, where
-it resteth (but without stirring) untill hir second liquor be almost
-ready to boile. This doone she letteth hir mash run till the malt
-be left without liquor, or at the leastwise the greater part of the
-moisture, which she perceiveth by the staie and softe issue thereof,
-and by this time hir second liquor in the furnace is ready to seeth,
-which is put also to the malt as the first woort also againe into the
-furnace, whereunto she addeth two pounds of the best English hops, and
-so letteth them seeth together by the space of two hours in summer, or
-an houre and a halfe in winter, whereby it getteth an excellent colour
-and continuance without impeachment, or anie superfluous tartnesse. But
-before she putteth her first woort into the furnace, or mingleth it
-with the hops, she taketh out a vessel full, of eight or nine gallons,
-which she shutteth up close, and suffereth no aire to come into it
-till it become yellow, and this she reserveth by it selfe unto further
-use, as shall appeare hereafter, calling it Brackwoort or Charwoort,
-and as she saith it addeth also to the colour of the drinke, whereby
-it yeeldeth not unto amber or fine gold in hew unto the eie. By this
-time also hir second woort is let runne, and the first being taken out
-of the furnace and placed to coole, she returneth the middle woort
-into the furnace, where it is striken over, or from whence it is taken
-againe.
-
-“When she hath mashed also the last liquor (and let the second to
-coole by the first) she letteth it runne and then seetheth it againe
-with a pound and an half of new hops or peradventure two pounds as she
-seeth cause by the goodness or basenesse of the hops; and when it hath
-sodden in summer two hours, and in winter an houre and an halfe, she
-striketh it also and reserveth it unto mixture with the rest when time
-dooth serve therefore. Finallie when she setteth hir drinke together,
-she addeth to hir brackwoort or charwoort halfe an ounce of arras and
-halfe a quarterne of an ounce of baiberries finelie powdered, and then
-putteth the same into hir woort with an handful of wheate floure,
-she proceedeth in such usuall order as common bruing requireth. Some
-in steed of arras and baies add so much long peper onely, but in hir
-opinion and my lyking it is not so good as the first, and hereof we
-make three hoggesheads of good beere, such (I meane) as is meet for
-poore men as I am to live withall whose small maintenance (for what
-great thing is fortie pounds a yeare computatis computandis able to
-performe) may indure no deeper cut, the charges whereof groweth in this
-manner. I value my malt at ten shillings, my wood at foure shillings
-which I buie, {56} my hops at twenty pence, the spice at two pence,
-servants wages two shillings sixpence, both meat and drinke, and the
-wearing of my vessell at twentie pence, so that for my twenty shillings
-I have ten score gallons of beer or more, nothwithstanding the loss
-in seething. . . . The continuance of the drinke is alwaye determined
-after the quantitie of the hops, so that being well hopped it lasteth
-longer. For it feedeth upon the hop and holdeth out so long as the
-force of the same endureth which being extinguished the drinke must be
-spent or else it dieth and becometh of no value.”
-
-A brewhouse was in the sixteenth century an essential for a gentleman’s
-house. Boorde, in his directions for building a country house, mentions
-this:—“And also” he says, “the backe-house and brew-house shall be a
-dystance from the place and from other buyldyng.”
-
-Strutt gives an inventory of the contents of a private brewhouse of
-the sixteenth century. “_Im primis_ a meshe fatt—_Item_, a great ledde
-(leaden vessel)—_Item_, a brasse panne set in the walle (the copper for
-boiling the wort)—_Item_, 6 wort leeds, callyd coolars—_Item_, a greate
-c’linge fatt with 2 other fattes, and other tubs and kimnelles.”
-
-The poetic soul of Thomas Tusser, which has condescended to celebrate
-in quaint and homely verse most subjects of domestic interest or
-savouring of country life, has left us a short effusion on home-brew,
-which, though not perhaps so complete as a novice in the art of
-brewing might desire for his instruction, yet contains some pithy and,
-doubtless, useful rules. The verses are to be found in the _Pointes of
-Good Huswiferie_, and run thus:—
-
-           Brew somewhat for thine,
-           Else bring up no swine.
- Where brewing is needful, be brewer thyself,
- what filleth the roofe will helpe furnish the shelfe;[32]
- In buying of drinke by the firkin or pot
- the tallie ariseth, but hog amendes not.[33]
-                Well brewed, worth cost,
-                Ill used, halfe lost.
- One bushell well brewed, outlasteth some twaine,
- and saveth both mault, and expenses in vaine,
- Too new is no profite, too stale is as bad,
- drinke deade, or else sower, makes laborer sad. {57}
-               Remember, good Gill,
-               Take paine with thy swill.
- Seeth grains in more water, while graines be yet hot,
- and stirre them in copper as poredge in pot,
- Such heating with straw, to make offall good store,[34]
- both pleseth and easeth, what would you have more?
-
-   [32] _i.e._, we presume, brewing which fills the roof with steam is
-   good economy.
-
-   [33] The score at the ale-house mounts up, but your pig is none the
-   better for it. The allusion is to feeding pigs on the spent grains.
-
-   [34] The grains are to be used again to make “offall,” or small beer.
-
-Pain was not always taken by Gill with her swill, as may be seen by
-the sad account of the _Distracted Maid, an Ancient Garland_, in which
-the evil results of a pre-occupied mind are shown. One verse of this
-effusion will doubtless be deemed sufficient:—
-
- To tell you as I am true,
-   When ever I bake or brew,
- The thoughts of Will come uppermost still,
-   I hardly know what to do;
- Instead of malt I put in salt,
-   And boils my copper dry;
- The perjured Act, and wicket Fact,
- My brains are rack’d and I am crack’d,
-   There’s no body knows but I,
-   There’s no body knows but I.
-
-It is interesting to compare the cost of brewing in the sixteenth
-century with that at the present day. Harrison’s brewing, as he has
-shown us, cost him a fraction over a penny the gallon. The following
-account of a brewing in the household of the Duke of Northumberland, in
-the eighth year of the reign of Henry VIII., brings out somewhat the
-same result, though the “painful scribe” seems to have got a little
-confused in his arithmetic towards the end of his account; however,
-a good deal must be excused to those who have to work sums in Roman
-numerals.
-
-“A Brewyng at Wresill and carryede to Topclif. Fyrste paide for vj
-quarters malt at Wresill after vs. the quarter—xxxs. Item, paide for vj
-lb Hopps for the saide Brewyng after j d. ob. the lb—jxd. Item, {58}
-paide for v score Faggotts for the saide Brewyng after v faggots j
-d—xxd. Item, paide for the Cariage of the saide Brewyng from Wresill
-to Borrowbrigg by watir—viz xij Hoggeshedes whiche makith iij Tonns
-after iiijs. vd. the Tonne and a penny more at all—xiijs. iiijd. Item
-paide for the Hire of iij Wanys for carrying of the said iij Tonne from
-Barrow-brigg to Topclyf after viijd for the Hire of every Wayne—ijs.
-
- “Summa xlvijs. ixd.
-
-“Whereof is made xij Hoggeshedes of Beyr. Every Hoggeshede contenyng
-xlviij gallons whiche is in all cccciiij xvj gallons after a Penny the
-Gallon and iijd. les at all which is derer by qu in every gallon save
-iijs iiijd. les at all—xlvijs ixd.”
-
-Not so many years later the prices of ale and beer seem to have risen
-unaccountably, for in the charges for the diet of Mary Queen of Scots
-at Tutbury, Chartley, and Fotheringaye the item is to be found “for ale
-bought at dyerse pryces 1148 gallons at 9d. the gallon, £43 13s.
-9d.”
-
-“Three hundred and fifty-three tons 2 hogs of beare” were also bought
-at an average price of 39s. 11d. the ton, £706 13s. 5d. Burton ale
-may even at that time have commanded a higher price than ordinary ale,
-and the cost of transit would, no doubt, be heavy. In addition to the
-ale bought at “dyerse pryces,” some must have been brewed at home; for
-in further accounts are the following items:—“Hopps 1s., a brewinge
-fatte with the charges for settyng it up £4 5s. 8d. A new pompe for
-the brewhouse 28s. 8d.”
-
-Although brewing, as we have seen, was carried on during every month
-in the year for the commoner household uses, March and October were
-the favourite months for making strong ale, “the authenticall drinke
-of England, the whole barmy tribe of ale-cunners never layd their lips
-to the like.” The summer months were especially eschewed by those who
-wished to keep their liquor, and hence the old saying:—
-
- “Bow-wow, dandy-fly,
-  Brew no beer in July.”
-
-“Oh! but my grandmother,” says Gluttony, in the _Tragical History of
-Doctor Faustus_, “she was a jolly gentlewoman, and well beloved in
-every good town and city; her name was Mistress Margery March Beer.”
-
-“_Ale_ and _beere_,” says Harrison, “beare the greatest brunt in
-{59} drincking, which are of so many sortes and ages as it pleases
-the brewar to make them. The beer that is used at noblemen’s tables,
-is commonly of a yeare olde, (or peradventure of twoo yeres tunning
-or more, but this is not general) it is also brued in Marche, and is
-therefore called Marche bere, but for the household it is usually not
-under a monethes age, eache one coveting to have the same as stale as
-he might, so that it was not soure.”
-
-And a serious “brunt” it was if the following obituary notice, which
-appeared in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in 1810, may be taken as a
-sample of our fathers’ devotion to home-brew:—
-
-“At the Ewes farm-house, Yorkshire, aged 76, Mr. Paul Parnell, farmer,
-grazier, and maltster, who, during his lifetime, drank out of one
-silver pint cup upwards of £2,000 sterling worth of Yorkshire Stingo,
-being remarkably attached to Stingo tipple of the home-brewed best
-quality. The calculation is taken at 2d. per cupful. He was the
-bon-vivant whom O’Keefe celebrated in more than one of his Bacchanalian
-songs under the appellation of Toby Philpott.”
-
-The Journal of Timothy Burrell, Esquire, of Ockenden House, Cuckfield,
-Sussex, proves him to have been a true devotee of the rites of
-Ceres. With what particularity he mentions his purchases of malt and
-hops—“May 3, 1683. Quarter of malt, £1. . . . 23 July. For 28lbs.
-of hops I gave 7s. . . . October. I paid Jo. Warden for 30 bushels
-of malt, just 4 months, £4 3s.” Then with what care he notes the
-day on which he brewed, as thus—“3 May, 1702, _Pandoxavi_” and with
-what satisfaction the day on which he tapped the barrel,—“12 June
-_Relinivi_”—illustrating his manuscript as he goes along with quaint
-sketches of barrels, quart pots, pockets of hops and such-like. John
-Coachman, who seems to have been worthy Timothy’s servant for many
-years, frequently comes in for a remark by reason of his excessive
-devotion to the barley bree:—“Oct. 8th, 1698. Payd John Coachman, in
-full of his half year’s wages, to be spent in ale, £2 6s. 6d. I paid
-him for his breeches (to be drunk,) in part of his wages, 6s.” “Paid
-to John Coachman, in part of his wages, to be fooled away in syder or
-lottery, 5s.” “March 26th, 1710, I paid the saddler for John Coachman
-falling drunk off his box, when he was driving to Glynde, in part of
-his wages, £1 7s. 6d.” Rest well, honest Timothy, thy quaint pen is
-still, thy brewing days are over!
-
-In Dean Swift’s _Polite Conversations_ we have the following amusing
-dialogue on the subject of home-brew:—
-
-_Lady Smart._ Pray, my lord, did you order the butler to bring {60} up
-a tankard of our October to Sir John? I believe they stay to brew it.
-
- _The butler brings up the tankard to Sir John._
-
-_Sir John Linger._ Won’t your ladyship please to drink first?
-
-_Lady S._ No, Sir John; ’tis in a very good hand; I’ll pledge you.
-
-_Col. Atwit_ (to Lord Smart). My lord, I love October as well as Sir
-John; and I hope you won’t make fish of one and flesh of another.
-
-_Smart._ Colonel, you’re heartily welcome. Come, Sir John, take it by
-word of mouth, and then give it to the Colonel.
-
- _Sir John drinks._
-
-_Smart._ Well, Sir John, how do you like it?
-
-_Sir J._ Not as well as my own in Derbyshire; ’tis plaguy small.
-
-_Lady S._ I never taste malt liquor: but they say it is well hopp’d.
-
-_Sir J._ Hopp’d? why if it had hopp’d a little further it would have
-hopp’d into the river. O, my lord, my ale is meat, drink, and cloth; it
-will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
-
-_Lady S._ I was told ours was very strong.
-
-_Sir J._ Ay, madam, strong of the water; I believe the brewer forgot
-the malt, or the river was too near him. Faith, it is mere whip-belly
-vengeance; he that drinks most has the worst share.
-
-_Col._ I believe, Sir John, ale is as plenty as water at your house.
-
-_Sir J._ Why, faith, at Christmas we have many comers and goers; and
-they must not be sent away without a cup of Christmas ale for fear they
-should——
-
-_Lady S._ I hear Sir John has the nicest garden in England; they say
-’tis kept so clean that you can’t find a place where to spit.
-
-_Sir J._ O, madam; you are pleased to say so.
-
-_Lady S._ But, Sir John, your ale is terribly strong and heady in
-Derbyshire, and will soon make one drunk or sick; what do you then?
-
-_Sir J._ Why, indeed, it is apt to fox one; but our way is to take a
-hair of the same dog next morning. I take a new-laid egg for breakfast;
-and faith one should drink as much after an egg as after an ox.
-
-Thompson, in his _Autumn_, makes reference to the strong October brew.
-
- Nor wanting is the brown October, drawn
- Mature and perfect from his dark retreat
- Of thirty years; and now his honest front
- Flames in the light refulgent, not afraid
- Even with the vineyard’s best produce to vie.
-
-{61}
-
-Seldom, it may be imagined, even in the sphere of domestic brewing, has
-so small a “browst” been brewed as that described by Hone in his _Table
-Book_ as having been made by Widow Wood, of Beckenham Alms House. She
-brewed with her ordinary cooking utensils, and the fireplace of her
-little room; a tin kettle served her for boiler, she mashed in a common
-butter-firkin, ran off the liquor in a “crock,” and tunned it in a
-small beer barrel. She thought that poor folk might do a great deal for
-themselves if they only knew how; “but,” said she, “where there’s a
-will there’s a way.”
-
-Among modern writers Christopher North has left perhaps the best
-description of what a modern private brewhouse should be. “We dare
-say,” he says, “that many personages who never in the whole course of
-their polished existences dreamed or thought of dreaming of brewing
-anything (except mischief), will shrug their shoulders at the idea of
-being introduced like his Majesty George the Third, at Whitbread’s,
-into an odorous brewhouse, redolent of wash, wort, grains, hops, yeast,
-and carbonic acid gas; peeping into pumps—tumbling into vats. Silence,
-good exquisite! and let us inform you—(but first take that cigar out
-of your mouth, or you will infallibly burn the carpet)—let us inform
-you that a _gentleman’s brewhouse_, like his greenhouse, his hothouse,
-his dairy, or even his cellar, _is no such unpleasant place_. No place,
-indeed, can be so that has anything of the rural about it. There is
-our own brewhouse at Buchanan Lodge; it might pass for a summer-house.
-We shall describe it to you. It stands, good reader (mark us well),
-at the back of the house, just at the edge of the little ravine or
-dell, and half hid by the laburnums. It is also separated from the
-other offices by a lowish beech hedge. Around, below, and opposite are
-growing the wild cherry, the tall chestnut, the sycamore, the fir, the
-thorn, and the bramble, which clothe the sides of the deep glen. From
-its chimneys, as soon as the soft March gales begin to blow, curls the
-white smoke before the hour of dawn. The fire within burns brightly.
-Everything is clean and ‘sweet as the newly-tedded hay.’ Precisely as
-six o’clock strikes we march forth—ay, even we, Christopher North—with
-our old fishing jacket and our apron on; our old velvet study-cap
-close about our ears, and our thermometer in our hand. The primroses
-are basking in the morning rays; the dewdrops are sparkling the last
-upon the leaves; the unseen violets are breathing forth sweets; the
-blackbird trills his mellow notes in the thicket; the wren twitters
-in the hedge; and the redbreast hops round the door. We enter. All is
-right. We try our heat. ‘Donald, a leetle more cold. That will do.
-{62} In with the malt. Every grain, you hound.’ ‘Ech! Donald’s no the
-man to pench the maut.’ ‘Now stir, for life;’ and the active stirrer
-turns over and over the fragrant grain in the smoking liquid. All
-is covered up close, and the important mash (twelve bushels to the
-hogshead) is completed.
-
-“But of what sort of malt? ‘Another question for the swordsmen,’ for
-of ‘malts’ there are as many flavours, almost, as of vintages. They
-who think that if malt be but sweet, mealy, and well crushed—that is
-all—know, begging their pardons, little of the matter. We have heard
-brewers, who thought themselves no fools, assert that the hops alone
-give the ale its flavour; and that the difference between pale and
-high dried malt is only in colour. They might as well have argued
-that the lemon gives all the flavour to punch! We, Christopher North,
-aver, that upon the degree of dryness which has been given to the
-malt, the distinguishing flavour of malt liquor mainly depends. The
-bitter principle of the hop is only the ground or substratum upon
-which the skilful brewer builds his peculiar flavour of beer. As more
-or less of hops is put in, no doubt the saccharine principle of the
-malt is subdued, or is suffered to predominate. But in malt there is,
-besides the mere sugar which it contains in common with so many other
-vegetables, a flavour peculiar to itself: and this is brought out and
-modified by the application of more or less of the great chemical
-agent, heat, to the malted barley. In short, fire makes malt more or
-less savoury, much as it makes a brandered fowl, or a mutton steak, or
-a toasted oaten cake, more or less savoury.”
-
-Countless receipts have been preserved for making, flavouring, and
-keeping home-brew from the days of the Saxon Leechbooks down to the
-present time. Some of the older ones were supposed to depend for their
-efficacy on supernatural intervention. “If the ale be spoilt,” says an
-old _Saxon Leechdom_, “take lupins, lay them on the four quarters of
-the dwelling, and over the door, and under the threshold, and under the
-ale-vat, put the wort (the herb) into the ale with holy water.”
-
-In a Scotch brewer’s instructions for Scotch ale, dated 1793, may be
-found a mystical note: “I throw a little dry malt, which is left on
-purpose, on the top of the mash, with a handful of salt, _to keep the
-witches from it_, and then cover it up.” Perhaps the idea that witches
-could spoil the ale by their evil charms gave rise to the phrase “water
-bewitched,” signifying very weak beer or other liquor.
-
-The plant, ale-cost (ground ivy), was, during the sixteenth and
-seventeenth centuries, used for “dispatching the maturation” of ale and
-beer. {63} Gerard, in his _Herball_ (1579), mentions the same plant
-under the name of ale-houve. “The women of our northern parts,” he
-says, “do tun the herb ale-houve into their ale, but the reason thereof
-I know not.”
-
-Our ancestors either must have had some means of very rapidly
-“maturing” their ale, or they must have been content to drink it
-unmatured; for it is recorded in the _Munimenta Academica Oxon._ that
-a brewer of Oxford was, in 1444, compelled to solemnly swear before
-the Chancellor that he would let his ale stand twelve hours to clear,
-before he carried it to hall or college for sale; and in London it
-was the custom to drink ale even newer, so much so, that on complaint
-being made, in the fourteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, that the brewers
-deliver ale and beer but two or three hours after it has been cleansed
-and tunned, an ordinance was made that the brewers should not deliver
-their liquors until eight hours after it had been tunned in the summer
-months, and six hours in the winter.
-
-Ivory shavings have been recommended for rapidly maturing beer,
-and it is related that a woman, who lived at Leighton Buzzard, in
-Bedfordshire, and had the best ale in the town, once told a gentleman
-she had drink just done working in the barrel, and that she would wager
-it was fine enough to drink out of a glass even before it was bunged.
-It was as she said, and the ivory shavings, that she boiled in the
-wort, were the cause of it.
-
-Among the many receipts given in old works for “recovering” ale or
-beer when it has turned sour, is one directing the housewife to put a
-handful or two of ground malt into the beer, stir it well together,
-which will make the beer work and become good again. In another receipt
-the brewer is directed to put a handful of oatmeal into a barrel of
-beer when first laid into the cellar, which will cause it to carry
-with it a quick and lively taste. The root of flower-de-luce or iris
-suspended in ale is said to be a specific against sourness.
-
-Another plan is to calcine oyster shells, beat them to powder with a
-like quantity of chalk, put them in a thin bag into the liquor, hanging
-it almost to the bottom, and in twenty-four hours the work will be
-effected. It may be suggested that in these cases prevention is better
-than cure—drink your beer while it is good, and do not give it an
-opportunity of getting sour. An old receipt for preserving small beer
-without the help of hops, is to mix a small quantity of treacle with
-a handful of wheat and bean flour and a little ginger, to knead the
-mixture to a due consistence, and put it into the barrel. “It has been
-a common observation,” said an old writer, “that both beer and ale are
-{64} apt to be foul, disturbed, and flat in bean season; the same is
-observed of wines in the vintage countries. Thunder is also a spoiler
-of good malt liquor, to prevent the effects of which, laying a solid
-piece of iron on each cask has hitherto been esteemed an effectual
-prevention of the above injuries.” In some places, too, an iron pad
-fitting closely over the bunghole is used, and in others an iron tray
-answers the same purpose. An old receipt book contains the following
-remarkable directions for making forty sorts of ale out of one barrel
-of liquor.
-
-“Have ale of good body, and when it has worked well bottle it off, but
-fill not the bottles within three spoonfuls; then being ripe, as you
-use it, fill it up with the syrup of any fruit, root, flower, or herb
-you have by you for that purpose, or drop in chimical oyls or waters of
-them, or of spices, and with a little shaking the whole mass will be
-tinctured and taste pleasantly of what you put in; and so you may make
-all sorts of physical ales with little trouble, and no incumbrance,
-more healthful and proper than if herbs were soaked in it or drugs,
-which in the pleasant entertainment will make your friends wonder how
-you came by such variety on a sudden.”
-
-Thus much then, of home-brew; the subject is almost inexhaustible and
-pleasant withal, but the laws of space are inexorable, and forbid
-further tarrying. As Walter de Biblesworth quaintly remarks:—
-
- Ceste matyre cy repose,
- Parlom ore de autre chose.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{65}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-
- Then long may here the ale-charged Tankards shine,
- Long may the Hop plant triumph o’er the Vine.
-                                _Brasenose College Shrovetide Poem._
-
- The Hop for his profit I thus do exalt.
- It strengtheneth drink, and it favoureth Malt;
- And being well brewed, long kept it will last,
- And drawing abide—if ye draw not too fast.
-                                                    _Thomas Tusser._
-
-_USE AND IMPORTANCE OF HOPS IN BEER: THEIR INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY.
-— HOP-GROWERS’ TROUBLES. — MEDICINAL QUALITIES. — ECONOMICAL USES. —
-HOP-PICKERS._
-
-The hops used in beer-brewing are the female flowers of the hop
-plant known to botanists as the _Humulus lupulus_ of Linnæus. At
-first sight it may seem strange that hops and wolves should have
-anything in common, but it has been explained that the word _lupulus_
-comes from the name by which the Romans called the hop plant—_Lupus
-Salictarius_—the idea being that the hop was as destructive among the
-willows (where it grew) as a wolf among sheep. Though hops are now
-staple articles of a large commerce, and largely cultivated in England,
-America, Belgium, France, and our colonies, some few hundred years ago
-their valuable qualities were little known in this country.
-
-How, when, and where the flowers of the hop plant were first used to
-give to beer its delicious flavour and keeping qualities, is not {66}
-accurately known. Pliny, in his _Natural History_, states that the
-Germans preserved ale with hops, and there is a Rabbinical tradition,
-referring to still earlier times, to the effect that the Jews, during
-their captivity in Babylon, found the use of hopped ale a protection
-against their old enemy, leprosy. In a letter of donations, the great
-King Pepin uses the word “Humuloria,” meaning hop gardens. Mesne, an
-Arabian physician, who wrote about the year 845, also mentions hops;
-and Basil Valentine, an alchemist of the 14th century, specifically
-refers to the use of the hop in beer. Dr. Thudichum, in his pamphlet,
-_Alcoholic Drinks_, tells us that in early days of beer production
-wild hops only were used, as is the practice at the present day in
-Styria, but that in some foreign countries the plant has been largely
-cultivated for nearly a thousand years. It is a well-known fact that
-in the eighth and ninth centuries, hop gardens, called Humuloria or
-Humuleta, existed in France and Germany.
-
-That the hop was known to the English before the Conquest in some form
-or other, is proved by the reference to the hymele, or hop plant, in
-the Anglo-Saxon version of the _Herbarium_, of Apuleius. Although no
-trace of the word hymele now remains in our every-day language, it is
-found in Danish as “humle,” and is only the English form of the Latin
-_humulus_. The _Herbarium_ just mentioned contains a remarkable passage
-with reference to “hymele.” “This wort,” it says, “is to that degree
-laudable that men mix it with their usual drinks.” The usual drinks
-of the English were undoubtedly malt liquors, and this passage would
-go far to show that even in Saxon times the hop was used in English
-brewing. Cockayne, the learned editor of _Saxon Leechdoms_, is inclined
-to this opinion, and he instances in confirmation of it that special
-mention is made of the hedge-hymele, as though there existed at that
-time a cultivated hop from which it had to be distinguished; he also
-cites the name Hymel-tun, in Worcestershire (now Himbleton), which he
-states is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon deeds, and which could hardly have
-signified anything less than hop yard. The word _hopu_ (_i.e._, hops)
-also occurs in Saxon documents. _Ewe-hymele_ is mentioned in _Saxon
-Leechdoms_, and would probably signify the female hop. In the year 822
-there is a record that the millers of Corbay were freed by the abbot
-from all labours relating to hops, and a few years later hops are
-mentioned by Ludovicus Germanicus.
-
-The introduction of hops into England has been generally assigned
-to the early part of the sixteenth century. The old but unreliable
-distich, {67}
-
- Hops, Reformation, bays and beer
- Came into England all in one year,[35]
-
-points to a period subsequent to 1520 as the time when the great
-improvement of adding hops to malt liquors was first practised in this
-country. This rhyme probably refers to the settling of certain Flemings
-in Kent, to be mentioned anon, which no doubt gave a great impulse to
-the use of hops; it cannot well refer to their first introduction, as
-they were known in England for many years previously and were used in
-beer-brewing nearly a century before the Reformation.
-
-   [35] Two other versions are to be found:
-
-      “Hops and turkeys, carp and beer
-       Came into England all in one year;”
-
-   and
-
-      “Turkeys, carps, hops, pickerel, and beer
-       Came into England all in one year.”
-
-   The couplets also err as to pickerel, which are mentioned in
-   mediæval glossaries at a date long before the Reformation.
-
-In that curious old work the _Promptorium Parvulorum_ (1440), which is,
-in fact, an old English-Latin dictionary, occur some passages which,
-when taken in conjunction with the London Records of a slightly later
-date, seem to show that the introduction of hops into English brewing
-(excepting their possible use in Saxon times) should be assigned to a
-period a little before the middle of the fifteenth century.
-
-The word “hoppe” is defined as “sede for beyre. Humulus secundum
-extraneos.” “Bere” is defined as “a drynke. Humulina, vel humuli
-potus, aut cervisia hummulina.” The inference to be drawn from these
-passages is that hops and beer, in the sense of hopped ale, were
-known in England some time previous to the year 1440. The compiler,
-however, shows by his definition of “bere” as a “drynke,” that the
-word required some explanation, for when he mentions “ale,” he simply
-gives the Latin equivalent, “cervisia.” He certainly regarded beer
-as an interloper, as shown by his note on ale, “Et nota bene quod
-est _potus Anglorum_.” Four years after the date of the publication
-of the Promptorium, William Lounde and Richard Veysey were appointed
-inspectors or surveyors of the “bere-bruers” of the City of London,
-as distinguished from the ale-brewers who were at this time a company
-governed by a master and wardens. Ten years later an {68} ordinance
-for the government of the beer-brewers was sanctioned by the Lord
-Mayor. From this date the City Records contain frequent mention of the
-beer-brewers as distinct from the ale-brewers. However, beer, “the son
-of ale,” as an old writer calls it, did not rapidly attain popularity.
-Ten years after the date last referred to, the beer-brewers petitioned
-the Lord Mayor and “Worshipfull soveraignes the Aldermen” of the City
-of London, in these terms:—“To the full honourable Lord the Maire,
-etc. Shewen mekely unto youre good Lordshipp and maistershippes, the
-goode folke of this famous citee the which usen Bere-bruyng within
-the same, that where all mistiers and craftys of the sd citee have
-rules and ordenances by youre grete auctoritees for the common wele
-of this honourable citee made, and profite of the same craftys,” but
-the petitioners have none such rules, and therefore the citizens
-are liable to be imposed upon “in measure of barell, kilderkyns and
-firkyns, _and in hoppes and other greynes_ the which to the said
-mistiere apperteynen. . . . It is surmysed upon them that often tymes
-they make their bere of unseasonable malt the which is of little prise
-and unholsome for mannes body for their singular availe, forasmuch as
-the comon peple _for lacke of experience cannot know the perfitnesse
-of bere as wele as of the ale_,” the petitioners pray that certain
-regulations of the trade may be established by authority. Passing
-over another period of twenty years, during which the City Records
-contain nothing to show whether hops and beer advanced or declined in
-popularity, we find that in the first year of Richard III. a petition
-was presented to Lord Mayor Billesdon, by the Brewers’ Company, showing
-“that whereas by the sotill and crafty means of foreyns[36] dwelling
-withoute the franchises . . . . . a deceivable and unholsome fete
-in bruyng of ale within the said citee nowe of late is founde and
-practised, that is to say, in occupying and puttyng of hoppes and other
-things in the said ale, contrary to the good and holesome manner of
-bruynge of ale of old tyme used, . . . to the great deceite and hurt
-of the King’s liege people. . . . Pleas it therefore your saide good
-lordshyppe to forbid the putting into ale of any hops, herbs, or any
-other like thing, but onely licour, malte and yeste.” The petition is
-granted and a penalty of 6s. 8d. is laid on every barrel of ale so
-brewed contrary to the ancient use. This early use of the technical
-{69} term “licour,” or liquor, instead of water is noteworthy. We
-learn by a note in the Letter-book that the fine on putting hops into
-ale was shortly afterwards reduced to 3s. 4d. the barrel, while any
-other kind of adulteration is still to subject the offender to the
-full fine of 6s. 8d. It will have been observed that it is not the
-making of _beer_ which is forbidden, but the putting of hops into
-_ale_, and selling the drink as ale. There is abundant evidence to
-show that beer continued to be made and sold with the sanction of the
-authorities, and that the beer-brewers, many of whom at this time were
-Dutchmen, practised a separate craft from that of the ale-brewers. Two
-years after the date of the last petition a regulation was made that
-no beer-brewer is to be “affered” (fined) more than 6s. 8d., nor
-an ale-brewer more than two shillings, for breaking the assize. The
-oath of the ale-searchers contains the following passage:—“Ye shall
-swear . . . to search and assay . . . that the ale be holsom, weell
-soden and able for mannes body, and made with none other stuff but
-only with holsom and clere ale-yest, watyr and malt, and such as you
-find unholsom for mannes body or brewed with any other thing except
-with watyr and malt, be it with rosen, _hoppes_, _bere-yest_, or any
-other craft, . . .” you shall duly report for punishment. In the
-same year it is recorded that the _beer-brewers_ were ordered to use
-“gode clene, sweete, holsom greyne and _hoppes_,” and the rulers of
-the _beer-brewers_ are to have powers of inspection of hops and other
-grains.
-
-   [36] A “foreyn” was one who was not a freeman of the City—no
-   reference to nationality.
-
-Prosecutions for the use of hops were frequent, but they were for
-putting hops into _ale_, and not for brewing beer. In the twelfth
-year of Henry VII., John Barowe was presented by the wardens of the
-brewers because he brewed _ale_ with _beer-yeast_, “_quod est corpori
-humano insalubre_.” Nine years later Robert Dodworth, brewer’s servant,
-confessed that he had brewed “a burthen of _ale_ in the house of his
-master in Fleet Street with hops, contrary to the laws and laudable
-acts and customs of the city.” In the tenth year of Henry VIII.,
-William Shepherd, brewer’s servant to Philip Cooper, “occupying the
-feat of bruing,” made a deposition that he had “once since Michaelmas
-last brewed _ale_ with hops, but that his master knew not of it,”
-but that he had heard that other servants had brewed with hops, “and
-that was the cause why he brewed with hoppes, and more he would not
-say.” Philip Cooper, however, was evidently suspected, for in the
-same records we find that he was compelled to bring into the Court “a
-standing cup with a cover of gylt with three red hearts in the bottom
-of the cup to stand to the order of the Court touching the brewing
-with hoppes.” On {70} payment of a fine of five shillings, his gage
-is ordered to be returned to him. Many other passages could be quoted
-from the City Records in support of the view that beer-brewing was
-not forbidden, but only the adulteration, as it was considered, of
-the old English ale with an admixture of hops. We have dwelt somewhat
-fully upon this part of the subject, as there appears to be an almost
-universal misconception as to the date of the introduction of hops
-into England, and as to their use having been for some time altogether
-prohibited by the law of the land. The only authority for this last
-mentioned idea, seems to be the statement of Fuller, in his _Worthies
-of England_, that hops were forbidden as the result of a petition
-which was presented in the time of Henry VI. against “the wicked weed
-called hops.” No statute to this effect is in existence, no record is
-to be found in the rolls of Parliament of any such petition, and the
-statement is in opposition to the evidence we have been able to collect
-on the subject.
-
-About the year 1524 a large number of Flemish immigrants settled in
-Kent, cultivated hops and brewed beer, and soon caused that county
-to become famous for its hop gardens and the excellence of their
-produce. To these strangers is perhaps due the chief credit of having
-enlightened the British mind on the subject of bitter beer, and their
-advent is probably the event pointed to in the old couplet already
-quoted.
-
-Among the numerous officials appointed to enforce the regulations of
-the City, were persons called hop-searchers, whose duty it was to
-search for defective hops, which, when found were burnt. Wriothesley’s
-Chronicle mentions that “on the 10th daie of September, 1551, was
-burned in Finsburie Field XXXI sacke and pokettes of hopps in the
-afternoune, being nought, and not holsome for man’s bodie, and
-condemned by an Act made by my Lord Maior and his bretheren the
-aldermen the 10th daie of September, at which court six comeners of the
-Cittie of London were apoynted to be serchers for a hole yeare for the
-said hopps; and they were sworne the fifth daie of this moneth and made
-search ymediatlie for the same.”
-
-The popular taste is not a thing to be changed in a day, and at that
-happy period of history when railways, penny posts, newspapers, stump
-orators and other nineteenth-century methods of enlightenment were
-unknown and undreamt of, it may well be understood that the knowledge
-of this great improvement spread but slowly. Not only were the
-English slow to appreciate what the Flemings had done for them, but
-they believed that they were like to be poisoned by the new-fangled
-drink which was not in their eyes to be compared to the sweet and
-{71} thick, but honest and unsophisticated English ale. The writers
-of the day are loud in their abuse of beer. In the passages from
-Andrew Boorde’s _Dyetary_ (1542), quoted in Chapter I. (p. 6), ale is
-described as being the natural drink of Englishmen, and made of malt
-and water, while beer, which is composed of malt, hops, and water, is
-the natural drink of a Dutchman, and of late is much used in England,
-to the great detriment of many Englishmen. There is a truly insular
-ring about this. We should like to enlighten old Andrew’s darkness by a
-draught of sparkling Burton. Boorde undoubtedly expresses the popular
-opinion of the period, for from Rastall’s _Book of Entries_ we learn
-that an ale-man brought his action against his Brewer for spoiling his
-ale, by putting in it a certain _weed_ called a _hopp_, and recovered
-damages. Even Harry the Eighth, who of all our kings was the greatest
-lover of good things—and a few bad ones—was blind to the merits of the
-hop, and enjoined the Royal brewer of Eltham that he put neither hops
-nor brimstone into the ale. Possibly sulphuring, of which a word or
-two anon, was then in use; we cannot otherwise account for the mention
-of brimstone. This was in 1530, only six years after the Flemings had
-settled in Kent.
-
-Abused by medical writers as drink only fit for Dutchmen, objected
-to by the king, and disliked by the majority of the people, the
-song-writers of the day, of course, had a good deal to say against the
-new drink. In the _High and Mightie Commendation of the Virtue of a Pot
-of Good Ale_, it is hardly surprising to find the following lines:—
-
- And in very deed, the hops but a weed
-   Brought over ’gainst law, and here set to sale,
- Would the law were removed, and no more Beer brewed,
-   But all good men betake them to a pot of good ale.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- But to speak of killing, that am I not willing,
-   For that in a manner were but to rail,
- But Beer hath its name ’cause it brings to the Bier,
-   Therefore well fare, say I, to a pot of good ale.
-
- Too many, I wis, with their deaths proved this,
-   And therefore (if ancient records do not fail)
- He that first brewed the hop, was rewarded with a rope,
-   And found his Beer far more bitter than Ale.
-
-{72}
-
-The ale-wives and brewers, however, were wiser than their customers,
-and, induced also by the fact that their hopped ale went not sour as of
-yore, stuck to their colours—nailed to a hop pole no doubt—and slowly
-but surely educated the taste of the people. It was, however, a long
-process.
-
-Henry, in his _History of England_, vol. 6, referring to the Scottish
-diet about the end of the sixteenth century, writes:—
-
-“_Ale_ and gascony wines were the principal liquors; but mead, cyder,
-and perry were not uncommon. Hops were still scarce, and seldom
-employed in _Ale_, which was brewed therefore in small quantities, to
-be drunk while new. At the King’s table _Ale_ was prohibited as unfit
-for use till _five days old_.”
-
-From a whimsical old book, entitled _Wine, Beer, Ale, and Tobacco, a
-dialogue_, in which the two leading malt liquors of the day (1630)
-converse, and give their own views on the subject, it appears that even
-as late as the seventeenth century beer was little known in country
-districts, though popular in London.
-
-Beer is introduced making a pun on his own name; he says to Wine,
-“Beere leave, sir.” The chief points in Ale’s argument, which
-is better than that of any of the others, are contained in the
-following passage:—“You, Wine and Beer, are fain to take up a corner
-anywhere—your ambition goes no farther than a cellar; the whole house
-where I am goes by my name, and is called Ale-house. Who ever heard
-of a Wine-house, or a Beer-house? My name, too, is, of a stately
-etymology—you must bring forth your latin. Ale, so please you, from
-alo, which signifieth nourish—I am the choicest and most luscious of
-potations.” Wine, Beer, and Ale at last compose their differences, each
-having a certain dominion assigned to him, and join in singing these
-lines:—
-
-   Wine.—I, generous Wine am for the court.
-   Beer.—The citie call for Beere.
-    Ale.—But Ale, bonnie Ale, like a lord of the soile.
-              In the country shall domineere.
-
- Chorus.—Then let us be merry, wash sorry away,
-          Wine, Beer and Ale shall be drunk this day.
-
-In the end Tobacco appears—He arrogates an equality with Wine—“You and
-I both come out of a pipe.” The reply is, “Prithee go smoke elsewhere.”
-“Don’t incense me, don’t inflame Tobacco,” he retorts; but is told, “No
-one fears your puffing—turn over a new _leaf_, Tobacco, most high and
-mighty Trinidado.” {73}
-
-In an old play printed a few years later (1659) it is indicated that
-ale was still generally made without hops:—
-
- Ale is immortal:
-   And, be there no stops
- In bonny lads quaffing,
-   Can live without hops.
-
-If Defoe’s statement on the subject, in his _Tour Through Great
-Britain_, is correct, it must, indeed, have been many years before the
-use of hops made any headway in the northern portions of the kingdom.
-“As to the North of England,” he writes, “they formerly used but few
-Hops there, their Drink being chiefly pale smooth ale, which required
-no hops; and consequently they planted no hops in all that part of
-England North of Trent. . . . But as for some years past, they not only
-brew great quantities of Beer in the North, but also use hops in the
-brewing of their ale, much more than they did before, so they all come
-south of Trent to buy their hops.”
-
-In the reign of Edward VI., by the Statute 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 5
-(repealed 5 Eliz. c. 2), it was enacted that all land formerly in
-tillage should again be cultivated, excepting “land set with saffron
-or hops.” This is, we believe, the first mention of hops in the
-Statute book. The next Act on the subject was one passed in 1603, by
-which regulations were made for the curing of hops, which process had
-thenceforward to be carried out under the inspection of the officers
-of excise. From a petition presented by the Brewers’ Company to Lord
-Burleigh, a few years previously (1591), we learn that the price of
-hops was then £3 16s. 8d. to £4 10s. 6d. per cwt., instead of
-6s. 8d. as formerly, and was, the Brewers said, in quality well worth
-three hundredweight of those sold at that time. Hops were evidently
-coming into favour. We gather from an old receipt that about the end
-of the century, Beer was made with “40 lbs. of hoppeys to 40 qrs. of
-grain.”
-
-[Illustration: A Perfite Platform of a Hoppe Garden.
-
-Of ramming of Poales.
-
- “Then with a peece of woode as bigge belowe as the great ende of one
- of youre Poales, ramme the earth that lieth at the outsyde of the
- Poale.”
-
-Cutting Hoppe Rootes.
-
- “When you pull downe your hylles . . . you should undermine them round
- about.”
-
-Of Tying of Hoppes to the Poales.
-
- “When your hoppes are growne about one or two foote high, bynde up
- (with a rushe or grasse) such as decline from the Poales, wynding them
- as often about the same Poales as you can, and directing them alwayes
- according to the course of the Sunne.”
-]
-
-About the earliest English work on the culture of hops is an old
-black-letter pamphlet published in 1574 “at the Signe of the Starre,
-in Paternoster Rowe.” It is entitled, “_A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe
-Garden_, and necessarie instructions for the making and mayntenance
-thereof, with notes and rules for reformation of all abuses, commonly
-practised therein, very necessary and expedient for all men to have,
-which in any wise have to doe with hops.” The author was one Reynolde
-Scot, and the little volume is adorned with quaint illustrations, and
-tastefully designed initial letters. The work is dedicated to {75}
-“Willyam Lovelace Esquire, Sergeaunt at the Lawe,” whom the author
-desires to accompany him in a consideration of “a matter of profite,
-or rather with a poynt of good Husbandrie, (in aparance base and
-tedious, but in use necessarie and commodious, and in effect pleasant
-and profitable) (that is to saye) to look downe into the bowels of your
-grounde, and to seeke about your house at Beddersden (which I see you
-desire to garnish with many costly commodities) for a convenient plot
-to be applyed to a Hoppe Garden, to the furtherance and accomplishing
-whereof, I promyse and assure you, the labour of my handes, the
-assistance of my advise, and the effect of myne experience.”
-
-This little work is recommended to the reader (the recommendation
-covers four pages) more particularly “as a recompence to the labourer,
-as a commoditie to the house-keeper, as a comfort to the poor, and as
-a benefite to the Countrie or Commonwealth, adding thus much hereunto,
-that there cannot lightly be employed grounde to more profitable use,
-nor labour to more certain gaynes; howbeit, with this note, that no
-mysterie is so perfect, no floure so sweete, no scripture so holy,
-but by abuse a corrupt body, ascending to his venomous nature, may
-draw poyson out of the same, and therefore blame not this poore trade
-for that it maketh men riche in yielding double profite.” The author
-goes on to say that it grieves him to see how “the Flemings envie our
-practise herein” and declare English hops to be bad, so that they may
-send the more into England. From this it would seem clear that at all
-events foreign hops were extensively used in English beer at that date,
-and English hop gardens by no means common. Scot, who must have been
-a man of common sense, gives good advice to intending hop growers.
-They are to consider three things: “First, whether you have, or can
-procure unto yourself, any grounde good for that purpose” (_i.e._, the
-cultivation of hops). “Secondly, of the convenient standing thereof.
-Thirdly, of the quantitie. And this I saye by the way, if the grounde
-you deale withall, be not your own enheritance, procure unto your selfe
-some certayne terme therein, least another man reape the fruite of your
-traveyle and charge.”
-
-From the epilogue, which concludes with a tremendous denunciation
-of those who allow strangers from beyond the seas to bring into the
-country that which we ought to grow ourselves, we cull the following
-quaint passage:
-
-“There will some smell out the profitable savour of this herbe, some
-wyll gather the fruit thereof, some will make a sallet therewith (which
-is good in one respect for the bellye, and in another for the {76}
-Purse), and when the grace and sweetenesse hereof conceived, some will
-dippe their fingers therein up to the knuckles, and some will be glad
-to licke the Dishe, and they that disdayne to be partakers hereof,
-commonly prove to be such as have mountaynes in fantasie, and beggary
-in possession.”
-
-Reynolde Scot’s pamphlet is most complete in the directions it gives
-concerning hop-growing, and, strange to say, the system of cultivation
-seems little changed since then. The author levels the following
-remarks at the heads of those who might, yet will not, grow hops:—
-“Methinks I might aptlye compare such men as have grounde fitte
-for this purpose, and will not employ it accordingly, to ale-house
-knightes, partly for the small devotion which both the one and the
-other have unto Hoppes, but especially for that many of these ale
-knights havyng good drinke at home of their owne, can be content to
-drinke moore abroade at an ale-house, so they may sit close by it. Let
-them expounde this comparison that buy their hoppes at Poppering, and
-may have them at home with more ease, and lesse charge.”
-
-Honest old Thomas Tusser, in his “_Five Hundred Points of Good
-Husbandry_” (1580), has a good deal to say about hops. He gives a
-charmingly quaint but very practical “lesson where and when to plant a
-good hop-yard.”
-
- Whom fancy persuadeth among other cropps
- To have for his spending, sufficient of hopps,
- Must willingly follow, of choyses to chuse;
- Such lessons approved, as skilful do use.
-
- Ground gravely, sandly, and mixed with clay
- Is naughty for hops, any maner of way,
- Or if it be mingled with rubbish and stone,
- For drienes and barrennes, let it alone.
-
- Chuse soile for the hop of the rottenest mould
- Well donged and wrought as a garden plot should,
- Not far from the water (but not overflowne)
- This lesson well noted is meete to be knowne.
-
- The Sunne in the South, or els southly by west,
- Is joye to the hop as a welcomed gest,
- But wind in the North, or els northely and east,
- To hop is as ill as fray in a feast. {77}
-
- Meete plot for a hopyard, once found as is told,
- Make thereof accompt, as of jewell of gold,
- Now dig it, and leave it the sunne for to burne,
- And afterwards fence it to serve for that turn.
-
-Among the directions for good husbandry for the various months, Tusser
-advises that—
-
- In March at the furdest, drye season or wet,
- Hope rootes so well chosen, let skilful go set,
- The goeler[37] and younger, the better I love
- Wel gutted[38] and pared, the better they prove.
-
- Some layeth them crosewise, along in the ground,
- As high as the knee, they do come up round.
- Some pricke up a sticke, in the midds of the same:
- That little round hillocke, the better to frame!
-
- Some maketh a hollownes, halfe a foote deepe,
- With fower sets in it, set slant wise a steepe
- One foote from another, in order to lye,
- And thereon a hillock, as round as a pye.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- By willows that groweth, thy hopyard without,
- And also by hedges, thy meadowes about,
- Good hop hath a pleasure, to climbe and to spread:
- If sonne may have passage to comfort her hed.
-
-   [37] goeler = goodlier.
-
-   [38] gutted = taken off from the old roots.
-
-The process of setting the hop-poles is thus described:—
-
- Get into thy hopyard with plentie of poles,
- Amongst those same hillocks deuide them by doles,
- Three poles to a hillock (I pas not how long)
- Shall yield thee more profit, set deeplie and strong.
-
-Care must be taken to weed and to fence the hop garden:—
-
- Grasse, thistle and mustard seede, hemlock and bur,
- Tine, mallow and nettle, that keepe such a stur,
- With peacock and turkie, that nibbles off top,
- Are verie ill neighbors to seelie poore hop.
-
-        *       *       *       *       * {78}
-
- If hops do looke brownish, then are ye to slow,
- If longer ye suffer, those hops for to growe.
- Now, sooner ye gather, more profite is found,
- If weather be faier, and deaw of ye ground.
-
- Not break of, but cut of, from hop the hop string,
- Leave growing a little, again for to spring.
- Whos hil about pared, and therewith new clad,
- That nurrish more sets, against March to be had.
-
- Hop hillock discharged, of every set
- See then without breaking, ecche poll ye out get,
- Which being betangled, above in the tops:
- Go carry to such, as are plucking of hops.
-
-We have quoted rather largely from Tusser’s poem, thinking that it may
-interest hop-growers of the present day.
-
-Reynolde Scot’s appeal was not in vain, for in 1608 there is no doubt
-that hop plantations were fairly abundant, though the plant was not
-sufficiently cultivated for home consumption. In that year an Act was
-passed against the importation of spoilt hops. Until 1690, however, the
-greater part of supply was drawn from abroad, and then, to encourage
-home production, a duty of twenty shillings per cwt. over and above
-all other charges, was put upon those imported. Walter Blith, writing
-in 1643, speaks of hops as a “national commoditie.” In 1710, the duty
-of a penny per lb. was imposed upon all hops reared in England, and
-threepence on foreign hops. In subsequent years slight variations were
-made in the amount of the duty, and finally it was abolished, when
-hop-grounds at once began to increase.
-
-When the duty was high, and hops scarce, substitutes for _Humulus
-lupulus_ were experimented with, among others, pine and willow bark,
-cascarilla bark, quassia, gentian, colocynth, walnut leaf, wormwood
-bitter, extract of aloes, cocculus indicus berries, capsicum, and
-others too numerous to mention, picric acid being perhaps the most
-modern. None of these have been found to be an equivalent for the hop,
-lacking its distinct and independent elements of activity.
-
-So far we have treated solely of the somewhat chequered history of the
-hop. Let us now consider its merits and uses. Thus sang the poet:—
-
- Lo! on auxiliary Poles, the Hops
- Ascending spiral, rang’d in meet array: {80}
- Lo! how the arable with Barley-Grain
- Stands thick, o’er-shadow’d to the thirsty hind
- Transporting prospect!—_These,———_
- _————infus’d an auburn Drink compose_
- _Wholesome of Deathless Fame._
-
-[Illustration: A Perfite Platform of a Hoppe Garden.
-
-Training the Hoppe.
-
- “It shall not be amisse nowe and then to passe through your Garden,
- having in eche Hande a forked wande, directyng aright such Hoppes as
- decline from the Poales.”
-
-Gathering the Hoppe.
-
- “Cutte them” (the hop stalkes) “a sunder wyth a sharpe hooke, and wyth
- a forked staffe take them from the Poales.”
-]
-
-But from poets we do not, as a rule, gather much practical information,
-except from such as worthy old Tusser. Harrison, in his description
-of England, says: “The continuance of the drinke is alwaie determined
-after the quantitie of the hops, so that being well hopped it lasteth
-longer.” A modern writer puts it thus: “The principal use of hops in
-brewing is for the preservation of malt liquor, and to communicate to
-it an agreeably aromatic bitter flavour. The best are used for ale and
-the finer kinds of malt liquor, and inferior kinds are used for porter.”
-
-“Brew in October and hop it for long keeping,” was the excellent advice
-given by Mortimer. Dr. Luke Booker, in his sequel poem to the Hop
-Garden, of course devotes some lines to this subject:—
-
- Hop’s potent essence, Ale.——bring hither, Boy!
- That smiling goblet, from the cask just brimmed
- Where floats a pearly star. By it inspired,
- No purple wine—no Muse’s aid I ask,
- To nerve my lines and bid them smoothly flow.
-
-And in another place:—
-
-             Then whencesoever the Hop,
- That flavouring zest and spirit to my cask
- Imparts, preservative—a needless truth
- ’Twere to reveal. There are, whose accurate taste
- Will tell the region where it mantling grew.
-
-In relation to his allusion to a “pearly star,” Dr. Booker tells
-us that, “When ale is of sufficient strength and freshness, there
-will always float a small cluster of minute pearl-like globules in
-the centre of the drinking vessel, till the spirit of the liquor is
-evaporated.”
-
-Hops are an essential to the brewer, not only keeping the beer and
-giving it an exquisite flavour, but also assisting, if we may be
-pardoned for using a technical term in a work intended to be anything
-but technical, to break down the fermentation.
-
-Hops are valuable according as they contain much or little of a yellow
-powder called lupuline, and technically known as “condition,” which
-is deposited in minute yellow adhesive globules underneath the {81}
-bracts of the flower tops, and amounts to from 20 per cent. to 30
-per cent. of the dry hops. This powder has a powerful aromatic smell,
-and is bitter to the taste. It contains hop resin, bitter acid of
-hops (flavour familiar to bitter beer drinkers), tannic acid, and
-hop oils, the chemical composition of which is not accurately known.
-Hops contain most lupuline when the flower is fully matured. Year-old
-hops only command about half the price of new. Those two years old
-are called “old-olds,” and are still less valuable. After having been
-five years in store they are worthless to brewers. Nearly all hops
-intended to be kept are more or less (the less the better) subjected
-to the fumes of sulphur, which, oxidising the essential oil, converts
-it into valerianic acid, and combines with the sulphur to form a solid
-body. Thus the oil, which would otherwise be the cause of mould, is
-destroyed, and the hops can be kept. We believe it is the practice of
-the best brewers to use a mixture of new and old hops, the latter being
-slightly sulphured, so slightly, indeed, that the smell of the sulphur
-cannot be detected.
-
-Much has been written on the injurious effects of sulphuring, both to
-the fermentation and the health of beer-drinkers, and some people have
-very strong views on the subject. In 1855 a commission, which included
-Liebig among its members, was appointed by the Bavarian Government to
-inquire into the matter. After experiments which lasted over a period
-of two years, a report was issued in which it was stated that in the
-opinion of the commissioners, sulphuring was beneficial to the hops,
-and in no way prejudicial to the fermentation. In 1877, a method was
-made known of preserving hops without sulphur. The oil which prevents
-the hops from keeping was separated from them by a chemical process,
-and bottled. The hops were then pressed and kept in the usual way. When
-required for brewing, the hops and oil could again be united by adding
-ten or twelve drops of the latter to every twenty-two gallons of beer.
-This system does not seem to have found favour with hop merchants.
-
-Aloes have occasionally been used to restore decayed hops, though
-with such poor success that we should hardly think the experiment was
-often repeated. Professor Bradly, a Cambridge professor of botany,
-wrote as follows:—“I cannot help taking notice here of a method which
-has been used to stale and decayed hops, to make them recover their
-bitterness, which is to unbag them, and sprinkle them with aloes and
-water, which, I have known, has spoiled great quantities of drink about
-London; for even where the water, the malt, the brewer, {82} and the
-cellars are each good, a bad hop will spoil all: so that every one of
-these particulars should be well chosen before brewing, or else we must
-expect a bad account of our labour.”
-
-The age of hops is known by their appearance, odour, and feel. New
-unsulphured hops, for instance, when rubbed through the hand feel oily.
-In their first year they are of a bright green colour, have an aromatic
-smell and the lupuline is a bright yellow. In the second year they get
-darker, have a slightly cheesy odour, and the lupuline becomes a golden
-yellow. In the third year the lupuline is a dark yellow, the smell
-being about the same as in the second year.
-
-In the hedges about Canton is found a variety of hop growing wild. It
-has been named the _Humulus Japonicus_. “Although this species,” says
-Seemann, in his _Botany of the Voyage of H.M.S. Herald_, “was published
-many years ago by Von Siebold and Zuccarini, we still find nearly
-all our systematic works asserting that there is only _one_ species
-of Humulus, as there seems to be only one species of Cannabis. This,
-however, is a very good species, at once distinguished from the common
-Hop by the entire absence of those resinous spherical glands, with
-which the scales of the imbricated heads of the latter are scattered,
-and to which they owe their value in the preparation of beer, making
-the substitution of the one for the other for economical purposes an
-impossibility.”
-
-So much then for the first and principal use of hops—and yet a few
-lines more on the same subject; from Christopher Smart’s poem of the
-_Hop Garden_:—
-
-                               Be it so.
- But Ceres, rural Goddess, at the best
- Meanly supports her vot’ry, enough for her
- If ill-persuading hunger she repell,
- And keep the soul from fainting: to enlarge,
- To glad the heart, to sublimate the mind
- And wing the flagging spirits to the sky,
- Require the united influence and aid
- Of Bacchus, God of Hops, with Ceres joined,
- ’Tis he shall generate the buxom beer.
-
-But hops have other uses than the generation of “the buxom beer.” The
-discovery, which we consider an important one, was made a few years
-back that hop-bine makes excellent ensilage. The subject was {83}
-first mentioned, so far as we know, in a letter to _The Field_ of
-December 6th, 1884, from A. L., probably, agent to H. A. Brassey, Esq.,
-of Aylesford. The writer gave an account of the opening of a silo, in
-one compartment of which had been placed eight tons of hop-bines, in
-the beginning of the previous September. An account of the experiment
-was also sent by a visitor at the farm, from whose letter the following
-extract seems to us well worth perusal:—“The hop-bine is at present an
-entirely waste material, except for littering purposes; and not a few
-of the local farmers were anxious to see how it would turn out, and
-whether stock would eat the hop-bine ensilage or not. No experiment
-could be more satisfactory. The apparent condition and smell of a great
-deal of it was even superior to that of several of the other varieties;
-and when a bag of it was taken to the homestead and offered to some
-fattening steers, which had been well fed just before, and were not
-in the least hungry, they devoured it with great alacrity, and seemed
-heartily to enjoy the new food; consequently this will be good news to
-hop-growers.”
-
-Early in ’85, the following important letter on the subject appeared in
-the _Kentish Gazette_, from Mr. T. M. Hopkins, Lower Wick, Worcester:—
-
-“Having learnt from Mr. Seymour, agent to H. A. Brassey, Esq., that
-hop-bine made first-rate ensilage, last Oct. I made two stacks of it
-16ft. by 16ft., and 18ft. high. After letting it ferment freely, I
-pressed down with Reynolds and Co.’s patent screw press, and next day
-filled up again; and, when sufficiently fermented, again pressed down,
-and this lasted all through the hop-picking. I have now used nearly the
-whole of it, and calculate that it has saved me some 80 tons of hay; no
-more hop-bine do I waste in future as I have hitherto done. My horses
-have had nothing else for two months, excepting their usual allowance
-of corn, and I never had them looking better. I have also had 100 head
-of cattle, stores, cows, and calves feeding on it for a fortnight, and
-they do well. Dr. Voelcker, chemist to the R.A.S.E., who has analysed
-it, says: ‘It has plenty of good material in it, and is decidedly rich
-in nitrogen, nor is the amount of acid excessive or likely to harm
-cattle.’ Another analyst, Mr. W. E. Porter, F.C.S., says: ‘It contains
-more flesh-forming matter and less indigestible fibre than hay dried at
-212.’ Planters should leave off growing hops to sell at present average
-prices, 40s. to 50s., which is a dead loss. Let the plant run wild,
-and they may every season cut two or three immense crops of material
-that will make ensilage of unexceptionable quality.” {84}
-
-To this there is little we can add.[39] The importance of the subject
-is evident. We may, however, express a hope that hop-growers will not
-act on Mr. Hopkins’ suggestion, and only grow hops for the sake of the
-bine—English hops are too good for that. We have spoken of hop-bine
-ensilage as a discovery, but French farmers have for years mixed green
-hop-leaves with their cows’ food, under the belief, rightly or wrongly
-we know not, that it increases the flow of milk. Possibly in the far
-past hops were cultivated as fodder, and even used as ensilage. Silos
-we know were used anciently, though only recently re-introduced owing
-principally to the attention called to them in _The Field_ and the
-agricultural journals.
-
-   [39] In a letter with which we have recently been favoured by Mr.
-   Hopkins, that gentleman says: “I have every reason to believe in the
-   great value of Hop-Bine Ensilage . . . milking-cows do well with it,
-   and it does not affect the flavour of the milk.”
-
-The stem of the hop contains a vegetable wax, and sap from which can
-be made a durable reddish brown. Its ash is used in the manufacture
-of Bohemian glass; and it also makes excellent pulp for paper. From
-its fibres ropes and coarse textile fabrics of considerable strength
-have been made. The Van de Schelldon process of cloth-making from the
-stem of the hop, invented, we believe, in 1866, is shortly as follows:
-The stalks are cut, done up in bundles, and steeped like hemp. After
-steeping they are dried in the sun. They are then beaten with mallets
-to loosen the fibres, which are afterwards carded and woven in the
-usual way. It is from the thicker stems that ropes can be made.
-
-Several patents have been taken out for manufacturing paper from hops.
-One taken out by a Mr. Henry Dyer was for paper made of fresh or spent
-hops, or spent malt, alone or combined with other materials. In 1873 a
-meeting of paper-makers was held in France, before whom was exhibited
-a textile material made from the bark of the hop-stalk, the outer skin
-being removed and subjected to chemical treatment. It was in long
-pieces, and supple and delicate of texture.
-
-About ten years ago it was announced, in a journal devoted to
-photography, that an infusion of hops, mixed with pyrogallic acid,
-albumen of eggs, and filtered in the ordinary way, could be used as
-a preservative for the plates then in use by photographers. Plates
-preserved with this, dried hard with a fine gloss, and yielded
-negatives of very high quality. A mixture of beer and albumen was
-formerly used {85} for the same purpose, but owing to the varying
-quality and properties of the beer, was very uncertain in its action.
-
-The root of the hop is not without its uses, containing starchy
-substances which can be made into glucose and alcohol. It also contains
-a certain amount of tannin, which, it has been suggested, might be used
-with advantage in tanneries.
-
-Until recently trumpeted forth in the advertisements of a certain
-patent medicine, it was not generally known outside the medical
-profession that hops possessed medicinal qualities of considerable
-value. Old medical writers, however, must have changed their views on
-the subject within a hundred years after the time of Andrew Boorde,
-from whose works we have already quoted a few lines. Wm. Coles,
-Herbalist, in his _History of Plants_, published in 1657, states that
-certain preparations of hops are cures for about half the ills that
-flesh is heir to. Another old writer declares the young shoots of the
-hop, eaten like asparagus, to be very wholesome and effectual to loosen
-the body (the poorer classes in some parts of Europe still eat the
-young hops as a vegetable); the head and tendrils good to purify the
-blood in the scurvy and most other cutaneous diseases (which scurvy is
-not), and the decoctions of the flower and syrup thereof useful against
-pestilential fevers. Juleps and apozems are also prepared with hops for
-hypochondriacal and hysterical affections; and a pillow stuffed with
-hops is used to induce sleep. This last method, by the way, was taken
-advantage of by the medical advisers of George III. That unfortunate
-king, when in a demented condition, always slept on a pillow so
-prepared. Another writer tells us that the Spaniards were in the habit
-of boiling a pound of hop roots in a gallon of water, reducing it to
-six pints, and drinking half a pint when in bed of a morning, under
-the belief that it possessed the same qualities as sarsaparilla. Dr.
-Brooks, in his _Dispensatory_, published in 1753, concurs with the
-older writers on the subject.
-
-_Observations and Experiments on the Humulus Lupulus of Linnæus, with
-an account of its use in Gout and other Diseases_, is the title of a
-pamphlet by a Mr. Freake, of Tottenham Court Road, published in 1806.
-The author states that a patient of his, who was in want of a bitter
-tincture, found all the usual remedies disagree with him, and after
-numerous unsatisfactory experiments, fell back upon a preparation of
-hops, which appeared to answer its purpose. This led Mr. Freake to try
-further experiments with the hop, when he came to the conclusion that
-it was an excellent remedy for relieving the pains of gout, acting
-sometimes when opium failed. {86}
-
-Hops have also been employed with good effect in poultices. Dr.
-Trotter, in one of his medical works, quotes a letter from an assistant
-of Dr. Geach, once senior surgeon of the Royal Hospital at Plymouth, in
-which the writer says that he had during six months experimented with
-hops, and found that a poultice made of a strong decoction of hops,
-oatmeal, and water was an excellent remedy for ulcers, which should
-first be fomented with the decoction.
-
-Dr. Paris, writing of the hop about the year 1820, says, “It is now
-generally admitted that they constitute the most valuable ingredient in
-malt liquors. Independently of the flavour and tonic virtues which they
-communicate, they precipitate, by means of their astringent principle,
-the vegetable mucilage, and thus remove from the beer the active
-principle of its fermentation; without hops, therefore, we must either
-drink our malt liquors new and ropy, or old and sour.”
-
-In the introduction to Murray’s _Handbook of Kent_ it is stated that
-invalids are occasionally recommended to pass whole days in hop grounds
-as a substitute for the usual exhibition of Bass or Allsopp. In hop
-gardens the air is no doubt impregnated with lupuline, so there may be
-something in this.
-
-At the present day lupuline is often used in medicine. Lupuline was
-the name given by Ives to the yellow dust covering the female flower
-of hops. Later, Ives, Chevallier, and Pellatau gave that name, not
-to the dust, but to the bitter principle it contains. The recognized
-preparations of hops are an infusion, a tincture, and an extract. They
-are stomachic, tonic, and soporific. Dr. John Gardner, in one of his
-works on medicine, says that “bitter ale, or the lupuline in pills
-which it forms by simply rubbing between the fingers and warming, are
-the best forms for using hops in dyspepsia and feeble appetite, which
-they will often relieve.” The lupuline powder is easily separated
-from the hops by means of a sieve. A hop bath to relieve pain is also
-recommended by Dr. Gardner for certain painful internal diseases. It is
-made thus: two pounds of hops are boiled in two gallons of water for
-half an hour, then strained and pressed, and the fluid added to about
-thirty gallons of water. This bath has been much praised. Hop beer
-(without alcohol) is another preparation of the plant which has been
-recommended.
-
-In America the hop is highly appreciated for medicinal purposes. There
-are three preparations of it in the authorized code: a tincture, a
-liquid extract, and an oleo-resin.
-
-So much, then, for the history and economic and medicinal uses of {87}
-the hop. Before we close this chapter it is our intention to give a
-short account of the hop-growing countries and districts, of hopfields,
-of hop-growers’ multifarious troubles, and some description of what are
-perhaps the greatest curiosities of the subject—the hop-pickers.
-
-The European hop-growing countries stand in the following order:
-Germany takes the lead with about 477,000 acres of hop gardens,
-England following, and then Belgium, Austria, France, and other
-states (Denmark, Greece, Portugal, &c.), in which the acreage is
-insignificant. According to Dr. Thudichum, 53,000,000 kilogrammes of
-hops are produced annually in Europe, and in good years production may
-rise to over 80,000,000. In America hops have been cultivated for more
-than two centuries, having been introduced into the New Netherlands in
-1629 and into Virginia in 1648. Hop-culture is now common in most of
-the northern states.
-
-We believe we are correct in saying that the best hop years America
-has ever known, were 1866 to 1868, when the amount produced was from
-2,400 lbs. to 2,500 lbs. per acre. In 1870 the total production was
-25,456,669 lbs. In Australia hops are extensively cultivated; they are
-also grown in China and India. In the latter place they have not been
-introduced many years, but beer of a fair quality is made in some of
-the hill stations. The following table shows approximately the acreage
-of hops in England at the present time:
-
-   District.              Acreage.
- Mid Kent                  17,150
- Weald of Kent             12,601
- East Kent                 11,885
- Sussex                     9,501
- Hereford                   6,087
- Hampshire                  2,938
- Worcester                  2,767
- Surrey                     2,439
- Other Counties               251
-
-From the eastern limits of the hop gardens at Sandwich to the western
-boundary in Hereford, hard by the borders of Wales, there are, then,
-about 65,619 acres of hop gardens, or hop “yards,” as they are called
-in some districts, _e.g._, Worcester and Hereford. North Cray, in
-Nottinghamshire, formerly grew a good quantity of hops, but the
-plantations are now considerably reduced, and this applies also to the
-Stowmarket district, in Suffolk, and to Essex. The number of acres
-devoted to the cultivation of hops has always been subject to great
-{88} fluctuations; thus in 1807 they numbered 38,218; in 1819, 51,000;
-in 1830, 46,727; and in 1875, 70,000.
-
-Dr. Booker wrote that for quality of hops, Herefordshire stood first
-Worcestershire second, Kent third, and North Cray fourth; but he was
-probably mistaken, for the hops of East Kent have always been held
-to be the best in all England, pre-eminent alike for strength and
-flavour; those of Farnham, however, run them very closely. Our English
-hops, indeed, are far superior to most of those imported, and the
-foreigners are rarely used in beer without an admixture of home-grown
-hops. Immense quantities now come from abroad; in 1828 only 4 cwt. were
-imported!
-
-Until quite recently, the whole of the hops in this country were poled
-upon much the same system as that described in Reynolde Scot’s old
-pamphlet—that is, three or four plants would be grown on a hillock,
-each having a pole to climb. Now, the poles are largely supplemented
-by wires arranged in various ways, sometimes, when covered with bine,
-forming bell-tents of hops; and sometimes running from pole to pole.
-Other wires leaving them at right angles are attached to pegs in the
-ground. The aspect of the gardens is greatly changed, but they are not
-less beautiful than of yore. Train the hop as you will, you cannot
-make it unlovely. The vines twist lovingly round the slender wires and
-tall poles, the former bending under their weight and swaying to and
-fro in the breeze. From pole to pole run the topmost shoots, and the
-whole field is one large arbour, roofed, if it be autumn, with verdant
-foliage and golden green fruit. Then, may be, the sunlight here and
-there touches the glorious clusters, giving them still richer colours.
-“The hop for his profit I thus do exalt,” wrote old Tusser, “and for
-his grace and beauty,” he might have added, but the worthy Thomas was
-nothing if not practical. Howitt, in his _Year Book of the Country_
-thus writes of the hop country in autumn: “But all is not sombre and
-meditative in September. The hopfield and the nutwood are often scenes
-of much jolly old English humour and enjoyment. In Kent and Sussex the
-whole country is odorous with the aroma of hop, as it is breathed from
-the drying kilns and huge wagons filled with towering loads of hops,
-thronging the road to London. But not only is the atmosphere perfumed
-with hops, but the very atmosphere of the drawing-room and dining-room
-too. Hops are the grand flavour of conversation as well as of beer.
-Gentlemen, ladies, clergymen, noblemen, all are growers of hops, and
-deeply interested in the state of the crop and the market.” {89}
-
-The use of wires is a serious matter for hop-pole growers if the
-following calculation, made by some ingenious person, be correct.
-Suppose that 45,000 acres of hops are under cultivation, and each acre
-annually requires 800 new poles, the total annual requirement will
-be 36,000,000 poles. Each acre of underwood from which poles are cut
-produces about 3,000. Every year, therefore, 12,000 acres of underwood
-must be cut to supply the demand. If each acre produces on an average
-2,000 poles, which is nearer the truth than 3,000, then 18,000 acres
-must be cut annually to supply the hop-gardens with poles.
-
-Poets, in their search for similes, have not overlooked hops and hop
-poles. In Gay’s _A New Song of New Similes_ occur the following lines:—
-
- Hard is her heart as flint or stone,
- She laughs to see me pale;
- And merry as a grig is grown,
- And brisk as _bottled ale_.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Ah me! as thick as _hops_ or hail
- The fine men crowd about her.
-
-Then Cotton, in his verses to John Bradshaw, Esq., writes:—
-
- Mustachios looked like heroes’ trophies
- Behind their arms in th’ Herald’s office;
- The perpendicular beard appeared
- Like _hop-poles_ in a _hopyard_ reared.
-
-Hop-growers’ troubles, furnish a theme of which, were we hop-growers,
-we fear our readers would weary, for a volume might very well be
-filled with a relation of them. Not being hop-growers, and having much
-to write about ere we inscribe the sad word “finis,” we must content
-ourselves only with such an account as will give our readers a general
-idea of the subject. To begin with, the annual outlay per acre in the
-gardens is very great, being about £36. A hop acre, be it observed,
-is not an ordinary acre, but contains a thousand hop plants in rows,
-six or seven feet apart, and is equal to about two-thirds the statutory
-acre.
-
-No crops are more precarious than the _humulus lupulus_. How said Dr.
-Booker?—
-
- The spiral hop, high mantling, how to train
- _No common care_ to Britain’s gen’rous sons,
- Lovers of “nut-brown ale”—sing fav’ring Muse!
-
-{90}
-
-A glance at statistics will show the truth of our statement. In 1882
-the return per acre did not average more than 1½ cwt. on account of a
-perfect plague of aphides; while in 1859, which is about the best hop
-year of the century, the return was 13¼ cwt. per acre. The average
-yield during the last seventy-six years is about 6¾ cwt. per acre; not
-a very large return for the outlay. In 1839 a certain hop plantation
-in Kent of about 21½ acres, produced 15 cwt. per acre, and in the
-following year only 1 cwt. per acre.
-
-These extraordinary variations in the production of hop gardens are
-caused by insects and the weather. Early in the year, when the vines
-appear well grown and sturdy, the hop-grower may with a light heart,
-perhaps, prophesy a good crop. In May a few aphides—winged females—are
-noticed, and in August the silvery brightness of the delicate bracts
-is blackened and spoilt by the filth of the lice—larvæ of the hop
-aphis. About September a mighty wind comes; poles are blown down in all
-directions, the ground is strewn with the cones blown from the vines,
-and branches are bruised, causing the cones on them to wither and
-decay before picking-time. Just as the hops are ripening two or three
-cold nights perhaps occur, which throw them back and materially reduce
-the value of the crop. Then they may be attacked with mildew, or even
-when all evils have in most part been avoided, picking-time has all
-but arrived, and the hop-grower is congratulating himself on his good
-fortune, a shower of hail may happen, stripping the vines and reducing
-the value of the crop by three-fourths.
-
-Miss Ormerod, consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural
-Society, has given much study to, and thrown considerable light upon,
-the hop aphis. The course of the attack upon the hop she has discovered
-to be as follows:—The aphis first comes upon the hop in the spring in
-the form of wingless females (depositing young), which ascend the bine
-from the ground. The great attack, however, which usually occurs in the
-form of “fly” about the end of May, comes from damson and sloe bushes
-as well as from the hop; the hop aphis and the damson aphis being, in
-Miss Ormerod’s opinion, very slight varieties of one species, and so
-similar in habits that for all practical purposes of inquiry they may
-be considered one.
-
-From experiments made on hop grounds in Hereford, the use of various
-applications round the hills in the late autumn or about the beginning
-of April, completely prevented attacks to the vines of those hills
-until the summer attack came on the wing. Paraffin in any dry material
-spread on the hills, proved serviceable both as a preventive {91} and
-a remedy, and petroleum and kerosine were also used with advantage.
-Among the methods of washing, the application of steam power opens up
-a possibility of carrying out these operations with rapidity and at
-less cost. When the fly is very bad, the common practice is, after
-the picking is over, to clear the land of bine and weeds and to place
-quicklime round the hills or plant centres.
-
-When the hop is fully formed, shortly before picking, if the weather
-be hot and close, almost the whole crop may be destroyed in a few
-days. The aphides penetrate the hop and suck from the tender bracts
-the juice, some of which exudes; this, the moist weather retarding
-evaporation, produces decay at the point of puncture, and a black spot
-shows, technically called “mould.” The great enemies to the lice are
-the ladybirds, which devour them greedily, and a hop-grower would as
-soon destroy a ladybird as a herring fisherman a seagull.
-
-It has been recently suggested that the suitability or not of soil for
-hop-growing, depends upon the presence or absence of sulphur, which
-is an essential ingredient of hops. There is more than one instance
-on record where hops treated with gypsum (sulphate of lime) were free
-from mould, while in adjoining gardens the hops not so treated suffered
-severely. The hops least liable to blight and mould contain the largest
-amount of sulphur. A curious fact has been proved in Germany by careful
-analysis. In plants attacked by the hop bug the proportion of sulphur
-is much greater in the healthy and unattacked leaves than in those
-infested with the bug. This subject hardly comes within the range
-of our work, and we merely mention it to bring it into notice among
-hop-growers, whom further experiments with gypsum may possibly benefit.
-It is obvious that as the chief attack is made by aphis on the wing,
-dressings put on the ground with a view to kill the aphides in the soil
-are of little avail, for from a neighbouring or even a distant garden
-where the hills have been not so treated, may come a flight of aphides
-causing desolation in their track. If, however, sulphur can be imported
-into the live plant, and such plants are untouched by the fly, it would
-seem that we are near a solution of this very vexed problem. We know
-of an instance where the hops on one side of a valley were totally
-destroyed by the fly, while on the other side they were untouched. The
-wind setting in one direction during the flight, had carried the fly
-over the sheltered side, and deposited them on the exposed side of the
-valley.
-
-Not to mention extraordinary tithes in this portion of our subject
-would be a serious omission. Formerly our worthy pastors were paid
-{92} with a tenth of the actual produce of the land, now they receive
-what are in theory equivalent money payments. As orchards, market
-gardens, and hop gardens were deemed to yield much greater returns than
-other land, the tithe on them was fixed at a much greater rate than
-on pasture and arable land. While the tithe on these latter is but
-trifling, the tithe on the former is about thirty shillings per acre.
-When few foreign hops were imported, these very extraordinary tithes
-could be paid, but now they are a most serious, not to say unjust,
-tax on the hop-grower who in very bad years may not make thirty or
-even twenty shillings per acre. It is common knowledge that a great
-agitation is on foot to obtain their abolition, and there appears to
-be a very general feeling that no land ought in the future to become
-subject to extraordinary tithe by reason of any crop which may be grown
-on it. At present the extraordinary tithes are a check on production
-and the most advantageous cultivation of land. Being thus prejudicial
-to the welfare of the State, they should have been abolished long
-ago, and no doubt would have been, but for the circumstance that the
-immediate sufferers are comparatively few in number.
-
-The hop gardens of Kent not only provide the brewer with the best hops,
-but, as each autumn comes round, afford to some thirty thousand or so
-of the poorer classes living in the densely-populated districts of the
-east of London a few weeks of country life. The East-Enders, indeed,
-look upon hop-picking in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex as their particular
-prerogative, and mix but little with the “home” pickers, who, however,
-are almost equal to them in numbers.
-
- “When the plants are laden with beautiful bloom
-  And the air breathes around us its rich perfume,”
-
-the grower sends word to the pickers, most of whom have had their names
-down for a bin, or a basket, for weeks or even months previously. In
-Mid Kent “bins” are used. These consist of an oblong framework of wood
-supported on legs, and to which a piece of sackcloth is fastened. The
-bins are divided down the centres, so that two families may pick into
-one bin. At certain times in the day the hops in each bin are measured
-and the number of bushels credited to the pickers. In East Kent baskets
-are used; these contain distinct marks for each bushel, so that the
-labour of measuring is dispensed with. From the baskets the hops are
-emptied into sacks and carried to the oast house to be dried. This is
-a simple operation. The oast house is a square brick building with a
-chimney of large size in the centre of the roof. The hops are {93}
-laid on cloths stretched between beams. The necessary heat is obtained
-from a brick fireplace which is open at the top. After having been
-sufficiently baked, the hops are allowed to cool, and are then put into
-pockets, _i.e._, long sacks, stamped down as tightly as possible, and
-are ready for the market.
-
-As in Chaucer’s time pilgrims wound their way through the garden of
-England, so now do pilgrims, but with different object, tramp along the
-dusty highway or shady lane into that beautiful country. In Chaucer’s
-time the monasteries provided food and shelter for the pilgrims; but
-now they in most part are content with the blue sky or spreading
-branch of tree as a roof, and hedge-row for a wall. If the weather
-be but reasonably fine, the life of these latter-day pilgrims is not
-a hard one, for the balmy country air, the soft turf and beautiful
-surroundings must seem to these poor creatures a kind of paradise after
-the dens of filth, disease, and darkness from which they have come.
-
-Not pleasant company are these pilgrims. As a rule they are uncleanly,
-their habits coarse, their language foul, and their morality doubtful.
-Many persons in Kent prefer to lose several pounds rather than let
-their children go into the fields and associate with the mixed
-company from the East-End. Poor people! they are after all what their
-circumstances have made them; a sweep can hardly be blamed for having
-a black face. A few years since men, women, and children all slept
-together indiscriminately in barns and outhouses. Now, as regards
-sleeping accommodation, there have been changes for the better,
-
-         “And far and near
-         With accent clear
- The hop-picker’s song salutes the glad ear:
-         The old and the young
-         Unite in the throng,
- And echo re-echoes their jocund song,
- The hop-picking time is a time of glee,
- So merrily, merrily now sing we:
- For the bloom of the hop is the secret spell
- Of the bright pale ale that we love so well;
- So gather it quickly with tender care,
- And off to the wagons the treasure bear.”
-
-The high road from London to the hopfields of Kent presents a curious
-appearance immediately before the hop-picking season. A stranger
-might imagine that the poorer classes of a big city were flying {94}
-before an invading army. Grey-haired, decrepit old men and women
-are to be seen crawling painfully along, their stronger sons and
-daughters pressing on impatiently. Children by the dozens, some fresh
-and leaping for very joy at the green fields and sunshine, others
-crying from fatigue, for the road is long and dusty. Nearly all these
-people carry sacks or baskets, or bundles, and some even push hand
-carts laden with clothing, rags, and odds and ends. Most of these
-folk are careless, merry people, and beguile the way as did Chaucer’s
-pilgrims, with many a coarse jest, but here and there will be seen some
-hang-dog bloated-faced ruffian tramping doggedly along, a discontented
-weary woman dragging slowly a few yards in his rear, as likely as
-not carrying a half-starved sickly child in her shawl. Such as these
-cause the coming of the hop-pickers to be regarded with anything but
-satisfaction in country districts, and at such time householders are
-doubly careful to see that their windows and doors are properly barred.
-But the majority of the pickers are well-behaved according to their
-lights, and guilty at most of a little rough horseplay towards the
-solitary traveller or among themselves.
-
-Towards evening the pickers cease their tramp, and take up their
-quarters for the night in woodland copse, or under hedge-row or
-sheltering bank. Baskets, sacks, and hand carts are unpacked, and here
-and there will be seen a whole family seated round a blazing wood fire,
-over which boils the family kettle. Others, less fortunate in having no
-family circle to join, betake themselves to more secluded quarters to
-munch the lump of bread of which their supper consists.
-
-About half the pickers are taken into Kent by special trains, a larger
-number, as might be expected, returning that way. The secretaries of
-the South Eastern and London and Chatham Railway Companies have very
-kindly furnished us with a few figures on the subject. In 1882—_the_
-bad year for hops—the S.E.R. Company only carried 173 pickers to the
-fields, and 3,094 on the return journeys; but in previous years the
-numbers varied from 6,000 to 17,000 on the outgoing journey, and 9,000
-to 19,000 on the return journey. Last year the L.C. & D.R. Company
-carried 1,785 pickers to the fields, and brought back 4,035.
-
-But if the pickers are light-hearted and merry on the way to the
-fields, with empty pockets, what are they on their return, after work
-is over and wages paid? Everything is then the height of merriment,
-and of such an uproarious kind as the people of the East End delight
-in. Young men and girls, invigorated by their sojourn in the bracing
-country air, alike garland themselves with hops, and decorate
-themselves with gay ribbons. Laughing, dancing, and singing, they hurry
-{95} to the station, or along the road to London. Practical jokes are
-played by the score, the railway officials are distracted, the police
-look the other way. As train after train full of shouting people leaves
-the station, the crowd gradually becomes less thick. Night comes on,
-and many return to their barns, obliged to put off their return home
-for another day. In a few days this lively throng of humanity has
-disappeared; the hopfields, robbed of their bright crops, are again
-quiet; and the more nervous of the dwellers in Kent again breathe
-freely.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{96}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-
- JACK CADE—“There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a
- penny, the three hooped pot shall have seven hoops, and I will make it
- felony to drink small beer.”—_Hen._ VI., Part II. Act iv. Scene 2.
-
-_ANCIENT AND CURIOUS LAWS RELATING TO THE MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF ALE
-AND BEER._
-
-Kings, Parliaments and Local Authorities have, from very early times up
-to the present, more or less interfered with the production and sale of
-alcoholic liquors. As a rule, the laws and regulations made by them had
-the benevolent object of preserving the public health and pocket, but
-to modern notions they appear for the most part arbitrary and vexatious
-enactments which unduly oppressed an important industry.
-
-Before dealing with the many early references to laws concerning the
-brewing and sale of ale, it will be interesting to notice a few of the
-curious regulations to be found in the Canons of ancient religious
-orders enjoining sobriety on the members of their communities. Almost,
-if not quite, the earliest of the kind is attributed to St. Gildas the
-Wise, who lived towards the close of the sixth century, and is to the
-effect that, if any monk through drinking too freely gets thick of
-speech, so that he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of
-his supper.
-
-The Canons of St. David’s contain further rules on the same matter.
-Priests about to minister in the temple of God, and drinking wine or
-strong drink through negligence, and not ignorance, must do penance
-three days. If they have been warned, and despise, then forty days.
-Those who get drunk from ignorance must do penance fifteen days;
-if through negligence, forty days; if through contempt, three {97}
-quarantains. He who forces another to get drunk out of hospitality,
-must do penance as though he had got drunk himself. But he who out of
-hatred or wickedness, in order to disgrace or mock at others, forces
-them to get drunk, if he has not already sufficiently done penance,
-must do penance as a murderer of souls.
-
-That these restrictions were not confined to clerics may be seen
-from the decree of Theodore, seventh Archbishop of Canterbury (A.D.
-668–693), that if a Christian layman drink to excess, he must do a
-fifteen-days’ penance.
-
-King Edgar seems to have gone nearer to the programme of the United
-Kingdom Alliance. Strutt says of him that under the guidance of
-Dunstan he put down many alehouses, suffering only one to exist in a
-village. He also ordered that pegs should be fastened in the drinking
-horns at intervals, that whosoever drank beyond these marks at one
-draught should be liable to punishment. We find, however, that this
-last-mentioned device defeated its own end, and became a provocative
-of drinking, so that in 1102, Anselm decreed, “Let no priest go to
-drinking bouts, nor drink to pegs (ad pinnas).” The custom was called
-pin-drinking or pin-nicking, and is the origin of the phrase, “He is in
-a merry pin,” and, doubtless, also of the expression, “Taking him down
-a peg.”
-
-The peg-tankards, as they were called, contained two quarts, and were
-divided into eight draughts by means of these pegs; they passed from
-hand to hand, and each must drink it down one peg, no more, no less,
-under pain of fine.
-
-In a code of Dunstan, for the regulation of the religious orders, were
-further injunctions to the priesthood, in which it was enjoined that no
-drinking be allowed _in the Church_, that men should be temperate at
-Church-wakes, that a priest should beware of drunkenness, and should in
-no wise be an ale-scop (_i.e._, a reciter at an ale-house). If we may
-believe the strange story of St. Dunstan, as recorded by the graphic
-pen of the author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, we shall have little
-difficulty in accounting for the Saint’s abhorrence of strong drink.
-The legend is a good illustration of the maxim, “A little knowledge
-is a dangerous thing.” Lay-brother Peter discovers that the Saint’s
-miraculous powers are due to his magical control over a broomstick, and
-that, on his uttering certain mystic words, the broomstick is compelled
-to do his bidding. Lay-brother Peter determines to apply his knowledge
-of the broomstick’s powers to his own temporal advantage. Having spoken
-the mystic words, {98}
-
-                     Peter, full of his fun,
- Cries, “Broomstick! you lubberly son of a gun!
- Bring ale!—bring a flagon—a hogshead—a tun!
-     ’Tis the same thing to you; I have nothing to do;
- And, ’fore George, I’ll sit here, and I’ll drink till all’s blue.”
-
-Alas! too literally the broomstick obeys the command; and the poor
-lay-brother, not having at command the spell that may compel the
-broomstick to desist, “after floating a while like a toast in a
-tankard,” is at last overwhelmed, and perishes in the brown flood he
-has so incautiously called up.
-
- In vain did St. Dunstan exclaim, “Vade retro
- Strongbeerum! discede a Lay-fratre Petro!”
-
-However, the impression made upon the good Saint’s mind was indelible,
-and has left its traces in the regulations made by him relating to
-drunkenness.
-
-Elfric’s Canons, also, are directed towards putting down the custom of
-drinking in churches. They lay down that men ought not to drink and eat
-immoderately in churches, for “men often act so absurdly as to sit up
-by night, and drink to madness in God’s house.”
-
-Some of the earliest laws directed against a particular custom in
-which ale figured as the principal beverage, were the prohibitions to
-be met with in the records of the 13th century with regard to what
-were called scot-ales. A scot-ale was a meeting for the purpose of
-consuming ale, and its name was derived from the fact that the drinkers
-_divided_[40] the expenses of the entertainment amongst them. These
-feasts were forbidden in the reign of King John by Fitz-piers and Peter
-of Winchester, the regents of the kingdom, on the ground that they
-were made occasions for extortion. The forests, which then spread over
-great tracts of country, were not subject to the common law, but to the
-laws of the forest only, and we are told that the foresters and their
-minions not only set up ale-houses, but even compelled people living
-near to come in and join in scot-ales, for the sake of the revenue
-accruing therefrom. In 1256 Giles of Bridport, Bishop of Salisbury,
-{99} interdicted scot-ales, and commanded rectors, vicars, and other
-parish priests to exhort their parishioners that they violate not
-rashly the prohibition. In certain places the term scot-ale was used to
-denote one of the services paid by tenants to the lord or his bailiff
-on the periodical tour of inspection, and Bracton mentions that the
-Itinerant Justices were directed to inquire whether any viscounts or
-bailiffs brew their own ale, “which they call scot-ale or filct-ale,”
-for the purpose of extorting money from the tenants.
-
-   [40] _Cf._ The modern expressions _scot free_ and _paying the shot_.
-
-Somewhat similar in practice, though distinct in origin and in the
-purpose of their institution, were the festivals called Bede-ales.
-These curious celebrations are described in Prynne’s _Canterburie’s
-Doome_ (1646) as public meetings, “when an honest man decayed in his
-fortune is set up again by the liberal benevolence and contribution
-of friends at a feast; but this is laid aside at almost every place.”
-The custom somewhat reminds one of the saying that the British are
-wont to drink themselves out of debt, an allusion, of course, to the
-enormous revenue collected on malt and other liquors. We must suppose,
-however, that the practice of bede-ale was abused; the more generous
-and kindly-hearted a man might be, the more tipsy he would have to
-make himself in order to help his unfortunate “decayed” friend in the
-manner prescribed. Accordingly we find in ancient records prohibitions
-of this custom. One such may be cited from the records of the Borough
-of Newport, Isle of Wight: “Atte the Lawday holden here in the 8th day
-of October, the second yeare of the Reigne of King Edward the iiijth in
-the time of William Bokett and Henry Pryer, Bayliffs, Thomas Capford
-and William Spring, Constables, it is enacted furthermore that none
-hereafter, whether Burgesse or any other dweller or inhabitant, within
-this Towne aforesaid, shall make or procure to bee made, any Ale,
-commonly called Bede-Ale, within the liberty, nor within this Towne or
-without, upon payne of looseing xxd. to be payde to the Keeper of the
-Common Box.”
-
-[Illustration: The Tumbrel.]
-
-About the time of Henry III., we begin to find mention in the records
-of the period, of persistent attempts to fix the prices of bread and
-ale. Laws made with this end in view were termed collectively the
-_Assisa Panis et Cervisiæ_ (_i.e._, The Assize of Bread and Ale). In
-the fifty-first year of that reign, we find it enacted that when a
-quarter of wheat is sold for iiis. or iiis. ivd., and a quarter of
-barley for xxd. or iis., and a quarter of oats for xvid., then brewers
-(_braciatores_) in cities ought, and may well afford, to sell two
-gallons of ale for a penny, and out of cities to sell three or four
-gallons for the same sum. By a statute {100} passed in the same year
-it is enacted that if a baker or a brewster[41] (_braciatrix_) be
-convicted, because he or she hath not observed the Assise of Bread
-and Ale, the first, second, or third time, he or she shall be amerced
-according to the offence, if it be not over grievous; but if the
-offence be grievous and often, and will not be corrected, then he or
-she shall suffer corporal punishment, to wit, the Baker to the pillory,
-the brewster to the tumbrel (a cart for ignominious punishment), or
-to flogging. (The illustration represents a woman undergoing the
-punishment of the tumbrel, and is taken from the MS. _Cent Nouvelles_
-in the Hunterian Library.) A jury of six lawful men is to be summoned
-in every township, who are to be sworn faithfully to collect all
-measures of the town, to wit, bushels, half and quarter bushels,
-gallons, pottles and quarts, as well from taverns as from other places.
-The jurymen are to inquire how the assise of bread has been kept, and
-adjudge accordingly; they are then to inquire of the assise of Ale in
-the Court of the Town, what it is, and whether it has been observed;
-and if {101} not, they are to inquire what brewsters have sold
-contrary to the assises and they shall present their names distinctly
-and openly, and adjudge them to be fined or to the tumbrel.
-
-   [41] The old word brewster is here used in its proper signification
-   of a female brewer. The Brewster Sessions, as Licensing Sessions are
-   called in many parts of the country, preserve the name, though the
-   original feminine signification has disappeared. For an account of
-   the early brewsters and ale-wives the reader is referred to Chapter
-   VI.
-
-By another statute, of rather uncertain date, but passed about this
-period, it is enacted that the standard of bushels, gallons, and ells
-(_standardum busselli galonis et ulne_) is to be marked with an Iron
-Seale of our Lord the King, and safe kept, under pain of £100, and no
-measure is to be used in any town unless it do agree with the King’s
-measure, and be marked with the seal of the shire town; and if any do
-sell or buy by measures unsealed, and not examined by the Mayor or
-Bailiffs, he shall be grievously amerced and all the measures of every
-Town, both great and small, shall be viewed and examined twice in the
-year; and if any be convict for a double measure, to wit, a greater for
-to buy with, and a lesser for to sell with, he shall be imprisoned for
-his falsehood (_tanquam falsarius_) and shall be grievously punished.
-
-The manner in which the various standard measures of capacity were
-arrived at is worthy of mention. It is enacted that: “One English
-penny, called a stirling, round and without any clipping, shall weigh
-twenty-two wheat corns in the midst of the ear, and twenty pence shall
-make an ounce, and twelve ounces a pound, and eight pounds shall make a
-gallon of wine, and eight gallons of wine shall make one bushel London,
-and eight bushels one quarter.”
-
-We are glad to observe that a subsequent statute was passed which
-provided that both the pillory, or stretch-neck (_collistrigium_) as it
-was called, and also the tumbrel, must be of suitable strength, so that
-offenders might be punished without bodily peril.
-
-The _collistrigium_ given below is taken from an old drawing in the
-City Records, temp. Ed. III.
-
-[Illustration: The Pillory.]
-
-In the City of London the comparative severity of the punishments of
-the fraudulent baker and brewer seems to have been the reverse of that
-ordained by statute; the baker suffered the heavier penalty, being
-condemned to what was called the “_judicium claye_,” or condemnation
-to the hurdle, which, as described in the Liber Albus, was certainly
-a most unpleasant form of punishment. On conviction for selling short
-weight the defaulting baker was to be drawn upon a hurdle from the
-Guildhall to his own house, “through the great streets where there be
-most people {102} assembled, and through the great streets _that are
-most dirty_.” The illustration is taken from the _Assissa Panis_ (temp.
-Edw. I.), preserved among the City Records. The defaulting brewer or
-brewster, in the reign of Edw. III., for the first offence was to
-forfeit the ale, for the second to forswear the mistier (the mystery
-or art of brewing), and on the third offence to forswear the City for
-ever. However, the penalties varied from time to time, for in the reign
-of Henry V., when the Liber Albus was compiled, the punishment of a
-brewster convicted of selling ale contrary to the assize was, that for
-the first offence she was to be fined 10s., for the second 20s., and
-for the third that she should suffer the “punishment provided for her
-in Westchepe,” which would probably be the tumbrel or the pillory.
-Some confusion as to the appropriate punishment occasionally arose. In
-1257, Sir Hugh Bygot, as Grafton’s Chronicle tells us, “came to the
-Guylde-hall, and kept his Court and Plees there, without all order of
-law, and contrary to the libertyes of the citie, and there punished the
-bakers for lack of size by the tombrell, where beforetymes they were
-punished by the Pillorye.”
-
-[Illustration: Punishment of the Hurdle.]
-
-Offending brewers and bakers, in some places, suffered on the Cucking
-Stool. In the Borrow Lawes of Scotland, speaking of Browsters (“Wemen
-quha brewes aill to be sauld,”) it is said, “Gif she makes gude ail,
-that is sufficient. Bot gif she makes euel ail, contrair to the use
-and consuetude of the burg, and is convict thereof, she sall pay ane
-unlaw of aucht shillinges, or sal suffer the justice of the brugh,
-that is, _she sall_ be put upon the Cock- stule, _and the aill sall be
-distributed to the pure folke_.”
-
-In April, 1745, an ale-wife of Kingston-on-Thames was ducked in the
-river, for scolding, in the presence of two thousand or more people.
-
-The following extracts from the old Assembly Books of Great {103}
-Yarmouth give some idea of the powers possessed by corporate bodies
-for the regulation of trade in olden times:—
-
-“Friday before Palm Sunday, 7 Edwd. VI. Agreed that no inhabitant shall
-buy any beer to sell again but such as was brewed in the town, under
-pain of 6s. 8d. a barrel.
-
-“Feb. 14. 1 Philip and Mary, 1554. M. Swansey, of Hickling, being a
-foreigner, bought of a merchant stranger certain hopps—the buyer to
-forfeit the Hopps, and he may buy them again of the Chamberlain.
-
-“March 19. 1 Mary, 1554. No inhabitant shall buy nor no ship shall
-receive any beer brewed out of the town, under a penalty of 3s. 4d.
-per gallon.
-
-“July 2. 1 Philip and Mary, 1554. No baker or brewer to bake or brewe
-in the town unless appointed by the bailiffs.
-
-“Apl. 8. 15 Eliz., 1573. That brewers be ordered to brew with coals
-instead of wood, from the latter’s exhorbitant price.”
-
-The Articles of the Free Fair (1658) held at Great Yarmouth, contain
-the following regulation:—
-
-“Also that no brewer selle nor doe to be solde, a gallon of the beste
-ale above _two pence_: a gallon of the second ale above one pennye
-uppon the payne and perrille above sayde.”
-
-The records of the old municipal corporations of England that have
-survived the destroying hand of time are very few, but it can hardly
-be doubted that they contained very similar regulations to those given
-above. In the _Domesday Book of Ipswich_ an order of the reign of
-Edward I. provides as to Brewsters, that “after Michelmesse moneth,
-whan men may have barlych of newe greyn, the ballyves of the forseid
-toun doo cryen assize of ale by all the toun, after that the sellyng of
-the corn be. And gif ther be founden ony that selle or brewe a geyns
-the assise and the crye, be he punysshed be the forseyed ballyves and
-by the court for the trespas, after the form conteyned in the Statute
-of merchaundise (13 Edw. I., s. 3) of oure lord the kyng, and after law
-and usage of the same toun.”
-
-Ricart’s _Kalendar of the City of Bristol_ contains the following
-record: “Item, hit hath be usid, in semblable wyse, the seid maire
-anon aftir Mighelmas, to do calle byfore theym in the seide Counseill
-hous, all the Brewers of Bristowe; and yf the case require that malt
-be scant and dere, then to commen there for the reformacion of the
-same, and to bryng malte to a lower price, and that such price as
-shall be sette by the maier upon malte, that no brewer breke it, upon
-payne of XLs. forfeitable {104} to the Chambre of the Toune. And the
-shyftyng[42] daies of the woke, specially the Wensdaies and Satirdaies,
-the mair hath be used to walke in the morenynges to the Brewers howses,
-to oversee thym in servyng of theire ale to the pouere commens of the
-toune, and that they have theire trewe mesures; and his Ale-konner
-with hym to taste and undirstand that the ale be gode, able, and
-sety keeping their sise, or to be punyshed for the same, aftir the
-constitucion of the Toune.”
-
-   [42] The days when the ale was being moved to customers’ houses.
-
-Sometimes a whole township was fined for the default of some of its
-members. In 1275 the township of Dunstable was fined 40s., because the
-brewers had not kept the assize.
-
-Some curious and amusing entries are to be found in the _Munimenta
-Academica_ of the University of Oxford, as to the regulations for the
-brewing trade in the fifteenth century. In the year 1434 we find it
-recorded that, “Seeing how great evils arise both to the clerks and
-to the townsmen of the City of Oxford, owing to the negligence and
-dishonesty of the brewers of ale,” Christopher Knollys, commissary,
-assembles the brewers together in the church of the Blessed Mary the
-Virgin, and commands them to provide sufficient malt for brewing; and
-that two or three shall twice or thrice in the week carry round their
-ale for public sale, under a penalty of 40s.; and John Weskew and
-Nicholas Core, two of their number, are appointed supervisors of the
-brewers. Each brewer is then made to swear on the Blessed Evangelists
-to brew good ale and wholesome, and according to the assize, “so far as
-his ability and _human frailty permits_.”
-
-It would appear that very considerable disorders prevailed in that
-ancient seat of learning at this period. The Warden of Canterbury
-College, for instance, is accused of having incited his scholars to
-make a raid upon the ale of other scholars of the town, which they
-accordingly did, and carried off ale to the value of 12d.
-
-The fair brewsters of the period seem to have held much the same ideas
-as to the relative importance of the patronage of Town and Gown as
-a fashionable Oxford tailor of the present day may be supposed to
-entertain. In 1439 Alice Everarde is suspended “ab arte pandoxandi”
-(from practising brewing) for ever, because she refused to brew ale for
-sale for the common people of Oxford.
-
-In 1444 the brewers were made to swear before the Chancellor that they
-would brew wholesome ale, and in such manner that the water {105}
-should boil until it emitted a froth, that they would skim the froth
-away, and that they would give the ale sufficient time to settle before
-they sold it in the University; and Richard Benet swore that he would
-let his ale stand twelve hours to clear, before he carried it to hall
-or college, and that he would not mix the dregs with the ale when he
-carried it for sale within the University.
-
-In 1449 the stewards and manciples of the college swear that nine of
-the brewers have broken the assize and have brewed “an ale of little
-or no strength, to the grave and no mean damage of the University and
-Town, and that they are obstinate and rebels and refuse to serve the
-Principals and others of the Halls with ale.” In 1464 John Janyn is
-ordered by the Commissary to refund to Anisia Barbour, without the east
-gate of Oxford, the sum of 8d., because he had sold her a cask of ale
-for 20d., and “in our opinion and that of others who have just tasted
-it, it is not worth more than 12d.”
-
-The sister University exercised a similar jurisdiction over the brewing
-trade, and it is mentioned in Rymer’s _Fœdera_ (R. 2. 934) that in
-the year 1336, on a petition of the Chancellor and scholars of the
-University of Cambridge, the _ancient_ privilege of the University,
-that, on the demand of the Chancellor, the Mayor and bailiffs should
-make trial or assize of the bread or ale, was restored. A curious
-survival of the municipal jurisdiction over the vendors of Cambridge
-ale is recorded in Hone’s _Every-Day Book_, as existing at the annual
-fair on Stourbridge Common during the latter half of last century:
-“Besides the eight servants called _red coats_, who are employed as
-constables attendant upon the Mayor of Cambridge, who held a court of
-justice during the fair, there was another person dressed in similar
-clothing, with a string over his shoulders, from whence were suspended
-spigots and fossets, and also round each arm many more were fastened.
-He was called _Lord of the Tap_, and his duty consisted in visiting all
-the booths in which ale was sold, to determine whether it was a fit and
-proper beverage for the persons attending the fair.”
-
-In making the ale of Old England, wheat was frequently malted and used
-with barley malt. In times of scarcity this practice was now and again
-forbidden as tending to unduly enhance the price of bread. In 1316,
-ground malt having risen during the preceding fourteen years from 3s.
-4d. to 13s. 4d. the quarter, a proclamation was issued prohibiting
-the malting of wheat. The regulation, however, was unpopular and
-difficult to enforce, and wheat continued to be malted and mixed with
-the more appropriate grain. Receipts of more recent times frequently
-{106} mention this use of wheat malt. One of these of the sixteenth
-century is as follows:—
-
-“To brewe beer. 10 quarters of malte, 2 quarters of wheete, 2 quarters
-of oates, 40 pound weight of hoppys—to make 60 barellys of sengyll
-beer; the barel of aell contains 32 galones, and the barell of beer 36
-gallons.”
-
-The restrictive legislation was not confined to ale, for in 1330 we
-find it enacted: “Because there are more taverners in the realm than
-were wont to be, selling as well corrupt wines as wholesome, and have
-sold the gallon at such price as they themselves would, because there
-was no punishment ordained for them, as hath been for them that sell
-bread and ale, to the great hurt of the people,” therefore wine must
-be sold at a reasonable price. No sum, however, appears to have been
-fixed, and we can well imagine that the ideas of the innkeeper and
-his customer might not altogether agree on the question of what was a
-_reasonable_ price.
-
-Not only was the price of ale fixed, but its strength and quality
-were also subjected to the experienced taste of the ale-conner, an
-officer appointed to test the goodness of the brew. The ale-conner’s
-appellation appears to be derived from his power of conning, _i.e._,
-knowing of or judging the liquor, and reminds one of Chaucer’s line:—
-
- “Well coude he knowe a draught of London ale.”
-
-The ale-conners were appointed annually in the courts leet of every
-manor; also in boroughs and towns corporate; and in many places, in
-compliance with charters and ancient custom, appointments to this
-office are still made, though the duties have fallen into disuse.
-
-The following is the oath of this ale official, taken from the _Liber
-Albus_, compiled in the reign of Henry V. by John Carpenter, clerk,
-and Richard Whittington, mayor:—“You shall swear, that you shall know
-of no brewer, or brewster, cook, or pie-baker, in your ward, who sells
-the gallon of best ale for more than one penny halfpenny, or the gallon
-of second for more than one penny, or otherwise than by measure sealed
-and full of clear ale; or who brews less than he used to do before this
-cry, by reason hereof, or withdraws himself from following his trade
-the rather by reason of this cry; or if any persons shall do contrary
-to any one of these points, you shall certify the Alderman of your ward
-and of their names. And that you, so soon as you shall be required to
-taste any ale of a brewer or brewster, shall be ready to do the same;
-and in case that it be less good than it used to be before this cry,
-you, by assent {107} of your Alderman, shall set a reasonable price
-thereon, according to your discretion; and if any one shall afterwards
-sell the same above the said price, unto your Alderman you shall
-certify the same. And that for gift, promise, knowledge, hate or other
-cause whatsoever, no brewer, brewster, huckster, cook, or pie-baker,
-who acts against any one of the points aforesaid, you shall conceal,
-spare or tortuously aggrieve; nor when you are required to taste ale,
-shall absent yourself without reasonable cause and true; but all things
-which unto your office pertains to do, you shall well and lawfully do.
-So God you help, and the saints.” No doubt this oath was regularly
-repeated with due solemnity, but we can imagine with what a subtle
-irony the official described in _The Cobler of Canterburie_ would have
-repeated the part of the oath having reference to absenting himself
-when required to taste ale.
-
- A nose he had that gan show,
- What liquor he loved I trow;
- For he had before long seven yeare,
- Beene of the towne the ale-conner.
-
-Absent himself—not if he knew it!
-
-The ale-conners also had the power of presenting, _i.e._, accusing at
-the court leet, any brewer who refused to sell ale to his neighbours
-though he had some for sale.
-
-The officials who tested ale bore various appellations. At the Court
-Leet of the Manor of New Buckenham, in Norfolk, the name under which
-this person was known was the _ale-founder_. In rolls of the same
-Manor of earlier date he is called Gustator Cervisiæ. In the records
-of the Manor Court of Hale in the 15th century, in a list of persons
-fined, occurs the entry, “Thomas Layet, quia pandocavit semel iid., et
-quia concelavit le fowndynge pot iiid.;” that is, a fine of 2d. was
-inflicted because he brewed in some manner contrary to the custom of
-the manor; as by not putting out his sign when he brewed, or by not
-summoning the ale-founder to taste the brew as soon as he had finished;
-and a fine of 3d. because he concealed the “fowndynge” pot, the
-vessel, probably, in which he had brewed.
-
-In Scrope’s _History of Castle Coombe_ we are told that the rules of
-that place in reference to the making and sale of ale were numerous and
-perplexing. No one was permitted to brew ale so long as any church-ale
-lasted, nor so long as the keeper of the park had any to sell, nor
-at {108} any time without licence of the lord or court; nor to sell
-without a sign, or, during the fair, without an ale-stake hung out, nor
-to ask a higher price for ale than that fixed by the jury of assize,
-nor to lower the quality below what the ale-tasters approved, nor to
-sell at times of Divine service, nor after nine o’clock at night, nor
-to sell at all without entering into a bond for £10, with a surety of
-£5, to keep orderly houses. The frequent changes in the price allowed
-show the difficulty the authorities had in settling the problem, how
-to have good liquor cheap. In the reign of Elizabeth all systematic
-attempts to set the price of ale seem to have been discontinued. At
-a court held in May in the tenth year of that queen, the tithing-man
-reported that “the ale-wyves had broken all the orders of the last
-laweday.” The court received the announcement in silence, and made no
-order. The ale-wives had conquered; let us hope they used their victory
-with discretion.
-
-The practice seems to have prevailed here as elsewhere of compelling a
-brewer to put out his sign or ale-stake when he had brewed, as a signal
-to the local ale-conner that his services were required. In 1402 we
-find that John Lautroppe was presented to the court “quia brasiavit iij
-vicibus sub uno signo,” _i.e._, he had brewed three times but had only
-displayed the legal signal once. The only penalties recorded as being
-imposed for drunkenness appear to be one in 1618 and one in 1631; but
-it would hardly be safe to argue that the inhabitants of the district
-were an exceptionally sober race, for though the manor rolls of Castle
-Coombe date from 1346, no legislative effort to restrain excess in
-drinking was made till the reign of James I., and such laws were always
-highly unpopular, and were very sparingly or not at all enforced.
-
-Tierney, in his _History of Sussex_, gives the following extract from
-the rolls of Arundel: “John Barbs, Roger Shadyngden, and others,
-brewers, refuse to sell a gallon of ale for one farthing according to
-the proclamation of the mayor, and are consequently fined twopence
-each.” The passage in the _Taming of the Shrew_, in which the servant,
-seeking to convince Christopher Sly that his former life is nothing but
-the delusion of a crazy brain, tells him how he would
-
- . . . rail upon the mistress of the house,
- And say you would present her at the leet,
- Because she brought stone jugs and no sealed quarts,
-
-shows that this jurisdiction of the manor courts was still in full
-force in Shakspere’s day. {109}
-
-Kitchen, in his work on _Courts_ (1663), in writing of courts leet,
-says:—“Also if tapsters sell by cups and dishes, or measures, sealed or
-unsealed, is enquirable.” It is noted in Dr. Langbaine’s collections,
-under January 23, 1617, that John Shurle had a patent from Arthur Lake,
-Bishop of Bath and Wells and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, for the office
-of ale-taster (to the University). The office required “that he go to
-every ale-brewer that day they brew, according to their courses, and
-taste their ale; for which his ancient fee is one gallon of strong ale,
-and two gallons of less strong worth a penny.”
-
-In some places the office of ale-conner still survives. The appointment
-of four ale-conners for the City of London is said to date as far back
-as the first charter of William the Conqueror. Originally they were
-elected by the folkesmote, afterwards at the wardmote, and from the
-time of Henry V. till the present day by the livery. We have before us
-an extract from a daily paper of the 16th September, 1884, in which is
-recorded the appointment of an ale-taster for the ancient borough of
-Christchurch.
-
-The following curious application was made in the year 1864 to the
-manorial court of the Duke of Buccleuch:—“To the Manorial Court of the
-Right Hon. Walter Francis, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, sitting
-at Haslingden, this 18th day of October, 1864.—This is to give notice
-to your honourable court, that I, Richard Taylor, by appointment for
-the last five years Ale-taster for that part of her Majesty’s dominions
-called Rossendale, do hereby tender my resignation to hold that office
-after this day, as I am wishful, while young and active, and as my
-talents are required in another sphere of usefulness, to devote them to
-that purpose. For five successive years your honourable court has done
-me the honour of electing me to the above office, which I have held,
-and performed the duties thereof efficiently, and without disgrace.
-Having won your confidence by holding this office, at a late sitting of
-your honourable court it pleased you to appoint me bellman for Bacup,
-and while I resign the former office, am wishful to hold my connexion
-with his Grace the Duke Francis Walter, to continue to cry aloud as
-bellman for Bacup, and, as heretofore, to cry for nothing for those
-who have nothing to pay with. Given under our hand and seal this 18th
-day of October, in the year of our Lord 1864. Signed, Richard Taylor,
-Ale-taster for Rossendale. God save the Queen.”
-
-As early as the days of Edward I. attempts were made to bring about the
-early closing of taverns; but the authorities seem to have moved rather
-in the interests of peace than of temperance. {110}
-
-In a preamble to a statute passed in that reign it is stated that
-“offenders, going about during the night, do commonly resort and have
-their meetings and evil talk in taverns more than elsewhere, lying in
-wait and watching their time to do mischief.” It is therefore enacted
-that taverns are to be closed at the tolling of the curfew bell. And if
-any taverner does otherwise, he shall be put on his surety, the first
-time by the hanap (a two-handled tankard, sometimes of silver) of his
-tavern, or by some other good pledge therein found, and fined 40d.,
-with various cumulative punishments for successive offences until on
-the fifth conviction he shall forswear such trade in the City for ever.
-
-In the year 1455 it was enacted “that no person that in the County of
-Kent shall commonly brew any ale or beer to sell, shall make nor do to
-be made any malt in his house, or in any other place to his own use, at
-his costs and expences above an C quarters in the year, under penalty
-of x li., and this statute is to be in force for the space of 5 years.”
-This act appears to have been passed to protect the maltsters of other
-places from the competition of the Kentish men. An act was passed in
-1496 “against vacabonds and beggars,” which directs two justices of the
-peace to “rejecte and put away comen ale-selling in townes and places
-where they shall think convenyent, and to take suertie of the keepers
-of ale-houses of their gode behavyng, by the discrecion of the seid
-justices, and in the same to be avysed and aggreed at the time of their
-sessions.”
-
-In 1531 brewers were forbidden to take more than such prices and rates
-as should be thought sufficient, at the discretion of the justices of
-the peace within every shire, or by the mayor and sheriffs in a city.
-
-By 5 and 6 Edward VI. c. 25, entitled “An Act for Keepers of Ale-houses
-to be bounde by Recognizances,” it is enacted that “forasmuch as
-intolerable hurts and troubles to the commonwealth do daily grow and
-increase through such abuses and disorders as are had and used in
-common ale-houses, the Justices of the Peace are authorized to close
-such houses at their discretion.” And we find later, in Elizabeth’s
-time, that Lord Keeper Egerton, in his charge to the judges when going
-on circuit, bade them ascertain, for the Queen’s information, how
-many ale-houses the justices of the peace had _pulled down_, so that
-the good justices might be rewarded and the evil removed. Surely the
-advocates for total suppression of the sale of alcoholic drinks were
-born some two or three centuries too late! A quaint jingle, entitled
-“Skelton’s Ghost,” which may be attributed to some post-Elizabethan
-rhymer, contains an allusion to the legal price of ale. {111}
-
- To all tapsters and tiplers,
- And all ale-house vitlers,
- Inne-keepers and cookes,
- That for pot-sale lookes,
- And will not give measure,
- But at your owne pleasure,
- Contrary to law,
- Scant measure will draw
- In pot and in canne,
- To cozen a man
- Of his full quart a penny,
- Of you there’s too many.
- For in King Harry’s time,
- When I made this rime
- Of Elynor Rumming,
- With her good ale tunning,
- Our pots were full quarted,
- We were not thus thwarted
- With froth canne and neck pot
- And such nimble quick shot,
- That a dowzen will score
- For twelve pints and no more.
-
-The views of a cozening hostess of the period are amusingly set forth
-in a quaint old ballad taken from the Roxburghe collection, a portion
-of which finds place on the following page.
-
-The varying prices and qualities of ale and beer, as sanctioned by
-legal authority, have been so fully treated of in another part of this
-work (Chapter VIII.) that it is not necessary to dwell further upon the
-subject.
-
-[Illustration: All is ours and our Huſbands, or the Country Hoſtelles
-Vindication.
-
-To the tune of _The Carman’s Whiſtle, or High Boys up go we_.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- For if any honeſt company
-   Of boon good fellows come,
- And call for liquor merrily
-   In any private room,
- Then I fill the Jugs with Froth,
-   Or cheat them of one or two,
- If I can ſwear them out of both
-   The reckoning is my due.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- _Roxburghe Ballads._
-]
-
-In the year 1531, brewers were forbidden to make the barrels in which
-their ale was sold. The reason for this extraordinary prohibition is
-thus given in the quaint words of the preamble of the act:—“Whereas
-the ale-brewers and beer-brewers of this realm of England have used,
-and daily do use, for their own singular lucre, profit, and gain, to
-make in their own houses their barrels, kilderkins, and firkins, of
-much less quantity than they ought to be, to the great hurt, prejudice,
-and damage of the King’s liege people, and contrary to divers acts,
-statutes, ancient laws and customs heretofore made, had, and used, and
-to the destruction of the poor craft and mystery of coopers,” therefore
-no beer-brewer or {113} ale-brewer is to “occupy . . . the mystery
-or craft of coopers.” The coopers are commanded to make every barrel,
-which is intended to contain beer for sale, of the capacity of xxxvi.
-gallons; ale barrels, however, are to contain but xxxii. gallons, and
-so in proportion for smaller vessels. The wardens of the coopers are
-empowered to search for illegal vessels, and to mark every correct
-vessel with “the sign and token of St. Anthony’s cross.” This cross is
-possibly the origin of the X, double X and treble X now in use upon
-casks. A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, however, thinks that the
-letter X on brewers’ casks is probably thus derived:—Simplex—single
-X or X. Duplex—double X or XX. Triplex—treble X or XXX. This was
-suggested by Owen’s epigram, _lib._ xii. 34.
-
- Laudatur vinum simplex, cerevisia duplex
- Est bona duplicitas, optima simplicitas.
-
-From early times laws concerning our exports and imports were
-considered as specially appertaining to the royal prerogative. Corn and
-malt, ale and beer, could only be exported by royal licence. This is
-instanced by the order of Edward III., in 1366, to the ports of London,
-Sandwich, Bristol, Southampton, and eight other places:—
-
-“The King, to the collectors of customs in the port of London, Greeting.
-
-“We command you, that all merchants and others, who wish to export
-corn, malt, ale, and other victuals, be allowed, after first taking
-an oath or some other sufficient security from them, to export such
-things to our town of Calais and to other of our possessions, but not
-elsewhere.”
-
-In later times a considerable revenue was raised for the Crown by the
-profits of these export licences. In the reign of Edward VI. the export
-of beer was regulated by an act (1543) which provides that no larger
-vessel than a barrel was to be used for export purposes, under fine of
-6s. 8d., and that every exporter should give security for importing
-so much “clapboard” as would be an equivalent for the barrels he took
-out of the country. Queen Elizabeth jealously guarded the prerogative
-in this matter, and in her thrifty way seems to have made a pretty
-penny from the licences. English beer had at that time become widely
-famed, and could be obtained in foreign parts, as may be learnt by a
-letter from Charles Paget to Walsingham (1582), in which he announces
-that he is going to Rouen for his health, and intends to drink _English
-beer_. {114}
-
-In 1572, Thomas Cantata, a Venetian, sought permission to export 200
-tuns of beer, on condition of his making known to her Majesty certain
-inventions useful for the defence of the realm. In the same year one
-Th. Smith had licence to export 4,000 tuns of beer.
-
-In 1586, Th. Cullen, of Maldon, Essex, applies to the Council by letter
-in which he asks, as a recompense for having discovered Mr. Mantell, a
-traitor, that he may have a licence as a free victualler for twenty-one
-years, or a licence to transport 400 tuns of beer, or else to have
-£40 in money. Even noblemen engaged in the export trade, for in 1603,
-licence was granted to Lord Aubigny to export 6,000 tuns of double beer.
-
-The power of granting licences to inns and ale-houses in the days of
-Elizabeth and her immediate successors, was frequently given by letters
-patent to favourites or to persons prepared to pay for the privilege.
-In 1590 Wm. Carr received a licence for seven years, to give leave to
-any persons in London and Westminster to brew beer for sale. The abuses
-that grew out of this system formed one of the grievances examined into
-by Parliament in 1621.
-
-A statute was passed in the fourth year of James I. enacting that
-“whereas the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness is of late
-grown into common use, being the root and foundation of many other
-enormous sins, as bloodshed, etc., to the great dishonour of God and
-of our nation, the overthrow of many good arts, and manual trades,
-the disabling of divers good workmen, and the general impoverishment
-of many good subjects, abusively wasting the good creatures of God,”
-a fine of five shillings is imposed for drunkenness, together with
-six hours in the stocks. Some attempt had been previously made at
-legislation in this direction. In Townsend’s _Historical Collections_
-(1680) an account is found under date Tuesday, November 3rd, 1601, of a
-debate on a Bill to restrain the Excess and Abuse used in Victualling
-Houses. Mr. Johnson moved, that “bodily punishment might be inflicted
-on Alehouse keepers that should be offenders, and that provision be
-made to restrain Resort to Alehouses.” In the same bill Sir George
-Moore spoke against drunkenness, and desired “some special provision
-should be made against it;” and, “touching the Authority of Justices
-of the Assize and of the Peace, given by this bill, That they shall
-assign Inns, and Inn Keepers. I think that inconvenient: for _an
-Inn is a man’s inheritance_, and they are set at great rates, _and
-therefore, not to be taken away from any particular man_.” The attempt
-of James who, to tell the truth, was himself not by any means free
-from “the loathsome and hideous sin,” to {115} make his subjects
-sober by compulsion, seems to have met with but poor success, for
-in 1609 another statute was passed which, while confessing that,
-“notwithstanding all former laws and provisions already made, the
-inordinate and extreme vice of excessive drinking and drunkenness doth
-more and more abound,” enacts that a person convicted under the former
-act shall be deprived of his licence for the space of three years. In
-1627 a fine of twenty shillings and a whipping is imposed for keeping
-an ale-house without a licence.
-
-Drunkenness seems to have been prosecuted with some severity during
-the Commonwealth time, and the entries in the records of convictions
-for being “drunk in my view” would seem to point to the fact that the
-offenders were haled before the judgment seat ere the effects of their
-debauches had passed away.
-
-As early as the middle of the fifteenth century some attempts were made
-to bring about “Sunday closing.” They seem to have taken the form, for
-the most part, of bye-laws of corporations, and to have been generally
-unsuccessful. In 1428 the corporation of Hull prohibited the vintners
-and ale-house keepers from delivering or selling ale upon the Sunday,
-under penalty of 6s. 8d. for sellers and 3s. 4d. for buyers. In
-1444 an act was made by the Common Council of London “that upon the
-Sunday should no manner of thing within the franchise of the City be
-bought or sold, neither victual nor other things.” The attempt was
-apparently unsuccessful, as we are told that “it held but a while,”
-but it was renewed from time to time in some form or other. In 1555 an
-order was made by the Privy Council of Queen Mary, and directed to the
-Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, whereby taverns, ale
-or beer houses, &c., are directed to be closed on “Sondaye, or other
-festeyvall or hollye daye duringe all the severall tymes of mattyns,
-highe masse, and evynsonge, or of eny sermon to be songe or sayde
-within their severall parishe Churches upon payne of ymprysonmente,
-as well of the boddyes of every suche howseholder, as also of the
-boddyes of every suche persone as shall so presume to eate or drynke.”
-A hundred years later many entries occur in parish and other records of
-penalties for Sunday drinking.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The books of St. Giles’ parish furnish the following extracts:—
-
- 1641. Received of the Vintner at the Catt in Queene
-         Streete, for p’mitting of tipling on the Lord’s
-         day                                                  £1  10  0 {116}
- 1644. Received of three poor men, for drinking on the
-         Sabbath daie at Tottenham Court                      £0   4  0
- 1646. Received of Mr. Hooker, for brewing on a Fast day       0   2  6
- 1648. Received from Isabel Johnson, at the Cole Yard, for
-         drinking on the sabbath day                           0   4  0
- 1655. Received of a Mayd taken in Mrs. Jackson’s Ale-house
-         on the sabbath day                                    0   5  0
-       Received of a Scotchman drinking at Robert Owen’s
-         on the Sabbath                                        0   2  0
- 1658. Received of Joseph Piers, for refusing to open his
-         doores to have his house searched on the Lord’s
-         daie                                                  0  10  0
-
-In 1641, an amusing pamphlet was published on the subject of Sunday
-closing. Its title, frontispiece, and an extract from its contents are
-given on the opposite page.
-
-About this period was in vogue that curious old form of punishment
-which was known as the drunkard’s, or Newcastle, cloak. This garment
-was nothing more nor less than a beer barrel, worn in the manner shown
-in the accompanying illustration. Possibly the inventor of sandwich men
-derived his idea from this source.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Locke, in his second letter on Toleration, informs us that the
-intolerance of the age with regard to Dissent was carried to such
-length that hardly any walk in life was free from obstacles thrown in
-the way of Dissenters pursuing it. Amongst other things he mentions
-that those who had licences to sell ale were compelled to receive the
-Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. We are
-unable to find in contemporary records any confirmation of this alleged
-regulation.
-
-[Illustration: The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapſter, and
-Ruleroſt the Cooke, concerning the reſtraint lately ſet forth, againſt
-drinking, potting, and piping on the Sabbath day and againſt ſelling
-meat.
-
- _Cook._—“There is ſuch news in the world will anger thee to heare of,
- it is as bad, as bad may be.”
-
- _Froth._—“Is there ſo? I pray thee what is it, tell me whatever it be.”
-
- _Cook._—“Have you not heard of the reſtraint lately come out againſt
- us, from the higher powers; whereby we are commanded not to ſell
- meat nor draw drink upon Sundays, as will anſwer the contrary at our
- perils.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
- _Froth._—“I much wonder, Maſter Ruleroſt, why my trade ſhould be put
- downe, it being ſo neceſſary in a Commonwealth.”
-]
-
-Efforts were made by the brewers from time to time to bring about
-an alteration in the law restricting the quality of beer to two
-sorts, the strong and the small. _The Brewers’ Plea or a Vindication
-of Strong Beer_, London, 1647, thus gives the views of the brewers
-on the advantages to be obtained by allowing stronger beer to be
-brewed:—“For of hops and malt, our native commodities (and therefore
-the more agreeable to the constitutions of our native inhabitants), may
-be made such strong beer (being well boiled and hopped, and kept its
-full time) as that {118} it may serve instead of Sack, if authority
-shall think fit, whereby they may also know experimentally the virtue
-of those creatures, at their full height; which beer being well brewed,
-of a low, pure amber colour, clear and sparkling, noblemen and the
-gentry may be pleased to have English Sack in their wine cellars,
-and taverns also to sell to those who are not willing, or cannot
-conveniently lay it in their own houses; which may be a means greatly
-to increase and improve the tillage of England, and also the profitable
-plantations of hop grounds . . . and produce at lesser rates (than
-wines imported) such good strong beer as shall be most cherishing to
-poor labouring people, without which they cannot well subsist; their
-food being for the most part of such things as afford little or bad
-nourishment, nay, sometimes dangerous; and would infect them with many
-sicknesses and diseases, were they not preserved (as with an antidote)
-with good beer, whose virtues and effectual operations, by help of the
-hop well boiled in it, are more powerful to expel poisonous infections
-than is yet publicly known, or taken notice of.”
-
-Another ineffectual plea, somewhat later in date, may be here
-mentioned. In _The grand concern of England explained in several
-proposals to the consideration of the Parliament_, London, 1673,
-petition is made to Parliament that legislation of a protective nature
-may be granted to the brewers’ trade. The proposal is “That Brandy,
-Coffee, Mum, Tea, and Chocolate may be prohibited,” for these greatly
-hinder the consumption of Barley, Malt, and Wheat, the product of our
-land.
-
-“But the prohibition of Brandy would be otherwise advantageous to the
-Kingdom, and prevent the destruction of his majesty’s subjects; many of
-whom have been killed by drinking thereof, it not agreeing with their
-constitutions.
-
-“Before brandy (which is now become common and sold in every little
-alehouse) came over into England in such quantities as it now doth, we
-drank good strong beer and ale; and all laborious people (which are far
-the greatest part of the Kingdom), their bodies requiring, after hard
-labour, some strong drink to refresh them, did therefore every morning
-and evening use to drink a pot of ale, or a flagon of strong beer;
-which greatly promoted the consumption of our own grain, and did them
-no great prejudice; it hindered not their work, neither did it take
-away their senses, nor cost them much money.”
-
-This petition, like the last, seems to have been of no effect, for we
-find these “destructive” drinks, brandy, coffee, tea, and chocolate,
-still in use in this country, and not yet prohibited by law. {119}
-
-Arriving now at a period where the ancient gives way to the
-comparatively modern, this chapter necessarily ends. In the laws of the
-present day relating to ale and beer, are curiosities by the score; but
-we should hardly earn the thanks of our readers for devoting half this
-book to matters which are common knowledge. Suffice it to quote a verse
-from the lays of the Brasenose College butler, written, doubtless, at a
-time when it was first proposed to repeal the old beer tax, and which
-tells in simple words the probable result:—
-
- Yet beer, they tell us, now will be
-   Much cheaper than before;
- Still, if they take the duty off,
-   _In duty_ we drink more.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{120}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-
-  Come all that love good company,
-    And hearken to my ditty,
-  ’Tis of a lovely Hoastess fine,
-    That lives in London City,
-  Which sells good ale, nappy and stale,
-    And always thus sings she,
- “My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-    And a little above my knee.”
-                                                  _The Merry Hoastess._
-
- “. . doughty sons of Hops and Malt.”
-                                         _A Vade Mecum for Malt Worms._
-
-_BREWING AND MALTING IN EARLY TIMES. — THE ALE-WIVES. — THE BREWERS OF
-OLD LONDON AND THE BREWERS’ COMPANY. — ANECDOTES. — QUAINT EPITAPHS._
-
-It seemeth well that before we record the doings of departed brewers,
-brewsters, and ale-wives, a page or so should be devoted to the two
-principal ingredients—malt and water—used by those ancient worthies in
-compounding their “merrie-goe-downe.”
-
-Old Fuller thus moralizes on the art of malting:—“Though commonness
-causeth contempt, excellent the Art of first inventing thereof. I
-confesse it facile to make Barley Water, an invention which found out
-itself, with little more than the joyning of the ingredients together.
-But to make mault for Drink, was a masterpiece indeed. How much of
-Philosophy concurred to the first Kill of Mault, and before it was
-turned on the floor, how often was it toss’d in the brain of the first
-inventor thereof. First, to give it a new growth more than the earth
-had bestowed thereon. Swelling it in water to make it last the longer
-by breaking it, and taste the sweeter by corrupting it. Secondly,
-by making it to passe the fire, the grain (by Art fermented) {121}
-acquiring a lusciousnesse (which by nature it had not) whereby it doth
-both strengthen and sweeten the water wherein it is boyled.”
-
-Those practically engaged in the production of our English national
-drink, whether maltsters or brewers, will no doubt be interested to
-compare the art of malting as it was carried on three hundred years
-ago in this country, with the more familiar processes of to-day. A
-description of malting in the sixteenth century is given by Harrison.
-“Our drinke,” he says, “whose force and continuance is partlie
-touched alreadie, is made of barleie, water and hops, sodden and
-mingled together, by the industrie of our bruers, in a certain exact
-proportion. But before our barleie doo come unto their hands, it
-susteineth great alteration, and is converted into malt, the making
-whereof I will here set downe in such order as my skill therein may
-extend unto. . . Our malt is made all the yeare long in some great
-townes, but in gentlemen’s and yeomen’s houses, who commenlie make
-sufficient for their owne expenses onelie, the winter half is thought
-most meet for that commoditie, howbeit the malt which is made when
-the willow doth bud, is commonlie worst of all, nevertheless each
-one indeuereth to make it of the best barleie, which is steeped in a
-cesterne, in greater or less quantitie, by the space of three daies and
-three nights, untill it be thoroughly soaked. This being doone, the
-water is drained from it by little and little, till it be quite gone.
-Afterward they take it out and laieng it upon the cleane floore on a
-round heape, it resteth so until it be readie to shoote at the roote
-end, which maltsters call ‘comming.’ When it beginneth, therefor, to
-shoote in this maner, they saie it is ‘come,’ and then foorthwith they
-spread it abroad, first thick and afterward thinner and thinner upon
-the said floore (as it commeth) and there it lieth (with turning every
-day foure or five times) by the space of one and twenty daies at the
-least, the workemen not suffering it in any wise to take any heat,
-whereby the bud end should spire, that bringeth foorth the blade, and
-by which oversight or hurt of the stuffe it selfe the malt would be
-spoiled, and turne small commoditie to the bruer. When it has gone or
-been turned so long upon the floore, they carie it to a kill covered
-with haire cloth, where they give it gentle heats (after they have
-spread it there verie thin abroad) till it be dry, in the meane while
-they turne it often that it may be uniformelie dried. For the more it
-be dried (yet must it be doone with soft fire) the sweeter and better
-the malt is, and the longer it will continue, whereas if it be not
-dried downe (as they call it) but slackelie handled, it will breed
-a kind of worme, called a wivell, which {122} groweth in the floure
-of the corne, and in processe of time will so eat out it selfe, that
-nothing shall remaine of the graine but even the verie rind or huske.
-The best malt is tried by hardnesse and colour for if it looke fresh
-with a yellow hew and thereto will write like a peece of chalke, after
-you have bitten a kirnell in sunder in the middest, then you may
-assure yourselfe that it is dried downe. In some places it is dried
-at leisure with wood alone, or strawe alone, in other with wood and
-straw together, but of all the straw dried is the most excellent. For
-the wood dried malt when it is brued, beside that the drinke is higher
-of colour, it dooth hurt and annoie the head of him that is not used
-thereto, bicause of the smoake. Such also as use both indifferentlie
-doo barke, cleave, and drie their wood in an oven, thereby to remove
-all moisture that should procure the fume, and this malt is in the
-second place, and with the same likewise, that which is made with dried
-firze, broome, &c.: whereas if they also be occupied greene, they are
-in a maner so prejudicial to the corne as is the moist wood. And thus
-much of our malts, in bruing whereof some grind the same somewhat
-groselie, and in seething well the liquor that shall be put unto it,
-they adde to everie nine quarters of mault one of headcorne, which
-consisteth of sundrie graine as wheate and otes groond . . .”
-
-Though the reasons which caused one kind of water to be more suitable
-than another for brewing, were not so well understood in olden days
-as they are at present, our ancestors had learned in the school of
-experience that the quality of the water had much to do with the
-quality of the ale and beer brewed from it. Speaking of brewing,
-Harrison says: “In this trade also our Bruers observe verie diligentlie
-the nature of the water, which they dailie occupy, and soile through
-which it passeth, for all waters are not of like goodnesse, sith the
-fattest standing water is alwaies the best; for although the waters
-that run by chalke and cledgie soiles be good, and next unto the
-Thames water which is the most excellent, yet the water that standeth
-in either of these is the best for us that dwell in the countrie, as
-whereon the sunne lyeth longest, and fattest fish are bred. But of all
-other the fennie and morish is the worst, and the clerist spring water
-next unto it.”
-
-The silver Thames—very different then from the turbid noisome sewer of
-to-day—by reason of the excellence of its water, formed the ordinary
-source of supply for the old London Brewers, many of whom erected
-their breweries on or near its banks. As early as 1345, however, there
-seems to have been a tendency on the part of certain brewers to get
-their water elsewhere. In that year a complaint was made to the {123}
-authorities on behalf of the Commonalty of the City of London, “that
-whereas of old a certain conduit” (probably the Cheapside conduit
-constructed in Henry III.’s reign) “was built in the midst of the City
-of London, that so the rich and middling persons therein might there
-have water for preparing their food, and the poor for their drink;
-the water aforesaid was now so wasted by Brewers and persons keeping
-brewhouses and making malt, that in these modern times it will no
-longer suffice for the rich and middling, nor yet for the poor.” In
-consequence of this state of things, the brewers were forbidden to
-use the conduit water under penalty, for the first offence to forfeit
-the _tankard_ or vessel in which the water was carried, on a second
-conviction to suffer fine, and on the third, imprisonment.
-
-More than four hundred years ago the waters of the Thames were at some
-states of the tide too turbid for use, and accordingly in the reign
-of Henry VI., the Wardens of the Brewers’ Company were commanded not
-to take water for brewing from the Thames when it was disturbed, but
-to wait till low water and the turn of the tide. In Queen Elizabeth’s
-reign the Thames was beginning to acquire an evil repute, if we may
-believe the author of _Pierce Penilesse, his supplication to the
-Deuill_ (1592), who refers to the London Brewers in terms of contempt.
-“Some” says he, “are raised by corrupt water, as gnats, to which we
-may liken brewers, that, by retayling _filthie Thames water_, come
-in a few yeres to be worth fortie or fiftie thousand pound.” Stow
-remarks of the London Brewers that “for the more part they remain near
-the friendly waters of the Thames.” In his time many brewhouses were
-gathered together in the parish of St. Catharine, near the Tower, and
-are distinguished on the map of London given in the Civitates Orbis by
-the name of “Beer Houses.”
-
-Many years ago a canal led up from the Thames to the Stag Brewery at
-Pimlico, and provided that now famous brewhouse with water.
-
-All through the reign of Elizabeth, and for some time afterwards,
-the Thames in the neighbourhood of the City, continued to afford the
-greater part of the water used by the London Brewers. Until the New
-River water was brought to London, an event which took place in the
-time of James I., the Thames would naturally furnish the chief supply.
-
-The regulations in force touching the Thames water, had regard to the
-manner in which it was carried from the river to the Breweries, and
-did not in any way seek to restrict the use of the water as unfit for
-its purpose. For instance, in the third year of Elizabeth’s reign the
-Wardens of the Brewers were called before the Common Council and {124}
-charged not to fetch the water of the Thames in a “liquor-cart,”[43]
-but to make use of “boge” horses (horses carrying boges, _i.e._
-water-barrels), according to the ancient laws and ordinances. The
-command was subsequently relaxed in favour of brewers living close to
-the River, and drawing water from “the Water-gate at the Tower Hill
-or at the Whitefriars.” The reason for this regulation is not stated,
-but the partial removal of the restriction would seem to show that it
-was intended to prevent the crowding of the narrow thoroughfares of
-the City with brewers’ carts passing and repassing. The horse with his
-“boge” would pass another horse with ease, while two “liquor carts”
-meeting would certainly block the way. This interpretation is rather
-confirmed by a subsequent regulation, made three years before the Great
-Fire cleared away many of the narrow lanes of the City, that brewers’
-drays should not go abroad in the streets after 11 a.m. on account of
-the obstruction to traffic thereby occasioned.
-
-   [43] “Liquor” had then, and also at a far earlier date, the same
-   technical sense as it now has, and meant water.
-
-Turning now from the ingredients used in brewing to the actual brewers,
-it will not surprise any one who has read the chapter immediately
-preceding the present one, to be informed that in early times a great
-part of the brewing trade was in the hands of the gentler sex. Alreck,
-King of Hordoland, is said to have chosen Geirhild for his queen, in
-consequence of her proficiency in this necessary art, and what was not
-derogatory to the dignity of a queen might of course be performed by a
-subject. Accordingly, as has been already shown, even as late as the
-seventeenth century the brewing of ale and beer for the household was
-looked upon as belonging to the special province of the housewife and
-her female servants. Anciently the same custom prevailed in regard to
-the brewing of ale for sale, and the brewsters or ale-wives had at one
-time a great part of the trade, both in the country and the city. Mr.
-Riley, in his preface to the _Liber Albus_, goes so far as to say that
-even down to the close of the fifteenth century, if not later, the
-London brewing trade was almost entirely in the hands of women, and
-he states that Fleet Street was at that time nearly wholly tenanted
-by ale-wives and felt-cap makers. With all respect for Mr. Riley’s
-intimate knowledge of the ancient lore connected with London Town, it
-must be said that this view seems to be incorrect, for in a list of the
-London Brewers, made in the reign of Henry V., and still existing in
-the City Records, out of about three hundred names, only fifteen are
-those of women. {125} The ale-wives of Fleet Street were probably not
-brewers, but hucksters or retailers.
-
-The first ale-wife deserving of special mention is the Chester
-“tapstere,” whose evil doings and fate are recorded in one of the
-Chester Misteries, or Miracle Plays, of the fourteenth century. The
-good folk of Chester seem to have had a peculiar dislike to being
-subjected to the tricks of dishonest brewers and taverners. Even in
-Saxon times it was a regulation of the City that one who brewed bad
-ale should be placed on a cucking-stool and plunged in a pool of muddy
-water. For the ale-wife of the old play a worse fate was reserved, and
-though she was a fictitious person, many of the audience would no doubt
-find little difficulty in fitting some of their acquaintances with
-the character depicted. With that mixture of the sacred and profane
-which to a modern ear is, to say the least, somewhat startling, the
-Mystery in question describes the descent of Christ into Hell and the
-final redemption of all men out of purgatory—all, save one. A criminal
-remains whose sins are of so deep a dye that she may not be forgiven.
-She thus confesses her guilt:—
-
- Some time I was a tavernere,
- A gentel gossepp, and a tapstere
- Of wine and ale, a trusty brewer,
-       Which woe hath me bewrought.
- Of cannes I kept no true measure,
- My cuppes I solde at my pleasure,
- Deceavinge many a creature,
-       Tho’ my ale were nought.
-
-[Illustration: The Sad Fate of a Mediæval Ale-wife.]
-
-{126}
-
-The ale-wife is then carried off into Hell’s mouth by the attendant
-demons, and the play closes.
-
-The illustration is taken from a _miserere_ seat in Ludlow Church. The
-scene is a very similar one to that just described. A demon is about
-to cast the deceitful ale-wife into Hell’s mouth. She carries her gay
-head attire and her false measure. Another demon reads the roll of her
-offences, and a third is playing on the pipes by way of accompaniment.
-
-Elynour Rummynge, the celebrated ale-wife of Leatherhead in the reign
-of Henry VIII., has been handed down to fame by the pen of Skelton, the
-Poet Laureate of the day. It may be, as Mr. Dalloway, one of Skelton’s
-editors, suggests, that the poet made the acquaintance of Elynour while
-in attendance upon the Court at Nonsuch Palace, which was only eight
-miles from her abode. That the Laureate had a very intimate knowledge
-of this lady, may be gathered from his minute description of her
-unprepossessing person:―
-
- Her lothely lere
- Is nothynge clere
- But ugly of chere,
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Her face all bowsy,
- Comely crynkled
- Wondrously wrinkled,
- Lyke a rost pigges eare,
- Brystled wyth here,
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Her nose somdele hoked,
- And camously croked,
- Her skynne lose and slacke,
- Grained like a sacke;
- With a croked backe.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Her kyrtel Brystow red
- With clothes upon her hed
- That wey a sowe of led.
-
-{127}
-
-[Illustration: Eleanor Rummyng, Alewife.
-
- When Skelton wore the Laurell Crowne,
- My Ale put all the Ale-wiues downe.
-]
-
-{128}
-
-Thus, and with many more unpleasing qualities, does the poet garnish
-the subject of his verse, going on to describe how—
-
- She breweth noppy ale
- And maketh thereof fast sale,
- To trauellers, to tynkers,
- To sweters, to swinkers
- And all good ale drynkers.
-
-So fond are many of her customers of her ale, that they will come to
-it, even though they cannot pay in coin of the realm.
-
- Instede of coyne and monney,
- Some brynge her a conny,
- And some a pot of honny,
- Some a salt, and some a spone,
- Some theyr hose, and some theyr shone.
-
-The writers of the Elizabethan age make frequent reference to
-the ale-wives. “Ask Marian Hacket, the ale-wife of Wincot,” says
-Christopher Sly, “if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen
-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave
-in Christendom.” One would think that the ale-wife mentioned in _The
-Knight of the Burning Pestle_ would have a large, if not a very
-lucrative, trade:—
-
- For Jillian of Berry she dwells on a hill,
- And she hath good beer and ale to sell,
- And of good fellows she thinks no ill,
- And thither shall we go now, now, now,
-         And thither shall we go now.
-
- And when you have made a little stay,
- You need not ask what is to pay,
- But kiss your hostess and go your way,
- And thither will we go now, now, now,
-         And thither will we go now.
-
-All ale-wives, however, had not so good a repute as Jillian of Berry.
-Harrison, whose knowledge of ale was indisputable, speaking of the
-fraudulent ale-wives of his time, says: “Such sleights have they for
-the utterance of this drink (ale) that they will mire it with resin and
-salt, but if you heat a knife red-hot, and quench it in the ale, so
-near the {129} bottom of the pot as you can put it, you shall see the
-rosen come forth hanging on the knife. As for the force of salt, it is
-well known by the effect; for the more the drinker tipleth, the more
-he may, and so dooth he carry oft a drie drunken noll to bed with him,
-except his luck be the better.”
-
-The lady, whose tall hat and large white frill appear upon the next
-page, went by the unpleasant name of Mother Louse. She is mentioned
-by Anthony Wood, in 1673, as an ale-wife of Hedington Hill, and was
-supposed to be the last woman who wore a ruff in England. The verses
-under the engraving indicate that the dun hat and ruff had gone out of
-vogue, and were objects of merriment.
-
-From the _Accounts of the Lord Treasurer of Scotland_ (fifteenth
-century) it may be gathered that the customs and regulations respecting
-the brewing and sale of ale were much the same in Scotland as in
-this country. The price of ale was fixed from time to time “efter
-the imposicioune of the worthi men of the toune,” who regulated it
-according to the price of malt. “Browster wives” brewed the greater
-part of the ale, and kept most of the ale-houses. Their ale was
-frequently made from a barley and oat malt, as was the practice in
-England at the same date. As in this country, the lack of piquant
-flavour, afterwards supplied by the hop, was in those days compensated
-by the addition of ginger, pepper, spices, and aromatic herbs. Though
-the use of hops spread but slowly into Scotland, a considerable import
-trade in beer (hopped ale) was carried on with Germany. In 1455 the
-accounts already quoted show a payment for German beer supplied to the
-garrison at Dunbar. Some curious entries also appear for the years
-1497–8: “Item, to Andrew Bertoune, for ten pipe of cider and beir,
-the price of all IX li; item, for _aill that the Kinges horse drank_,
-viiijd.; item, for the King’s ships, xij barrellis of ail; for ilk
-barrell xiiijs. iiijd.”
-
-[Illustration: Mother Louſe of Louſe Hall, near Oxford.
-
-An Alewife at Hedington Hill (1678) mentioned by Anthony Wood. Probably
-the laſt woman in England who wore a ruff.
-
-AN ALEWIFE.
-
- You laugh now Goodman two ſhoes, but at what?
- My Grove, my Manſion Houſe, or my dun Hat;
- Is it for that my loving Chin and Snout
- Are met, becauſe my Teeth are fallen out;
- Is it at me, or at my Ruff you titter;
- Your Grandmother, you Rouge, nere wore a fitter.
- Is it at Forehead’s Wrinkle, or Cheeks’ Furrow,
- Or at my Mouth, ſo like a Coney Borrough,
- Or at thoſe Orient Eyes that nere ſhed tear
- But when the Exciſemen come, that’s twice a year.
- Kiſs me and tell me true, and when they fail,
- Thou ſhalt have larger potts and ſtronger Ale.
-]
-
-The following extracts from old Scotch laws show the similarity of
-the old English and Scotch usages:—“All women quha brewes aill to be
-sould, sall brew conforme to the use and consuetude of the burgh all
-the yeare. And ilk Browster sall put forth ane signe of her aill,
-without her house, be the window or be the dure, that it may be sene
-as common to all men; quhilk gif she does not, she sall pay ane unlaw
-(fine) of foure pennies.” “It is statute that na woman sel the gallon
-of aill fra Pasch until Michaelmes, dearer nor twa pennies; and fra
-Michaelmas untill Pasch, dearer nor ane pennie.” A verse or two of
-the “_Ale-wife’s Supplication_; or, the Humble Address of the Scotch
-Brewers to his Majesty King George III., for taking away the License
-and charging some less {131} duty on Malt and Ale,” must close this
-reference to the old Scotch brewing trade:—
-
- Here’s to thee, neighbour, ere we part,
-   But your Ale is not worth the mou’ing
- You must make it more stout and smart,
-   Or else give over your brewing.
- It’s nineteen Times ’courg’d thro’ the Draff,
-   So whipt by Willy Water,
- That Barm and Hop bears a’ the Scoup;
-   I swear I’ve made far better.
-
- Cries Maggy, then, you speak as you ken,
-   Consider our Taxations;
- And brew it stout, you’ll soon run out,
-   Of both your Purse and Patience:
- For these gauging Men, with nimble Pen,
-   Can count each Pile of Barley;
- And he that cheats them of a Gill,
-   Will get up very early.
-
-Returning now to London, it is proposed to give some account of the
-brewing trade in olden times, and of the Brewers’ Company.
-
-The first differences that strike one in contrasting the ancient
-and modern breweries are that the former were on a very small scale
-compared with the huge establishments of to-day, and that originally
-nearly every brewer was also a retailer. In Chaucer’s time a brewhouse
-was often synonymous with an ale-house:—
-
- “In al the toun nas brewhouse ne taverne
-  That he ne visited with his solas.”
-
-We have no knowledge of any representations of brewhouses at this
-early period. The interesting picture of a sixteenth-century brewery
-is taken from a rare work by Hartman Schopper, entitled, “Πανοπλια,
-omnium illiberalium, mechanicarum, aut sedentariarun artium genera
-continens, carminibus expressa, cum venustissimis imaginibus omnium
-artificum negociationes ad vivum representantibus,” published at
-Frankfort-on-Main, 1568. The illustration would no doubt stand as well
-for a brewhouse of a much earlier period, judging from the written
-descriptions which we possess. The engraver of _Der Bierbreuwer_ was
-Jost Ammon, and the engraving is considered one of the best examples
-{133} of the art at this very early period. A plate taken from the
-same work, representing a cooperage, will be found on page 334.
-
-[Illustration: Der Bierbreuwer.
-
- Auß Gerſten ſied ich gutes Bier,
- Feißt und ſüß, auch bitter monier,
- In ein Breuwfeſſel weit und groß
- Darein ich denn den Hopſſen ſtoß,
- Laß den ich denn in Brennten fühlen daß
- Damit ſüll ich darnach die Faß,
- Wohl gebunden und wohl gebicht,
- Denn giert er und iſt zugericht.
-
- Beschreibung aller Stände (1568).
-]
-
-The old German lines under the engraving of the Beer-brewer may be
-thus rendered into English: From barley I boil good beer, rich and
-sweet and bitter fashion. In a wide and big copper I then cast the
-hops. Then [after boiling the wort] I leave it to cool, and therewith
-I straightway fill the well-hooped and well-pitched [fermenting] vat;
-then it [the wort] ferments, and [the beer] is ready.
-
-There is no doubt that the brewers’ trade was originally held in little
-esteem, and was considered as mean and sordid (_de vile juggement_).
-The ignominious punishments and restrictions (some of which have been
-already mentioned) to which the old London brewers were subjected,
-prove that their status only slowly improved. In the time of Henry
-VIII., however, their position had so far advanced in repute that
-in the grant of arms then made to them, they are specified as “the
-Worshipful Occupation of the Brewars of the City.”
-
-The Records of the City of London are particularly full of details
-concerning the brewers and the brewing trade, and it will probably
-give the best idea of the conditions under which the business was
-carried on in former days to mention a few of the principal regulations
-gathered from that valuable body of information, and to supplement them
-by extracts from the records of the Brewers’ Company. Truth to say,
-the brewers and the City authorities were never the best of friends,
-and long accounts are to be found from time to time of disputes
-between them as to the legal price and quality of the liquor with
-which the lieges were to be supplied—struggles in which the action of
-the authorities seems, according to our modern notions, to have been
-arbitrary in the extreme. An instance of this tyranny over a trade
-is given in the _Liber Aldus_, from which it appears that not only
-was a brewer compelled to brew ale of a specified price and quality,
-but he was not even allowed to leave off brewing in case he found it
-did not pay him to continue. The regulation runs thus: “If any shall
-refuse to brew, or shall brew a less quantity than he or she used to
-brew, in consequence of this ordinance, he or she shall be held to
-be a withdrawer of victual from this city and shall be punished by
-imprisonment, and shall forswear his trade as a brewer within the
-liberties of the City for ever.”
-
-The same idea, formerly so prevalent, that persons ought to be
-compelled by the strong hand to pursue their avocations, and the
-arbitrary manner in which the authorities acted in obtaining a supply
-of victuals, may be illustrated from the _Annals of Dunstaple_ (1294),
-in which it is {134} recorded that the King’s long stay at St. Albans
-and Langley “enormously injured the market of Dunstaple and all the
-country round. . . The servants of the King seized all victual coming
-to the market, even cheese and eggs; they went into the houses of the
-citizens and carried away even what was not for sale, and scarce left
-a tally with any one. They took bread and ale from the ale-wives, and
-if they had none _they made them make bread and ale_.” In 1297 the
-Sheriffs of Notts and Derby are ordered by Edward I. (Rymer R. 1. 883)
-to proclaim in every town that the bakers and brewers should bake and
-brew a sufficient store of bread and ale for certain Welshmen, who were
-marching to chastise the Scots, “because the King is unwilling that, by
-reason of such victuals failing, the men of those parts should suffer
-damage at the hands of the sd Welshmen.”
-
-The persons employed in the malt liquor trade, whether as manufacturers
-or retailers, are specified in an ordinance of the reign of Henry
-IV. to be Brewers, Brewsters, Hostillers (_i.e._, Innkeepers),
-Kewes (_i.e._, Cooks), Pyebakers, and Hucksters. The hucksters were
-undoubtedly at one time accustomed to sell their ale in the streets of
-London. In 1320 they were prohibited by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen
-from selling ale on London Bridge. In the sixth year of Richard II.
-Juliana atte Vane, huckster, was charged with selling her ale in
-“hukkesterie;” she is asked from whom she bought the ale, and replies
-that she bought the said ale, viz., one barrel of 30 gallons, from
-Benedicta (brewster), who lived at “Crepulgate.” It was accordingly
-adjudged that Juliana had broken the City regulations, and the ale was
-forfeited. The brewers were forbidden at this time to sell to hucksters
-under pain of forfeiture and imprisonment _at the will of the Mayor_,
-the intention apparently being that only a brewer should be a vendor of
-ale.
-
-By the reign of Henry IV. the brewers, although they had as yet no
-royal charter, had joined themselves together for purposes of mutual
-protection and social intercourse. They are mentioned in an ordinance
-of the seventh year of that reign as the Mystery (_i.e._, trade or
-craft) of Free Brewers within the City, and a constitution is ordained
-for them by the City Fathers. The freemen of the Mystery are yearly to
-elect eight persons, four of the part of the City east of Walbrook,
-viz., two masters and two wardens, and four like persons of the part
-west of Walbrook. These eight are to make regulations for those using
-the mystery of brewing, as to the hiring of servants, the sale of ale,
-and such like matters, as they should be charged by the Mayor and
-Aldermen; they are also to see “that the good men of the mystery may
-{135} have a proper place to go to to transact their own business,”
-and are called together upon the proper occasions “by summons of their
-beadle in such a manner as other mysteries are;” they are to supervise
-those who make and supply ale, and to see that “good, able and seyn
-(sound) ale” is brewed according to the legal price, and to report
-offenders to the Chamberlain of the City.
-
-Considerable difficulty was at this time experienced in compelling the
-sellers of ale to keep to the lawful measures of barrel, kilderkin, and
-lesser vessels. On a complaint being made to the Common Council in the
-ninth year of Henry IV., that whereas “each barrel ought to contain
-thirty gallons of just measure, but each is deficient by two gallons or
-more . . . if the dregs are reckoned as clear ale, and that the brewers
-will make no rebate in the price on that account to the great deceit
-and damage of the Lords, Gentles and Citizens,” therefore the deputies
-of the Chamberlain are ordered to mark every barrel as containing 27
-gallons, and the half barrel as containing 14 gallons by reason of the
-aforesaid dregs. Five years later further evil doings are recorded. The
-Brewers and brewsters, “to the displeasure of God and contrary to the
-profit of the City, sell their ale three quarts for a gallon, one quart
-and a half for a potell (_i.e._, a two-quart measure); and one hanap
-(_i.e._ a two-handled tankard), for a half quart of which six or seven
-hanaps scarcely make a gallon,” and they are therefore ordered for the
-future to sell only by sealed measure and not by hanap, tankard, or any
-such vessel.
-
-In the reign of Henry V. the famous Lord Mayor, Richard Whitington, and
-the Brewers seem to have been perpetually at daggers drawn.
-
-The records of the Brewers’ Company contain a quaint account of an
-information laid against them for selling dear ale; the complainant
-in the case being Sir Richard, whose mayoralty had then expired. The
-substance of it, translated from the original Norman French, is as
-follows:—
-
-“On Thursday, July 30th, 1422, Robert Chichele, the Mayor, sent for
-the masters and twelve of the most worthy of our company to appear
-at the Guildhall; to whom John Fray, the recorder, objected a breach
-of government, for which £20 should be forfeited, for selling dear
-ale. After much dispute about the price and quality of malt, wherein
-Whityngton, the late mayor, declared that the brewers had ridden into
-the country and forestalled the malt, to raise its price, they were
-convicted in the penalty of £20; which objecting to, the masters were
-ordered to be kept in prison in the Chamberlain’s company, until they
-{136} should pay it, or find security for payment thereof.” Whereupon,
-the Mayor and Court of Aldermen, having “gone homeward to their meat,”
-the masters, who remained in durance vile, “asked the Chamberlain and
-clerk what they should do; who bade them go home, and promised that no
-harm should come to them; for all this proceeding had been done but to
-please Richard Whityngton, for he was the cause of all the aforesaid
-judgment.” The record proceeds to state that “the offence taken by
-Richard Whityngton against them was for their having fat swans at
-their feast on the morrow of St. Martin.” Whether this unctuous dish
-had offended the famous Mayor’s mind by way of his digestion, does not
-appear.
-
-[Illustration: Whityngton.]
-
-The same Robert Chichele is recorded to have issued the following
-curious regulation in 1423:—“That retailers of ale should sell the same
-in their houses in pots of “peutre,” sealed and open; and that whoever
-carried ale to the buyer should hold the pot in one hand and a cup in
-the other; and that all who had cups unsealed should be fined.”
-
-Many other complaints of the “oppressive” acts of Whitington towards
-the Company are also recorded. {137}
-
-The Company, as appears from these records, had the power of fining its
-members for breach of discipline. In 1421 one William Payne, at the
-sign of the Swan, by St. Anthony’s Hospital, Threadneedle Street, was
-fined 3s. 4d., to be expended in a swan for the masters’ breakfast,
-for having refused to supply a barrel of ale to the King when he was in
-France. Simon Potkin, of the Key, Aldgate, was fined for selling short
-measure, whereupon he alleged that he had given money to the masters of
-the Brewers’ Company, that he might sell ale at his will. This excuse
-embroiled him with the Company, who were not to be appeased until he
-had paid 3s. 4d. for a swan to be eaten by the masters, but of which,
-it is added, “he was allowed his own share.”
-
-In 1420 Thomas Greene, master, and the wardens of the Company
-agreed that they should meet at “Brewershalle” every Monday for the
-transaction of their business. It would appear that the first Hall
-had then been recently erected, for, as we have seen, the Brewers
-had in the preceding reign no fixed place to which “the good men of
-the mystery” might resort. Many curious accounts are to be found of
-election feasts. The presence of females was allowed. The brothers of
-the Company paid 12d., and the sisters 8d., and a brother and his
-wife 20d. A _menu_ of one of these feasts, given in the ninth year of
-Henry V., is subjoined. It shows the nature of these entertainments at
-that period.
-
-LA ORDINANCE DE NOSTRE FESTE EN CESTE AN.
-
-     _La premier Cours_              _The First Course_
-
-   Brawne one le mustarde          Brawn with mustard
-   Caboch à le potage              Cabbage soup
-   Swan standard                   Swan standard
-   Capons rostez                   Roast capons
-   Graundez Costades.              Great costard apples.
-
-    _La seconde Cours_               _The Second Course_
-
-   Venyson en broth one            Venison in broth
-   Blanche mortrewes[44]            Mortreux soup {138}
-   Cony standard                   Rabbit standard
-   Pertriches on cokkez rostez     Partridges with roasted cocks
-   Leche Lombard[45]                Leche Lombard
-   Dowsettes one pettiz parneux.   Sweetmeats and pastry.
-
-     _La troisme Cours_              _The Third Course_
-
-   Poires en serope                Pears in syrup
-   Graundezbriddes one             Great birds and
-   Petitz ensemblez                Little ones together
-   Fretours                        Fritters
-   Payne puff one                  Bread puff
-   Un cold bakemete.               A cold baked meat.
-
-   [44] _Mortreux_ was a kind of white soup. Chaucer says of the Cook
-   that:—
-
-      “He coude roste, and sethe, and broille, and frie,
-       Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pye.”
-
-   [45] An old receipt for _leche lombard_ describes it as made of pork
-   pounded with eggs; sugar, salt, raisins, currants, dates, pepper,
-   and cloves were added; the mixture was put in a bladder and boiled;
-   raisins, wine and more spices were added, and the whole was served
-   in a wine gravy.
-
-It will be gathered from a study of this bill of fare that, though the
-Brewers frequently alluded to themselves in petitions as “the poor men
-of the Mystery of Brewers,” “your poor neighbours the Berebruers,” and
-such like, they nevertheless fared rather sumptuously than otherwise.
-Here is their drink bill for a similar entertainment:—
-
-BOTERYE.
-
- item for xxii galons of red wine                      xiiijs. viijd.
- item for iij kilderkyns of good ale at ijs. iiijd.    viis.
- item for ij kilderkyn of iij halfpeny Ale at xxij     iijs. viijd.
- item for j kilderkyn of peny ale                      xijd.
-
-In 1422 Parliament ordered that all the weirs or “kydells” in the
-Thames from Staines to Gravesend should be destroyed, and the Lord
-Mayor and Aldermen ordained that two men from each of the City
-Companies should assist in the work. Thomas Grene and Robert Swannefeld
-were accordingly chosen on behalf of the Brewers to go to Kingston. The
-expenses were defrayed by a general contribution by the members of the
-Company. “These be the names,” says the old {139} writer, “of Brewers
-of London, the wheche dede paien diverse somes of monye for to helpe to
-destruye the weres yn Tempse for the comynalte of the Cite of London
-shulde have the more plente of fissh.” The names of some two hundred
-and fifty subscribers are subjoined to the record.
-
-In 1424 the Brewers had a Lord Mayor to their mind in John Michelle,
-who was “a good man, and meek and soft to speak with.” When he was
-sworn-in, the Brewers gave him an ox, that cost 21s. 2d., and a boar
-valued at 30s. 1d.; “so that he did no harm to the Brewers, and
-advised them to make good ale, that he might not have any complaint
-against them.”
-
-Returning to the ordinances of the City, we find that about this time
-(7 Hen. V.) there were some three hundred brewers in the City and
-liberties. In that year another precaution was taken to ensure a proper
-measure of cask. The coopers were ordered by Whitington to mark with
-an iron brand all casks made by them. Each cooper was to have his own
-brand, and the marks were to be entered of record. This regulation was
-carried into effect, and the mark chosen by each cooper appears on the
-City Records with his name annexed, as thus:—
-
-[Illustration]
-
-In the sixteenth year of the reign of Henry VI. the first charter
-was granted to the Brewers’ Company. It empowered the freemen of
-the Mystery of Brewers of the City of London thenceforward to be a
-corporate body, with a common seal and powers of taking and holding
-land. The Company was yearly to elect four of their number as wardens,
-who were to have power to regulate the members of the Mystery and their
-brewing operations, and also to govern and rule all men employed in,
-and all processes connected with, the brewing of _any kind of liquor
-from malt_ within the City and suburbs for ever. This last provision
-was probably intended to extend the power of the Company to the
-Fellowship of the Beer-brewers, then beginning to come into existence.
-Some years afterwards a coat-of-arms was granted to the Company by
-William Hawkeslowe, Clarencieux King of Arms of the South Marches of
-Ingelond. It is thus described in the grant: {140} “They beren asure
-thre barly sheues gold, bound of the same, a cheveron, gowles, in the
-cheveron thre barels, Sylvir, garnyshed with sable.”
-
-[Illustration: The Ancient Arms.]
-
-The Brewers had taken for their patron saints St. Mary and St. Thomas
-the Martyr, and bore the arms of Thomas à Becket impaled with their
-own, until Henry VIII., discovering that St. Thomas was no saint after
-all, desecrated his tomb, scattered his dust to the four winds of
-heaven, and compelled the Brewers to adopt another escutcheon. The new
-coat, discarding the obnoxious saint’s insignia, was a good deal like
-the old one, and is borne by the Company to this day. It is described
-in the grant as follows: “Geules on a Cheueron engrailed silver three
-kilderkyns sable hoped golde between syx barly sheues in saultre of
-the same, upon the Helme on a torse siluer and asur a demy Morien in
-her proper couler, vestid asur, fretid siluer, the here golde, holding
-in either hande thre barley eres of the same manteled sable, dobled
-siluer.”
-
-[Illustration: The Arms of the Brewers’ Company.]
-
-With regard to the old Hall of the Brewers’ Company, it occupied the
-site of the present Hall, and is described by Stowe as a “faire house;”
-it was destroyed in the Great Fire. Of the present edifice, which
-sprang Phœnix-like from the ashes of the yet smoking City—it bears date
-1666—suffice it to say that it is a fine building, characteristic of
-the architectural style of the period, and that for lovers of old oak
-carvings its interior is worthy a visit.
-
-This notice of the Brewers’ Company, its foundation, its feasts, and
-{141} its troubles has taken us rather in advance of our tale, and we
-must hark back to the middle of the fifteenth century.
-
-To judge from an entry in the City Records of the sixteenth year of
-Edward IV. the Brewers were sometimes openly resisted by force of arms.
-The actual occasion on which this was done is not specified, but it is
-recorded that Richard Geddeney was committed to prison for having said
-that the Brewers had made new ordinances, and that it would be well to
-oppose them, as had formerly been done, with swords and daggers, when
-they were assembled in their Hall.
-
-Six years afterwards a petition was presented to the Lord Mayor and
-Aldermen by the Brewers, which is so good a specimen of the usual style
-of their supplications that some portions of it are given. It begins by
-“petieously compleynyng that where in tyme passed thei have honestly
-lyved by the meanes of bruyng, and utteryng of their chaffer as well
-within the fraunchises of the saide Citee as withoute. And hath ben
-able to bere charges of the same citee after their havours and powers
-as other freemen of the saide citee. Where now it is so that for lak
-of Reules and other directions in the saide Crafte they ben disordered
-and none obedience nor goode Rule and Guydyng is hadd within the saide
-Crafte to the distruction thereof.” It is therefore prayed—“That eny
-persone occupying the Craft or feat of bruying within the franchise or
-the saide citee make or do to be made good and hable ale and holesome
-for mannys body. . . and that no manner ale after it be clensed and set
-on yeyst be put to sale or borne oute to eny custumers hous till that
-it have fully spourged (worked).” That no brewer shall occupy a house
-or a “seler” _apart from his own dwelling-house_ for the sale of his
-ale. That no brewer shall “entice or labour to taak awey eny custumer
-from a brother brewer,” or “serve or do to be served any typler
-(_i.e._, retailer of ale) or huxster as to hym anewe be comen custumer
-of any manner ale for to be retailed till he have verrey knowlage that
-the saide typler or huxster be clerely _oute of dett and daunger for
-ale to any other person_” . . . . . That every person keeping a house
-and being a _brother of Bruers_ do pay to the Wardens of the Company a
-sum of 4s. yearly. “That no manner persone of the said crafte . . .
-presume to goo to the feeste of the Maior or the Sherriff _unless he
-be invited_ . . that members of the crafte shall appear in livery when
-so commanded that is to sey gowne and hode . . . That the livery of
-the crafte be changed and renewed every third year agenst the day of
-the Election of the newe Wardeyns of the crafte . . .” That once a
-quarter the ordinances of the Company shall be read to the assembled
-brewers in {142} their common hall. That no brewer is to buy malt
-except in the market. That malt brought to market must not be “capped
-in the sakke, nor raw-dried malte, dank or wete malte or made of mowe
-brent barly, belyed malt, Edgrove malte, acre-spired malte, wyvell eten
-malte or meddled[46], in the deceite of the goode people of the saide
-citee, upon payn of forfaiture of the same.” No one is to buy his own
-malt or corn in the market, “to high the price of corn in the Market,”
-under pain of the pillory. No one is to sell malt “at the Market of
-Gracechurch or Greyfreres before 9 of the clock till market bell
-therfor ordeigned be rongen,” and at one o’clock all the unsold malt is
-to be cleared away.
-
-   [46] “Capped in the sakke” = probably with some good malt put on the
-   top and defective malt beneath. Mowe brent barley = barley that has
-   heated in the stack. Belyed = swollen. Acre-spired = with the shoot
-   of the plant projecting from the husk. Wyvell-eten = weevil-eaten.
-   Meddled = mixed.
-
-All these rules and ordinances the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were
-graciously pleased to sanction and confirm.
-
-The records contain many entries showing the difficulties the
-authorities had to contend with in keeping the brewers to the legal
-price and qualities of ale, a subject already touched on in Chapter
-V. The prices being fixed by law, and no allowance being made for the
-natural fluctuations of the market, it is not to be supposed that
-the brewers would give their customers any better ale than they were
-absolutely compelled by law to give. As old Taylor quaintly says:—
-
- I find the _Brewer_ honest in his _Beere_,
- He sels it for small Beere, and he should cheate,
- Instead of _small_ to cosen folks with _Greate_,
- But one shall seldome find them with that fault,
- Except it should invisibly raine Mault.
-
-Disputes arising between the officers of the Brewers’ Company and any
-members of the guild, were sometimes referred for settlement to the
-Lord Mayor and Aldermen. In 1520 there was “variance and debate in the
-Court of Aldermen between the Master and Wardens of the ale-brewers
-and Thomas Adyson, ale-brewer, concerning the making of a growte” by
-the latter. The parties having submitted their case to the Court,
-it was adjudged that Adyson should go to the Brewers’ Hall, {143}
-and there, before the Master and Wardens, “with due reverence as
-to them apperteynyng, standing before them his hed uncovered, shall
-say these words: ‘Maysters, I pray you to be good masters to me, and
-fromhensforth I promytte you that I shall be good and obedient to you
-. . and obey the laws and customs of the house.’”
-
-Foreign brewers (_i.e._, brewers not members of the Company) were
-only allowed to sell ale within the City on paying 40s. annually to
-the use of the City, and in default of payment the Chamberlain “shall
-distreyne their carts from tyme to tyme.” There was also a duty called
-ale-silver, which had been paid from time immemorial to the Lord Mayor
-by the sellers of ale within the City.
-
-Complaints of short measure were still common, and as it is shown that
-the barrels were delivered to customers without being properly filled,
-so that “thynhabitants of the City paye for more ale and bere than
-they doo receive, which is agenst alle good reason and conscience,”
-therefore the brewers were ordered to take round “filling ale” to fill
-up their customers’ casks.
-
-In the eighteenth year of Henry VIII. a striking instance of the
-insubordination of the Brewers is recorded. The four Wardens of the
-Company were ordered to produce their books of fines, “the whiche
-to doo they utterly denyed.” Therefore the four Wardens and their
-Clerk, Lawrence Anworth, “were comytted to the prisn of Newgate ther
-to remayne.” This seems to have awakened the Wardens to a sense of
-their duties, for on the same day they brought in “ij. boks inclosed
-in a whytte bagge.” A committee was appointed to inspect the same,
-“forasmuche as it is thought that mayne unreasonable fynes and other
-ordynannces be conteyned in theym.”
-
-It has been already mentioned (p. 68) that from the time of Henry VI.
-beer had begun slowly to displace the old English ale. The Beer-brewers
-had gathered themselves together into a “fellowship” for the protection
-of their interests, and were quite distinct from the Ale-brewers,
-who composed the Brewers’ Company. Whatever may have been the case
-earlier, in the reign of Henry VIII. the Beer-brewers numbered in their
-fellowship a certain proportion of Dutchmen. In the twenty-first year
-of that reign it was ordained that “no maner Berebruer, _Ducheman or
-other_, selling any bere shall, etc.” “Also that no maner of berebruer
-_Englise_ or _straunger_, shall have and kepe in his house above the
-nomber of two Coblers to amende their vessells.” Constant reference
-is made to the Beer-brewers as being a fellowship separate from the
-Ale-brewers until the reign of Edward VI., by which {144} time they
-had united, apparently without obtaining the sanction of any authority
-to the change. In the fifth year of that reign a resolution was passed
-by the Court of Common Council that, “forasmoche as the beare-bruers
-in the last commen counseyll here holden most dysobedyentlye,
-stubborenelye, and arrogantlye behaved theymselfes toward this
-honourable Courte,” the whole craft of the Beer-brewers are for ever
-disqualified from being elected to serve upon the Common Council; if,
-however, the Beer-brewers make humble submission, they may be restored
-to their old status, “if your lordship and the wysdomes of this Citee
-shall then thynke it mete.” And forasmuch as “most evydently yt hathe
-apperyd that this notable stobernes of the beare-bruers hath rysen by
-the counseyll and provocatioun of the ale-bruers, which have unyted
-to theym all the beare-bruers,” it is ordered that for the future the
-two crafts shall not unite, nor shall the Ale-brewers compel any one
-to come into their Company. This state of things continued till the
-third year of Queen Mary’s reign, when a petition was presented by the
-Brewers to the Common Council, which recited that the two crafts had
-formerly been united, “as mete and verye convenyente it was and yet
-is,” and prayed that the restriction might be removed. The petition
-ended thus: “and they with all their hartes accordinge to theire
-dueties shall daylye praye unto almightye god longe to prosper and
-preserve your honours and worshippes in moche helthe and felycytie.”
-This affecting appeal, which would have moved a heart of stone, had
-the desired effect, and from that day to the present the Beer-brewers
-and Ale-brewers have been united, “as mete and very convenyente it
-is” that they should be. Different governance, however, was applied
-to the former, and for long after this period four Surveyors of the
-Beer-brewers, being “substantyall sadd men,” were elected every year to
-supervise the trade.
-
-An instance of the tyranny with which the trades were regulated in
-the old days has been already given; a very similar one may be taken
-from an order of the Star Chamber in the twenty-fourth year of Henry
-VIII., which commands that “in case the Maire and Aldermen of the same
-Citie shall hereafter knowe and perceyve or understonde that any of the
-saide Brewers of their frowarde and perverse myndes shall at any tyme
-hereafter sodenly forbere and absteyne from bruynge, whereby the King’s
-subjects shulde bee destitute or onprovided of Drynke,” the brewhouses
-of such “wilfull and obstynate” brewers shall be taken possession of
-by the City, who are to allow others to brew there, and provide them
-materials “in case their lak greynes to brew with.” {145}
-
-Regrators and forestallers (_i.e._, persons who bought large stocks
-of provisions with the object of causing a rise in price) were in
-old times severely treated by the authorities, who generally checked
-their iniquitous dealings by ordering them to sell their stores at a
-_reasonable_ price. The forestaller, indeed, might think himself lucky
-if he escaped so easily. In the fourth year of Edward VI. four persons
-who had accumulated great quantities of hops in a time of scarcity were
-ordered to sell their whole stock at once at a reasonable price.
-
-All through the reign of Queen Elizabeth the unfortunate brewers were
-vexed with frequent and, in some cases, contradictory regulations: This
-beer was to be allowed; that beer was prohibited; prices were still
-fixed by law, and qualities must correspond to the City regulations.
-Even though a man be ruined, he could not leave off brewing, for fear
-of being held a “rebel.”
-
-A curious ordinance, made in the fourteenth year of Elizabeth’s reign,
-shows the extreme newness of the ale and beer consumed by the good men
-of the City of London in those days. The ordinance is expressed to be
-for the reformation of “dyvers greate and foule abuses disorderlye
-bigonne by the Brewers,” and, reciting that the Brewers have begun to
-deliver their beer and ale but two or three hours after the same be
-cleansed and tunned, it provides that no beer or ale is to be delivered
-to customers till it has stood in the brewer’s house six hours in
-summer and eight in winter.
-
-There seems to have been a smoke question in London even as early as
-this period, for in the twenty-first year of Elizabeth we find that
-John Platt was committed to prison, “for that he contrarye to my Lorde
-Maior’s comaundement to refraine from burninge of seacoles during
-her Majestie’s abode at Westminster, he did continually burn seacole
-notwithstanding.” A petition from the Brewers to Her Majesty’s Council
-about the same period recites that the Brewers understand that Her
-Majesty “findeth hersealfe greately greved and anoyed with the taste
-and smoke of the seacooles used in their furnaces.” They therefore
-promise to substitute wood in the brewhouses nearest to Westminster
-Palace. What would have been Her Majesty’s “grief” if she could have
-experienced a modern November in London?
-
-In Peter Pindar’s poem on the visit of King George III. to Whitbread’s
-Brewery, allusion is made to the once popular belief that brewers’
-horses are usually fed on grains. The origin of this idea may possibly
-be found in the regulations enforced in London as to the price of and
-the dealings in brewers’ grains. In a proclamation of Elizabeth’s {146}
-time it is recited that “forasmuche as brewers’ graines be victuall
-for horses and cattell as hey and horsebread and other provinder be,”
-therefore a price is to be set upon grains by the Lord Mayor, and
-the buying of grains to sell again is forbidden. The difficulties of
-enforcing the rules as to price and quality of ale and beer are shown
-in the frequent complaints of the brewers, and in the numerous trials
-that were made from time to time by the City authorities to ascertain
-how much drink ought to be brewed from a fixed quantity of malt. In the
-thirty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a large Committee was
-appointed to make trial, at the charges of the City, of twenty quarters
-of malt, to be brewed into two sorts of beer, viz., strong beer at 6s.
-8d. the barrel, and “doble” beer at 3s. 4d. the barrel. As a result
-of the trial, the brewers promised to draw only five barrels and a
-half of double beer from a quarter of malt until the price of malt had
-fallen to 18s. the quarter; a strong proof this of the growing taste
-for strong ale and beer. Shortly before this time the strongest ale
-allowed by law had been this same “doble.” Now the “doble” had taken
-the place of the single, and the strong ale of twice the strength of
-the “doble” had stepped into its place.
-
-A very summary way had the City authorities in the sixteenth century,
-of treating any drink or victual which did not come up to the required
-standard of excellence. In 1597 we find it ordered that two and fifty
-pipes of corrupt beer, “being nether fitt for man’s body, nor to be
-converted into sawce (_i.e. vinegar_) . . . shall have the heades
-of all the same pipes beaten owte and the beer poured out into the
-channells, part in Cheapside, part in Cornhill and part in Bishopsgate.”
-
-After the reign of Elizabeth the entries concerning the Brewers and
-their delinquencies become fewer and farther between. The prices of
-ale and beer were still fixed by law, but more common-sense views on
-the subject of trade and trade regulation were slowly beginning to
-prevail, and we soon lose all traces of the tyrannous and vexatious
-regulations of which so many instances occur in earlier times. One
-more such instance may be mentioned of an arbitrary attempt to force
-trade out of its natural channels, and to lower prices and compel
-sobriety at one and the same time. In 1614 the Lord Mayor, “finding
-the gaols pestered with prisoners, and their bane to take root and
-beginning at ale-houses, and much mischief to be there plotted, with
-great waste of corn in brewing heady strong beer, many consuming all
-their time and means sucking that sweet poison,” had an exact survey
-taken of all victualling houses and ale-houses, which were above a
-thousand. As above 300 {147} barrels of beer were in some houses, the
-whole quantity of beer in victualling houses amounting to above 40,000
-barrels, he had thought it high time to abridge their number and limit
-them by bonds as to the quantity of beer they should use, and as to
-what orders they should observe, whereby the price of corn and malt had
-greatly fallen. The Brewers, however, seem to have been too many for
-his Lordship, for though he limited the number of barrels to twenty
-per house, and the quality of the two sorts of beer to 4s. and 8s. a
-barrel, so that the price of malt and wheat was in a fortnight reduced
-by 5s. or 6s. per quarter, yet the Brewers brewed as before, alleging
-that the beer was to be used for export, and, “combining with such as
-kept tippling houses,” conveyed the same to the ale-houses by night, so
-that in a few weeks’ time the price of malt had risen to much the same
-figure as before.
-
-In 1626 the Brewers’ Company was in evil case, as may be judged from a
-petition presented by them in that year to the City Fathers, in which
-they allege that they are in a decayed state and not able to govern
-their trade, that their Company consists of but six beer-brewers and a
-small number of ale-brewers, and that other brewers are free of other
-Companies. The petition goes on to pray that no other person than a
-freeman of the Company be allowed to set up a brewhouse in the City.
-The petition was referred to a Committee, and nothing more was heard
-of it. A similar petition, presented to the Common Council in the year
-1752, was considered and the prayer granted.
-
-While, however, the Brewers’ Company had been allowed to fall into
-decay, the City regulations of the trade had become less and less
-irksome, and the brewers themselves increased in wealth and prosperity.
-Many allusions may be found in the writers of the middle of the
-seventeenth century, which prove that the status of the brewers had
-greatly improved. The old Water Poet thus describes how the brewers
-“are growne rich”:—
-
- Thus Water boyles, parboyles, and mundifies,
- Cleares, cleanses, clarifies, and purifies.
- But as it purges us from filth and stincke:
- We must remember that it makes us drinke,
- Metheglin, Bragget, Beere, and headstrong Ale,
- (That can put colour in a visage pale)
- By which meanes many Brewers are growne rich,
- And in estates may soare a lofty pitch.
- Men of Goode Ranke and place, and much command,
- Who have (by sodden Water) purchast land: {148}
- Yet sure I thinke their gaine had not been such
- Had not good fellowes usde to drinke too much:
- But wisely they made Haye whilst Sunne did shine,
- For now our Land is overflowne with Wine:
- With such a Deluge, or an Inundation
- As hath besotted and halfe drown’d our Nation.
- Some there are scarce worth 40 pence a yeere
- Will hardly make a meale with Ale or Beere:
- And will discourse, that wine doth make good blood,
- Concocts his meat, and make digestion good,
- And after to drink Beere, nor will, nor can
- _He lay a churl upon a Gentleman_.
-
-A somewhat similar moral may be drawn from the humorous little poem,
-written a century and a half later by a namesake of the Water Poet:—
-
-THE BREWER’S COACHMAN.
-
-  Honest William, an easy and good natur’d fellow,
-  Would a little too oft get a little too mellow;
-  Body coachman was he to an eminent brewer,
-  No better e’er sat on a coach-box to be sure.
-
-  His coach was kept clean, and no mothers or nurses,
-  Took more care of their babes, than he took of his horses;
-  He had these, aye, and fifty good qualities more,
-  But the business of tippling could ne’er be got o’er.
-
-  So his master effectually mended the matter,
-  By hiring a man who drank nothing but water,
- “Now William,” says he, “you see the plain case,
-  Had you drank as he does you’d have kept a good place.”
-
- “Drink water!” cried William; “had all men done so,
-  You’d never have wanted a coachman, I trow.
-  They are soakers, like me, whom you load with reproaches,
-  That enable you brewers to ride in your coaches.”
-
-A short space only may be devoted to a record of a few of the more
-remarkable brewers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jan
-Steen, of Delph, seems to have been a brewer famed rather for his
-eccentricities than for his beer. He flourished in the days of Charles
-II., and Arnold Hinbraken, his biographer, says that a whole book might
-{149} be filled with droll episodes of his life. “He was so attached
-to boon companions, that his Brewery came to grief. He bought wine with
-his money instead of malt. His wife, seeing this, said one day to him,
-‘Jan, our living is vanishing, our customers call in vain, there is
-no beer in the cellar, nor have we malt for a Brew, what will become
-of us? You should bring life into the brewery.’ ‘I’ll keep it alive,’
-said Jan, and walked away. He went to market and bought several live
-ducks, having first told his men to fill the largest kettle with water
-and heat it. He then threw a little malt in it, and threw in the Ducks,
-which, not accustomed to hot water, flew madly through the Brewery
-making a horrid noise, so that his wife came running in to see what the
-matter was, when Jan, turning to her, said, ‘My love, is it not lively
-now in our Brewery?’ However, he gave up brewing, and turned Painter.”
-
-William Hicks, who died in the year 1740, was one of the most
-remarkable Brewers of the last century. He was brewer to the Royal
-household, and left behind him a well-earned reputation for honesty and
-loyalty. A striking proof of his loyalty may be seen to this day in
-the statue of George I., which he set up on the summit of Bloomsbury
-steeple, and of which a facetious person wrote:—
-
- The King of Great Britain was reckon’d before
- The head of the Church by all good Christian people,
- But his brewer has added still one title more
- To the rest, and has made him the head of the steeple.
-
-Another celebrated brewer of last century was Humphrey Parsons, twice
-Lord Mayor of London. This gentleman, when upon a hunting party with
-Louis XV., happened to be exceedingly well mounted, and, contrary to
-the etiquette observed in the French Court, outstripped the rest of the
-company, and was first in at the death. On the King asking the name of
-the stranger, he was indignantly informed that he “was un chevalier
-de malte.” The King entered into conversation with Mr. Parsons, and
-asked the price of his horse. The Chevalier, bowing in the most courtly
-style, replied that the horse was beyond any price other than his
-Majesty’s acceptance. The horse was delivered, and from thenceforward
-the _chevalier_ Parsons had the exclusive privilege of supplying the
-French Court and people with his far-famed “black champagne.”
-
-It has been the sad reflection of many an one, on wandering in a
-churchyard and reading the epitaphs of the departed, that certainly
-the most virtuous and highly-gifted of mankind have already passed
-{150} away—that is, if the epitaphs are absolutely to be relied on.
-Mr. Tipper, the Newhaven brewer, who died in 1785, and lies buried in
-Newhaven Churchyard, is an instance in point. Surely none but himself
-could have been Mr. Tipper’s parallel. His epitaph runs thus:—
-
- Reader! with kind regards this grave survey,
- Nor heedless pass where Tipper’s ashes lay.
- Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt and kind,
- And dared do, what few dare do—speak his mind.
- Philosophy and History well he knew,
- Was versed in Physick and in Surgery too.
- The best old Stingo he both brewed and sold,
- Nor did one knavish trick to get his gold.
- He played thro’ life a varied comic part,
- And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.
- Reader, in real truth, such was the man,
- Be better, wiser, laugh more if you can.
-
-The last resting place of Mr. Pepper, sometime brewer of Stamford, in
-Lincolnshire, bears these lines:—
-
- Though _hot_ my name, yet mild my nature,
- I bore good will to every creature;
- I brew’d good ale and sold it too,
- And unto each I gave his due.
-
-The following lines were composed on a brewer who, becoming too big a
-man for his trade, retired from business—and died:—
-
- Ne’er quarrel with your craft,
-   Nor with your shop dis’gree.
- He turned his nose up at his Tub
-   And the bucket kicked he.
-
-And so the old Brewers are dead and gone, with their virtues and their
-faults, their troubles and their successes, and the modern Brewers
-reign in their stead.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{151}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-
- “The Almaynes with their smale Rhenish wine are contented; but we must
- have March beere, double beere, dagger ale, and bracket . . .”
-            _Gascoygne’s Delicate Dyet for Daintie-Mouthed Droonkards._
-
- Alum si fit stalum non est malum
- Beerum si fit clerum est sincerum.
-                                                           _Old Rhyme._
-
-_VARIOUS KINDS OF ALES AND BEERS.—SOME FOREIGN BEERS. — RECEIPTS. —
-SONGS. — ANECDOTES._
-
-An attempt to describe, or even to specify, all the ales and beers that
-have gained a local or more wide-spread fame, would be a lengthy task.
-Nearly every county in England, and nearly every town of any size, has
-been at one time or another noted for its malt liquors. The renown of
-some localities has been evanescent, having depended probably upon
-the special art of some “barmy” brewer or skilful ale-wife, whilst of
-others it may be said that years only increase their fame and spread
-their reputation.
-
-From a perusal of those queer old collections of quackery, magic,
-herb-lore and star-lore, the Saxon Leechdoms, it may be gathered
-that our Saxon ancestors brewed a goodly assortment of malt liquors.
-They made beer, and strong beer; ale, and strong ale; clear ale,
-lithe (clear) beer; and _twybrowen_, or double-brewed ale, the mighty
-ancestor of the “doble-doble” beer of Elizabethan times. Besides all
-these, there was foreign ale for those whose tastes were too fastidious
-to be satisfied with their native productions. {152}
-
-On the authority of the _Alvismál_, it may be said that no distinction
-was originally drawn between ale and beer, except, perhaps, that the
-latter was considered to be a somewhat more honourable designation; “öl
-heitir meth mönnum en meth Asum bjoor” (_i.e._, ale it is called among
-men, and among the gods beer).
-
-The _Exeter Book_, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems, contains the
-expressions, “a good beer-drinker,” “angry with ale,” “drunken with
-beer,” in close juxtaposition and apparently without any distinction of
-meaning. A distinction must, however, have arisen in very early times,
-for in the collection of Saxon Leechdoms, mentioned above, a direction
-is to be found that a patient is on no account to drink beer, although
-he may partake in moderation of ale and wine; and the same work
-contains the remarkable and apparently impossible statement that while
-a pint of ale weighs six pennies more than a pint of water, a pint of
-beer weighs twenty-two pennies less than a pint of water.
-
-The word beer seems gradually to have given place to the word ale,
-and though the former may have lingered in some parts of the country,
-and the passage from _King Horn_ already quoted shows that in the
-thirteenth century it was not quite forgotten—ale became the usual
-word to express malt liquor. It was English _ale_ that strengthened
-the arm of English bowmen at Crecy and Poictiers, and on many another
-well-fought field; and English _ale_ was the “barley-broth” which
-“decocted” the cold blood of the dwellers in this land of fogs and
-mist “to such valiant heat” and stubborn endurance in their constant
-struggles with the valour and chivalry of France.
-
-The old English word “beor,” indeed, had become so weakened and
-specialised, even as early as the tenth century, that it is to be
-found in a Vocabulary of that date as an equivalent for idromellum, a
-word properly signifying an inferior sort of mead, but also denoting
-the sweet wort, before fermentation had changed it into _ale_. It is
-curious to observe that when next the word “beer” came into common use
-in our language, it was by introduction of our neighbours the Flemings,
-and was specially applied to malt liquor in which the bitter of the hop
-was an important ingredient. The word left us in sweetness, it returned
-in bitterness, and so the whirligig of time brings in its revenges.
-Beer became the name for hopped ale, but that distinction soon began to
-be less significant, for as early as 1616 we find Gervase Markham, in
-his _Maison Rustique_, recommends the use of a small quantity of hops
-in ale-brewing. {153}
-
-Taylor, in _Drink and Welcome_, dwells upon this distinction between
-ale and beer in the seventeenth century as follows:—“Now to write of
-Beere I shall not need to wet my pen much with the naming of it, it
-being a drinke which Antiquitie was an _Aleien_ or a meere stranger
-to, and as it hath scarcely any name, so hath it no habitation, for
-the places or houses where it is sold doth still retain the name of
-an Alehouse. This comparison needs a _Sir Reverence_ to usher it, but
-being Beere is but an Upstart and a Foreigner or Alien, in respect
-of _Ale_, it may serve instead of a better; Nor would it differ from
-Ale in anything, but onely that an Aspiring _Amaritudinous_ Hop comes
-crawling lamely in, and makes a Bitter difference betweene them, but
-if the Hop be so crippled, that he cannot be gotton to make the oddes,
-the place may poorely bee supply’d with chopp’d Broome (new gathered)
-whereby Beere hath never attained the sober Title of _Ale_, for it is
-proper to say _A Stand of Ale_, and a _Hoggeshead of Beere_, which in
-common sense is but a swinish phrase or appellation.”
-
-That curious ballad entitled _Skelton’s Ghost_, which was probably
-the work of a rhymer of the seventeenth century, points to the same
-distinction. The ghost of Skelton the Laureate is supposed to be
-addressing some of the jovial characters of the period much in the tone
-of one who, having lived in the golden age (of liquor), looks down
-with pity and scorn at a later-day’s degenerate topers. These are the
-particular lines in point:—
-
- For in King Harry’s time
- When I made this rhyme
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Full Winchester gage
- We had in that age
- The Dutchman’s strong beere
- Was not hopt over here,
- To us ’twas unknowne;
- Bare ale of our owne,
- In a bowle we might bring,
- To welcome the King.
-
-At the present day, in the eastern counties, and indeed over the
-greater portion of the country, _ale_ means strong, and _beer_ means
-small malt liquor; in London _beer_ usually means porter (_i.e._, the
-small beer of stout); while in the west country _beer_ is the “mighty”
-liquor, and _ale_ the small. In the trade, however, _beer_ is the
-comprehensive word for all malt liquors. {154}
-
-Ale was not the only word employed in late Saxon times to signify the
-“oyle of barly,” for _wœt_, from the Saxon _swatan_, was in common use
-as a synonym, and now, perhaps, finds its representative in the slang
-phrase, “heavy wet.” The same term lingers in Scotland, and lovers of
-Burns will remember his line, “It gars the _swats_ gae glibber doun.”
-In former times wheat and oats were malted, as well as barley, and
-though, as has been previously stated (p. 105), the law from time to
-time prohibited this use of wheat, as tending to enhance the price of
-bread, the practice was stronger than the precept, and continued to
-prevail down to a comparatively recent date.
-
-Cogan, in _The Haven of Health_ (1586), thus describes the effect of
-the different malts on the resultant liquor:—“For beere or ale being
-made of wheat inclineth more to heat, for wheat is hot. If it be made
-of barley malt, it enclineth more to cold, for barley is cold. And if
-it be made of barley and otes together it is yet more temperate and of
-less nourishment.” In the reign of Edward VI. even beans were used in
-brewing, for the Brewers’ Company, in a petition to the Common Council
-asking for a revision of the prices of ale and beer, complain that the
-articles they use in brewing, viz., “wheate, malte, oates, beanes,
-hoppes . . . . . . at these days are comen unto greate and exceeding
-pryces.”
-
-It has been shown that for several hundred years the prices and
-qualities of ale were fixed by law. As a rule, only two kinds were
-allowed to be brewed for sale, the better and the second, or, as they
-were called in some places, and notably in London, the double and the
-single. The prices in Henry III.’s reign for the better kind were fixed
-at 1d. for two gallons sold within cities, and 1d. for three or four
-gallons sold in country places. In Edward III.’s reign three sorts
-of ale might be brewed, the best at 1½d. a gallon, the middling at
-1d., and the third at three farthings; and these prices seem to have
-been in force in the City of London with slight variations down to the
-time of Henry VIII., when the Brewers upon several occasions stirred
-themselves to get the prices raised, but met with varying success.
-In the early part of the reign the retail price of the best ale was
-still 1½d. the gallon, and of the second, called threehalfpenny ale,
-1d. per gallon. Double beer was to be 1d. per gallon, and single
-½d. and a half-farthing. The wholesale price for beer was also fixed,
-and three kinds were allowed, viz., “Dobyll” at 15d. the kilderkin,
-“Threehalfpenny” at 12d., and “Syngyll” at 10d.
-
-In the twenty-fourth year of Henry VIII. the Brewers, after much
-agitation, got the prices of beer raised to 2s. the kilderkin for the
-“doble,” {155} and 1s. for the “syngyll”; but even with that they
-were not satisfied, and expressed their dissatisfaction in protests to
-the Common Council, who listened to their complaint, “but after long
-consideration it was agreed, that whereas the Serjeaunt Gybson hath
-exhibited and rote a boke of the gaynes of the said bere-brewers,”
-their case should be remitted to the care of a committee appointed
-to look into it. In the result no alteration was then sanctioned,
-but five years afterwards the price was raised to 3s. 4d. the kil.
-for the best, and 2s. 8d. for the threehalfpenny. The strength of
-ale usually brewed about this time may be judged from answers given
-by London brewers when interrogated on the subject. John Sheffield,
-on being asked (36 Henry VIII.) how many kilderkins of _good ale_ he
-draws from a quarter of malt, answers, “Little above five.” Other
-brewers say much the same thing, though Richard Pyckering evades the
-question by saying that “he commytteth the whole to his wife, and what
-she draweth from a quarter he knoweth not.” This would point to an ale
-of very considerable strength. In the thirty-seventh year of Henry
-VIII., another committee was appointed to consider this all-important
-question, “on account of the grete derthe and scarcitye at this present
-of all kinds of grayne;” but nothing resulted from their deliberations.
-The Brewers, however, seem to have stuck to their text with great
-pertinacity, and in the fifth year of Edward VI. obtained a decision
-of a committee of the Common Council, that they could no longer supply
-the City at the then existing prices. Two kinds of beer only are to be
-allowed, our old friends, “doble” and “syngyll,” and the strength and
-quality are defined as follows: “Of every quarter of grayne that any
-beare-bruer shall brewe of doble beare, he shall drawe fowre barrells
-and one fyrkyn of goode holsome drynke for mannes bodye,” and double
-that quantity of single beer. The price of the double beer is to be
-4s. 8d. the barrel, and of single beer 2s. 4d., until the price of
-malt is reduced to 15s. the quarter, and of wheat to 12s., when the
-old prices are to be revived. Little variations of price occurred until
-the reign of Elizabeth, who seems, from contemporary accounts, to have
-been frequently exercised by the behaviour of the London Brewers. In
-a Royal proclamation of the second year of her reign, she complains
-that the Brewers have left off brewing any single beer, but brew “a
-kynde of very strong bere calling the same doble-doble-bere which they
-do commenly utter and sell at a very greate and excessyve pryce,” and
-orders the old rules and rates to be observed; and in particular that
-every Brewer shall once a week brew “as much syngyl as doble beare and
-more.” Twenty years later the “doble-doble” seems to have been {156}
-sanctioned in practice if not in name, for the Brewers are ordered to
-sell two sorts of beer only, the double at 4s. the barrel and “the
-other sort of beare of the best kynde at 7s. 6d.”
-
-Three years later still the Queen declares that the disorders of the
-Brewers, through their “ungodly gredyness,” have grown to such lengths
-that something must be done; and an Act of Common Council brings back
-the beer to double and single, and applies other remedies.
-
-In 1654 three sorts of beer are allowed—the best at 8s. the barrel,
-the second at 6s., and the small at 4s.; and shortly afterwards a
-fourth kind was added at 10s. The efforts of the authorities to fix
-the prices of ale and beer by arbitrary means were not long afterwards
-finally discontinued.
-
-The limitation and classification of ale and beer according to their
-strength, was maintained down to quite recent times because of the
-duties laid upon them, but on the repeal of those duties ales of every
-strength, kind and description were, and have since been, extensively
-manufactured. Every want, whim, and fancy of the ale-drinker may now
-be gratified. There is old Scotch or old Burton for the lover of
-strong beer, porter for the labouring classes, stout for the weakly,
-and last, but far from least, that splendid liquid, pale ale, which,
-when bottled, vies with champagne in its excellence and delicacy of
-flavour, and beats it altogether out of the field when we take into
-consideration its sustaining and restorative powers.
-
-A tale is told of a man who asserted that tea was stronger than beer.
-“A pot of beer,” said he, “will seldom attract more than a couple of
-men about it, but a pot of tea will draw half-a-dozen or more old
-women.”
-
-A potent drink, much in vogue with the roystering blades of former
-times, was that known as “huff-cap.” The name was a cant expression
-for strong ale, which was so called because it induced people to set
-their caps in a bold huffing fashion. The term huff-cap was also used
-to denote a swaggering fellow, as may be gathered from Clifford’s
-_Note on Dryden_ (1687):—“Prethee tell me true, was not this huff-cap
-once the Indian Emperour, and at another time did he not call himself
-Maximine?” _Fulwel’s Art of Flattery_ thus mentions this variety of the
-juice of barley:—“To quench the scorching heat of our parched throtes,
-with the best nippitatum in this toun, which is commonly called
-_huff-cap_, it will make a man look as though he had seen the devil
-and quickly move him to call his own father a ———” (naughty name).
-Harrison, writing on the food and diet of the English in 1587, also
-{157} mentions huff-cap, and speaks of the mightiness of the ale in
-which our ancestors indulged; ale, in fact, as an old Proverb has it,
-“that would make a cat speak.” “Howbeit,” he writes, “though they are
-so nice in the proportion of their bread, yet in lieu of the same their
-is such headie ale and beere in moste of them, as for the mightinesse
-thereof among suche as seeke it oute, is commonly called huffe cap,
-the mad dog, angel’s food, dragon’s milke, etc. And this is more to be
-noted, that when one of late fell by God’s prouvidence into a troubled
-conscience, after he had considered well of his reachlesse life, and
-dangerous estate; another thinking belike to change his colour and not
-his mind, carried him straightwaie to the strongest ale, as to the next
-physician. It is incredible to saie how our malte bugs lug at this
-liquor, even as pigs should lie in a rowe, lugging at their dame’s
-teats, till they lie still againe and be not able to wag. Neither did
-Romulus and Remus sucke their shee woolfe or sheepherd’s wife Lupa with
-such eger and sharpe devotion as these men hale at hufcap, till they be
-red as cockes, and little wiser than their combs.” A strong ale, called
-“Huff,” is still brewed at Winchester, and is kept for the use of the
-fellows (not the boys) of that ancient institution.
-
-Some idea of the strength of the ale usually drunk in the country
-districts in Elizabeth’s reign, may be gathered from a passage in a
-letter from Leicester to Burleigh, written while the Queen was on
-one of her famous progresses through the country: “There is not one
-drop of good drink here for her. We were fain to send to London, and
-Kenilworth, and divers other places where ale was; her own bere was so
-strong as there was no man able to drink it.”
-
-To quote again from old Harrison on the fondness of his contemporaries
-for strong ale, speaking of workmen and others attending bride-ales
-(_i.e._, marriage feasts) and such like festivities, he says: “If they
-happen to stumble upon a peece of venison and a cup of wine or verie
-strong beere or ale (which latter they commonlie provide against their
-appointed daies) they thinke their cheere so great, and themselves to
-have fared so well, as the Lord Maior of London, with whom, when their
-bellies be full, they will not stick to make comparison.”
-
-In the year 1680, during the debate on the Act to restrain the excess
-and abuse used in Victualling Houses, one member said that he wished
-“there might be a reformation of Ale, which is now made so strong, that
-he offered to affirm it upon oath, that it is commonly sold for a Groat
-a quart. _It is as strong as wine, and will burn like Sack._” {158}
-
-The Water Poet thus describes the different qualities of mild and stale
-beer as known to the topers of the seventeenth century: “The stronger
-_Beere_ is divided into two parts (viz.), mild and stale; the first
-may ease a man of a drought, but the latter is like water cast into a
-Smith’s forge, and breeds more heart-burnings, and as rust eates into
-Iron, so overstale Beere gnawes aulet holes in the entrales, or else my
-skill failes, and what I have written of it is to be held as a Jest.”
-
-Nipitatum or nipitato was another slang name for very strong ale. It is
-mentioned in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_:—
-
- My father oft will tell me of a drink,
- In England found and _Nipitato_ called,
- Which driveth all the sorrow from your hearts.
-
-Another epithet applied to ale, and denoting great strength, was
-“humming,” and a reason for the term is shown by the extract from a
-letter from John Howell to Lord Ciffe (seventeenth century), who, in
-speaking of metheglin, says “that it keeps a humming in the brain,
-which made one say that he loved not metheglin because he was used
-to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive.” The
-humming in the head would be equally applicable to the effects of ale
-as of metheglin, though the hive would only apply to the latter. The
-same idea is sometimes expressed by the term _hum-cup_, as in the lines
-from the old Sussex sheep-shearing song, beginning:—
-
- ’Tis a barrel then of _hum-cup_, which we call the black ram.
-
-Besides these strong ales and others too numerous to mention,
-there was, at the beginning of last century, a certain strong beer
-called Pharaoh, which gave its name to an ale-house at Barley, in
-Cambridgeshire. The reason of the name is not certainly known, although
-it was said in the county that it was so called because it _would not
-let the people go_. This drink is no longer made in England, but a
-strong beer of the same name is much appreciated in Belgium. The same
-liquor is mentioned in the _Praise of Yorkshire Ale_ (1685):
-
-  . . . Coffee, Twist, Old Pharaoh and old Hoc,
- Juniper Brandy and Wine de Langue-Dock.
-
-As there have been many strong and mighty ales since the days when—
-
- King Hardicanute, ’midst Danes and Saxons stout,
- Carous’d on nut-brown ale and dined on growt, {159}
-
-so there have been an abundance of small poor drinks, which have been
-from time to time known by various terms of contempt, the titles
-“whip-belly-vengeance” and “rotgut” being, perhaps, on the whole, the
-most expressive. Shakspere sums up the humdrum of retired matronly life
-in the well-known line, “To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.”
-Beer which had been kept so long that it had turned sour was at one
-time known as “broken beer,” much as we speak now of broken victuals.
-Ben Jonson, in his _Masque of Gypsies_, makes mention of an infant
-“very carefully carried at his mother’s back, rock’d in a cradle of
-Welsh cheese like a maggot, and there fed with _broken beer_, and blown
-wine of the best daily.”
-
-In olden times small beer discharged that friendly office assigned
-by later and more fastidious days to soda-water, namely, the cooling
-of the parched throat after a too earnest devotion to the rites of
-_Bacchus_.
-
- Welcome to my lips, great king of frolic,
- Stern foe to headache, devils blue, and cholic—
- No dandy soda-water bring to me,
- No Lady’s lemonade, no soft bohea;
- Thy sterner aid I claim, and ask thy might
- To quell the riots of that punch last night;
-
-wrote one of the Brasenose College poets. Christopher Sly, awakening
-from his debauch, cries aloud for “a pot of small ale . . . and once
-again a pot of the smallest ale,” and Prince Hal “remembers the poor
-creature small beer.”
-
-A nameless author, writing in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1746,
-describes this function of small beer, and in poetic vein tells how
-after a “wine,” awaking from a feverish sleep, he sees before him a
-venerable man,
-
-  Old, but not bending with the weight of years;
-  His face was ruddy, and he smiled benign,
-  As if nor sickness had his form impair’d,
-  Nor anxious cares his soul: his silver’d head
-  Was bound with wreaths of salutary flow’rs,
-  Call’d _Hops_ by men, but _Panace_ by Gods.
- “My son,” he said (and at his voice divine
-  New life beat vig’rous in each throbbing vein)
- “Long has my friendly influence mov’d the scorn,
-  My name the laughter of the sons of men,
-  The sons of men, regardless of their weal {160}
-  And health, the greatest sublunary good!
-  The genius I of liquor, call’d below
-  Small Beer, and doubtless you have heard me damn’d
-  Full oft, by Belials rude, outrageous sons;
-  But yet, were honour due, to Temp’rance given,
-  Mine were the favours of th’ applauding crowd,
-        *       *       *       *       *
-  ——Here, taste and live, live soberly and well.”
-  This said, a vase with steady hand he gave,
-  Full to the brim, I quaft’d the tender’d draught;
-  Swift the cool stream refresh’d my burning throat,—
-        *       *       *       *       *
-  In haste my visionary guest retir’d,
-  And left me deep in contemplation drown’d
-  Resolving reason never more to quench
-  In floods _Lethean_ of deceitful wine;
-  Deceitful wine! embrew’d with mixtures dire,
-  By the curs’d vintner’s art for sordid pelf.
-  O! grant me, Heav’n, to live with health and ease,
-  My books, a sober friend, _Small Beer_, and sense:
-  So shall my years the smiling fates prolong,
-  And each auspicious morn shall see me happy.
-
-Even in distant times particular localities became noted for the
-excellence of their brewers. London early attained, and has maintained
-until the present day, a great reputation for its ale. Chaucer alludes
-to the taste of the Cook for a “draught of London ale.” Tyrwhitt says
-that in 1504 London ale was of such excellence that it fetched 5s. a
-barrel more than Kentish ale. This can hardly be, as we have already
-seen that at that period the barrel of London double ale only fetched
-4s. Probably Tyrwhitt intended to refer to a tun and not to a barrel.
-The occasion referred to was the enthronement of William Wareham as
-Archbishop of Canterbury, when the provision made for washing down
-the vast stores of eatables was something tremendous. Besides great
-quantities of wine of many sorts, there were four tuns of London ale,
-six of Kentish, and twenty of English beer.
-
-The malt liquors of London, and especially London porter and stout,
-are known from pole to pole, and Burton ales have a no less world-wide
-reputation. Indeed, the word Burton has in itself come to be synonymous
-with ale, and the expression “a glass of Burton” has become a household
-word. {161}
-
-Burton and its famous brew are treated of elsewhere in these pages, and
-it must suffice here to insert an old song in praise of this nineteenth
-century nectar:—
-
-BURTON ALE.
-
- Ne’er tell me of liquors from Spain or from France,
- They may get in your heels and inspire you to dance,
- But the Ale of Old Burton if mellow and right
- Will get in your head and inspire you to fight.
-
- Your Claret and Rhenish and fine Calcavella
- Were never yet able to make a good fellow,
- But of stout Burton Ale, if you drink but enough,
- ’Twill make you all jolly and hearty and tough.
-
- Then let meagre Frenchmen still batten on Wine,
- They ne’er will digest a good English Sirloin,
- Parbleu they may caper and Vapour along,
- But right Burton can make us both valiant and strong.
-
- Come here then ye Mortals who’re prone to despair
- From frowns of Dame Fortune or frowns of the fair,
- Whate’er your disorder, three nips will prevail,
- And the best Panacea you’ll find, Burton Ale.
-
- Then Molly approach with your Peacock and Cann—
- Not Juno herself brought more blessings to Man—
- With nip after nip, all my sorrows beguile,
- And my Fortune and Mistress shall presently smile.
-
-Old strong beer is sometimes known by the name of Stingo, and this
-appellation seems, for a couple of hundred years at least, to have been
-specially applied to Yorkshire Ale. The estimation in which this liquor
-was held at the end of the eighteenth century, and the wonders it was
-deemed capable of bringing about, may be learned from a perusal of _The
-Praise of Yorkshire Ale_, an old poem, extracts from which may be found
-in the chapter devoted to Ballads. We have been given to understand
-that the brewers of Yorkshire Stingo have not forgotten their ancient
-skill.
-
-Our old friend Taylor mentions a goodly number of places where
-especially good ale was brewed in his day. “I should be voluminous,” he
-says, “if I should insist upon all pertinent and impertinent passages
-{162} in the Behalfe of _Ale_, as also of the retentive fame that
-_Yorke_, _Chester_, _Hull_, _Nottingham_, _Darby_, _Gravesende_, with
-a Toaste, and other Countries still enjoy, by making this untainted
-liquor in the primitive way, and how _Windsor_ doth more glory in that
-composition than all the rest of her speculative pleasures. . . . .
-Also there is a Towne neere _Margate in Kent_ (in the Isle of Thanet)
-called _Northdowne_, which Towne hath ingrost much Fame, Wealth, and
-Reputation from the prevalent potencie of their attractive _Ale_.”
-
-Derby had as early as the sixteenth century a great reputation for its
-ales. Sir Lionel Rash, in _Green’s Tu Quoque_, an Elizabethan comedy,
-says: “I have sent my daughter this morning as far as Pimlico to fetch
-a draught of Derby Ale, that it may fetch a colour into her cheeks.”
-Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_, with an evident conservative
-taste for ale, that “authenticall drinke of old England,” mentions
-the repute of Derby ale with some circumlocution, but with no stinted
-praise. “Ceres being our English Bacchus,” he remarks, “this was our
-ancestors’ common drink, many imputing the strength of their Infantry
-(in drawing so stiff a bow) to their constant (but moderate) drinking
-thereof. Yea, now the English begin to turn to Ale (may they in due
-time regain their former vigorousnesse) and whereas in our remembrance,
-Ale went out when swallows came in, seldom appearing after Easter; it
-now hopeth (having climbed up May Hill) to continue its course all
-the year. Yet have we lost the Preservative, what ever it was, which
-(before Hops were found out) made it last so long in our land some
-two hundred years since, for half a year at least after the brewing
-thereof; otherwise of necessity they must brew every day, yea pour it
-out of the Kive into the Cup, if the prodigious English Hospitality in
-former ages be considered, with the multitude of menial servants and
-strangers entertained. Now never was the wine of Sarepta better known
-to the Syrians, that of Chios to the Grecians, of Phalernum to the
-Latines, than the Canary of Derby is to the English thereabout.”
-
-Manchester at about the same period seems to have had a great
-assortment of Ales and Beers, if we are to believe Taylor, who, in his
-_Pennyless Pilgrimage_, tells
-
-  How men of Manchester did use me well,
-        *       *       *       *       *
-  We went into the house of one John Pinners
-  (A man that lives among a crew of sinners)
-  And there eight severall sorts of Ale we had,
-  All able to make one starke drunke or mad. {163}
-  But I with courage bravely flinched not,
-  And gave the Towne leave to discharge the shot,
-  We had at one time set upon the table,
-  Good Ale of Hisope, ’twas not Esope fable:
-  Then had we Ale of Sage, and Ale of Malt,
-  And Ale of Woorme-wood, that could make one halt,
-  With Ale of Rosemary, and Bettony,
-  And two Ales more, or else I needs must lye.
-  But to conclude this drinking Alye tale,
-  We had a sort of Ale called scurvy Ale.
-
-The southern district of Devon, which is locally known as South Hams,
-has long been famed for a curious liquor known as “white ale.” The
-beverage is of great antiquity, and has been subject to tithe from time
-immemorial. Kingsbridge is supposed to have been the place where white
-ale was first brewed. It used to be made of malt, a small quantity of
-hops, flour, spices, and a mysterious compound known as “grout,” or
-“ripening,” the manufacture of which was, and may be still, preserved
-as a great secret in a few families. In another receipt for making
-this ale it is stated that a number of eggs should be added to the
-liquor before it is allowed to ferment, and this seems to have been an
-essential of the original brew, or at any rate was so considered in
-1741. A writer at that date says:—“The Ale-wives, whose province of
-making this Ale it commonly falls under to manage from the beginning
-to the end, are most of them as curious in their brewing it, as the
-Dairy women in making their butter, for as it is a White Ale it soon
-sullies by dirt . . . . ; the wort is brewed by the hostess, but
-the fermentation is brought on by the purchase of what they call
-‘ripening,’ or a composition, as some say, of flower of malt and white
-of eggs . .”
-
-This luscious liquid has been described as “not the sparkling beverage
-brewed from malt and hops, but a milky-looking compound, of which,
-judging from the flavour, milk, spice and gin seemed to be among
-the ingredients. It does not improve by keeping, and is brewed only
-in small quantities for immediate consumption. It is kept in large
-bottles, and you will scarcely pass a public-house from Darmouth to
-Plymouth without seeing evidence of its consumption by the empty
-bottles piled away outside the premises.”
-
-At the present time a considerable quantity of white ale is made in and
-about Tavistock. It is now, however, brewed in a simpler manner than
-of yore, and consists simply of common ale with eggs and flour {164}
-added. The labourers of that part of the country much affect it, and
-as it is highly nutritious it is regarded by many of them as “meat,
-drink and cloth” combined. A bloated habit of body is said to arise
-from a too faithful adherence to this luscious fluid. A former great
-connoisseur of this West-country ale, one Bone Phillips, lies buried
-just outside the church door at Kingsbridge; the following lines were
-inscribed over his grave at his request:—
-
- Here lie I at the church door,
- Here be I because I’m poor,
- The further in the more you pay,
- Here lie I as warm as they.
-
-While on the subject of epitaphs, the following may be quoted as having
-some bearing on the subject specially treated of in this chapter:—
-
- Poor John Scott lies buried here;
- Tho’ once he was both _hale_ and _stout_,
- Death stretched him on his bitter bier:
- In another world he _hops_ about.
-
-An ale of a similar nature to white ale goes in Cornwall by the rather
-uneuphonious title of “Laboragol.” Somewhat similar to the foregoing
-was grout[47] ale, which is said by Halliwell, on the authority of
-Dean Milles’ MS. glossary, to have been different from white ale, of a
-brownish colour, and known only to the people about Newton Bussel, who
-kept the method of preparing it a secret. A physician, a native of that
-place, informed him that the preparation was made of “malt almost burnt
-in an iron pot, mixed with some of the barm which rises on the first
-working in the keeve, a small quantity of which invigorates the whole
-mass and makes it very heady.” {165}
-
-   [47] The word grout properly signifies ground meal or malt. Kennett
-   says that in Leicestershire the infusion of malt and water before
-   it is fully boiled is called grout, and after it is tunned up it
-   is called wort. Ray explains it as wort of the last running. Pegge
-   says it is only drank by poor people, who are on that account called
-   “grouters.” See Halliwell’s Dict. of Arch. and Prov. Words. In the
-   old play, _Tom Tyler and his Wife_, growt is used to signify a kind
-   of ale.
-
-      This jolly growt is jolly and stout
-      I pray you stout it still-a,
-
-While mentioning some few of the places specially noted for their
-ales, our ancient seats of learning must not be forgotten. Who has
-not heard of Trinity audit, and of that scarcely less famous liquor,
-Brasenose Ale? Many who have tasted the former have had no words to
-express their feelings; some have said that it is as superior to all
-other mortal brews as Chateau Lafitte is to vin ordinaire. These may
-seem words of extravagant praise; but let the reader who has never
-tasted this famous drink reserve his judgment on the point until he
-has, and above all let him lose no time in putting his judgment to the
-test. Trinity audit would justify the eulogy of the host in the _Beaux’
-Stratagem_—“As smooth as oil, sweet as milk, clear as amber, strong as
-brandy; fancy it Burgundy, only fancy it, and it is worth ten shillings
-a quart.”
-
- Oh, in truth, it gladdens the heart to see
- What may spring from the Ale of Trinitie,—
- A scholar—a fellow,—a rector blithe,
- (Fit to take any amount of tithe)—
- Perhaps a bishop—perhaps, by grace,
- One may mount to the Archiepiscopal place,
- And wield the crosier, an awful thing,
- The envy of all, and—the parsons’ King!
- O Jove! who would struggle with learning pale,
- That could beat down the world by the strength of Ale!
- For _me_,—I avow, could my thoughtless prime
- Come back with the wisdom of mournful time,
- I’d labour—I’d toil—by night and day,
- (Mixing liquors and books away,)
- Till I conquer’d that high and proud degree,
- M. A. (Master of Ale) of Trinitie.[48]
-
-   [48] A Panegyric on Ale addressed to W. L. Birkbeck, Esq., by Barry
-   Cornwall.
-
-Brasenose College, Oxford, has long been noted for its ale. As each
-Shrovetide comes round, the college butler, as a condition of the
-tenure of his office, presents a barrel of the strongest nappy, and
-celebrates the event in verse, handing on to generations yet unborn the
-name and fame of the Brasenose brew. The earlier of these ale poems,
-which are in reality the effusions of some poetical undergraduate,
-had a fleeting existence, but some years ago Mr. Prior, who was then
-and still continues, {166} the butler of the College, published a
-collection of them in a small volume, entitled _Brasenose Ale_. In his
-little book, which we commend to the perusal of all good ale-knights,
-occur the following lines, written by R. J. B., in 1835:—
-
-  Lo! Prior hastens with his motley crew,
-  To pour the foaming liquor to our view:
-  Clasps his firm hand in all a Butler’s pride
-  The cup no Brasenose Fellow e’er denied:
-  Yet secret triumph o’er his brow has cast
-  That Ale the sweetest, as that brew the last!
- “Away, ye lighter drinks! ye swipes, away,
-  Where masters bully, and where boys obey,”
-  The brewer cried; and taught the Ale to live
-  With all the charms that malt and hops could give.
-  Warm’d at his touch, behold the vapours rise
-  In all their genuine fragrance to the skies:
-  No beer-shops bev’rage, such as Cockneys buy,
-  Foul to the taste, and loathsome to the eye;
-  No dingy mixture, vulgarly call’d swipes;
-  No quassia juice, promoter of the gripes;
-  But true proportions of good hops and malt,
-  Mingled with care, then stow’d within the vault:
-  The hue that tells its potency—the scent
-  That breathes as if from blest Arabia sent.
-  Still o’er his Ale fond Prior hangs confest,
-  And joy and triumph swell his manly breast.
-        *       *       *       *       *
-  Such, glorious liquor of the olden time,
-  When to be drunk with Ale was deem’d no crime;
-  When in the morn and eve and mid-day stood
-  Upon our fathers’ boards old English food;
-  Such hast thou been, ’mid war and change the same,
-  Link’d with the poet’s and the scholar’s name,
-  Mellow’d by age—but still with flavour higher,
-  The pride of Brasenose, and the boast of Prior.
-
-How Brasenose College came by its peculiar name is a much disputed
-point. There is a legend that in the far-off time of long ago certain
-students of the temporary university at Stamford, the iron ring of
-whose door-knocker was fitted in a nose of brass, migrated to Oxford,
-{167} and there set up a brazen nose over the entrance of their
-college as a souvenir of their former abode. Equally plausible is the
-tradition that upon the site of the college brewery once stood King
-Alfred’s brasinium (brewhouse), and that the name, clinging to the
-place through all the changes and chances of a thousand years, now
-appears under the slightly modified form of Brasenose. If the latter
-theory be correct, the Shrovetide feast and the yearly ode in praise of
-Brasenose Ale may be attributed to the desire to keep green the memory
-of the famous brewhouse of the good King, and the mighty liquor therein
-brewed for the royal table.
-
-The merits of a celebrated Oxford butler, John Dawson of Christ Church,
-are commemorated in the following elegy:—
-
- Dawson, the butler’s dead. Although I think
- Poets were ne’er infus’d with single drink
- I’ll spend a farthing, Muse; a wat’ry verse
- Will serve the turn to cast upon his hearse.
- If any cannot weep amongst us here,
- Take off his cap, and so squeeze out a tear:
- Weep, O ye Barrels! make waste more prodigal
- Than when our Beer was good, that John may float
- To Styx in beer, and lift up Charon’s boat
- With wholsome waves; and as the conduits ran,
- With claret at the Coronation,
- So let your channels flow with single tiff,
- For John, I hope is crown’d: take off your whiff,
- Ye men of rosemary, and drink up all,
- Rememb’ring ’tis a Butler’s funeral;
- Had he been master of good double Beer
- My Life for his, John Dawson had been here.
-
-For a hundred years or more the town of Nottingham has been famous for
-its ales, and the song “Nottingham Ale” commemorates the many virtues
-of this justly celebrated “barley-wine.” Amongst others, it has virtues
-ecclesiastical:—
-
- Ye bishops and deacons, priests, curates and vicars,
- Come taste, and you’ll certainly find it is true,
- That Nottingham Ale is the best of all liquors,
- And who understand the good creature like you?
- It dispels every vapour, saves pen, ink, and paper;
- For when you’re disposed in the pulpit to rail {168}
- It will open your throats, you may preach without notes,
- When inspired with full bumpers of Nottingham Ale.
-
-This song, which was a great favourite at the end of last century, was
-composed by one Gunthorpe, a naval officer, by way of payment for a
-cask of the “particular,” received as a present from his brother, who
-was a Nottingham Brewer.
-
-To go further north, Newcastle, besides its coals, has long had the
-reputation for what, if we are to believe the townsmen of the place, is
-the best, the stoutest, the brightest “Stingo” that the heart of man
-can desire. As every Jack will have his Jill, so famous ale ever finds
-its appropriate verses. The song _Newcastle Beer_, of which a verse is,
-given below, extols the wonders wrought by English beer in general, and
-by that of Newcastle in particular:—
-
- ’Twas Stingo like this made Alcides so bold,
-   It brac’d up his nerves, and enliven’d his powers;
- And his mystical club, that did wonders of old,
-   Was nothing, my lads, but such liquor as ours.
-       The horrible crew
-       That Hercules slew,
- Were Poverty—Calumny—Trouble—and Fear;
-       Such a club would you borrow,
-       To drive away sorrow,
- Apply for a jorum of Newcastle Beer.
-
-_Warrington Ale_, a song of last century, describes in glowing terms
-the good ale of that Lancashire town, and the poet, if he is to be
-believed, is evidently a man of some experience in various drinks:—
-
- D’ye mind me, I once was a Sailor,
- And in different countries I’ve been;
- If I lie, may I go for a tailor,
- But a thousand fine sights I have seen.
- I’ve been crammed with good things like a wallet,
- And I’ve guzzled more drink than a whale;
- But the very best stuff to my palate
- Is a glass of your Warrington Ale.
-
-De Foe in his _Tour through Great Britain_ eulogises the Lancashire
-ale of the period. In travelling through the northern parts of the
-county, “though it was but about the middle of August, and in some
-places the harvest hardly got in, we saw the mountains covered with
-{169} snow, and felt the cold very acute and piercing, but we found,
-as in all these northern countries, the people had a happy way of
-mixing the warm and the cold together; for the store of good ale which
-flows plentifully in the most mountainous parts of this country, seems
-abundantly to make up for all the inclemencies of the season, or
-difficulties of travelling.”
-
-A certain very strong ale called Morocco is, or was, made at Levens
-Hall, in the County of Cumberland. Beef, or other meat, is an
-ingredient of this mighty brew, but the exact receipt is kept a secret.
-There is a tradition that the method of brewing Morocco was brought by
-a Crusader named Howard from certain unknown regions beyond the seas,
-and it is said that the receipt was buried during the Parliamentary
-wars, and was only unearthed many years afterwards. It is always
-brought in an immense and curiously wrought glass to everyone who dines
-at Levens for the first time, and the visitor is expected on no account
-to refuse the glass, but to take it and say, “To the health of the Lady
-of Levens.”
-
-To go a little further north, the ales of Edinburgh are justly
-celebrated, old Scotch ale being as favourite a beverage as old Burton.
-Scotch brewers are great believers in malt and hops, and at the present
-day brew excellent light ales, as well as the mightier brew which has
-given them their world-wide reputation.
-
-A curious ale is mentioned in the _Buik of Chroniclis of Scotland_
-(fifteenth century). Owing to a very severe winter in the reign of
-William the Lion, liquids of many kinds were frozen solid, and ale was
-sold by _weight_:—
-
- So furious ouir all part wes that frost
- Of bestiall that thair wes mony lost;
- The starkest aill of malt that mycht be browin,
- Thocht it war keipit neuir so clois and lowin,
- It wald congeill _and freis into hard yis_.
- The thing of all men thocht wes then most nys
- That this be weycht, and nocht mesour, wes sauld
- That tyme for drink as that my author told.
-
-The wanderings of the _Penniless Pilgrim_ took him to Scotland, and he
-wonders much at the powers of ale-suction shown by the natives. “The
-Scots,” he says, “doe allow almost as large measure of their miles
-as they doe of their drinke, for an English gallon either of ale or
-wine is but their quart.” After rising from a repast, he tells how
-“the {170} servants of the house have enforced me into the seller or
-Buttery, where (in the way of kindnesse) they will make a man’s belly
-like a sowse-tub, and inforce mee to drinke as if they had a commission
-under the devil’s great seale, to murder men with drinking, with such
-a deal of complimentary oratory as, ‘off with your lap,’ ‘wind up your
-bottome,’ ‘up with your toplash,’ and many other eloquent phrases,
-which Tully and Demosthenes never heard of; that in conclusion I am
-persuaded three days fasting would have been more healthfull to mee,
-then two hours feeding and swilling in that manner.”
-
-Christopher North, in his _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, mentions some of the
-famous Scotch ales of his day. After alluding to the ales of Berwick
-and of Giles, he says:—
-
-“Maitland and Davison—again—has inspired my being with a _new_ feeling,
-for which no language I am acquainted with can supply an adequate
-name. That feeling impels me to say these simple words on behalf of
-the Spirit of Ale in general—speaking through me, its organ—_Ale
-loquitur_—“If not suffered by Fate to fix my abode in barrels of
-Berwick or Giles, where I have long reigned alternate years, in all my
-glory, scarcely should I feel myself priviledged to blame my stars,
-were I ordered for a while to sojourn in one of Maitland—and Davison.”
-
-A notice of Scoth ales, however short, would be incomplete without some
-reference to the great Scotch national poet, who sometimes, at any
-rate, would seem to have owed his inspiration to the “barley bree.” The
-song of Burns, _O, Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut_, is too well known
-to need repetition here. Who does not remember the chorus of this
-admirable chanson-à-boire:—
-
- We are na fou, we’re no that fou,
-   But just a drappie in our e’e,
- The cock may craw, the day may daw,
-   And aye we’ll taste the barley bree!
-
-The occasion which the song was intended to celebrate is not so
-commonly known. The “three merry boys,” Willie, Rob, and Alan were
-respectively William Nicol, of the High School, Edinburgh, our poet,
-and Alan Masterton, who was a schoolmaster and musical amateur. The
-place of meeting was a small farm named Laggan, belonging to Nicol.
-The inspiring ale was Nicol’s, the song was Burns’, and the music was
-Alan Masterton’s. “We had such a joyous meeting,” says Burns, “that
-Mr. Masterton and I agreed, each in our own way, to celebrate the
-business.” {171}
-
-To pass to the Principality, Welsh ales were in Saxon times well known
-and highly esteemed. In the laws of Hywel Dda two kinds of ale are
-mentioned—Bragawd[49], which was paid as tribute to the King by a free
-township, and Cwrwf, which was more common, and was paid by the servile
-township in cases where the former kind ran short. It may be hence
-gathered that in early times the highly-flavoured Bragawd was held in
-greater estimation than the Cwrwf; yet the latter has out-lived the
-former, and is still to be had in various parts of Wales, where it is
-consumed with great gusto by Cambria’s patriotic sons.
-
-   [49] Bragawd or Bragot. See p. 379.
-
-The neighbouring county of Hereford, now a great cider-drinking
-locality, had in former times at least one town with a reputation for
-good ale. “Lemster bread and Weobley ale” had passed into a proverb
-before the seventeenth century. The saying seems, however, to have
-been affected chiefly by the inhabitants of the county, who, perhaps,
-were not quite impartial. Ray, writing in 1737, ventures to question
-the pre-eminence ascribed to the places mentioned. For wheat he gives
-Hesten, in Middlesex, “and for ale Derby town, and Northdown in the
-Isle of Thanet, Hull in Yorkshire, and Sandbich in Cheshire, will
-scarcely give place to Weobley.” Herrick mentions this celebrated
-Northdown ale in the lines:—
-
- That while the wassaile bowle here
- With North-down ale doth troule here,
- No sillable doth fall here,
- To marre the mirth at all here.
-
-Norfolk was once celebrated for a strong ale, bearing the euphonious
-name of _Norfolk Nog_. It is mentioned in Vanbrugh’s _Journey to
-London_, “Here, John Moody,” says Sir Francis, “get us a tankard of
-good hearty stuff presently.” “Sir,” is the reply, “here’s Norfolk
-Nog to be had next door.” Swift also knew something of this brew, and
-mentions that “Walpole laid a quart of nog on it.” “Clamber-skull” is
-probably a variety of this strong Norfolk ale, and earned its name
-from the rapidity with which it mounted to the heads of its votaries.
-Norfolk still holds a high place as an ale-producing county, and the
-ales of Great Yarmouth and Norwich are justly celebrated.
-
-Banbury produced a mighty ale in the seventeenth century, if we may
-judge from the couplet in _Wit Restored_:—
-
- Banbury ale a half-yard pot
- The devil a tinker dares stand to ’t. {172}
-
-It must have been strong indeed, for according to the old proverb—
-
- Cobblers and tinkers
- Are your true ale drinkers.
-
-Dorsetshire, amongst the southern counties, has long been noted for a
-fine pale ale. This is the liquor mentioned in _English Ale_ (1737) as—
-
- Bright amber priz’d by the luxurious town,
- The pale hu’d Dorchester——
-
-Its strength may be judged from the entry in John Byrom’s diary of
-about the same period (1725):—“I found the effect of last night’s
-drinking that foolish Dorset, which was pleasant enough, but it did not
-agree with me at all, for it made me very stupid all day.” These are
-the words of a man who has evidently loved not wisely but too well.
-
-Cox, in his _History of Dorsetshire_ (1700), states that “since by
-the French wars the coming of French wine is prohibited, the people
-here have learned to brew the finest malt liquors in the kingdom,
-so delicately clean and well tasted that the best judges . . . .
-prefer it to the ales most in vogue, as Hull, Derby, Burton, &c.”
-Great quantities of Dorchester beer were consumed in London during
-the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries, but
-from that time the trade with London, for some reason—probably the
-expense of transit—gradually fell away. The excellence of the Dorset
-beer depended in a great measure upon the fact that the water of the
-neighbourhood possessed peculiarly good qualities for brewing purposes,
-and, that advantage being of a permanent character, there seems to be
-no reason why the Dorchester ales of the present day should not regain
-throughout the country the position they had at the beginning of last
-century. In the south and south-western portions of England they are
-held in very high esteem.
-
-Barnstaple was famous for its ales in the middle of the last century; a
-writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of Jan., 1753, says that they are
-as good as Derby ales, though not quite so famous.
-
-Mum, a popular drink early in the last century, was a strong ale brewed
-chiefly from wheat-malt with the addition of various aromatic herbs.
-Mum-houses were in existence in 1664, for Mr. Samuel Pepys records
-that on a certain occasion he went “with Mr. Norbury near hand to the
-Fleece, a mum-house in Leadenhall, and there drank _mum_, and by-and-by
-broke up.” A receipt of the date 1682, describes the brewing of mum as
-follows:— {173}
-
-“To make a vessel of sixty-three gallons, we are instructed that, the
-water must be first boiled to the consumption of a third part, then let
-it be brewed according to art with seven bushels of wheat-malt, one
-bushel of oat-malt, and one bushel of ground beans. When the mixture
-begins to work, the following ingredients are to be added: three
-pounds of the inner rind of the fir; one pound each of the tops of
-the fir and the birch; three handfuls of _Carduus Benedictus_, dried;
-two handfuls of flowers of _Rosa solis_; of burnet, betony, marjoram,
-avens, pennyroyal, flowers of elder, and wild thyme, one handful and
-a half each; three ounces of bruised seeds of cardamum; and one ounce
-of bruised bayberries. Subsequently ten new-laid eggs, not cracked or
-broken, are to be put into the hogshead, which is then to be stopped
-close, and not tapped for two years, a sea voyage greatly improving the
-drink.”
-
-The origin of the word “mum” is somewhat disputed, but the best
-derivation seems to be from the name of Christopher Mummer, who is said
-to have been the first to brew it. Others assign to the word an origin
-from _mummeln_, to mutter, and this seems to have been Pope’s idea when
-he wrote the lines:—
-
- The clamorous crowd is hushed with mugs of mum,
- Till all, turned equal, send a general hum.
-
-Others, again, find the derivation in the word mum, meaning silence.
-
-Brunswick is always given as its birthplace, and it was certainly
-known as early as the sixteenth century, for in an old work, _De
-generibus ebriosorum et ebrietate vitanda_ (1515), “mommom sive mommum
-Brunsvigen” is mentioned as one of the drinks of Germany.
-
-An old book, _England’s Improvement by Sea and Land_ (1677), contains a
-remarkable proposition for bringing over the mum trade from Brunswick,
-and establishing it at Stratford-on-Avon.
-
-The old writer, from whom the receipt before-quoted is taken,
-lays considerable stress on the fact that “the ingredients in its
-composition are very rare and choice simples, there being scarcely any
-disease in nature against which some of them is not a sure specific,”
-the implication apparently being that the combination of these
-ingredients would largely increase their healing power.
-
-In one of the 400 letters addressed by Sir Richard Steele to his wife
-we find him writing under date December 6th, 1717:—“I went to bed
-last night after taking only a little broth; and all the day before a
-little tea and bread and butter, with two glasses of mum and a piece
-of bread. {174} at the House of Commons. Temperance and your company,
-as agreeable as you can make it, will make life tolerable if not easy,
-even with the gout.”
-
-A particular variety of this beverage was known as Hamburgh mum, and a
-catch in its praise of the early part of last century mentions it as
-hailing from that city:—
-
- There’s an odd sort of liquor
-   New come from Hamborough,
- ’Twill stick a whole wapentake
-   Thorough and thorough;
- ’Tis yellow, and likewise
-   As bitter as gall,
- And as strong as six horses,
-   Coach and all.
- As I told you ’twill make you,
-   As drunk as a drum;
- You’d fain know the name on’t,
-   But for that my friend, _mum_.
-
-Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember that Mr. Oldbuck is described
-at breakfast as despising the modern slops of tea and coffee and
-substantially regaling himself “more majorum, with cold roast beef and
-mum.”
-
-An Act of Parliament, which was passed annually during the greater part
-of the first half of this century, prescribed certain duties on “malt,
-mum, cyder and perry,” and a tale is told that when Mr. Perry, editor
-of the _Morning Chronicle_, was indicted for libel, he conducted his
-own case, and by his able defence secured a verdict of “Not guilty.”
-Cobbett, who was shortly afterwards tried on a similar charge, also
-conducted his own defence, but was convicted. Erskine remarked that
-Cobbett had tried to be Perry, when he should have been mum.
-
-In the eighteenth century patriotic sentiment was invoked to support
-the failing popularity of mum, as may be gathered from the old work
-_Political Merriment, or Truths to some Tune_ (1714), in which these
-lines occur:—
-
- Now, now true Protestants rejoice,
-   Stand by your laws and King,
- Now you’ve proclaimed the nation’s choice,
-   Let traitorous rebels swing; {175}
-
- Let Royal George, the Papists scourge,
-   To England quickly come;
- His health till then, let honest men,
-   Drink all in Brunswick Mum.
-
-But all would not avail, and the liquor is now as dead as Christopher
-Mummer, the first inventor of it.
-
-There is a tradition lingering in the northern parts of this island,
-that the Picts possessed the secret of making an ale from heather. Sir
-David Smith, in a MS. in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland,
-mentions a large trough cut in the solid rock at Kutchester, near the
-Roman wall. “The old peasants,” he says, “have a tradition that the
-Romans made a beverage somewhat like beer, of the bells of heather,
-and that this trough was used in the process of making it.” The
-tradition in Caithness runs that three Picts—an old blind man and his
-two sons—survived the rest of their race; that these alone of all
-mankind possessed the secret of making heather ale; that they guarded
-their secret with jealous care, and that they were in consequence much
-persecuted by their conquerors. At last the old Pict, in answer to the
-frequent importunities of his persecutors, promised to tell the secret,
-on condition that his two sons should be put to death. This was done,
-but the task was as far from accomplishment as ever, and nothing could
-be got from the old man but the truly Delphic words which are handed
-down in the couplet:—
-
- Search Brockwin well out and well in,
- And barm for heather crop you’ll find within.
-
-The secret died with him.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-True or false, this is the legend as related in the north, and certain
-it is that _a_ heather beer was made until quite recently in some parts
-of Scotland and Ireland. The heather, however, is used as a flavouring
-rather than as an actual basis for making the drink. The blossoms of
-the heather are carefully gathered and cleansed, and are then placed in
-the bottom of vessels; wort of the ordinary kind is allowed to drain
-through the blossoms, and gains in its passage a peculiar and agreeable
-flavour, which is well known to all who are familiar with heather honey.
-
-Pennant, in his _Voyage to the Hebrides_, mentions heather _ale_,
-and says that the proportions were two-thirds of the plant to one of
-hops (hops being sometimes added); and Mr. Weld, in his _Two Months
-in the Highlands_, {176} says that “although the art of brewing the
-Pictish heather ale is lost, old grouse shooters have tasted a beverage
-prepared by shepherds, on the moors, principally from heather flowers,
-though honey or sugar, to produce fermentation, was added.”
-
-In some parts of Ireland there is a tradition that the Danes possessed
-the knowledge of making an intoxicating liquor from heather bells;
-this drink the peasants speak of as beoir-lochlonnach (_i.e._, strong
-at sea), an epithet by which the savage Northmen were known to the
-Celtic races. It is possible that there is some connection between this
-heather ale and the ale formerly made by the Swedes and flavoured with
-the _Myrica gale_. Reference to this plant is made in a Swedish law of
-the fifteenth century, in which it is forbidden to gather the blossoms
-before a certain period. The probability of this connection seems to
-be increased by the fact that in Yorkshire, a county which contains
-many descendants of the old Northmen, a beer is still made called “gale
-beer,” and is flavoured with the blossoms of a species of heather found
-growing on the moors in that part of the country.
-
-As late as the commencement of this century an ale flavoured with
-heather, and differing little from the heather ale described, was
-brewed in many parts of Ireland. The practice, it is believed, is now
-almost if not quite extinct.
-
-Irish moss ale is made in the following manner:—Take one ounce of Irish
-moss, one ounce of hops, one ounce of ginger, one ounce of Spanish
-juice, and one pound of sugar. Ten gallons of water are added and the
-mixture is boiled, fermented, and bottled. The consideration of the
-name of this liquor and the actual constituents may possibly remind
-readers of the old tale of that very clever person who made soup out of
-a stone with the assistance of a few such trifles as beef, vegetables,
-and flavourings.
-
-Beer powders have been made, from which a good and refreshing drink
-may be procured by the simple addition of water. Various substances
-and juices have been used from time to time to improve the flavour or
-strength of ale. In Wales berries of the Mountain Ash were once used,
-and were said to greatly improve the flavour of the beverage. The sap
-of the sycamore tree is mentioned by Evelyn as being a most useful
-adjunct to the brewhouse; he says that one bushel of malt with sycamore
-sap makes as good ale as four bushels with water alone.
-
-The service tree, the name of which is said to be a corruption of
-cerevisia, was so called because in former times a kind of ale was
-brewed {177} from its berries. Evelyn says that ale and beer, “brewed
-with these berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink.”
-
-Maize, beet-root, potatoes, parsnips, and other vegetables have
-each and all been used in the making of beer, but it seems very
-doubtful whether any combination of ingredients will ever equal the
-time-honoured partnership of malt and hops.
-
-A writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in 1758 says: “In many parts of
-the Kingdom, a beer is made of treacle—thus: to eight quarts of boiling
-water put a pound of treacle, a quarter of an ounce of ginger, and two
-bay leaves. Boil these for a quarter of an hour, then cool and work
-with yeast the same as beer.”
-
-From treacle we naturally come to sugar. This chapter would be very
-incomplete without some mention of a kind of beer which is extensively
-brewed in England at the present day. It is brewed sometimes wholly
-of sugar, or sugar and malt. Occasionally rice is added. Looking at
-this sugar-beer from a chemist’s point of view, there is absolutely no
-fault to find with it; it is perfectly pure and perfectly wholesome.
-Nor is it found to differ, when analysed, from beer made from malt.
-There is certainly a popular prejudice against it, which may arise in a
-great measure from the love of the people for the historic drink made
-from malt. Though analysts cannot distinguish between malt liquors and
-beers made from sugar, there is usually a slight difference in flavour
-between them. It is a noteworthy fact that most of the largest firms,
-having extensive _private_ businesses, brew from malt and hops. Their
-success certainly indicates the direction in which the popular taste
-runs. If Englishmen prefer malt liquors, it is surely to the interest
-of the brewers to give them the genuine barley-bree, and not beer
-brewed from sugar, however excellent it may be.
-
-The use of malt by brewers is of no little importance to English
-grain-growers, and is rightly looked upon by many as of national
-concern. Considerable misconception, however, may exist on this point,
-for the brewing trade generally, say that of late years English
-barley, from climatic or other causes, has not been found altogether
-suitable for brewing purposes, rendering an admixture of foreign grain
-necessary. All we can do is to express a hope that the brewers are
-somewhat mistaken in their estimate of English barley; but that if they
-are correct, England may in future years be accorded its due share of
-sunshine—that blessing of which Dame Nature has been somewhat niggardly
-of late, so that malt made from English grain alone, may again fill our
-mash-tuns. {178}
-
-A distinction between beers arises, in name at least, from the vessels
-in which they are contained. We have beer in casks and beer in bottles.
-Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_, ascribes the invention of
-bottled beer to Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul’s and a master of
-Westminster School in the reign of Queen Mary. The Dean was a devoted
-angler. “But,” says old Fuller, “whilst Newell was catching of fishes,
-Bishop Bonner was catching of Newell, and would certainly have sent him
-to the shambles, had not a good London merchant conveyed him away upon
-the seas.” Newell was engaged in his favourite pursuit on the banks of
-the Thames, when such pressing notice of his danger reached him, that
-he was obliged to take immediate flight. On his return to England,
-after Mary’s death, he remembered, when resuming his old amusement,
-that on the day of his flight he had left his simple repast, the liquor
-of which consisted of a bottle of beer, in a safe place in the river
-bank; there he sought it, and, as the quaint language of Fuller informs
-us, he “found it no bottle, but a gun, such the sound at the opening
-thereof; and this is believed (casualty is the mother of more invention
-than industry) the original of bottled ale in England.” If this be the
-true origin of bottled ale, the use of it must have spread rapidly,
-for we find it mentioned in many Elizabethan writers. In Ben Jonson’s
-_Bartholomew fair_, Ursula calls to the drawer to bring “A Bottle of
-Ale, to quench me, rascal,” and many other quotations could be given
-proving its use in those days. Of course ale must have been carried in
-bottles long before Newell’s time, almost as early, indeed, as bottles
-came into use, but the bottled ale referred to is that which has been
-so long in bottle as to have acquired a peculiar and delicious flavour
-combined with a certain briskness not found in draught ale.
-
-The country which next to our own has for generations stood pre-eminent
-in matters of beer and brewing is Germany; there, as here, beer is
-the national drink, though the character of the liquors is somewhat
-different. The usual German beer is of an exceedingly light character,
-and so perishable that it is impossible to preserve it for any length
-of time even in the coolest cellar; four-and-twenty hours after a cask
-is tapped it must be emptied, or what remains is spoilt. Nearly every
-considerable town in Germany gives its name to the beer that is brewed
-there and consumed by the inhabitants. The beer of each town has its
-own peculiarities, and the worthy burghers are, of course, always
-ready to support both in deed and in word the superiority of their
-native drink. There is, for instance, the Jena beer, famous in that
-university, which is of a very peculiar character, and is only made at
-{179} Lichtenhain, a little village adjoining the university town. It
-is a species of white beer, and is brewed from wheat malt. The taste
-for this liquor must be one not easy of acquisition, for the author
-of _German Life in Saxony_ describes it as being much like “cider and
-water, with a dash of camomile tea added to it.” The students, however,
-assure you that the taste once acquired remains so strong through life
-that Lichtenhainer is preferred to any other kind of beer.
-
-So much has been written about student life and drinking customs that
-the subject will hardly bear repetition. Suffice it to say that in
-Heidelberg, Jena, and other large German universities there exist
-elaborate codes of drinking rules, in which _Persons_ are classified in
-accordance with their seniority at the university, and the beer-honours
-and labours which their position entail; _Things_ are divided into
-Principal things, subordinate things and appurtenances; Principal
-things are specified as “Lager-beer,” “black Cöstritzer-beer,”
-“Lichtenhainer-beer,” and all other white beers; appurtenances are
-“cans, doctors (a kind of measure), popes (another measure)” and other
-necessities of the drinking bouts. The actual laws of the code are far
-too long and complicated to be more than referred to here.
-
-Lager beer is not unknown in England, and is sold at restaurants and
-hotels in most of our large towns. Much of it is imported; the rest
-comes from Lager-beer brewers, who have, within the last few years,
-started business in this country. Neither German nor Anglo-German beers
-appear to make much headway over here, nor is this very surprising when
-we remember how far superior our own ales and beers are to any brewed
-in Germany. The chief difference between lager[50] and English beers
-is in the time occupied in the fermentation. Lager-beer brewers keep
-the wort at an exceedingly low temperature all through the process, the
-result being that fermentation is delayed over several days. Lager beer
-simply means beer which can be kept in lagers or stores. Germany has
-from very early times maintained a large export trade in Beer. It has
-already been shown that in the fifteenth century large quantities were
-exported into Scotland, and another instance is to be found in Rymer
-(H. 5. 1. 22), where there is a record of an appeal made by the consuls
-of Hamburgh to Henry VI. The appeal states “that certain of your
-Magnificence’s Subjects and Servants to wit Michael Schotte and Molchun
-Poerter of Calais, rulers or captains of a certain great ship of war
-specially fitted out, did with their Complices in that present year,
-about the feast of St. James the Apostle, hostilely seize, detain, and
-carry off at their pleasure two vessels laden with {180} Hamburg ale,
-to the no small hurt and injury of our fellow townsmen.” They therefore
-pray that the ships may be restored to them and compensation made for
-the outrage.”
-
-   [50] Readers curious as to the technical details of the brewing
-   of Lager Beer are referred to Liebig’s Chemistry of Agriculture
-   (Playfair).
-
-Roberts, in his _Map of Commerce_ (1638), says of Lubeck: “The place is
-famous for the beere made, and hence transported into other regions,
-and by some used medicinally for bruises of the body . . . though by
-them in use commonly both for their own drinke and food and rayment.”
-
-One of the characteristics of Bavaria is the inordinate love of its
-inhabitants for their Bavarian beer, a love remarkable even amongst
-the beer-drinking Germans. In the towns the brewhouses are amongst
-the most important buildings, and the traveller remarks the number of
-beer cellars, whither the inhabitants resort to drink their favourite
-liquor. Brewing is the most flourishing trade, and the produce of
-Bavarian brewhouses is the best of continental beers. One of its chief
-peculiarities is that, although exposed to the air for lengthened
-periods, it will not turn acid as other beers do. This valuable quality
-is obtained for it by the peculiar management of the fermentation, and
-has been already referred to. Very little space can be afforded even
-for a general description of German beers, suffice it to say that their
-name is legion; there is black beer, white beer, brown beer, thin beer,
-strong beer, double beer, bitter beer, and countless local varieties of
-each and all these various liquors. One more _special_ variety may be
-noted, and that is the strong ten-years-old ale known by the people of
-Dortmund as “Adam.” It is mentioned by Corvin in _An Autobiography_,
-who relates that “when King Frederick William IV. of Prussia visited
-Dortmund a deputation of the magistrates waited upon him, one of them
-bearing a salver with a large tankard filled with Adam. When the King
-asked what it was, and heard that it was the celebrated beer, he said
-‘Very welcome; for it is extremely warm,’ and drained off the contents
-of the tankard at a draught. The members of the deputation, who were
-better acquainted with old Adam than the unsuspecting King, smiled at
-each other, for they knew what would be the result. His Majesty was
-unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.”
-
-The best beer brewed in Norway is a more or less faithful imitation
-of the Bavarian beer, and travellers should be careful to ask for
-“Baiersk öl,” {181} as the ordinary “barley-wine” of the country is
-not described as being of a very choice character. Much the same may
-be said of Swedish beer, one variety of which, however, has obtained a
-place in history. The beer of Arboga was of so seductive a character
-that on the occasion of the invasion of Hako and his Norwegian and
-Danish levies, a large part of the army loitered behind in the various
-inns of the place, quaffing the luscious beverage, and their King, in
-consequence, lost the day.
-
-Russia has been behindhand in matters of brewing from the days when
-Catherine had to send to Burton for her private supply, even until
-now; but during the last few years the gentle Mujik has been taking so
-kindly to his “Bavarski Peavah” (Russo-Bavarian beer), that a triumph
-apparently awaits John Barleycorn in Russia similar to that old victory
-of his over Bacchus commemorated in the song of “Yorkshire Ale,” which
-finds place in the chapter devoted to Ballads.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{182}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-
-“Come on, you mad-cap. I’ll to the Alehouse with you presently, where,
-for one shot of fivepence, thou shalt have five thousand welcomes.”
-                             _Two Gentlemen of Verona._ Act ii., sc. 5.
-
- Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,
-   Where’er his stages may have been,
- May sigh to think he still has found
-   The warmest welcome at an inn.
-                                                           _Shenstone._
-
-_ALE HOUSES: THEIR ORIGIN. — HOSPITALITY IN MEDIÆVAL TIMES. — OLD
-LONDON INNS AND TAVERNS. — ANECDOTES OF INNS AND INN KEEPERS. — CURIOUS
-SIGNS. — SIGN-BOARD AND ALE-HOUSE VERSES. — SIGN-BOARD ARTISTS. —
-ALE-HOUSE SONGS AND CATCHES._
-
-“No, Sir;” said Dr. Johnson, “there is nothing which has yet been
-contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good
-tavern or inn.” The argument by which the great Doctor leads up to this
-oracular deliverance is as follows:—“There is no private house in
-which people can enjoy themselves so well as in a capital tavern. Let
-there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur,
-ever so much elegance, and ever so much desire that everybody should
-be easy, in the nature of things it cannot be; there must always be
-some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to
-entertain his guests, the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him,
-and no man but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what
-is in another {183} man’s house as if it were his own; whereas, at a
-tavern there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are
-welcome, and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the
-more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servant will
-attend you with the alacrity which waiters do who are incited by the
-prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please.” The
-Doctor seems most conscientiously to have made his practice square
-with his preaching. Till the end of his life, although generally an
-abstemious man, he was regular in his attendance at the various taverns
-he patronised, and his burly figure was as well known amongst the
-frequenters of the inns and taverns of Fleet Street, as that of the
-most notorious roysterer of the time.
-
-In his day the tavern—the London tavern especially—attained the highest
-point of social importance which it has ever reached; and many of those
-convivial and social functions, now for the most part discharged by the
-clubs and by private hospitality, were then considered to fell within
-its special province. During the last century the tavern gathered
-around its hospitable hearth those groups of savants and wits, which
-have been the starting points of many a scientific and literary society
-of the present day.
-
-It is, of course, impossible for us in the space we are able to devote
-to the history of public hospitality in England, to do more than give a
-very slight sketch of the subject.
-
-Most of the functions of the modern inn were in early days discharged
-by the hospitality of the Church. In the laws and constitutions of
-the various religious bodies are to be found directions to the clergy
-to observe the rites of hospitality, and a law of Ecgbright commands
-bishops and priests to have a house for the entertainment of strangers,
-not far from the church. The house here referred to would probably be
-the Almonry, where strangers and travellers, too poor or lowly to be
-entertained within the walls of the monastery, were fed and tended.
-
-Persons of higher rank were received into the monastery, which
-was always furnished with a _hospitium_, or guest hall, for the
-entertainment of visitors and travellers. The importance of this
-monastic function may be judged from the size of some of the guest
-halls belonging to the larger religious bodies: one at Canterbury was a
-hundred and fifty feet long, and forty feet wide.
-
-Visitors on their arrival at a monastery were met by the _hosteler_ in
-the _parletory_, and after receiving greeting were conducted to the
-guest hall, where they were refreshed with meat and drink according to
-their {184} rank and importance. A small present was usually given
-at the gate on arrival, but, save for that, the entertainment seems
-to have been free. The guests were allowed to stay on these terms for
-two days and two nights; but on the third day after dinner, unless
-prevented by sickness or other just cause, they were to depart in peace.
-
-Many constitutions of religious houses enjoin that hospitality should
-be shown to all comers, clerical or lay, and we are told that in some
-cases this liberality was much abused. The heirs of persons who had
-made large donations to religious houses, when they could not injure
-the monks by means of law, did their best to ruin them by constant
-visits with large retinues, and thus literally eat them out of house
-and home; and to such lengths did this custom extend that, in the reign
-of Edward I., it was found necessary to pass certain laws restraining
-such abuses.
-
-By the rules of the Benedictine order, an officer was appointed,
-called the _terrer_, whose duty it was to see that the guest-chambers
-were kept clean. He was always to have on hand two tuns of wine for
-the entertainment of strangers, and also provender for their horses;
-and four yeomen were appointed to attend upon strangers, that nothing
-might be wanting to pilgrims and travellers of whatever rank they might
-be. In the middle ages the denial of hospitality was looked upon as
-disgraceful, and an ancient anecdote is related of the revenge taken by
-a travelling minstrel upon his host, on account of the meagre nature
-of the entertainment afforded. The minstrel sought a night’s food and
-lodging at an Abbey, when the abbot, a parsimonious man, happened
-to be absent. The monk in attendance at the hospitium, acting upon
-instructions, gave the poor minstrel nothing but black bread and water
-and a bed of straw. Next morning the traveller proceeded on his way,
-and meeting the abbot in the course of the journey, took occasion to
-thank him in good set phrase for the princely hospitality dispensed at
-his house, enlarging upon the choice viands and costly presents he had
-received. The abbot hastened home in great rage, and caused the monk,
-whom he believed to be guilty of the lavish waste, to be flogged and
-dismissed from his office.
-
-One of the few instances of the public hospitality of the religious
-orders surviving down to our own days is to be found at the Hospital of
-Saint Cross, Winchester, where whoever knocks at the porter’s lodge is
-entitled to a slice of bread and a mug of small beer—_very small_, if
-rumour lies not.
-
-Side by side with this monastic hospitality were the shelter and {185}
-entertainment afforded at the houses of the nobility and gentry when
-their owners were absent; and when they were at home, the practice of
-keeping open house seems to have been by no means rare. The traveller
-of gentle blood would be entertained at the lord’s table, while the
-servant, the travelling mechanic, the disbanded soldier, and other
-wanderers of lowly rank, would find rest and refreshment in the keep.
-
-In process of time, however, this custom of promiscuous entertainment
-seems to have fallen into disuse; the accommodation before provided by
-the castle or manor house being now afforded by a separate inn set up
-close by, and frequently kept by some worn-out servant of the castle,
-who would naturally bear upon his sign the arms of the dominant family,
-and would, for the purpose of entertaining travellers, be regarded
-as representing the lord. It is possible that to this custom, or the
-preceding one, may be attributed the use of the expression landlord, as
-signifying the host of an inn.
-
-In towns, those of the citizens who had large enough houses frequently
-made a practice of receiving guests, and taking money for their pains,
-thus adding the profession of a host to their other callings. Persons
-who practised this letting of lodgings were called _herbergeors_
-(_i.e._, harbourers), to distinguish them from the hostelers or
-innkeepers; and a further extension of the use of coats-of-arms for
-signs was thus brought about, the herbergeor frequently taking as his
-sign the arms of his most frequent or most influential guest. The
-_Liber Albus_ mentions both classes of entertainers, and records that
-by the regulations of the City of London herbergeours and hostelers
-must be freemen of the City, and persons of a strange land desirous of
-being herbergeour or hosteler within the City must dwell in the heart
-of the City and not upon the waterside of the Thames.
-
-Although hospitality was so freely exercised by the monks and great
-landowners, it must not be imagined that inns were unknown. Even in
-Saxon days, to go no further back, inns and village alehouses seem
-to have existed. Bracton tells us of a regulation of Edward the
-Confessor that if any man lay a third night in an inn he was called a
-_third-night-awn-hinde_, that is to say, he was looked upon in the same
-light as a servant of the house would be, and the host was answerable
-for him if he committed any offence—a curious illustration of that
-local and vicarious responsibility for crime which was so prominent a
-feature of our ancient polity. In much later times a similar regulation
-is to be found applying to “hostelers” in the City of London. The
-_Liber Albus_ gives, as {186} one of the City rules, that no hosteler
-shall harbour a man beyond a day and a night, if he be not willing to
-produce such person to stand his trial, and in case such a person shall
-commit an offence, and absent himself, his host shall answer for him.
-
-Goldsmith’s description of a village inn is probably as applicable
-to the old Saxon _eala-hus_ of a thousand years ago as it was to the
-alehouse of his own time, and as it is to many in the present day:—
-
- Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,
- Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired;
- Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,
- And news, much older than the Ale, went round.
- Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
- An hour’s importance to a poor man’s heart,
-
-and the following descriptive verses of Leigh Hunt, entitled _The
-Village Alehouse, a Picture in Detail_, with but slight alterations,
-would serve equally as well:—
-
- Dear ramblers all—an Alehouse sign
-   You’ll own as good a sight as greets ye;
- When summer’s long, long mornings shine,
-   Where leisure reigns, and ‘All hail’ meets ye.
-
- There rests the waggon in its track,—
-   A corn bag round each horse’s nose is;
- There comes the miller and his sack:
-   And there at ease the beggar dozes.
-
- There limps the ostler with his pails,
-   And there the landlord stalks inspector;
- Two farmers there discuss their sales,
-   And drain by turns one goblet’s nectar.
-
- Hay ricks are near and orchard fruit;
-   The cock’s shrill crow and flapping wing;
- The low contented neigh of brute;
-   The pipe’s perfume, and tankard’s ding.
-
- The fiddle’s scrape,—the milking cows,—
-   The snapping cork,—the roaring joke:—
- The birds by thousands in the boughs:—
-   The creaking wheel and whip’s loud stroke. {187}
-
- Sunshine strews all the kitchen floor,
-   Reposes on the home-field crop—
- Blisters the Doctor’s fine new door,
-   And kisses copse and chimney top.
-
- Clouds fleecy dot the blue immense—
-   Farm-houses—cities—vales—and streams—
- And seats and parks and forests dense,
-   Sleep stretch’d afar, in floods of beams.
-
-An inn or an alehouse, however, was at the time of the Conquest and
-for long after, far to seek. In the reign of Edward I. there were
-only three taverns in London, one in Chepe, one in Wallbrooke, and
-one in Lombard Street, and in country districts the proportion to the
-population would doubtless be as small, the want being supplied in the
-manner before alluded to. Even in the year 1552 the following list
-of the numbers of taverns allowed for the chief towns in England, no
-doubt shows a much smaller proportion to population than is seen at
-the present day. There were to be allowed forty in London, eight in
-York, four in Norwich, three in Westminster, six in Bristol, four in
-Hull, three in Shrewsbury, four in Exeter, three in Salisbury, four in
-Gloucester, four in Chester, three in Hereford, three in Worcester,
-three in Oxford, four in Cambridge, three in Southampton, four in
-Canterbury, three in Ipswich, three in Winchester, three in Colchester,
-and four in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
-
-[Illustration: A Mediæval Innkeeper.]
-
-Even parsonages seem to have been licensed as alehouses in very
-out-of-the-way districts. A survival of this custom, almost to our own
-times, is mentioned by Southey, who states that the parsonage house of
-Langdale was licensed as an alehouse, because it was so poor a living
-that the curate could not have otherwise supported himself.
-
-The regulation previously mentioned as to the number of taverns, seems
-never to have been formally repealed; it could, however, only have been
-very slackly enforced, and doubtless soon became a dead letter. It was
-not, however, altogether forgotten, for in a letter from {188} the
-Lords in Council, in reply to a petition presented in the year 1618 by
-the parishioners of St. Mildred, in London, it is stated that “whereas
-the number of taverns had been limited to forty, and their places
-assigned,” there were then no less than four hundred in the City alone.
-The Lord Mayor and Common Council are therefore directed to put some
-restraint on this “enormous liberty of setting up taverns.”
-
-The latter part of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth
-centuries seem to have been remarkable for a great excess of alehouses,
-having regard to the wants of the population at the time. In 1591 a
-report of the Queen’s Council on the state of Lancashire and Cheshire
-states that the streets and alehouses are so crowded during service
-time that there was none in church but the curate and his clerk; that
-alehouses were innumerable, and that great abuses prevailed. In 1639
-the Justices of Middlesex made presentment to the Council that there
-were twenty-four alehouses in Covent Garden, and that most of their
-keepers were chandlers who had got licensed surreptitiously at general
-meetings, and that the said Justices had reduced the number of the
-alehouses to _four_.
-
-Old John Taylor, in _Drinke and Welcome_, gives evidence of the
-excessive facilities for drinking afforded at the fairs then so common.
-“Concerning the fructifying or fruitfulnesse of ale,” he says in his
-quaint way, “it is almost incredible, for twice every yeere there is a
-Faire at a small Towne called Kimbolton or Kimolton in Northamptonshire
-(as I take it), in which towne there are but thirty-eight Houses, which
-at the Faire time are encreased to thirty-nine _Alehouses_, for an
-old woman and her daughter doe in those dayes divide there one house
-into two, such is the operation and encreasing power of our English
-Ale.” Decker, writing in 1632, says that “a whole street is in some
-places but a continuous alehouse, not a shop to be seen between red
-lattice and red lattice.” This mention of the red lattice recalls the
-custom now extinct, but once well nigh universal, for the alehouses
-to have open windows to enable the guests to enjoy the fresh air.
-Privacy was ensured by a trellis or lattice, which was fixed in front
-of the window, and prevented a passer-by from seeing in, though those
-within could see out. Whether or not the red colour of the lattices
-was intended to harmonise with the noses of the frequenters may be
-considered a moot point; the page seems to have intended some such
-insinuation when he says of Bardolph, “He called me even now, my Lord,
-through a red lattice, and I could see no part of his face from the
-window; at last I spied his eyes and methought he had made two holes in
-the ale-wife’s new petticoat, and peeped through.” {189}
-
-[Illustration:
-
- A merry new Ballad, bothe pleaſant and ſweet,
- In praiſe of a Blackſmith, which is very meet.
-
-An Ale-Houſe Lattice.
-
- “Of all the trades that ever I ſee
-  There is none which the Blackſmith compared may be.”
-                                                    _Roxburghe Ballads._
-]
-
-{190}
-
-So usual did the red lattice become that it was regarded as a
-distinctive mark, as shown in Marston’s _Antonio and Mellida_, in which
-occurs the passage, “As well known by my wit as an alehouse by a red
-lattice.” Green lattices were occasionally used, and the memory of them
-still survives in the sign of _The Green Lettuce_.
-
-Another feature peculiar to old country inns was the ale-bench, a seat
-in front of the house where the thirsty wayfarer might rest and take
-his modest quencher. An ancient institution was the ale-bench. It
-is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon poem _Beowulf_ and in the sixteenth
-century seems to have been considered the appropriate resting place of
-sententious and argumentative persons. One of the old Homilies (1547)
-alludes to those “which upon the ale-benches delight to set forth
-certain questions.”
-
-Another institution of the old alehouse, corresponding in fact to the
-modern _bar_, was called the _ale-stond_, an allusion to which is to
-be found in _Marprelate’s Epistle_: “Therefore at length Sir Jefferie
-bethought him of a feat whereby he might both visit the ale-stond and
-also kepe his othe.”
-
-In the sixteenth century the keeper of an alehouse was fancifully
-called an _ale-draper_. Chettle, in his _Kind-Hearts’ Dreame_ (1592),
-has the following:—“I came up to London and fell to be some tapster,
-hostler, or chamberlaine in an inn. Well, I got me a wife; with her
-a little money; when we are married seeke a house we must; no other
-occupation have I but an ale-draper.” _The Discoverie of the Knights
-of the Poste_ (1597) also contains an allusion to the phrase:—“‘So
-that nowe hee hath left brokery, and is become a draper.’ ‘A draper!’
-quoth Freeman, ‘what draper? of woollin or of linnen?’ ‘No,’ qd he, ‘an
-ale-draper, wherein he hath more skil then in the other.’” Innkeepers
-in Whitby are denominated ale-drapers in the parish registers of last
-century.
-
-In those good old days before the introduction of mail-coaches, to
-say nothing of the more modern means of transit, hospitality to the
-traveller was the rule in country districts. The Water Poet tells in
-his _Pennilesse Pilgrimage_ that he travelled “on foot from London to
-Edinburgh in Scotland, not carrying money to or fro, neither begging,
-borrowing or asking meat.” However, from what he goes on to relate,
-this description of his journey needs to be accepted with some slight
-reservation, for he gives a comical recital of how “from Stamford we
-_rode_ the next day to Huntingdon, where we lodged at the Post-master’s
-house at the signe of the Crowne.” The landlord appears, and “very
-{191} bountifully called for three quarts of wine and sugar and some
-jugges of beere. He did drink and begin healths like a horse-leach,
-and swallowed downe his cuppes without feeling, as if he had had the
-dropsie, or nine pound of spunge in his maw. In a word, as he is a
-Poste, he dranke poste, striving and calling by all means to make the
-reckoning great, or to make us men of great reckoning. But in his
-payment he was tyred like a jade, leaving the gentleman that was with
-me to discharge the terrible shott, or else one of my horses must have
-laine in pawne for his superfluous calling and unmannerly intrusion.”
-
-The opinion of the great Doctor already quoted was not confined either
-to himself or to his times. Bishop Earle, writing in the seventeenth
-century of those social functions of the tavern or alehouse, now in
-a great measure discharged by the Clubs, sums up his description as
-follows:—“To give you the total reckoning of it, it is the busy man’s
-recreation, the idle man’s business, the melancholy man’s sanctuary,
-the stranger’s welcome, the inns of court man’s entertainment, the
-scholar’s kindness, and the citizens’ courtesy. It is the study of
-sparkling wits, and a cup of comedy their book; whence we leave them.”
-
-Old Izaak Walton had a lively appreciation of the comforts of an inn
-and the virtues of English ale. Piscator, of _The Complete Angler_,
-thus addresses the hostess of an inn: “Come, hostess, dress it (a
-trout) presently, and get us what other meat the house will afford,
-and give us some of your best barley wine, the good liquor that our
-honest forefathers did use to drink of; the drink which preserved their
-health, and made them live so long and do so many good deeds.”
-
-The quaint old author of _The Haven of Health_ (1584) gives his readers
-directions how to find out the best alehouse in a strange town, and
-also some prudent maxims as to the behaviour there:—“But if you come as
-a stranger to any towne, and would faine know where the best ale is,
-you neede do no more than marke where the greatest noyse is of good
-fellows, as they call them, and the greatest repaire of beggars. But
-withall take good heed that malt bee not above wheat before you part.
-For it is worse to be drunke of Ale than wine, and the drunkenness
-indureth longer: by reason that the fumes and vapours of ale that
-ascend to the head, are more grosse, and therefore cannot be so soone
-resolved as those that rise up of wine.”
-
-Malvolio is alluding to the custom of alehouse singing when he says:
-“Do you make an alehouse of my lady’s house, that ye squeak out your
-cozier’s catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice?”
-
-The English custom of wives following their husbands to the ale {192}
-house is mentioned with reprehension by Gascoigne in _A Delicate Diet
-for Daintie-mouthed Droonkards_ (1576). “What woman,” he exclaims,
-“(even among the droonken Almaines), is suffered to follow her husband
-into the Alehouse or Beerhouse?” However, if we are to believe the
-author of the following verses, the practice does not always seem to
-have been unfavourable to temperance:—
-
-BACCHANALIAN JOYS DEFEATED.
-
- While I’m at the Tavern quaffing,
-   Well disposed for t’other quart,
- Come’s my wife to spoil my laughing,
-   Telling me ’tis time to part:
- Words I knew, were unavailing,
-   Yet I sternly answered, no!
- ’Till from motives more prevailing,
-   Sitting down she treads my toe:
- Such kind tokens to my thinking,
-   Most emphatically prove
- That the joys that flow from drinking,
-   Are averse to those of love.
- Farewell friends and t’other bottle,
-   Since I can no longer stay,
- Love more learn’d than Aristotle,
-   Has, to move me, found the way.
-
-Many a tale is told of wordy passages of arms between travellers and
-innkeepers. Dame Halders, of Norwich, was a stingy ale-wife. Upon
-one occasion a passing pedlar begged of her a mug of water. “You
-had better,” said she, “have a jug of my home-brewed.” The pedlar
-complied and paid for it, remarking after tasting it that it was a very
-satisfying tipple. “Yes,” rejoined the dame, pleased at the supposed
-compliment uttered in the hearing of her country customers, “it’s my
-own brewing—nothing but malt and hops.” “Indeed,” exclaimed the pedlar;
-“what!—no water?” “O yes,” cried the dame, “I forgot the water.” “No,”
-quickly added the pedlar, “I’m d—d if you did.”
-
-“I say,” a wag asked of a publican, “if we were to have a Coroner’s
-Inquest on your beer, what verdict should we arrive at?” “Give it up,”
-said Boniface. “Found drowned,” was the cruel reply.
-
-“Have you a pair of steps?” asked a customer of an ale-wife, who was
-notorious for giving short measure. “Yes; what do you want it for?”
-{193} inquired the woman. “To go down and get at this ale,” was the
-reply pointing to the half-filled pewter.
-
-It is not, however, always the host or the ale-wife who is made the
-object of these shafts of wit; as often as not it is Boniface who
-assumes the character of the joker. In illustration of his jests, the
-following extract is taken from the _Mirror_: “About half a century
-ago, when it was more the fashion to drink ale at Oxford than it is at
-present, a humorous fellow, of punning memory, established an alehouse
-near the pound, and wrote over his door, ‘Ale sold by the pound.’
-As his ale was as good as his jokes, the Oxonians resorted to his
-house in great numbers, and sometimes staid there beyond the college
-hours. This was made a matter of complaint to the Vice-Chancellor, who
-was directed to take away his licence by one of the Proctors of the
-University. Boniface was summoned to attend, and when he came into the
-Vice-Chancellor’s presence he began hawking and spitting about the
-room; this the Chancellor observed, and asked what he meant by it.
-‘Please your worship,’ said he, ‘I came here on purpose to _clear_
-myself.’ The Vice-Chancellor imagined that he actually weighed his
-ale and sold it by the pound. ‘Is that true?’ ‘No, an’t please your
-worship,’ replied the wit. ‘How do you, then?’ said the Chancellor.
-‘Very well, I thank you, sir,’ replied he; ‘how do you do?’ The
-Chancellor laughed, and said, ‘Get away for a rascal; I’ll say no more
-to you.’ The fellow departed, and crossing the quadrangle met the
-Proctor who laid the information. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘the Chancellor wants
-to speak to you,’ and returned with him. ‘Here, sir,’ said he when he
-came into the Chancellor’s presence, ‘you sent me for a _rascal_, and
-I’ve brought you the greatest that I know of.’”
-
-There is a good tale told of a certain innkeeper, who, had he received
-the advantages of an university education, would certainly have taken
-high mathematical honours. To him came a traveller, who demanded a
-tankard of treble X. Thereupon the innkeeper, having hesitated a
-moment, left the tap-room, to reappear shortly afterwards with a
-foam-crowned pewter. The traveller tasted, and exclaimed angrily, “This
-is not what I ordered!” “It is,” shortly replied Boniface; and retired
-to avoid discussion. The traveller was a connoisseur in beer, and knew
-he had been given table ale. Calling the potboy, he questioned him “No,
-master kept no strong beer,” said the lad; “nothing more than double
-X.” The traveller then summoned the landlord, and the meeting was
-stormy. The traveller asserted, the host denied, and came off finally
-triumphant with, “I know I don’t keep treble X, {194} but I can make
-it. I just gave you half double X and t’other half single X, and if two
-and one don’t make three, my name’s not Boniface.”
-
-[Illustration: Cornelius Caton.]
-
-The very grotesque figure which adorns this page represents Cornelius
-Caton, landlord of the “White Lion,” Richmond, about the middle of last
-century. Beginning life as a potboy, he rose through various stages
-till he became landlord of the house. He was almost a dwarf, and his
-whimsical character and unfailing good humour brought him much custom.
-The illustration is taken from a very rare print.
-
-The portrait of an old Cumberland landlord of the hard-drinking days
-is drawn in the following ballad, which was written by some wandering
-bard, in the album kept at the “Rising Sun,” Pooley Bridge:— {195}
-
- Will Russell was a landlord bold,
-   A noble wight was he,
- Right fond of quips and merry cranks,
-   And every kind of glee.
-
- Full five and twenty years agone,
-   He came to Pooley Height,
- And there he kept the Rising Sun,
-   And drunk was every night.
-
- No lord, nor squire, nor serving man,
-   In all the country round,
- But lov’d to call in at the Sun,
-   Wherever he was bound.
-
- To hold a crack with noble Will,
-   And take a cheerful cup
- Of brandy, or of Penrith ale,
-   Or pop, right bouncing up.
-
- But now poor Will lies sleeping here,
-   Without his hat or stick,
- No longer rules the Rising Sun,
-   As he did well when quick.
-
- Will’s honest heart could ne’er refuse
-   To drink with ev’ry brother:
- Then let us not his name abuse—
-   We’ll ne’er see sic another.
-
- But let us hope the gods above,
-   Right minded of his merits,
- Have given him a gentle shove
-   Into the land of spirits.
-
- ’Tis then his talents will expand,
-   And make a noble figure,
- In tossing off a brimming glass,
-   To make his belly bigger.
-
- Adieu, brave landlord, may thy portly ghost
-   Be ever ready at its heavenly post;
- And may thy proud posterity e’er be
-   Landlords at Pooley to eternity. {196}
-
-Rather profane the last verse; but, perhaps, not more so than the
-epitaph on one Matilda Brown:—
-
- Here lies the body of Matilda Brown,
- Who while alive was hostess of the Crown.
- Her son-in-law keeps on the business still,
- Patient, resigned to the Eternal Will.
-
-At King’s Stanley, in Gloucestershire, is the following epitaph to
-another hostess, one Ann Collins:—
-
- ’Twas as she tript from cask to cask,
-   In at a bung-hole quickly fell,
- Suffocation was her task,
-   She had no time to say farewell.
-
-[Illustration: The George Inn, Salisbury.]
-
-The ancient George Inn, Salisbury, depicted in our illustration, was
-in the vicinity of the Royal residence at Clarendon, and four hundred
-years ago was one of the best and most commodious inns in the west
-of England. In the records of the Corporation of the town a lease of
-this house is found, dated April 9th, 1473; it is made to one John
-Gryme, a saddler, and contains a description of the rooms of the inn,
-and an inventory of furniture. The house contained at that date {197}
-thirteen guest chambers, viz.:—The Principal Chamber, the Earl’s
-Chamber, the Pantry adjoining, the Oxford Chamber, the Abingdon
-Chamber, the Squire’s Chamber, the Lombard’s Chamber, the Garret, the
-George, the Clarendon, the Understent, the Fitzwaryn, and the London
-Chamber.
-
-[Illustration: The Falcon Inn, Chester.]
-
-There was also the _taberna_ or wine-cellar, the Buttery, the Tap
-House, the Kitchen, the Hostry, and the Parlour. The furniture, of
-which a full inventory is appended, seems to have been of a very homely
-type. No difference seems to have been made between the living and
-the sleeping rooms; each room was supplied with beds, the relative
-importance of which was measured by the number of _planks_ they
-contained, and the only other articles of furniture were tables on
-tressels for dining and forms of oak and beech for the guests to sit
-at table. The Principal room was distinguished by the possession of a
-cupboard, and each room contained three beds.
-
-Another fine old inn is the Falcon of Chester. It is notable as a good
-example of old half-timbered work. {198}
-
-Malone, in his _Supplement_ to Shakspere, mentions the fact that many
-of our old plays were acted in the yards of Carriers’ Inns, in which,
-he says, “in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the comedians,
-who then first united themselves in companies, erected an occasional
-stage. The form of these temporary play-houses seems to be preserved
-in our modern theatre. The galleries are in both ranged over each
-other, on three sides of the building. The small rooms under the lowest
-of these galleries answer to our present boxes; and it is observable
-that these, even in theatres which were built in a subsequent period,
-expressly for dramatic exhibitions, still retained their old name, and
-are frequently called rooms by our ancient writers. The yard bears a
-sufficient resemblance to the pit, as at present in use. We may suppose
-the stage to have been raised in this area, on the fourth side, with
-its back to the gateway of the inn, at which the money for admission
-was taken. Here, in the middle of the Globe, and, I suppose, of the
-other public theatres in the time of Shakespeare, there was an open
-yard or area, where the common people stood to see the exhibition, from
-which circumstances they are called groundlings, and by Ben Jonson,
-‘the understanding gentlemen of the ground.’”
-
-At the beginning of the present century the Angel at Islington was a
-typical, old-fashioned country inn, long and low, with deep overhanging
-eaves, and a central yard surrounded by double galleries, open to the
-air and communicating with the bedrooms. Travellers approaching London
-from the north would frequently remain at the Angel the night, rather
-than venture into London by dark along a road dangerous alike from its
-ruts and its footpads. Persons whose business took them to Islington
-after dark usually waited at an avenue, which then existed on the site
-of John Street, until a sufficient number of them had assembled to go
-on in safety to their destination, whither they were escorted by an
-armed patrol appointed for that purpose. What a striking picture of the
-insecurity of life and limb in districts close to the metropolis not
-one hundred years ago!
-
-A curious custom, known as the Highgate Oath, held its ground for many
-a long year, and has only fallen into disuse within living memory. When
-a traveller passed through Highgate towards London for the first time
-he was brought before a pair of horns at one of the taverns, and there
-a mock oath was administered to him, to the effect that he would never
-drink small beer when he could get strong, unless he liked it better;
-that, with a similar saving clause, he would never drink gruel when he
-could command turtle soup; nor make love to the maid, when {199} he
-could court the mistress, unless he preferred the maid; with much more
-to the same effect. In the old coaching days scarcely a coach passed
-through Highgate without some of its occupants being initiated and we
-may well imagine that copious streams of ale would flow to “wet” the
-time-honoured custom. It is to this custom that Byron makes allusion in
-Childe Harold:—
-
-     .    .    many to the steep of Highgate hie;
- Ask ye, Bœotian shades, the reason why?
- ’Tis to the worship of the solemn horn,
- Grasped in the holy hand of Mystery,
- In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,
- And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till morn.
-
-The privileges belonging to a freeman of Highgate who had taken the
-oath are described as follows:—“If at any time you are going through
-Highgate, and want to rest yourself, and you see a pig lying in the
-ditch, you have liberty to kick her out and take her place; but if you
-see three lying together, you must only kick out the middle one and lie
-between the two others.”
-
-The custom is said to have been originated by a club of graziers who
-were wont to tarry at Highgate on their way to London, and who, in
-order to keep their company select, would admit none to their society
-before he had gone through a process of initiation, which consisted of
-kissing between the horns, one of their oxen brought to the door for
-the purpose.
-
-Interesting as are many of our old country inns and village ale-houses,
-and numberless the tales that might be told of the doings within their
-time-stained walls; “of quips and cranks and wanton wiles”; of the
-village feast, the village minstrelsy, the “jocund rebeck’s” sound to
-ears long since deaf; the song; the toast pledged by lips long since
-cold—interesting as all these are, it is when we come to the history of
-our old London taverns, fragmentary though it be, that we really find
-ourselves face to face with the clearest pictures of the social life
-and customs of the past. It is here that memories gather thickest of the
-
- Peals of genial clamour sent
- From many a tavern door,
- With twisted quirks and happy hits,
-   From misty men of letters;
- The tavern hours of mighty wits—
-   Thine elders and thy betters.
-
-{200}
-
-In the history of the old London taverns may be seen the habits, the
-customs, and the amusements of by-gone generations of Londoners.
-Innumerable pictures of society, and modes of life and thought, might
-be gathered from among the records of these houses of entertainment.
-For centuries before these days of telegraphs and newspapers, it was to
-the tavern that men resorted to hear the latest news, to exchange ideas
-and to refresh their minds, as well as bodies, after the labours of the
-day. It was here the traveller told his tale of marvels, of “contrees
-and the yles that ben beyond Cathay”; it was here the stay-at-home
-gathered what information he possessed of lands and nations over the
-seas.
-
-Space forbids us to mention more than a very few of these old London
-Inns. That old Tabard—what a picture of fourteenth-century life
-does its very name recall! The earliest mention of this typical old
-Southwark Inn—an inn which after seeing all the changes and chances of
-five centuries, fell a victim but yesterday to that modern Vandal, the
-improver (save the mark!)—occurs in a register of the Abbey of Hyde,
-near Winchester, where we find that two tenements were conveyed by
-William de Ludegarsale to the Abbot in 1306, the site being described
-as extending in length from the common ditch of Southwark eastwards,
-as far as the royal way towards the west. This royal way was none
-other than the old Roman road which connected London with Kent and the
-south. Stow, writing three centuries later, thus mentions the inn and
-its sign: “From thence towards London Bridge,” he writes, “bee many
-faire Innes, for receit of travellers, by these signes, the Spurre,
-Christopher, Bull, Queen’s Head, _Tabard_, George, Hart, King’s Head,
-etc. Amongst the which the most ancient is the Tabard, so called of
-the signe, which as wee do now terme it, is of a Jacket or sleevelesse
-coate whole before, open on both sides, with a square collar, winged
-at the shoulders; a stately garment, of old time commonly worne of
-noblemen and others, both at home and abroad in the warres; but
-then, (to wit in the warres) their Armes embroidered, or otherwise
-depict upon them that every man by his coate of Armes might be knowne
-from others: But now these Tabards are onely worne by the Heralds,
-and bee called their coates of Armes in service. Of the Inne of the
-Tabard, Geffrey Chaucer Esquire, the most famous poet of England, in
-commendation thereof, writeth thus:—
-
- “Byfel, that in that sesoun, on a day
-  In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay,
-  Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
-  To Caunterbury with ful devout corage, {201}
-
-  At night was come into that hostelrie
-  Wel nyne and twenty in a compainye,
-  Of sondry folk, by aventure i-falle,
-  In felawship and pilgrims were thei alle,
-  That toward Caunterbury wolden ryden.”
-
-Then follows an unrivalled description of typical fourteenth-century
-society.
-
-   The Knight,
-                    . . . . a worthy man,
-          That from the tyme that he first bigan
-          To ryden out, he lovede chyvalrye,
-          Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.
-        *       *       *       *       *
-          He was a very perfight gentil knight.”
-
- —The Squire, whose gay dress is thus described:—
-          Embrowded was he, as it were a mede
-          Al ful of fresshe flouers, white and reede—
-
- —The Yeoman attending him, “clad in coote and hood of greene.”
-
- —The “Nonne, a Prioresse,” so “symple and coy,” whose “gretteste
- ooth was but by seynt Loy”:—
-          And Frensch sche spak ful faine and fetysly,
-          After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe
-          For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe.
-
- —The Sporting Monk, the prototype of the Hunting Parson of more
- recent days:—
-          An outrydere that lovede venerye;
-          A manly man, to ben an abbot able.
-          Ful many a deynte hors hadde he in stable:
-        *       *       *       *       *
-          Greyhoundes he hadde as swifte as fowel in flight;
-          Of prikyng and of huntyng for the hare
-          Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.
-
- —The easy-going Friar, who “sweetely herde confessioun”:—
-          And pleasant was his absolucioun
-        *       *       *       *       *
-          He knew the tavernes well in every toun,
-          And everych hostiler and tappestere. {202}
-
-—The Merchant with his forked beard and “Flaundrisch bevere hat”—The
-Clerk of Oxenford—The Sergeant of Law, “war and wys”—The Franklin—The
-Ploughman—The Cook, and every other of that goodly company—How fresh
-their pictures are to-day! Each touch, each tint, as clear, as bright,
-as though the great father of English poetry had but yesterday laid
-aside his pencil! And then the Host, none other than the Henry Bayley
-of the Tabard, who represented the borough of Southwark in Parliament
-in 1376, and again in 1378, how interesting it is to observe his
-demeanour, as depicted by Chaucer. Quite at his ease, and on an
-equality with his guests, he talks with them, jests with them, in
-person presides over the table, acts as umpire and judge of the tales
-they tell upon the journey, and generally behaves more like a man who
-entertains his friends than a landlord serving his guests; and, be it
-remembered, these guests were not by any means of the lowest rank of
-life:
-
- A seemly man our hoste was withal,
- For to have ben a marshall in an hall,
- A large man he was with eyen steep,
- A fairer burgess was there none in Chepe:
- Bold of his speeche, and wys and well y-taught,
- And of manhood him lackede righte noughte.
-
-The old Tabard was partly burnt down in the great Southwark fire in
-1676, and on rebuilding the ruined portion “that ignorant landlord or
-tenant,” Aubrey tells us, “instead of the ancient sign of the Tabard
-put up the Talbot or doge.” In this condition it remained until a few
-years ago, when, despite the protests of the antiquarian world, despite
-the pages of remonstrance with which the newspapers and magazines
-were filled, it was pulled down, and is now replaced by a tall brick
-building. Had we not enough and to spare of these tall brick buildings?
-
-[Illustration: The Tabard in 1722.]
-
-At the time when Knight wrote his _History of London_, the original
-house was sufficiently complete for him to leave us a description of
-the old arched entrance to the inn-yard, the balustraded galleries on
-which the bedrooms opened, the gabled roofs, the panelled rooms, and
-last, {203} but not least, the Pilgrim’s room, which tradition said
-was the veritable scene of the supper on the night before the guests
-set out upon their world-famed pilgrimage.
-
-John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds, writing about the
-same time as Chaucer, mentions that Cornhill was in his time noted for
-its taverns, where was “wine one pint for a pennie, and bread to drink
-it was given free at every tavern.”
-
-In a black-letter sheet entitled _Newes from Bartholomew Fayre_, of
-probably the early part of the seventeenth century, some of the most
-famous inns of London are thus whimsically enumerated:—
-
- There has been great sale and utterance of wine,
- Besides Beer, Ale, and Hippocrass fine,
- In every country, region, and Nation,
- Chiefly at Billings-gate, at the Salutation;
- And Boreshead near London Stone,
- The Swan at Dowgate, a tavern well knowne;
- The Mitre in Cheap, and the Bull-head,
- And many like places that make noses red;
- The Boreshead in Old Fish Street, Three Cranes in the Vintree
- And now, of late, Saint Martin’s in the Sentree;
- The Windmill in Lothbury, the Ship at the Exchange,
- King’s Head in New Fish Street, where Roysters do range;
- The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand,
- Three Tuns in Newgate Market, in Old Fish Street the Swan.
-
-Most of these hostelries, famous in their day and generation, were
-swept away in the Great Fire of London.
-
-The Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, “near London stone,” was one of the
-oldest inns in London. It stood near the site whereon the statue to
-William IV. in King William Street has been erected. It was there that
-Prince Hal and “honest Jack Falstaff” played their wildest pranks.
-Carved oak figures of the two worthies stood at the door of the house
-until the Great Fire; and the proud inscription, “This is the chief
-tavern in London,” appeared upon the signboard until the house was
-finally pulled down in 1831, to make way for the approaches of London
-Bridge. In the year 1718 one James Austin, the inventor of “Persian
-inkpowder,” whatever that may have been, desiring to entertain his
-chief customers, and also, no doubt, to advertise his wonderful powder,
-issued invitations for a Brobdingnagian repast to be partaken of at
-the Boar’s Head. The feast was to consist of an enormous plum-pudding,
-weighing 1,000 lbs., {204} and the best piece of an ox roasted; this
-wonderous pudding was put to boil on Monday, May 12th, in a copper at
-the Red Lion Inn in Southwark, where it had to boil for fourteen days.
-As soon as this mighty feat of cookery was accomplished, a triumphant
-procession was formed, and the pudding set out on its journey, escorted
-by a band playing _What lumps of pudding my mother gave me_; but, alas,
-for the vanity of all things human! the tempting dish had not proceeded
-far upon its way, when the mob, goaded to madness by the savoury odour
-of the pudding, fell upon the escort, and, having put them to the rout,
-tore the pudding in pieces, and devoured it there and then.
-
-[Illustration: The Boar’s Head.]
-
-Some years ago a great mound of rubbish in Whitechapel, supposed to be
-the carted remains of the City after the Great Fire, was cleared away,
-and the relic, of which we give a representation, was discovered. It is
-an oak carving, dated at the back 1568, and had a name written upon it
-which was found to correspond with that of the landlord of the Boar’s
-Head, Eastcheap, in that year.
-
-A ballad, which assigns to each inn its particular class of customers,
-is introduced by Thomas Heywood into his _Rape of Lucrece_:—
-
- The Gintry to the King’s Head,
-   The Nobles to the Crown,
- The Knights unto the Golden Fleece,
-   And to the Plough the Clowne. {205}
-
- The Churchman to the Mitre,
-   The Shepherd to the Star,
- The Gardiner hies him to the Rose,
-   To the Drum the Man of War.
-
- The Huntsman to the White Hart,
-   To the Ship the Merchants goe,
- And you that doe the Muses love,
-   The sign called River Po.
-
- The Banquer out to the World’s End,
-   The Fool to the Fortune hie,
- Unto the Mouth the Oyster-wife,
-   The Fiddler to the Pie.
-
-The taverns of the seventeenth century seem in many cases to have
-occupied the upper part of a house, the lower portion being devoted to
-some other trade. Izaak Walton’s _Complete Angler_ was to be “sold at
-his shopp in Fleet Street, under the King’s Head Tavern.” Bishop Earle,
-who wrote in the early part of that century, seems to signify that
-there was often a tavern above and an alehouse below. “A tavern,” he
-says, “is a degree or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an alehouse
-where men are drunk with more credit and apology. . . . Men come here
-to be merry, and indeed make a noise, and the music above is answered
-with a clinking below.”
-
-Amongst the inns and taverns frequented by Shakspere may be mentioned
-the Falcon Tavern, by the Bankside, which was the place of meeting
-of the mighty poets and wits of the Elizabethan age—of Shakspere,
-Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Ford, Beaumont, Fletcher, Drayton,
-Herrick, and a host of lesser names. An assemblage, indeed, unique in
-any country or in any age! Here took place those “wit combats,” of
-which Fuller speaks, between Shakspere and Ben Jonson, “which two I
-behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war; Master
-Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but
-slow, in his performances. Shakspere, like the English man-of-war,
-lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack
-about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and
-invention.”
-
-An example of the kindly passages of wit between these two great
-spirits has come down to us, having been preserved from the oblivion
-that shrouds the bulk of them by Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in his {206}
-_Merry Passages and Jests_. The passage, in the compiler’s own words
-is as follows:—“Shakspere was god-father to one of Ben Jonson’s
-children; and after the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came
-to cheer him up, and asked him why he was so melancholy. ‘No, faith,
-Ben,’ (says he), ‘not I; but I have been considering a great while what
-should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god-child; and I
-have resolved at last.’ ‘I prythee what?’ says he, ‘I ’faith, Ben, I’ll
-e’en give him a dozen good Latin spoons (_i.e._ latten, an inferior
-metal), and thou shalt translate them.’” Whether the Spanish great
-galleon could bring his guns to bear upon his nimble antagonist in this
-encounter is left unrecorded; but we can imagine that the great scholar
-would not be without a retort to a jest which was directed against his
-classic learning by one who had “little Latin and less Greek.”
-
-The great poet seems to have had many god-children. Of one, Sir
-William Davenant, while yet a boy, the following tradition remains.
-The father of Sir William was host of the Crown at Oxford, and at
-this house Shakspere would frequently lodge on his journeys between
-Stratford-on-Avon and London. Malicious rumour had it that the lad
-was of a closer relationship than that of god-son only, and upon one
-occasion, on the poet’s arrival at Oxford, the boy, who was sent for to
-meet him, was asked by a grave master of one of the colleges whither he
-was going. “Home,” said the lad, “to see my god-father.” “Fie, child,”
-said the don, “why art thou so superfluous? Hast not thou yet learnt
-not to use the name of God in vain?”
-
-The Mermaid, in Bread Street, was often the place of meeting of these
-convivial wits. Beaumont, then a mere lad, addressing Jonson in verse,
-writes:—
-
-       —What things have we seen
- Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
- So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
- As if that everyone from whence they came
- Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
- And had resolved to live a fool the rest
- Of his dull life: . . . .
- We left an air behind us, which alone
- Was able to make the two next companies
- Right witty;—though but downright fools, mere wise.
-
-Sir Walter Raleigh established a literary club at this house in the
-year, 1603. Amongst the members were Shakspere, Jonson, Beaumont
-Fletcher, Selden, Donne, and many scarcely less illustrious
-names. Herrick, in graceful lyrics, bears witness to similar sparkling
-gatherings of a somewhat later date, and to other houses where they
-were held:—
-
-       Ah, Ben!
-       Say how, or when,
- Shall we thy guests,
- Meet at those lyric feasts
- Made at the Sun,
- The Dog, the Triple Tun?
- Where we such clusters had,
- As made us nobly wild, not mad;
- And yet each verse of thine
- Out-did the meat, out-did the wine.
-
-Ben Jonson, in inviting a friend to sup with him at the Mermaid,
-promises him—
-
- A cup of pure Canary wine,
- Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine.
-
-The Swan at Charing Cross, however, was the house where Jonson was
-always most sure of getting the best draught of his favourite liquor.
-
-Aubrey relates that the poet was upon one occasion dining with King
-James, and when called upon to say grace produced the following lines:—
-
- Our King and Queen, the Lord God blesse,
- The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse,
- And God blesse every living thing
- That lives and breathes and loves the King.
- God blesse the Councill of Estate,
- And Buckingham the fortunate.
- God blesse them all, and keep them safe,
- And God blesse me, and God blesse Ralph.
-
-Whereupon “the King was mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was.
-Ben told him ’twas the drawer at the Swanne Taverne by Charing Crosse,
-who drew him good canarie. For this drollerie his Ma^{tie.} gave him an
-hundred pounds.”
-
-The legend of St. Dunstan, who, being tempted of the devil in bodily
-form, took the prince of darkness by the nose, and
-
- With redhot tongs he made him roar
- Till he was heard three miles or more, {208}
-
-was commemorated on the signboard of a celebrated inn in Fleet Street,
-which was called “The Devil” for short. The old inn stood on the site
-now occupied by Child’s Bank, and it was there that the meetings of
-the celebrated Apollo Club were held, and rare Ben Jonson, with other
-kindred spirits, passed the sparkling wine and still more sparkling
-jest. Here over the entrance of the Apollo Chamber were inscribed the
-well-known lines beginning
-
- Welcome all who lead or follow
- To the oracle of Apollo.
-
-Sim Wadlow, whom Jonson dubbed “the king of skinkers,”[51] was one
-of the famous landlords of this house. The following epitaph on this
-notorious character is recorded by Camden in his _Remaines_:—
-
-   [51] Skinkers = tapsters; from the old English verb schenchen, to
-   pour out.
-
- Apollo et cohors Musarum,
- Bacchus vini et uvarum,
- Ceres pro pane et cervisia,
- Adeste omnes cum tristitia.
-
- Dii, Deæque, lamentate cuncti,
- Simonis Vadloe funera defuncti,
- Sub signo malo bene vixit, mirabile!
- Si ad cœlum recessit gratias Diaboli.
-
-These lines may be thus rendered:—
-
- Apollo and the Muses nine,
- Bacchus the god of grapes and wine,
- Ceres the friend of “cakes and ale,”
- Assembled, list to my sad tale.
-
- Gods, goddesses, lament ye all,
- At Simon Wadlow’s funeral,
- He lived right well tho’ his sign was evil,
- If heaven he won, ’tis thanks to ‘the Devil.’
-
-Our illustration depicts two innkeepers, who were probably Sim Wadlow’s
-contemporaries. {209}
-
-During the last century The Devil Tavern was the resort of the wits and
-literary men of the day. Addison and Dr. Garth often dined here; and
-Dr. Johnson here once presided at a supper that lasted till dawn peeped
-in at the windows. The inn was pulled down in the year 1788.
-
-[Illustration: Innkeepers, 1641.]
-
-Nearly opposite to the Devil stood the Cock Tavern, for centuries, and
-until a few months ago, when it was closed for alterations, frequented
-by the Templars. We hope that it was not for this reason that its
-internal arrangements were spoken of by the Laureate as—
-
- The haunts of _hungry sinners_,
- Old boxes, larded with the steam
- Of thirty thousand dinners.
-
-This Tavern, once known as the Cock and Bottle, and subsequently as
-the Cock Alehouse, was a noted house in the seventeenth century. The
-effigy of the Cock, which until recently used to stand over the door,
-was reputed to have been carved by the great Grinling Gibbons. At the
-time of the Plague of London the following advertisement appeared in
-the _Intelligencer_:—“This is to certify that the Master of the Cock
-and Bottle, commonly called the Cock Alehouse, hath dismissed his
-servants, and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God
-willing) to return at Michaelmass next, so that all persons who have
-any accounts {210} or farthings belonging to the said house are desired
-to repair thither before the 8th of this instant July, and they shall
-receive satisfaction.” The Cock, however, seems to have soon resumed
-its hospitality, for we read that Pepys shortly afterwards went “by
-water to the Temple, and then to the Cock Alehouse, and drank, and ate
-a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry. So almost night, I carried Mrs.
-Pierce home; and then Knipp and I to the Temple again, and took boat,
-it being darkish, and to Foxhall, it being now night, and a bonfire
-burning at Lambeth for the King’s coronation day.”
-
-A waiter at this house is commemorated in the well-known lines of Will
-Waterproof’s Monologue:—
-
- O plump head waiter at the Cock
-   To which I most resort,
- How goes the time? ’tis five o’clock,
-   Go fetch a pint of port.
-
-The old Cock alehouse is now no more; but the sign which for two
-hundred years has looked down upon the bustling Fleet Street crowds,
-together with the “old boxes” and carved oak over-mantel, have found a
-resting-place at “The Temple Bar,” on the other side of the way.
-
-The Mitre was the sign of several celebrated London Taverns, the most
-famous of all being that situated in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, where
-Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, Boswell, and other lesser lights used to
-meet. It was here that Boswell first made acquaintance with the great
-Doctor. “He agreed to meet me in the evening at the Mitre. I called on
-him, and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper and port wine,
-of which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox, High Church
-sound of the Mitre,—the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel
-Johnson—the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation, and
-the pride from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a
-variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I
-had ever experienced.” The great name of Shakspere is also connected by
-tradition with this house.
-
-The old Globe Tavern in Fleet Street survived down to about the
-beginning of the present century. It was the favourite resort of Oliver
-Goldsmith, who took great delight in hearing a certain “tun of a man,”
-who frequented the house, sing the song entitled _Nottingham Ale_, in
-which Bacchus himself is said to have sprung from a barrel of that
-famous liquor:— {211}
-
- Fair Venus, the Goddess of beauty and love,
- Arose from the froth that swam on the sea,
- Minerva leap’d out of the cranium of Jove,
- A coy sullen slut, as most authors agree;
- Bold Bacchus they tell us, the prince of good fellows,
- Was his natural son, but attend to my tale,
- For they that thus chatter mistake quite the matter,
- He sprang from a barrel of Nottingham Ale,
-     Nottingham Ale, boys; Nottingham Ale; no liquor
-         on earth is like Nottingham Ale.
-
-This song was a great favourite in the eighteenth century, and was sung
-to the tune of “Lilabolero.”
-
-The Crown and Anchor in the Strand was one of the most famous houses
-in London during the first part of the present century. A tragic
-story is related of how one Thomas Simpkin, the first landlord after
-the rebuilding of the house in 1790, on the occasion of an inaugural
-dinner, in leaning over a balcony to look into the street, broke the
-balustrade and, falling to the ground, was killed on the spot. Here
-were held the famous Westminster political meetings, and here the
-birthday of Fox was celebrated in 1794, when two thousand persons sat
-down to dinner. Many another tavern in this region so famous for houses
-of entertainment, brings back memories of the past, but space forbids
-us to linger over the recital.
-
-John Taylor, the Water Poet (poeta Aquaticus, as he was fond of calling
-himself), who was the author of many whimsical works in prose as well
-as verse, was a Thames waterman, and the keeper of an alehouse in
-Phœnix Alley, Long Acre. It is related of him that on the death of
-Charles I. he changed his sign, which had formerly been the Crown,
-into the Mourning Bush, as expressing his grief and loyalty. He was,
-however, soon compelled to take this sign down, and he then substituted
-the Poet’s Head, his own portrait, with this inscription:—
-
- There is many a head hangs for a sign;
- Then, gentle reader, why not mine?
-
-At the same time he issued the following poetical advertisement:—
-
- My signe was once a Crowne, but now it is
- Changed by a sudden metamorphosis.
- The Crowne was taken downe, and in the stead
- Is placed John Taylor’s, or the Poet’s Head. {212}
- A painter did my picture gratis make,
- And (for a signe) I hanged it for his sake.
- Now if my picture’s drawing can prevayle,
- ’Twill draw my friends to me, and I’ll draw ale.
- Two strings are better to a bow than one;
- And poeting does me small good alone.
- So ale alone yields but small good to me,
- Except it have some spice of poesie.
- The fruits of ale are unto drunkards such,
- To make ’em sweare and lye that drink too much.
- But my ale, being drunk with moderation,
- Will quench thirst and make merry recreation.
- My booke and signe were published for two ends,
- T’ invite my honest, civill, sober friends.
- From such as are not such I kindly pray,
- Till I send for ’em, let ’em keep away.
- From Phœnix Alley, the Globe Taverne neare
- The Middle of Long Acre, I dwell there.
-
-An old dodge of some of the London tavern-keepers was to hang up in a
-conspicuous place in the taproom, a notice to the effect that no one
-could have more than one glass at a sitting. The result of this notable
-device was the very opposite to what one might expect; it is thus
-quaintly told by old Decker, in his _Seven Deadly Sins, seven times
-pressed to death_: “Then you have another brewing called Huff’s ale, at
-which, because no man must have but a pot at a sitting, and so be gone,
-the restraint makes them more eager to come in, so that by this policie
-one may huffe it four or five times a day.”
-
-Last century was pre-eminently the century for Clubs, some literary
-some political, and some purely social, many partaking of all these
-characters. The October Club, which was so called on account of the
-quantities of October ale which the members drank, used to meet at
-the Bell Tavern, King Street, Westminster, and drink confusion to the
-Whigs. Swift was a member. “We are plagued here,” he writes to Stella,
-“with an October Club; that is a set of above a hundred Parliament men
-of the country, who drink October beer at home, and meet every evening
-at a tavern near the Parliament, to consult affairs and drive matters
-to extremes against the Whigs, to call the old Ministry to account, and
-get off five or six heads.”
-
-The Mug Houses, famous early in the last century, were distinguished
-{213} by the rows of pewter mugs placed in the window, or hung up
-outside as in the illustration, which is taken from the _Book of
-Days_. In _A Journey through England_ (1722) the original Mug-house
-is thus described: “But the most diverting and amusing of all is the
-Mug-house Club in Long Acre. They have a grave old gentleman, in his
-own gray hairs, now within a few months of ninety years old, who is
-their President, and sits in an arm’d chair some steps higher than the
-rest of the company, to keep the whole room in order. A harp plays all
-the time at the lower end of the room; and every now and then one or
-other of the company rises and entertains the rest with a song, and
-(by-the-by) some are good masters. Here is nothing drunk but ale, and
-every gentleman hath his separate Mug, which he chalks on the table
-where he sits as it is brought in; and everyone retires when he pleases
-as from a Coffee House. The Room is always so diverted with songs, and
-drinking from one table to another to one another’s healths, that there
-is no room for Politicks, or anything that can sow’r conversation. One
-must be there by seven to get Room, and after ten the Company are for
-the most part gone. This is a Winter’s amusement, that is agreeable
-enough to a Stranger for once or twice, and he is well diverted with
-the different Humours, when the Mugs overflow.”
-
-[Illustration: Mug House.]
-
-{214}
-
-A few years earlier, however, “Politicks” had much troubled this House
-and others of which it was the parent. “On King George’s accession,”
-says the _Mirror_, “the Tories had so much the better of the friends to
-the Protestant succession, that they gained the mobs on all public days
-to their side. This induced a set of gentlemen to establish Mug-houses
-in all the corners of this great city, for well affected tradesmen to
-meet and keep up the spirit of loylty to the Protestant succession,
-and to be ready, upon all tumults, to join their forces to put down
-the Tory mobs.” The frequenters of these houses formed themselves into
-Mug-house Clubs after the fashion of their prototype, and discussed
-their Whig sentiments—
-
- “While ale inspires and lends its kindly aid
-  The thought perplexing labour to pursue.”
-
-Whenever Tory mobs assembled, these disorderly champions of order would
-sally forth and attack them with sticks and staves and divers other
-offensive weapons. “So many were the riots,” continues the _Mirror_,
-“that the police was obliged, by Act of Parliament, to put an end of
-this City strife, which had this good effect, that upon pulling down of
-the Mug-house in Salisbury Court, for which some boys were hanged on
-this Act, the City has not been troubled with them since.”
-
-A still earlier Club, more renowned than any for its marvellous
-powers of suction, was the Everlasting Club, instituted during the
-Parliamentary wars; it was so called because it sat night and day,
-one set of members relieving another. It is recorded of them early in
-the eighteenth century that “since their first institution they have
-smoked fifty tons of tobacco, drank thirty thousand butts of ale, one
-thousand hogsheads of red port, two hundred barrels of brandy, and
-_one kilderkine of small beer_. They sang old catches at all hours
-to encourage one another to moisten their clay, and grow immortal by
-drinking.”
-
-No work on the Curiosities of Ale and Beer would be complete without
-some notice of signboards. Their connection with taverns and alehouses
-is so ancient and intimate, and many of them are in themselves so
-exceedingly curious, that they may be said to constitute some of the
-chief curiosities of the subject. The history of signboards has been
-so exhaustively written by Mr. Larwood and Mr. Hotten that it would be
-superfluous, even if space did not forbid, to present to our readers
-anything but a slight sketch of so voluminous a subject. {215}
-
-Signboards at the present day may be said to inspire their historian
-with something of a melancholy feeling. A history of them is a history
-of a bygone art, which has long passed its zenith, which has served
-its purpose, and which is destined to decay more and more before the
-advance of modern education. Truly the glory of signboards is departed!
-Though one sees here and there a barber’s pole, a golden fleece, and a
-few other signs of divers trades, innkeepers and alehouse-keepers are
-the only persons who as a class keep to their old distinctive marks.
-Formerly, when persons who could read and write were few, every craft
-and occupation had its own peculiar sign, for the huge letters and
-notice-boards, now so common, would at that time have been of little
-use.
-
-There seems to be no doubt that we derived the signboard from the
-Romans; the old Latin proverb _Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non opus
-est_ finds its counterpart in the English _Good wine needs no bush_,
-and the common sign of the Bush is the lineal descendant of the old
-Roman bunch of ivy. In the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii many
-examples have been brought to light of signs appropriate to various
-trades: thus, a goat is the sign of a dairy; a mule driving a mill is
-the sign of a miller or baker; and two men carrying a large amphora
-of wine is the sign of the vintner, and brings to mind the well-known
-English sign of the _Two Jolly Brewers_ carrying a barrel of ale strung
-on a long pole.
-
-The ale-stake, which was a long pole either attached to the front of
-the house or standing in the road before the door, seems to have been
-the first sign in use with English ale-sellers. In early times every
-person who brewed ale for sale was, as has been already mentioned,
-compelled by law to exhibit the ale-stake as a signal to the local
-ale-conner that his services were required. Very early mention is to be
-found of these signs. In 1393 Florence North, a Chelsea ale-wife, was
-presented for neglecting to put up an ale-stake in front of her house.
-Similar allusions are to be found in many early writers. Chaucer’s
-Pardoner when asked to begin his tale—
-
- “It shall be donn,” quod he, “and that anoon.
-  But first,” quod he, “here at this ale-stake,
-  I will both drynke and byten on a cake.”
-
-The accompanying cut is taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth
-century. The figures are doubtless an ale-wife and a pilgrim. {216}
-
-“The ale-pole doth but signifie that there is good ale in the house
-where the ale-pole standeth,” writes an old author, “and will tell him
-that he muste go near the house and there he shall find the drinke, and
-not stand sucking the ale-pole in vayne.” And again:—
-
- For lyke as the jolly ale-house
-   Is always knowen by the good _ale-stake_,
- So are proude jelots sone perceaved, to,
-   By their proude folly, and wanton gate.
-
-[Illustration: An Ale-stake.]
-
-Skelton, writing of the fame of Elynour Rummynge’s “noppy ale,” alludes
-to the ale-pole thus:—
-
- Another brought her bedes
- Of jet or of cole,
- To offer to the _ale-pole_.
-
-[Illustration: Signboard and Bush.]
-
-In process of time it became usual for the publican to affix some
-further distinctive mark to his ale-stake. At first a mere bush or
-bunch of ivy seems to have been used, and in Scotland a wisp of straw
-long served the same purpose. In Chaucer’s time the bush had developed
-into an ale-garland of considerable size, as we are informed by the
-lines:—
-
- A garlond hadde he sette uhede
- As grete as it wer for an ale-stake.
-
-The signboard and bush shown above are taken from a print of Cheapside
-in 1638. {217}
-
-Porter’s _Angry Woman_ shows that a mere bush was still frequently used
-at that period (1599) by the passage: “I might have had a pumpe set up
-with as good Marche beere as this was and nere set up an ale-bush for
-the matter,” and the _Country Carbonadoed_ (1632) shows that the bush
-had not yet become specialised to the use of the wine-seller. Referring
-to alehouses, it is stated that “if these houses have a boxe-bush, or
-an old post, it is enough to show their profession, but if they be
-graced with a signe compleat, it is a signe of good custome.” Towards
-the end of the seventeenth century, the ivy-bush, the sacred emblem of
-Bacchus, came to denote that wine as well as ale was sold within. In
-_Poor Robin’s Perambulation from Saffron Walden to London_ (1678) the
-author mentions that—
-
- Some ale-houses upon the road I saw,
- And some with bushes, showing they wine did draw.
-
-The following illustrations represent an ancient road-side alehouse and
-a hostel by night. The former is taken from a manuscript of the early
-part of the fifteenth century. The latter is from an illumination in
-the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ in the Hunterian Library at Glasgow, and
-is of about the same date. In one a conventional bush appears above
-the door; while in the other there is both bush and sign. The absence
-of any night attire other than night-caps—the usual custom of the
-period—and the number of persons sleeping in one room, are noticeable.
-Night-caps were no doubt very necessary in an age when glass windows
-were little used.
-
-[Illustration: Ancient Alehouse.]
-
-The next step in the historical development of the signboard was
-the addition of a carved and painted effigy of a Swan, a Cock, a
-Hen, or some other bird or beast. The effigy was fixed in a hoop and
-hung from the end of the ale-pole, and it is suggested that the term
-“cock-a-hoop,” signifying a rather offensively jubilant demeanour,
-may be traced to the attitude of Chanticleer upon the ale-house hoop.
-Hazlitt gives a different origin to the phrase. Quoting from Blount’s
-Dictionary (1681), he says: “The Cock was the tap and being taken out
-{218} and laid on the hoop of the vessel, they used to drink up the
-ale as it ran out without intermission (in Staffordshire now called
-stunning a barrel of ale) and then they were _cock-on-hoop_ (_i.e._,
-at the height of mirth and jolity).” Old Heywood seems to support the
-latter derivation in the lines:—
-
- He maketh havok and setteth the cock on hoope;
- He is so lavies, the stooke beginneth to droope.
-
-From the painted effigy to the painted signboard was an easy step, and
-then began the signboard’s palmy days. If mine host were a man of small
-imagination, he might still be content with a bush or with the arms of
-some local magnate, but if he were a man of fancy, his imagination, in
-quest of a worthy sign, might revel unrestrained through the highways
-and byways of history ancient and modern, political and natural. The
-sign was and is usually painted on a board and suspended from the front
-of the house, or from a sign-post set up in the street in front of the
-door. In country places signboard ambition went so far as to erect a
-kind of triumphal arch in front of the house, from the centre of which
-the signboard swung.
-
-[Illustration: Night Scene in a Fifteenth-century Inn.]
-
-A good example of a signboard stretching across a street may be seen in
-the illustration of the Black Boy Inn, Chelmsford, which is taken from
-a print by Ryland of the date 1770. {219}
-
-Even as early as the reign of Henry V. the eagerness of the ale-house
-keepers to outstrip one another in the size of their signboards had
-become obnoxious to the authorities. The _Liber Albus_ contains a
-direction to the Wardmotes of the City of London, to make inquiry
-whether the ale-stake of any tavern “is longer or extends further
-than ordinary,” and the Common Council ordained that “whereas the
-ale-stakes projecting in front of taverns in Chepe, and elsewhere in
-the said City, extend too far over the King’s highways, to the impeding
-of riders and others, and by reason of their excessive weight, to the
-great deterioration of the houses to which they are fixed,” therefore
-the taverners are ordered that on pain of 40s. fine they shall not
-have a stake, bearing a sign or leaves extending over the King’s
-highway, of greater length than seven feet at most.
-
-[Illustration: The BLACK BOY INN]
-
-The restriction on the length of the projecting signboards seems to
-have been little regarded. Charles I., in his Charter to the City of
-London, granted on his accession to the throne, permits the use of
-suspended signs, and the Charter contains no mention of any restriction
-{220} as to size. The nuisance caused by the extravagant size of
-signboards at length became very great, and in the reign of Charles
-II. it was ordained that “in all the streets no signboard shall hang
-across, but that the sign shall be fixed against the balconies or
-some convenient part of the side of the house.” Even this specific
-regulation seems to have been generally disregarded, as we learn from
-an account written in 1719, by Misson, a French traveller. Speaking
-of the signs, he says: “At London, they are commonly very large, and
-jut out so far, that in some narrow streets they touch one another;
-nay, and run across almost quite to the other side. They are generally
-adorned with carving and gilding; and there are several that, with the
-branches of iron which support them, cost above a hundred guineas.
-. . . . Out of London, and particularly in villages, the signs of inns
-are suspended in the middle of a great wooden portal, which may be
-looked upon as a kind of triumphal arch to the honour of Bacchus.”
-
-About the middle of last century various Acts of Parliament were
-passed, the result of which was that London signboards have from that
-time been fixed to the face of the house, and are no longer allowed to
-project over the street.
-
-We must go to the country districts, and best of all to one of our old
-cathedral towns, to see really old-fashioned signs. In some cases a
-signboard may still be seen hanging beneath beautifully scrolled iron
-work, from which in more artistic days the “ale-house painted signs”
-depended. Even in such a stronghold of conservative and antiquarian
-feeling as a cathedral city, these relics of the past are yearly
-becoming more and more scarce, though in those out-of-the-world places,
-where a change in the situation of the parochial pump must be preceded
-by about a proportionate amount of discussion as would attend the
-proposal to make a new underground railway for London, the removal of
-an old signboard is usually a matter causing grave public agitation.
-The authors of the _History of Signboards_ have given an account of
-the demolition of the time-honoured sign of Sir John Falstaff, which
-for many a generation had gladdened the hearts of the good citizens
-of Canterbury. However, as a matter of fact, the signboard was only
-removed to be repainted, and in spite of the orders of Local Boards and
-City Authorities, in spite of law suits and various other disagreeable
-attempts at persuasion, the owner of the house has persisted in
-maintaining in its place this fine old sign with its elaborate
-iron-work, and there to this day may the gallant knight be seen, with
-sword and buckler, ready to make instant assault on those men in
-buckram, or on any other foes. {221}
-
-The close connection that existed between the profession of host and
-the signboard, may be judged from the fact that the publican who was
-deprived of his licence also had his sign removed by the minions of the
-law. _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_ illustrates this fact in the lines—
-
- For this gross fault I here do damn thy licence,
- Forbidding thee ever to tap or draw;
- For instantly I will in mine own person
- Command the constables to pull down thy sign.
-
-In 1629 one Price was forbidden to open a certain house in Leadenhall
-Street as a tavern, “whiche house was heretofore never used for a
-taverne, and standeth unfitly for that purpose, being neare unto the
-Church and two auncient tavernes already neere unto the same in the
-same streete.” Price, however, persisted, and accordingly the Common
-Council issued orders for the closing of his doors and the taking down
-of his bush.
-
-Probably the most elaborate signboard that ever existed, a marvel even
-in the palmy days of signs, was hung before The White Hart at Scole, in
-Norfolk. Sir Thomas Brown mentions it in the year 1663. “About three
-miles further,” he says, “I came to Scoale, where there is a very
-handsome inne, and the noblest signnepost in England, about and upon
-which are carved a great many stories as of Charon and Cerberus, Actæon
-and Diana, and many others; the signe itself is a White Hart, which
-hanges downe carved in a stately wreath.” This king of signboards was
-built in the year 1655 by James Peck, a merchant of Norwich, and is
-said to have cost over £1,000. It was in existence up till the end of
-the last century.
-
-Goldsmith, in making some comments on the influence of signs, relates
-how “an alehouse keeper, near Islington, who had long lived at the
-sign of the French King, upon the commencement of the last war, pulled
-down his old sign and put up that of the Queen of Hungary. Under the
-influence of her red face and golden sceptre, he continued to sell ale,
-till she was no longer the favourite of his customers; he changed her,
-therefore, some time ago, for the King of Prussia, who may probably be
-changed in turn for the next great man that shall be set up for vulgar
-admiration.”
-
-An anecdote is related which illustrates the danger incurred by
-altering a sign. It seems that the landlord of the Magpie and Crown in
-Aldgate, a house famous for its ale, was minded to discard {222} the
-Magpie and to have his house known by the sign of the Crown only. He
-did so, and the results were disastrous, for the customers fancied that
-the Crown ale did not taste as good as that formerly sent out from the
-Magpie and Crown, and the custom fell off. The landlord died, and the
-business came into the hands of a waiter of the house, one Renton, who
-restored the Magpie to his old place on the signboard, and with such
-good effect that on his death the ex-waiter left behind him an estate
-worth some £600,000, chiefly the produce of the Magpie and Crown ale.
-
-Space only permits that we should mention a very few of the more
-curious signs in use. The Pig and Whistle is said to be a corruption
-of the old sign the Peg and Wassail, alluding to the peg-tankards
-introduced in Saxon times. The Goose and Gridiron is a whimsical
-variation on the Swan and Harp, which was once common, the inartistic
-execution of the latter sign no doubt affording the suggestion. The
-Tumbling Down Dick is supposed to be a derisive sign commemorating the
-fall of Richard Cromwell.
-
- Then Dick, being lame, rode holding the pummel,
-   Not having the wit to get hold of the rein;
- But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell,
-   That poor Dick and his kindred turn’d footmen again.
-
-The Crooked Billet is a sign for which it is difficult to suggest an
-explanation. It is generally represented by a rough untrimmed stick
-hanging before the door. Near Bridlington is one such, to which are
-appended the following lines:—
-
- When this comical stick grew in the wood
- Our ale was fresh and very good;
- Step in and taste, O do make haste,
- For if you don’t ’twill surely waste.
-
-On the other side is the verse:—
-
- When you have viewed the other side,
- Come read this too before you ride,
- And now to end we’ll let it pass;
- Step in, kind friends, and take a glass.
-
-The Bull and Mouth, a favourite London sign in former days, and one
-still to be found, is represented by a huge gaping mouth and a small
-black bull just within its verge. This sign dates from the time of
-{223} Henry VIII., and celebrates his capture of Boulogne Harbour,
-or Boulogne Mouth. The Beetle and Wedge at first sight seems a very
-strange association, but when we remember Shakspere’s line,
-
- Filip me with a three-man beetle,
-
-the matter is clear enough. The “three-man beetle” was a hammer or
-mallet wielded by three men and used for pile driving. The three
-Lubberheads is a corruption of the three Libbards’ Heads, “libbard”
-being a popular form of the word leopard; Falstaff is “invited to
-dinner at the Libbard’s Head in Lumbert Street to Master Smooth’s the
-silkman.” The Two Pots was the sign under which the far-famed ale-wife,
-Eleanor Rumyng, brewed her “noppy ale” at Leatherhead, where, according
-to Skelton, she made
-
-     thereof fast sale,
-   To travellers, to tinkers,
- To sweaters, to swinkers,
-   And all good ale drinkers.
-
-The Stewponey Inn, between Kinver and Stourbridge, might suggest to
-some that the Parisian Hippophagic Society was not much of a novelty
-after all. It is therefore rather disappointing to find that the name
-is a popular version of the Stourponte Inn, so called from a bridge
-over the Stour hard by.
-
-The Four Alls, though probably once the sign of a house frequented
-by the fraternity of Cobblers, now generally presents itself in the
-following lines with suitable illustrations:—
-
- The Ploughman works for All,
- The Parson prays for All,
- The Soldier fights for All,
- And the Farmer pays for All.
-
-It seems sad to think that in some places a pessimistic Publican has
-added a fifth “All,” the picture representing the Prince of Darkness,
-rampant, and looking anything but “a gentleman,” with the grim legend
-writ beneath that he “takes All.” Old Pick-my-Toe would seem to be a
-popular perversion of the Roman fable of the faithful slave who carried
-his message before he stooped to remove the thorn which was all the
-while in his foot. The Shoe and Slap was an old sign, the “Slap” being
-a lady’s shoe with a loose sole. {224}
-
-A poetical landlord or a poetical customer has frequently produced
-verses, more or less appropriate, for a signboard. We give a selection
-of these effusions. At an inn at Norwich, known as the Waterman, kept
-by a barber, this couplet is written under the sign:—
-
- Roam not from pole to pole, but step in here,
- Where nought excels the shaving but the beer.
-
-At an Inn at Collins’ End, where the unfortunate King Charles, while
-a prisoner at Caversham, is said to have played at bowls, are these
-lines:—
-
- Stop, traveller, stop; in yonder peaceful glade,
- His favourite game the royal martyr played;
- Here stripped of honours, children, freedom, rank,
- Drank from the bowl and bowled for what he drank;
- Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown,
- And changed his guinea ere he lost his crown.
-
-The Robin Hood and Little John is not an uncommon sign in that part
-of the country which was the scene of their exploits, and where their
-fame still lingers. The sign is frequently accompanied with a rhyme, of
-which the following is a specimen:—
-
- To Gentlemen and Yeomen good,
- Come in and drink with Robin Hood,
- If Robin Hood is not at home,
- Come in and drink with Little John.
-
-A tale is told of how a poor author, who was once staying at the
-sign of the White Horse on the Old Bath Road, after partaking rather
-heartily of the good cheer provided, found that he could not discharge
-the _shot_. In recompense to his host for letting him off, he wrote
-beneath his signboard the lines:—
-
- My White Horse shall beat the Bear,
-   And make the Angel fly;
- Shall turn the Ship quite bottom up,
-   And drink the Three Cups dry.
-
-In consequence, it is alleged, of this facetious praise of his own
-house at the expense of his rivals, mine host got a good deal of their
-custom. On one of the windows of the same White Horse was written:—
-{225}
-
- His liquor’s good, his pot is just,
- The Landlord’s poor, and cannot trust;
- For he has trusted to his sorrow,
- So pay to-day, he’ll trust to-morrow.
-
-These lines occur on the signboard of the Waggon and Horses, Brighton:—
-
- Long have I travelled far and near,
- On purpose to find out good beer,
- And at last I’ve found it here.
-
-The couplet, written on a signboard at Chadderton, near Manchester,
-seems, at any rate from the outside of the Inn, to be what a logician
-might call a _non sequitur_:—
-
- Although the engine’s smoke be black,
- If you walk in I’ve ale like sack.
-
-The following doggerel inscription is said in the _Year Book_ to have
-been written over the door of an ale house between Sutton and Potton,
-in Bedfordshire:—
-
-             Butte Beere, Solde Hear,
-               by Timothy Dear.
- Cum. tak. a. mugg of mye. trinker. cum trink.
- Thin. a. ful. Kart. of mye. verry. stron. drink
- Harter, that. trye. a. cann. of mye. titter, cum. tatter
- And. wynde. hup. withe, mye. sivinty-tymes weaker, thin, water.
-
-At Creggin, Montgomeryshire, the Rodney Pillar Inn is distinguished by
-a double signboard, on one side of which is the following verse:—
-
- Under these trees, in sunny weather,
- Just try a cup of ale, however;
- And if in tempest, or in storm,
- A couple then to make you warm:
- But when the day is very cold.
- Then taste a mug a twelvemonth old.
-
-On the reverse are these lines:—
-
- Rest and regale yourself, ’tis pleasant,
- Enough is all the present need,
- That’s the due of the hardy peasant,
- Who toils all sorts of men to feed. {226}
- Then muzzle not the ox when he treads out the corn,
- Nor grudge honest labour its pipe and its horn.
-
-Another queer old inscription is the following:—
-
- John Uff
- Sells good ale and that’s enough;
- A mistake here,
- Sells foreign spirits as well as beer.
-
-At a public-house in Devonshire the landlord has painted outside his
-door, “Good beer sold here, but don’t take my word for it;” and at the
-Bell Inn, Oxford, kept by John Good, are these lines:—
-
- My name, likewise my ale, is Good,
- Walk in and taste my own home brew’d,
- For all that know John Good can tell
- That like my sign it bears the Bell.
-
-One more example of Boniface’s wit must conclude this notice of
-Signboard poesy. At a public-house in Sussex, the sign of which is
-the White Horse, there is painted under the figure of that animal the
-couplet:—
-
- To the roadsters who enter a welcome he snorts,
- While they fill up his quarters and empty his quarts.
-
-In addition to signboard verses, inscriptions within the alehouse are
-by no means uncommon. Burns, who was fond of this style of composition,
-inscribed these lines on the window of the Globe Tavern at Dumfries:—
-
- The grey-beard, old wisdom, may boast of his treasures,
-   Give me with gay folly to live;
- I grant him his calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures,
-   But Folly has raptures to give.
-
-Dowie’s Tavern, in Libberton’s Wynd, Edinburgh, was the favourite
-resort of Burns, and is said by the able recorder of the _Traditions of
-Edinburgh_ “to have been formerly as dark and plain an old-fashioned
-house as any drunken lawyer of the last century could have wished to
-nestle in.” {227}
-
-Dowie’s was much resorted to by the Lords of Session for “Meridians,”
-as well as in the evening for its Edinburgh ale. The ale was Younger’s.
-That brewer, together with his friends, instituted a Club there,
-which they sportively called the “College of Doway.” Johnnie Dowie is
-described as having been the sleekest and kindest of landlords. Nothing
-could equal the benignity of his smile when he brought in a bottle of
-“the Ale” to a company of well-known and friendly customers. It was a
-perfect treat to see his formality in drawing the cork, his precision
-in filling the glasses, his regularity in drinking the healths of
-all present in the first glass (which he always did, and at every
-successive bottle), and then his douce civility in withdrawing. Johnnie
-always wore a cocked hat, and buckles at knees and shoes, as well as a
-crutched cane.[52] Not so polished as Burns’ verses, but perhaps more
-suited to the Genius loci, are the lines written up in a certain old
-tap-room:—
-
- He that doath upon the table sit,
- A pot of porter shall for-fe-it.
-
-   [52] Hone’s Year Book.
-
-The following additional specimens of tap-room verse are typical of
-their kind, and may be said to contain the be-all and end-all of
-the host’s proverbial philosophy. The first is taken from an Inn at
-Sittingbourne, where it hangs framed and glazed over the door:—
-
- Call frequently,
- Drink moderately,
- Pay honourably,
- Be good company,
- Part friendly,
- Go home quietly.
-
-The second is longer, but perhaps not quite so comprehensive:—
-
- All you that bring tobacco here,
- Must pay for pipes as well as beer;
- And you that stand before the fire,
- I pray sit down by good desire; {228}
- That other folks as well as you,
- May see the fire and feel it too.
- Since man to man is so unjust,
- I cannot tell what man to trust:
- My Liquor’s good, ’tis no man’s sorrow,
- Pay to-day. I’ll trust to-morrow.
-
-It may not be amiss to devote a few lines to the signboard artists. The
-following passage in _Whimzies: or a New Cast of Characters_ (1631)
-gives an early example of the way in which many a village signboard has
-been painted. “He (a painter) bestowes his Pencile on an aged piece of
-decayed canvas in a sooty ale-house, when _Mother Redcap_ must be set
-out in her Colours. Here hee and his barmy Hostess drew both together,
-but not in like nature; she in _Ale_, he in _Oyle_, but her commoditie
-goes better downe, which he meanes to have his full share of, when his
-worke is done. If she aspire to the Conceite of a Signe, and desire to
-have her Birch-pole pulled downe, he will supply her with one.”
-
-It seems that in the last century, the palmy days of signboards, the
-best signs were produced by the coach-painters, who derived their
-skill from the custom amongst the wealthy of having their coach panels
-decorated with a variety of subjects.
-
-Artists of renown have lent their genius to this branch of art. Hogarth
-painted a sign called the Man loaded with Mischief, and this sign is
-still in existence in an alehouse in Oxford Street; it represents a
-man bearing on his back and shoulders a woman, a magpie and an ape. A
-similar painting may be seen before an inn on the road to Madingley,
-about a mile from Cambridge. Richard Wilson, R.A., painted a sign
-called The Loggerheads, which has given its name to a village near
-Mold, in North Wales. The Royal Oak, by David Cox, which is the sign of
-an inn at Bettws-y-Coed, is well known to all lovers of North Wales,
-and was a few years ago the subject of a law-suit. At Wargrave, a
-pretty Thames-side village near Henley, is an inn called the George and
-Dragon. One side of its sign was painted by Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A.,
-who has chosen the battle with the dragon for his subject. The other
-side was painted by Mr. Hodgson, A.R.A., and is a representation of St.
-George refreshing himself with a pot of beer after the mighty encounter.
-
-Not often, however, has the signboard been so fortunate as to obtain
-the attention of such masters of the limner’s art. {229}
-
-In the vast majority of cases the village sign-painter has been a
-person of limited ideas and but small skill, painting and re-painting
-the old familiar patterns. The following tale is related illustrative
-of this conservative bent of the sign-painter’s mind.
-
-A pious old couple, who had taken a Public wherein they hoped
-peacefully to end their days, determined that they would not have any
-of your common wordly signs, such as the Crown, the Blue Boar, and the
-like, but something of a quite uncommon and even of a quasi-religious
-nature, and after much cogitation their choice fell upon the title of
-the Angel and Trumpet. The village sign-painter was summoned to the
-conclave, and the case was solemnly opened to him.
-
-Landlord: “Well, John, me and my missis have been thinking about this
-sign, and we hear as you’re up to painting amost anythink.”
-
-Sign Painter (with proper professional pride): “Yes, mister, I can do
-you pretty well what you like; the Red Lion, and so as that.”
-
-L.: “No, John, that a’n’t quite what we wants. Me and my missis has
-been a-thinking as we’d like to have the Angel and Trumpet. Now, can
-you do it?”
-
-S. P. (doubtfully): “Well, mister, I can do un; but you’d better by
-half have the Red Lion; it’s a dell a thirstier sign.”
-
-L. (with decision): “No, John, we must have the Angel and Trumpet, so
-if you can’t do un, say so, and we must get some un as can.”
-
-S. P. (driven to bay): “All right; I’ll paint the Angel and Trumpet,
-but (aside) I specs it’ll be a good dell like the Red Lion.”
-
-Unfortunately the history breaks off at this point, and we are left in
-doubt as to the result. The troubles of the unfortunate sign-painter
-may be imagined; the unwilling hands striving to depict the benign
-features of the angel; the fierce and truculent visage of the lion
-making its appearance, whether the artist would or not.
-
-The unskilfulness of the signboard painter has even been considered
-of sufficient importance to form the subject of a Royal Proclamation.
-Our good Queen Bess, with that vigour of language which endeared her
-to the hearts of her faithful subjects, and proved her to be her
-father’s daughter, issued an order, “that portraits of herself, made
-by unskilful and common painters, should be knocked in pieces, and
-cast into the fire.” The reasons for this summary treatment, and also
-a promised remedy for the woes of her faithful subjects, thus deprived
-of the counterfeit presentment of her most gracious Majesty, are set
-forth in a proclamation shortly afterwards issued. “Forasmuch” said
-this weighty {230} document, “as thrugh the natural desire that all
-sorts of subjects and people, both noble and mean, have to procure
-the portrait and picture of the Queen’s Majestie, great nomber of
-Paynters, and some Printers, and Gravers, have already, and doe daily,
-attempt to make in divers manners portraictures of hir Majestie, in
-paynting, graving and prynting, wherein is evidently shown, that
-hytherto none have sufficiently expressed the naturall representation
-of hir Majestie’s person, favor, and grace . . . . “Therfor”—after
-much more to the same effect—“hir Majestie being as it were overcome
-with the contynuall requests of hir Nobility and Lords, whom she can
-not well deny, is pleased that for their contentations, some coning
-persons, mete therefore, shall shortly make a pourtraict of hir person
-or visage,” and, in short, that her loving subjects shall be enabled to
-take copies thereof, but in the meantime shall perpetrate no further
-libellous “pourtraicts,” under pains and penalties.
-
-The phrase “to grin like a Cheshire cat” is said to have originated
-from the well-meant but inartistic attempts of a sign-painter of that
-county to depict a Lion Rampant.
-
-This chapter may be appropriately concluded with one of the best
-examples of the alehouse catch of former days: _Bryng us in good Ale_,
-contained in the Ipswich Song Book (Sloane Collection of MSS.). Our
-readers will be better able to comprehend the verses, if they bear in
-mind that ys as a termination is used where we should now use es, s, se
-or ce.
-
-BRYNG US IN GOOD ALE.
-
-     Bryng us in good ale, and bryng us in good ale,
-     For our blyssyd lady sak, bryng us in good ale
-
- Bryng us in no browne bred, for that is mad of brane,
- Nor bryng us in no whyt bred, for therein is no game.
-                 But bryng us in good ale, etc.
-
- Bryng us in no befe, for ther is many bonys,
- But bryng us in good ale, for that goth downe at onys.
-                 And bryng us in, etc.
-
- Bryng us in no bacon, for that is passyng fate,
- But bryng us in good ale, and give us i-nough of that.
-                 But bryng us in, etc. {231}
-
- Bryng us in no mutton, for that is often lene,
- Nor bryng us in no trypes, for they be syldom clene.
-             But bryng us in, etc.
-
- Bryng us in no eggys, for ther ar many shelles,
- But bryng us in good ale, and give us nothing ellys.
-             But bryng us in, etc.
-
- Bryng us in no butter, for therin are many herys,
- Nor bryng us in no pygge’s flesch, for that will make us borys.
-             But bryng us in, etc.
-
- Bryng us in no podynges, for therein is al Gode’s good,
- Nor bryng us in no venesen, for that is not for our blod.
-             But bryng us in, etc.
-
- Bryng us in no capon’s flesch for that is ofte der,
- Nor bryng us in no doke’s flesch for thei slober in mer (mire).
-     But bryng us in good ale, and bryng us in good ale,
-     For our blyssyd lady sak, bryng us in good ale.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{232}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-
-Sir Toby.—“Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no
-more cakes and ale?”
-
-Clown.—“Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.”
-                                        _Twelfth Night._ Act ii. Sc. 3.
-
- England was Merry England then,
- Old Christmas brought his sports again,
- ’Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale,
- ’Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
- A Christmas gambol oft would cheer
- A poor man’s heart through half the year.
-                                                             _Marmion._
-
-_ANCIENT MERRY-MAKINGS, FEASTS AND CEREMONIES PECULIAR TO CERTAIN
-SEASONS, AT WHICH ALE WAS THE PRINCIPAL DRINK. — HARVEST HOME, SHEEP
-SHEARING, AND OTHER SONGS._
-
-England was merry England then, and whatever may be thought of the
-utility of attempting to revive the ancient sports and amusements
-of the people, it is undeniable that when the old customs and games
-went out of vogue, they left behind them a void which seems without
-any immediate prospect of being filled. We have no doubt gained in
-many ways by changed habits of life and modes of thought, but it must
-not be forgotten that at the same time life has lost much of its old
-picturesqueness and variety. These simple, hearty festivals of old,
-in which our ancestors so much delighted, served to light up the dull
-round of the recurring seasons, and to mark with a red letter the day
-in the calendar appropriate to their celebration. It was these that
-gained for our country in mediæval times the name of “Merrie England.”
-The purpose of this chapter, however, is not to compose a dirge on
-the departed {233} glories of our English merry-makings, but rather
-to give in short limits some account of the principal feasts and
-ceremonies in which the national beverage, personified by the familiar
-name of John Barleycorn, figured as a constant and well-tried friend, a
-provocative to mirth and good feeling, to jollity and hearty enjoyment.
-The principal merry-makings of old England were associated with certain
-special days of the year, or with various events, important in the life
-of the people, which though not fixed to any particular day in the
-calendar, were from their nature connected with certain seasons. May
-Day and Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and Twelfth Night, the Harvest
-Home, the Sheep-shearing Supper, and many another minor festival, all
-served to make the labourer’s lot seem an easier one, and to vary
-the monotonous round of toil. Herrick thus alludes to the number and
-variety of the sports and pastimes incidental to the country life in
-his day:—
-
- Thy wakes, thy quintals, here thou hast,
- Thy maypoles too with garlands graced,
- Thy morris dance, thy Whitsun-ale,
- Thy shearing feasts which never fail,
- Thy harvest home, thy wassail bowl,
- That’s tossed up after fox-i’-th’ hole,[53]
- Thy mummeries, thy twelfth-tide kings
- And queens, thy Xmas revellings,
- Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit,
- And no man pays too dear for it.
-
-In many a village at the present day the only representative, if so it
-may be called, of all these rustic jollifications, is the annual dinner
-of the members of the sick club, if funds will permit, or perhaps tea
-and a magic lantern.
-
-   [53] Fox-i’-th’ hole = the tongue.
-
-Where can we begin better than with New Year’s Day and the ancient
-custom of the wassail? New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were
-anciently, and still are to some extent, celebrated with various
-observances; presents and good wishes for the coming year were freely
-exchanged, and sometimes the lasses and lads would pay their neighbours
-the compliment of singing a carol to bury the old and usher in the
-glad new year. But more generally the practice was observed of a {234}
-crowd of youths and maidens entering their friends’ houses in the
-first hours of New Year’s Day, bearing with them the wassail-bowl
-of spiced ale, and singing verses appropriate to the occasion. The
-origin of the name wassail and of the ceremonies connected with it, is
-well known and better authenticated than that of most of our ancient
-customs. Rowena, the daughter of Hengist, on being presented to
-Vortigern at a feast which her father had prepared for him, kneeled
-before him and offered him a bowl with the words “Louerd king wœs
-hœil,” that is, “Lord King, your health.” Vortigern is represented in
-_Layamon’s Brut_ as not understanding the phrase—
-
- The King Vortigerne
- Haxede his cnihtes
- What were the speche
- That the mayde speke.
-
-The answer is—
-
- Hit is the wone (_wont_)
- Ine Saxe-londe,
- That freond saith to his freond,
- Wan he sal drink
- “Leofue (_dear_) freond wassail,”
- The other saith “drinc hail.”
-
-Old Geoffrey of Monmouth, after relating the legend, remarks that from
-that time down to his own day it had been the custom in Britain for
-one who drinks to another to say, “Wacht heil!” and for that other who
-pledges him in return, to answer, “Drink heil!” The word wassail, from
-being used to signify a pledge or greeting, in time came to denote
-feasting in general, and in the phrase, “wassail-bowl,” to con-note the
-particular liquor, spiced ale, with which the bowl was filled.
-
-Milner, in a dissertation on an ancient cup, supposed to be a
-wassail-cup, inserted in the eleventh volume of the _Archæologia_,
-states that the introduction of Christianity amongst our ancestors
-did not at all interfere with the practice of wassailing. On the
-contrary, the custom began to assume a sort of religious aspect; and
-the wassail-bowl itself, which in great monasteries was placed on the
-Abbot’s table, at the upper end of the refectory, to be circulated
-amongst the community at his discretion, received the honourable
-appellation of _Poculum Caritatis_. The wassail-bowl is probably the
-original of the Grace Cup and Loving Cup. {235}
-
-It was also customary in some places for the poor of a village at
-Christmas time or on New Year’s Eve, to go round to the doors of their
-richer neighbours, bearing a wassail-bowl, decked with ribbons and a
-golden apple, and singing a carol appropriate to the occasion. This
-interesting custom is still carried out to the letter at Chippenham,
-in Wiltshire. On Christmas Eve five or six burly labourers, carrying
-a bowl gaily decorated with ribbons, go round from house to house and
-sing a peculiarly quaint rhyme, of much the same character as that
-given below, which was once common in Gloucestershire, particularly in
-the neighbourhood of “Stow on the Wold where the wind blows cold.”
-
- Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
- Our toast it is white, and our ale it is brown;
- Our bowl is made of a maplin-tree;
- We be good fellows all;—I drink to thee.
-
- Here’s to our horse, and to his right ear,
- God send our measter a happy new year;
- A happy new year as e’er he did see,—
- With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.
-
- Here’s to our mare, and to her right eye,
- God send our mistress a good Christmas pie;
- A good Christmas pie as e’er I did see,—
- With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.
-
- Here’s to our cow, and to her long tail,
- God send our measter us never may fail
- Of a cup of good beer: I pray you draw near,
- And our jolly wassail it’s then you shall hear.
-
- Be here my maids? I suppose here be some;
- Sure they will not let young men stand on the cold stone!
- Sing hey O, maids! come trole back the pin,
- And the fairest maid in the house, let us all in.
-
- Come, butler, come, bring us a bowl of the best,
- I hope your soul in heaven will rest;
- But if you do bring us a bowl of the small,
- Then down fall butler, and bowl, and all.
-
-{236}
-
-From this wassail-song it may be gathered that the persons visited
-were expected to contribute to the wassail-bowl. Another example of a
-wassailing song begins thus:—
-
-     Here we come a-wassailing
-       Among the leaves so green;
-     Here we come a wandering,
-         So fair to be seen.
-
- Chorus—Love and joy come to you,
-         And to your wassail too,
-     And God send you a happy new year—new year;
-     And God send you a happy new year;
-     Our wassail cup is made of the rosemary tree,
-     So is your beer of the best barley.
-
-A quaint custom, doubtless a survivor from pagan times, was wassailing
-the fruit trees with a view to a productive crop in the coming year. In
-some places the trees were wassailed on New Year’s Eve, in others on
-Christmas Eve. The pretty superstition has been commemorated by Herrick
-in the lines:—
-
- Wassaile the trees, that they may beare
- You many a plum and many a peare;
- For more or lesse fruits they will bring,
- As you do give them wassailing.
-
-In Devonshire the eve of the Epiphany was devoted to this custom,
-and in that apple-bearing country, cider was the wassail used on the
-occasion, and the apple tree the chief recipient of the country folks’
-good wishes. The wassailers, with good supply of their favourite
-beverage, would proceed to some gnarled and crooked, but productive
-apple tree, and there, forming a circle about his ancient trunk, would
-drink his health with some such incantation as this:—
-
- Here’s to thee, old apple tree,
- Whence thou mayest bud, and whence thou mayest blow,
- And whence thou mayst bear apples enow.
-       Hats full, caps full,
-       Bushel, bushel, sacks full,
-       And my pockets full too; hurrah!
-
-{237}
-
-A variety of the New Year’s Wassail-Bowl custom was, until a few years
-ago, practised in Scotland. What is called a _hot pint_ (_i.e._, a
-great kettle full of hot sweetened ale), was prepared, and when the
-clock had sounded out the knell of the old year, each member of the
-family drank “A good health and a Happy New Year to all.” A move was
-then made by the revellers with what remained of the hot pint, and a
-store of short-bread and _bun_ to visit their friends and neighbours,
-and to give them seasonable greeting. If the party were the first to
-enter a friend’s house since twelve o’clock had struck, they were
-called the _first foot_, and must come in with hands full of cakes,
-of which all the inmates must partake; and so they went from house to
-house until either their endurance or that long, long hot pint, failed.
-Even within this century the custom was so religiously observed that
-the streets of Edinburgh are described as having been more thronged
-at midnight than at mid-day. This old practice is said to have
-received its death-blow in 1812, when the descent of gangs of thieves
-and pickpockets upon the wassailers caused such scenes of rioting
-and violence that, after languishing for a few years, it came to an
-untimely end.
-
-It was customary at the beginning of the present century for the
-inhabitants of the parish of Deerness, in Orkney, to assemble on New
-Year’s Eve, and pay a round of visits through the district, drinking
-their neighbours’ healths, and singing various old songs, of which the
-following may be taken as a specimen:—
-
- This night it is guid New Year’s E’en night
- We’re a’ here Queen Mary’s Men;
- And we’re come here to crave our right,
- And that’s before our lady.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Gae fill the three pint cog o’ ale,
- The maut maun be aboun the meal.
- We houp your ale is stark and stout
- For men to drink the old year out.
-
-The composition of the wassail-bowl has been dealt with elsewhere, and
-it only remains to be added that though the drinking of its spiced
-contents was very usual on New Year’s Eve, it was not peculiar to that
-day, but accompanied most occasions of mediæval festivity, and, indeed,
-was so common that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the wassail-bowl was
-frequently referred to by the writers of that Golden Age of English
-{238} literature as symbolical of feasting and good cheer in general.
-It is thus that Herrick mentions it in his beautiful little poem,
-entitled _A Thanksgiving for his House_:—
-
- Lord, I confess too when I dine,
- The pulse is thine,
- And all those other bits that be
- There placed by Thee.
- The worts, the purslain, and the mess
- Of water-cress,
- Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent:
- And my content
- Makes those, and my beloved beet,
- To be more sweet.
- ’Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth
- With guiltless mirth;
- And giv’st me wassail bowls to drink,
- Spiced to the brink.
-
-Twelfth Night was specially celebrated with wassailing, accompanied
-with the consumption of spiced cakes, the combination giving rise to
-the phrase “cakes and ale.”
-
-[Illustration: “Cakes and Ale.”
-
-From the “Good-Fellow’s Counsel, or the Bad Husband’s Recantation.”
-
- (_Roxburghe Ballads_).
-]
-
-{239}
-
-The twelfth day after Christmas was celebrated in the old days in
-honour of the three Kings, as the Wise Men were called who came out of
-the East to worship the Messiah. One of the chief ceremonies connected
-with the day was the election of the King and Queen of the Bean. A
-large cake—the Twelfth Cake—had been previously made, in which a bean
-and a pea were inserted, the cake was cut up and distributed by lot
-among the company, and whoever got the piece which contained the bean
-was crowned King of the Bean, while the pea conferred the distinction
-of Queen upon its happy recipient.
-
-       Now, now the mirth comes,
-       With the cake full of plums,
- Where beane’s the king of the sport here;
-       Besides we must know,
-       The pea also
- Must revell as queene in the court here.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
-       Give then to the king
-       And queen wassailing;
- And though with ale ye be whet here,
-       Yet part ye from hence,
-       As free from offence
- As when ye innocent met here.[54]
-
-   [54] Herrick’s _Twelfth Night_.
-
-Dr. Plot, in his _Natural History of Staffordshire_ (1685), describes
-a curious custom called the Hobby-horse dance, which he says had been
-practised at Pagets Bromley within memory of persons living when he
-wrote. On Twelfth Day a man on a hobby-horse used to dance down the
-village street, holding in his hand a bow and arrow, and accompanied by
-six men, carrying deers’ heads on their shoulders. “To this Hobby-horse
-dance,” says our author, “there also belong’d a _pot_, which was kept
-by turnes by 4 or 5 of the _chief_ of the _Tow_, whom they call’d
-_Reeves_, who provided _Cakes_ and _Ale_ to put in this _pot_; all
-people who had any kindness for the good intent of the Institution of
-the _sport_, giving pence a piece for themselves and families; and so
-_forraigners_ too, that came to see it: with which mony (the charge
-of the _Cakes_ and _Ale_ being defrayed) they not only repaired their
-_Church_ but {240} kept their _poore_ too: which _charges_ are not now
-perhaps so cheerfully boarn.”
-
-It would be going too far from the special subject of this work
-to detail the more elaborate festivities of the Court and the
-Universities, or the masques and revels of those ancient abodes of
-legal learning, the Inns of Court, where Twelfth Night formed the
-annual excuse for much feasting and pageantry. On these occasions,
-no doubt, costly wines and liqueurs formed the staple of the liquids
-consumed,
-
- Both Ippocras and Vernage wine
- Mount Rose and wine of Greek,
-
-and not the honest juice of barley. Suffice it to note in passing
-that on the 2nd of February, 1601, John Manningham, a student of the
-Middle Temple, records in his Diary: “At our feast we had a play called
-_Twelfth Night or What You Will_.” This is the earliest recorded
-mention of that grand Twelfth-night revel, and was, perhaps, its first
-performance.
-
-The appearance of Twelfth Cake is the signal for the disappearance of
-mince pies, in accordance with the farewell words an old carolist puts
-into the mouth of Christmas:—
-
- Mark well my heavy doleful tale,
-   For Twelfth-day now is come,
- And now I must no longer stay
-   And say no word but mum.
- For I, perforce, must take my leave
-   Of all my dainty cheer—
- Plum porridge, roast beef, and minced-pies,
-   My strong ale and my beer.
-
-A minor festival, Plough Monday, used to be celebrated on the first
-Monday after Twelfth Night. A plough, dressed up with ribbons by the
-villagers, was taken round from house to house. Its escort consisted of
-a number of rustics dressed up in various mummers’ guises, and chanting
-verses, the text of which was “God speed the Plough.” The principal
-performers were Bessy and the Clown, Bessy being, in fact, a man
-dressed up in fantastic female weeds. Bread, cheese, and ale were asked
-for at the farmhouses and seldom refused, and a variety of curious
-dances and uncouth antics completed the entertainment of the day. {241}
-
-The season of Lent, of course, was marked by no special festivities,
-but when Easter Sunday was passed, the reaction from the enforced
-restraint of the previous period made the enjoyment of the Easter-week
-festivities all the keener. Easter Monday and Tuesday were in some
-places noted for the curious custom known as “heaving;” on the Monday
-the men “heaved” the women (_i.e._, lifted them off the ground and
-kissed them), and on the Tuesday the women’s turn came, and they heaved
-the men. “Many a time have I passed along the streets inhabited by the
-lower orders of people,” says one who has witnessed the ceremony, “and
-seen parties of Jolly matrons assembled round tables on which stood a
-foaming tankard of Ale. Woe to the luckless man that dared to invade
-their prerogatives! as sure as seen he was pursued, as sure taken,
-heaved and kissed, and compelled to pay a fine of sixpence for ‘leave
-and license’ to depart.”
-
-The antiquity of the custom is proved by an entry in one of the Tower
-Rolls of payments made to certain maids-of-honour for having taken
-Edward I. in his bed and “lifted him.”
-
-The second Monday and Tuesday after Easter were known in olden days as
-Hock-tide. The Tuesday was the principal day, and was designated Hock
-Day. Many derivations have been suggested for the name; the best seems
-to be that which connects it with the German _hoch_ (high). Hock Day
-would thus denote a day of high festivity. Be that as it may, the name
-is of great antiquity. In the Annals of Dunstaple we read that in 1242
-“Henry III., King of England, crossed over on _Ochedai_ with a great
-army against the King of France.” On Hock Day the women of the village
-would go into the streets with cords in their hands, and every one of
-the opposite sex whom they could catch, was bound until he purchased
-his release by a contribution for the purposes of the common feast. On
-this day the feasting seems to have frequently passed into excess, and
-sometimes with direful results; the Annalist of Dunstaple tells that on
-Hokke-day in the year 1252 the village of Esseburne was “burned down
-miserably.” In 1450 a Bishop of Worcester prohibited the celebrations
-of Hock-tide, on the ground that they led to dissipation and other
-evils. There seems to be no connection between this festival and the
-Hock-cart spoken of by Herrick, and to be mentioned anon, save that the
-name of each takes its derivation, if our surmise be the correct one,
-from the word _hoch_. The Hock Day meaning High Day; and the Hock Cart,
-the harvest-home wain piled _high_ with the trophies of autumn.
-
-We next come to the May Day festivities, which in many respects {242}
-may be regarded as the most joyous and picturesque of all the year.
-Without staying to inquire whether the origin of the festival is to be
-traced to the old Roman Floralia, or games in honour of the goddess
-who ushered in the spring and strewed the earth with flowers, let us
-pause for a while to contemplate the old ceremony of “bringing home the
-May,” as it was performed some few centuries ago. On May Day morning
-the inhabitants of every village would go out at an early hour into
-the fields to gather garlands of hawthorn blossom and other flowers,
-with which they decorated the May-pole and every door and window of the
-village. These floral trophies were brought home to the tune of pipe
-and drum; the fairest maid in all the hamlet was crowned with flowers
-as Queen of the May, and, embowered in hawthorn branches, presided over
-the mirth and feasting of the day. Stubbe, in his _Anatomy of Abuses_
-(1585), describes the ceremony of raising the May-pole, in language
-which gives some notion of the pretty scene, and which is all the more
-likely not to be overdrawn, from the evident abhorrence of the writer
-to what he regarded as the impiety of the whole affair. “They have
-twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen,” he writes, “every one having a sweet
-nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw
-home this Maie pole (this stinckyng Idoll rather) which is couered all
-ouer with flowers and hearbes bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from
-the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours,
-with two or three hundred women and children following it with great
-devotion. And thus being reared up with handkerchiefs and flagges
-streaming on the toppe they strowe the grounde aboute, binde green
-boughes aboute it, sett up sommer houses, Bowers and Arbours hard by
-it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute
-it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their Idolles,
-whereof this is a perfect pattern or rather the thing itself.”
-
-The May-pole once raised, of course the next thing to be done was to
-pour a libation in honour of the day, and in most cases this would,
-equally of course, be performed with the ale of Old England.
-
-       The May-pole is up,
-       Now give me the cup,
- I’ll drink to the garlands around it,
-       But first unto those,
-       Whose hands did compose,
- The glory of flowers that crown’d it.
-
-{243}
-
-In olden days even the King and Queen condescended to mingle with
-their lieges, and to assist in commemorating the time-honoured custom.
-Chaucer, in his _Court of Love_, describes how on May Day, “Forth goeth
-all the Court both most and least, to fetch the flowers fresh.”
-
-Spenser, in his _Shepherd’s Calendar_, thus describes the May Day
-festival of Elizabethan times:—
-
- Siker this morrow, no longer ago,
- I saw a shole of shepherds out go
- With singing and shouting and jolly cheer;
- Before them rode a lusty Tabrere,
- That to the many a hornpipe played,
- Whereto they dancen each one with his maid.
- To see these folks make such jouissance,
- Made my heart after the pipe to dance.
- Then to the green-wood they speeden them all,
- To fetchen home May with their musical;
- And home they bring him in a royal throne
- Crowned as king; and his queen attone
- Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend
- A fair flock of fairies, and a fresh bend
- Of lovely nymphs—O that I were there
- To helpen the ladies their May-bush to bear!
-
-Probably the most famous May-pole that ever existed was the one which
-gave its name to the parish of St. Andrew-Undershaft. It was of such a
-height that it towered above all the houses and even above the church
-spire. Chaucer alludes to this mighty pole in the lines:—
-
- Right well aloft and high ye beare your head,
- As ye would beare the greate shaft of Cornhill.
-
-When this May-pole was not required for festive purposes, it lay
-suspended on great iron hooks above the doors of the neighbouring
-houses. In the reign of Edward VI., after a sermon preached at the
-cross of St. Paul’s against the iniquity of May games, the inhabitants
-of these houses in a fit of pious enthusiasm, desiring, doubtless, to
-replenish their wood-cellars and to destroy an “idoll” at the same
-time, cut the pole in pieces, each man retaining that portion of it
-which had been before his house. The May-pole in the Strand was another
-celebrated {244} shaft. It was erected at the Restoration, when there
-was a revival of the popular sports which the sour-faced Puritans had
-so unsparingly condemned. It was 134 ft. high, and was raised with
-great ceremony and public rejoicings.
-
-At Helston, in Cornwall, on the 8th of May, called “Furry Day,” may
-still be witnessed a survival of the old May Day festivities. Very
-early in the morning the young men and maidens of the place go off into
-the country to breakfast. About seven o’clock they return bearing green
-branches, and decked with flowers, they dance through the streets to
-the tune of the “Furry Dance.” At eight o’clock the “Hal-an-Tow” (Heel
-and Toe?) song is sung, and dancing and merriment fill the remainder of
-the day.
-
-THE HAL-AN-TOW.
-
- Robin Hood and little John,
-   They both are gone to fair O !
- And we will go to the merry green wood,
-   To see what they to do there O !
- And for to chase O !
-   To chase the buck and doe O !
-       With Hal-an-tow,
-       Jolly rumble O !
-
- Chorus: And we were up as soon as any day O !
-         And for to fetch the summer home,
-         The Summer and the May O !
-         For Summer is a come O !
-         And Winter is a gone O !
-
- Where are those Spaniards
-   That makes so great a boast O !
- They shall eat the grey goose feather
-   And we will eat the roast O !
-       In every land O !
-       The land where’er we go,
-         With Hal-an-tow,
-           Jolly rumble O !
-
-               Chorus: And we were up, &c. {245}
-
- As for St. George O !
-   St. George he was a knight O !
- Of all the knights in Christendom
-   St. George he is the right O !
-       In every land O !
-       The land where’er we go,
-         With Hal-an-tow,
-           Jolly rumble O !
-               Chorus: And we were up, &c.
-
- God bless Aunt Mary Moyses,
-   And all her power and might O !
- And send us peace in merry England,
-   Both day and night O !
- And send us peace in merry England,
-   Both now and evermore O !
-       With Hal-an-tow,
-         Jolly rumble O !
-               Chorus: And we were up, &c.
-
-The custom is popularly attributed to the escape of the town from the
-threatened attack of a fiery dragon, who, in days when dragons were
-more common than they are now, hung in mid-air over the place, driving
-the inhabitants to the greenwood tree for shelter. On his disappearance
-the people returned with great rejoicings and to this day commemorate
-their fortunate escape. The true explanation is probably that the
-festival is simply a survival of the old celebration in honour of
-_Flora_.
-
-In some few country villages a May-pole still survives. One such is to
-be seen in the little village of Welford, in Gloucestershire, painted
-in stripes of red, white, and blue. It was decked with flowers on May
-Day not many years ago, owing to the exertions of some of the local
-lovers of things ancient; but the genuine spirit of the festival seems
-to have entirely disappeared, and the ceremony has not been repeated.
-
- What’s not destroyed by Time’s relentless hand?
- Where’s Troy? and where’s the May-pole in the Strand?
-
-In the early days of May occur what used to be known as the Gange Days,
-on which the ceremony of beating the parish bounds was, and still {246}
-is in some places, undertaken, the work of the day being wound up by
-a more or less liberal distribution of buns and ale. Sums of money
-were occasionally left to provide the refreshments for these parish
-perambulations. At Edgcott, in Buckinghamshire, there was an acre of
-land called “Gang Monday Land,” the income of which was devoted to the
-provision of cakes and ale for those who took part in the business of
-the day; and in Clifton Reynes, in the same county, a devise of land
-for a like purpose provides that one small loaf, a piece of cheese, and
-a pint of ale, should be given to every married person, and half a pint
-of ale to every unmarried person, resident in Clifton, when they walked
-the parish boundaries in Rogation week.
-
-When Whitsuntide came round, the time arrived for those quaint
-festivals to which Ale gave not only his support, but also his name,
-and which were known as Whitsun Ales. The Whitsun Ale was a special
-form of the Church Ale, to be mentioned anon. It is thus described by
-an old writer:—“Two young men of the Parish are yerely chosen by their
-last foregoers to be wardens, who, dividing the task, make collection
-among the parishioners of whatsoever provision it pleaseth them
-voluntarily to bestow. This they employ in brewing, baking, and other
-acates[55] against Whitsuntide; upon which holy days the neighbours
-meet at the Church-house, and there merrily feed on their owne victuals
-contributing some petty portion to the stock, which by many smalls,
-groweth to a meetly greatness: for there is entertayned a kind of
-emulation between these wardens, who, by his graciousness in gathering,
-and good husbandry in expending, can best advance the churche’s profit.
-Besides, the neighbour parishes at those times lovingly visit each
-one another, and this way frankly spend their money together. The
-afternoones are consumed in such exercises as olde and yong folke
-(having leisure) doe accustomably weare out the time withall. When the
-feast is ended, the wardens yield in their account to the parishioners:
-and such money as exceedeth the disbursement is layd up in store, to
-defray any extraordinary charges arising in the parish, or imposed on
-them for the good of the country, or the prince’s service: neither of
-which commonly so gripe but that somewhat still remayneth to cover the
-purse’s bottom.”
-
-   [55] acates = purchases.
-
-The Morris Dancers regarded Whitsuntide as their chief festival.
-Introduced into this country from Spain, the Morisco or Moorish {247}
-Dance had, in the reign of Henry VIII., attained a great popularity.
-There seems to have been at that time two principal performers,
-Robin Hood and Maid Marian; then there was a friar, a piper, a fool,
-and the rank and file of the dancers. In the parish accounts of
-Kingston-on-Thames for the year 1537 the Morris Dancers’ wardrobe, then
-in the charge of the churchwardens, consisted of “A fryers cote of
-russet and a kyrtele weltyd with red cloth, a Mowren’s (Moor’s) cote of
-buckram, and four morres daunsars cotes of white fustian spangelid and
-two gryne saten cotes, and disardde’s (fool’s) cote of cotton, and six
-payre of garters with belles.”
-
-In Elizabethan times the Morris Dance, and indeed every other kind of
-picturesque country festivity, may be said to have reached the zenith
-of popularity, soon, alas! to be followed by the chilling austerity of
-the Puritans, of whom it was so truly said that they “like nothing; no
-state, no sex; music, dancing, etc., unlawful even in kings; no kind of
-recreation, no kind of entertainment,—no, not so much as hawking; all
-are damned.”
-
- These teach that Dauncing is a Jezabell
- And barley-break the ready way to Hell,
- The Morrice, Idolls; Whitson-ale can bee
- But profane Reliques of a Jubilee.[56]
-
-   [56] Thomas Randal—_Annalia Dubrensia_.
-
-Whitsuntide, with its lengthening days, was specially set apart for
-sports and old-fashioned games, and amongst the many meetings for such
-purposes, none attained a wider popularity than the Cotswold or Dover’s
-Games. Those who are familiar with the country made classic by its
-associations with the great Master of English poetry, know well the
-green hill, still called Dover’s Hill, which forms an outpost of the
-main body of the Cotswolds, and overlooks the smiling vale of Evesham.
-On this spot, time out of mind, rural sports and festivities had been
-held under the name of the Cotswold Games. “How does your fallow
-greyhound, sir?” says Slender to Page, “I heard say he was outrun at
-Cotsale.” This was the site chosen by Robert Dover, an attorney of
-Barton-on-the-Heath, for the enlargement and perpetuation of those
-national sports in which he took so keen an interest, and which he
-{248} hoped would counteract the narrow spirit of bigotry which was
-beginning in his day to curtail the innocent amusements of the people.
-Armed with a formal authority from King James, Dover was so successful
-in his organization of the Games that, with a short interregnum during
-the Commonwealth days, their popularity continued until well into
-the present century. A curious old volume of poems, called _Annalia
-Dubrensia_, published in 1636, contains many quaint descriptions of the
-Games and their object. Drayton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Randall and others
-of lesser note, contributed each a poem to this collection. One of the
-contributors thus eulogises the sports and their patron:—
-
-       . . . . . . Oh most famous Greece!
- That for brave Pastimes, wert earth’s Master-piece!
- Had not our English DOVER, thus out-done
- Thy foure games, with his Cotswoldian one.
-
-Dover himself composed the poem which closes the volume. Some of his
-motives he thus describes:—
-
- I’ve heard our fine refined clergy teach,
- Of the commandments, that it is a breach
- To play at any game for gain or coin;
- ’Tis theft they say; men’s goods you do purloin;
- One silly beast another to pursue
- ’Gainst nature is, and fearful to the view,
- And man with man their activeness to try
- Forbidden is—much harm doth come thereby;
- Had we their faith to credit what they say,
- We must believe all sports are ta’en away;
- Whereby I see, instead of active things,
- What harm the same unto our nation brings;
- The pipe and pot are made the only prize
- Which all our spriteful youth do exercise.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Yet I was bold for better recreation
- T’invent these sports to countercheck that fashion,
- And bless the troope that come our sports to see,
- With hearty thankes and friendly courtesie
-
-{249}
-
-[Illustration: Cotswold Games.]
-
-The nature of the sports may be gathered from an inspection of the
-curious old cut taken from the frontispiece of the above-named work.
-Dancing, tumbling, wrestling, sword-play, quarter-staff, cudgel play,
-casting the hammer, dog-racing, horse-racing, coursing—must have made
-up a highly varied programme, while the table in the midst of the field
-of view shows, both by its conspicuous position and by the size of
-the cups and tankards in use, that the good creatures, meat and ale,
-were by no means neglected. The wonderful structure at the top of the
-picture represents the wooden castle erected every year, and called
-Dover Castle in honour of the founder of the sports. The artist does
-not appear to have quite done justice to his subject if we may credit
-the account of the Castle given by one of the versifiers:— {250}
-
- What Ingineere, or cunning Architect
- A Fabricke of such pompe did ere erect?
- I’ve heard men talk, of Castles in the aire,
- Inchanted Cells, Towers, Pageants most faire,
- Fortifications, Trophies, Theaters,
- Laborinths, Puppet-workes, strange Meteores,
- Of those that have their substance wholie spent
- To shew their Puppets dauncing with content;
- Of Egypts Pharoes stately glasen Tower,
- Built by King Ptolomies’ art magick power,
- Of Cheops, Pyramids; of Rhodes Colosse,
- Of Joves Olympick golden Ivorie Bosse.
- These to thy famous works compared will be
- Of small account; like them in no degree.
-
-The figure of the founder occupies a prominent place in the foreground.
-He used to appear in clothes that had belonged to King James, and it
-is said wore them with much greater dignity than did the King. Dover
-seems to have been a remarkable person in more ways than one, as may
-be gathered from the following quaint note, to be found in one of the
-editions of the _Annalia_:—“He was bred an Attorney, who never try’d
-but two causes, _always made up the Difference_.”
-
-The next in order of the country celebrations in which ale formed the
-principal drink, were the sheep-shearing feasts, formerly so common,
-but now in most places things of the past. Many songs have been
-preserved which record these old merry-makings when the day’s work
-was done, and the farm labourers were gathered round their master’s
-hospitable board. One of these, taken from the Sussex Archæological
-Collections, is given below. It is a sample of many.
-
-  Come all my jolly boys, and we’ll together go
-  Abroad with our masters, to shear the lamb and ewe.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
-  And there we must work hard, boys, until our backs do ache,
-  And our master he will bring us beer whenever we do lack.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
-  And then our noble captain doth unto our master say,
- “Come, let us have one bucket of your good Ale, I pray”
-  He turns unto our captain, and makes him this reply {252}
-
- “You shall have the best of beer, I promise, presently,”
-  Then out with the bucket pretty Bess she doth come,
-  And master says “Mind, mind and see that every man has some.”
-
-  This is some of our pastime while the sheep we do shear,
-  And though we are such merry boys, we work hard, I declare;
-  And when ’tis night, and we have done, our master is more free,
-  And stores us well with good strong beer, and pipes and tobaccee
-  So we do sit and drink, we smoke, and sing and roar,
-  Till we become more merry far than e’er we were before,
-  When all our work is done, and all our sheep are shorn,
-  Then home to our Captain, to drink the Ale that’s strong.
-  ’Tis a barrel, then, of _hum cup_, which we call the _black ram_,
-  And we do sit and swagger, and swear that we are men;
-  But yet before ’tis night, I’ll stand you half a crown,
-  That if you ha’nt a special care, the _ram_ will knock you down.
-
-[Illustration: The Merry Bagpipes.
-
-The Pleaſant Paſtime betwixt a Jolly Shepherd and a Country Damſel on a
-Midſummer-Day in the Morning.
-
-To the tune of _March Boys, &c._
-
- A Shepherd ſat him under a Thorn
-     he pulled out his pipe and began for to play
- It was on a Mid-Summer’s-day in the Morn
-     for honour of that Holy-day:
- A Ditty he did chant along
-     goes to the tune of Cater-Bordee,
- And this was the burden of his ſong
-     if thou wilt pipe lad, I’ll Dance to thee
- To thee, to thee, derry, derry, to thee, &c.
-
- _Roxburghe Ballads._
-]
-
-The Haymakers’ song given below is, or rather was, a great favourite at
-festive gatherings during the hay harvest:—
-
- In the merry month of June,
-   In the prime time of the year;
- Down in yonder meadows
-   There runs a river clear;
- And many a little fish
-   Doth in that river play;
- And many a lad and many a lass,
-   Go abroad a-making hay.
-
- In come the jolly mowers,
-   To mow the meadows down;
- With budget and with bottle
-   Of ale both stout and brown.
- All labouring men of courage bold
-   Come here their strength to try;
- They sweat and blow, and cut and mow,
-   For the grass cuts very dry.
-
-Gratitude to the Giver of all good things has been the mainspring of
-rejoicings that in nearly all nations have celebrated the safe {253}
-ingathering of the fruits of the earth. In England the festival is
-known by the expressive title of the Harvest Home. An ancient ballad
-expresses _The Farmer’s Delight in the Merry Harvest_:—
-
- Come all my Lads and Lasses
-   Let us together go,
- To the pleasant Corn-field,
-   Our courage for to show,
- With sickle and with knapsack,
-   So well we clean our Land,
- The Farmer crys work on Boys
-   Here’s Beer at your command.
- In a good old Leather Bottle,
-   Of ale that is so brown,
- We’ll cut and strip together,
-   Until the Sun goes down;
- Every morning Sun,
-   The small Birds they do sing;
- The Echoes of their Harmony,
-   Do make the Wood to ring.
- Young Nanny she came to me,
-   Some wheat-seed for to lase.[57]
- She is a pretty Creature,
-   I must speak in her Praise:
- I wish she was some keeper,
-   She is my whole delight
- In the Groves and Forests,
-   To range both Day and Night.
- Thus the industrious Farmer
-   By the Sweat of his Brow
- He labours and endeavours
-   To make his Barley Mow.
- Sir John produces Liquor,
-   ’Tis very often said,
- Good Beer makes Good Blood
-   Good Blood makes pretty maid. {254}
- When Harvest it is over
-   And the Corn secure from Harm
- And for to go to Market,
-   We must thrash in the Barn.
- The Flail which we do handle
-   So stoutly we do swing,
- And after Harvest Supper,
-   So merry we will sing:
- With good Success to the Farmer,
-   Or else we are to blame,
- I wish them Health and Happiness,
-   Till Harvest comes again.
-
-Beer has always been _the_ drink in the harvest field.
-
- Beneath some shelt’ring heap of yellow corn
- Rests the hoop’d keg, and friendly cooling horn,
- That mocks alike the goblet’s brittle frame,
- It’s costlier potions, and its nobler name.
- To Mary first the brimming draught is given,
- By toil made welcome as the dews of heaven,
- And never lip that press’d its homely edge,
- Had kinder blessings or a heartier pledge.
-
-   [57] To lase or lease, provincial term for “to glean.”
-
-In most parts of England the grain last cut was brought home in the
-Hock Cart or Horkey Cart. The name “Horkey,” is probably a corruption
-of “Hock,” and is equivalent to the German _hoch_, the allusion being
-to the wain piled _high_ with sheaves. The cart decked with ribbons
-and surmounted with a sheaf dressed up to represent a woman—perhaps
-Ceres, goddess of the harvest; the horses pranked out in gay trappings;
-a crowd of labourers and all the youthful inhabitants of the village
-hurrahing in the wake presented such a scene as that described by
-Herrick in his poem of the _Hock Cart_:—
-
- Come, sons of summer, by whose toile
- We are the Lords of wine and oile;
- By whose tough labours and rough hands
- We rip up first, then reap our lands,
- Crown’d with the ears of corne, now come,
- And, to the pipe, sing harvest home.
- Come forth, my Lord, and see the cart,
- Drest up with all the country art. {255}
- See here a maukin, there a sheet
- As spotless pure as it is sweet;
- The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,
- Clad all in linen white as lillies,
- The harvest swaines and wenches bound
- For joy to see the hock-cart crown’d.
- About the cart heare how the rout
- Of rural younglings raise the shout,
- Pressing before, some coming after,
- Those with a shout and these with laughter.
- Some blesse the cart; some kisse the sheaves
- Some prank them up with oaken leaves;
- Some cross the fill-horse; some with great
- Devotion stroak the home-borne wheat;
- While other rusticks, lesse attent
- To prayers than to merryment,
- Run after with their breeches rent.
-
-A verse was sung to start the hock-cart on its way; generally some
-thing of this kind:—
-
- Harvest home, harvest home,
- We have ploughed, we have sowed;
- We have reaped, we have mowed,
- We have brought home every load,
-       Hip, hip, hip, harvest home!
-
-In Hampshire it was years ago the custom at the end of harvest to
-send to the harvest-field a large bottle containing seven or eight
-gallons of strong beer; and the head carter, while the beer was being
-discussed, said or sang the lines:—
-
- Well ploughed—well sowed,
- Well reaped—well mowed,
-     Well carried, and
- Never a load overthro’d.
-
-He then raised his hand, and all cheered. This was called the custom of
-the Hollowing Bottle. {256}
-
-For a description of the harvest-home supper we may again turn to
-Herrick:—
-
- Well, on, brave boyes, to your Lord’s hearth
- Glittering with fire, where, for your mirth,
- You shall see first the large and cheefe
- Foundation of your feast, fat beefe;
- With upper stories, mutton, veale,
- And bacon, which makes full the meale;
- With severall dishes standing by,
- As here a custard, there a pie,
- And here all-tempting frumentie.
- And for to make the merry cheer,
- If smirking wine be wanting here,
- There’s that which drowns all care, stout beer,
- Which freely drink to your lord’s health,
- Then to the plough, the commonwealth,
- Next to your flails, your fans, your vats;
- Then to the maids with wheaten hats;
- To the rough sickle and the crooked scythe,
- Drink, frolic, boys, till all be blithe.
-
-Robert Bloomfield alludes to the horkey-beer as to a brew specially
-prepared for the occasion:—
-
- And Farmer Cheerum went, good man,
-   And broach’d the horkey-beer,
- And sich a mort of folks began
-   To eat up our good cheer.
-
-When supper was finished the horkey-beer was freely sent about the
-board, with the effect noticed by old Lydgate in his _Story of
-Thebes_:—“They were in silence for a tyme tyl good ale gan arise.”—Slow
-tongues are loosened, and the time is passed in songs and mirth.
-
-The following extracts are taken from old Suffolk songs which have
-descended from father to son for generations. They are typical of many
-more that might be given:—
-
-       Here’s a health to our master,
-         The founder of the feast!
-       God bless his endeavours
-         And send him increase. {257}
-       Now our harvest is ended
-         And supper is past,
-       Here’s our mistress’ good health
-         In a full flowing glass!
-       She is a good woman,—
-         She prepared us good cheer;
-       Come all my brave boys,
-         And drink off your beer.
-
- Drink, my boys, drink until you come unto me,
- The longer we sit, my boys, the merrier shall we be!
-
- In yon green wood there lies an old fox,
- Close by his den you may catch him, or no;
- Ten thousand to one you catch him, or no.
- His beard and his brush are all of one colour,—
-           (_Takes the glass and empties it off._)
- I am sorry, kind sir, that your glass is no fuller.
- ’Tis down the red lane! ’tis down the red lane!
- So merrily hunt the fox down the red lane!”
-
-There is another version of these concluding lines:—
-
- Down the red lane there lives an old fox,
- There does he sit a-mumping his chops:
- Catch him, boys, catch him, catch if you can;
- ’Tis twenty to one if you catch him or Nan.
-
-The red lane is the throat, and the fox is the tongue.
-
-A favourite old Norfolk harvest-home song was “The Pye upon the Pear
-Tree Top,” the following version of which is taken from Mr. Rye’s
-admirable _History of Norfolk_:—
-
- The pye upon the pear-tree top,
-     (_The singer holds up a glass of beer_)
- The pear-tree top—the pear-tree top,
- I hold you a crown she is coming down.
-     (_Brings down the glass slowly_)
- She is coming down, she is coming down,
- I hold you a crown she is come down.
-     (_Offers the glass to his right-hand neighbour._) {258}
- She _is_ come down, she _is_ come down,
- So lift up your elbow, and hold up your chin,
- And let your neighbour joggle it in.
-
-The drinker then tries to drink, and his neighbour tries to prevent him.
-
-During the evening one of the reapers, who had been chosen as “lord,”
-would retire from the table, and, putting on a kind of mummer’s garb,
-return, calling “Lar-gess.” He then carried a hat or plate round and
-collected money to prolong the jollification at the village alehouse.
-
-A laughable custom prevalent at Sussex harvest-homes, was the
-following: Each person at the table—perhaps twenty or thirty men—had
-to drink, without spilling, a glass of ale placed on the top of a tall
-hat; when he had finished, he must toss the glass up in the air and
-catch it in the hat as it fell. Sometimes a man would fail four or five
-times, and at length get too drunk even to try. Meantime the company
-kept up the refrain:—
-
- I’ve been to London, I’ve been to Dover,
- I’ve been a rambling, boys, all the world over,
- Over, over, over and over,
- Drink up the liquor and turn the bowl over.
-
-These lines were sung over and over again, getting louder at the
-critical moments. If the drinker’s effort was crowned with success the
-fourth line was changed to—
-
- The liquor’s drinked up, and the bowl is turned over,
-
-while ill success was greeted by—
-
- The liquor’s drinked up, and the bowl _ain’t_ turned over.
-
-Another Sussex custom practised not many years ago, and perhaps still,
-at harvest-home suppers consisted in a harvester sticking a lighted
-candle in a glass of beer and drinking the beer while he held the
-candle in position with his nose. The company meantime sing a song, of
-which the chorus runs—
-
- Your nose’s alight, your nose’s alight,
- Your hair’s alight, your hair’s alight,
- Your hair’s alight, afire. {259}
-
-Frequently the greasy candle would slip from between the nose and the
-rim of the glass, really bringing about a conflagration of hair or
-eyebrows.
-
-In Scotland a dish always to be met with at harvest home, or
-_Kirn_-suppers, as they are called, is composed of porridge, strong ale
-and whisky. Had such dish as this been found at Sabine harvest-homes,
-well might Horace have exclaimed, “_O dura messorum ilia!_” Much the
-same course of feasting, strong-ale drinking, and singing is observed
-as at the English festival—
-
-           —the frothing bickers,[58] soon as filled,
- Are drained, and to the gauntrees[59] oft return.
-
-   [58] The beakers.
-
-   [59] The frame supporting the barrel.
-
-Such were some of the principal ceremonies connected with the
-harvest-home. It is to be regretted that such observances are now
-comparatively rare. The kindly association of master and man at these
-and such-like gatherings, did much to keep alive a mutual spirit of
-good will, and to grease the wheels of toil, and it is to be feared
-that such feelings when once lost cannot easily be recalled. Bloomfield
-well describes this peculiarity of former times, which to that extent,
-at any rate, may be called the “good old days”:—
-
- Here, once a year, distinction lowers its crest,
- The master, servant, and the merry guest,
- Are equal all; and round the happy ring,
- The reaper’s eyes exulting glances fling;
- And, warmed with gratitude, he quits his place,
- With sun-burnt hands, and ale-enlivened face,
- Refills the jug his honored host to tend,
- To serve at once the master and the friend;
- Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale,
- His nuts, his conversation, and his Ale.
-
-Last of all the great festivals of the year comes Christmas, celebrated
-from early ages with feasting and hearty boisterous merriment. In
-olden times the closing days of the old year, and the opening days
-of the new, were devoted to holiday-making. From Christmas Day to
-Twelfth Night was one long Saturnalia of feasting, dancing, and {260}
-wassailing. One of the chief ceremonies of the time was the bringing
-in of the Yule Log on Christmas Eve. Escorted by troops of shouting
-men and boys, and greeted with strains of village minstrelsy, the
-yule log was drawn from its resting place, lighted in the great hall
-fireplace with some of the charred fragments of the last Christmas log,
-and consumed as a token of hospitality and good cheer. Herrick thus
-describes the ceremony:—
-
- Come, bring with a noise, my merry, merry boys,
-   The Christmas log to the firing,
- While my good Dame she—bids ye all be free,
-   And drink to your heart’s desiring.
-
- With the last year’s brand—light the new block, and
-   For good success in his spending,
- On your psaltries play—that sweet luck may
-   Come while the log is teending.[60]
-
- Drink now the strong beare, cut the white loafe here,
-   The while the meat is a-shredding,
- For the rare mince-pie, and the plums stand by,
-   To fill the paste that’s a-kneeding.
-
-   [60] Blazing.
-
-As an accompaniment to the yule log, an immense candle, called the Yule
-Candle, shed its light upon the scene of merriment, and neighbours all
-began
-
- To quaff brown Ale foam’d high from tall stone jugs
- And pledge deep healths in oft-replenished mugs.
-
-The custom of wassailing the fruit trees has been already mentioned.
-In some counties the practice extends to the field and pastures, and a
-song is still sung on Christmas Eve in Hampshire, of which the chorus
-is:—
-
- Apples and pears with right good corn,
- Come in plenty to every one,
- Eat and drink good cake and hot ale,
- Give Earth to drink and she’ll not fail.
-
-{261}
-
-The time-honoured amusement appropriate to Christmas Eve was provided
-by the Mummers and the Lord of Misrule.
-
-The Mummers (or Maskers, as the name imports) were to be found in every
-village. They dressed themselves to represent various characters, and
-the chief pageant exhibited by them was a version of the national
-legend of St. George and the Dragon. The principal characters of course
-were the gallant Knight, and as close a copy of the Dragon as the wit
-and ingenuity of the village could contrive; then there was Old Father
-Christmas, the Turk, the Maiden, and a Doctor with a huge box of pills
-ready to execute any repairs rendered necessary by the internecine
-fury of the Knight, the Turk, and the Dragon. The performance varied a
-good deal according to the fancy of the performers, but in all places
-there seems to have been a set form of recitation in verse describing
-the various antics of the players. The Lord of Misrule, or Master of
-Merry Disports, was elected as Master of the Ceremonies, and his term
-of office extended from All-hallow Eve to Candlemas Day. He directed
-the revels, exercised full power and authority over high and low in
-the ordering of the festivities, and played the wit and fool with what
-skill nature had endowed him.
-
-And so in mirth and jollity the evening rolls away, and Christmas Day
-appears. Sir Roger de Coverley says, or at any rate the _Spectator_
-reports that he said: “I have often thought it happens very well that
-Christmas should fall out in the middle of winter. It is the most dead,
-uncomfortable time of the year, when the poor people would suffer very
-much from their poverty and cold, if they had not good cheer, warm
-fires, and Christmas gambols to support them. I love to rejoice their
-poor hearts at this season, and to see the whole village merry in my
-great hall. I allow a double quantity of malt to my small beer, and set
-it a-running for twelve days for everyone that calls for it.”
-
-From _Round about our Coal Fire_ it may be gathered that “an English
-Gentleman at the opening of the great day (_i.e._, on Christmas day
-in the morning) had all his tenants and neighbours enter his hall by
-daybreak. The strong beer was broached, and the black jack went merrily
-about with toast, nutmeg, and good Cheshire Cheese.”
-
-It may not be generally known that the _Old English Gentleman_ is but
-a version of a very similar song published in 1600, in a book entitled
-_Le Prince d’Amour_. The earlier song contains the following verse
-relating to our subject:— {262}
-
- With an old fashion when Christmas was come
- To call in all his neighbours with a bagpipe or drum.
- And good cheer enough to furnish out every old rome,
- And beer and ale would make a cat speak and a wise man dumb
-           Like an old Courtier of Queens,
-           And the Queen’s old Courtier.
-
-On Christmas Day, and indeed during all the Christmas holidays,
-the tables were spread from morn till eve; sirloins of beef, mince
-pies and foaming ale formed the chief ingredients of the feast. In
-many places, in the houses of the great, the ceremonious custom was
-observed of bringing in the boar’s head on a dish of costly plate, the
-whole company following in procession, chanting the well-known lines
-beginning:—
-
- Caput apri defero,
- Reddens laudes Domino.
-
-The custom still observed at Queen’s College, Oxford, of bringing in
-the boar’s head at Christmas is said to have arisen from the adventure
-of a student of that house in far-off legendary days, who, according
-to the wont of students in those distant times, was walking abroad
-studying his Aristotle, when a wild boar, who happened to be in the
-neighbourhood, whether annoyed at having his lair disturbed, or out
-of mere malice, charged down upon him with open mouth. However, the
-student’s presence of mind did not desert him; with a loud cry of
-“Græcum est” he thrust the volume down the throat of the monster, who,
-choked by the tough morsel, then and there expired.
-
-Turning from the tables of the great to the cottage of the humble, we
-find a description of the effect of Old Father Christmas’s approach
-upon the labourer’s home in Bampfylde’s _Sonnet on Christmas_:—
-
- With footstep slow, in furry pall yclad,
- His brows enreathed with holly never sere,
- Old Christmas comes, to close the waned year,
- And aye the shepherd’s heart to make right glad,
- Who, when his teeming flocks are homeward had,
- To blazing hearth repairs, and nut-brown beer,
- And views well pleased the ruddy prattlers dear
- Hug the grey mongrel; meanwhile maid and lad
- Squabble for roasted crabs—Thee, Sire, we hail, {263}
- Whether thine aged limbs thou dost enshroud,
- In vest of snowy white, and hoary veil,
- Or wrap’st thy visage in a sable cloud:
- Thee we proclaim with mirth and cheer, nor fail
- To greet thee well with many a carol loud.
-
-It is the practice in many parts of Cumberland at Christmas to roast
-apples before the fire on a string, and hold under them a bowl of
-spiced or mulled ale. The apples roast on until they drop into the ale.
-
-Many an ancient Christmas carol tells of the joviality which at that
-time reigned supreme. The following example is taken from a collection
-of rare old songs and carols:—
-
- Mye boyes come here
- Theres capital cheere
- ’Tis Christmas tyme, let myrthe goe rounde
- With a flaggon of ale, by tyme well brown’d.
-
- Drink boyes drinke
- And never thinke
- Of crustie old tyme, his scythe and his glasse,
- He cannot, nor dare not, this waye passe.
-
- Drinke and be wise
- Till red Phœbus arise
- And banish colde care from the good waning year:
- The Old year he shall dye, mid plenty of cheere.
-
- My boyes, come passe
- Your empty glasse,
- And fill them with Ale, as the world is of strife
- And toaste to the widow, the maide and the wife.
-
- Come drink success
- You cannot do less,
- To the new coming yere, may it be loaded with funne
- And ne’er bring us worse than the old one has done.
-
-{264}
-
-Another verse from a good old song specially celebrates our theme—
-
-     Come, help us to raise
-     Loud songs to the praise
-     Of good old England pleasures:
- To the Christmas cheer,
- And the foaming Beer.
- And the buttery’s solid treasures.
-
-Many pages might be compiled of these old English carols, all in praise
-of the same theme, the roast beef and good ale of Old England; but one
-more quotation must suffice. It is from _Poor Robin’s Almanack_ (1695):—
-
- Now, thrice welscome, Christmas!
-   Which brings us good cheer;
- Mince pies and plum-pudding—
-   Strong Ale and strong Beer;
- But as for curmudgeons
-   Who will not be free,
- I wish they may die
-   On a two-legged tree.
-
-And so the cycle of the waning year is nearly completed. Midst sounds
-of revelry and mirth the old year is dying, and dying hard, and New
-Year’s Eve comes round again. The principal customs of New Year’s Eve
-have been already described, being inextricably blended with those
-appropriate to New Year’s Day.
-
-One scene more; a custom of very ancient origin and still observed.
-An ivy-mantled tower, from which to-night, at all events, the moping
-owl has been driven, for within are lights and the sounds of busy
-preparation. Those who are about to perform the last offices for the
-dying year are here assembled, and a great brown bowl of foaming ale
-passes from hand to hand. The old church clock, not bating one jot of
-his accustomed space from stroke to stroke, for all the impatience of
-listeners in many a house and cottage near, but deliberately, and with
-a solemnity befitting the occasion, tolls out the hour of midnight. A
-moment’s pause; but ere the last echo of its brazen tongue has died
-upon the ear, a merry peal of clashing music bursts from the ancient
-pile, carrying over hill and dale, over flood and field, on the rapid
-wings of {265} sound, the tidings that the old year is dead and the
-new year reigns in his place.
-
-As we gaze back on these old scenes of fun and frolic, their rougher
-outlines perchance softened by distance, their true-heartiness and
-geniality shining through the golden mist of time, which of us will be
-found to deny that in some respects the old was better?
-
- Happy the age and harmless were the days,
-   For then true love and amity were found,
- When every village did a May-pole raise,
-   And Whitsun ales and May-games did abound.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{266}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-
- “And then satten some and songe at the Ale.”
-                                        _The Vision of Piers Ploughman._
-
- Be mine each morn with eager appetite
- And hunger undissembled to repair
- To friendly buttery; there on smoking crust
- And foaming Ale to banquet unrestrained;
- Material breakfast! Thus in ancient days
- Our ancestors robust with liberal cups
- Usher’d the morn, unlike the squeamish sons
- Of modern times.
-                                              _Panegyric on Oxford Ale._
-
-_THE ALES. — ALE AT BREAKFAST. — BEQUESTS OF ALE. — DRINKING CUSTOMS. —
-A SERMON ON MALT. — EXCESSES OF THE CLERGY. — ANECDOTES._
-
-So far we have only considered those merry-makings which were peculiar
-to certain seasons of the year. It need hardly be said that there were
-also a number of festivals in which ale figured as the chief beverage,
-in no way related to any particular day, and these, together with a
-variety of curious customs connected with ale and beer, will be now
-treated of.
-
-Prominent among the many convivial meetings indulged in by our
-ancestors were the _Ales_, at which, as their name indicates, malt
-liquor was largely consumed. Such a feast is referred to in Chaucer:
-
- “And make him grete feestes atte _nale_.”
-
-And in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, Launce says to Speed, “Thou hast not
-so much charity in thee as to go to the _Ale_ with a Christian.”
-
-Ben Jonson also mentions Wakes and Ales in his _Tale of a Tub_:— {267}
-
- And all the neighbourhood from old records
- Of antique proverbs, drawn from Whitson-lords,
- And their authorities at Wakes and Ales,
- With country precedents and old wives’ tales,
- We bring you now to show what different things
- The cotes of clowns are from the courts of kings.
-
-Of Ales there were several kinds—Church-Ales, Bride-Ales, Scot-Ales and
-many others. The Church-Ales, of which the Easter-Ales and Whitsun-Ales
-and Wakes were varieties, must be considered the most important of
-this class of festival. The grotesque carvings on many old churches
-have been considered by some to represent the humours of these curious
-gatherings. Their origin is no doubt to be traced to the Agapæ, or
-Love Feasts of the early Christian Church. Stubbe, in his _Anatomie of
-Abuses_ (1585), gives the following account of the manner and intent
-of these Ales: “In certain townes where dronken Bacchus beares swaie,
-against Christmas and Easter, Whitsondaie, or some other tyme, the
-churchwardens of every Parishe provide half a score or twentie quarters
-of mault, whereof some they buy of the churche-stocke and some is given
-them of the Parishioners themselves, everye one conferring somewhat,
-according to his abilitie; whiche maulte being made into very strong
-beere or ale, is sette to sale, either in the church or some other
-place assigned to that purpose. Then when this is set abroche, well is
-he that can gete the soonest to it, and spend the most at it. In this
-kinde of practise they continue sixe weekes, a quarter of a yeare,
-yea, halfe a year together. That money, they say, is to repaire their
-churches and chappels with, to buye bookes for service, cuppes for
-the celebration of the Sacrament, surplesses for Sir John, and other
-necessaries. And they maintain extraordinarie charges in their Parish
-besides.”
-
-The account contains some obvious exaggerations. Stubbe was one
-of those of whom the Earl of Dorset might have said as he said of
-Prynne,—“My Lords, when God made all His works, He looked upon
-them and saw that they were good; this gentleman, the devil having
-put spectacles on his nose, says that all is bad.” It will not do
-for Macaulay’s New Zealander in looking through the files of old
-newspapers, discovered in the ruins of the British Museum, to accept
-every statement of the modern teetotal platform as representing an
-actual fact.
-
-Carew gives an account of the matter which probably represents the
-actual state of the case:—“Touching Church-Ales: these be mine {268}
-assertions, if not my proofs:—Of things induced by our forefathers,
-some were instituted to a good use, and perverted to a bad; again, some
-were both naught in the invention and so continued in the practice. Now
-that Church Ales ought to be sorted in the better rank of these twaine,
-may be gathered from their causes and effects, which I thus raffe up
-together:—entertaining of Christian love; conforming of men’s behaviour
-to a civil conversation; compounding of controversies; appeasing of
-quarrels; raising a store, which might be converted partlie to good
-and goodlie uses, as relieving all sorts of poor people; repairing of
-bridges, amending of highways, and partlie for the Prince’s service,
-by defraying, at an instant, such rates and taxes as the magistrate
-imposeth for the countrie’s defence. Briefly, they do tend to an
-instructing of the mind by amiable conference, and an enabling of the
-bodie by commendable exercise.”
-
-The curious old Indenture of pre-Reformation times given below, is
-an agreement between the inhabitants of the parishes of Elvarton,
-Thurlaston, and Ambaston of the one part, and the good folk of Okebrook
-of the other part, by John, Abbot of the Dale, Ralph Saucheverell,
-Esqre., John Bradshaw, and Henry Tithell. It provides that—“the
-inhabitants, as well of the said Parish of Elvarton, as of the town of
-Okebrook, shall brew four Ales, and every ale of one quarter of malt,
-and at their own costs and charges, betwixt this and the feast of St.
-John Baptist next coming. And that every inhabitant of the said town of
-Okebrook shall be at the several Ales; and every husband and his wife
-shall pay two pence, every cottager one penny; and all the inhabitants
-of Elvarton, Thurlaston and Ambaston shall have and receive all the
-profits and advantages coming of the said Ales to the use and behoof
-of the said Church of Elvarton; and that the inhabitants of the said
-towns of Elvarton, Thurlaston, and Ambaston, shall brew eight Ales
-betwixt this and the feast of St. John the Baptist; at the which Ales,
-and every one of them, the inhabitants of Okebrook shall come and pay
-as before rehearsed: and if he be away at one Ale, to pay at t’oder Ale
-for both, or else to send his money. And the inhabitants of Okebrook
-shall carry all manner of Tymber being in the Dale wood now felled,
-that the said Prestchyrch of the said towns of Elvarton, Thurlaston,
-and Ambaston shall occupye to the use and profit of the said Church.”
-Shakspere mentions these festivals in _Pericles_:
-
- It hath been sung at festivals,
- On ember eves and holy ales; {269}
-
-and an old writer (1544) speaks of “keapinge of Church-Ales, in the
-whiche with leapynge, dansynge and kyssynge they maynteyne the profett
-of their Church.”
-
-The Church-Ale was usually celebrated in a house known as the Church
-House, which was either hired for the festival, or was a house to
-which the parishioners had a right to resort upon occasions of this
-character. By an old lease, mentioned in Worsley’s _History of the Isle
-of Wight_, a house, called the Church House held by the inhabitants
-of Whitwell, parishioners of Gatcombe, of the Lord of the Manor, was
-demised by them to John Brode on condition “that, if the Quarter shall
-need at any time to make a _Quarter-Ale_ or _Church-Ale_, for the
-maintenance of the Chapel, it shall be lawful for them to have the use
-of the s^d house, with all the rooms, both above and beneath, during
-their Ale.”
-
-Considerable sums were raised by these means. The parish books of
-Kingston-upon-Thames show that in the year 1526 the proceeds of the
-Church-Ale amounted to £7 15s., and an ancient church book of Great
-Marlow contains the entry in the year 1592, “Received of the torchmen,
-for the profytte of the Whitsun Ale £5.”
-
-No doubt some amount of abuse and excess occurred upon these occasions.
-Many writers of the sixteenth century stigmatise the Church-Ales
-and Wakes as the sources of “gluttonie and drunkenness,” and other
-evils; and Harrison, writing in 1587, states as of a subject for
-congratulation, that “The superfluous numbers of idle wakes,
-church-ales, helpe-ales, and soule-ales, called also dirge ales, with
-the heathenish rioting at bride-ales, are well diminished.” Some,
-however, were found to uphold them. Pierce, Bishop of Bath and Wells,
-writes in answer to an inquiry of Archbishop Laud, that “Church-Ales
-were when the people went from afternoon prayers on Sundays to their
-lawful sports and pastimes in the churchyard, or in the neighbourhood,
-or in some public-house, where they drank and made merry. By the
-benevolence of the people at these pastimes, many poor parishes have
-cast their bells and beautified their churches, and raised stock for
-the poor.”
-
-The Puritan movement was, of course, strongly opposed to all these
-festivals, and the influence of these “unco’ righteous” folk in the
-year 1631, procured an order from Judge Richardson, putting an end to
-all such gatherings in the county of Somerset, whereupon, on report
-being made to the King, an order was made annulling the decree of the
-Judge, and seventy-two of the most orthodox and able of the clergy of
-the county certified that “on these days (which generally fell on a
-Sunday) {270} the service of God was more solemnly performed, and the
-services better attended than on other days.”
-
-A previous attempt by the Justices of the Peace to suppress these
-gatherings seems to have been equally unsuccessful. In 1596, John
-and Alexander Popham, George Sydenham, and seven other Justices of
-Bridgewater, ordered that no Church-Ale, Clerk’s-Ale, or tippling
-should be suffered; but the decree seems to have been disregarded. A
-custom somewhat similar to the Church-Ale was that of “drinking ale at
-the Church stile.” Ale and in some cases food as well, were consumed on
-certain occasions on the parish account. Pepys, under date April 14,
-1661, mentions that “After dinner we all went to the Church stile (at
-Walthamstow) and there eat and drank;” and a writer in the _Gentleman’s
-Magazine_ (November, 1852) states that in an old book of parish
-accounts belonging to Warrington the entry occurs: “Nov. 5, 1688. Paid
-for drink at the Church steele, 13s.”
-
-Clerk-Ales, or lesser Church-Ales, were held for the maintenance of
-the parish clerk. Bishop Pierce, from whom we have before quoted,
-says of them that “in poor country parishes, where the wages of the
-clerk were but small, the people thinking it unfit that the clerk
-should duly attend at the church, and not gain by his office, sent
-him in provision, and then came on Sundays and feasted with him; by
-which means he _sold more Ale_, and tasted more of the liberality of
-the people, than their quarterly payments would have amounted to in
-many years; and since these have been put down, many ministers have
-complained to me (says his Lordship) that they were afraid they should
-have no parish clerks.”
-
-There is a tradition well known in the Vale of the Warwickshire Avon,
-which connects the name of Shakspere with the Whitsun-Ale. It is
-related that the ale of Bidford was in Shakspere’s day famed for its
-potency, and that on the occasion of a Whitsun-Ale held at that place,
-young Shakspere and some of his friends attended it, having accepted
-a challenge of the Bidford men to try their powers as ale-drinkers.
-The Bidfordians proved the better men, and the others endeavoured to
-return to Stratford. They had not gone far, however, when, overcome
-by the fumes of the ale, they were forced to rest under a crab-tree
-about a mile out of Bidford. Here sleep overcame them, and their nap
-lasted from Saturday night till Monday morning, when they were aroused
-by a labourer who was on his way to his work. Shakspere’s companions
-urged him to return and renew the contest, but he refused. “I have had
-enough” he said; “I have drunk with {271}
-
- “Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,
-  Haunted Hillbro’, hungry Grafton,
-  Dudging Exhall, papist Wixford,
-  Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford.”
-
-These villages are all visible from the spot where the Bard’s long
-sleep is related to have taken place, and it is said retained
-their characteristics until very recently. The Crab, long known as
-“Shakspere’s Crab,” was cut down some time in the early part of
-this century by the Lady of the Manor, who is said to have given
-the somewhat Irish reason for this act of Vandalism, that the tree
-was gradually being demolished by curiosity hunters. A new crab has
-recently been planted upon the spot, and will, it is to be hoped, hand
-down to future generations the memory of the Poet’s youthful escapade.
-
-The term Christian-Ale was in all probability used to denote some kind
-of Church or Whitsun Ale. The expression is to be found in a curious
-old pamphlet entitled “The Virgins’ Complaint for the loss of their
-sweethearts in the present wars . . . presented to the House of Commons
-in the names and behalfes of all Damsels both of Country and City,
-Jan. 29, 1642, by sundry Virgins of the City of London,” in which
-occurs this passage: “Since the departure of the lusty young gentlemen,
-and courtiers, and cavaliers, and the ablest prentices and handsome
-journeymen, with whom we had used to walk to Islington and Pimlico to
-eat Cakes and drink Christian-Ale on holy daies.”
-
-Somewhat akin to Church-Ales were the guild-feasts held by the old
-fraternities. The records of the ancient guild at Lynn Regis, in
-Norfolk (Rye’s _Hist. of Norfolk_), show that in the time of Richard
-II. the annual election of officers of the fraternity was followed by
-“a guild-feast,” in which great quantities of ale were consumed. An
-alderman’s allowance of ale, “while it lasteth,” was two gallons, a
-steward had one gallon, and the dean and clerk a pottle each. The feast
-was apparently prolonged night after night, till all the ale brewed
-for the occasion was expended, and those brethren who from any urgent
-cause were absent, had a gallon of ale reserved for them. Before the
-carouse commenced, the guild-light was lit, and the clerk read prayers.
-Anybody who “jangled” during prayer-time, or who fell asleep over his
-ale afterwards, was liable to a fine.
-
-A curious old custom of a similar nature to the Whitsun-Ale is recorded
-in Curll’s _Miscellanies_. It was observed at Newnton, in Wiltshire,
-and was intended to preserve the memory of a donation from {272} King
-Athelstan of a common, and a house for the hayward (the hay keeper).
-“Upon every Trinity Sunday, the parishioners being come to the door of
-the hayward’s house, the door was struck thrice, in honour of the Holy
-Trinity; they then entered. The bell was rung; after which, silence
-being ordered, they read their prayers aforesaid. Then was a ghirland
-of flowers made upon a hoop, brought forth by a maid of the town upon
-her neck; and a young man (a bachelor) of another parish, first saluted
-her three times in honour of the Trinity, in respect of God the Father.
-Then she put the ghirland upon his neck and kissed him three times
-in honour of the Trinity, particularly God the Son. Then he put the
-ghirland on her neck again, and kissed her three times, in respect
-of the Holy Trinity, particularly the Holy Ghost. Then he took the
-ghirland from her neck, and, by the custom, gave her a penny at least.
-The method of giving this ghirland was from house to house annually,
-till it came round. In the evening every commoner sent his supper up
-to this house, which was called the Eale-house; and having before laid
-in there equally a stock of malt which was brewed in the house, they
-supped together; and what was left was given to the poor.”
-
-Thoroton, in his _Nottinghamshire_, gives an account of a shepherd who
-kept ale to sell _in_ the Church of Thorpe. He was the sole inhabitant
-of a village depopulated by inclosure. Besides the _Ales_ already
-mentioned, there were Bid-Ales, Bride-Ales, Give-Ales, Cuckoo-Ales,
-Help-Ales, Tithe-Ales, Leet-Ales, Lamb-Ales, Midsummer-Ales,
-Scot-Ales, and Weddyn-Ales. Some of these are sufficiently explained
-by their names. Bid-Ales, or Bede-Ales, and Scot-Ales have been
-mentioned in Chapter V. Bride-Ale, also called Bride-bush, Bride-wain
-and Bride-stake, was the custom of the bride selling ale on the
-wedding-day, for which she received by way of contribution any sum or
-present which her friends chose to give her. In the _Christen State of
-Matrimony_ (1545) we read: “When they come home from the church, then
-beginneth excesse of eatyng and drynking, and as much is waisted in one
-daye as were sufficient for the two newe-married folkes halfe a yeare
-to lyve upon.” Modern wedding breakfasts and the presents given to the
-happy pair are, doubtless, descendants of this old custom. In Norway
-at the present day, a peasant’s wedding is celebrated with much the
-same ceremony as the old English Bride-Ale. Ale is handed round to the
-guests, and they are each expected to contribute, according to their
-ability, to form a purse to assist the bride in commencing housekeeping.
-
-Regulations were made in some places to restrain the excesses {273}
-attending on the keeping of Bride-Ales. In the Court Rolls of Hales
-Owen is an entry:—“A payne ye made that no person or persons that shall
-brewe any weddyn ale to sell, shall not brewe aboue twelve stryke of
-mault at the most, and that the said persons so marryed shall not keep
-nor have above eyght messe of persons at hys dinner within the burrowe,
-and before hys brydall daye he shall keep no unlawful games in hys
-house, nor out of hys house on payne of 20s.”
-
-The old custom of Cuckoo-Ale appears to have been only of local
-observance. In Shropshire the advent of the first cuckoo was celebrated
-by general feasting amongst the working classes; as soon as his first
-note was heard, even if early in the day, the men would leave their
-work and spend the rest of the day in mirth and jollity.
-
-The Tithe-Ale was a repast of bread, cheese and ale, provided by the
-recipient of the tithe and enjoyed by the tithe-payers. At Cumnor, in
-Berkshire, a curious custom of this kind still obtains. On Christmas
-Day, after evening service, the parishioners who are liable to pay
-tithe, repair in a body to the vicarage and are there entertained on
-bread and cheese and ale. This is not by any means considered in the
-light of a benefaction on the part of the vicar, but is demanded as a
-right by the tithe-payers, and even the quantity of the good things
-which the vicar is to give is strictly specified. He must brew four
-bushels of malt in ale and small beer, he must provide two bushels
-of wheat for bread making, and half a hundred-weight of cheese; and
-whatever remains unconsumed is given to the poor. Leet-Ales, in some
-parts of England, denoted the dinner given at the Court Leet of a Manor
-to the jury and customary tenants. Another somewhat similar custom
-was known by the name of Drink-lean, and was a festive day kept by
-the tenants and vassals of the Lord of the Manor, or, as some say, a
-potation of ale provided by the tenants for the entertainment of the
-Lord or his steward. The origin of the term is not known; it probably
-has no connection with the effect which a lover of old ale said that
-beverage had upon him. “I always find it makes me lean,” said he.
-“Lean!” cries his friend, in amazement; “why, I always thought ale made
-folks fat.” “That may be,” was the reply, “but it makes me lean, for
-all that—against a lamp-post.”
-
-Another variety of the Ale was called Mary-Ale, and was a feast held
-in honour of the Virgin Mary. Foot-Ales seem to have meant not so much
-feasts as sums of money paid to purchase ale on a man’s entering a new
-situation. We still talk of a man “paying his footing.”
-
-A short consideration may now be devoted to the use of ale in former
-{274} times in the household. It is easy to picture to oneself the
-English squire or yeoman of old times, an article of whose creed it was
-that
-
- “Old England’s cheer is beef and beer,
-  Soup-meagre is Gallia’s boast,”
-
-as he sat in his hard, uncompromising chair before the fire on a
-winter’s evening, with perhaps a few of his cronies gathered round him,
-quaffing their bright March beer or mellow old October as they talked
-and ruminated in turns on the crops, the market or the hunt. It is not,
-however, so easy for the degenerate sons of modern days to realise the
-mighty draughts of ale taken at breakfast, soon after daylight. Yet,
-before the introduction of tea and coffee, ale was the morning drink
-in the palace of the king as in the cottage of the labourer. In 1512
-the breakfast of the Earl and Countess of Northumberland on a fast-day
-in Lent was “a loaf of bread, two manchetts (_i.e._, rolls of fine
-wheat), a quart of beer, a quart of wine, two pieces of salt fish, six
-bawned herrings, four white herrings, or a dish of sprats.” On flesh
-days “half a chyne of mutton or a chyne of boiled beef” was substituted
-for the fish. In the same household, the boys, “my lord Percy and
-Mr. Thomas Percy,” were allowed “half a loaf of household bread, a
-manchett, a pottle (2 quarts) of beer and three mutton bones boiled.”
-“My lady’s gentlewoman” seems to have been a rather thirsty soul; she
-was allowed for breakfast “a loaf of bread, a pottle of beer and three
-mutton bones boiled.” Even the two children in the nursery were brought
-up on this diet of beer; their breakfast consisted of “a manchett,
-a quart of beer, a dish of butter, a piece of salt fish and a dish
-of sprats.” The _liveries_, or evening meal, produced even a greater
-supply of malt liquor. My Lord and Lady then had “two manchetts, a loaf
-of bread, a _gallon_ of beer and a quart of wine.”
-
-The allowance of food and drink made from the Court to Maids of
-Honour and other attendants, was called the _bouche of Court_, a name
-corrupted into the _bouge of Court_, and “to have bouge of Court”
-signified to have meat and drink free. In the Ordinances, of Eltham,
-17 Henry VIII., Maids of Honour of the Queen are each allowed for
-breakfast “one chet lofe, one manchet, _two gallons of ale_, dim’
-pitcher of wine.” Lady Lucy, one of the Maids of Honour in the same
-reign, was allowed for breakfast—a chine of beef, a loaf, and a gallon
-of ale; for dinner—a piece of boiled beef, a slice of roast meat and a
-gallon of ale; and for supper—porridge, mutton, a loaf and a gallon of
-ale. {275}
-
-Queen Elizabeth’s breakfast seems frequently to have consisted of
-little else but ale and bread. In the household accounts for the year
-1576, are to be found certain items of her diet. One morning it is
-“Cheate and mancheate 6d., ale and beare 3½d., wine 1 pint. 7d:”
-another day it is bread as before, “ale and beare 10½d., wine, 7d;”
-and considering the prices of the times, the amount of ale represented
-by these figures must have been very considerable. Even well into last
-century ale was a common drink for breakfast among those who affected
-the manners of the old school. Applebie’s Journal, under date September
-11th, 1731, makes mention of “an old gentleman near ninety, who has a
-florid and vigorous constitution, and tells us the difference between
-the manners of the present age, and that in which he spent his youth.
-With regard to _eating_ in his time, _Breakfast_ consisted of good
-hams, cold sirloin, and good beer, succeeded with wholesome exercise,
-which sent them home hungry and ready for dinner.”
-
-In an old song, _Advice to Bachelors; or, the Married Man’s
-Lamentations_, occurs this verse:—
-
- If I but for my breakfast ask
-   then doth she laugh and jeer;
- Perhaps give me a hard dry crust
-   and strong four shilling beer;
- She tells me that is good enough
-   for such a rogue as me;
- And if I do but seem to pout
-   then hey, boys, flap goes she.
-
-Between breakfast and dinner there was generally a “nunchion”[61] (noon
-draught), a word curious from its having been confounded with lunch,
-which signifies a large piece or hunch of bread. When uneducated people
-speak of their “nunchions,” they are unconsciously using a more correct
-form of word than more refined persons when they speak of “luncheon.”
-On any occasion when a drink between meals was needed, it was called
-a “russin,” as in the lines of the old poem, _The Land of Cockaigne_
-(thirteenth century):—
-
- In Cockaigne is met and drink,
- Without care, how, or swink,
- The met is trie (choice), the drink is clere,
- To none, _russin_ and sopper. {276}
-
-An evening draught in the religious houses was called a “potatio.”
-When the afternoon reading was finished, the monks proceeded “_ad
-potationem_” (_i.e._, to take their evening draught of ale).
-
-   [61] From _noon_, and _schenchen_, to pour out.
-
-Ale, generous ale, was the beverage with which all meals alike were
-washed down; and ale and beer were in old times considered as having
-a peculiar suitability to the stomach of an Englishman. A letter from
-John Stile to Henry VIII. (1512) on the condition of the army in France
-bears witness to this common notion. “And hyt plese your grace,” he
-writes, “the greteyst lacke of vytuals, that ys here ys of bere, for
-your subjectys had lyver for to drynk bere than wyne or sydere, for the
-hote wynys dothe burne theym, and the syder dothe caste theym yn dysese
-and sekenysys.”
-
-The custom of women resorting to ale-houses and taking provisions with
-them wherewith to make a common feast, seems to have been an early
-form of the modern picnic. In one of the Chester Miracle Plays Noah is
-represented as being greatly annoyed at finding his wife eating and
-drinking with her gossips in an ale-house when it is time to be getting
-into the Ark. Several women meet together, and one of them proposes to
-the others an _al fresco_ entertainment of this character.
-
-The ale is recommended in these lines:—
-
- I know a draught of merry-go-downe,
- The best it is in all thys towne,
- But yet wold I not for my gowne,
- My husband it wyst, ye may me trust.
-
-One of the women says, “God might send me a strype or two, if my
-husband should see me here.” “Nay,” said Alice, “she that is afraid had
-better go home; I fear no man.”
-
- And ich off them will sumwhat bryng,
- Gosse, pygge, or capon’s wing,
- Pastes off pigeons, or sum other thyng.
- Ech of them brought forth their dysch,
- Sum brought flesh and sum fysh.
-
-Nor was the “mery-go-downe” forgotten. On going home these revellers
-represent to their husbands that they have been _to church_.
-
-It may be gathered from Dean Swift’s satirical advice to servants that
-ale and beer in his day formed the principal dinner beverages in polite
-society. In his directions to the butler, he tells him, “If any one
-{277} desires a glass of bottled ale, first shake the bottle, to see
-if anything be in it; then taste it, to see what liquor it is, that you
-may not be mistaken; and, lastly, wipe the mouth of the bottle with the
-palm of your hand, to show your cleanliness.
-
-“If any one calls for small beer towards the end of the dinner, do
-not give yourself the trouble of going down to the cellar, but gather
-the droppings and leavings out of the several cups and glasses and
-salvers into one; but turn your back to the company, for fear of being
-observed. On the contrary, when any one calls for ale towards the end
-of dinner, fill the largest tankard cup topful, by which you will have
-the greatest part left to oblige your fellow-servants without the sin
-of stealing from your master.”
-
-In the seventeenth century there lived an interesting person named
-John Bigg, better known as the Dinton Hermit, who subsisted chiefly
-on bread and ale supplied him by his friends. He only begged one
-thing—leather—with which he patched his shoes in innumerable
-places. A portrait of him is to be seen in Lipscombe’s _History of
-Buckinghamshire_. Two leather bottles hang at his girdle, the one for
-ale, the other for small beer.
-
-Many records are in existence illustrative of the custom of
-distributing ale for charitable purposes. The following instances are
-selected from a collection of _Old English Customs and various Bequests
-and Charities_.
-
-“At Piddle Hinton, Dorsetshire. An ancient custom is for the Rector
-to give away, on Old Christmas Day, annually, a pound of bread, a
-pint of ale, and a mince pie to every poor person in the parish. This
-distribution is regularly made by the Rector to upwards of 300 persons.”
-
-“At Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire. Before the enclosure, the tenant
-of the Abbey Farm in this parish, during those years in which the open
-field land was under tillage, used to give a slice of cake and a glass
-of ale to all parishioners who applied for it.”
-
-“At Giggleswick, Yorkshire. By the will of William Clapham (1603)
-4s. 4d. was left towards a potation for the poor scholars of the
-Freeschool there on St. George’s Day; and the custom was formerly to
-give figs, bread, and ale.”
-
-“At Edgcott, Buckinghamshire. Robert Marcham, Esq., pays the overseers
-£3 a year, a rent charge upon an acre of land.” This was formerly
-distributed to the tenants in the shape of two cakes each, and as much
-beer as they could drink at the time.
-
-“At St. Giles’, Norwich. By the will of John Ballestin, 1584, the {278}
-rent from three tenements was to be distributed to the poor in the
-following manner: viz., that in the week before Christmas, the week
-before Michaelmas, and the week after Easter, in the Church of St.
-Giles, the Minister should request the poor people, all that should
-receive or have need of alms, to come to Church, and pray for the
-preservation of the Prince, &c.; that the poor should place themselves
-four and four together, all that should be above the age of eleven
-years, and that every four of them should have set before them a
-twopenny wheat loaf, a gallon of best beer, and four pounds of beef and
-broth.”
-
-“At Prince’s Risborough, Buckinghamshire. Up to 1813, a Bull and a
-boar, a sack of Wheat, and a sack of Malt were given away to the poor
-by the Lord of the Manor, every Christmas morning about six o’clock.”
-
-In many houses small beer was always kept to dispense in charity, Ben
-Jonson, in _The Alchemist_, describes a mean, stingy person as—
-
-               . . one who could keep
- The buttery-hatch still locked, and save the chippings,
- Sell the _dole_ beer to aqua vitæ men.
-
-Visitors at Leicester’s Hospital, Warwick, may have noticed a huge
-copper beer-tankard reposing on a shelf. This great cup holds six
-quarts, and is filled with strong ale thrice a year on _gaudy_ days,
-and passed round among the old brethren, pensioners of the house.
-
-In the fourteenth century there was a custom for one of the fishermen
-engaged upon the river Thames to present a salmon to the Abbot of
-Westminster once a year. The fisherman who bore the tribute had that
-day a right to sit at the prior’s table, and might demand bread and ale
-of the cellarer; the cellarer on his part might take from the fish’s
-tail as much as he could with “four fingers and his thumb erect.”
-
-Superstitious observances were rife in former times. The Roman augurs
-observed the flight of birds, and scrutinised the palpitating vitals
-of fresh slain victims, thinking thereby to steal a march upon the
-future. Our ancestors would draw omens from the barking of dogs, the
-cries of wild fowl, or from the manner in which beer, accidentally
-spilt from the cup, distributed itself upon the floor. Melton, in his
-_Astrolagaster_, observes that “if the beere fall next a man it is a
-signe of good luck.”
-
-The customs and ceremonies attending the actual consumption of ale and
-other liquors now require some few words. First in order stands the old
-custom of pledging, which was in origin distinct from {279} toasting
-or health-drinking. William of Malmesbury says that the treacherous
-murder of King Edward while drinking a horn of wine presented to him
-by his stepmother Elfrida, gave rise to the old custom of pledging. A
-person before drinking would ask one who sat next to him whether he
-would _pledge_ him. The other thereupon drew his sword and held it over
-the drinker as a _pledge_ to him that no secret foe should strike him
-in an unguarded moment while he drained the bowl. Others have referred
-the origin of the custom to the treachery of the Danes, who would take
-advantage of the attitude of a man when drinking a horn of ale or mead,
-to stab him unawares. Be the origin what it may, the custom prevailed
-for many centuries, and was one of the things noted by that lively and
-inquisitive French physician, Stephen Perlin, who visited England about
-the middle of the sixteenth century. Amongst many other entertaining
-observations made by him is the following:—“The English, one with the
-other, are joyous, and are very fond of music; they are also great
-drinkers, . . . and they will say to you usually at table, ‘Goude
-chere,’ and they will also say to you more than one hundred times,
-‘Drind oui,’ and you will reply to them in their language, “I plaigui’
-(‘I pledge you’).”
-
-[Illustration: Health-Drinking.]
-
-The custom of health-drinking seems to have been at one time or another
-common to all European nations. The Romans had their _commissationes_,
-or drinking bouts, and their “_bene te, bene tibi_.” Our own immediate
-ancestors the Saxons, as we have already seen, observed the custom of
-health-drinking with their “Wacht heil” and “Drinc heil.” {280} The
-picture of an Anglo-Saxon dinner-party is taken from a MS., supposed to
-be of the tenth century (Tiberius, c. vi., fol. 5, v.). The peculiar
-weapons borne by the attendants are, no doubt, spits from which the
-guests are carving meat. The preceding illustration occurs in Alfric’s
-version of Genesis (MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. IV., fol. 36, v.) and
-represents Abraham’s feast at the birth of his child.
-
-[Illustration: Anglo-Saxons Feasting and Health-Drinking.]
-
-The Danes, also, were great health-drinkers. It is recorded that
-previous to the invasion of England by these ravaging pirates of the
-North, in the reign of Sweyne, that monarch gave a great banquet on his
-accession to the throne. First, the ale-horns were filled and emptied
-in memory of the dead King Harold; the next draught was in honour of
-Christ, and the third of St. Michael the Archangel. A writer of the
-year 1623 thus describes the ceremonies of health-drinking as practised
-at that time:—“He that begins the health first uncovering his head, he
-takes a full cup in his hand, and setting his countenance with a grave
-aspect, he craves for audience; silence being once obtained, he begins
-to breathe out the name, peradventure, of some honourable personage,
-whose health, is drunk to, and he that pledges must likewise off with
-his cap, kiss his fingers, and bow himself in sign of a reverent
-acceptance. When the leader sees his follower thus prepared, he sups
-up his broth, turns the bottom of the cup upward, and, in ostentation
-of his dexterity, gives the cup a fillip to make it cry _twango_. And
-thus the first scene is acted. The cup being newly replenished to the
-breadth of a hair, he that is the pledger must now begin his part; and
-{281} thus it goes round throughout the whole company.” To prove that
-each person had drunk off his measure, he had to turn the glass over
-his thumb, and if so much liquor remained as to make more than a drop
-which would stand on the nail of his thumb without running off, he had
-to drink off another bumper. This latter practice went by the name
-of _supernaculm_, and is mentioned in an old ballad, _The Winchester
-Wedding_:—
-
- Then Phillip began her health,
- And turn’d a beer-glass o’er his thumb,
- But Jenkin was reckoned for drinking,
- The best in Christendom.
-
-The author of _Memoires d’Angleterre_ (1698) mentions the absolute
-universality of this practice of health-drinking amongst the English.
-“To drink at table,” he writes, “without drinking to the health of some
-one in especial, would be considered drinking on the sly, and as an act
-of incivility. There are in this proceeding two principal and singular
-grimaces, which are universally observed. . . .” The person whose
-health is drunk must remain as inactive as a statue while the drinker
-drinks, after which the second grimace is “to make him an _inclinabo_,
-at the risk of dipping his periwig in the gravy. . . . I confess that
-when a foreigner first sees these manners he thinks them laughable.”
-And yet one would have thought that a Frenchman’s familiarity with
-toasting would have rendered the proceeding not so singular an one
-after all, for that custom was carried to an extreme in his own
-nation, among the choice spirits of which it was not unusual to give a
-toast which necessitated the drinking of a glass to each letter of a
-mistress’s name, as illustrated in the lines:—
-
- Six fois je m’en vas boire au beau nom de Cloris,
- Cloris, le seul desire de ma chaste pensée.
-
-Space forbids that we should go very fully into all these old drinking
-customs, though some of them are fantastic and curious enough. One
-or two more, however, may be mentioned. In Elizabethan times it was
-customary for hard drinkers to put some inflammable substance on the
-surface of their liquor, and so to swallow the draught and the blazing
-fragment at a gulp. This was called flap-dragoning, and the fiery
-morsel was known as a flap-dragon. Shakspere has many allusions to
-this practice. Falstaff says of Prince Hal, that he “drinks off {282}
-candle-ends for flap-dragons.” And in _Winter’s Tale_ an instance of
-the verb occurs in the passage, “But to make an end of the ship; to
-see how the sea flap-dragoned it.” The captain in _Rowley’s Match at
-Midnight_ asserts that his corporal “was lately choked at Delf by
-swallowing a flap-dragon.”
-
-The term hob-nob as denoting pot-companionship, has been said by some
-to be a corruption of “Habbe or nabbe?” _i.e._, Will you have or not
-have (a drink)? Others suggest a more whimsical derivation. It is said
-that the Maids of Honour of the Tudor Court, who we have seen were
-ale-ladies, if they cannot be called ale-knights, frequently liked
-their beer warm, and had it placed upon the hob of the grate “to take
-the chill off.” It was therefore natural for their attendants to ask
-the question, “From the hob or not from the hob?” which in process of
-time became “Hob or nob?”
-
-The above remarks on drinking customs lead to the consideration of the
-extravagant drinking and eating of days gone by. Our ancestors, both
-Saxon and Dane, were tremendous drinkers, and their sole amusement
-after the labours of the day seems to have been drinking down mighty
-draughts of ale and mead, and getting themselves under the table as
-quickly as possible. An ancient anecdote is told of a Saxon bishop,
-who invited a Dane to his house for the purpose of making him drunk.
-After dinner “the tables were taken away, and they passed the rest
-of the day until evening in drinking.” The cupbearer manages matters
-in such a manner that the Dane’s turn comes round much oftener than
-that of the others, as, indeed, “the bishop had directed him,” and
-the desired end is at last attained. Whether Iago was right when he
-gave to the English the palm in drinking over “your Dane, your German,
-and your swag-bellied Hollander,” and whether one taught the other
-his own particular drinking vices, we cannot stop now to inquire. The
-English were always famed for their love of strong ale, and passing
-over the intervening centuries and coming down to the Tudor period,
-many instances could be quoted from contemporary writers showing the
-proneness of our ancestors to drench deep thought in tankards of the
-nappy nut-brown ale. Stubbe, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_ (1585), says
-that the ale-houses in London were crowded from morning to night with
-inveterate drunkards, whose only care was how to get as much heady ale
-into their carcases as possible. Ale, strong ale, was all the cry;
-one who could not or would not quaff of the strongest was counted a
-milksop, {284} while he who could drink longest of it without (or
-rather before), getting tipsy, was the king of the company. It must
-have been of such an one that Herrick wrote—
-
- Tap, better known than trusted, as we hear,
- Sold his old mother’s spectacles for beer,
- And not unlikely, rather too than fail,
- He’ll sell her eyes and nose for beer and ale.
-
-The love for the strong and the contempt for the small is illustrated
-in the well-known lines of the old song:—
-
- He who drinks small beer, goes to bed sober,
- Falls as the leaves do fall, that fall in October;
- He who drinks strong ale, goes to bed mellow,
- Lives as he ought to live, and dies a jolly fellow.
-
-Such was the love of strong ale in the sixteenth century that a term
-was actually invented to describe madness produced by excessive
-ale-drinking. A writer in the year 1598 affords us an instance of
-the word in question, when he says that “to arrest a man that hath
-no likeness to a horse is flat lunasie or _alecie_.” Harrison, whom
-we have frequently had occasion to quote, in speaking of the heavy
-ale-drinking of his days, though the ale was then “more thick and
-fulsome” than the beer, says, “Certes I know some ale-knights so much
-addicted thereunto, that they will not cease from morow until even to
-visit the same, clensing house after house, till they either fall quite
-under the boord, or else, not daring to stirre from their stooles, sit
-still pinking with their narrow eies as halfe sleeping, till the fume
-of their adversarie be digested that he may go to it afresh.”
-
-[Illustration: The Ale-Wives’ Invitation to Married Men and Bachelors:
-
-Shewing
-
-How a good fellow is ſlighted when he is brought to Poverty.
-
- Therefore take my Counſel and Ale-wives don’t truſt.
- For when you have waſted and ſpent all you have
- Then out of doors ſhe will you headlong thruſt,
- Calling you raſcal and ſhirking Knave,
- But ſo long as you have money, come early or late
- You ſhall have her command, or elſe her maid Kate.
-                                    To a new tune, or _Digbys Farewell._
-
-A Ballad ſuppoſed to be ſung by a young man who, having ſpent his money
-in Ale-houſes, offers ſome advice on the ſubject.
-
- “And thus all young men, you plainly may ſee
-  This ſong it will learn you good huſbands to be.”
-                                           _Collec. Eng. Ballads._
-]
-
-Herrick has left us an epigram upon a person of the class described by
-Harrison:—
-
- Spunge makes his boast that he’s the onely man,
- Can hold of beere and ale an ocean;
- Is this his glory? then his triumph’s poore;
- I know the Tunne of Hidleberge holds more.
-
-Profuseness in drinking was accompanied with enormous gluttony in
-eating. At one of the feasts of the Court of King James I.—
-
- They served up venison, salmon, and wild boars,
- By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores. {285}
- Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,
- Muttons and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
- Herons, and bitterns, peacocks, swan, and bustard.
- Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeon, and in fine,
- Plum puddings, pancakes, apple pie and custard.
- And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,
- With mead, and _Ale_, and cider of our own.
-
-This, however, was only a mild repetition of some of the prodigious
-feasts of former days. On the enthronement of George Nevile as
-archbishop of York, in the reign of Edward IV., the following was the
-list of eatables which furnished the tables:—104 oxen, 6 wild bulls,
-1,000 sheep, 304 calves, 304 swine, 400 swans, 2,000 geese, 1,000
-capons, 2,000 pigs, many thousand of various small birds such as quail,
-plovers, &c., 4,000 cold venison pasties, 500 stags, 608 pike and
-bream, 12 porpoises and seals, and many other delicacies. These solids
-were washed down with 300 tuns of ale and 100 tuns of wine and “one
-pynt of hypocrass.”
-
-Nor were the clergy behind the laity in their devotion to good living.
-In Saxon times the frequent directions to the monks and friars to
-abstain from excess in eating and drinking, from haunting ale-houses
-and from acting the ale-scop or gleeman at such places, all tell their
-own tale. The frequency with which from that period the intemperance
-of the clergy called forth the rebukes of their superiors and the
-satire of the writers of the day, show that matters did not mend much
-as mediæval times advanced. Friar Tuck, as depicted in _Ivanhoe_, is
-probably a type of many a jolly monk of his day. For his drink is
-assigned “a but of sack, a rumlet of malvoisie, and three hogsheads of
-ale of the first strike. And if,” continues the King, “that will not
-quench thy thirst, thou must come to court, and be acquainted with my
-butler.” Chaucer describes his monk as a free liver and a jolly good
-fellow, whose sentiments with regard to the duties of his order are
-shown in the lines:—
-
- The reule of seynt Maure or of seint Beneyt,
- Bycause that it was old and somdel streyt,
- This ilke monk let olde things pace,
- And held after the newe world the space.
-
-The Friar, too, who “knew the taverns well in every town,” may be taken
-as a true portrait of a prominent figure of the times. It is recorded
-that the Abbey of Aberbrothwick expended annually 9,000 {286} bushels
-of malt in ale-brewing, and a popular satire, perpetuated by Sir Walter
-Scott on the monks of Melrose, declares that—
-
- The monks of Melrose made fat kail
-   On Fridays when they fasted;
- And neither wanted beef nor ale,
-   So long as their neighbours’ lasted.
-
-The names of some of the drinks in vogue are exceedingly suggestive; we
-read of Bishop, Cardinal, Lawn Sleeves, Pope, and others of a similar
-character.
-
-The Glutton-masses of the secular clergy, as described by Henry in his
-_History of England_, “were celebrated five times a year, in honour of
-the Virgin Mary, in this manner. Early in the morning the people of the
-parish assembled in the church, loaded with ample stores of meats and
-drinks of all kinds. As soon as mass ended, the feast began, in which
-the clergy and laity engaged with equal ardour. The church was turned
-into a tavern, and became a scene of excessive riot and intemperance.
-The priests and people of different parishes entered into formal
-contests, which of them should have the greatest glutton mass, _i.e._,
-which of them should devour the greatest quantity of meat and drink in
-honour of the Holy Virgin.”
-
-The Tudor period seems to have produced but little amendment in this
-respect. Satirists of the day make constant allusion to the fondness of
-ecclesiastics, both exalted and humble, for strong drink and every kind
-of sensual indulgence. Skelton, in _Colin Clout_, speaking of the angry
-disputes of churchmen when under the influence of drink, says:—
-
- Such logic men will chop,
- And in their fury hop
- When the good ale-sop
- Doth dance in their foretop.
-
-In the old Comedy of _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_, already referred to,
-the parson is wanted, and the old Gammer gives the boy the following
-directions for finding him:—
-
- Hence swithe to Doctor Rat, hye thee that thou were gone,
- And pray him come speke with me, cham not well at ease,
- Shall find him at his chamber, or els at Mother Bees,
- Els seek him at _Hobfilcher’s_ shop; for as charde it reported
- There _is the best Ale in the Town, and now is most resorted_.
-
-{287}
-
-The boy goes forth to seek him as he is ordered; and when he returns,
-Gammer thus inquires:—
-
- _Gammer_:
-   “Where did’st thou finde him, Boy? was he not wher I told thee?”
-
- _Cock_:
-   “Yes, yes, even at _Hobfilcher’s_ house, by him that bought and
-            sold me:
-    A _cup of ale_ had in his hand, and a _crab_ lay in the fier . .”
-
-Drunkenness amongst the clergy was probably at this period too
-common for much mention of it to be made in the various records of
-ecclesiastical offences. An occasional prosecution, however, seems to
-have been instituted before the Ordinary. One such may be found in the
-Records of the Ecclesiastical Court of Chester, 1575, where the Vicar
-of Whalley is charged with being “a common dronker and ale-knight.”
-
-The time has happily gone by when a Swift could write of
-
- “Three or four parsons full of October,
-  Three or four squires between drunk and sober,”
-
-or a Pope of “a parson much bemused with beer,” or when the following
-old Ballad could be supposed to give a true picture of the habits of
-village clergymen:—
-
-THE PARSON.
-
-  A parson who had the remarkable foible
-  Of minding the bottle much more than the Bible,
-  Was deemed by his neighbours to be less perplex’d
-  In handling a tankard than handling a text.
-
-  Perch’d up in his pulpit, one Sunday, he cry’d,
- “Make patience, my dearly beloved, your guide,
-  And in your distresses, your troubles, your crosses,
-  Remember the patience of Job in his losses.”
-
-  The parson had got a stout cask of beer,
-  By way of a present—no matter from where—
-  Suffice it to know, it was toothsome and good,
-  And he lov’d it as well as he did his own blood. {288}
-
-  While he the church service in haste rambled o’er,
-  The hogs found a way thro’ his old cellar door,
-  And by the strong scent to the beer barrel led
-  Had knock’d out the spiggot or cock from its head.
-
-  Out spurted the liquor abroad on the ground,
-  The unbidden guests quaffed it merrily round,
-  Nor from their diversion and merriment ceas’d
-  Till ev’ry hog there was as drunk as a beast.
-
-  And now the grave lecture and prayers at an end,
-  He brings along with him a neighbouring friend,
-  To be a partaker of Sunday’s good cheer,
-  And taste the delightful October brew’d beer.
-
-  The dinner was ready, the things were laid snug,
- “Here, wife,” says the parson, “go fetch us a mug,”
-  But a mug of what?—he had scarce time to tell her,
-  When, “yonder,” says she, “are the hogs in the cellar.
-
-  To be sure they got in when we’re at prayers,”
- “To be sure you’re a fool,” said he, “get you down stairs,
-  And bring what I bid you, and see what’s the matter.
-  For now I myself hear a grunting and clatter.”
-
-  She went, and returned with sorrowful face,
-  In suitable phrases related the case,
-  He rav’d like a madman about in the room,
-  And then beat his wife and the hogs with the broom.
-
- “Lord, husband,” said she, “what a coil you keep here,
-  About a poor beggarly barrel of beer.
-  You should, ‘_in your troubles, mischances, and crosses,
-  Remember the patience of Job in his losses_.’”
-
- “A plague upon Job,” cried the priest in his rage,
- “That beer, I dare say, was near ten years of age;
-  But you’re a poor ignorant jade like _his_ wife;
-  For Job never had such a cask in his life.”
-
-A curious tale is related of one Mr. Dod, who had a country living near
-Cambridge. Being impressed by the intemperance then prevalent in the
-University, he on one occasion preached a very vigorous condemnatory
-sermon on the vice of drunkenness. Soon after, several of the {289}
-undergraduates, who were disporting themselves at some little distance
-from the town, perceived Mr. Dod jogging along towards them on his old
-horse. Annoyed at the sermon on drinking, which had probably seemed
-to them as directed specially against themselves, the undergraduates
-rapidly consulted together, and determined in revenge to make the old
-man preach a sermon from a text of their own choosing. At first he
-declined, but his persecutors were inexorable, and he was forced to
-submit with the best grace he could. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “as
-you are thus urgent for my compliance, pray what is the subject I am
-to handle?” They answered, “Sir, the word _malt_; and, for want of a
-better, here, Sir, is your pulpit,” pointing to the stump of a hollow
-tree that stood by. Whereupon the venerable man mounted the rostrum,
-and spoke as follows:—
-
-“Beloved,
-
-“I am a little man, come at a short warning,—to deliver a brief
-discourse,—upon a small subject,—to a thin congregation, and from an
-unworthly pulpit.
-
-“Beloved, my text is—
-
- “M A L T,
-
-“Which cannot be divided into words, it being but one; nor into
-syllables, it being but one: therefore, of necessity, I must reduce it
-into letters, which I find to be these,
-
- “M—A—L—T.
-
-“M—my beloved, is Moral. A—is Allegorical. L—is Literal, T—is
-Theological.
-
-“The moral is set forth to teach you drunkards good manners, therefore:
-M—my Masters. A—All of you. L—Listen. T—to my Text.
-
-“The allegorical is when one thing is spoken, and another is intended:
-the thing expressed is MALT; the thing signified is the oil of Malt,
-which you Bacchanals make: M—your Meat. A—your Apparel. L—your liberty.
-T—your Text.
-
-“The Literal is according to the letter: M—Much. A—Ale. L—Little.
-T—Thrift.
-
-“The Theological is according to the effects it produces, which I find
-to consist of two kinds. The first respects this life, the second, that
-which is to come.
-
-“The effects it produces in this world are in some: M—Murder.
-A—Adultery. L—Licentious Lives. T—Treason. {290}
-
-“The effects consequent in the world to come are: M—Misery. A—Anguish.
-L—Lamentation. T—Torment.
-
-“Thus, sirs, having briefly opened and explained my short text, give me
-leave to make a little use and improvement of the foregoing. First, by
-way of exhortation: M—My Masters. A—All of you. L—Look for. T—Torment.
-
-“Now to wind up the whole and draw to a close, take with you the
-characteristics of a drunkard. A drunkard is the annoyance of modesty,
-the spoil of civility, his own shame, his children’s curse, his
-neighbour’s scoff, the alehouse man’s benefactor, the devil’s drudge, a
-walking swill-bowl, the picture of a beast, and monster of a man.”
-
-There was a curious custom in vogue at the beginning of the seventeenth
-century known as “muggling.” It was thus described by Young, in
-_England’s Bane_: “I have seen a company amongst the very woods and
-forests drinking for a muggle. Sixe determined to try their strengths
-who could drinke most glasses for the muggle. The first drinkes a
-glasse of a pint, the second two, the next three, and so every one
-multiplieth till the last taketh sixe. Then the first beginneth againe
-and taketh seven, and in this manner they drinke thrice a peece round,
-every man taking a glasse more than his fellow, so that he that dranke
-least, which was the first, dranke one and twenty pints, and the sixth
-man thirty-six.” So great was the ale-drinking at this time, that the
-headache brought on by it was known by the common expression, “the
-ale passion,” and one in liquor was said to have been “kicked by the
-brewer’s horse.”
-
-One or two instances, only, of the drinking songs popular in
-olden times can be given here. The _Merry Fellows_, a song of the
-Restoration, well illustrates the old idea that merriness must be
-accompanied with potations “pottle deep”:—
-
- Now, since we’re met, let’s merry, merry be,
-   In spite of all our foes;
- And he that will not merry be,
-   We’ll pull him by the nose.
-
-     _Chorus._ Let him be merry, merry there,
-                 While we’re all merry, merry here;
-              For who can know where he shall go,
-                 To be merry another year. {291}
-
- He that will not merry, merry be,
-   With a generous bowl and a toast,
- May he in Bridewell be shut up,
-   And fast bound to a post.
-             Let him, &c.
-
- He that will not merry, merry be,
-   And take his glass in course,
- May he be obliged to drink small beer,
-   Ne’er a penny in his purse.
-             Let him, &c.
-
- He that will not merry, merry be
-   With a company of jolly boys,
- May he be plagued with a scolding wife
-   To confound him with her noise.
-             Let him, &c.
-
- He that will not merry, merry be,
-   With his sweetheart by his side,
- Let him be laid in the cold church-yard
-   With a head-stone for his bride.
-             Let him, &c.
-
-Cobblers have already been mentioned as devotees of strong malt drinks,
-and many a cozier’s catch celebrates this propensity. Here is one:—
-
- Come, sit we here by the fire-side,
-   And roundly drink we here,
- Till that we see our cheeks ale-dyed,
-   And noses tanned with beer.
-
-Shoemakers and cobblers used to call a red-herring a pheasant, and in
-the same inflated style term half a pint of beer half a gallon, and a
-pint of beer a gallon, much after the manner of Caleb Balderstone in
-_The Bride of Lammermoor_.
-
-Tinkers, too, swore by Ceres and not by Bacchus, as Herrick shows in
-his _Tinker’s Song_.
-
- Along, come along,
- Let’s meet in a throng
-   Here of tinkers; {292}
-
- And quaff up a bowl,
- As big as a cowl,
-   To beer-drinkers.
-
- The pole of the hop
- Place in the ale shop,
-   To bethwack us,
- If ever we think
- So much as to drink
-   Unto Bacchus.
-
- Who frolic will be
- For little cost, he
-   Must not vary
- From beer-broth at all
- So much as to call
-   For canary.
-
-Last century may be said to have brought the vice of heavy drinking to
-its highest pitch. Statesmen, Judges, dignitaries of the Church—all
-joined in the riotous living of the time. The usual allowance for a
-_moderate_ man at dinner seems to have been two bottles of port. Men
-were known as two-bottle men, three and four-bottle men, and even in
-some instances _six-bottle men_. Lord Eldon, who was himself inclined
-to get a little merry after dinner, relates an amusing story in his
-_Anecdote Book_, which is illustrative of the habits of the day. He
-tells how Jemmy Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s Biographer, while on assize, so
-exceeded the bounds of moderation one evening, that he was found by
-his friends lying on the pavement very drunk. His comrades, of whom
-Lord Eldon (then Mr. Scott) was one, subscribed a guinea amongst them,
-and sent Boswell a bogus brief, instructing him to move the Court
-the next day for a writ of _Quare adhæsit pavimento_. Much to the
-astonishment of the learned Judge who presided, Mr. Boswell actually
-made the application in due course. The whole court was convulsed with
-laughter, and the unfortunate counsel, turning this way and that in his
-perplexity, knew not what to make of it. At last a learned friend came
-to his assistance. “My lord,” he said, “Mr. Boswell _adhæsit pavimento_
-last night; there was no moving him for some time. At length he was
-carried to bed, and has been dreaming of what happened to himself.”
-Where such manners prevailed in the {293} upper ranks of life, the
-lower orders were not likely to be more sober. As a matter of fact,
-gin ran riot amongst the working classes in the great centres of
-population, spreading corruption of morals and ruin of health on every
-side.
-
-One more instance of a huge drinker may be given: One Jedediah Buxton
-was curious enough in his drinking habits to calculate the number of
-pints of ale or strong beer that he had drunk free of cost to himself
-since he was twelve years of age, and the names of the gentlemen at
-whose houses he had consumed them. The list began with the Duke of
-Kingston, 2,130 pints; Duke of Norfolk, 266 pints; Duke of Leeds, 232,
-and so on through a long list, of which it need only be said the total
-amounted to 5,116 pints or _winds_, as he termed them, because, he
-said, he never took more than one wind, or breath, to a pint and two
-to a quart. Surely this man deserves to rank among the curiosities
-of the subject. Happily times have changed and drunkenness, we may
-hope, will soon cease to be counted a national vice. Bearing in mind
-the excesses to which drinking was carried in the last century, it
-cannot be denied that much progress has been made in the direction of
-moderation; and that the habits of the whole people—slow and difficult
-as such habits are to change—have undergone a very marked improvement.
-Ere the next century has had time to grow from youth to old age, it may
-be impossible to find in any rank of the population a man who could say
-of an evening’s amusement like the old Scotch Shepherd, “It was a grand
-treat, for before the end o’t there was na ane of us able to bite his
-ain thoomb!”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{294}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-
-
- ’Tis Ale, immortal Ale I sing!
- Bid all the Muses throng!
- Bid them awake each slumbering string,
- Till the loud chords responsive ring
-   To swell the lofty song!
-                                    _Brasenose College Shrovetide Poem._
-
- These venerable ancient song inditers
- Soar’d many a pitch above our modern writers;
- Our numbers may be more refin’d than those,
- But what we’ve gained in verse we’ve lost in prose;
- Their words no shuffling double meaning knew,
- Their speech was homely, but their hearts were true.
-                                                                 _Rowe._
-
-_OLD BALLADS, SONGS AND VERSES RELATING TO ALE AND BEER._
-
-Long ago, in the merry days when the chilling influence of Puritanism
-had not yet put an end to the majority of our sports and pastimes, and
-when anyone who had ventured to speak of a May-pole as a “Stinckyng
-Idoll” would most likely have been ducked in the nearest pond as a
-proper reward for his calumny, the lower orders of England were far
-more musical than at present; and there existed a great demand for
-ballads to be sung at village merry-makings, ale-house gatherings,
-and during the long winter evenings which would have been dull indeed
-without the cheering influence of song. {295}
-
-Of the quaint old ballads, written mostly in the sixteenth and
-seventeenth centuries, a splendid collection was made by the Earl of
-Oxford (born in 1661), to whom we are also indebted for the Harleian
-MSS., now in the British Museum. These ballads are known as the
-_Roxburghe Collection_, and a selection of them is given in this
-chapter, together with facsimile reproductions of the curious woodcuts
-with which the originals are adorned.[62]
-
-   [62] Most of the Roxburghe Ballads have been reprinted by the Ballad
-   Society, and for the very scanty information we have been able to
-   gather concerning them we are in a great measure indebted to the
-   Editors of these reprints. Our illustrations have been taken in
-   every case from the original ballads, and are, we believe, the only
-   exact facsimile reproductions in existence.
-
-The most important ballad connected with the subject of ale and beer
-is _Sir John Barley-corne_, of which there are many versions. It seems
-very probable that the original is not in existence, for at a very
-early date songs bearing the same name, and containing in effect the
-same words, were known both in the North of England and in the West
-Country. In later editions of Sir John Barley-corne old printers seem
-to have frequently varied the text, and in recent times Burns has
-recast the verses of the old ballad.
-
-The version given below is the oldest in the _Roxburghe Collection_,
-and must have been written at some time previous to the reign of
-James I. To anyone who has perused these pages so far, the pretty
-allegory contained in the ballad will not require explanation, but it
-may be well to point out that Sir John is the grain of barley which
-the farmer, the maltster, the miller, and the brewer do their best
-to destroy. However, after having forced Sir John to go through the
-various processes of agriculture, malting, and brewing, a friend,
-Thomas Good-ale, comes to the poor fellow’s assistance with mickle
-might, and takes “their tongues away, their legs or else their sight.”
-The illustration is taken from a later version.
-
-SIR JOHN BARLEY-CORNE.
-
- A pleasant new Ballad to sing both even and morne
- Of the bloody Murther of Sir John Barley-corne.
-
- To the tune of _Shall I lye beyond thee_. {296}
-
-[Illustration]
-
- As I went through the North countrey,
-   I heard a merry greeting,
- A pleasant toy and full of joy,
-   two noblemen were meeting.
-
- And as they walkèd for to sport,
-   upon a summer’s day,
- Then with another nobleman,
-   they went to make a fray.
-
- Whose name was Sir John Barley-corne;
-   he dwelt down in a dale;
- Who had a kinsman dwelt him nigh,
-   they cal’d him Thomas Good-ale.
-
- Another namèd Richard Beere
-   was ready at that time,
- Another worthy Knight was there,
-   call’d Sir William White-wine.
-
- Some of them fought in a Blacke-Jack,
-   some of them in a Can;
- But the chiefest in a blacke-pot,
-   like a worthy alderman. {297}
-
- Sir Barly-corn fought in a Boule,
-   who wonne the victorie;
- And made them all to fume and swear
-   that Barly-corne should die.
-
- Some said Kill him some said Drown
-   others wisht to hang him hie—
- For as many as follow Barly-corne,
-   shall surely beggers die.
-
- Then with a plough they plow’d him up,
-   and thus they did devise,
- To burie him quicke within the earth,
-   and swore he should not rise.
-
- With harrowes strong they combèd him,
-   and burst clods on his head,
- A joyful banquet then was made,
-   when Barly-corne was dead.
-
- He rested still within the earth,
-   till raine from skies did fall,
- Then he grew up in branches greene,
-   which sore amaz’d them all.
-
- And so grew up till midsommer,
-   which made them all afeard;
- For he was sprouted up on hie
-   and got a goodly beard.
-
- Then he grew till S. James’s-tide,
-   his countenance was wan,
- For he was growne unto his strength,
-   and thus became a man.
-
- With hookes and sickles keene
-   into the field they hide,
- They cut his legs off by the knees,
-   and made him wounds full wide. {298}
-
- Thus bloodily they cut him downe,
-   from place where he did stand,
- And like a thiefe for treachery,
-   they bound him in a band.
-
- So then they tooke him up againe,
-   according to his kind,
- And packt him up in severall stackes
-   to wither with the wind.
-
- And with a pitchforke that was sharpe,
-   they rent him to the heart;
- And like a thiefe for treason vile,
-   they bound him in a cart.
-
- And tending him with weapons strong,
-   unto the towne they hie,
- And straight they mowed him in a mow,
-   and there they let him lie.
-
- Then he lay groning by the wals,
-   till all his wounds were sore,
- At length they tooke him up againe,
-   and cast him on the floore.
-
- They hyrèd two with holly clubs,
-   to beat on him at once,
- They thwackèd so on Barly-corne
-   that flesh fell from his bones.
-
- And then they tooke him up againe,
-   to fulfill women’s minde,
- They dusted and they sifted him,
-   till he was almost blind.
-
- And then they knit him in a sacke,
-   which grievèd him full sore,
- They steep’d him in a Fat, God-wot,
-   for three days space and more. {299}
-
- Then they took him up againe,
-   and laid him for to drie,
- They cast him on a chamber floore,
-   and swore that he should die.
-
- They rubbèd him and stirrèd him,
-   and still they did him turne
- The malt-man swore that he should die,
-   his body he would burne.
-
- They spightfully tooke him up againe
-   and threw him on a Kill;
- So dried him there with fire hot,
-   and thus they wrought their will.
-
- Then they brought him to the mill
-   and there they burst his bones,
- The miller swore to murther him,
-   betwixt a paire of stones.
-
- Then they tooke him up againe
-   and serv’d him worse then that;
- For with hot scalding liquor store,
-   they washt him in a Fat.
-
- But not content with this, God-wot,
-   they did him mickle harme,
- With threatening words they promisèd,
-   to beat him into barme.
-
- And lying in this danger deep,
-   for feare that he should quarrell,
- They tooke him straight out of the fat
-   and tunn’d him in a barrell.
-
- And then they set a tap to him,
-   even thus his death begun,
- They drew out every dram of blood,
-   whilst any drop would run. {300}
-
- Some brought jacks, upon their backes,
-   some brought bill and bow,
- And every man his weapon had
-   Barly-corne to overthrow.
-
- When Sir John Good-ale heard of this,
-   he came with mickle might,
- And there he tooke their tongues away,
-   their legs, or else their sight.
-
- And thus Sir John in each respect,
-   so paid them all their hire,
- That some lay sleeping by the way,
-   some tumbling in the mire.
-
- Some lay groning by the wals,
-   some in the streets downe right,
- The best of them did scarcely know
-   what they had done ore-night.
-
- All you good wives that brew good Ale,
-   God turne from you all teene,
- But if you put too much water in
-   the devill put out your eyne!
-
-“Printed for John Wright and are to be sold at his Shop in Guilt Spurre
-Street at the sign of the Bible.”
-
-Another version commences:—
-
- There were two brothers liv’d under yon hill,
- As it might be you and I;
- And one of them did solemnly swear
- That Sir John Barley-corn should die.
-
-Burns’ ballad commences:—
-
- There went three Kings into the East,
- Three Kings both great and high,
- And they have sworn a solemn oath
- John Barleycorn should die, {301}
-
-and ends—
-
- Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
- Each man a glass in hand,
- And may his great posterity
- Ne’er fail in old Scotland.
-
-Burns, no doubt, founded his ballad on the West Country _Sir John
-Barleycorn_, which, according to Robert Bell, in his annotated edition
-of ancient ballads, can set up a better claim to antiquity than any
-copy in the _Roxburghe Collection_. It commences thus:—
-
- There came three men out of the West
-   Their victory to try;
- And they have taken solemn oath,
-   Poor Barleycorn should die.
-
-This, by the way, reads like the origin of a teetotal movement.
-
-Printed on the same sheet as the _Sir John Barley-corne_ of the
-_Roxburghe Collection_ is another old ballad of probably the same
-date, the author of which is unknown. It has no illustration, and is
-entitled:—
-
- A new Ballad for you to looke on,
- How mault doth deale with everyone.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- To the tune of _Triumph and Joy_.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Mas Mault he is a genleman,
- And hath beene since the world began,
- I never knew yet any man,
-     That could match with Master Mault, Sir,
- I never knew any match Mault but once,
- The Miller with his grinding stones,
- He laid them so close that he crusht his bones;
-     You never knew the like, Sir.
- Mault, Mault, thou art a flowre;
- Thou art beloved in every bowre,
- Thou canst not be missing one halfe howre;
-     You never saw the like, Sir.
- For laying of his stones so close
- Mault gave the Miller a copper nose,
- Saying, Thou and I will never be foes,
-     But unto thee I sticke, Sir. {302}
- Mault gave the miller such a blow,
- That from his horse he fell full low;
- He taught him his master Mault for to know;
-     You never saw the like, Sir,
- Our hostesse maid she was to blame,
- She stole Master Mault away from her dame,
- And in her belly she hid the same,
-     You never saw the like, Sir.
- So when the Mault did worke in her head,
- Twice a day she would be sped,
- At night she could not goe to bed,
-     Nor scarce stand on her feet, Sir.
- Then came in the Master Smith,
- And said that Mault he was a thief;
- But Mault gave him such a dash in the teeth,
-     You never saw the like, Sir.
- For when his iron was hot and red,
- He had such an ach all in his head,
- The Smith was faine to get him to bed,
-     For then he was very Sicke, Sir.
- The carpender came a peece to square,
- He bad Mault come out if he dare,
- He would empty his belly and beat his sides bare,
-     That he knew not where to sit, Sir.
- To fire he went, with an arme full of chips,
- Mault hit him right betweene his lips,
- And made him lame in both his hips;
-     You never saw the like, Sir.
- The shooe-maker sitting upon his seat,
- With Master Mault he began to fret,
- He said he would the Knave so beat,
-     You never saw the like, Sir.
-
-The writer, in a number of verses, then shows how “Mas Mault” deals
-with the shoemaker, the weaver, the tailor, the tinker, and the sailor,
-including the chapman, a person of interest to us as the retailer of
-such ballads as these.
-
- Then came the Chapman travelling by,
- And said, ‘my Masters I will be w’ ye, {303}
- Indeed, Master Mault, my mouth is dry,
-     I will gnaw you with my teeth, Sir.
- The chapman he laid on apace,
- Till store of blood came in his face,
- But Mault brought him in such a case,
-     You never saw the like, Sir.
-
-Several other persons are then dealt with, and the ballad ends with the
-lines:—
-
- Thus of my song I will make an end
- And pray my hostesse to be my friend,
- To give me some drink now my money is spend,
-     Then Mault and I am quite, Sir.
-
-The tune to which this ballad is to be sung is probably the same as the
-old air _Greene Sleeves_.
-
-A song near akin to the foregoing, also showing the effects of barley
-wine, is _The Little Barley Corn_. It is evidently of the time of
-Charles I., from the allusions it contains to the King’s great Porter,
-and to Banks, whose performing horse is mentioned.
-
-THE LITTLE BARLEY-CORN.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
- Whose properties and vertues here
- Shall plainly to the world appeare;
- To make you merry all the yeere.
-
- To the tune of _Stingo_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{304}
-
- Come, and doe not musing stand,
-   if thou the truth discerne;
- But take a full cup in thy hand
-   and thus begin to learne,
- Not of the earth nor of the ayre,
-   at evening or at morne,—
- But joviall boys your Christmas keep
-   _with the Little Barley-corn_.
-
- It is the cunningst alchymist
-   that e’re was in the land;
- ’Twill change your mettle when it list,
-   in turning of a hand.
- Your blushing gold to silver wan,
-   your silver into brasse,—
- ’Twill turn a taylor to a man,
-   _and a man into an asse_.
-
- ’Twill make a poore man rich to hang
-   a sign before his doore;
- And those that doe the pitcher bang,
-   though rich, ’twill make them poor,
- ’Twill make the silliest poorest snake
-   the King’s great Porter scorne;
- ’Twill make the stoutest lubber weak,
-   _this little Barley-Corn_.
-
- It hath more shifts than Lambe ere had,
-   or _Hocus-pocus_ too;
- It will good fellowes shew more sport
-   then _Bankes_ his horse could doe;
- ’Twill play you faire above the boord,
-   unlesse you take good heed,
- And fell you, though you were a Lord,
-   _and justify the deed_.
-
- It lends more yeeres unto old age,
-   than ere was lent by nature;
- It makes the poet’s fancy rage,
-   more than Castalian water. {305}
- ’Twill make a huntsman chase a fox,
-   and never winde his horne;
- ’Twill cheer a tinker in the stockes,
-   _this little barley-corn_.
-
- It is the only Will o’ th’ Wisp
-   which leades men from the way;
- ’Twill make the tongue-ti’d lawyer lisp,
-   and nought but (hic up) say.
- ’Twill make the Steward droope and stoop,
-   his bils he then will scorne,
- And at each post cast his reckoning up,
-   _this little barley-corn_.
-
- ’Twill make a man grow jealous soone,
-   whose pretty wife goes trim,
- And raile at the deceiving moone
-   for making hornes at him:
- ’Twill make the maidens trimly dance,
-   and take it in no scorne,
- And helpe them to a friend by chance,
-   _this little barley-corn_.
-
- It is the neatest serving-man,
-   to entertaine a friend;
- It will doe more than money can
-   all jarring suits to end:
- There’s life in it, and it is here,
-   ’tis here within this cup;
- Then take your liquor, doe not spare,
-   _but cleare carouse it up_.
-
-To this ballad there is a second part to much the same effect. We give
-the illustration and a few verses. Both parts are in the _Roxburghe
-Collection_.
-
- The Second Part of the Little Barley-corne
- That cheereth the heart both evening and morne.
-
- _To the same tune._
-
-{306}
-
-[Illustration]
-
- If sicknesse come, this physick take,
-   it from your heart will set it;
- If feare incroach, take more of it,
-   your head will soone forget it;
- Apollo, and the Muses nine,
-   doe take it in no scorne;
- There’s no such stuffe to passe the time
-   _as the little Barley-corne_.
-
- ’Twill make a weeping widdow laugh
-   and soone incline to pleasure;
- ’Twill make an old man leave his staffe
-   and dance a youthful measure:
- And though your clothes be nere so bad
-   all ragged rent and torne,
- Against the cold you may be clad
-   _with the little Barley-corne_.
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Thus the Barley-Corne hath power
-   even for to change our nature,
- And make a shrew, within an houre,
-   prove a kind-hearted creature:
- And therefore here, I say againe,
-   let no man tak’t in scorne,
- That I the vertues doe proclaime
-   _of the little Barley-corne_.”
-
- Printed at London for E. B.
-
-The following song in praise of ale is taken from _London
-Chanticleers_, a rude sketch of a play printed in 1659, but evidently
-much older. The {307} reference to being “without hops” in the verse
-vii. is noticeable. It will be remembered that the ale which our
-forefathers drank was made without hops, which “pernicious weeds” were
-only used in the “Dutchman’s strong beere.”
-
-I.
-
- Submit, Bunch of Grapes,
- To the strong Barley ear;
- The weak wine no longer
- The laurel shall wear.
-
-II.
-
- Sack, and all drinks else,
- Desist from the strife:
- Ale’s the only Aqua Vitæ,
- And liquor of life.
-
-III.
-
- Then come my boon fellows,
- Let’s drink it around;
- It keeps us from grave,
- Though it lays us on ground.
-
-IIII.
-
- Ale’s a Physician,
- No Mountebank Bragger:
- Can cure the chill Ague,
- Though it be with the Stagger.
-
-V.
-
- Ale’s a strong Wrestler,
- Flings all it hath met;
- And makes the ground slippery,
- Though it be not wet.
-
-VI.
-
- Ale is both Ceres
- And good Neptune too;
- Ale’s froth was the sea,
- From which Venus grew.
-
-VII.
-
- Ale is immortal:
- And be there no stops
- In bonny lad’s quaffing,
- Can live without hops.
-
-{308}
-
-VIII.
-
- Then come my boon fellows,
- Let’s drink it around:
- It keeps us from grave,
- Though it lays us on ground.
-
-The ballad entitled the _Merry Hoastess_ is probably of an earlier date
-than 1664. It bears the initials T. R., and was, perhaps, composed by
-Thomas Randal. The tune to which it was sung is a capital one, and is
-to be found in Mr. William Chappell’s _Popular Music_. This ballad is
-in the first volume of the _Roxburghe Collection_.
-
-THE MERRY HOASTESS
-
-or
-
-A pretty new Ditty, compos’d by an Hoastess that lives in the City,
-
- To wrong such an Hoastess it were a great Pitty,
- By reason she caused this pretty new Ditty.
-
- To the tune of _Buffcoat has no fellow_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{309}
-
- Come all that loves good company,
-   and hearken to my ditty,
- ’Tis of a lovely Hoastess fine,
-   that lives in London City;
- Which sells good ale, nappy and stale,
-   and alwayes thus sings she,
- My ale was tunn’d, when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- Her ale is lively, strong and stout,
-   if you please but to taste;
- It is well brew’d you need not fear,
-   but I pray you make no waste:
- It is lovely brown, the best in town,
-   and alwayes thus sings she,
- My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- The gayest lady with her fan,
-   doth love such nappy ale,
- Both city maids and country girls
-   that carries the milking pail:
- Will take a touch and not think much
-   to sing so merrily,
- My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- Both lord and esquire hath a desire
-   unto it night and day,
- For a quart or two be it old or new,
-   and for it they will pay,
- With pipe in hand, they may her command
-   to sing most merrily,
- My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- You’r welcome all brave gentlemen,
-   if you please to come in,
- To take a cup I do intend,
-   and a health for to begin:
- To all the merry joval blades,
-   that will sing for company,
- My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee. {310}
-
- Here’s a health to all brave Englishmen,
-   that loves this cup of ale;
- Let every man fill up his can,
-   and see that none do fail;
- ’Tis very good to nourish the blood,
-   and make you sing with me,
- My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
-SECOND PART.
-
-[Illustration]
-
- The bonny Scot will lay a plot
-   to get a handsome tutch
- Of this my ale, so good and stale,
-   so will the cunning Dutch:
- They will take a part with all their heart,
-   to sing this tune with me,
- My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- It will make the Irish cry A-hone!
-   if they but take their fill,
- And put them all quite out of tune
-   let them use their chiefest skill. {311}
-
- So strong and stout it will hold out
-   in any company,
- For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- The Welchman on St. David’s day
-   will cry, Cots plutter a nail,
- Hur will hur ferry quite away,
-   from off that nappy ale;
- It makes hur foes with hur red nose,
-   hur seldom can agree,
- But my ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- The Spaniard stout will have a bout,
-   ’cause he hath store of gold,
- Till at the last, he is laid fast,
-   my ale doth him so hold:
- His ponyard strong is laid along,
-   yet he is good company,
- For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- There’s never a tradesman in England,
-   that can my ale deny,
- The weaver, taylor and glover
-   delights it for to buy,
- Small money they do take away,
-   if that they drink with me,
- For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- There is Smug the honest Blacksmith,
-   he seldom can pass be,
- Because a spark lies in his throat
-   which makes him very dry:
- But my old ale tells him his tale,
-   so finely we agree,
- For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- The brewer, baker and butcher,
-   as well as all the rest, {312}
- Both night and day will watch where they
-   may find ale of the best:
- And the gentle craft will come full oft,
-   to drink a cup with me,
- For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
- So to conclude good fellows all,
-   I bid you all adieu,
- If that you love a cup of ale,
-   take rather old than new,
- For if you come where I do dwell,
-   and chance to drink with me,
- My ale was tunn’d when I was young,
-   and a little above my knee.
-
-The following poem in praise of Yorkshire Ale was written in the
-seventeenth century. The author is given on the title page as “G. M.
-Gent.” The little volume, somewhat rare nowadays, was printed at York
-in 1697, by F. White, for Francis Hildyard, at the sign of the Bible in
-Stone Gate.
-
-THE PRAISE OF YORKSHIRE ALE
-
- Wherein is enumerated several sorts of Drink, and a Description of
- the Humors of most sorts of Drunkards. To Which is added, a Yorkshire
- Dialogue, in its pure natural Dialect, as it is now commonly spoken in
- the North parts of Yorkshire.
-
-  Bacchus having called a Parliament of late,
-  For to consult about some things of state,
-  Nearly concerning the honour of his Court
-  To the Sun, behind th’ Exchange, they did resort:
-  Where being met, and many things that time
-  Concerning the Adulterating Wine,
-  And other liquors; selling of Ale in Muggs,
-  Silver Tankards, Black-Pots, and little Jugs:
-  Stronge Beer in Rabits, and cheating penny cans,
-  Three pipes for two pence and such like Trepans:
-  Vintners’ small bottles, silver-mouthed black Jacks, {313}
-        *       *       *       *       *
-  And many other things were there debated,
-  And Bills passed upon the cases stated;
-  And all things ready for Adjournment, then
-  Stood up one of the Northern countrymen,
-  A boon good fellow, and lover of strong Ale,
-  Whose tongue well steep’d in Sack begun this Tale.
- “My bully Rocks, I’ve been experienced long
-  In most of liquors, which are counted strong;
-  Of Claret, White-wine and Canary Sack,
-  Renish and Malago, I’ve had no lack,
-  Sider, Perry, Metheglin, and Sherbet,
-  Coffee and Mead, with Punch and Chocolet:
-  Rum and Tea, Azora wine, Mederry,
-  Vin-de-Paree, Brag, wine with Rosemary:
-  Stepony, Usquebath, besides all these,
-  Aqua Cœlestis Cinnamon, Heart’s ease;
-  Brave Rosa Solis, and other Liquors fine,
-  Rasberry Wine, Pur-royal, and Shampine,
-  Malmsey and Viper-wine, all these I pass;
-  Frontineack; with excellent Ipocras:
-        *       *       *       *       *
- “Tent, Muskatine, Brandy and Alicant
-  Of all these liquors I’ve had no scant,
-  And several others; but none do I find,
-  Like humming Northern Ale to pleas my mind,
-  It’s pleasant to the taste, strong and mellow,
-  He that affects it not, is no boon fellow.
-        *       *       *       *       *
- “It warms in winter, in summer opes the pores,
-  ’Twill make a Sovereign Salve ’gainst cuts and sores;
-  It ripens wit, exhillerates the mind,
-  Makes friends of foes, and foes of friends full kind;
-  It’s physical for old men, warms their blood,
-  Its spirits makes the Coward’s courage good:
-  The tatter’d Beggar being warmed with Ale,
-  Nor rain, hail, frost, nor snow can him assail,
-  He’s a good man with him can then compare,
-  It makes a Prentise great as the Lord Mayor;
-  The Labouring man, that toiles all day full sore,
-  A pot of ale at night, doth him restore, {314}
-  And makes him all his toil and paines forget,
-  And for another day’s work, hee’s then fit.
-        *       *       *       *       *
- “Oh the rare virtues of this Barly Broth;
-  To rich and poor it’s Meat Drink and Cloth.”
-  The Court here stopt him, and the Prince did say,
- “Where can we find this Nectar, I thee pray,”
-  The boon good fellow answered, “I can tell,
-  North Allerton in Yorkshire doth excell
-  All England, nay all Europe for strong Ale,
-  If thither we adjourn we shall not fail
-  To taste such humming stuff, as, I dare say,
-  Your Highness never tasted to this day.”
-
-Bacchus’ Court then adjourns to North Allerton, and imbibes the noble
-ale kept at Madame Bradley’s, with this result:—
-
- For arguments some were and learned discourses,
- Som talk’d of greyhounds, som of running horses,
- Som talk’d of hounds, and some of Cock o’ th game,
- Som nought but hawks, and setting dogs did name,
- Som talk’d of Battels, Sieges and great wars,
- And what great Wounds and cutts they had and scars,
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Some there were all for drinking healths about,
- Others did rub the table with their Snout
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Some broke the pipes, and round about them threw,
- Some smoak’d tobacco till their nose was blew.
- Some called for victuals others for a crust,
- Some op’d their Buttons and were like to bust,
- Som challeng’d all the people that were there
- And some with strange invented oaths did sweer,
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Some fill’d the room with noise yet could not speak,
- One word of English, Latine, French and Greek
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Some burnt their Hats, others the Windowes broke,
- Some cry’d more liquor we are like to choke,
-        *       *       *       *       * {315}
- Lame gouty men did dance about so sprightly,
- A boy of fifteen scarce could skip so lightly,
- Old crampy Capts. that scarce a sword could draw,
- Swore now they’d keep the King of France in awe,
- And new commissions get to raise more men,
- For now they swore they were grown young again;
- Off went their Perriwigs, Coats and Rapers,
- Out went the candles, Noses for Tapers
- Serv’d to give light, while they did daunce around,
- Drinking full healthes with caps upon the ground:
-        *       *       *       *       *
- This moved Bacchus presently to call
- For a great jug which held about five quarts,
- And filling to the Brim; come here my hearts
- Said he, wee’l drink about this merry health,
- To th’ honour of the Town, their state, their wealth,
-        *       *       *       *       *
- And for the sake of this good nappy ale,
- Of my great favour it shall never fail,
-
-Bacchus and his party having once tasted the ale, drink all the casks
-out—
-
-           then out they pull’d the Taps
- And stuck the Spiddocks finely in their hats,
-
-The Court then adjourns to Easingwold—
-
- With Nanny Driffield there to drink a glass
- For Bacchus having heard of her strong ale,
- He swore by Jupiter, he would not fail
- To have a merry bout if he did find
- Her nappy ale to please his princely Mind;
-
-Bacchus is so delighted with the ale that he grants her letters patent.
-
- Bacchus Prince of good fellows; To all to whom
- These our brave letters Pattents shall now come,
- Whereas wee’ve been informed now of late,
- That Nanny Driffield our great court and state
- For many years last past has much advanced
- By her strong humming ale. . . .
-        *       *       *       *       * {316}
- This land-lady unto the noble state,
- And honour of a countess we create;
- And by our merry fuddling subjects, she
- Countess of Stingo henceforth call’d shall be.
-
-Some townsmen then come in, and a contest is arranged between the
-ale-drinkers and the wine-drinkers, in which the latter are of course
-worsted.
-
-1
-
- Colonus and Bacchus did meet
- Each one to commend his own liquor;
- The Juice of the Grape was sweet;
- But Barly Oyle ran down the quicker;
- Colonus did challenge the Gods,
- To fight in defence of his Barley,
- But Bacchus perceiving the odds,
- Desir’d a friendly parley.
-
-2
-
- They drunk full Bumpers about,
- And Bacchus an health did begin,
- The Bacchanalians gave a great shout,
- The Colonians then thronged fast in:
- They drunk double Tankards around,
- Till the Grape Boyes begun for to glore,
- The Rusticks neer flinch’d their ground,
- Till Bacchus fell down to the Floor.
-
-3
-
- Colonus did heartily laugh,
- And about the God they did daunce,
- Full pots about they did quaff:
- Whilest Bacchus lay still in a Trance;
- The grape boyes were beat out of play,
- And at length poor Bacchus did rise;
- To Colonus he yielded the day,
- So the Rusticks obtainèd the Prize.
-
-Bacchus, on coming to, adjourns his court to York, where they again
-taste—
-
- Both from North Allerton and Easingwold,
- From Sutton, Thirke, likewise from Rascal Town,
- . . . Ale also that’s called Knocker-down—
-        *       *       *       *       * {317}
- They tasted all; And swore they were full glad,
- Such Stingoe, Nappy, pure ale they had found,
- Let’s loose no time said they but drink around.
-
-The Yorkshire Ale, however, proves too strong for Bacchus and his
-Court, and a final adjournment South is made, though—
-
-     Bacchus swore to come he would not fail
- To glut himself with Yorkshire nappy ale.
- It is so pleasant, mellow too and fine,
- That Bacchus swore hee’d never more drink wine.
-
-Those who wish to peruse the “Yorkshire Dialogue in its pure natural
-Dialect” are referred to the British Museum.
-
-In the _Roxburghe Collection_ are nineteen ballads by Lawrence Price,
-a celebrated writer of the time of Charles I. He wrote chap-books,
-riddles, and political squibs in rhyme. The following rollicking
-drinking song is from his pen. Only one copy of it is known to be in
-existence.
-
-GOOD ALE FOR MY MONEY.
-
- The Good-fellowes resolution of strong Ale,
- That cures his nose from looking pale.
-
- To the tune of _The Countrey Lasse_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{318}
-
- Be merry my friends, and list a while
-   unto a merry jest,
- It may from you produce a smile
-   when you hear it exprest,
- Of a younge man lately married,
-   which was a boone good fellow,
- This song in ’s head he alwaies carried,
-   when drinke had made him mellow,
- I cannot go home, nor I will not go home
-   its long of the oyle of Barly;
- Ile tarry all night for my delight,
-   and go home in the morning early.
-
- No tapster stout, or Vintner fine
-   quoth he shall euer get
- One groat out of this purse of mine
-   to pay his master’s debt:
- Why should I deal with sharking Rookes,
-   that seeke poore gulls to cozen,
- To giue twelue pence for a quart of wine,
-   of ale ’twill buy a dozen.
-         ’Twill make me sing, I cannot, &c.
-
- The old renowned Ipocrist
-   and Raspie doth excell,
- But neuer any wine could yet
-   my honour please to swell,
- The Rhenish wine or Muskadine,
-   sweet Malmsie is too fulsome
- No giue me a cup of Barlie broth,
-   for that is very wholesome,
-         ’Twill make me sing, I cannot, &c.
-
- Hot waters ar to me as death,
-   and soone the head oreturneth,
- And Nectar hath so strong a breath
-   Canary when it burneth,
- It cures no paine but breaks the braine,
-   and raps out oaths and curses,
- And makes men part with heauiy heart,
-   but light it makes their purses,
-         I cannot go home, &c. {319}
-
- Some say Metheglin beares the name,
-   with Perry and sweet Sider,
- ’Twill bring the body out of frame,
-   and reach the belly wider
- Which to preuent I am content
-   with ale that’s good and nappie,
- And when thereof I haue enough
-   I thinke myself most happy.
-         I cannot go home, &c.
-
- All sorts of men when they do meet
-   both trade and occupation,
- With curtesie each other greet,
-   and kinde humiliation;
- A good coale fire is their desire,
-   whereby to sit and parly
- Theyle drink their ale and tell a tale,
-   and go home in the morning early.
-         I cannot go home, &c.
-
- Your domineering swaggering blades,
-   and caualiers that flashes,
- That throw the Jugs against the walls
-   and break in peeces glasses
- When Bacchus round cannot be found
-   they will in merriment
- Drinke ale and beere and cast of care
-   and sing with one consent
-         I cannot goe home, &c.
-
-The title-page of the following poem tells its history:—
-
-               THE HIGH AND MIGHTIE COMMENDATION OF THE
-                     VERTUE OF A POT OF GOOD ALE.
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-             Full of wit without offence, of mirth without
-             obscenities, of pleasure without scurrelitie
-                 and of good content without distaste
-                *       *       *       *       * {320}
-             Whereunto is added the valiant battell fought
-                     betweene the Norfolk Cock and
-                           the Wisbich Cock.
-                   *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration
-
- Written by Thomas Randall.
- London:
- Printed for F. Cowles; T. Bates; and J. Wright.
- MDCXLII
-]
-
-THE HIGH AND MIGHTIE COMMENDATION OF THE VERTUE OF A POT OF GOOD ALE.
-
- Not drunk nor sober, (but neighbour to both,)
- I met with a friend in Alesberry vale;
- He saw by my face, that I was in the case,
- To speak no great harm of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- And as we did meet, and friendly did greet,
- He put me in mind of the name of the Dale,
- That for _Alesberries_ sake, some paines I would take,
- And not burie the praise of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The more to procure me, then did he adjure me,
- (If the _ale_ I drank last, were nappie and stale,)
- To doe it its right, and stir up my spright,
- And fall to commend a Pot of Good Ale. {321}
-
- Quoth I, to commend it, I dare not begin,
- Lest therein my cunning might happen to faile,
- For many there be that count it a sin,
- But once to look towards a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- Yet I care not a pin, for I see no such sin,
- Nor any else that my courage may quaile,
- For this I do find, being taken in kind,
- Much vertue there is in a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- When heavinesse the mind doth oppresse,
- And sorrow and griefe the heart doth assaile,
- No remedy quicker but take up your liquour,
- And wash away care with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Priest and the Clark, whose sights are dark,
- And the print of the letter doth seeme too small,
- They will con every letter, and read service better,
- If they glaze but their eyes with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Poet divine, that cannot reach wine,
- Because that his money doth oftentimes faile,
- Will hit on the veine, and reach the high straine,
- If he be but inspired with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- All writers of Ballads, for such whose mishap
- From Newgate up Holbourne to Tyburne doe saile,
- Shall have sudden expression of all their confession,
- If the Muse be but dew’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Prisoner that is enclos’d in the grate,
- Will shake off remembrance of bondage and jaile,
- Of hunger or cold, or fetters or fate,
- If he pickle himself with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Salamander Blacksmith that lives by the fire,
- While his Bellowes are puffing a blustring gale,
- Will shake off his full Kan, and sweare each true Vulcan,
- Will Hazzard his witts for a Pot of Good Ale. {322}
-
- The woer that feareth his suit to begin,
- And blushes, and simpers, and often looks pale,
- Thogh he miss in his speech and his heart were at his breech,
- If he liquors his tongue: with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Widdow, that buried her husband of late,
- Will soon have forgotten to weep and to waile;
- And think every day twaine, till she marry againe,
- If she read the contents of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Plowman and Carter that toyles all the day,
- And tires himself quite at the Plough-taile,
- Will speak no lesse things, than of Queens and Kings,
- If he do but make bold with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- And indeed it will make a man suddenly wise,
- Ere while was scarce able to tell a right tale,
- It will open his Jaw, he will tell you the Law,
- And straight be a Bencher with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- I doe further alledge, it is fortitudes edge,
- For a very Coward that shrinks like a Snaile,
- Will sweare and will swagger, and out goes his Dagger,
- If he be but well arm’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The naked man taketh no care for a coat,
- Nor on the cold weather will once turne his taile,
- All the way as he goes, cut the wind with his nose,
- If he be but well lin’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The hungrie man seldome can mind his meat,
- (Though his Stomach could brook a Ten Penny Nail,)
- He quite forgets hunger, thinks of it no longer,
- If his guts be but sows’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Reaper, the Mower, the Thresher, the Sower,
- The one with his Sithe, and the other with his flaille,
- Pull ’em out by the pole, on the perill of my sole,
- They will hold up their caps at a Pot of Good Ale. {323}
-
- The Beggar, whose portion is alwayes his Prayer,
- Not having a tatter, to hang at his taille,
- Is as rich in his rags, as a Churle with his bags,
- If he be but entic’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- It puts his povertie out of his mind,
- Forgetting his browne bread, his wallet, his maile,
- He walks in the house like a six footed Lowse,
- If he be but well drench’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Souldier, the Saylor, the true man, the Taylor,
- The Lawyer that sels words by weight and by tale,
- Take them all as they are, for the War or the Bar,
- They all will approve of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- The Church and Religion to love it hath cause,
- (Or else our Fore-fathers, their wisdomes did faile,)
- For at every mile, close at the Church stile,
- An house is ordain’d for a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- And Physick will flavour _Ale_ (as it is bound)
- And stand against Beere both tooth and naile,
- They send up and downe, all over the towne,
- To get for their Patients a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- Your Ale-berries, Cawdles, and Possets each one,
- And sullabubs made at the milking pale,
- Although they be many, Beere comes not in any,
- But all are compos’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- And in very deed, the Hop’s but a weed,
- Brought o’re ’gainst law, and here set to sale;
- He that first brought the Hop, had reward with a rope,
- And found that his Beere was bitter than ale.
-
- The antient tales that my Grannam hath told,
- Of the mirth she had in Parlour and Hall,
- How in Christmas time, they would dance, sing, and rime,
- As if they were mad, with a Pot of Good Ale. {324}
-
- Beere is a stranger, a Dutch Upstart come,
- Whose credit with us, sometimes is but small;
- But in the records of the Empire of Rome,
- The old Catholic drink is a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- To the praise of Gambinius, the old British King,
- Who devised for his nation (by the Welshmen’s tale),
- Seventeene hundred years before Christ did spring,
- The happie invention of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- But he was a Pagan, and Ale then was rife,
- But after Christ came, and bade us, _All haile,
- Saint Tavie was neffer trink peere in her life,
- Put awle Callywhiblin_, and excellent Ale.
-
- All religions and nations, their humours and fashions
- Rich or poore, knave or whoore, dwarfish or tall
- Sheep or shrew, Ile avow, well I know will all bow,
- If they be but wel steep’d, with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- O Ale, _ab alendo_, thou liquor of life,
- I wish that my mouth were as big as a Whale,
- But then ’twere to little, to reach thy least title,
- That belongs to the Praise of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- Thus many a vertue to you I have showed,
- And not any vice in all this long tale,
- But after the Pot, there commeth a shot,
- And that is the Blot of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
- Well, said my friend, the blot I will beare,
- You have done very well, it is time to strike saile,
- We’ll have six Pots more, though we dye on the score,
- To make all _this good_ of a Pot of Good Ale.
-
-We may be pardoned for omitting “the valiant battell fought between the
-Norfolk Cock and the Wisbich Cock.”
-
-Returning again to the _Roxburghe Collection_. _A Health to all Good
-Fellowes_ is a very quaint old drinking song, having beneath its title
-a wood-cut no less quaint than the letterpress. It was printed about
-the commencement of the seventeenth century, for Henry Gossen. The
-author is unknown; possibly he was Martin Parker or Lawrence Price.
-{325} No copy beyond that in the _Roxburghe Collection_ is known to be
-in existence. The tune is a good one.
-
-A HEALTH TO ALL GOOD-FELLOWES:
-
-or,
-
-The good Companions Arithmeticke.
-
-To the tune of _To drive cold Winter away_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
- Be merry my hearts, and call for your quarts,
-   and let no liquor go lacking,
- We have gold in store, we purpose to roar
-   until we set care a packing.
- Then Hostis make haste, and let no time waste,
-   let every man have his due,
- To save shooes and trouble, bring in the pots double
-   for he that made one, made two.[63]
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Then while we are here, wee’le drinke Ale and Beer,
-   and freely our money wee’le spend,
- Let no man take care for paying his share,
-   if need be Ile pay for my friend,
- Then Hostesse make haste, and let no time waste;
-   you’re welcome all kind Gentlemen; {326}
- Never feare to carowse, while there is beere in the house,
-   for he that made nine made ten.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- Now I thinke it is fit, and most requisit,
-   to drinke a health to our wives,
- The which being done, wee’le pay and be gone,
-   strong drinke all our wits now deprives:
- Then Hostesse lets know, the summe that we owe,
-   twelve pence there is for certaine,
- Then fill t’other pot, and here’s money for’t,
-   for he that made twelve made thirteen.”
-
-The poet was probably at a loss for a word to rhyme with fourteen, or
-the ballad would have been longer.
-
-   [63] The “he that made” is probably the brewer. The numbers increase
-   by ones in the last line of each verse, the last verse reaching
-   thirteen.
-
-Another song of much the same character is _Monday’s Work_, the work
-being no work at all, but a day spent at the alehouse. The only known
-copy of this ballad is in the _Roxburghe Collection_. The author is
-unknown.
-
-MONDAYS WORK
-
-or
-
- The Two honest neighbours both birds of a feather
- Who are at the Alehouse both merry together.
-
- To the tune of _I owe my Hostesse Money_.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{327}
-
- Good morow neighbour Gamble
- Come let you and I goe ramble,
- Last night I was shot,
- Through the braines with a pot
-     and now my stomach doth wamble;
- Your Possets and your Caudles,
- Are fit for babies in Cradles;
- A piece of salt Hogge,
- And a haire of the old Dogge
-     is good to cure our drunken Noddles.
-         Come hither mine host, come hither,
-         Here’s two birds of a feather,
-         Come hither my host
-         With a pot and a tost,
-         and let us be merry together.
-
- I rose in the morning early,
- To take this juice of barly,
- But if my wife Jone,
- Knew where I were gone,
-     shee’d call me to a Parley.
- My bones I do not fauour,
- But honestly doe labour:
- But when I am out
- I must make a mad bout
-    come here’s halfe a pot to thee neighbour.
-         Come hither, &c.
-
- Gramarcy, neighbour Jinkin,
- I see thou louest no shrinking,
- And I for my part
- From thee will not start,
-     come fill us a little more drinke in.
- I’th weeke we aske but one day,
- And that’s next after Sunday
- Our custome wee’le hold
- Although our Wiues scold
-    the Maultman comes a Monday.
-         Come hither, &c.
-
- Come let us haue our Liquor about us
- Mine host does not misdoubt us, {328}
- Yet if we should call,
- And pay none at all,
-     you were better be without us:
- But we are no such fellowes,
- Though some in clothes excell us
- And yet haue no coyne
- For Liquor to joyne
-     yet we haue both whites and yellowes.
-         Come hither, &c.
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
-There is a second part to this song, which ends with the words:—
-
- Now lest our wiues should find us
- ’Tis fit we should look behind us
- Let’s see what is done
- Then pay and begone,
-     as honesty hath assigned us.
- ’Tis strong ale I conceiue it
- ’Tis good in time to leaue it
- Or else it will make
- Our foreheads to ake,
-    ’tis vanity to outbraue it.
-         Come hither, &c.
-
-Coming now to works of a later date, the following comicality seems
-worthy of reproduction. It is hardly necessary to point out that the
-verses are a smart hit upon female ale-bibbers. They are attributed
-to Samuel Bishop, M.A., rector of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook (1783). “A
-worthy man and generally beloved,” says Dr. Hughson, LL.D., in his
-_London_.
-
-QUOD PETIS HIC EST.
-
- No plate had John and Joan to hoard,
-   Plain folks in humble plight;
- One only tankard crown’d the board,
-   And that was filled each night.
- Along whose inner bottom sketched
-   In pride of chubby grace,
- Some rude engravers hand had etch’d
-   A babys angels face,
- John swallowed first a moderate sup;
-   But Joan was not like John; {329}
- For when her lips once touched the cup,
-   She swill’d till all was gone.
- John often urged her to drink fair,
-   But she ne’er changed a jot;
- She loved to see that angel there,
-   And therefore drain’d the pot.
- When John found all remonstrance vain,
-   Another card he play’d;
- And where the angel stood so plain,
-   He got a devil pourtrayed.
- John saw the horns, Joan saw the tail,
-   Yet Joan as stoutly quaffed;
- And ever when she seized her ale
-   She cleared it at a draught.
- John star’d with wonder petrify’d,
-   His hairs rose on his pate;
- “And Why dose guzzle now?” he cryd,
-   “At this enormous rate?”
- “Oh, John,” says she, “am I to blame,
-   I can’t in conscience stop;
- For sure ’twould be a burning shame
-   To leave the devil a drop.”
-
-A collection of ale ballads and songs would hardly be complete without
-at least one on the “guid yill of Scotland.” Burns’ works are so well
-known that we fall back upon a capital Scotch song written at the
-close of the last century, and bearing the title _A Coggie O’ Yill_.
-The author was Andrew Sheriffs of Shirrefs, at one time Editor of the
-_Aberdeen Chronicle_. He also wrote a Scotch pastoral entitled _Jamie
-and Bess_, which was published in 1787, and a second time in 1790.
-Burns, in his Third _Northern Tour_, speaks of Sheriffs, who was a
-bookbinder by trade, as “a little decrepit body with some abilities.”
-The words of the song were set to music by a celebrated violin player,
-named Robert Macintosh.
-
-A COGGIE O’ YILL.
-
-     A Coggie o’ Yill,
-     And a pickle aitmeal,
- And a dainty wee drappie o’ whiskey,
-     Was our forefathers dose,
-     For to sweel down their brose
- And keep them aye cheery and friskey— {330}
-     Then hey for the wiskey, and hey for the meal,
-     And hey for the Cogie, and hey for the yill,
-     Gin ye steer a’ thegither they’ll do unco weel,
- To keep a chiel cherry and brisk aye.
-
-     When I see our Scots lads,
-     Wi’ their kilts and cockauds,
- That sae often ha’e loundered our foes, man:
-     I think to mysel’,
-     On the meal and the yill,
- And the fruits o’ our Scottish Kail brose, man.
-       Then hey, &c., &c.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
-     Then our brave Highland blades,
-     Wi’ their claymore and plaids,
- In the field drive like sheep a’ our foes, man:
-     Their courage and pow’r—
-     Spring from this to be sure,
- They’re the noble effects o’ the brose, man.
-       Then hey, &c., &c.
-
- But your spyndle-shank’d sparks
-     Wha sae ill fill their sarks,
- Your pale-visaged milksops and beaux, man:
-     I think when I see them,
-     ’Twere kindness to gie them—
- A cogie o’ yill or o’ brose, man.
-       Then hey, &c., &c.
-
-     What John Bull despises,
-     Our better sense prizes,
- He denies eatin’ blanter ava, man;
-     But by eatin o’ blanter,
-     His mare’s grown, I’ll warrant her,
- The manliest brute o’ the twa, man.
-       Then hey, &c., &c.
-
-It would not be difficult to fill a volume of considerable size with
-songs and ballads having ale or beer for their subject, but the
-foregoing, together with many others to be found in these pages, are
-among the best of their kind, and will doubtless give a fair idea of
-the poetry of malt liquor.
-
-{331}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-
- “Blessing of your heart, you brew good Ale.”
-                            _Two Gentlemen of Verona._ Act iii., Sc. 1.
-
- “The bigger the brewing the better the browst.”
-                                               _Old Yorkshire Proverb._
-
-_BREWING IN THE PRESENT DAY. — ANECDOTAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF
-SOME REPRESENTATIVE LONDON, DUBLIN, BURTON, AND COUNTRY BREWING FIRMS.
-— EDINBURGH ALES._
-
-Passing on to modern times and bidding adieu to the old brewers,
-brewsters, ale-wives, and tapsters, it behoves us to devote ourselves
-to giving some account of the brewing of the present day, thereby
-bringing our history up to date. With this intent, we cannot do better
-than commence with a few figures, startling enough, no doubt, to others
-than the _cognoscenti_, as to the magnitude of what are commonly called
-the Liquor Trades.
-
-From a report drawn up by Professor Leoni Levi in 1878, at the request
-of the late Mr. M. T. Bass, M.P., and from recent Parliamentary
-returns, it appears that the total amount of capital invested in the
-liquor trades of the United Kingdom amounts to about one hundred and
-seventeen million pounds sterling. This sum is equal to more than half
-the total value of our exports, and is more than double the annual
-receipts of all the railways. About one-third of the whole National
-Revenue is drawn from this source.
-
-Making due allowance for families, the persons employed directly
-in {332} the various trades connected with the production and
-distribution of alcoholic drinks are not fewer in number than one and a
-half million.
-
-From these startling facts, it follows that teetotallers, before they
-can accomplish the total abolition of spirituous liquors, must arrange
-for either emigrating or giving employment to over a million persons,
-and must be prepared to pay one-third more taxes than they do at
-present.
-
-It may be well, before proceeding further, to give a short and very
-simple account of brewing as it is now carried on in nearly every
-brewhouse in the country, for without a few general ideas on the
-subject many of our readers would no doubt be a little puzzled by the
-references to mashing tuns, vats, union rooms and such like, which
-occur in this chapter.
-
-In brewing there are three principal operations: 1.—Mixing the malt
-with hot water; 2.—Adding hops to the infusion obtained and boiling
-them together; and 3.—Fermenting the liquid by putting yeast in it.
-
-The malt when brought to the brewery is first screened to remove dirt,
-dust and foreign particles; nails and other odds and ends of metal
-being caught on a bar magnet over which the malt passes. It is then
-crushed between rollers and, by an ingenious mechanical contrivance,
-is carried to large bins or hoppers situated above the mash tuns, the
-huge tubs in which the malt and hot (not boiling) water are mixed. This
-process is called mashing, and was formerly done by merely stirring
-water and malt together with a long oar or pole, a practice of course
-still followed by home brewers.
-
- See, the welcome Brewhouse rise,
- See, the priest his duty plies!
- And, with apron duly bound,
- _Stirs the liqour round and round_.
- O’er the bubbling cauldron play
- Mirth and merriment so gay;
- Melancholy hides her head,
- The frowns of Envy, all are fled;
- Youthful Wit and Attic Salt
- Infuse their savour in the Malt.
-
-Mashing is now carried on in various ways, machinery entirely taking
-the place of manual labour. Sometimes the water—always spoken of as
-“liquor” in a brewery—rises in the tun, and the malt comes in from
-{333} above, but in many breweries the malt and water run in together,
-a machine mixing them before they enter. When the malt-tea has stood
-long enough—huge revolving rakes mixing the mash meanwhile—the amber
-infusion (technically “wort”) is drawn off and more water added, until
-all the goodness has been extracted from the malt, the empty husks or
-“grains” only being left. With grains pigs and cows are often fed, and
-not brewers’ horses, as is popularly imagined.
-
-“Mashing” over, the next process is to give the malt-tea its bitter
-flavour, and this is done by boiling it in a huge copper with a
-quantity of hops. When sufficiently boiled, the hops and wort are run
-off from the copper into huge square vessels (technically “hop-backs”)
-with perforated bottoms, which act as strainers or colanders, the
-liquid passing through the holes, leaving the hops behind, which are
-subsequently pressed to get all the liquid out of them. The brewer
-has now a quantity of unfermented hot beer, which he must first cool
-by passing it among pipes containing icy cold water. Refrigerators
-and ice-making machines are, it need hardly be said, of the greatest
-assistance to the modern brewer, who without them could only brew in
-the cold months. Some firms have spent as much as £8,000 on their
-ice-making machines. The beer, which at present is a teetotal drink
-devoid of alcohol, having been cooled, is turned into large tubs or
-square boxes, and yeast is added to it. Fermentation now sets in, and
-by various ingenious contrivances the froth as it rises to the top is
-skimmed off or carried away. During this process the beer is kept at a
-low temperature by means of cold water-pipes which are taken through
-the fermenting tuns. When the fermentation has almost ceased, the beer
-is put into smaller vessels,[64] where a little fermentation still goes
-on, and the froth either works over the side or is skimmed off or, as
-in the “union” system at Burton, works up through pipes. Fermentation
-being now practically at an end, the beer goes into huge vats, from
-which it is drawn into casks as required. This last operation is termed
-“racking.” Even then the bung-holes are left open for a day or two to
-allow a little froth to work out.
-
-   [64] There are several varieties of these vessels: Pontoons, unions,
-   &c., the most approved being shallow trays. On these the yeast rises
-   very quickly. The process is termed “cleansing.”
-
-The foregoing process seems, and is, of a simple character, but to
-{334} obtain the very best results great skill is necessary. The
-colour of the malt, the temperature of the water in the mash tun,
-the temperature during fermentation, the proper proportion of the
-materials, and many other matters are of the greatest importance. Some
-brewers, and notably Messrs. Guinness & Sons, keep their beer in vats
-for a considerable length of time before racking it into the casks, but
-the practice is gradually dying out, and huge vats such as that built
-some years ago by Messrs. Meux & Co. are now but little used.
-
-The racking room of a large brewery is a wonderful sight. All round the
-sides are huge vats—twenty or thirty, perhaps—in each of which fifteen
-to twenty people could dine comfortably. These giant tubs tower above
-thousands of barrels which line the floor, and which look like pigmies
-by comparison.
-
-One of the most interesting portions of a modern brewery is the
-cooperage. Coopers are highly-skilled workmen, and it is more or less
-of a marvel to see how without any measurement they plane down planks
-into staves for casks, and fit them together so closely that the
-{335} cask is perfectly sound and incapable of leaking. The length
-of the staves is measured, for the rest the Cooper trusts to his eye.
-Coopering is a most ancient trade, and appears from the illustration by
-Jost Ammon, in Schopper’s rare book, Πανοπλια, to be carried on in much
-the same way now as it was in Germany in the year 1568.
-
-[Illustration: Der Bender.
-
-A Sixteenth-century Cooperage.]
-
-Before giving any account of the firm known as Allsopp & Sons,[65] it
-is only fitting to devote a few lines to the Pale Ale Metropolis.
-
-   [65] The following Sketches of certain of our great brewing firms
-   are in alphabetical order. The task of placing the firms according
-   to their importance or size was of a character too invidious to be
-   attempted.
-
-The history of Burton has been so exhaustively treated by Mr. Molyneux
-that it is not an easy matter to add anything fresh on the subject.
-In the monastic establishments which were inaugurated at a very early
-date in the neighbourhood of the town, enormous quantities of ale were
-brewed. There is no record, however, of any public breweries at that
-date (1295), though there is little doubt that the trade of malting
-was largely carried on. By the sixteenth century a small local trade
-in brewing had been established. In a series of letters written by
-Walsingham, in 1584, to Sir Ralph Sadler, governor of Tutbury Castle,
-to the inquiry, “What place neere Tutbury beere may be provided for her
-Majestie’s use?” is the answer that “beere” may be had “at Burton three
-myles off.” Information of the progress of the Babbington conspiracy
-is said to have been conveyed to Mary Queen of Scots, while in Tutbury
-Castle, by a Burton brewer; and a load of beer on its way from Burton
-to Fotheringay was intercepted, and among the casks were found
-correspondence throwing fatal light on the plot.
-
-In 1630 the fame of the Burton ale had spread to London, and that
-excellent liquor was sold at “The Peacock” in Gray’s Inn Lane. In the
-_Spectator_ of May 20th, 1712, is recorded how the writer and Sir Roger
-de Coverley visit Vauxhall, where, after inspecting the garden, they
-concluded their walk “with a glass of Burton ale and a slice of hung
-beef.”
-
-The history of Burton as a great brewing centre cannot be traced back
-much beyond 1708, at least so far as export is concerned. When, as
-the result of an Act passed in 1698, water communication was opened
-up between Burton and the Baltic ports, the brewers were not slow to
-take advantage of their opportunities, and in 1748 a considerable
-export trade had been established, the Russians being by far the best
-customers. {336} Both Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine were
-extremely fond of Burton ale. The Empress, indeed, is said to have
-loved it not wisely but too well. In 1791 there were nine brewers
-in the town, their names being Bass, Clay, Evans, Leeson, Musgrave,
-Sherratt, Wilson (two) and Worthington. Previous to the year 1822
-Burton ale was better known on the Continent than in England, but about
-that time the brewers turned their attention to increasing their home
-trade, and met with marked success. In 1851 the breweries had increased
-to sixteen, giving employment to 867 men and 61 boys.
-
-The special recommendation of the spring water at Burton consists in
-the fact that whatever saccharine may be put into it, appears to remain
-there for any length of time without being chemically injured by those
-mineral combinations which are generally present in spring water.
-
-Burton of the present day is a city of breweries. Tall chimneys tower
-on all sides, the smell of new beer pervades the air, great red brick
-buildings block the way in every direction; engines glide noiselessly
-about dragging trucks loaded with casks; burly brewers’ men meet you
-at every corner; it is, in fact, the very home of John Barleycorn. The
-Breweries of Burton in this present year of grace are thirty in number,
-and give employment to about eight thousand men and boys.
-
-In a view of Burton-on-Trent, engraved in 1720, is a small brewery,
-which was then the property of one Benjamin Wilson, the founder of the
-great firm of S. Allsopp and Sons. Though not the creator of the Burton
-Beer trade, he was the first to carry on an extensive business as a
-common brewer, and was, it is believed, the originator of the extensive
-export trade which Burton carried on during the eighteenth century.
-Letters of his are still extant, from which it may be gathered that he
-had established a flourishing trade in Burton ales so early as 1748.
-His account books show that in 1770 the business done with Russia was
-an extensive one, and partly carried on by barter.
-
-In 1774, in a letter to Mr. Charles Best, Mr. Wilson writes: “We have
-already two large Brewhouses Employ’d, and are about to use a third,
-the whole of which will take all the money I can raise with convenience
-to myself, beyond which I do not choose to go.” In a letter dated
-Oct. 23, 1775, from Messrs. B. Wilson & Co. to Messrs. J. D. Newman &
-Co., St. Petersburg, occur the following interesting passages:—“To
-people who have the Credit of their own Manufacture and y inseparable
-Interest of their Friends at Heart, we cannot but feel an accumulated
-Satisfaction at every additional instance of our Ale proving fine and
-distinguishing itself, wch, in Justice to its Character, we have y^e
-{337} happiness to say our Friends have universally confirmed. To y^e
-several Queries of y^r Letter, we beg leave to acquaint you that tho’
-many Merchants from St. Petersburg are supplied with Burton Ale from
-our House, yet there are many we are not intimately connected with,
-their orders being transmitted through y^e Houses of Hull and London
-. . . . . The Price of Ale last year at Burton from y^e extravagant
-Price of Grain sold for 17^d per Gallon.”
-
-In the order book for 1770 are many entries which appear curious enough
-to modern readers. Some of the customers order their casks to be cased,
-_i.e._, enclosed in a larger cask—a process necessary to prevent the
-“Gainsboro’ Captains,” as the bargees were called, from “sucking the
-monkey.” One customer writes: “Send me 24-gallon casks strong ale and
-let y^e casks be iron-hooped at the head.” Another wants “two 14-gallon
-casks of strong ale by _sea_” to London, and another “a hogshead by
-_land_” also to London, the carriage of which must have been very
-extensive.
-
-There may possibly be persons still living who recollect an old fellow
-named Dyche, who was full of information regarding the early history
-of the Burton Ale trade. He remembered John Wilson well, and described
-him as a kind, hearty, portly, well-favoured old gentleman, somewhat
-peppery withal, but never angry without a cause. Dyche’s father worked
-for Mr. Wilson during forty years as a sawyer, his business being to
-cut up into staves for the coopers, the timber brought from the Baltic
-in exchange for ale. At fourteen years of age the younger Dyche was
-apprenticed to the cooper at the brewery. The commonest ale was then,
-according to Dyche, as strong as the strongest ale now brewed.
-
-Dyche used to tell how old Benjamin Wilson had two sons, and a daughter
-renowned far and wide for her beauty. This Miss Wilson became the wife
-of Mr. James Allsopp, and her son Samuel was father of the Mr. Henry
-Allsopp, now Lord Hindlip of Hindlip, who for many years was head of
-the firm.
-
-Benjamin Wilson the younger, having no children, took his nephew Samuel
-into the business, much against the wish of Mr. James Allsopp, who had
-intended his son for the church. John Walker Wilson, another son of old
-Benjamin, also joined the firm, but soon left it and started a brewery
-(now Worthington’s) on his own account. On the death of Benjamin Wilson
-the younger, who never married, the business came altogether into the
-hands of his nephew, Mr. Samuel Allsopp, and was carried on under the
-style of “Wilson & Allsopp” until 1822, when the name was changed to
-“Samuel Allsopp & Son.” {338}
-
-The Allsopps come of an ancient family. One Hugh de Allsopp (or
-Elleshope) went with Richard I. to the Holy Land, and was knighted for
-good service during the siege of Acre. He married a niece of Sir Ralph
-de Farington, who presented Sir Hugh with certain lands in Derbyshire,
-which, for seventeen generations, the Allsopps-of-the-Dale enjoyed as
-their patrimony. Anthony Allsopp, who married a daughter of Sir John
-Gell of Hopton, sold the family seat in 1691 to Sir Philip Gell, his
-brother-in-law. Mr. James Allsopp, whom we have mentioned as being the
-first of the name who joined the firm, was a grandson of Anthony. He
-married a member of the old Staffordshire family of Fowlers.
-
-Several ancient deeds, some of the early part of the thirteenth
-century, in the possession of Lord Hindlip, contain conveyances of
-land to and from various members of the Alsop family, the chief names
-mentioned being Henry de Alsop, Ranulf de Alsop, and Thomas de Alsop.
-
-In Pepys’ _Diary_ mention is made of a Mr. Alsop, brewer to Charles II.
-Whether any connection existed between him and the Allsopp family is
-not known.
-
-Returning now to the history of the firm—in 1822 high import duties
-were imposed by the Russian Government upon English ales, and this
-fact led for a time to the almost total suspension of the trade which
-Messrs. Allsopp & Son had for so long carried on with Russia. The
-results were not, however, altogether disastrous, for the Burton firm
-now saw the necessity of pushing their home trade, and the ales which
-had hitherto been better known in St. Petersburg than in London came
-into considerable demand in the southern portions of this country.
-
-An eye-witness of a banquet given by Peter the Great has left the
-following description:—“As soon as you sit down you are expected to
-drink a cup of brandy, after which they ply you with great glasses of
-adulterated Tokay and other vitiated wines, and between whiles with a
-bumper of the strongest English beer.” Burton ales then were of a very
-different character to the excellent bitter of to-day; Dyche spoke as
-to their strength, and they were so rich and luscious that if a little
-was spilled on a table the glass would stick to it.
-
-At this time a brewer named Hodgson had the whole of the Indian
-export trade, but Messrs. Allsopp & Son, at the suggestion of a Mr.
-Majoribanks, brewed and exported ale similar to Hodgson’s. Their
-venture met with marked success, and for many years the firm held the
-{339} chief place among the exporters of Indian Pale Ale. The first
-Burton specimen of that beverage, many thousand hogsheads of which are
-now brewed annually, was compounded by Job Goodhead, Mr. Allsopp’s
-veteran maltster, in a _tea-pot_.
-
-Space forbids a long account of Mr. S. Allsopp’s life. To his
-endeavours was chiefly due the bringing of the Derby and Birmingham
-railway system close to Burton. In both public and private life Mr.
-Allsopp was charitable to a fault, and greatly beloved. He died in
-1838, and was succeeded by his two sons, Charles James and Henry. The
-latter, so long the head of the firm, is too well known to need mention
-here. He it was who took a leading part in refuting certain mischievous
-charges, which were to the effect that the Burton brewers used noxious
-materials in the manufacture of their bitter beer. He represented
-Worcestershire from 1874 to 1880, and in 1880 was created a Baronet. In
-the early part of 1886 he had the honour of being raised to the peerage
-under the title of Lord Hindlip of Hindlip and Alsop-en-le-Dale, having
-retired from the firm for some years in favour of his three sons, the
-Hon. Charles, George and Percy Allsopp.
-
-A word now as to the breweries, which rank among the best and most
-perfect of their kind. They are three in number, and are connected
-together, and with the makings, cooperages, &c., by about ten miles of
-railway.
-
-The New Brewery is an immense structure, no single building being in
-existence which has a greater brewing capacity. The union room is of
-very fine proportions, being 375 feet in length and 105 in breadth. It
-contains 1,424 unions, which can cleanse 230,688 gallons at one time.
-The union rooms, taken altogether, contain about 4,500 unions, each
-with a capacity of 695 gallons.
-
-Next to the New Brewery comes the Old Brewery, and lastly the Model
-Brewery, which seems a mere toy compared with the others. It is used
-chiefly for experiments, and for occasional brews of stout and porter.
-The firm also possesses extensive maltings, and, it is almost needless
-to say, large cooperages, stables, &c.
-
-A feature in the conduct of Messrs. Allsopp & Sons’ business is the
-consideration shown to the employés, who, without counting clerks and
-the office staff, number 1,600. For their benefit the firm maintains a
-cricket ground, bowling green, a sick and funeral club, and a library
-managed by a scripture reader, who also visits the men and their
-families. Here and there about the breweries and maltings may be seen
-tottering old men, who seem out of place among so much life and {340}
-bustle. These are the pensioners, who work as much or as little as
-they like. We believe that Messrs. Allsopp and Sons rank third among
-the brewing firms of the United Kingdom, and the extent of their
-business may be inferred from the simple fact that they have an annual
-expenditure of £1,400 to £1,500 in postage stamps alone. In the busy
-periods of the year upwards of 20,000 casks pass weekly through their
-racking rooms. It would be presumption to attempt to criticise the malt
-liquor produced by this firm or, indeed, that of any of our leading
-brewers.
-
-Early in the eighteenth century, as early indeed as the year 1710, if
-the Commercial List is correct, a building called the Anchor Brewery
-existed on the Surrey side of the Thames, in Southwark, owned by a Mr.
-Halsey, whose beer is mentioned in State papers of Queen Anne’s reign
-as being exported to Flanders for the use of the army. This gentleman
-having amassed a large fortune, and married his daughter to Lord
-Cobham, severed his connection with trade, and sold the business to Mr.
-Thrale, the member for the Borough of Southwark, and Sheriff for the
-County of Surrey. Mr. Thrale died in 1781, and was succeeded by his
-son, whose wife Hester was the intimate friend of the great Dr. Johnson.
-
-Even at that time a great business was done by the firm, about 30,000
-barrels of beer being produced annually. According to the _Annual
-Register_ for 1759, Thrale’s was the fourth largest London brewery,
-Calvert’s, Whitbread’s and Truman’s coming before it. It is said that
-Thrale lost £130,000 by unfortunate speculations, but so profitable
-was the brewery that at the end of nine years he had saved a sum which
-enabled him to pay all the debts contracted by reason of his losses.
-
-Dr. Johnson’s friendship with the Thrales commenced in 1765, and
-continued until the brewer’s death. The Doctor lived sometimes in a
-house near the brewery, and sometimes in the villa at Streatham. Up to
-1832, when the brewery was destroyed by fire, a room near the entrance
-gate used to be shown, which was said to have been the Doctor’s study.
-In Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_ are numerous letters and reports of
-conversations relating more or less to the Brewery. One of the last
-letters written by the Doctor was to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and contained
-proposals for the establishment of a convivial club, as _The_ Club
-was getting overweighted with Bishops. The Doctor scoffed at the idea
-that persons, however learned, could meet habitually merely for the
-purpose of discussing philosophy or the sciences without material
-refreshment, and he gravely warned Mrs. Thrale that if she forbade
-{341} card-tables in her drawing room, she must at least give her
-guests plenty of sweatmeats, else nobody would come to see her. But
-the Doctor, and not the bonbons or card-tables, must have been the
-loadstone which filled Mrs. Thrale’s reception rooms. At Thrale’s death
-Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and three gentlemen, named Cator, Smith
-and Crutchley, found themselves appointed Executors, and determined
-to carry on the business; but Dr. Johnson, who by nature could not
-help taking the lead in whatever he was concerned, was not born to
-be a brewer, and the undertaking was not a success. Mrs. Thrale, in
-_Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson_, has left a very lively account of these
-amateur brewers’ proceedings. In June, 1781, when the Executors had
-made the resolve to sell the business, she wrote: “Dear Dr. Johnson was
-somewhat unwilling—but not much at last—to give up a trade by which
-in some years £15,000 or £16,000 had undoubtedly been got, but by
-which in some years its possessor had suffered agonies of terror and
-tottered twice upon the verge of bankruptcy . . . adieu to brewing and
-borough wintering; adieu to trade and tradesmen’s frigid approbation.
-May virtue and wisdom sanctify our contract, and make buyer and seller
-happy in the bargain!”
-
-When the brewery was offered for sale, Dr. Johnson appeared bustling
-about with his ink-horn and pen in his buttonhole, like any excise
-man. On being asked what he really considered to be the value of the
-property, he spoke the celebrated words: “We are not here to sell a
-parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond
-the dream of avarice.” The brewery was finally sold by private contract
-for £135,000 to Messrs. Robert Barclay and John Perkins, who were
-associated in the transaction with Mr. David Barclay, junr., and Mr.
-Sylvanus Bevan, of the banking firm of Barclay, Bevan & Co. Mr. Robert
-Barclay was succeeded by his son Charles, who represented Southwark in
-Parliament, and his sons and grandsons. In 1827, the last year of the
-old Beer-tax, Barclays’ headed the list of London firms, having brewed
-341,331 barrels of beer.
-
-The present brewery and its belongings adjoin Bankside, extend from
-the land arches of Southwark Bridge nearly half the distance to London
-Bridge, and cover about twelve acres. Within the brewery is said to be
-the site of the old Globe Theatre. In an account of the neighbourhood,
-dated 1795, it is stated that “the passage which led to the Globe
-Tavern, of which the playhouse formed a part, was till within these few
-years known by the name of Globe Alley, and upon its site now stands a
-large storehouse for porter.” {342}
-
-In the Globe Theatre, which was built by Henslowe and his son-in-law
-Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, Shakspere produced and acted
-in several of his plays. It is curious that with Barclay and Perkins’
-brewery should be associated the names of our greatest poet and perhaps
-our most brilliant conversationalist—Dr. Johnson—who did so much to
-revive the popularity of his predecessor.
-
-A rather amusing anecdote used to be told of Madame Malibran, who, like
-many singers, knew the beneficial effects of stout on the voice, and
-whose favourite evening’s repast after the Opera consisted of oysters
-and bottled stout. Once hearing the name of the Honourable Craven
-Berkeley announced in company, she tripped up to him, and, with great
-animation, said, “Ah, Mr. Barclay and Perkins, I do owe you so much!”
-This reminds us of another anecdote, told of Madame Pasta. When in
-England she was asked by a literary lady of high distinction whether
-she drank as much stout as usual. “No, mia cara,” was the reply “prendo
-half and half adessa.”
-
-Messrs. Barclay, Perkins and Co.’s brewery ranks among the sights of
-London, and is visited by thousands of foreigners during the year.
-The present brewhouse is nearly as large as Westminster Hall, and
-each of the three malt bins could, if required, contain an ordinary
-three-storied house. The vats number a hundred and fifty, with
-capacities varying from one hundred to three thousand five hundred
-barrels; the largest of these weigh when full no less than 500 tons.
-The full capacity of the mash tuns is 690 quarters. The water used in
-brewing is drawn from an artesian well 623 feet deep, and the firm give
-employment to over six hundred men.
-
-Among the collection of Hearne’s Letters, in the Bodleian Library, is
-one from Saml. Catherall, dated “Luscom, near Bath, Nov. 2, 1729.” It
-contains a few semi-humorous verses on the death of two mutual friends,
-named Whiteside and Craster, and ends thus:—
-
- “Ev’en you alas! with grief o’ercome, shall lend
-  Some tears, and lose y^e stoick in y^e Friend:
-  So stern Achilles wept—But you, and I
-  Observant of Decorum, will not cry
-  Like children (for we all were born to Die);
-  Basse’s Immortal Ale shall make us gay,
-  He Holds out longest y^t dilutes his clay.
-
-                          “Your faithful Friend,
-                                       “SAM CATHERALL.
- “To Mr. Thomas Hearne
-                                    “At Edmund Hall, in Oxford.
- “By the cross post.”
-
-{343}
-
-Though there are records extant of persons bearing the name of Bass
-who did various notable things, such as undertaking a pilgrimage to
-Canterbury in 1506 (not forgetting a certain Mrs. Laura Bassi, who was
-promoted to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Bologna, in Italy
-“having first passed a strict examination and answered all points with
-surprising capacity and learning), this is nevertheless the first
-mention of Basse’s ale. Who was this Basse”? Frankly, we cannot say,
-but from the date of the letter it is certain that he was not the
-founder of the present firm.
-
-The year 1877 was the centenary of that great commercial enterprise
-now known as Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton, Limited. It was when George the
-Third was King, and Pitt, the youngest Prime Minister this country has
-ever known, was in power, that Mr. William Bass, the proprietor of a
-considerable carrying business, commenced to brew ale at Burton. His
-brewhouse was situated in the High Street, and the building on that
-site, still in the hands of the firm, is always spoken of as the “Old
-Brewery.” The land occupied was about equal in extent to a moderately
-large garden, and the power in the brewery was probably altogether
-manual, for Watt had not at that time fully developed the greatest
-invention the world has ever known. Bass and Co.’s Brewery and its
-belongings now cover forty-five acres of freehold and over a hundred of
-leasehold land, on which are thirty-two steam engines of altogether 610
-horse power!
-
-Mr. William Bass, finding that his new undertaking was proving a
-success, sold his carrying business to the well-known house of Pickford
-& Co. The brewery did not, however, begin to take any important place
-in the trade until the beginning of the present century, some few years
-after Mr. Michael Thomas Bass, grandson of the founder, had been taken
-into the business, which then soon began to increase with marvellous
-rapidity, owing, there can be no doubt, to the fact that Mr. Michael
-Bass’s principal aim was to brew the very best beer that could possibly
-be brewed. In 1834 Mr. Ratcliff was taken into partnership, and a few
-years later Mr. Gretton joined the firm. In 1853 was built the middle
-brewery, between Guild Street and Station Street. In 1864 a third
-brewhouse was opened in Station Street, only thirty-six weeks after the
-foundations were commenced. Both the Middle Brewery and the New Brewery
-have been greatly enlarged within the last few years, and the Old
-Brewery has been entirely rebuilt. In 1884 Mr. M. T. Bass died, and was
-probably more deeply lamented than any other inhabitant of Burton since
-that place became a town. In 1880 the {344} business was turned into a
-private Limited Company, of which the eldest son of Mr. M. T. Bass is
-the chairman.[66]
-
-   [66] Created (1886) Baron Burton of Rangemore and of
-   Burton-on-Trent, in the county of Stafford.
-
-Before attempting to give any idea of the enormous business transacted
-by Messrs. Bass & Co., a few words respecting the man by whose strict
-integrity, business qualifications, and persistent and successful
-efforts to produce the best possible article, and none other, the
-name of Bass has been rendered a familiar word throughout the whole
-civilised world. He was born in 1799, and entered the business
-immediately after leaving school. The trade then done was so limited
-that he had for a time to act as a traveller; but year by year
-the demand for Bass’s Ale became greater and greater, and for a
-considerable period before his death Mr. Bass was at the head of the
-greatest pale ale brewery in the world. He was a genial, kindly man,
-and had a genuine pride in the success of his great undertaking. Those
-who had the pleasure of being his guests will no doubt remember his
-translation of two lines from _Martial_, Book vi. Epigram 69:—
-
- Non Miror quod potat aquam tua Bassa, Catulle!
- Miror quod _Bassi filia_ potat aquam.
-
-“I am not the least surprised, O Catullus, that your nymph Bassa drinks
-water; what I _am_ surprised at is that Bass’s daughter drinks water.”
-The epigram has also been rendered into English verse:—
-
- Not strange, my friend, I’m thinking,
- Thy Bassa water drinking,
- Most strange that Bass’s daughter
- Should think of drinking water.
-
-Mr. M. T. Bass represented Derby in Parliament for thirty-five years,
-being eight times elected in succession, only resigning in 1883, having
-lived to be the oldest member in the House. He gave Derby a Free
-Library, a Museum, an Art Gallery, a Public Bath, and a Recreation
-Ground, at a cost of £50,000. Railway Companies’ servants have
-reason to be grateful to him, for through his endeavours their hours
-of labour, though still in some case left far too long, have on many
-lines been considerably shortened. For some years many of them worked
-sixteen, eighteen, and even twenty hours out of the twenty-four.
-He also strenuously exerted himself to obtain the abolition of
-imprisonment for debt. His benefactions to Burton are too numerous
-to mention. The chief of them were the gifts of St. Paul’s and St.
-Margaret’s {345} Churches, with a Parsonage House, Schools, and an
-endowment of £500 a year, and a Workman’s Club and Institute at
-a total cost of over £100,000. Mr. Bass was repeatedly offered a
-Peerage, and as often refused it. We cannot better conclude this short
-and very inadequate description than by quoting the words used by Sir
-William Harcourt when opening St. Paul’s Institute at Burton-on-Trent:
-“We are met here to-day to commemorate the munificent benefaction of
-Mr. Bass. He is a man advanced in years, in honour, and in wealth,
-which is the fruit of a life of intelligent industry. He was a Liberal
-in his youth; he is a Liberal in his age. Years and wealth have not
-brought to him selfish timidity. In his grey hairs he cherishes the
-generous sentiments which inspired his earlier days. He has received
-freely, and freely has he bestowed.”
-
-The liberality of the firm was not confined to Mr. Michael Bass. The
-Messrs. Gretton have erected and endowed a Church in the suburbs of
-Burton at a cost of nearly £20,000, and Public Baths and Wash-houses,
-costing nearly £10,000, have been presented to the town by Messrs.
-Ratcliff.
-
-The firm of Bass & Co. alone contribute to the National Revenue
-upwards of £780 per day, and its breweries at Burton-upon-Trent
-are the largest of their kind in the world, the business premises
-extending, as we have said, over 145 acres of land. Locomotives have to
-a large extent superseded brewers’ drays at Burton, and this firm has
-connection with the outer railway systems by twelve miles of rails on
-the premises, and use as many as 60,000 railway trucks in the course of
-six months. The casks required to carry on the business number 600,000,
-of which 46,901 are butts, and 159,608 are hogsheads. Some ingenious
-calculations have been made with regard to these casks. Piled one above
-another they would make 3,300 pillars, each reaching to the top of
-St. Paul’s. The great Egyptian Pyramid is 763 ft. square at the base;
-the butts, standing on end and placed bulge to bulge, would furnish
-bases for _five_ such pyramids, and the other casks would be more than
-sufficient for the superstructure 460 ft. high.
-
-Though labour-saving machinery is used as much as possible, Bass & Co.
-employ at Burton alone 2,250 men and boys. In 1821 only 867 men and
-61 boys were engaged in all the Burton breweries. In the course of a
-season the firm now sends out over 800,000 barrels, and manufacture
-raw material weighing 85,000 tons. In the year ending June 30th, 1883,
-250,000 quarters of malt were used and 31,000 cwt. of hops. The amount
-of business now done by the firm in one year cannot be less than
-£2,400,000, figures which will give some idea of the capital employed.
-{346}
-
-A detailed description of the three brewhouses would fill the whole of
-the space devoted to this chapter; suffice it, therefore, to say that
-the racking rooms on the ground floor of the new brewery cover more
-than one and a half acre, the tunning rooms of the same area contain
-2,548 tunning casks of 160 gallons each; and the copper house contains
-three water coppers that will boil 12,000 gallons each; and eleven wort
-coppers that will each boil 2,200 gallons of wort.
-
-On the cooperage great demands are made, for about 40,000 casks, which
-are made in part by machinery, are annually exported. The firm has
-thirty-two maltings at Burton, and others elsewhere, which, during the
-malting season, make 7,600 qrs. per week.
-
-The annual issue of Bass and Co.’s labels amounts to over one hundred
-millions. Some idea of this quantity may be gathered from the fact that
-if they were put end to end in one long line they would reach to New
-York and back again, a distance of five thousand miles.
-
-Both the late Mr. Bass’s sons are members of the firm. The eldest,
-Lord Burton of Rangemore, late member for the Burton division of
-Staffordshire, represented Stafford from 1865 to 1868, and East
-Staffordshire from 1868 to 1886. Mr. Hamar Bass, the second son,
-represented Tamworth for some years, and in the general elections of
-1885–6 was returned for West Staffordshire.
-
-Between the firms of Bass and Allsopp there is a friendly rivalry as to
-which shall brew the best ale. A few years since Sir M. Arthur Bass and
-Mr. Charles Allsopp while fishing on Loch Quvich, in Inverness-shire,
-were nearly drowned. Sir Arthur had hooked a large fish, and Mr.
-Allsopp, eager to see it, stepped on one side of the boat, which at
-once capsized. The anglers and their attendants clung to the bottom
-of the boat, and were ultimately thrown on an island in an exhausted
-condition! The following paragraph shortly afterwards appeared in the
-_World_:—“The exciting accident which nearly proved the death of the
-rival brewers of Burton-on-Trent, at once so touching in its record
-of disinterested friendship, and so highly satisfactory in its sequel
-to the world at large, has suddenly inundated me with facetious rhyme
-and caustic epigram. This is how one of my correspondents treats the
-subject:—
-
- Let friends who go fishing for salmon or wrasse,
- Take a hint from the story of Allsop and Bass;
- When you hook a fine fish, of your brother keep clear,
- Or your salmon, when caught, may _embitter your beer_ (bier).
-
-{347}
-
-One of the most ancient and important brewing centres in the kingdom
-is the city of Dublin. With one exception, all its breweries are
-exclusively devoted to the manufacture of stout, that sturdy beverage
-the fame of which has gone forth into all lands; and just as Burton
-has acquired the right to be termed the Pale Ale Metropolis, so does
-Ireland’s chief town contend with London for the honour of being called
-the Capital of Black Beer.
-
-It is remarkable that so early as the commencement of the seventeenth
-century, Dublin was already a notable brewing centre, producing a
-description of brown ale. Barnaby Ryche, writing about that time, gives
-a quaint account of the manners and customs of the people, and calls
-attention to the great number of alehouses in Dublin during the reign
-of James I.
-
-“I am now,” he says, “to speake of a certaine kind of commodity, that
-outstretcheth all that I have hitherto spoken of, and that is the
-selling of ale in Dublin, a quotidian commodity that hath vent in every
-house in the towne, every day in the weeke, at every houre in the day,
-and in every minute in the houre: There is no merchandise so vendible,
-it is the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin: the whole profit
-of the towne stands upon ale-houses, and selling of ale, but yet the
-cittizens, a little to dignifie the title, as they use to call every
-pedlar a merchant, so they use to call every ale-house a taverne,
-whereof there are such plentie, that there are streates of tavernes.
-
-“. . . . This free mart of ale selling in Dublyne is prohibited to
-none, but that it is lawfull for every woman (be she better or be she
-worse) either to brewe or else to sell ale.”
-
-About the time of the Restoration there were ninety-one public
-brewhouses in Dublin, and in the early part of the eighteenth century
-the trade, though on the decrease, was evidently thriving, the
-brewhouses being seventy in number. It seems, however, that, as the
-century wore on, the trade died away, for in 1773 there were only
-thirty-five Breweries surviving. The decay of so important an industry
-was chiefly due to three causes: In the first place, the Irish brewers
-were saddled with a heavy tax, and, secondly, English Porter was taking
-the place of old Irish brown ale in the popular fancy. An old song on
-the Tavern of the Cross Keys, in Dublin, composed about the middle of
-the century, opens with the lines—
-
- When London Porter was not known in town
- And Irish ale or beer went glibly down.
-
-{348}
-
-It does not seem that the Dublin brewers, who were frequently
-petitioning Parliament for assistance, faced the difficulty by brewing
-Porter themselves until the year 1778. The third adverse influence
-was the taste for ardent spirits, especially rum and brandy, which
-had sprung up; and the Irish records of the day are full of allusions
-to the injury which this was working, not only to the trade of the
-Brewers, but to the morals and health of the people.
-
-A remarkable letter is still preserved, written by Henry Grattan on
-this subject at the close of the century. It appears to be addressed
-to the Brewers of Dublin, probably in answer to one of their numerous
-petitions for protection. It is as follows:—
-
-“Gentlemen,
-
-“The Health of Ireland and the prosperity of her breweries I consider
-as intimately connected. I have looked to your trade as to a source
-of life and a necessary means of subsistence. I have considered it as
-the natural nurse of the people and entitled to every encouragement,
-favour, and exemption. It is at your source the Parliament will find
-in its own country the means of Health with all her flourishing
-consequences, and the cure of intoxication with all her misery.
-
-“My wishes are with you always. My exertions, such as they are, you may
-ever command.
-
-“I have the honour to be your sincere and your humble servant,
-
- “HENRY GRATTAN.”
-
-At present (1886) there are only seven firms of any note in Dublin;
-and of those existing a hundred years ago but two survive—Messrs.
-Sweetman’s and the well-known house of Messrs. Guinness, which has long
-been at the head of the trade in Ireland. To some English readers it
-may come as a revelation that at the present time this Irish firm is
-the greatest producer of malt liquors in the whole world.
-
-Some account of the rise and progress of so vast a business cannot but
-be of interest to the student of industrial enterprise, but in the
-compass of the present work it will of course only be possible to give
-the merest outline of its growth.
-
-Arthur Guinness, the great-grandfather of Sir Edward Guinness, the
-present owner, purchased the original premises from a Mr. Ransford
-in the year 1759. The business appears to have been of very modest
-dimensions, for the plant, as acquired by Arthur Guinness, included
-only one mash tun and one seventy-barrel copper. The brewery had, even
-at that time, been worked for a considerable period, certainly from the
-earliest years of the eighteenth century, and probably before that.
-{349}
-
-The property, about one acre in extent, thus acquired in 1759, forms
-the nucleus of the present gigantic establishment. The principal
-brewhouse stands to-day precisely on the site once occupied by
-Ransford’s mash tun and copper; but since the commencement of the
-nineteenth century many additional properties have from time to
-time been acquired, until at present the total area occupied by the
-brewhouses and their belongings amounts to between forty and fifty
-statute acres.
-
-For many years the dimensions of the business were but moderate.
-Wakefield, writing in 1809, states that Guinness was then only the
-second brewer in Ireland, Beamish and Crawford of Cork, who brewed
-upwards of 100,000 barrels a year, standing first.
-
-Without attempting to account for or to describe the advance, since
-Wakefield’s day, of the great Dublin firm (made a limited liability
-company in October, 1886), we may briefly notice one or two points of
-special interest connected with the manufacture.
-
-The materials used are absolutely confined to malt, pale and roasted,
-and hops. Of the latter a preference has always been shown for those of
-Kent, no other English varieties being used. But of late years American
-Hops have been largely consumed as well. The water for brewing is drawn
-from the City Watercourses, and not from the Liffey, as some people
-unacquainted with Dublin have supposed.
-
-It would be impossible here to describe in detail the process or
-the plant of the St. James’ Gate Brewery, and owing to the position
-held by the firm it seems almost unnecessary to say that every
-modern improvement of the Engineer and the Scientist, whether for
-facilitating the operations of Brewing or for ensuring the safety
-and welfare of those employed, has been carefully investigated and
-judiciously applied. The minute attention which is paid to every detail
-of the process, from the manufacture and selection of the malt, to
-the treatment and storage of the beer in every stage, is matched by
-the liberal provision made for the men engaged in the work and their
-families.
-
-To the visitor nothing is more astonishing than the size and number
-of the vats. Some of these huge erections of Oak and Iron contain no
-less than 90,000 gallons apiece; and to a lengthened storage in these
-is due in great measure the peculiar character of the Stout devoted to
-the foreign export trade. The tendency in most modern breweries has
-been to dispense with lengthened storage in vat. Not so here, and the
-erection of vats of great capacity has kept pace with the extension of
-the export trade.
-
-Another remarkable feature is the large provision of ice machines,
-{350} or rather of engines for the cooling, by the evaporation of
-ether and ammonia, of fluid brine, which circulates by a complicated
-system of copper pipes through every part of the vast storehouses,
-and ensures a winter temperature on the hottest summer day. It is the
-extent to which this system is applied that is so striking in this
-establishment, where all is on so vast a scale that the ordinary units
-of measurement seem inadequate to convey a notion of the truth. The
-same may be said of the multitude of mains by which the finished beer
-is conveyed from the storage vats, a distance of half a mile beneath
-one of the principal streets of the city, to the lower portion of the
-works where the beer is “racked” into cask.
-
-It is related that the Empress of Brazil, who a few years since visited
-the Brewery, went away under the impression—a not unnatural one—what
-beer was laid on like gas and water to all the houses in Dublin.
-
-A small railway of 22-inch gauge, and which is altogether about two
-miles in length, penetrates every part of the Brewery. The rolling
-stock includes six locomotives and upwards of one hundred and sixty
-trucks and bogies.
-
-The descent from the Brewery to the lower level of the river side has
-been engineered with remarkable skill. In order to avoid crossing the
-street which bisects the works a spiral tunnel has been constructed,
-by means of which the line descends thirty feet in three circuits, the
-diameter of which is only forty yards, while the gradient is 1 in 39.
-Much of the internal traffic of the Brewery is thus carried on with
-ease and rapidity by means of this unique underground railway.
-
-So far as is possible in a Brewery which has been added to from time to
-time, advantage has been taken of the physical features of the locality
-in the general arrangement of the plant. Thus the finished beer runs by
-gravitation from the Brewery to the Racking Stores, which are situated
-upon the Quays. Full advantage has been taken of this excellent
-position, and the firm possesses a fleet of steamers and barges which
-convey the filled casks to the docks, a distance of a mile and a half.
-The Export trade is entirely carried on by river, while a branch line
-from the Great Southern and Western Railway terminus bears away many a
-train-load of porter every day, to be distributed over the whole length
-and breadth of Ireland.
-
-We have already borne witness to the increasing popularity of porte
-in Ireland, and feel sure that no better thing could happen to the
-“distressful country” than that the drinking of whisky and the bad
-substitutes that are sold under that name should be brought within
-{351} reasonable limits, and that malt liquor should become the daily
-drink of every Irish farmer, who from that source will find, to again
-quote Grattan’s words, “the means of Health with all her flourishing
-consequences, and the cure of intoxication with all her misery.”
-
-Romford, in Essex, is known to the few as the birthplace of Sir Anthony
-Cooke and Francis Quarles, the poet; but to the many it is the source
-whence come certain excellent and deservedly popular ales. Through the
-town wanders a little stream now called the Rom, but described in old
-country Maps as the Bourne Brooke, and which in the fifteenth century
-was called the Mercke-dyche.[67] Towards the close of the eighteenth
-century there stood by the bridge which carries the High Street over
-this rivulet, a small Inn called the Star. The innkeeper, according
-to the fashion of the times, brewed his own beer, and at the rear of
-his hostel was a small brewhouse. His mash tub was no doubt of modest
-dimensions, and his “liquor” was possibly drawn from the Mercke-dyche,
-for in that day pure water could be got from most streams and rivers.
-Now, sad to say, an unpolluted stream is almost unknown, and nine wells
-supply the water which, with a due admixture of malt and hops, forms
-that admirable compound known as Romford Ale.
-
-   [67] It is curious that the river now takes its name from the
-   town, and not _vice versa_, as is generally the case. “Romford” is
-   mentioned in the Red Book of the Exchequer in 1166, when the stream
-   was called the Mercke-dyche. Some antiquarians derive the word from
-   Roman-ford, but it probably simply means broad-ford, the first
-   syllable being the Saxon word for broad and akin to roomy.
-
-In the year 1799 two important events happened in the town. That which
-probably created the most profound sensation among the inhabitants
-was the death of a most eccentric person, James Wilson, the corpulent
-butcher of Romford. This worthy was in the habit of going to church
-on Sunday sometime before the hour of service, and loudly singing
-psalms by himself, until the minister came to the desk. On the last
-fast-day before his death he remained in church between morning and
-evening services, repeating the Lord’s Prayer and singing psalms in
-each of the pews, only leaving the church when there remained no pew
-in which he had not performed his devotions. Another peculiarity was
-the peripatetic manner in which he sometimes took his meals. Armed
-with a shoulder of mutton in one hand, some salt in the bend of his
-arm, a small loaf, and a large knife, he would wander up and down the
-street until all was consumed. He was, moreover, an {352} excellent
-penman, as the vestry books to this day witness, and his meat bills
-were well worthy of framing. One line would be in German text, another
-in Roman characters; no two meats being written in the same coloured
-ink. The death of such a man naturally attracted more attention than
-the second event alluded to, a small commercial transaction, which we
-venture to think was of more importance to the community at large than
-the decease of the butcher. This was the purchase of the Star Inn and
-Brewery by Mr. Ind, who, in conjunction with a Mr. Grosvenor, carried
-on the business of a brewer. Seventeen years later the partnership was
-dissolved, Mr. John Smith took the place of Mr. Grosvenor, and until
-1845 the firm traded as Ind and Smith. In that year Mr. Smith sold
-his share in the Brewery, and Mr. O. E. Coope and his brother, George
-Coope, joined the firm, which then, for the first time, adopted its
-present title of Ind, Coope & Co.
-
-A few years back the following epigram appeared in one of the London
-comic papers in connection with the name of the firm and _Drink_, the
-English version of the play _L’Assomoir_:—
-
- The drunkards in the play of _Drink_
-   All reeling in a group, O,
- Close on intoxication’s brink,
-   Swill stronger stuff than soup, O,
- What is their liquor do you think?—
-   It should be Ind and Coope, O (Coupeau).
-
-Mr. Ind, the founder of the Romford Brewery, died in 1848, his place
-being taken by his son, the present Mr. Ind. Mr. E. V. Ind, another
-son of the founder, was also made a partner, as was Mr. Charles Peter
-Matthews, to whose skill as a brewer Romford Ales owe much of their
-reputation. In 1858, Mr. Thomas Helme (who has recently assumed the
-name of Mashiter) joined the firm, which consisted in 1886 of Messrs.
-O. E. Coope; Edward Ind; C. P. Matthews (the general managing partner);
-T. Mashiter; together with their four sons, and Major F. J. N. Ind, son
-of the late Mr. E. V. Ind.
-
-In 1853 Messrs. Ind, Coope & Co. purchased a brewery at Burton, which,
-having been enlarged from time to time, now rivals in size the old
-brewhouse at Romford. It is under the direction of Mr. E. J. Bird, the
-Burton managing partner.
-
-The mash tuns, vats, coppers, &c., of the Romford brewery differ
-but little from those used by other firms of the first rank. In the
-brewhouse are thirty-two malt bins, the eight largest of which hold
-900 quarters, and are each about as large as a small dwelling-house.
-{353} Altogether 10,000 quarters of malt can be stored. Extensive hop
-rooms, one of which is 110 feet long by 80 feet wide, afford storage
-for 5,000 pockets of hops. There are six coppers, the largest of which
-holds 32,400 gallons. In the fermenting room are twenty-four squares
-with capacities ranging up to 500 barrels. The stores are in seventeen
-buildings connected by tramways, and the tram lines on which the casks
-are rolled are about eight miles in length. About 600,000 full casks of
-various sizes are sent out from the store every year. In the stores are
-twenty-three huge vats used for storing old ale.
-
-The cooperage is one of the largest departments in the brewery, giving
-employment to thirty-two coopers and fifty-six assistants. In the
-stables are some forty or fifty horses, and the more thoroughly to
-dispel the popular delusion that brewers’ horses are fed on grains, it
-may be worth while stating that these have each an allowance of 42 lbs.
-per day of oats, beans, clover, meadow-hay, oat-straw and bran, all
-either cut or bruised and mixed together.
-
-On the brewery are kept three fire-engines (a steamer and two manuals)
-and a well organised fire-brigade of ten men, which is ever ready to
-render its services at fires in the neighbourhood. A laudable feature
-in connection with the brewery is a Friendly Society, to which all
-the employés belong, and which ensures their receiving, among other
-benefits, a substantial allowance during sickness.
-
-At Romford the firm give employment to three hundred men and boys,
-exclusive of officials, collectors, &c., and are large employers of
-labour at their London stores (where eighty horses are in use); at
-their Burton brewery, and at their twenty-five country depôts. The
-firm is a great supporter of the Volunteer movement. For many years
-Mr. Coope was Major of the Essex Volunteers, and one company of the
-battalion to which he was attached is entirely made up of brewery
-employés, “doughty sons of malt and hops.”
-
-Messrs. Ind, Coope & Co. stick to the old-fashioned materials for their
-beer, and the large extent of what may be termed their private family
-trade is an indication not to be lightly disregarded that we English
-still adhere to our ancient friendship for Sir John Barleycorn.
-
-One other Burton Brewery yet remains to be mentioned, that of Messrs.
-Thomas Salt & Company, at the head of which firm is Mr. Henry Wardle,
-the present (1886) member for South Derbyshire, the other partners
-being Messrs. Edward Dawson Salt, William Cecil Salt, and Henry George
-Tomlinson.
-
-To trace the origin of the firm, it is necessary to go back as far as
-{354} the year 1774, when Messrs. Salt & Co.’s maltings were worked
-in conjunction with the brewery of Messrs. Clay & Sons. It was about
-this time that the great-grandfather of two present members of the
-firm added a brewery to the malting business, and thus, in the list
-of brewers, then few in number, given in the records of the town for
-1789, we find the name of Thomas Salt. In 1822 the only Burton Brewers
-mentioned in Pigott’s _Commercial Directory_ were S. Allsopp & Co.;
-Bass and Ratcliffe; Thomas Salt & Co.; John Sherrard; and William
-Worthington.
-
-When in 1823 the Burton brewers determined to brew an ale which could
-compete with Hodgson’s then well-known India pale ale, Salt & Co.
-were among the first to bring the idea to a practical issue. There
-must indeed have been no lack of energy on the part of the firm, for
-in 1884 they came off with flying colours at the International Health
-Exhibition, gaining a gold medal for the excellence of their ale.
-
-Salt & Co.’s brewery is bounded on the front by the High Street, while
-at the back flows the silvery Trent, the waters of which are not used
-in brewing, as many people suppose. Even in Burton, famous as it is
-for its waters, every well sunk does not produce the right sort of
-“liquor,” and Messrs. Salt & Co., after many fruitless borings on their
-own premises, were obliged to sink an artesian well a quarter of a mile
-distant before they could obtain the water most suitable for their
-purpose.
-
-The firm have several maltings in Burton, the most important of which
-is that situated on the Wallsitch. It consists of three huge blocks of
-buildings, each of which is seventy yards long, thirty wide, and four
-storeys high. As a malting has not yet been described in this book,
-some account of the interior of John Barleycorn’s Crematory, taking
-that last erected by Messrs. Salt & Co. as a sample, may be read with
-interest.
-
-On the ground floor is the cistern, into which the barley, after being
-cleansed (technically “screened”), is placed for the purpose of being
-steeped. At the end of about fifty hours the clear water is drained
-off, and the soaked barley is thrown into the couch frame, where
-it remains about twenty-five hours. The grain has now commenced to
-germinate. The next process is to distribute it over various floors (by
-means of baskets lowered and raised by steam windlasses), where it is
-spread on clean red tiles, in layers varying from two to four inches
-in thickness, according to the temperature of the weather. For four
-or five days the barley is left to grow. At the end of that time its
-vitality begins to flag {355} for lack of moisture, and more water is
-added, the skill of the maltster being taxed to the utmost in assigning
-such a proportion of water as will develop the grain into perfect malt.
-At the end of about ten days germination is complete. A great and
-wonderful transformation has now taken place, the hard stubborn corn
-having been reduced to tender friable malt. The next process is to dry
-the malt, and for this purpose it is placed in a kiln and subjected
-to a high temperature until the vital principle of germination is
-extinguished, and the desired colour has been acquired. Any dry
-rootlets which adhere to the grain are then separated by trampling,
-a second screening takes place, and the malt is measured into sacks,
-every precaution being taken to prevent exposure to the atmosphere,
-until it is finally placed in the big bins above the mash tub.
-
-In the process of malting the most ingenious apparatus used is the
-screen, which may be described as a _multum in parvo_ piece of
-mechanism. Of these machines there are three, each being worked by an
-endless leathern rope, and by an ingenious system of graduated riddles,
-performing four distinct operations. In one compartment the dust is
-blown away by revolving fans, in another the broken half-corns are
-removed; the third action clears all stones, rubbish, &c., away, and
-finally the thin inferior corns are separated.
-
-To avoid repetition, we are obliged to omit a description of the
-brewery, those of the first class at Burton being very similar to one
-another. In order to give some idea of the extent of Messrs. Salt
-and Co.’s operations, it may be mentioned that in the new house are
-five mash tubs, each with a capacity of fifty-five qrs. of malt. The
-cooperage belonging to this firm is noteworthy, the casks being made
-by elaborate machinery worked by steam, a system followed in very few
-English breweries, but which is not uncommon in America.
-
-In the archives of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co., is a
-document bearing the date 1719, which purports to be “An Inventory of
-the Goods, Chattels, and Credits of Joseph Truman, which since his
-death have come into the hands, possession and knowledge of Benjamin
-Truman, Daniel Cooper, and the Executors named in the will of Joseph
-Truman.” No earlier written record of the firm is in existence, but
-there is a tradition that at some remote period of history there
-existed one John Oliver Truman, who carried on the business in Brick
-Lane, and to this day all casks leaving the brewery are branded I.O.T.
-Even in 1741 the business transacted was considerable. There were then
-four partners—Benjamin Truman, John Denne, Francis Cooper and the {356}
-executors of Alud Denne. Among the customers were two hundred and
-ninety-six publicans, one of whom was John Denne, who retailed the beer
-made by this firm.
-
-To the Benjamin Truman above-mentioned must be given the credit of
-having made the brewery one of the most important in London. In 1737,
-when the Duchess of Brunswick (grand-daughter of George II.) was born,
-the Prince of Wales ordered bonfires to be made before Carlton House,
-and four barrels of beer to be given to the populace. But the brewer to
-the royal household provided beer of the smallest, and the mob threw
-it in each other’s faces and into the fire. The Prince good-naturedly
-ordered a second bonfire the succeeding night, and Benjamin Truman
-supplied the beer. He had the wisdom to send a sturdy brew, the best
-his cellars could produce, and the people were greatly pleased. With
-such a shrewd trader at its head, it is not surprising that by 1760
-Truman’s had taken its place as third among the great London Breweries.
-Calvert and Seward came first with 74,704 barrels, Whitbread’s next
-with 60,508 barrels, Truman’s following with 60,140 barrels.
-
-Benjamin Truman was knighted by George III., and portraits of him
-and his daughter, by Gainsborough, still hang in the drawing room
-of the house in Brick Lane. In the same room is a portrait of Mr.
-Sampson Hanbury (the first of the name who joined the firm), a famous
-sportsman, who for thirty-five years was Master of the Puckeridge
-Hounds. He entered the firm in 1780, and was subsequently joined by his
-brother. Sampson Hanbury’s sister, Anna, married Thomas Fowell Buxton,
-of Earle’s Colne. This gentleman was High Sheriff of his county, and
-served the office with special credit. He died in 1792, leaving a
-widow, three sons, and two daughters. The eldest son, Thomas Fowell
-Buxton, was only six years old at his father’s death. This little
-fellow was destined to be, perhaps, the most distinguished partner in
-the firm. He was educated at Greenwich, and Trinity College, Dublin,
-at which latter place he carried off the highest honours, and when
-only twenty-one years of age received an influential requisition to
-represent the University in Parliament. This honour he declined. He
-had originally been intended for the Bar, but in 1808, when on a visit
-to the brewery, his uncles, Osgood and Sampson Hanbury, being struck
-with his undoubted abilities, offered him a situation in the business,
-and in 1811 made him a partner. The other members of the firm at that
-time were Mr. Sampson Hanbury, Mr. John Truman Villebois, and Mr. Henry
-Villebois. {357}
-
-To the young partner was soon given the work of re-modelling the
-Establishment, a task in which he succeeded admirably. A few years
-later he began to take an interest in public affairs, devoting himself
-more particularly to a consideration of subjects connected with prison
-discipline and the criminal code, into which his early training for
-the Bar gave him some insight. In 1818 he was elected for Weymouth,
-and, owing in a great measure to his exertions and co-operation, Sir
-Robert Peel carried his Bill for the abolition of capital punishment
-for trivial offences. Mr. Buxton’s great work was in connection with
-the Slavery question. Into the cause of Liberty he threw himself heart
-and soul, and to his unceasing endeavours were in great measure due
-the glorious results ultimately achieved. The Beer Act, passed in
-1830, had Mr. Buxton’s approval. “I have always voted for free trade
-when the interests of others are concerned,” he said, “and it would be
-awkward to change when my own are in jeopardy. I am pleased to have
-an opportunity of proving that our real monoply is one of skill and
-capital.”
-
-In June, 1831, occurred a noteworthy event in the history of the
-firm. This was a visit by a number of Cabinet Ministers to inspect
-the brewery. Mr. Buxton had provided an elaborate banquet, but Lord
-Brougham said that beef-steaks and porter were more appropriate to the
-occasion, so of those excellent comestibles the dinner in great part
-consisted. Of this visit Mr. Buxton has left a very lively account,
-too long, unfortunately, to be given here. Among the guests, who
-numbered twenty-three, were the Lord Chancellor, Lord Grey, the Duke of
-Richmond, the Marquis of Cleveland, Lords Shaftesbury, Sefton, Howick,
-Durham, and Duncannon, General Alava, Dr. Lushington, Spring Rice and
-W. Brougham. Mr. Buxton first took them to see the steam engine. Lord
-Brougham immediately delivered a little lecture upon steam power, and,
-as the party went through the brewery, had so much to say about the
-machinery that Joseph Gurney said he understood brewing better than any
-person on the premises. At dinner “the Chancellor lost not a moment,
-he was always eating, drinking, talking or laughing.” Later on the
-Ministers inspected the stables, and the Lord Chancellor surprised
-everyone by his knowledge of horseflesh. Some one proposed that he
-should mount one of the horses and ride round the yard, which he seemed
-very willing to do—such is the power of brown stout!
-
-On the 9th November, 1841, a large new structure was opened, and to
-celebrate the event a supper was given to the men. In the midst of it
-the good news came that the Queen had given birth to a son. In honour
-of Her Majesty’s first-born, a huge vat was christened. “The {358}
-Prince of Wales.” The inscription can still be seen. Twenty-five years
-later, when on a visit to the brewery, his Royal Highness had the
-satisfaction of drinking a glass of stout drawn from his namesake.
-
-In 1837, after twenty years’ faithful service, Mr. Buxton was defeated
-at Weymouth. Finding his health demanded repose, though invited by
-twenty-seven constituencies to represent them, he determined to leave
-Parliamentary life, and in 1841 a baronetcy was conferred on him by
-Lord John Russell. Even when out of Parliament he gave himself no rest,
-his mind being full of philanthropic schemes. He died in 1845, at the
-age of fifty-nine, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
-
-In 1820 Mr. Robert Hanbury, nephew of Mr. Sampson Hanbury, became a
-partner in the firm, of which he was the head for many years. He was
-born in 1796, and during the few years previous to his death was the
-oldest member of the London brewing trade. He is remembered for his
-philanthropy and benevolence. During the period when Mr. Thomas F.
-Buxton was engaged with public affairs nearly the whole management and
-control of the brewery fell on Mr. Hanbury.
-
-In 1814 the first steam-engine was erected in the brewery. Previously
-the mashing was accomplished with long oars worked by sturdy Irishmen,
-and each brewing occupied twenty-four hours.
-
-At the present time (1886) the members of the firm are Messrs. Arthur
-Pryor; C. A. Hanbury; T. F. Buxton; Sir T. Fowell Buxton, Bart.;
-Messrs. E. N. Buxton; J. H. Buxton; E. S. Hanbury; A. V. Pryor;
-R. Pryor; J. M. Hanbury; and Gerald Buxton. Of these perhaps the
-best known to the public is Mr. Edward North Buxton, whose name has
-long been before them in connection with many measures of national
-importance.
-
-Messrs. Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co. have always been a little
-ahead of the times, and it is not surprising to find in the brewery
-appliances of the most improved description. As an instance of this,
-when Lord Palmerston was at the Home Office he ordered that all London
-manufacturers should erect smoke-consuming furnaces. Mr. Buxton had,
-however, already adopted the principle, so that when the Home Secretary
-was abused by the manufacturers for ordering them to do the impossible,
-he was able to point out that what he desired had been already done.
-Palmerston publicly thanked the firm for this in the House of Commons.
-
-The brewery, cooperage, and stables in Brick Lane cover about five
-acres, and near at hand are the Coverley Fields, where are the {359}
-signboard and wheelwright shops, cellars, &c., covering about three
-and a half acres. As may be imagined, a small army of men is employed
-in the brewery, numbering in all about four hundred and fifty.
-
-Worthy of special notice in the brewhouse are the cleansing vessels,
-which, being very shallow, do their work with great rapidity. On
-the ground-floor is a novelty, one room being completely filled
-with shallow slate vessels for holding the yeast in summer. Each of
-these vessels has a false bottom, under which cold liquor (in vulgar
-parlance, water) constantly circulates, rendering the yeast so cool
-that is may be kept for some time in the hottest summer weather.
-
-In the brewery are ninety-five vats, which have a total capacity of
-3,463,992 gallons, an amount which it has been calculated is about five
-times the capacity of all the swimming-baths in London put together.
-These huge vats are, however, but rarely used. Nearly 80,000 casks are
-always in use.
-
-When the light ales came into fashion Messrs. Truman & Co. wisely
-determined to start a pale-ale brewery at Burton. They carried out
-their resolve in 1874. Of this it can only be said that everything
-Science could do to make the brewery perfect was done, and that the
-pale ales are brewed on the most approved Burton principles.
-
-The founder of the firm of Whitbread & Co. was the son of a yeoman who
-lived on a small estate at Cardington, in Bedfordshire. On his father’s
-death he improved the property by building, and from one propitious
-circumstance to another gradually amassed an immense fortune. It was
-in the year 1742 that Mr. Whitbread commenced business as a brewer, at
-the Brew House, Old Street, St. Luke’s, the premises now occupied by
-the firm of More & Co. In 1750 he removed to Chiswell Street, where
-for fifty years previously had been a brewery. Here the business was
-developed with great vigour, and from the returns made necessary in
-1760 by the imposition of a Beer-tax, we learn that in that year
-Whitbread’s brewed no less than 63,408 barrels of beer, only one other
-London firm—Calvert & Seward—brewing a greater quantity. In 1785 steam
-power was introduced into the brewery. In connection with this event
-are two very celebrated names, for the Sun and Planet engine, still
-in use, was manufactured by the firm of which Watt was a partner; and
-John Rennie adapted the other machinery to the new motive power. About
-the same period six huge underground cisterns were made, after designs
-by Smeaton, varying in capacity from 700 to 3,600 barrels each. Two
-years later Mr. Whitbread had the honour of a visit from King George
-and Queen Charlotte, the particulars {360} of which are recorded in
-a humorous poem of considerable length, by Peter Pindar (Dr. Walcot),
-a few verses from which will suffice to give some idea of what took
-place on that auspicious occasion. A more prosaic, and no doubt more
-credible, account will be found in the _Daily Chronicle_ of that period.
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Full of the art of brewing beer,
-     The monarch heard of Whitbread’s fame;
- Quoth he unto the queen, “My dear, my dear,
-     Whitbread hath got a marvellous great name;
- Charly, we must, must, must see Whitbread brew—
- Rich as us, Charly, richer than a Jew;
- Shame, shame, we have not yet his brewhouse seen!”
- Thus sweetly said the king unto the queen.
- Red-hot with novelty’s delightful rage,
- To Mister Whitbread forth he sent a page,
-     To say that Majesty proposed to view,
- With thirst of knowledge deep inflam’d,
- His vats, and tubs, and hops, and hogsheads fam’d,
-     And learn the noble secret how to _brew_.
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
-The preparations at the brewery are then described, followed by the
-arrival of King, Queen, Princesses and Courtiers. The conversation of
-the King, who “asked a thousand questions with a laugh, before poor
-Whitbread comprehended half,” was, according to the poet, as “five
-hundred parrots, gabbling just like Jews.”
-
- Thus was the brewhouse fill’d with gabbling noise,
- Whilst drayman, and the brewer’s boys,
- Devour’d the questions that the King did ask:
-     In diff’rent parties were they staring seen,
-     Wond’ring to think they saw a _King_ and _Queen_!
- Behind a tub were some, and some behind a cask.
-
- Some draymen forc’d themselves (a pretty luncheon)
- Into the mouth of many a gaping puncheon;
- And through the bunghole wink’d with curious eye,
-     To view and be assur’d what sort of things
-     Were princesses, and queens, and kings;
- For whose most lofty stations thousands sigh!
- And, lo! of all the gaping clan,
- Few were the mouths that had not got a man!
-
-{361}
-
-George III. was no doubt of opinion that a thing worth doing was
-worth doing well, and no detail of the manufacture of beer seemed too
-insignificant to interest him. “Thus microscopic geniuses explore,”
-says Peter Pindar.
-
- And now his curious majesty did stoop
- To count the nails on ev’ry hoop;
- And, lo! no single thing came in his way,
- That, full of deep research, he did not say,
- “What’s this? he, he? What’s that? What’s this?
-     What’s that?”
- So quick the words too when he deign’d to speak,
- As if each syllable would break its neck.
-
-The extent of the business at that time may be gathered from the
-following verse:—
-
- Now boasting Whitbread, serious did declare,
- To make the majesty of England stare,
- That he had buts enough, he knew,
- Plac’d side by side, to reach along to Kew:
- On which the king with wonder swiftly cry’d,
-     “What if they reach to Kew then, side by side,
-     What would they do, what, what, plac’d end to end?”
-
-To this Mr. Whitbread replies that they would probably reach to Windsor.
-
-After awhile the King began to take notes.
-
- Now, majesty, alive to knowledge, took
- A very pretty memorandum-book,
- With gilded leaves of asses’ skins so white,
- And in it legibly did write—
-
- Memorandum,
-
- A charming place beneath the grates,
- For roasting chesnuts or potates,
-
- Mem.
-
- ’Tis hops that gives a bitterness to beer—
- Hops grow in Kent, says Whitbread, and elsewhere.
-
- Quaere.
-
- Is there no cheaper stuff? where doth it dwell?
- Would not horse-aloes bitter it as well? {362}
-
- Mem.
-
- To try it soon on our small beer—
- ’Twill save us sev’ral pounds a year.
-        *       *       *       *       *
- Mem.
-
-   Not to forget to take of beer the cask
-     The brewers offer’d me, away.
-        *       *       *       *       *
-   To Whitbread now deign’d majesty, to say,
-     “Whitbread are all your horses fond of hay?”
-     “Yes, please your Majesty!” in humble notes,
-   The brewer answered—“also fond of oats:
-   Another thing my horses too maintains—
-   And that, an’t please your Majesty are grains.”
-
-   “Grains—grains,” said majesty, “to fill their crops?
-    Grains, grains, that comes from hops—yes, hops, hops, hops.”
- Later on the brewery pigs were reviewed by the King,
-    On which the observant man who fills a throne
-    Declar’d the pigs were vastly like his own.
-
-After the brewery had been inspected Mr. Whitbread entertained the King
-and Queen at a banquet.
-
-For several sessions Mr. Whitbread sat in Parliament as the member
-for Bedford. He was a man of much benevolence, and it is said of him
-that his charity, which was as judicious as it was extensive, was
-felt in every parish where he had property. His private distributions
-annually exceeded 3,000. Among the records of the Brewers’ Company we
-came upon a conveyance from him to the Company of three freehold farms
-in Bedfordshire, the income arising from which was to be devoted to
-supporting “one or two Master brewers of the age of fifty years or
-upwards, who had carried on the trade of a brewer within the bills of
-mortality or two miles thereof for many years in a considerable and
-respectable manner with good characters but by losses in the brewing
-trade only shall have come to decay or been reduced in circumstances
-and want relief.” By another indenture of the same date three dwelling
-houses in Whitecross Street, London, are conveyed to the Company,
-the income to be devoted towards the “support and relief of poor
-freemen of the Co^y. of Brewers being proper objects and their widows
-(particularly preferring such objects as shall be blind, lame {363}
-afflicted with palsy or very aged).” The date of the gift is 1794. Only
-two years later the donor died. His portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
-is still to be seen in the Hall of the Brewers’ Company.
-
-Mr. Samuel Whitbread, son of the founder, and remembered as Mr.
-Whitbread the politician, now became the head of the firm, and, having
-associated with himself partners, carried on the business as Whitbread
-& Co. He sat in Parliament for several years, and was a firm supporter
-of the Liberal party. It is related of him that being one evening at
-Brooks’s he talked loudly and largely against the Ministers for laying
-what was called the _war-tax_ upon malt; every one present of course
-concurred with him in opinion; but Sheridan could not resist the
-gratification of displaying his ever ready wit. Taking out his pencil,
-he wrote upon the back of a letter the following lines, which he handed
-to Mr. Whitbread across the table:—
-
- They’ve raised the price of table drink;
- What is the reason, do you think?
- The tax on malt’s the cause, I hear:
- But what has malt to do with beer?
-
-Mr. Whitbread the politician is mentioned in _Rejected Addresses_, and
-it is worthy of note that he took a considerable part in the rebuilding
-of Drury Lane Theatre after it had been destroyed by fire.
-
-Since 1760 the business had wonderfully increased. In 1806 we find
-Whitbread & Co. stand fourth among the London brewers, brewing 101,311
-barrels. In the succeeding ten years the business more than doubled
-itself, the beer brewed in 1815 amounting to 261,018 barrels.
-
-Mr. Whitbread, the son of the founder, died in 1820. A writer in the
-_London Magazine_ of that date gives a careful study of his character
-as a politician. “He was an honest man, and a true Parliamentary
-speaker. He had no artifices, no tricks, no reserve about him. He spoke
-point-blank what he thought, and his heart was in his broad, honest,
-English face. . . . . If a falsehood was stated, he contradicted
-it instantly in a few brief words: if an act of injustice was
-palliated, it excited his contempt; if it was justified, it roused his
-indignation; he retorted a mean insinuation with manly spirit, and
-never shrank from a frank avowal of his sentiments.”
-
-Mr. Whitbread the politician left two sons, the younger of whom
-represented Middlesex for several years, and died in 1879. Of the
-present member for Bedford, grandson of the politician, we need say
-but little. {364} He was born in 1830, was educated at Rugby and
-Cambridge, has sat for Bedford since 1852, and is one of the most
-respected members of the House of Commons.
-
-There are, it need hardly be said, many other brewing firms of the
-first rank in the United Kingdom. The length to which this chapter has
-grown absolutely prohibits us from giving, as we had intended, a sketch
-of a large Edinburgh firm. There is, however, scattered through these
-pages continual reference to the good ale—“jolly good ale and old”—of
-Scotland. The old ales of Edinburgh are now giving way somewhat to the
-pale ales affected by the temperate drinkers of the period, but old
-Scotch ale is by no means a thing of the past, and has a world-wide
-reputation. Most of the Edinburgh breweries have been established a
-very long time, in some cases over a hundred years.
-
-In the earlier portions of this book punning allusions to ale by
-old writers have been freely quoted; with them may be compared
-the following extract from a modern play, _Little Jack Sheppard_,
-written by Messrs. Stephens and Yardley, and which contains facetious
-references to some of the firms whose histories have just been related.
-
- THAMES DARRELL.
-  When out at sea the crew set me, Thames Darrell,
-  Afloat upon the waves within a barrel.
-
- WINIFRED WOOD.
-  In hopes the _barrel_ would turn out your _bier_.
-
- THAMES.
-  But I’m _stout_-hearted and I didn’t fear.
-  I nearly died of thirst.
-
- WIN.
-                         Poor boy! Alas!
-
- THAMES.
-  Until I caught a fish—
-
- WIN.
-                          What sort?
-
- THAMES.
-                                    _A bass._
- Then came the worst, which nearly proved my ruin,
- A storm, a thing I can’t _abear, a brewin’_.
-
- WIN.
-  It makes me pale.
-
- THAMES.
-                  It made _me pale_ and _ail_.
-  When nearly _coopered_ I descried a sail;
-  They didn’t hear me, though I loudly whooped.
-  Within the barrel I was _inned_ and _cooped_.
-  _All’s up_, I thought, when round they quickly brought her,
-  That ship to me of safety was the _porter_;
-  Half dead and half alive. Ha! ha!
-
- WIN.
-                                  Don’t laugh.
-  ’Twas very bitter.
-
- THAMES.
-                   No, ’twas _half and half_.
-
-{365}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-
- And what this flood of deeper brown,
- Which a white foam does also crown,
- Less white than snow, more white than mortar?
- Oh, my soul! can this be Porter?
-                                                         _The Déjeunè._
-
- P raised and caress’d, the tuneful Philips sung
- O f Cyder fam’d, whence first his laurel sprung;
- R ise then, my muse, and to the world proclaim
- T he mighty charms of Porter’s potent name:
- E ach buck from thee shall sweetest pleasure taste,
- R evel secure, nor think to part in haste.
-                                                        _An Acrostick._
-
-_PORTER AND STOUT. — CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH LED TO THEIR INTRODUCTION. —
-VALUE TO THE WORKING CLASSES. — ANECDOTES. — “A POT OF PORTER OH!”_
-
-Before the Blue Last, an old public-house situate in Curtain Road,
-Shoreditch, there formerly hung a board which bore this legend:—“The
-house where porter was first sold.”
-
-Whether this was true or false we cannot say; certain it is, however,
-that the drink which has made London and Dublin brewers famed far and
-wide had its birthplace not far from this spot.
-
-It appears that in the early years of last century the lovers of malt
-liquors in London were accustomed to regale themselves upon three
-classes of these beverages; they had ale, beer, and twopenny. Many who
-preferred a more subtle combination of flavours than either of these
-liquors {366} alone could impart, would ask for _half-and-half_, that
-is, half of ale and half of beer, half of ale and half of twopenny, or
-half of beer and half of twopenny. Others again—and these were the real
-connoisseurs of malt liquors—would call for a pot of three threads,
-or three thirds, _i.e._, one-third of ale, one-third of beer, and
-one-third of twopenny. The drawer would therefore have to go to three
-different casks, and through three distinct operations, before he could
-draw a pint of liquor. But the hour had come—and the man. One Ralph
-Harwood, whose name is too little known to an ungrateful posterity of
-beer-drinking Britons, some time about the year 1730, kept a brewhouse
-on the east side of High Street, Shoreditch. In that year, or perhaps
-a little earlier, as this great man brooded over the inconvenience and
-waste occasioned by the calls for the “three threads,” which became
-more and more frequent, he conceived the idea of making a liquor which
-would combine in itself the several virtues of ale, beer, and twopenny.
-He carried the idea into action, and brewed a drink which he called
-“Entire,” or “Entire Butts.” It was tasted; it was approved; it became
-the fruitful parent of a mighty offspring; and from that day to this
-has gone on increasing in name and fame.
-
-Visitors to the great brewery in Brick Lane are shown a hole from which
-steam issues to the accompaniment of awful rumbling noises. “In there
-once fell a man,” they are told—“a negro. Nothing but his bones were
-found when the copper was emptied, and it is said that the beer drawn
-off was of an extraordinary dark colour. Some say this was the first
-brew of porter. Oh yes” (this in answer to a question), “we soon learnt
-how to make it without the negro.” We must confess that we have some
-doubts as to this account of the origin of porter. We do not believe
-that brew could have been much darker on account of the accident,
-though no doubt, under the circumstances, it contained plenty of
-“body.” A similar tale is told of nearly every London porter brewery,
-and later on it will be found in verse.
-
-It seems to be to some extent a moot point among the learned how porter
-obtained its present name, for no record seems to have been kept of
-its christening. Harwood, no doubt, stood godfather to his interesting
-infant, but, as we have seen above, he called it “Entire;” and how
-or when it came to be known as porter is not quite clear. There are
-several theories on the subject, each more or less plausible. One
-is that being a hearty, appetizing, and nourishing liquor, it was
-specially recommended to the notice of the porters, who then, as now,
-formed a {367} considerable proportion of the Shoreditch population.
-Pennant, in his _London_ seems, to have held this view; he calls it “a
-wholesome liquor, which enables the London porter-drinkers to undergo
-tasks that ten gin-drinkers would sink under.” Another explanation
-of the origin of the name is that Harwood sent round his men to his
-customers with the liquor, and that the men would announce their
-arrival and their business by the cry of “Porter”—meaning, not the
-beer, but the bearer. Be this how it may, the embodiment of Harwood’s
-great idea had not attained its majority before it was known far and
-wide by its present name.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-In _The Student_ (1750) is thus related the first appearance of porter
-at Oxford—. . . “Let us not derogate from the merits of porter—a liquor
-entirely British—a liquor that pleases equally the mechanic and the
-peer—a liquor which is the strength of our nation, the scourge of our
-enemies, and which has given _immortality_ to aldermen. ’Tis with the
-highest satisfaction that we can inform our Oxford students that _Isis_
-herself has taken this divine liquor into her protection, and that the
-_Muses_ recommend it to their votaries, as being far preferable to
-Hippocrene, Aganippe, the Castalian spring, or any _poetical water_
-whatever. Know, then, that in the middle of the High Street, at the
-sign of the King’s Arms, opposite to its opposite, Juggins’s Coffee
-House, lives Captain Jolly; who _maugrè_ the selfish opposition of his
-brother publicans, out of a pure affection to this University, and
-regardless of private profit, reduc’d porter from its original price of
-Sixpence, and in large golden characters generously informs us that he
-sells
-
-     “London Porter
- At Fourpence a Quart.
-
-“As the Captain is a genius and a choice spirit he meets with the
-greatest encouragement from the gown, and sends porter to all the
-common-rooms. He therefore intends shortly (in imitation of the great
-Ashley, of the Punch House, Ludgate Hill) to have the front of his
-house new vamp’d up, and decorated with the following inscription:—
-
-           “Pro bono academico.
- Here lives Captain Jolly
-                 who first
- reduced Porter to its’ present price
-                 and
- Brought that liquor into University esteem.”
-
-{368}
-
-Though we fear the great Harwood does not fill the niche in the Temple
-of Fame to which he is entitled, yet his praises are not entirely
-unsung. Gutteridge, himself a native of Shoreditch, has commemorated
-the discovery of porter in these lines:—
-
- Harwood, my townsman, he invented first
- Porter to rival wine, and quench the thirst:
- Porter, which spreads its fame half the world o’er,
- Whose reputation rises more and more;
- As long as Porter shall preserve its fame,
- Let all with gratitude our Parish name.
-
-“It is not in my power,” says Pennant in the work we have before
-quoted, “to trace the progress of this important article of trade.
-Let me only say that it is now a national concern; for the duty on
-malt from July 5th, 1785, to the same day 1786, produced a million
-and a half of money to the support of the State, from a liquor which
-invigorates the bodies of its willing subjects, to defend the blessings
-they enjoy. One of these Chevaliers de Malte (as an impertinent
-Frenchman styled a most respectable gentleman of the trade) has, within
-one year, contributed not less than fifty thousand pounds to his own
-share.”
-
-The person to whom the Frenchman applied the title of Chevalier de
-Malte was Humphrey Parsons, a brewer of last century, and the incident
-which gave rise to the name has already been referred to.
-
-Pennant gives a list of the chief porter brewers of London at the end
-of last century, with the number of barrels of strong beer they brewed
-from Midsummer, 1786, to Midsummer, 1787. Samuel Whitbread heads the
-list with 150,280 barrels, and among the others may be noted Calvert,
-now the City of London Brewery; Hester Thrale, now Barclay and Perkins;
-W. Read; and Richard Meux. Most of the other names, though famous in
-their day and generation, are not familiar to the modern reader. The
-total amount produced by some twenty-four of the chief London brewers
-was considerably over one million barrels.
-
-It is interesting to contrast the state of the Brewing trade a hundred
-years ago with the proportions to which it has attained to-day.
-According to a Parliamentary return made in 1884, there are now six
-brewers of the United Kingdom who produce annually over three and a
-half million barrels of malt liquor, and who pay to the revenue in
-Licence and Beer duty nearly one million and a half sterling per annum.
-{369}
-
-A fine flavour has occasionally been given to stout by extraordinary
-means, as witness the following legend, entitled
-
-PATENT BROWN STOUT.
-
- A Brewer in a country town
-   Had got a monstrous reputation;
- No other beer but his went down.
-   The hosts of the surrounding station,
- Carving his name upon their mugs,
-   And painting it on every shutter;
-   And though some envious folks would utter,
- Hints that its flavour came from drugs,
- Others maintained ’twas no such matter,
-   But owing to his monstrous vat,
-   At least as corpulent as that
- At Heidelberg—and some said fatter.
-
- His foreman was a lusty Black,
-   An honest fellow;
- But one who had a ugly knack
-   Of tasting samples as he brewed,
- Till he was stupefied and mellow.
-   One day in this top-heavy mood,
- Having to cross the vat aforesaid,
-   (Just then with boiling beer supplied),
- O’ercome with giddiness and qualms he
-   Reel’d—fell in—and nothing more was said,
-   But in his favourite liquor died,
- Like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey.
-
- In all directions round about
-   The negro absentee was sought,
-   But as no human noddle thought
- That our fat _Black_ was now _Brown Stout_,
- They settled that the rogue had left
- The place for debt, or crime, or theft.
- Meanwhile the beer was day by day
- Drawn into casks and sent away,
- Until the lees flowèd thick and thicker,
-   When, lo! outstretched upon the ground,
-   Once more their missing friend they found,
- As they had often done before—in liquor. {370}
-
- “See,” cried his moralising master,
-   “I always knew the fellow drank hard,
- And prophesied some sad disaster:
-   His fate should other tipplers strike,
- Poor Mungo! there he welters like
-   A toast at bottom of a tankard!”
-
- Next morn a publican, whose tap,
-   Had help’d to drain the vat so dry,
- Not having heard of the mishap,
-   Came to demand a fresh supply,
- Protesting loudly that the last
- All previous specimens surpass’d,
- Possessing a much richer _gusto_
- Than formerly it ever us’d to,
- And begging, as a special favour,
- Some more of the exact same flavour.
-
- “Zounds!” cried the brewer, “that’s a task
-   More difficult to grant than ask;
- Most gladly would I give the smack
-   Of the last beer to the ensuing,
- But where am I to find a Black
-   And boil him down at every brewing?”
-
-Professor Wilson, writing on brewing,[68] thus relates his conversion
-to the porter-drinker’s creed.
-
-   [68] _Blackwood’s Magazine_, vol. xxi.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-“From ale we naturally get to porter—porter—drink ‘fit for the gods,’
-being, in fact, likely to be, now and then, _too potent_ for mere
-mortals. With porter we are less imbued than with ale (not but that
-for some years we have imported our annual butt of Barclay); and this
-we hold to be one of the great misfortunes of our life. We were early
-nurtured in love and affection for ‘good ale’ by our great aunt,
-with whom we were a young and frequent visitant. Excellent old Aunt
-Patty! She was a Yorkshire woman, and cousin (three times removed)
-to Mr. Wilberforce (the father). She too hated _rum_ as the devil’s
-own brewage, but then she loved sound ale in the same ratio. Thus it
-happened, as we derived our faith in malt liquor from her, that we
-{371} penetrated not the mysteries of porter until our elder days.
-Our heresy was first effectually shaken by Charles Lamb, who, in his
-admirable way, proved to us that, in a hot forenoon, a draught of Meux
-or Barclay is beyond all cordial restoratives, and after a broiling
-peregrination (the stages were all full) from Coleridge’s lodgings at
-Highgate to town, gave us a specimen of the inspiring powers of porter
-in a perspiration, which we shall remember until the day of our death.”
-Lamb was known by all his friends to have an amiable weakness for
-porter, and the poet, in _An Ode to Grog_, thus commemorates the fact:—
-
- The spruce Mr. Lamb (’pon my word it’s no flam)
-   With Whitbread’s Entire makes his Pegasus jog;
- I’ll grant he’s a poet, but then he don’t show wit,
-   In thinking that Porter is better than grog.
-
-Burns was fond of porter, as of all other extracts of malt. He
-addressed the following lines to his friend Mr. Syme, along with a
-present of a dozen of bottled porter:—
-
- O, had the malt thy strength of mind,
-   Or hops the flavour of thy wit,
- ’Twere drink for first of human kind,
-   A gift that e’en for Syme were fit.
-
-We have given what we believe to be a correct historical account of
-the origin of porter. Peter Pindar, in the _Lamentations of the Porter
-Vat_, a poem in which he celebrates the bursting of a mighty porter vat
-at Meux’s Brewery, gives a somewhat less prosaic account:—
-
- Here—as ’tis said—in days of yore,
- (Such days, alas! will come no more),
- Resided Sir John Barleycorn,
- An ancient Briton, nobly born,
- With Mrs. Hop—a well-met pair,
- For he was rich, and she was fair.
-
- Yet they—like other married Folke,
- When their past vows they can’t revoke—
- Were opposite in disposition,
- And quarrell’d without intermission;
- For He alone produc’d the _Sweets_,
- Which She, with _Bitters_ only, meets! {372}
-
- Howe’er by dint of perseverance,
- By gentle conjugal endearance,
- The _Sweets_ predominating most,
- In strength excelling, _rul’d the roast_;
- Whilst she, obedient, did her duty—
- That greatest ornament of beauty.
-
- Her _Bitters_, thus by him controll’d,
- Their wholesome properties unfold,
- And give to him superior pow’rs—
- Superior charms for social hours;
- As _Beauty_, with persuasive tongue,
- Tempers the mind, by _passion_ wrung.
-
- At length, from this domestic Pair,
- Was born a well-known Son and Heir;
- Whose deeds o’er half the world are fam’d,
- By Britons, Master Porter, nam’d.
-
-Meux’s great vat then contained about 3,555 barrels, and was 22 ft.
-high. In October, 1814, owing to the defective state of its hoops,
-it burst, and the results were most disastrous. The brewery in the
-Tottenham Court Road was at that time hemmed in by miserable tenements,
-which were crowded by people of the poorer classes. Some of these
-houses were simply flooded with porter, two or three collapsed, and
-no less than eight persons met their death, either in the ruins or
-from drowning, the fumes of the porter, or by drunkenness. At the
-inquest the jury returned the verdict: “Death by Casualty.” Seven huge
-vats—the largest holding 15,000 barrels—now take the place of the one
-that burst. The _Times_ of April 1, 1785, says, “There is a cask now
-building at Messrs. Meux & Co.’s brewery in Liquorpond Street, Gray’s
-Inn Lane, the size of which exceeds all credibility, being designed to
-hold 20,000 barrels of porter; the whole expense attending the same
-will be upwards of £10,000.” About this time the London porter brewers
-vied with each other in building large vats, a practice they have now
-discontinued.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-It would be difficult to imagine a liquor more suitable for the working
-classes than good porter—taken in moderation, of course. Not only
-does it afford the slight stimulant which, in another place, we have
-shown to be beneficial to the human body, but it also contains much
-{373} nutritive matter, both organic and inorganic, together with
-saccharine. The old writer who spoke of ale as being meat, drink, and
-clothing probably had no highly scientific knowledge of the chemical
-properties of the liquor he was extolling, but the statement—based, no
-doubt, on experience—can be called an exaggerated one.
-
-Very satisfactory is it to know that in Ireland porter is steadily
-displacing whisky. Even in the western portions of the island, the
-younger generation—excepting, perhaps, on holidays, at fairs, and on
-other festive occasions—are taking most kindly to their “porther.”
-It will be a happy thing for that country when “porther” shall have
-altogether displaced poteen. The whisky sold at threepence for each
-small wine-glassful in most of the country spirit shops in Ireland, and
-always taken neat by the natives, is of a most injurious character,
-being new, and consequently containing much fusel oil. Far be it from
-us to say a word against good, well-matured whisky, which, taken in
-moderation, is a most wholesome drink; but, good or bad, it is not the
-drink for working men who require a more sustaining and less expensive
-liquor. What have the total abstainers to suggest? _Water_, the
-diffuser of epidemics, and hardly ever obtained pure by the labouring
-classes; _tea_, which is almost as injurious as spirits to the nervous
-system, which lacks nutritive properties, and which is by no means an
-inexpensive liquor; _coffee_ and _cocoa_, both hot drinks and most
-unsuitable to slake the thirst of a labouring man; various effervescing
-drinks, all more or less injurious to the digestive organs, when taken
-habitually, and of whose composition no man hath knowledge, save the
-makers, and _temperance wines_, certain vendors of which were not
-long back prosecuted for attempting to defraud the revenue, when this
-abstainer’s tipple was found to contain some twenty per cent. of
-alcohol. One liquor, alone, have the teetotal party invented, which
-is nourishing, inexpensive, and wholesome. This we may term _oatmeal
-mash_, or cold comfort. It consists of scalded oatmeal, water, and
-some flavouring matter. For harvesters working in the almost tropical
-heat of an August sun, this is, no doubt, a wholesome drink, but it
-can hardly be called palatable. As a matter of fact, no non-alcoholic
-substitute has been put forward by the teetotal party which is in the
-least likely to take the place of porter; and until such beverage is
-invented—an event which we feel perfectly certain will never come to
-pass—the porter and stout brewers of the United Kingdom will have every
-opportunity of continuing to confer on the working classes the benefits
-of cheap and wholesome liquor. {374}
-
-One temperance drink we had almost overlooked—herb-beer. In the House
-of Commons, on May 6, 1886, Mr. Fletcher asked the Chancellor of the
-Exchequer why the Excise officers had interfered with the sale of
-herb-beer, a non-intoxicating beverage. To this the Chancellor of the
-Exchequer replied, that the Inland Revenue did not interfere with any
-liquors which contained less than three degrees of proof spirit, though
-legally no beer could be brewed under the name of herb-beer which
-had more than two degrees of alcohol. Some of these non-intoxicating
-liquors, sold as temperance drinks, had been found to be of
-considerably greater strength than London porter. For the protection of
-the revenue it was necessary—and so on. Comment is needless.
-
-As illustrative of the sustaining powers of brown beer, we may mention
-an instance which recently came under our notice. A valuable horse
-belonging to a member of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, & Co. had
-a serious attack of influenza, with slight congestion of the lungs, and
-was so ill that it could take no food, and was evidently dying. As a
-last resource it was offered stout, which it drank greedily. For two
-weeks it entirely subsisted on this novel diet, and at the end of that
-time the bad symptoms had almost disappeared. The horse subsequently
-recovered.
-
-The name Stout was used originally to signify strong or stout beer.
-This excellent brown beer only differs from Porter in being brewed of
-greater strength and with a greater proportion of hops. Swift thus
-mentions the liquor:—
-
- “Should but the Muse descending drop
-  A slice of bread and mutton chop,
-  Or kindly when his credit’s out,
-  Surprise him with a pint of stout;
-  Exalted in his mighty mind
-  He flies and leaves his stars[69] behind.”
-
-   [69] Cf. Horace’s “_Sublimi feriam sidera vertice_,” which was once
-   construed by an ingenuous school-boy, “I will whip the stars with my
-   sublime _top_ ! !”
-
-Many actors, actresses and singers imbibe largely of porter, both
-for its excellent effects upon the voice and for its restorative and
-sustaining powers. Fanny Kemble used frequently to apply herself to
-a vulgar pewter pot of stout in the green room both during and after
-her {375} performances. Peg Woffington was president of the Beefsteak
-Club, then held in the Covent Garden Theatre; and after she had been
-pourtraying on the stage “The fair resemblance of a martyr Queen,” she
-might have been seen in the green room holding up a pot of porter, and
-exclaiming in a tragic voice, “Confusion to all order, let liberty
-thrive.”
-
-Macklin, the actor, who lived to be a centenarian, was accustomed to
-drink considerable quantities of stout sweetened with sugar, at the
-Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden. Porson used to breakfast
-on bread and cheese and a pot of porter.
-
-A favourite mixture of modern Londoners is known by the name of
-“Cooper,” and consists of porter and stout in equal proportions.
-The best account of the origin of this name is one which attributes
-it to a publican by the name of Cooper, who kept a house in Broad
-Street, City, opposite to where the Excise Office stood. Cooper
-was a jolly, talkative host, and associated a good deal with his
-customers—principally officers of the Excise, bankers’ and merchants’
-clerks, and men of that stamp. His guests found on bits of broken
-plates, pieces of beef steak and mutton chops already priced with paper
-labels. These they had but to choose, mark their name on the ticket,
-and carry to the cook at the gridiron, which was in the room in which
-they dined. Cooper drank and recommended a mixture of porter and stout,
-the fame of which spread very rapidly. The combination became the
-fashion in the City, and finally it was brewed entire.
-
-An equally plausible but more invidious derivation of the name is given
-by Andrew Halliday in his _Every-Day Papers_. His account is that “Some
-brewers who are jealous for the reputation of their beer employ a
-traveller, who visits the houses periodically, and tastes the various
-beers, to see that they are not reduced too much. This functionary is
-called the ‘Broad Cooper.’ When the Broad Cooper looks in upon Mr.
-Noggins, and wants to taste the porter, and the porter is below the
-mark, Mr. Noggins slyly draws a dash of stout into it; and this trick
-is so common, and so well known, that a mixture of stout and porter has
-come to be known to the public and asked for by the name of ‘Cooper.’”
-
-It has been well observed that “Porter-drinking needs but a beginning:
-whenever the habit has once been acquired, it is sure to be kept up.
-London is a name pretty widely known in the world; some nations know it
-for one thing, and some for another. But all nations know that London
-is the place where porter was invented: and Jews, Turks, Germans,
-Negroes, Persians, Chinese, New Zealanders, {376} Esquimaux, copper
-Indians, Yankees and Spanish Americans, are united in one feeling of
-respect for the native city of the most universally favourite liquor
-the world has ever known.” When the Persian ambassador left England
-some years ago, many of his suite shed tears. One of them, struck with
-the security and peace of an Englishman’s life, when compared to a
-Persian’s, declared that his highest ideal of Paradise was to live at
-Chelsea Hospital, where for the rest of his life he would willingly sit
-under the trees and drink as much porter as he could get.
-
-Much as porter’s praises have been sung, one depreciatory remark is
-recorded to have been made by the late Judge Maule. “Why do you,
-brother Maule, drink so much stout?” he was asked by one of the judges.
-“To bring my intellect down to the level of the rest of the bench,” was
-the not very flattering reply. It may be mentioned that Judge Maule’s
-joke was not a new one, for L’Estrange has it thus: “One ask’t Sir John
-Millesent how he did so conforme himself to the grave justices his
-brothers when they mette. ‘Why, in faith,’ sayes he, ‘I have no way but
-to drink myselfe downe to the capacitie of the Bench.’”
-
-A song well known in the early part of the century is much heartier,
-and redounds with patriotic sentiment:—
-
-A POT OF PORTER OH!
-
- When to Old England I came home,
-     Fal lal, fal lal la !
- What joy to see the tankard foam
-     Fal lal, fal lal la !
- When treading London’s well-known ground,
-   If e’er I feel my spirits tire,
- I haul my sail and look up around
-   In search of Whitbread’s best entire.
- I spy the name of Calvert,
-   Of Curtis, Cox, and Co.;
- I give a cheer and bawl for’t,
-   “A pot of Porter, ho !”
- When to Old England I come home,
- What joy to see the tankard foam !
- With heart so light and frolic high,
- I drink it off to liberty ! {377}
-
- Where wine or water can be found
-           Fal lal, fal lal la !
- I’ve travell’d far the world around,
-           Fal lal, fal lal la !
- Again I hope before I die,
- Of England’s can the taste to try;
- For many a league I’d go about
- To take a draught of Gifford’s stout;
- I spy the name of Truman,
-   Of Maddox, Meux, and Co.;
- The sight makes me a new man,—
-   “A pot of porter, ho !”
- When to Old England I come home,
- What joy to see the tankard foam !
- With heart so light and frolic high,
- I drink it off to liberty.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{378}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-_Chapter XIV._
-
-
- Then hail, thou big and foaming bowl,
- Hail, constant idol of my soul;
- How laughingly the bubbles ride
- Upon thy rich and sparkling tide.
-                                  _Brasenose College Shrovetide Verses._
-
- This, I tell you, is our jolly _wassel_,
- And for twelfth-night more meet too.
-                                            _Christmas Masque (Jonson)._
-
-_BEVERAGES COMPOUNDED OF ALE OR BEER WITH A NUMBER OF RECEIPTS.—ANCIENT
-DRINKING VESSELS.—VARIOUS USES OF ALE OTHER THAN AS A DRINK._
-
-Very few people, when warming themselves in the winter months with
-Mulled Ale, know that they are quaffing a direct descendant of that
-famous liquor known to our forefathers as the Wassail-Bowl, and near
-akin to Lambs-Wool, of which Herrick wrote in his _Twelfth Night_:—
-
- Next crowne the bowle full
- With gentle Lambs wooll,
-     Adde sugare nutmeg and ginger,
- With store of ale too
- And thus ye must doe,
-     To make the Wassaile a swinger.
-
-A beverage of still greater antiquity, but certainly a family
-connection, is Bragget or Bragot, which is, or was, until quite
-recently, drunk in Lancashire. The word, according to the writer of
-_Cups and their {379} Customs_, is of Northland origin, and derived
-from “Braga,” the name of a hero, one of the mythological Gods of the
-Edda. In its Welsh form of Bragawd, the drink is mentioned in a very
-ancient poem, _The Hirlas or Drinking Horn of Owen_, which has been
-thus rendered into English:—
-
- Cup-bearer, when I want thee most,
- With duteous patience mind thy post,
- Reach me the horn, I know its power
- Acknowledged in the social hour;
- _Hirlas_, thy contents to drain,
- I feel a longing, e’en to pain;
- Pride of feasts, profound and blue,
- Of the ninths wave’s azure hue,
- The drink of heroes formed to hold,
- With art enrich’d and lid of gold !
- Fill it with _bragawd_ to the brink,
- Confidence inspiring drink;—
-
-We have been at no little trouble to discover the nature of the drink
-called bragot, bragawd, &c., and have come to the conclusion that the
-composition of the beverages bearing those names varied considerably.
-To define Bragot with any degree of preciseness would be as difficult
-as to give an accurate definition of “soup.” In the fourteenth century,
-according to a MS. quoted in Wright’s _Provincial Dialects_, “Bragotte”
-was made from this receipt:—
-
-“Take to x galons of ale iij potell of fyne worte, and iij quartis of
-hony, and put thereto canell (cinnamon) oz: iiij, peper schort or long
-oz: iiij, galingale (a sort of rush) oz: i, and clowys (cloves) oz i,
-and gingiver oz ij.”
-
-Halliwell tells us that Bragot was a kind of beverage formerly esteemed
-in Wales and the West of England, composed of wort, sugar and spices.
-It was customary to drink it in some parts of the country on Mothering
-Sunday.
-
-Bracket must at one time have been a liquor in common use in London,
-for in Mary’s reign the constables were ordered to make weekly search
-at the houses of the Brewers and “typlers,” to see whether they sold
-any ale or beer or _bracket_ above ½d. a quart without their houses,
-and above ½d. the “thyrdendeale”[70] within. {380}
-
-   [70] The thyrdendale was a measure containing a pint and a half.
-
-In the _Haven of Health_ (1584) are directions for making bragot, which
-are similar to those in the fourteenth-century receipt. “Take three
-or four galons of good ale or more as you please, two dayes or three
-after it is cleansed, and put it into a pot by itselfe, then draw forth
-a pottle thereof and put to it a quart of good English hony, and sett
-them over the fire in a vessell, and let them boyle faire and softly,
-and alwayes as any froth ariseth skumme it away, and so clarifie it,
-and when it is well clarified, take it off the fire and let it coole,
-and put thereto of peper a pennyworth, cloves, mace, ginger, nutmegs,
-cinnamon, of each two pennyworth, stir them well together and sett them
-over the fire to boyle againe awhile, then being milke-warme put it to
-the rest and stirre all together, and let it stand two or three daies,
-and put barme upon it and drinke it at your pleasure.”
-
-Harrison (1578), in his Preface to _Holinshed’s Chronicles_, relates
-that his wife made a composition called Brakwoort, which seems to have
-been rather used for flavouring ale than as a distinct beverage. It
-contained no honey.
-
-In _Oxford Nightcaps_ metheglin, mead, and Bragon, or Bragget, are all
-mentioned as being compounded of honey. Idromellum, which by-the-by did
-not always contain honey,[71] was sometimes spoken of as Bragget. In
-Chaucer’s _Miller’s Tale_ is mention of Braket:—
-
- “Hire mouth was sweete as braket or the meth.”
-
-   [71] See p. 53.
-
-The Wassail Bowl, according to Warton, was the “Bowl” referred to in
-the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_:—
-
- Sometimes lurk I in a _gossip’s bowl_,
- In very likeness of a roasted crab,
- And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
- And on her wither’d dewlap pour the _ale_.
-
-In _Hamlet_ our great dramatist uses the word “wassail”:—
-
- The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,
- Keeps _wassail_, and the swaggering upspring reels.
-
-The chief ingredients of the ancient Wassail Bowl were, without doubt,
-strong ale, sugar, spices, and roasted apples. The following {381}
-receipt—the best of some half-dozen before us—is the one adopted at
-Jesus College, Oxford, where, on the festival of St. David, an immense
-silver-gilt bowl, which was presented to the college by Sir Watkin W.
-Wynne in 1732, is partly filled with this admirable composition, and
-passed round the festive board. Into the bowl is first placed half a
-pound of Lisbon sugar, on which is poured one pint of warm beer; a
-little nutmeg and ginger are then grated over the mixture, and four
-glasses of sherry and five pints of beer are added to it. It is then
-stirred, sweetened to taste, and allowed to stand covered up for two or
-three hours. Three or four slices of thin toast are then floated on the
-creaming mixture, and the wassail bowl is ready. Sometimes a couple or
-three slices of lemon and a few lumps of sugar rubbed on the peeling
-of a lemon are introduced. The slang term at Oxford for this beverage
-is “Swig.” In another receipt it is said that the liquor, when mixed,
-should be made hot (but not boiled), and the liquid poured over roasted
-apples laid in the bowl.
-
-In some parts of the kingdom there are, it is to be hoped, some few
-persons who still adhere to the ancient custom of keeping Wassail on
-Twelfth Night and Christmas Eve; and these, if they are orthodox,
-should ignore the toast of the Oxford receipt in favour of the roasted
-crab. Not that there is much virtue in either apple or toast, the
-excellence of the drink being due to the spices, sack, and quality of
-the ale. It can easily be understood that when ale was for the most
-part brewed without hops, and consequently rather insipid in taste,
-many people would have a craving for something more highly flavoured,
-and would put nutmeg, ginger and other spices into their liquor. It
-is not unlikely that the introduction of hops was the cause which
-ultimately led to beer cups going out of fashion. At the present
-day they are but rarely compounded, even at the Universities. From
-experience we can say that, if skilfully made, they are excellent, and
-some of the receipts given in this chapter are well worthy a trial.
-
-Lambs-wool is a variety of the Wassail Bowl. Formerly the first day of
-November was dedicated to the angel presiding over fruits, seeds, &c.,
-and was called _La Mas ubal_ (The Day of the Apple-fruit), pronounced
-lamasool. According to Vallancey these words soon became corrupted by
-the country people into Lambswool, the liquor appropriate to the day
-bearing the same name.
-
-To make this beverage, mix the pulp of half a dozen roasted apples
-with some raw sugar, a grated nutmeg, and a small quantity of ginger;
-add one quart of strong ale made moderately warm. Stir the whole {382}
-together, and, if sweet enough, it is fit for use. This mixture is
-sometimes served up in a bowl, with sweet cakes floating in it.
-
-In Ireland Lambswool used to be a constant ingredient at the
-merry-makings on Holy Eve, or the evening before All Saints’ Day,
-and milk was sometimes substituted for the ale. It is now rarely or
-never heard of in that country, having been superseded by more ardent
-potations.
-
-_The Miller of Mansfield_ contains a reference to Lambswool:—
-
- Doubt not, then sayd the King, my promist secresye:
-   The King shall never know more on’t for mee.
- A cupp of _lambswool_ they dranke unto him then,
-   And to their bedds they past presentlie.
-
-Old writers frequently made allusion to the spicing of ale. In
-Chaucer’s _Rime of Sir Thopas_ occur these lines:—
-
- And _Notemuge_ to put in ale
- Whether it be moist or stale—
-
-and again, in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, by Beaumont and
-Fletcher:—
-
- Nutmegs and ginger, cinnamon and cloves,
- And they gave me this jolly red nose.
-
-The ale, apparently, had nothing to do with the colouration.
-
-Even the sublime Milton condescended to make allusion to spiced ale in
-his _L’Allegro_:—
-
- Till the livelong daylight fail
- Then to the _spicy nut-brown ale_.
-
-Wither, in _Abuses Stript and Whipt_ (1613), says:—
-
- Will he will drinke, yet but a draught at most,
- That must be spiced with a nut-browne tost.
-
-The last quotation is only one out of the many to be found in our
-literature having reference to the toast with which the spiced ale was
-so often crowned. Perhaps the most curious is one from Greene’s _Friar
-{383} Bacon_ (sixteenth century). The Devil and Miles are conversing
-on the pleasures of Hell, whence they soon afterwards proceed. “Faith
-’tis a place,” says Miles, “I have desired long to see; have you not
-good tippling houses there?—May not a man have a lusty fire there, a
-pot of good ale, a pair of cards, a swinging piece of chalk, and a
-_brown toast_ that will clap a white waistcoat on a cup of good drink?”
-
-Even in the last century toast and spices were not uncommonly put into
-ale. Warton, in his _Panegyric on Oxford Ale_, wrote:—
-
- My sober evening let the tankard bless
- With _toast_ embrown’d, and fragrant _nutmeg_ fraught,
- While the rich draught, with oft-repeated whiffs,
- Tobacco mild improves.
-
-The Anglo-Saxon custom of drinking healths and pledging has been, at
-any rate, since the eighteenth century, termed _toasting_. In the
-twenty-fourth number of _The Tatler_ the word is connected with the
-toast put in ale cups. This is probably correct, though Wedgewood
-considers it a corruption of _stoss an!_ knock (glasses), a German
-drinker’s cry. The explanation given in _The Tatler_ of the connection
-between the two meanings of the word “toast” is, however, open to
-question. It runs thus: “It is said that while a celebrated beauty was
-indulging in her bath, one of the crowd of admirers who surrounded
-her took a glass of the water in which the fair one was dabbling and
-drank her health to the company, when a gay fellow offered to jump in,
-saying, ‘Though he liked not the liquor, he would have the _toast_.’”
-
-In the reign of Charles II. Earl Rochester writes:—
-
- Make it so large that, filled with Sack
- Up to the swelling brim,
- Vast _toasts_ on the delicious lake,
- Like ships at sea, may swim.
-
-A very ancient composition was ale-brue, called later ale-berry. It was
-composed of ale boiled with spice, sugar, and sops of bread. An old
-receipt (1420) for it is:—
-
-   Alebrue thus make thou schalle
- With grotes, safroune and good ale.
-
-{384}
-
-Ale-brue was perhaps originally merely a brew of ale, but the word soon
-came to mean a peculiar beverage. It is mentioned in _The Becon against
-Swearing_ (1543): “They would taste nothing, no not so much as a poor
-_ale-berry_ until they had slain Paul,” and in Boorde’s _Dyetary_, “Ale
-brues, caudelles and collesses” are recommended for “weke men and feble
-stomackes.” The word also occurs in _The High and Mightie Commendation
-of the Vertue of a Pot of Good Ale_:—
-
- Their ale-berries, cawdles and possets each one,
-   And sullabubs made at the milking pail,
- Although they be many, Beer comes not in any
-   But all are composed with a Pot of Good Ale.
-
-Taylor, in _Drinke and Welscome_, says: “Alesbury (or Aylesbury), in
-Buckinghamshire, where the making of _Aleberries_, so excellent against
-Hecticks, was first invented.” This is probably only a punning allusion.
-
-All who have been at City festivities have tasted the Loving Cup,
-which, so it is stated in _Cups and their Customs_, is identical with
-the Grace Cup, a beverage the drinking of which has been from time
-immemorial a great feature at Corporation dinners both in London and
-elsewhere. Mr. Timbs, in _Walks and Talks about London_, says the
-Loving Cups are filled with “a delicious composition immemorially
-termed sack, consisting of sweetened and exquisitely flavoured white
-wine,” and Will of Malmsbury, describing the customs of Glastonbury
-soon after the Conquest, says that on certain occasions the monks had
-“mead in their cans, and _wine_ in their _Grace Cup_.” The Oxford Grace
-Cup, however, according to _Oxford Nightcaps_ (1835), contains ale.
-The receipt runs thus: “Extract the juice from the peeling of a lemon
-and cut the remainder into thin slices; put it into a jug or bowl, and
-pour on it three half pints of strong home-brewed beer and a bottle of
-mountain wine: grate a nutmeg into it; sweeten it to your taste; stir
-it till the sugar is dissolved, and then add three or four slices of
-bread toasted brown. Let it stand two hours, and then strain it off
-into the Grace Cup.”
-
-Many of the cups drunk by our forefathers had medicinal qualities
-attributed to them, and did in fact, often contain drugs of various
-descriptions. The famous Hypocras, for instance, was flavoured with
-an infusion of brandy, pepper, ginger, cloves, grains of paradise,
-ambergris, and musk. A Duchess of St. Albans has left us a receipt for
-making “The Ale of health and strength,” which, it sufficeth to say,
-was a {385} decoction of nearly all the herbs in the garden (agreeable
-and otherwise) boiled up in small beer. Old worthies, when induced to
-give up their receipts for the public good, described these drinks
-under the head of “Kitchen physic.” “I allowed him medicated broths,
-_Posset Ale_ and pearl julep,” writes Wiseman in his book on surgery.
-
-The name of the unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh is dear to Britons in
-connection with tobacco and potatoes. He has yet another claim on our
-sympathy as the inventor of an excellent receipt for Sack Posset, which
-a high authority has declared to show full well the propriety of taste
-in its compounder. It runs thus:—“Boil a quart of cream with _quantum
-sufficit_ of sugar, mace and nutmeg; take half a pint of sack[72]”
-(sherry), “and the same quantity of ale, and boil them well together,
-adding sugar; these being boiled separately are now to be added. Heat a
-pewter dish very hot, and cover your basin with it, and let it stand by
-the fire for two or three hours.”
-
-   [72] There were several kinds of Sack—Sherris, Malmsey, &c. The
-   word is derived from _saco_, the skin in which Spanish wines were
-   imported.
-
-“We’ll have a posset at the latter end of a sea-coal fire,” wrote
-Shakspere.
-
-A favourite drink of the seventeenth century was Buttered Ale. It was
-composed of ale (brewed without hops), butter, sugar and cinnamon. In
-_Pepys’ Diary_ for December 5th, 1662, “a morning draught of _buttered
-ale_,” is mentioned. There is also reference to it in _The Convivial
-Songster_:—
-
- And now the merry spic’d bowls went round,
-   The gossips were void of shame too;
- In _Butter’d Ale_ the priest half drown’d,
-   Demands the infant’s name too.
-
-At the beginning of the eighteenth century Beer Cups were much in
-vogue. Cuthbert Bede specifies, but does not describe, cups bearing the
-following names: Humpty-dumpty, Clamber-clown, Hugmatee, Stick-back,
-Cock Ale and Knock-me-down, and there were others called Foxcomb,
-Stiffle, Blind Pinneaux, Stephony and Northdown. Cock Ale was supposed
-to be, and no doubt was, a very strengthening and restorative compound.
-The receipt runs thus:—“Take a cock of half a year old, kill him and
-truss him well, and put into a cask twelve gallons of Ale to which
-add four pounds of raisins of the sun well picked, stoned, washed and
-dryed; sliced Dates, half a pound; nutmegs and mace two {386} ounces:
-Infuse the dates and spices in a quart of canary twenty-four hours,
-then boil the cock in a manner to a jelly, till a gallon of water is
-reduced to two quarts; then press the body of him extremely well, and
-put the liquor into the cask where the Ale is, with the spices and
-fruit, adding a few blades of mace; then put to it a pint of new Ale
-yeast, and let it work well for a day, and, in two days, you may broach
-it for use or, in hot weather, the second day; and if it proves too
-strong, you may add more plain Ale to palliate this restorative drink,
-which contributes much to the invigorating of nature.”
-
-Among the various beverages which good house-wives deemed it their duty
-to brew were Elderberry Beer, or Ebulon, Cowslip Ale, Blackberry Ale,
-China Ale and Apricot Ale. Their names indicate to a great extent their
-composition. China Ale, however, was not a term applied by wits to tea,
-as has been suggested, but was composed of ale flavoured with China
-root and bruised coriander seed, which were tied up in a linen bag,
-and left in the liquor until it had done working. The ale then stood
-fourteen days, and was afterwards bottled. This was the proper China
-Ale, but, according to an old cookery book, “the common sort vended
-about Town is nothing more (at best) than ten-shilling beer, put up in
-small stone bottles, with a little spice, lemon peel, and raisins or
-sugar.”
-
-Ebulon, which is said to have been preferred by some people to port,
-was made thus: In a hogshead of the first and strongest wort was boiled
-one bushel of ripe elderberries. The wort was then strained and, when
-cold, worked (_i.e._ fermented) in a hogshead (not an open tun or tub).
-Having lain in cask for about a year it was bottled. Some persons
-added an infusion of hops by way of preservative and relish, and some
-likewise hung a small bag of bruised spices in the vessel. White Ebulon
-was made with pale malt and white elderberries.
-
-Blackberry Ale was composed of a strong wort made from two bushels
-of malt and ¼lb. hops. To this was added the juice of a peck of ripe
-blackberries and a little yeast. After fermentation the cask was
-stopped up close for six weeks, the ale was then bottled, and was fit
-to drink at the end of another fortnight.
-
-In the _London and County Brewer_ (1744), is this receipt for Cowslip
-Ale: Take, to a barrel of ale a bushel of the flowers of cowslip pick’d
-out of the husks, and when your ale hath done working put them loose in
-the barrel without bruising. Let it stand a fortnight before you bottle
-it, and, when you bottle it, put a lump of sugar in each bottle. {387}
-
-The same book enlightens us as to the composition of “an ale that will
-taste like Apricot Ale”:—“Take to every gallon of ale one ounce and a
-half of wild carrot seed bruised a little, and hang them in a leathern
-bag in your barrel until it is ready to drink, which will be in three
-weeks; then bottle it with a little sugar in every bottle.”
-
-Egg Ale was a somewhat remarkable composition, and was doubtless
-highly nutritious. To twelve gallons of ale was added the gravy of
-eight pounds of beef. Twelve eggs, the gravy beef, a pound of raisins,
-oranges and spice, were then placed in a linen bag and left in the
-barrel until the ale had ceased fermenting. Even then an addition was
-made in the shape of two quarts of Malaga sack. After three weeks in
-cask the ale was bottled, a little sugar being added. A monstrously
-potent liquor truly! Can this have been one of the cups with which “our
-ancestors robust with liberal cups usher’d the morn”?
-
-Coming now to beverages more familiar, a word or two as to Purl, once,
-and not so long ago either, the common morning draught of Londoners.
-Tom Hood, in _The Epping Hunt_, thus puns upon the word:—
-
- Good lord, to see the riders now,
-   Thrown off with sudden whirl,
- A score within the purling brook,
-   Enjoy’d their “early purl.”
-
-According to one receipt, common Purl contained the following
-ingredients:—Roman wormwood, gentian root, calamus aromaticus snake
-root, horse radish, dried orange peel, juniper berries, seeds or
-kernels of Seville oranges, all placed in beer, and allowed to stand
-for some months. The writer who gives this receipt says a pound or two
-of galingale improves it—as if anything could improve such a perfect
-combination! According to an anecdote told of George III., a somewhat
-simpler beverage in his day went by the name of Purl. One morning
-the King, when visiting his stables, heard one of his grooms say to
-another: “I don’t care what you say, Robert, but the man at the Three
-Tuns makes the best _purl_ in Windsor.”
-
-“Purl, purl,” said the King; “Robert, what’s Purl?”
-
-The groom explaining that purl was hot beer with a dash of gin in it,
-in fact, the compound now known to ’bus conductors as “dogsnose,” the
-King remarked:—
-
-“Yes, yes; I daresay very good drink; but too strong for the morning;
-never drink in the morning.” {388}
-
-A mixture of warmed ale and spirits is called Hot-Pot in Norfolk
-and Suffolk, and a similar compound, to which is added sugar and
-lemon-peel, used to be called Ruddle.
-
-A somewhat remote ancestor of Purl, Dogsnose, Ruddle and other mixtures
-of ale or beer and spirits, was Hum, to which Ben Jonson refers in _The
-Devil is an Ass_:—
-
-                         —Carmen
- Are got into the yellow starch and chimney sweepers
- To their tobacco, and strong waters, _hum_,
- Meath and Obarni.
-
-And it is also mentioned in Beaumont and Fletcher’s _Wildgoose Chase_:
-“What a cold I have over my stomack; would I’d some _hum_.” In
-Shirley’s _Wedding_ is a reference to hum glasses, the small size being
-indicative of the potency of the liquor:—
-
- They say that Canary sack must dance again
- To the apothecarys, and be sold
- For physic in hum glasses and thimbles.
-
-Flip, once a popular drink, and not altogether without its patrons in
-the present day, is made in a variety of ways. The following receipt is
-a good one. Place in a saucepan one quart of strong ale together with
-lumps of sugar which have been well rubbed over the rind of a lemon,
-and a small piece of cinnamon. Take the mixture off the fire when
-boiling and add one glass of cold ale. Have ready in a jug the yolks of
-six or eight eggs well beaten up with powdered sugar and grated nutmeg.
-Pour the hot ale from the saucepan on to the eggs, stirring them while
-so doing. Have another jug at hand and pour the mixture as swiftly as
-possible from one vessel to the other until a white froth appears, when
-the flip is ready. One or two wine glasses of gin or rum are often
-added. This beverage made without spirits is sometimes called Egg-hot,
-and Sailor’s Flip contains no ale. A quart of Flip is styled in the
-_Cook’s Oracle_ a “Yard of Flannel.”
-
-There is a tale told of a Frenchman, who, stopping at an inn, asked for
-Jacob.
-
-“There’s no such person here,” said the landlord.
-
-“’Tis not a person I want, sare, but de beer warmed with de poker.”
-
-“Well,” said mine host, “that is flip.” {389}
-
-“Ah! yes,” exclaimed the Frenchman, “you have right; I mean Philip.”
-
-Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose have been immortalised by Dickens in his
-description of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. The tap and parlour
-of this hostel were provided with “comfortable fireside tin utensils,
-like models of sugar-loaf hats, made in that shape that they might,
-with their pointed ends, seek out for themselves glowing nooks in the
-depths of the red coals when they mulled your ale, or heated for you
-those delectable drinks, Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose. The first of these
-humming compounds was a speciality of the Porters, which, through an
-inscription on its door-posts, gently appealed to your feelings as ‘The
-Early Purl House.’ For it would seem that Purl must always be taken
-early; though whether for any more distinctly stomachic reason than
-that, as the early bird catches the worm, so the early purl catches the
-customer, cannot here be resolved.”
-
-Of other receipts for beer cups there are many—too many, indeed, to
-be given here; most of them differ from one another more in name than
-anything else. Brown Betty, an Oxford cup, deriving its name from
-its inventor, a bedmaker, is similar to the Oxford Wassail Bowl. The
-famous Brasenose Ale, which is by no means a modern institution and is
-introduced at Brasenose College on Shrove Tuesday, immediately after
-dinner, consists merely of ale sweetened with pounded sugar, and served
-with roasted apples floating on it.
-
- Not all the liquors Rome e’er had
- Can beat our matchless Beer;
- Apicius self had gone stark mad,
- To taste such noble cheer.
-
-Thus wrote an undergraduate of Brasenose Ale.
-
-A cup bearing the euphonious name of Tewahdiddle had the reputation
-of being most excellent tipple. It consists of a pint of beer, a
-tablespoonful of brandy, a teaspoonful of brown sugar, a little grated
-nutmeg or ginger, and a roll or very thinly-cut lemon-peel.
-
-Among beverages which hold a high place as cool summer drinks is The
-Parting Cup, which is made thus: Place in a bowl two slices of very
-brown toast, a little nutmeg, a quart of mild ale, and two-thirds of a
-bottle of sherry; sweeten the liquor with syrup, and immediately before
-drinking add a bottle of soda-water. Another good cup is made with
-two quarts of light draught beer, the juice of five lemons, and about
-three-quarters of a pound of sugar. The mixture should then be {390}
-strained and allowed to stand for a short time. If flat, a little
-carbonate of soda should be added.
-
-A very favourite summer drink at Oxford was Cold Tankard; and a certain
-fair damsel, who was skilful in the preparation of this pleasant
-beverage, was so honoured by the undergraduates that songs were written
-in her praise by the boating men and other frequenters of the riverside
-inn where she presided. She was, according to one poet, cheerful,
-blithe, merry, neat, comely, gay and obliging, and above all she
-excelled in making Cold Tankard.
-
- She looks up the oars, and the old tavern scores,
- And now and then cleans out a wherry;
-     The sails she can mend,
-     And the parlour attend,
- For obliging’s the Maid of the Ferry.
- She serves in the bar, and excels all by far
- In making Cold Tankard of Perry;
-     How sweet then at eve,
-     With her leave to receive
- A kiss from the Maid of the Ferry.
-
-Though “perry” is mentioned in the verse, Cold Tankard is also made
-with Ale or Cider. The ingredients are the juice from the peeling of
-one lemon, extracted by rubbing loaf sugar on it; two lemons cut into
-thin slices; the rind of one lemon cut thin, a quarter of a pound
-of loaf sugar, and a half pint of brandy. To make the cup, put the
-foregoing into a large jug, mix them well together, and add one quart
-of cold spring water. Grate a nutmeg into the jug, add one pint of
-white wine, and a quart of strong beer, ale, perry or cider, sweeten
-the mixture to taste with capillaire or sugar, put a handful of balm
-and the same quantity of borage in flower (_borago officinalis_) into
-it, stalk downwards. Then put the jug containing this liquor into a tub
-of ice, and when it has remained there one hour it is fit for use. The
-balm and borage should be fresh gathered.
-
-The use of Borage in cups is very ancient, and old writers have
-ascribed to the flower many virtues. In Evelyn’s _Acetaria_ it is said
-“to revive the hypochondriac, and cheer the hard student.” In Salmon’s
-_Household Companion_ (1710) Borage is mentioned as one of the four
-cordial flowers; “it comforts the heart, cheers melancholy, and revives
-the fainting spirits.” It may be doubted whether the comforting effects
-{391} of this inward application were rightly attributed to the borage
-alone. A modern writer has gone so far as to say that he never found
-any benefit apparent from the presence of Borage at Lord Mayor’s feasts
-and other such festive gatherings, beyond that of so stinging the
-noses of those other persons who have desired to drink deeply that the
-cup undrained has been. Though granting this undeniable advantage, we
-cannot concur that Borage possesses no other qualities, for it gives to
-cups a peculiarly refreshing flavour which cannot be imitated.
-
-In _Cups and their Customs_ are three Beer Cups which have not yet been
-mentioned. The first of these is Copus Cup. It consists of two quarts
-of hot ale, to which are added four wine glasses of brandy, three wine
-glasses of noyau, a pound of lump sugar, the juice of one lemon, a
-piece of toast, a dozen cloves, and a little nutmeg. Was it of such a
-cup as this that the lines were written?—
-
- Three cups of this a prudent man may take;
- The first of these for constitution’s sake,
- The second to the girl he loves the best,
- The third and last to lull him to his rest.
-
-Donaldson’s Beer Cup is of a more simple and lighter character. To a
-pint of ale is added the peel of half a lemon, half a liquor-glass of
-noyau, a bottle of seltzer-water, a little nutmeg and sugar, and some
-ice.
-
-“Hungerford Park” is an excellent beverage, and is especially suitable
-for shooting parties in hot weather. To make it—cut into slices three
-good-flavoured apples, which put into a jug; add the peel and juice of
-one lemon, a very little grated nutmeg, three bottles of ginger-beer,
-half a pint of sherry, two and a quarter pints of good draught ale,
-sweeten to taste with sifted loaf sugar, stir a little to melt the
-sugar, and let the jug stand in ice. “The addition of half a bottle of
-champagne makes it _awfully_ good,” wrote a certain Colonel B., in _the
-Field_, a few years ago.
-
-Freemasons’ Cup, which may be drank either hot or cold, is of a very
-potent character, and consists of a pint of Scotch ale, a similar
-quantity of mild beer, half a pint of brandy, a pint of sherry, half a
-pound of loaf sugar, and plenty of grated nutmeg. Freemasons must have
-strong heads.
-
-It will, no doubt, have been noted ere this that between mulled ale
-and the majority of hot beer-cups the distinction is rather in name
-than composition, and the various receipts for mulling ale so closely
-resemble the Wassail Bowl, Flip, &c., that it is quite unnecessary to
-quote any of {392} them. A word or two on cup making. Cups are easily
-made and easily marred. All the ingredients must be of good quality,
-and the vessels used sweet and clean. Everything required should be at
-hand before the mixing commences, and that important process should
-proceed as quickly as possible. Few servants can be trusted to brew
-cups, but if the matter is placed in their hands you cannot do better
-than caution them in terms similar to those addressed by Dr. King to
-his maid Margaret:—
-
- O Peggy, Peggy, when thou go’st to brew,
- Consider well what you’re about to do;
- Be very wise—very sedately think
- That what you’re going to make is—drink;
- Consider who must drink that drink, and then
- What ’tis to have the praise of honest men;
- Then future ages shall of Peggy tell,
- The nymph who spiced the brewages so well.
-
-Yet two more beverages compounded of ale or beer, and then this
-portion of the subject is completed. First, Shandy Gaff, the very
-writing of which word brings to us visions of a shining river, of
-shady backwaters, of sunny days, of two-handled tankards, and of deep
-cool draughts well earned. For the sake of the unfortunate few who
-are unacquainted with the beverage, the receipt is given: One pint
-of bitter beer, one bottle of the old-fashioned ginger-beer mixed
-together, and imbibed only on the hottest summer days, after rowing.
-Why, we cannot say; but Shandy Gaff always seems to us out of place
-anywhere but on the river.
-
-Secondly and lastly—Mother-in-law, which, also, to some of us may bring
-visions—but of another kind. The drink of this name is composed of
-equal proportions of “old and bitter.”
-
-If there is one season of the year more appropriate than another to hot
-beer-cups, be they Wassail Bowls, Lambswool, Flip or Mulled Ale, it is
-Christmas. Edward Moxon, a poet who flourished about the commencement
-of this century, presents in his _Christmas_ a charming picture of the
-merry circle gathered round the crackling yule log, regaling themselves
-with mulled ale:—
-
- Right merry now the hours they pass,
- Fleeting thro’ jocund pleasure’s glass,
- The yule-log too burns bright and clear,
- Auspicious of a happy year: {393}
- While some with joke and some with tale,
- But all with sweeter _mullèd ale_,
- Pass gaily life’s sweet stream along,
- With interlude of ancient song—
- And as each rosy cup they drain,
- Bounty replenishes again.
-
-From the excellent beverages compounded of ale or beer, concerning
-which so much has been said in this chapter, let us turn to the cups,
-flagons, horns, bowls and other vessels used by ale drinkers, and in
-some of which these beverages were compounded.
-
- “Come troll the jovial flagon,
-  Come fill the bonny bowl,
-  Come, join in laughing sympathy
-  Of soul with kindred soul.”
-
-A few pages must suffice for a very short notice of this interesting
-part of our subject.
-
-[Illustration: Anglo-Saxon Tumblers.]
-
-Mr. Sharon Turner, in his _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, gives many
-instances of the high estimation in which cups and drinking vessels
-were held by our Teutonic forefathers. Even in very early times the
-precious metals were largely used in their construction, and gold and
-silver cups are frequently the subjects of Anglo-Saxon bequests. In the
-old poem _Beowulf_ evidence may be found bearing upon this point. One
-of the treasures in the ancient barrow guarded by the dragon Grendel
-is “The solid cup, the costly drinking vessel (_drync fœt deore_).”
-Drinking vessels are frequently found in Anglo-Saxon tombs. The cups
-represented in the cut are made of glass, and were found chiefly in
-barrows in Kent. They are of the “tumbler” species, _i.e._, on being
-filled they must be emptied at a draught, and cannot be set down with
-any liquor in them. Mr. Wright suggests that the example to the left
-represents the “twisted” pattern mentioned in _Beowulf_.
-
-The savage custom, observed both by the Celts and Saxons, of drinking
-ale or mead from {394} a cup made out of the skull of a fallen foe,
-has left a trace in mediæval times in the word “scole,” signifying a
-cup or bowl, and may probably still be recognised in the provincial
-word “skillet,” which has the same meaning.
-
-Henry, in his _History of England_, relates that the Celtic inhabitants
-of the Western Islands of Scotland spoke in their poetical way of
-intoxicating liquors as “the strength of the shell,” from the fact that
-they used shells as drinking vessels.
-
-Returning to the Anglo-Saxons—besides metal and glass cups, they used
-drinking horns, and cups or bowls of wood, and in some respects the
-horn was the most important of their drinking vessels. Investiture of
-lands was frequently made by the horn both among the Saxons and Danes.
-The celebrated Horn of Ulphus, kept in the Sacristy of York Minster,
-was, according to Camden, given to the Cathedral by a noble Dane named
-Ulphus, who, when his sons quarrelled as to the succession to his
-estate, cut short the dispute by repairing to the Minster, and there
-enfeoffed the Cathedral with all his lands and revenues, draining the
-horn before the high altar as a pledge and evidence of the gift. The
-Mercian King Witlaf gave a drinking horn to the Abbey of Croyland “that
-the elder monks may drink from it on feast days, and remember the soul
-of the donor.”
-
-[Illustration: Cup found in the Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey.]
-
-The peg-tankards of the Anglo-Saxons have been already referred to in
-Chapter V. The Glastonbury Peg Tankard, illustrated in the cut, is made
-of oak. On the lid is a representation of the Crucifixion, and round
-the sides are the figures of the Apostles. It contains two quarts, and
-is divided with eight pegs. {395}
-
-While engaged on this subject of measured drinks, it may also be
-mentioned that hoops were used as well as pegs by the old topers, and
-hence the promise of Jack Cade that “the three-hooped pot shall have
-ten hoops.” From the same fact is derived the old phrase, “carousing
-the hunter’s hoop,” signifying a prolonged drinking bout. In certain
-parts of Essex it has been customary, until quite recently, for topers
-to drink out a pot of ale in three equal draughts, and with some
-ceremony; the first draught was called _neckum_, the second _sinkum_,
-and the third _swankum_.
-
-Passing on to mediæval times, We find, as might have been expected, a
-great increase of variety in the drinking vessels in common use. The
-tankard, which was one of the chief vessels used for ordinary drinking
-purposes, was originally a vessel containing three gallons, and used,
-not to drink out of, but to carry water in. Before Sir Hugh Middleton
-brought the New River water into London, the inhabitants were supplied
-by the tankard bearers. The tankard was usually made of metal and the
-common use of pewter in the fifteenth century is shown by an extract
-from a letter of that period, in which the recipient is reminded, that
-“If ye be at home this Christmas, it were well done ye should do purvey
-a garnish or twain of pewter vessel.” The _hanap_ was a kind of first
-cousin to the tankard, it came down from Saxon times, and the name
-is found in old Vocabularies under the form _hnæp_. The minds of the
-learned have been greatly exercised as to the connection of this word
-hanap with our word hamper, and with the older form still found in the
-term, the Hanaper Office. We would humbly suggest that the old work of
-Alexander Neckam, to which we have already had occasion to refer, makes
-the matter tolerably clear. The writer, in describing the contents of
-a cellar, mentions _ciphi_ and _cophini_, which of course mean _cups_
-and _baskets_. An ancient annotator, however, gives us just the hint
-we want by writing in the MS. over the word _ciphi_ “anaps,” and over
-_cophini_ “anapers.” The hanap therefore was the cup, the hanaper or
-hamper was the basket in which the cups were carried.
-
-As an example of the number and value of the various drinking vessels
-in use, the following extracts are given from an inventory of the goods
-of Sir John Fastolfe, who died in 1459:
-
- Item j payre galon Bottels of one sorte.
-
-  — j payre of potell Bottellys one sorte.
-
-  — j nother potell Bottell—Item 1 payre Quartletts of one sorte.
-
- Item iiij galon pottis of lether—Item iij Pottelers of lether.
-
- Item j grete tankard. {396}
-
- Item ij grete and hoge botellis.
-
-  — ij Pottis of silver, percell gilte and enameled with violetts and
- dayseys.
-
-  — ij Pottes of sylver, of the facion of goods enamelyd on the toppys
- withe hys armys.
-
-Leather was a very usual material for drinking vessels in former times,
-and black-jacks were to be seen in every village alehouse. Many such
-are still to be found in various parts of the country, though they are
-not now used.
-
-The venerable song the _Leather Bottel_ is too well known to bear
-repetition, but a verse or two of _Time’s Alterations or the Old Man’s
-Rehersal_, an ancient black-letter ballad, may be given to show the
-common use of the leather drinking vessel:—
-
- Black jacks to every man
-   Were filled with wine and beer;
- No pewter pot nor can
-   In those days did appear:
- Good cheer in a nobleman’s house
-   Was counted a seemly shew;
- We wanted no brawn nor souse,
-   When this old cap was new.
-
- We took not such delight
-   In cups of silver wine;
- None under the degree of a Knight
-   In plate drunk beer or wine:
- Now each mechanical man
-   Hath a cupboard of plate for a shew;
- Which was a rare thing then,
-   When this old cap was new.
-
-Taylor, the water poet, in his _Jack a Lent_, makes mention of these
-vessels (A.D. 1630):—
-
- ——— nor of Jacke Dogge, Jack Date,
- Jacke foole, or Jack a Dandy, I relate:
- Nor of Black Jacks at gentle Buttry bars,
- Whose liquor often breeds household wars:
-
-A variety of Black Jack was the Bombard, to which Ben Jonson refers
-in the lines from the _Masque of Love Restored_. “With that {397}
-they knocked hypocrisy on the pate and made room for a bombard-man,
-that brought bouge[73] for a country lady or two, that fainted, he
-said, with fasting.” Shakspere calls Falstaff “that swollen parcel or
-dropsies, that huge bombard of sack.” “Baiting of bombard” was a slang
-term for heavy drinking. Small Jacks were also in use. Decker, in
-his _English Villaines Seven Times Pressed to Death_, says: “In some
-places they have little leather Jacks, tip’d with silver, and hung with
-small silver bells (these are called Gyngle-Boyes), to ring peales of
-drunkennesse.”
-
-   [73] bouge = an allowance of meat and drink.
-
-The Black Jack was frequently taken for a sign. The house with that
-sign-board in Clare Market, London, was once the haunt of Joe Miller,
-of comic fame, and from the window of this tavern Jack Sheppard is
-said to have made a desperate leap, in escaping from the clutches of
-Jonathan Wild and his myrmidons.
-
-Heywood, in his _Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected and
-Anatomized_ (1635), gives a very full list of the various drinking
-vessels in use in his day. “Of drinking cups,” he says, “divers and
-sundry sorts we have; some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of
-holly, etc. Mazers, broad-mouthed dishes, naggins, whiskins, piggins,
-creuzes, ale-bowles, wassel-bowles, court dishes, tankards, kannes,
-from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we
-have of leather, but they are mostly used amongst the shepherds and
-harvest people of the countrey; small jacks we have in many ale houses
-of the citie and suburbs tipt with silver: black-jacks and bombards
-at the court; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at
-their return unto their country that the Englishmen used to drink out
-of their bootes. We have besides cups made of horns of beastes, of
-cockernuts, of goords, of eggs of estriches; others made of the shells
-of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and shining
-like mother of pearle. Come to plate, every tavern can afford you flat
-bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private
-householders in the citie, when they make a feast to entertain their
-friends, can furnish their cupboards with flagons, tankards, beere
-cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all over,
-some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.”
-
-During the religious feuds that raged so fearfully in Holland, the
-Protestant party gave the name of _Bellarmines_ to the bearded jugs
-{398} they used. This was done in ridicule of their opponent, Cardinal
-Bellarmine. The Cardinal’s figure was stout and squat, and well suited
-the form of the stone beer-jug in use. To make the resemblance more
-complete, the Cardinal’s face with his great square-cut beard was
-placed in front of the jug, which became known in England as the
-_Bellarmine_ or _Greybeard_ Jug. Many fragments of these jugs, of the
-reign of Elizabeth and James the First, have been exhumed, and the jug
-entire is not uncommon. Ben Jonson, alluding to the Greybeard, says
-of a drunkard that “the man with the beard has almost struck up his
-heels,” and an excellent description of this quaint old jug is to be
-found in Cartwright’s play _The Ordinary_ (1651):—
-
-                           ——thou thing
- Thy very looks like to some strutting hill,
- O’ershadow’d with thy rough beard like a wood;
- Or like a larger jug that some men call
- A Bellarmine, but we a conscience,
- Wheron the tender hand of Pagan workman
- Over the proud ambitious head hath carved
- An idol large, with beard episcopal.
-
-The Greybeard Jug is still to be found in some parts of Scotland,
-and the following tale, in which it figures, was taken down some
-years ago from the conversation of a Scotch Church dignitary. About
-1770 there flourished a Mrs. Balfour, of Denbog, in the County of
-Fife. The nearest neighbour of Denbog was a Mr. David Paterson, who
-had the character of being a good deal of a humorist. One day, when
-Paterson came to the house, he found Mrs. Balfour engaged in one of her
-half-yearly brewings, it being the custom in those days, each March and
-October, to make as much ale as would serve for the ensuing six months.
-She was in a great pother about bottles, her stock of which fell far
-short of the number required, and she asked Mr. Paterson if he could
-lend her any? “No,” said Paterson, “but I think I could bring you a
-few greybeards that would hold a good deal, perhaps that would do.”
-The lady assented, and appointed a day when he should come again and
-bring his greybeards with him. On the proper day Mr. Paterson made his
-appearance, in Mrs. Balfour’s parlour.
-
-“Well, Mr. Paterson, have you brought your greybeards?”
-
-“O, yes, they are down stairs waiting for you.”
-
-“How many?”
-
-“Nae less than ten.” {399}
-
-“Well I, hope they are pretty large, for really I find I have a great
-deal more Ale than I have bottles for.”
-
-“I’se warrant ye, Mem, ilka ane o’ them will hold twelve gallons.”
-
-“O, that will do extremely well.”
-
-Down goes the lady.
-
-“I left them in the dining-room,” said Paterson. When the lady went in
-she found ten of the most bibulous old lairds of the North of Fife. She
-at once perceived the joke, and entered into it. After a hearty laugh
-had gone round, she said she thought it would be as well to have dinner
-before filling the greybeards, and it was accordingly arranged that the
-gentlemen should take a ramble and come in to dinner at two o’clock.
-
-The extra ale is understood to have been duly disposed of.
-
-Closely allied to the Greybeard was the Toby Philpot beer jug; it was,
-however, a more elaborate article, and represented the whole figure of
-a portly toper. Its origin is thus described in the humorous verses
-entitled _Toby Philpot_, by Francis Fawkes:—
-
- Dear Tom, this brown jug, which now foams with mild ale,
- Out of which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Vale,
- Was once Toby Philpot, a thirsty old soul,
- As e’er crack’d a bottle, or fathom’d a bowl:
- In bousing about, ’twas his pride to excel,
- And amongst jolly topers he bore off the bell.
-
- It chanc’d as in dog days he sat at his ease,
- In his flower-woven arbour, as gay as you please,
- With his friend and a pipe, puffing sorrow away,
- And with honest Old Stingo sat soaking his clay,
- His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut,
- And he died full as big as a Dorchester Butt.
-
- His body when long in the ground it had lain,
- And time into clay had dissolv’d it again,
- A potter found out, in its covert so snug,
- And with part of Fat Toby he form’d this brown jug:
- Now sacred to friendship, to mirth, and mild Ale—
- So here’s to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale.
-
-The wooden ale bowls used by the Saxons continued common in England for
-many a century, and constant reference to them is to be {400} found.
-In the _Miller of Mansfield_ King Henry II. is represented drinking out
-of a brown bowl:
-
- This caus’d the King, suddenlye, to laugh most heartilye,
-   Till the teares trickled fast downe from his eyes.
- Then to their supper were they set orderlye,
-   With hot bag puddings, and good apply pyes;
- Nappy ale, good and stale, in a browne bowle,
-   Which did about the board merrilye trowle.
-
-At the time when the _Liber Albus_ was composed (1419), the gallons,
-pottles and quarts used in the City of London were made of wood, as may
-be judged from the fact that they are mentioned as shrinking if they
-were stamped when _green_.
-
-Dryden mentions the brown bowl as characteristic of the country life:—
-
- The rich, tir’d with continual feasts,
- For change become their next poor tenant’s guests;
- Drink heavy draughts of Ale from plain brown bowls,
- And snatch the homely Rasher from the coals.
-
-Mr. Pepys records that on the 4th of January, 1667, he had company
-to dinner; and “at night to sup, and then to cards, and last of all
-to have a flagon of ale and apples, drank out of a wood cup, as a
-Christmas draught, which made all merry.” Brown bowls were also the
-drinking vessels used in singing the old song, _The Barley Mow_ “which
-cannot,” says Bell “be given in words, it should be heard to be
-appreciated properly, particularly with the West Country dialect.”
-
- Here’s a health to the barley-mow, my brave boys,
-   Here’s a health to the barley-mow!
- We’ll drink it out of the jolly brown bowl,
-   Here’s a health to the barley-mow!
- Chorus:—Here’s a health to the barley-mow, my brave boys,
-           Here’s a health to the barley-mow!
- We’ll drink it out of the nipperkin, boys.
-           Here’s, &c.
-
-and so it proceeds, “quarter-pint,” “half-pint,” “pint,” “quart,”
-“pottle,” “gallon,” “half-anker,” “anker,” “half-hogshead,” “hogshead,”
-“pipe,” “well,” “river,” “ocean,” always in the third line repeating
-the whole of the previously-named “measures” backwards. {401}
-
-Among curious drinking vessels must be classed the Wager or Puzzle
-Jugs, which, in the seventeenth century, were great favourites at
-village inns. Some are to be seen in the South Kensington Museum. These
-jugs had usually many spouts, from most of which it was difficult to
-drink owing to perforations in the neck. But a secret passage for the
-liquor up the hollow handle or through one spout or nozzle afforded a
-means of sucking out the contents, the fingers of the drinker stopping
-up the other spouts and holes during the operation. On many of these
-jugs were inscriptions, such as—
-
- From Mother Earth I claim my birth,
- I’m made a joke to man,
- But now I’m here, fill’d with good beer
- Come, taste me if you can.
-
-One more curious drinking vessel must be mentioned, and then this short
-account of a subject upon which a large volume might well be written,
-must close.
-
-The “Ale-yard” has been described by a writer in _Notes and Queries_ as
-“a trumpet-shaped glass vessel, exactly a yard in length, the narrow
-end being closed, and expanded into a large ball. Its internal capacity
-is little more than a pint, and when filled with ale many a thirsty
-tyro has been challenged to empty it without taking away his mouth.
-This is no easy task. So long as the tube contains fluid it flows out
-smoothly, but when air reaches the bulb it displaces the liquor with
-a splash, startling the toper, and compelling him involuntarily to
-withdraw his mouth by the rush of the cold liquid over his face and
-dress.”
-
-The Ale-yard is known at Eton under the name of the “Long Glass.” Those
-boys who attain to a certain standing either as Dry Bobs or Wet Bobs
-(_i.e._, in the boats or at cricket) are invited to attend “Cellar,”
-which is held at “Tap” once a week during the summer term. On attending
-the first time the novice has to “floor the Long Glass” (_i.e._, to
-finish it without drawing breath). Many have to make several attempts,
-and some never succeed.
-
-It is, no doubt, generally supposed that the uses of ale other than as
-a drink are but few in number, yet malt liquors have been applied to a
-variety of queer purposes. From a letter of Pope Gregory to Archbishop
-Nidrosiensi, of Iceland, it would seem that in the thirteenth century
-children were sometimes baptized in ale instead of water.
-
-“Forasmuch as we learn from your letter that it has sometimes {402}
-happened that infants in your country have been baptized in ale owing
-to the lack of water in that region, we return in answer that since the
-heart ought to be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, those ought
-not to be considered as duly baptized who have been baptized in ale.
-
-“Given at the Lateran VIII. Idus Julii, anno XV.”
-
-In another letter of an earlier date (1237) the use of ale in the
-administration of the Eucharist was forbidden, though Nashe, speaking
-of the Icelanders in his _Terrors of the Night_ (1594), says: “It is
-reported that the Pope long since gave them a dispensation to receive
-the Sacrament in ale, since owing to their incessant frosts there, no
-wine but was turned to red emagle” (_i.e._, enamel) “as soone as euer
-it came amongst them.”
-
-To leave Theology for the Stable, it is worth recording that it is
-alleged that during the King’s progress through the country, in Norman
-times, such was the extravagance and waste of the royal household that
-the servants even washed the horses’ feet in ale. Grooms at the present
-day often mix ale with lampblack and oil for rubbing on the hoofs
-of horses. Possibly this was all that was done by the royal grooms.
-Ancient chroniclers are notoriously inaccurate.
-
-None appreciate good ale more than anglers, and this is clearly
-evidenced in the following receipt, written by Christopher North, for
-staining gut or hair lines a pale watery green:—“To a pint of strong
-ale add (as soon as possible, as it is so apt to evaporate when good)
-half-a-pound of soot, a small quantity of walnut leaves, and a little
-powdered alum (then drink the remaining pint of ale, if you happen to
-have drawn a quart); boil these materials for half or three-quarters of
-an hour, and when the mixture is cold, steep the gut or hair in it for
-ten or twelve hours.” Yes, good ale is apt to evaporate very quickly;
-the moral is obvious.
-
-Dame Juliana Berners, in _The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle_,
-gives two receipts “to coloure your lynes of here,” in which ale is
-used. One consists of ale and alum, the other of ale and soot.
-
-When every county had its monasteries, and every monastery its fish
-stew well stocked with fine carp for Fridays’ dinners, the fattening of
-fish was a matter of no little importance. In an old angling book it is
-stated that “Raspins and Chippins of Bread, or almost any scraps from
-the Table, placed under a cask of strong Beer or Ale, in such a manner
-that the Droppings of the Liquor may fall among them, is excellent Food
-for Carp. Two quarts of this is sufficient for thirty, and if they
-are fed Morning and Evening it will be better than once a Day only.”
-Stilton {403} cheeses, by the way, treated in a similar manner to
-that directed for the “Raspins,” are immensely improved in flavour and
-general excellence. Brewers’ grains are greedily eaten by most kinds
-of freshwater fish, and are used by anglers as groundbait for bream,
-roach, and carp in the Eastern counties.
-
-In a work entitled _Practical Economy_, published in 1821, persons
-desirous of fattening their fowls quickly are recommended to feed them
-on ground-rice, milk and sugar, made into a paste, and to let them
-drink beer.
-
-The ladies who preside over the culinary department of our households
-do not, so far as we know, make any use of ale other than as a drink,
-excepting the occasional use of beer in the preparation of Welsh
-rare-bits. From old cookery books, however, we gather that this has
-not always been the case. Beer mixed with brown sugar was a favourite
-sauce for pancakes; red herrings were steeped in small beer before
-being broiled; and catsup for sea stores was made principally of beer
-and vinegar, a few mushrooms being added for conscience’ sake. Then,
-from the same source, we find that beer has other domestic uses. An
-admirable method of cleaning crape is to steep it in beer, wring it
-gently, and hang it out to dry; stale beer formed, and still forms, the
-liquid part of the best blacking; ale or beer plus elbow grease makes
-capital furniture polish; and, leaving the interior of the house, beer
-grounds have been used for washing the outside of walls and houses
-covered with cement to harden the latter, a change which they are said
-likewise to effect on bricks and mortar.
-
-Beer mixed with brown sugar or honey is usually rubbed over the
-interiors of hives in which swarms of bees are intended to be taken.
-A bunch of mint and other sweet herbs forms the brush to spread the
-mixture. Not only is the sweet dressing agreeable to the taste and
-smell, but the beer has doubtless a lulling and soporific effect on the
-bees, and renders them less anxious to leave their new abode.
-
-In the medicine books of the Saxon Leeches are references to the use of
-ale in the composition of various lotions. Ale and beer are, indeed,
-often prescribed by medical practitioners of the present day, as will
-be seen by a perusal of Chapter XV. The valuable properties of bitter
-beer as an incentive to appetite and a promoter of digestion, and the
-nourishing qualities of the brown beers, are too well known to need
-comment.
-
-In many breweries large quantities of vinegar are manufactured from
-malt liquor. This is an ancient practice, for in the City of London
-{404} Records of the time of Good Queen Bess it is stated that
-officials were appointed to search the premises of the brewers for
-“vyneagre, bear-eagre and ale-eagre,” and to report to the Common
-Council touching the same. The words “beare-eagre” and “ale-eagre”
-have now gone out of use, and the acid liquid made from malt liquor is
-improperly called Vinegar though in no way connected with the Vine.
-
-A use of ale, which is additional rather than alternative to the common
-one, is commemorated by the old proverb, “Fair chieve good ale, it
-makes folk speak what they think.” Another such supplementary use, but
-of a character less commendable, is expressed in the ancient couplet:—
-
- The Good Noppy Ale of Southwerk
- Keeps many a goodwife from the Kirk.
-
-Moore, in his _Odes of Anacreon_, sings the praise of ale as an
-incentive to literary labours:—
-
- If with water you fill up your glasses,
- You’ll never write anything wise,
- For Ale is the horse of Parnassus
- Which hurries a bard to the skies.
-
-The following curious lines, copied from a MS. in the Cottonian
-Library, indicate some other supplementary uses, or to speak more
-correctly, the unwished-for effects of the strong ale in which our
-forefathers indulged:—
-
- Doll thi, doll, doll, doll this ale, dole,
- Ale mak many a man to have a doly poll.
- Ale mak many a mane to styk at a brere;
- Ale mak many a mane to ly in the myere;
- And ale mak many a mane to stombyl at a stone;
- Ale mak many a mane to dronken home;
- And ale mak many a mane to brek his tone;
-                 With doll.
-
- Ale mak many a mane to draw hys knyfe;
- Ale mak many a mane to bet hys wyf.
-                 With doll.
-
- Ale mak many a mane to wet hys chekes,
-        *       *       *       *       * {405}
-
- Ale mak many a mane to stomble in the blokkis;
- Ale mak many a mane to mak hys hed have knokkes,
- And ale mak many a mane to syt in the stokkes.
-                 With doll.
-
- Ale mak many a mane to ryne over the falows;
- Ale mak a mane to swere by God and alhalows
- And ale mak many a mane to hang upon the galows.
-                 With doll.
-
-A strange use of good liquor was that which anciently prevailed of
-partly intoxicating criminals before execution. The ladies of Jerusalem
-used to provide such a potion, consisting of frankincense and wine.
-There is a curious similarity between this custom and the old practice
-of giving to condemned men on their way to Tyburn Tree, a great bowl
-of ale as their last earthly refreshment. It is stated in Hone’s _Year
-Book_ that a court on the south side of the High Street, St. Giles’,
-derives its name of Bowl Yard from the circumstance of criminals on
-their way to execution being presented with a bowl of ale at the
-Hospital of St. Giles. Different maxims came ultimately to prevail
-in reference to this matter, and we are told that Lord Ferrers, when
-on his way to execution in 1760, for the murder of his land steward,
-was denied his request for some wine and water, the Sheriff stating
-that he was sorry to be obliged to refuse his lordship, but by recent
-regulations they were enjoined not to let prisoners drink when going to
-execution, as great indecencies had been frequently committed in these
-cases, through the criminals becoming intoxicated. The old saying that
-the “Saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his liquor,” arose from
-the following circumstances: Being sick at heart from his impending
-death, the Saddler refused the bowl of ale offered him on his way to
-the gallows. One minute after the poor fellow’s last struggle his
-reprieve arrived, so that had he but tarried to drink the ale he had
-been saved.
-
-Very different was the fortune of the Tinkler who had the good luck to
-meet
-
-             ——King Jamie, the first of our throne
- A pleasanter monarch sure never was known.
-
-The little incident is best told in the words of the old ballad:—
-
-  As he (the King) was a hunting the swift fallow deer,
-  He dropped all his nobles; and when he got clear, {406}
-  In hope of some pastime away he did ride
-  Till he came to an ale-house, hard by a wood side.
-
-  And there with a Tinkler he happened to meet,
-  And him in kind sort he so freely did greet:
- “Pray thee, good fellow, what hast in thy jug,
-  Which under thy arm thou dost lovingly hug?”
-
- “By the mass!” quoth the Tinkler, “it’s nappy brown ale,
-  And for to drink to thee, friend, I will not fail;
-  For although thy jacket looks gallant and fine,
-  I think my twopence as good as is thine.”
-
- “By my soul! honest fellow, the truth thou has spoke,”
-  And straight he sat down with the Tinkler to joke;
-  They drank to the King and they pledged to each other;
-  Who’d seen ’em had thought they were brother and brother.
-
-In their merry conversation the Tinkler remarks that the King is on the
-border chasing deer, and that he would much like to see a King. James
-immediately says he will show him one, if he will but mount behind him.
-This the Tinkler does, “with his sack, his budget of leather and tools
-at his back.” Doubts arising in his mind as to how he shall recognise
-the King, James tells him,
-
- “Thou’lt easily ken him when once thou art there;
-  The King will be covered, his nobles all bare.”
-
-Together the two ride through the merry greenwood, and come upon the
-nobles, when the Tinkler again asks to be shown the King.
-
-  The King did with hearty good laughter reply,
- “By my soul! my good fellow, its thou or its I!
-  The rest are bare-headed, uncovered all round.”
-  With his bag and his budget he fell to the ground,
-
-and beseeches mercy. Then says James—
-
- “Come tell me thy name?” “I am John of the Dale,
-  A mender of kettles, a lover of ale.”
- “Rise up! Sir John, I will honour thee here,
-  I make thee a Knight of three thousand a year.”
-
-{407}
-
-“This was a good thing for the Tinkler indeed,” writes the poet, who
-concludes with the verse:—
-
- Sir John of the Dale he has land, he has fee,
- At the Court of the King who so happy as he?
- Yet still in his hall hangs the Tinkler’s old sack,
- And the budget of tools which he bore at his back.
-
-There are two instances on record of ale being used to extinguish fire.
-One January in the seventeenth century occurred a devastating fire
-which burnt down the greater portion of the Temple in the neighbourhood
-of Pump Court. “The night was bitterly cold,” writes Mr. Jeafferson,
-in _Law and Lawyers_, “and the Templars, aroused from their beds to
-preserve life and property, could not get an adequate supply of water
-from the Thames, which the unusual severity of the season had frozen.
-In this difficulty _they actually brought barrels of ale from the
-Temple butteries, and fed the engines with the malt liquor_.” If the
-ale was old and potent the flare up thereof must have been great indeed.
-
-In the year 1613 the Globe Theatre was burnt down in consequence of
-the wadding from a cannon fired off during the performance of _Henry
-VIII._, setting fire to the thatched roof. Sir Henry Wotton, in a
-letter to his nephew giving an account of the occurrence, wrote: “One
-man had his breeches set on fire that perhaps had broiled him if he had
-not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle ale.” To
-what base uses may we return!
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{408}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-
- CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.
-    “Dieu de batailes! Where have they this mettle?
-     . . . can sodden water,
-     A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley broth,
-     Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?”
-                                    _King Henry V._, Act iii., Scene 5.
-
- “If every man is to forego his freedom of action because many make a
- licentious use of it, I know not what is the value of any freedom.”
-                                              _J. Risdon Bennett, M.D._
-
-_OLD MEDICAL WRITERS ON ALE. — ADULTERATION OF ALE. — ADVANTAGES
-OF MALT LIQUORS TO LABOURING CLASSES. — TEMPERANCE_ versus _TOTAL
-ABSTINENCE. — ANECDOTES. — GAY’S BALLAD._
-
-Champions of the so-called temperance cause, have gone so far towards
-_in_temperance as to say that a moderate drinker is worse than a
-drunkard. This absurd declaration stands self-condemned, and without
-labouring thrice to slay the slain by disproving an assertion which
-carries upon its face the unmistakable marks of a suicide’s death, we
-propose in this chapter to prove beyond question, from the works of
-ancient, mediæval, and modern writers, that sound malt liquors possess
-valuable medicinal and restorative qualities, and that their proper use
-is in nowise injurious to health.
-
-In Anglo-Saxon times ale was considered to be possessed of the highest
-medicinal virtues. It is mentioned in the _Saxon Leechdoms_ as an
-ingredient in many of the remedies therein prescribed, and for the
-most serious as well as for the most trifling complaints. In lung
-{409} disease a man is to “withhold himself earnestly from sweetened
-ale,” to drink clear ale, and in the wort of the clear ale “boil young
-oak-rind and drink.” Fever patients are recommended to drink during a
-period of thirty days an infusion of clear ale and wormwood, githrife,
-betony, bishop-wort, marrubium, fen mint, rosemary and other herbs. For
-one “fiend-sick” the receipt runs thus:—A number of herbs having been
-worked up in clear ale, “sing seven masses over the worts, add garlic
-and holy water and let him drink out of a church bell”; finally the
-lunatic is to give alms and pray for God’s mercies. Another remedy for
-lunacy is much simpler: “Take skin of a mere-swine (porpoise), work it
-into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will be well, Amen.”
-Another remarkable receipt runs thus: “Take a mickle handfull of sedge
-and gladden, put them into a pan, pour a muckle bowlfull of ale upon
-them, boil, and then rub into the mixture twenty-five libcorns. This is
-a good drink against the devil.”
-
-For less serious evils the receipts in these Anglo-Saxon pharmacopœias
-are numerous. Hiccup is cured thus: Take the root of jarrow, pound it,
-and put it into good beer, and give it to the patient to sup lukewarm.“
-Then I ween that it may be of good benefit to him either for hiccup or
-for any internal difficulty.”
-
-In Anglo-Saxon veterinary surgery beer was also used. “Take a little
-new ale and pour it into the mouth of each of the sheep; and make them
-swallow it quickly; that will do them good,” says the old _Lœce-boc_.
-(_i.e._, Medicine book.)
-
-At the present day, in some country places, cows which have lost their
-milk soon after calving, are given warm ale in which aniseed has been
-boiled, and ale has often been given to horses with advantage.
-
-Not only as an inward, but also as an outward application, was ale
-recommended: For pains in the knees, woodwax and hedge-rife pounded
-and put into ale, and used both inwardly and outwardly, was the Saxon
-remedy.
-
-The foregoing receipts are sufficient to show the character of the
-medicine prescribed in Saxon times. At a later period ale still held
-its high position as a cure for most of the evils to which unfortunate
-humanity is subject. In the eighth _Book of Notable Things_, a rare
-work, supposed to have been written in the sixteenth century, the
-following curious remedies are mentioned:—
-
-No. 45. An excellent medicine and a noble restorative for man or woman
-that is brought very low with sickness. Take two pounds of dates and
-wash them clean in Ale, then cut them and take out the {410} stones
-and white skins, then cut them small, and beat them in a mortar, till
-they begin to work like wax, and then take a quart of Clarified Honey
-or Sugar, and half an ounce of the Podder of Long Pepper, as much of
-Mace of Cloves, Nutmegs, and Cinnamon, of each one Drachm, as much of
-the Powder of Lignum Aloes; beat all the Spices together and Seeth the
-Dates with the Sugar or Honey with an easie fire, and let it seeth;
-cast in thereto a little Powder, by little and little, and stir it with
-a spatula of wood, and so do until it come to an Electuary, and then
-eat every morning and evening thereof, one ounce at a time, and it will
-renew and restore again his Complexion, be he never so low brought.
-This hath been proved, and it hath done good to many a Man and Woman.
-
-No. 46. A notable Receipt for the black Jaundice. Take a Gallon of
-Ale, a Pint of Honey, and two Handfuls of Red Nettles, and take a
-penny-worth or two of Saffron, and boil it in the Ale, the Ale being
-first skimmed and then boil the Hony and Nettles therein all together
-and strain it well, and every Morning take a good Draught thereof, for
-the space of a fortnight. For in that space (God willing) it will clean
-and perfectly cure the black Jaundice.
-
-In the Twelfth Book is a receipt which was probably far more effective
-than most of the ancient remedies:—
-
-No. 49. For a cough; Take a quart of Ale and put a Handful of Red Sage
-into it, and boyl it half away; strain it, and put to the Liquor a
-Quarter of a pound of Treacle, drink it warm going to Bed.
-
-In Ben Jonson’s _Alchemist_, of about the same date, is a mention of
-ale used as medicine:—
-
- Yes, faith, she dwells in Sea-coal lane, did cure me
- With sodden ale, and pellitory of the wall,
- Cost me but twopence.
-
-We have before us an old pamphlet bearing the title “_Warme Beere_,
-or a Treatise wherein is declared by many reasons, that Beere so
-qualified is farre more wholesome than that which is drunk cold. With
-a confutation of such objections that are made against it; published
-for the preservation of Health. Cambridge. Printed by R. D. for Henry
-Overton, and are to be sold at his shop entering into Pope’s-Head Alley
-out of Lumbard Street in London, 1641.” {411}
-
-The following verses form an apt commencement to this whimsical old
-treatise:—
-
-IN COMMENDATION OF WARME BEERE.
-
- We care not what stern grandsires now can say,
- Since reason doth and ought to bear the sway.
- Vain grandames saysaws ne’er shall make me think,
- That rotten teeth come most by warmed drink.
- No, grandsire, no; if you had us’d to warm
- Your mornings draughts, as I do, farre less harme
- Your raggie lungs had felt; not half so soon,
- For want of teeth to chew, you’d us’d the spoon.
- Grandame, be silent now, if you be wise,
- Lest I betray your skinking niggardize:
- I wot well you no physick ken, nor yet
- The name and nature of the vitall heat.
- ’Twas more to save your fire, and fear that I
- Your pewter cups should melt or smokifie,
- Then skill or care of me, which made you swear,
- God wot, and stamp to see me warm my beer.
- Though grandsire growl, though grandame swear, I hold
- That man unwise that drinks his liquor cold.
-                                                                   W. B.
-
-After giving instances of the value of warm beer as opposed to cold,
-the author gives the following sage account of the reasons he hath
-for the faith that is in him:—“When a man is thirstie, there are two
-master-qualities which do predominate in the stomach, namely heat
-and drinesse, over their contraries, cold and moisture. When a man
-drinketh cold beer to quench his thirst, he setteth all four qualities
-together by the ears in the stomach, which do with all violence oppose
-one another and cause a great combustion in the stomach, breeding
-many distempers therein. For if heat get the mastery, it causeth
-inflamation through the whole body, and bringeth a man into fluxes and
-other diseases. But hot beer prevents all these dangers, and maketh
-friendship between all these enemies, viz., hot and cold, wet and
-drie, in the stomach; because when the coldnesse of the beer is taken
-away by actuall heat, and made as hot as the stomach, then heat hath
-no opposite, his enemie cold being taken away, and there only remains
-these two enemies, dry and wet in the stomach: which heat laboureth to
-make friends. When one is exceeding thirstie, the beer being made hot
-and then drunk into the dry stomach, it immediately quencheth {412}
-the thirst, moistening and refreshing nature abundantly. Cold beer is
-very pleasant when extreme thirst is in the stomach; but what more
-dangerous to the health. Many by drinking a cup of cold beer in extreme
-thirst, have taken a surfet and killed themselves. Therefore we must
-not drink cold beer, because it is pleasant, but hot beer, because it
-is profitable, especially in the Citie for such as have cold stomachs,
-and inclining to a consumption. I have known some that have been so
-farre gone in a consumption, that none would think in reason they could
-live a week to an end: their breath was short, their stomach was gone,
-and their strength failed, so that they were not able to walk about
-the room without resting, panting and blowing: they drank many hot
-drinks and wines to heat their cold stomachs, and cure their diseases,
-especially sweet wines, but all in vain: for the more wine they drank
-to warm their stomachs, the more they inflamed their livers, by which
-means they grew worse and worse increasing their disease: But when they
-did leave drinking all wine and betook themselves onely to the drinking
-of hot beer so hot as blood, within a moneth, their breath, stomach and
-strength was so increased, that they could walk about their garden with
-ease, and within two moneths could walk four miles, and within three
-moneths were perfectly made well as ever they were in their lives.”
-
-Another curious old pamphlet of about the same period, entitled _Panala
-Alacatholica_ (1623) follows the text “That ale is a wholesome drinke
-contrary to many men’s conceits,” and after a description of the way in
-which ale is spoilt in the brewing and rendered injurious we are told:
-“But let a neat huswife, or canny Alewright have the handling of good
-Ingredients (sweet Maulte and wholesome water) and you shall see and
-will say, there is Art in brewing, (as in most actions) and that many
-more, even of those that ayme at brewing the Best Ale, doe yet for all
-their supposed dexteritie, misse the marke, than hit upon the mysterie.
-For you shall then have a neat cup of Nappie Ale (right _Darbie_, not
-Dagger Ale, though effectually animating) well boyled, desecated and
-cleared, that it shall equall the best Brewed Beere in transparence,
-please the most curious Pallate with milde quicknesse of relish, quench
-the thirst, humect the inward parts, helpe concoction and distribution
-of meate, and by its moderate penetration, much further the attractive
-power of the parts (especially being rectified with that Additament
-and _Vehiculum_ which the best Alistra boyles with it; to wit, such a
-proportion of Hop as gives not any the least tact of bitternesse to
-the Pallate after it growes Drinkable) and being free from all those
-former foule {413} imputations, doth by its succulencie much nourish
-and corroborate the Corporall, and comfort the Animall powers.”
-
-A long description here follows of the manner in which Panala, a
-medicated ale, is to be manufactured. Of its virtues our quaint author
-gives the following account:—“This Ale neither offends the Eye with the
-loathed object of a muddie substance, nor the smell with any ill vapour
-or favour, nor the tast nor stomacke with disgust or ingrate relish,
-but ’tis a pure, cleere, delicate, and singular Extract impregnated
-with the sincere spirits and vertuosities of excellent Ingredients, of
-a moderate temperature, indifferently accommodated to every Age, Sex,
-and Constitution, and so familiar and pleasing to Nature.”
-
-Medicated ales of this nature were held in high estimation by our
-ancestors. Such was the celebrated Dr. Butler’s ale, which held its
-sway for many generations; the following receipt for this ale is given
-in the _Book of Notable Things_: “Take Senna and Polypedium each four
-ounces, Sarseperilla two ounces, Agrimony and Maidenhair of each a
-small handful, scurvy grass a quarter of a peck, bruise them grossly
-in a stone mortar, put them into a thin canvass bag, and hang the bag
-in nine or ten gallons of ale; when it is well worked and when it is
-three or four days old, it is ripe enough to be drawn off and bottled,
-or as you see fit.” This ale was sold at houses that had Butler’s head
-for a sign, and we meet with further mention of it in a news-sheet
-of 1664:—“At Tobias’ Coffee House, in Pye Corner, is sold the right
-drink, called Dr. Butler’s Ale, it being the same that was sold by
-Mr. Lansdale in Newgate Market. It is an excellent stomach drink,
-it helps digestion, and dissolves congealed phlegm upon the lungs,
-and is therefore good gainst colds, coughs, ptisical and consumptive
-distempers; and being drunk in the evening, it moderately fortifies
-nature, causeth good rest and hugely corroborates the brain and memory.”
-
-A few years earlier than this Thomas Cogan was advocating in _The Haven
-of Health_ (1584), beer for persons inclined to “rewmes and gout.” Such
-persons must avoid “idleness, surfet, much wine and strong, especially
-fasting, and not condemn Beere as hurtful in this respect which was so
-profitably invented by that worthy Prince _Gambrinius_, anno 1786 years
-before the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as Lanquette writeth
-in his chronicle.”
-
-The same writer gives a curious receipt for “_Buttered Beere_,” which
-is good for a cough or shortness of wind:—Take a quart or more of
-Double Beere and put to it a good piece of fresh butter, sugar candie
-an ounce, of liquerise in powder, of ginger grated, of each a dramme,
-and {414} if you would have it strong, put in as much long pepper and
-Greynes, let it boyle in the quart in the manner as you burne wine and
-who so will drink it, let him drinke it as hot as hee may suffer. Some
-put in the yolke of an egge or two towards the latter end, and so they
-make it more strengthfull.“
-
-The following year John Taylor published in _Drinke and Welcome_ many
-modes of application of ale in the various ills to which the flesh is
-heir. He thus concludes his somewhat remarkable statements:—”_Ale_ is
-universale, and for Vertue it stands allowable with the best recipes of
-the most antientest Physisians; and for its singular force in expulsion
-of poison is equall, if not exceeding that rare antidote so seriously
-invented by the Pontique King, which from him (till this time) carries
-his name of _Mithridate_. And lastly, not onely approved by a Nationall
-Assembly, but more exemplarily remonstrated by the frequent use of
-the most knowing Physisians, who for the wonderfull force that it
-hath against all diseases of the Lungs, justly allow the name of a
-_Pulmonist_ to every _Alebrewer_.
-
-“The further I seeke to goe the more unable I finde myselfe to expresse
-the wonders (for so I may very well call them) operated by _Ale_
-for that I shall abruptly conclude, in consideratione of mine owne
-insufficiency, with the fagge-end of an old man’s old will, who gave a
-good somme of mony to a Red-fac’d _Ale-drinker_, who plaid upon a Pipe
-and Tabor, which was this:—
-
- “To make your Pipe and Tabor keepe their sound,
-  And dye your Crimson tincture more profound,
-  There growes no better medicine on the ground
-  Than _Aleano_ (if it may be found)
-  To buy which drug I give a hundred pound.”
-
-Prynne, the author of the famous _Histrio-Mastix_, seldom dined; every
-three or four hours he munched a manchet, and refreshed his exhausted
-spirits with _ale_ brought to him by his servant; and when “he was
-put into this road of writing,” as Anthony Wood telleth, he fixed on
-“a long quilted cap, which came an inch over his eyes,” serving as a
-shade, “and then hunger nor thirst did he experience, save that of
-his voluminous pages.” Evidence of the high regard in which English
-ale was held among foreign doctors in the seventeenth century may be
-gathered from an account given in _Hone’s Table Book_ of how, about
-1620 some doctors and surgeons during their attendance on an English
-gentleman, who was diseased at Paris, discoursed on wines and other
-{415} beverages; and one physician, who had been in England, said
-the English had a drink which they call Ale, and which he thought the
-wholesomest liquor that could be drunk; for whereas the body of man
-is supported by natural heat and radical moisture, there is no drink
-conduceth more to the preservation of the one, and the increase of the
-other, than _Ale_, for, while the Englishmen drank _only ale_, they
-were strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long;
-but, when they fell to wine and _Beer_, they are found to be much
-impaired in their strength and age.
-
-English doctors would always, it may be supposed, give their
-approbation to the nut-brown ale. There must have been some who even in
-the good old days leaned to the doctrines of the abstainers; but such
-was the faith of our ancestors in the virtues of the national beverage,
-that we may imagine the doctor’s advice was disregarded and, indeed,
-was even set down to anything but an amiable motive. This we may see
-from a verse of the old ballad, _Nottingham Ale_:—
-
- Ye doctors, who more execution have done
- With bolus and potion, and powder and pill,
- Than hangman with halter, and soldier with gun,
- Or miser with famine, or lawyer with quill,
- To dispatch us the quicker, you forbid us malt liquor,
- Till our bodies grow thin, and our faces look pale;
- Observe them who pleases, what cures all diseases,
- Is a comforting dose of good Nottingham Ale.
-
-The following receipt is quite gravely given by Dr. Solas Dodd, in
-whose _Natural History of the Herring_ (1753) it may be found: “Take
-the oil pressed out of fresh Herrings, a pint, a boar’s gall, juices
-of henbane, hemlock, arsel, lettuce, and wild catmint, each six
-ounces, mix, boil well, and put into a glass vessel, stoppered. Take
-three spoonfuls and put into a quart of warm ale, and let the person
-to undergo any operation drink of this by an ounce at a time, till
-he falls asleep, which sleep he will continue the space of three or
-four hours, and all that time he will be unsensible to anything done
-to him.” Whether or no we have here an account of a genuine early
-anæsthetic we are not prepared to say.
-
-Instances might be recorded without number of the restorative effects
-of ale in sickness, and more particularly in fever cases where the
-patient has been brought very low, and the loss of tissue has been
-great. Of these space only allows us to include a very few. {416}
-
-When Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, lay prostrate with pleuritic
-fever, the greatest physicians in the land found their skill avail
-nothing; and all the statesman’s alarmed friends got for expending
-seven hundred guineas in fees was the cold comfort that everything that
-could be done had been done, and the case was hopeless. Whilst those
-gathered round the bedside of the supposed dying man listened for his
-last sigh, he faintly murmured, “Small beer, small beer.” The doctors
-did not think it worth while to say nay, and a half-gallon cup of small
-beer was put to the lips of the sick man, who drained it to the dregs,
-and then demanded another draught, which he served in the same way:
-then turning on his side, he went off into a deep slumber, attended
-with profuse perspiration, and awoke a new man.[74] The beneficial
-effects of mild ale in fever is commemorated in an old poem, _Small
-Beer_:—
-
- Oft known the deadly fever’s flame,
- By the scorch’d patient crav’d, to tame.
-
-   [74] _Chambers’s Journal_, Jan. 2nd, 1875.
-
-In Sir J. Sinclair’s _Statistical Account_, an extraordinary case
-is related of a collier, named Hunter, who suffered from chronic
-rheumatism or gout. He had been confined to his bed for a year and a
-half, having almost entirely lost the use of his limbs. On Handsel
-Monday (the first Monday after New Year’s Day) some of his neighbours
-came to make merry with him. Though he could not rise, yet he always
-took his share of the new ale, as it passed round the company; and, in
-the end, became much intoxicated. The consequence was that he had the
-use of his limbs the next morning, and was able to walk about. He lived
-more than twenty years after this, and never had the smallest return of
-his complaint. This took place in 1758.
-
-An account of a cure, in which, no doubt, faith helped the ale, occurs
-in the _Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele_, gentleman, sometime
-student at Oxford (London, 1607). “Riding on his way to Oxford, he
-stopped all night at Mekham—At supper, he began to talk with the
-hostess, who was a simple professor of Chirurgerie, and conceited
-therewith.—Peele observing her humour and conceit, upheld all the
-strange cures she talked of and praised her, with much flattery, and
-promised on his return to teach her something that would do her no
-hurt—and added he was on his way to cure a gentleman in Warwickshire,
-who was in a consumption. The hostess immediately {417} said there was
-a gentleman close by so ill with that complaint, and proposed that
-Peele should see him. Peele, knowing as much of doctoring as of music,
-declined; but after much pressure, and resisting as long as he could,
-was fain to comply. Putting on a bold face he went to the gentleman,
-his hostess praising him as a wonderful doctor. After feeling the
-pulse, &c., &c., he asked if they had a garden. Yes, they had. He
-then went there and cut from every plant, flower, herb and blossom;
-boiling the results in _Ale_, straining and boiling again. He told the
-patient to take some of this warm, morning, noon, and night. Whether
-anything effective was in this _Herbal Mixture_, or from the patient’s
-fancy—in eight days after the patient was able to walk about apparently
-recovered—and so delighted that he put many pounds in Peele’s pocket.”
-
-A Brown ale called Stitch is mentioned in _The London and County
-Brewer_ of 1744 as having being of the greatest benefit in incipient
-consumption. It was of the first running of the malt, but of a greater
-length than is drawn out of the stout butt beer. It had few hops in it.
-Instances of the advantage of good malt liquors in certain cases of
-consumption are very numerous. Mons. Frémy, of the Beaujon Hospital, in
-Paris, made a series of experiments with malt powder given in the form
-of a decoction, and externally by means of baths. The substance was
-tried on sixty-four subjects of well-marked phthisis; but the results
-were trifling, beyond a certain degree of temporary amelioration.
-It was, however, of greater service in cases of chronic bronchitis,
-early phthisis, and chronic pulmonary catarrh; its utility being
-very marked in this last affection. In some parts of England it is a
-common practice for persons in consumption to procure wort (that is an
-infusion of malt before the hops are boiled with it for making beer)
-from the brewers, and to drink half-a-pint of it daily; and many have
-received great benefit from it. The experiments of Dr. Frémy verify the
-utility of the English practice.
-
-Of late years various preparations of malt have come to hold a very
-high place in popular estimation. A first-rate remedy for a cough is
-made thus: Over half a bushel of pale ground malt pour as much hot, but
-not boiling, water as will just cover it. In forty-eight hours drain
-off the liquor entirely, but without squeezing the grains: put the
-former into a large sweetmeat pan, or saucepan, that there may be room
-to boil as quick as possible, without boiling over; when it begins to
-thicken, stir constantly. It must be as thick as treacle. The dose is
-a dessert-spoonful thrice a day. This preparation has a very agreeable
-{418} flavour. One of the most easily digested and most nourishing
-of foods for those minute but assertive, atoms of humanity called
-babies,[75] is malt finely powdered; and chemists keep many kinds of
-foods, syrups, lozenges, &c., too numerous to mention, all claiming
-their origin from Sir John Barleycorn.
-
-   [75] The author knows a malt-fed baby who never cries.—_Verb. Sap._
-
-Among the many virtues of good ale, that of promoting generosity should
-take a high place. This peculiar effect is capitally illustrated in an
-anecdote of the Rev. Michael Hutchinson, D.D., of Derby. “The people,”
-writes Hutton, “to whom he applied for subscriptions (the church was
-in need of repair) were not able to keep their money; it passed from
-their pockets to his own as if by magic. Whenever he could recollect a
-person likely to contribute to this desirable work he made no scruple
-to visit him at his own expense. If a stranger passed through Derby,
-the Doctor’s bow and his rhetoric were employed in the service of the
-church. His anxiety was urgent, and his power so prevailing, that he
-seldom failed of success. _When the waites fiddled at his door for a
-Christmas box, instead of sending them away with a solitary shilling,
-he invited them in, treated them with a tankard of ale, and persuaded
-them out of a guinea._”
-
-Malt liquor has long been regarded by eminent medical men as almost
-a specific against the scurvy, that dread disease which in former
-times wrought such havoc amongst our brave tars. Sir Gilbert Blane,
-M.D., records the following instance of the virtues of porter in this
-connection:—
-
-“I was furnished,” he writes, in his _Observations on the Diseases of
-Seamen_, “by Dr. Clephane, physician to the fleet at New York, with
-the following fact as a strong proof of the excellence of this liquor:
-In the beginning of the war two store ships, called the Tortoise and
-Grampus, sailed for America under the convoy of the Dædalus frigate.
-The Grampus happened to be supplied with a sufficient quantity of
-porter to serve the whole passage, which proved very long. The other
-two ships were furnished with the common allowance of spirits. The
-weather being unfavourable, the passage drew out to fourteen weeks
-and, upon their arrival at New York, the Dædalus sent to the hospital
-a hundred and twelve men; the Tortoise sixty-two; the greater part
-of whom were in the last stage of the scurvy. The Grampus sent only
-thirteen, none of whom had the scurvy.” {419}
-
-In the Geographical Society’s Journal (vol. ii. p. 286) it is recorded
-that during a severe winter on the west coast of Africa the crew of the
-Etna suffered so much from scurvy that the least scratch had a tendency
-to become a dangerous wound. Capt. Belcher states that “the only thing
-which appeared materially to check the disease was beer made of the
-essence of malt and hops; and I feel satisfied that a general issue of
-this on the coast of Africa would be very salutary, and have the effect
-especially of keeping up the constitutions of men subjected to heavy
-labour in boats.”
-
-Thomas Trotter, M.D., in his _Medicina Nautica_, “an Essay on the
-Diseases of Seamen, comprehending the history of the health in His
-Majesty’s Fleet under the command of Richard Earl Howe, Admiral, 1797,”
-states that in typhus cases he found porter, where preferred by the
-patient, more beneficial than wine. During a low fever, he (the doctor)
-was entirely supported by bottled beer, of which he speaks very highly.
-In his practice at Haslar Hospital he found bottled porter to be one of
-the best ingredients in the diet of a convalescent, and never fail to
-strengthen them quickly for duty.
-
-Dr. Hodgkin, writing on Health, says, “I can assert, from well-proved
-experience that the invalid who has been reduced almost to extremity
-by severe or lingering illness, finds in well-apportioned draughts
-of sound beer, one of the most important helps for the recovery of
-his health, his strength, and his spirits.” Dr. Paris, who is not a
-recent authority, but whose remarks on this subject are most cogent
-and bear the stamp of common sense, asserts that “the extractive
-matter furnished by the malt is highly nutritive; and we accordingly
-find that those persons addicted to such potations are, in general,
-fat. This fact is so generally admitted by all those who are skilled
-in the art of training, that a quantity of ale is taken at every
-meal by the pugilist, who is endeavouring to screw himself up to his
-fullest strength. Jackson, the celebrated trainer, affirms, if any
-person accustomed to drink wine would but try malt liquor for a month,
-he would find himself so much the better for it, that he would soon
-take to the one, and abandon the other . . . The addition of the hop
-increases the value of the liquor, by the grateful stimulus which it
-imparts, and in some measure redeems it from the vices with which it
-might otherwise be charged where a corresponding degree of exercise
-is not taken. . . I regard its dismissal (table or light beer) from
-the tables of the great as a matter of regret, for its slight but
-invigorating {420} bitter is much better adapted to promote digestion
-than its more costly substitutes.”
-
-Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British Medical
-Association in 1862, advances the proposition that nature has provided
-in the salivary glands, the liver, and the lungs of every mammal,
-an apparatus “for converting all food, especially farinaceous, into
-alcohol, and he gives chemical reasons for believing that some such
-process actually does take place. Alcohol, he says, after being taken
-is incorporated with the blood, and passing in some form not yet
-explained into the circulation, ultimately disappears; a small portion
-alone passing from the body, and that in the breath. He further says
-that when alcohol is mingled with other food, a less amount of the
-latter suffices for the wants of the system than if water had been
-used as the drink. Dr. Inman cites his own experience of an attempt to
-do without his ordinary allowance of ale at dinner; a large increase
-of food was necessited, but the demand for this diminished at once on
-resuming the ale. Similar facts were noted in the experience of various
-members of his family. No loss of health or strength was experienced,
-except when the ordinary amount of solids was taken without the beer.
-
-A celebrated French medical man (Dr. Coulier) published an excellent
-article on beer (“Article Bière” in Vol. IX. of the _Dictionnaire
-Encyclopédique de Sciences Médicales_) considered from a medical point
-of view. He says, in effect, that beer being less rich in alcohol
-than even the poorest wines, holds an intermediate place between the
-latter and purely watery drinks. It presents, according to its mode
-of preparation and composition, a continuous scale of more or less
-alcoholic drinks, from porter and ale down to small beer containing
-little more than one per cent. of alcohol. Its bitter principles
-render it tonic and aperient; while the somnolence and heaviness that
-follow an over-allowance of this fluid are due to the action of the
-essential oil of the hop. He holds that of all fermented drinks, beer
-is the one whose taste _se marie le plus agréablement_ with the use
-of the pipe. Beer must be considered in the light of an alimentary
-drink. In every hundred parts of beer are five of extract containing
-a little nitrogenous assimilable matter and salts favourable to
-nutrition, but consisting mainly of respiratory food. “If,” he says,
-“fermented drinks have become one of the necessities of civilisation, a
-prudent regard for health should make us as far as possible reduce the
-excitement which the alcohol occasions. In this respect beer presents a
-great advantage over wine. Thus a half-bottle of wine {421} containing
-12 per cent. of alcohol, which is the common allowance for an adult,
-contains 375 grammes of wine, and consequently 45 grammes of anhydrous
-alcohol. A bottle of beer containing 4 per cent, of alcohol is equally
-satisfying, and contains only 30 grammes of alcohol. Hence, supposing
-two meals are taken daily, the beer-drinker daily imbibes 30 grammes
-less of alcohol than the wine-drinker; and this difference amounts
-in the course of the year to nearly 11 kilogrammes, or 14 litres
-(equivalent to 24 lbs. or 3 gallons), of anhydrous alcohol.”
-
-Examples without number might be collected of men who habitually used
-alcoholic drinks sometimes in moderation, sometimes, in what we, in
-these latter days, should certainly consider excess, and who yet lived
-in health and usefulness to the extreme boundary of human life. Old
-Parr, if we are to believe Taylor, who sings his praises, was a drinker
-of the moderate kind.
-
- Sometimes metheglin and by fortune happy,
- He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy,
- Cyder, or perry, when he did repair
- To Whitsun ale, wake, wedding, or fair,
- Else he had little leisure time to waste,
- Or at the ale-house huff-cup ale to taste.
-
-Henry Jenkins, who died in 1670 at the wonderful age of 165 years, took
-his ale whenever he could get it. He lived very much in the open air
-and spent his time in thatching and salmon-fishing. At one time he was
-butler to Lord Conyers, of Hornby Castle, and he has left it on record
-that when, as often happened, his master sent him over with messages to
-Marmaduke Brodelay, Lord Abbot of Fountains, the abbot “always sent for
-him to his lodgings, and, after prayers, ordered him, besides wassel, a
-quarter of a yard of roast beef (for that the monasteries did deliver
-their meat by measure), and a great black Jack of strong ale.” Have
-we not, too, the evidence of epitaphs graven in stone, which are well
-known never to lie, all bearing out the truth of the longevity of ale
-drinkers? Here are two, the first being in Great Walford churchyard:—
-
- Here John Randal lies
- Who counting of his tale
- Lived threescore years and ten,
- Such vertue was in ale.
-       Ale was his meat,
-       Ale was his drink. {422}
- Ale did his heart revive,
- And if he could have drunk his ale
- He still had been alive.
- He died January 5,
-            1699.
-
-The second is in Edwalton, Notts:
-
-       Ob. 1741.
- Rebecca Freeland,
- She drank good ale, good punch and wine,
- And lived to the age of 99.
-
-Macklin, the comedian, who died in 1797, for upwards of thirty years
-was a daily visitor at the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden.
-His usual beverage was a pint of hot stout; he said it balmed his
-stomach and kept him from having any inward pains. Whether from the
-effects of this inward “balming” or not, Macklin undoubtedly lived to
-the age of 97 years.
-
-In Daniell’s _British Sports_ there is an account of Joe Mann,
-gamekeeper to Lord Torrington. “He was in constant morning exercise,
-he went to bed always betimes, _but never till his skin was filled
-with ale_. This he said, ‘would do no harm to an early riser, and to a
-man who pursued field sports.’ At seventy-eight years of age he began
-to decline, and then lingered for three years. His gun was ever upon
-his arm, and he still crept about, not destitute of the hope of fresh
-diversion.”
-
-The next instance, to be found in HONE’S YEAR BOOK, illustrates, not so
-much the tendency of beer and ale, when taken in large quantities, to
-make men healthy, wealthy, and wise, as to make them fat. On November
-30, 1793, died at Beaumaris, William Lewis, Esq., of Llandismaw, in the
-act of drinking a _cup_ of Welsh ale, containing about a wine _quart_,
-called a “tumbler maur.” He made it a rule, every morning of his life,
-to read so many chapters in the Bible, and in the evening to drink
-eight gallons of ale. It is calculated that in his lifetime he must
-have drunk a sufficient quantity to float a seventy-four gun ship. His
-size was astonishing, and he weighed forty stone. Although he died in
-his parlour, it was found necessary to construct a machine in form of
-a crane, to lift his body in a carriage, and afterwards to have the
-machine to let him down into the grave. He went by the name of the King
-of Spain, and his family by the different titles of prince, infantas,
-&c. {423}
-
-One of the great teetotal arguments against the use of malt liquors,
-one which the advocates of total abstinence generally fall back upon
-when beaten on every other point, is that beer is adulterated. This
-assertion, if it could be substantiated, would undoubtedly cut away
-the very foundation of our argument as to the wholesomeness of ale and
-beer. We must, then, shortly consider the point. Time out of mind the
-brewers have been accused of adulterating their ale and beer, with
-what truth, at any rate at the present day, we shall see anon. Opium,
-henbane, cocculus indicus, and we know not what noxious drugs besides,
-it has commonly, and we think somewhat recklessly, been asserted, find
-their way into the brewing vessels. Some time ago M. Payen, a French
-chemist of distinction, created quite a panic amongst the drinkers of
-pale ale by asserting, in a lecture at the Conservatoire des Arts et
-Métiers, that strychnine was prepared in large quantities in Paris
-for exportation to England, where it was employed to give, or to aid
-in giving, the esteemed bitter flavour to pale ale. This statement
-appearing in _Le Constitutional_, and other French papers, soon found
-its way into the English journals, to the consternation of the drinkers
-and purveyors of this beverage.
-
-The leading firms of Burton ale brewers at once threw open their
-breweries and stores in the most unreserved manner, and “The _Lancet’s_
-Analytical Sanitary Commission” undertook an inquiry on the subject.
-Forty samples of beer, all brewed before the promulgation of the
-statement, were analyzed by the commission, as well as samples taken
-by other analysts at the request of Messrs. Allsopp and Sons. Needless
-to say, not a particle of strychnine was discovered. Half a grain of
-strychnine will destroy life, and a grain would be required to impart
-to one gallon of beer its ordinary degree of bitterness. The flavour of
-hops and strychnine differs. To bitter the amount then brewed at Burton
-16,448 ounces of strychnine would be required. Not so much as 1,000
-ounces of strychnine were manufactured in the whole world yearly.
-
-In a quaint pamphlet entitled _Old London Rogueries_, the following
-statement is made seriously:—“There ought also to be compiled a
-delectable and pleasant treatise by such as sell bottle-ale, who, to
-make it fly up to the top of the house at the first opening, do put
-gunpowder into the bottles while the ale is new, then by stopping it
-close make people believe it is the strength of the ale, when, being
-truly sifted, it is nothing indeed but the strength of the gunpowder
-that worketh the effect, to the great heart-burning of the parties who
-drink the same. This is a truly strange and marvellous artifice, and
-must be reckoned {424} among the lost inventions.” We wonder if these
-cunning retailers of the olden time ever used shot as well as powder
-with their bottled ale, which doubtless would have greatly increased
-the effect.
-
-In October, 1883, a statement was loudly trumpeted forth from teetotal
-platforms that 245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used every year in
-England in brewing. After a good deal of discussion on the subject,
-it leaked out that the figures had been arrived at by a firm of hop
-dealers, anxious to run up the price of hops. By a blunder in their
-calculations they had come to the conclusion that there was a deficit
-of 245,000 cwt. of hops in this country. From this it was argued that
-245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used. This house of cards fell when it
-was conclusively proved that there were at the time actually more hops
-in England than were required by the brewers.
-
-With regard to the question of adulteration at the present day, it
-could be wished that those who are induced by a fanatical hatred of
-alcohol in any shape or form to make this alleged adulteration a reason
-for further restrictive legislation on the brewing trade, would take
-the trouble to look at the reports annually published by the Inland
-Revenue Commissioners in which this point is dealt with. Here are a few
-extracts from their report for the year 1881, soon after the repeal
-of the Malt-tax. “Brewers have no doubt been experimenting with other
-descriptions of grain, as might have been expected, but we believe that
-barley, from its peculiar fitness for malting, will in the end maintain
-its superiority; and we are informed that a new method of preparing
-inferior barley for brewing purposes promises to be highly successful.”
-“So far as we are aware, no attempts have been made to use materials
-in brewing at all detrimental to the public health; and the presence
-of the Revenue officers in breweries affords fresh security to the
-public—if indeed any such were needed—against all such practices.”
-
-In the same report Professor Bell, the Principal of the Inland Revenue
-Laboratory, goes into detail and gives very valuable statistics,
-showing the way in which the opinion given by the Commissioners was
-arrived at. In 1881, 8,626 samples of beer were tested, of which 4,666
-were analyzed to see if any foreign body had been added, as well as
-to check the original gravity. Of this large number the whole were
-nearly correct, but actually 17 per cent, were found not alone to
-be up to the standard test, but above it; and out of nearly 20,000
-brewers, which, in round numbers, was then the extent of the trade in
-the United Kingdom, only some 300 were even suspected of having used
-illegal materials. Of the ninety samples of beer submitted for analysis
-as being suspected {425} to have been tampered with, sixty-three were
-found to have been “sugared,” but in every instance this occurred at
-the public-house or beerhouse, a matter which was beyond the control of
-the brewer, and was as much a fraud on him as on the Revenue and the
-public. Mr. Bell goes on to state that whatever adulteration prevails
-is wholly confined to the publican and the beer retailer, and even
-where it does prevail, at the most the practice means nothing worse
-than diluting the beer with water and afterwards adding sugar; still,
-as Mr. Bell remarks, “Reprehensible as the practice is, as being a
-fraud on the public as well as the Revenue, yet it is satisfactory to
-know that no adulterant of a poisonous or hurtful character has been
-detected.”
-
-Dr. Thudichum, in a work _Alcoholic Drinks_, published by the Executive
-Council of the late Health Exhibition, speaking of the supposition
-that hops are sometimes supplanted, entirely or in part, in the
-manufacture of beer by absynth, menyanthes, quassia, gentian, and other
-matters, regards such adulteration as rare and such as “if practised
-persistently would no doubt be discovered, and the liquids produced by
-their aid would be declined by the public.”
-
-An Irish brewer told us of a rather comic incident connected with hop
-substitutes. A traveller in these commodities was in the habit of
-pestering our friend, who informed the man that he believed his wares
-were poisonous, and that he ought to eat some to prove the contrary.
-With a wry face the traveller swallowed a portion of his sample and
-shortly afterwards left. Coming again in a week’s time the same
-performance was gone through. The traveller made yet another visit,
-when the brewer said the experiment had not satisfied him, as so small
-a quantity of the hop had been eaten. This time the traveller outdid
-himself, and when and before leaving the brewery promised to write and
-inform the brewer if the bitter meal had any evil effects. Whether the
-traveller died, or whether he discovered that he had been befooled, we
-do not know, but nothing more was heard of him.
-
-We believe that the importance of a supply of good, pure beer to
-the labouring classes of this country can hardly be over-estimated,
-particularly having regard to the fact—as we shall show with greater
-particularity, when we come to discuss the question of total abstinence
-as opposed to temperance, that malt liquors undoubtedly assist in the
-support of the body, and are in practical effect equivalent to so much
-easily digested food.
-
- “Thou clears the head o’ doited lear,
-  Thou cheers the heart o’ drooping care; {426}
-  And strings the nerves o’ labour fair,
-                  At’s weary toil.
-  Thou even brightens dark despair,
-                  Wi’ gloomy smile.”
-
-Dr. Paris, from whose works we have already quoted, explains that it is
-the stimulus of the beer that proves so serviceable to the poor man,
-enabling his stomach to extract more aliment from his innutritive diet.
-“Happy is that country,” he writes, “whose labouring classes prefer
-such a beverage to the mischievous potations of ardent spirit.”
-
-Barley wine is without doubt the wine of this country, and where shall
-we find, all the world over, a more stalwart, muscular, able-bodied
-race of labouring men than we find at home? The mighty thews of the
-English navigator are renowned, and not at home only, for it is well
-known that while the French railways were making, the contractors
-actually imported English “navvies” to do the heavy work, paying them
-higher wages than their French competitors.
-
-We would commend to the attention of those who, as the phrase goes,
-would rob a poor man of his beer, the certainty that, though the evils
-of intoxication can hardly be exaggerated, yet in counselling the
-labouring classes everywhere, and under all circumstances, to abstain
-from all kinds of liquor, they are taking upon themselves a very grave
-responsibility.
-
-The following old Somersetshire song has, we believe, at any rate in
-this form, never before appeared in print. It was taken down verbatim
-from the lips of the singer at a harvest-home. The verses no doubt
-lack the elegance of the productions of our greater English poets,
-but the composer, whoever he may have been, treated his subject with
-commendable vigour of expression, and “Robin Rough, the Plowboy,”
-illustrates in a remarkable manner the love of the agricultural
-labourer for his beer, and his belief in its health-giving qualities; a
-belief, by-the-bye, founded on many centuries of experience:—
-
- I’ze Robin Rough, the plowboy,
-   A plowman’s son am I,
- And like my thirsty feyther,
-   My trottle is always a-dry,
- The world goes round, to me it’s reet,
-   Why need I interfere?
- For I whistles and sings from morn till neet,
-   And I smokes and I drinks my beer. {427}
- For I likes a drop of good beer, I does;
-   I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is.
-     Let gentlemen fine
-     Sit down to their wine,
- But I will stick to my beer.
-
- There’s Sally—that’s my wife, zurs—
-   Likes beer as well as me,
- She’s the happiest woman in life, zurs,
-   As happy as woman can be.
-     She minds her work,
-     Takes care of bairns,
- No gossiping neighbours near;
-   When every Saturday neet returns,
- Like me she drinks her beer.
-   For Sally likes her beer, she does,
- She’s fond of a drop of good beer, she is,
-     Let gentlemen fine
-     Sit down to their wine,
-   But my Sally will stick to her beer.
-
- Now there’s my dad, God bless him,
-   He’s now turned eighty-five,
- Hard work does ne’er distress him,
-   He’s the happiest man alive.
-     Though old in age
-     He’s young in health,
- His head and his heart both clear,
-   Possessing these and blest with peace,
- He smokes and he drinks his beer—
-   For he’s fond of a drop of good beer, he is,
- He very much likes his beer, he does,
-     Let gentlemen fine
-     Sit down to their wine,
- But my feyther will stick to his beer.
-
- Now, lads, need no persuasion,
-   But send your glasses round,
- There’s no fear of an invasion
-   While barley grows in ground; {428}
- May trade increase
-   And discord cease
-   In every coming year.
- Possessed of these and blest with peace,
- Why, we’ll smoke and we’ll drink our beer.
-   For I likes a drop of good beer, I does,
-   I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is.
-     Let gentlemen fine
-     Sit down to their wine
- But we’ll all of us stick to our beer.
-
-The poet Bloomfield, in the _Farmer’s Boy_, may possibly better please
-our more critical readers. In describing the harvest-homing, he says:—
-
- Now noon gone by, and four declining hours,
- The weary limbs relax their boasted pow’rs;
- Thirst rages strong, the fainting spirits fail,
- And ask the sov’reign cordial, home-brew’d ale:
-
-        *       *       *       *       *
-
- A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound,
- As quick the frothing horn performs its round,
- Care’s mortal foe, that sprightly joys imparts
- To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts.
-
-Shakespere has been called by the teetotallers as a witness in favour
-of abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Does he not make Adam, in _As
-You Like It_, say—
-
- Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
- For in my youth I never did apply
- Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,
- Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
- The means of weakness and debility;
- Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
- Frosty, but kindly?
-
-Hot and rebellious liquors! yes; but would Shakespere have classed ale
-amongst them? It seems far more probable that the reference is to the
-strong wines of which the topers of his time drank deeply, the “malmsey
-and malvoisie,” the “neat wine of Orleance, the Gascony, the Bordeaux,
-the sherry sack, the liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved Bastard, or fat
-{429} Aligant,” or to the “aqua vitæ,” the manufacture of which in the
-reign of Mary was the subject of restrictive legislation.
-
-Our consideration of the arguments put forward by the teetotal
-theorists has so far been slightly delayed by the few pages we have
-thought it well to devote to the accusations made against brewers of
-adulteration, and of the evident advantages of malt liquor to the
-labouring classes—proved beyond doubt without any necessity for learned
-disquisitions on chemistry or physiology. In turning now to a more
-particular consideration of the much-vexed question of temperance
-_v._ total abstinence, we do not propose to attempt the advancement
-of any novel or startling theories, but merely to give publicity to
-the arguments in favour of the temperate use of alcoholic drinks, as
-opposed to the total abstinence therefrom, supporting our arguments, as
-it will be found we shall be able to do, by the opinions of some of the
-best-known medical and scientific writers of the present day.
-
-One of the first things that strikes an observer who considers, as
-impartially as he can, the case put forward by the extreme advocates
-of abstinence, is that the controversy itself is a very modern one,
-and that, with the tendency to run into opposite extremes which is a
-characteristic of human opinion, we pass suddenly from the centuries
-in which it was held no shame for a man to be drunk, into these
-present years, when there exists a considerable, and in some sense,
-an influential body of persons, who not only will not touch alcoholic
-drink themselves upon any terms, but who think it their duty to press
-for such legislation as would deprive all men, be they temperate or
-otherwise, of the power of buying, selling, or drinking any liquor
-of which alcohol is a constituent. “Poison!” “Touch not the accursed
-thing!” “Away with it!” and so on—very voluble, occasionally eloquent,
-sometimes plausible. But will the fierce denunciations of these
-apostles of a new religion—a religion not of temperance, but, as it has
-been well called, of “intemperate abstinence,” bear the searching light
-of calm and quiet argument? We had once a friend who, while fond of his
-pipe, was always interested in reading about the terrible evils which
-the weed would, according to the infallible dicta of the anti-tobacco
-lecturers, be sure in time to bring upon his unfortunate constitution.
-Before sitting down to read one of these lectures, he used always to
-light a large and favourite briar; he said it enabled him to follow
-the lecturer’s points so much better. Now we do not ask our readers
-to follow the example of our friend _mutatis mutandis_. We do not say
-that such a proceeding would of necessity assist him in following our
-arguments. All we claim {430} is a patient hearing, for there never
-has been a time in which an unprejudiced discussion of the subject
-would be of greater advantage than at present.
-
-Human habit of centuries, of thousands of years, of such time that the
-memory and record of the human race, to use a legal phrase, runneth
-not to the contrary, is evidence in our favour. Whenever he has had
-the requisite skill, man has produced, enjoyed, and, we maintain, has
-been improved by drinks in which alcohol formed a constituent part.
-The practice of civilised nations for thousands of years is, then,
-so far as it goes, an argument in favour of temperance as opposed to
-abstinence. We do not wish to put this part of our case too high, and
-our meaning cannot be better expressed than by the words of Sir James
-Paget, who, in an essay on this subject in the _Contemporary Review_,
-writes: “The beliefs of reasonable people are, doubtless, by a large
-majority favourable to moderation rather than abstinence, and this
-should not be regarded as of no weight in the discussion. For, although
-the subject be one in which few, even among reasonable people, have
-made any careful observations, and fewer still have thought with any
-care, yet this very indifference to the subject, this readiness to fall
-in with custom, a custom maintained in the midst of a constant love of
-change, and outliving all that mere fashion has sustained—all this is
-enough to prove that the evidence of the custom being a bad one is not
-clear.”
-
-It is an indisputable fact that nations who have used alcohol have
-attained to a greater perfection in power and will to do good work,
-and a longer duration of life in which such work can be performed,
-than those who have used no alcohol; and, confining our attention to
-Europe, may we not say that these powers of work, these activities of
-body and mind in enterprise, in invention, and in production, are more
-remarkably developed in the inhabitants of the northern than of the
-southern parts of the Continent, that is to say, among those who have
-habitually drank more than those who have drank less? And may we not
-ask how it is that, if the use of alcohol in moderation be pernicious,
-the inherited effects of it have not during these vast periods of time
-during which it has been used, made themselves apparent in a marked
-degeneracy of the race, since we know that these results will make
-themselves very conspicuous indeed in two generations of persons who
-are habitually intemperate?
-
-We are told that it is unnatural to make use of alcoholic drinks, and
-we are lectured about what man in his natural state would do, or {431}
-not do. This is a misuse of terms; the state in which mankind is at
-any particular period, the point in his path of development which
-he has then reached, and his then environment, these constitute his
-natural state, and not some more or less hypothetical state of being
-which has been now left far behind.
-
-In order to enable them to thrust their theories upon a certainly
-unwilling audience, it would be very convenient for the abstainers
-to show, if they could, that alcohol, in any form and no matter how
-diluted, is in itself a bad thing. First, then, let us consider whether
-alcohol, as such, is food. On this point Dr. Lander Brunton says: “The
-argument in favour of alcohol being food is that it is retained in
-the body and supplies the place of other foods, so that the quantity
-of food which would without it be insufficient, with its aid becomes
-sufficient.” He also quotes Dr. Hammond, who observed in his own case
-that when his diet was insufficient, the addition of a little alcohol
-to it not only prevented him from losing weight, as he had previously
-done, but converted this loss into a positive gain.
-
-The late G. H. Lewes, in his _Principles of Physiology_, also speaks
-conclusively on this subject, pointing out that alcohol is one of the
-alimentary principles. “In compliance with the custom of physiologists
-we are forced to call alcohol food, and very efficient food too. If it
-be not food, then neither is sugar food.” Mr. Lewes also states that
-alcohol taken in large quantities is harmful, depriving the mucous
-membrane of the stomach of all its water, but that taken in small
-quantities and diluted it has just the opposite effect, increasing the
-secretion by the stimulus it gives to the circulation.
-
-The general opinion of the medical world appears to be that alcohol
-as such, is a food in a special sense, viz., that it checks the waste
-of tissue and enables a person to attain to a high standard of health
-and strength mentally and bodily while taking less food than would be
-necessary without the alcohol. Moleschott says that “although forming
-none of the constituents of blood, alcohol limits the combustion of
-those constituents, and in this way is equivalent to so much blood.
-Alcohol is the savings bank of the tissues. He who eats little and
-drinks alcohol in moderation, retains as much in his blood and tissues
-as he who eats more and drinks no alcohol.”
-
-The argument to the effect that alcohol must be useless, because
-chemists have as yet been unable to trace the exact form and manner in
-which it acts upon the human economy, would seem to be fallacious in
-the face of the experience, which shows that it does act, and act {432}
-beneficially, when taken in a suitable form and in suitable quantity.
-Experience shows, and instances by the hundred could be given, from the
-works of medical men, that life can be sustained for long periods of
-time solely upon alcoholic drinks. Dr. Brudenell Carter mentions a case
-in his own experience of an old gentleman who lived for many months in
-moderate strength and comfort and without any remarkable emaciation
-upon alcoholic drinks alone. Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before
-the British Medical Association, gives an instance of a lady who twice
-in succession nursed a child, subsisting upon each occasion during the
-greater part of twelve months upon brandy and bitter ale alone; the
-children, he adds, grew up strong and healthy.
-
-Dr. Francis E. Anstie, in an article published in the _Cornhill
-Magazine_ in 1862, draws attention to the fact that many substances
-have an action on the body in small doses, _totally different in
-kind_ to that which they exercise in large doses _e.g._, common salt,
-arsenic, and many others which are either food or poisons, according
-to the dose. “We are compelled, therefore,” he writes, “to believe
-that in _doses proportioned to the needs of the system at the time_,
-alcohol acts as a food;” and he instances several cases of longevity
-in which alcohol was the only aliment, excepting in some cases a
-little water, and in others a spare allowance of bread. Decisively
-vanquished on this ground, our opponents return to the attack: “You
-must abstain,” say they, “because your practice, which is now moderate,
-will insensibly become excessive.” Here we again turn to Mr. Lewes’s
-work on Physiology, and quote the pithy argument by which he refutes
-this fallacy. A portion is italicised for the benefit of tea drinkers:
-“To suppose there is any necessary connection between moderation and
-excess, is to ignore Physiology, and fly in the face of evidence . . .
-Men take their pint of beer or pint of wine daily, for a series of
-years. This dose daily produces its effect; and if at any time thirst
-or social seduction makes them drink a quart in lieu of a pint, they
-are at once made aware of the excess. Men drink one or two cups of tea
-or coffee at breakfast with unvarying regularity for a whole lifetime;
-but whoever felt the necessity of gradually increasing the amount to
-three, four, or five cups? Yet we know what a stimulant tea is; we know
-_that treble the amount of our daily consumption would soon produce
-paralysis_—why are we not irresistibly led to this fatal excess?”
-
-Let us now return to our authorities, and from the wealth of material
-which exists in the published opinions of medical men of distinction,
-choose a few more extracts in favour of temperance as opposed to total
-{433} abstinence. Professor Liebig, for instance, says that wine,
-spirits, and beer are _necessary_ principles for the important process
-of respiration, and it would seem that the stomachs of all mankind,
-_teetotallers included_, will secrete alcohol from the food which is
-eaten. If any man, therefore, is resolved to carry out total abstinence
-strictly, he must refuse every sort of vegetable food, even bread
-itself; for all such diet contains more or less of alcohol.
-
-Sir James Paget, in the article already referred to, asserts that the
-habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and
-that, in the question raised between temperance and abstinence, the
-verdict should be in favour of temperance.
-
-Dr. A. J. Bernays, in an essay on _The Moderate Use of Alcohols_,
-alluding to water as a proposed substitute, remarks on the wretched
-character of the water which is supplied in towns, and the difficulty
-of getting it pure. “Water which has gone through some form of
-preparation, especially through some form of cooking, as in beer, is
-generally better suited for meals than water itself.”
-
-Dr. Carpenter has also drawn attention to the wholesomeness of bitter
-beer at meals. “There is a class of cases,” he writes, “in which we
-believe that malt liquors constitute a better medicine than could be
-administered under any other form; those, namely, in which the stomach
-labours under a permanent deficiency of digestive powers.” Bitter beer,
-he asserts, assists digestion in cases in which no medicine would be of
-use.
-
-This question of the water reminds us of the following tale: A cobbler
-was listening to the persuasive eloquence of a teetotaller, and getting
-somewhat dry over the prosy argument. “Well,” said the knight of St.
-Crispin, “all you say amounts to this—that water is the best thing any
-man can drink. Now I am not proud, and am easily satisfied, and don’t
-want the best—stout, or ale, or even bitter-beer is quite good enough
-for the likes of me.”
-
-It is very often pointed out that the agricultural labourer and
-the working classes generally would be better off if they spent the
-money devoted to beer in food. This is, however, open to question,
-keeping in mind the fact that alcohol enables the human frame to exist
-with a smaller amount of food than would be otherwise necessary. Dr.
-C. D. Redcliffe, in giving his views on alcohol, in the form of a
-conversation between himself and a patient, speaks very positively on
-this point. “The glass of malt liquor,” he writes, “or cyder or perry
-or common wine, if the man have the luck to live in a wine-growing
-country, will {434} cost less than the amount of ordinary food which
-must otherwise be eaten in order to preserve health. I have no doubt
-of the saving in pocket which will result from the adoption of the
-practice recommended . . . . and I am equally certain that the
-result will be as beneficial to health as it will be satisfactory
-financially.” Liebig also testifies to the same effect, stating that in
-families where beer was withheld, and money given in compensation, it
-was soon found that the monthly consumption of bread was so strikingly
-increased that the beer was twice paid for, once in money and a second
-time in bread.
-
-Mr. Brudenell Carter, while he was practising his profession in a
-mining district, and daily brought into contact with the results of
-drunken habits, determined that he “should be a better advocate of
-abstinence if he practised it,” and he accordingly gave up his liquor.
-The results we give in his own words:—“After about two months of total
-abstinence, the conviction was reluctantly forced upon me that the
-experiment was a failure, and that I must give it up.” His symptoms
-pointed, he says, “in a perfectly plain way to an excess of waste over
-repair. I returned to my bitter beer, and in the course of a week was
-well again.”
-
-A volume could be filled with similar experiences, but in summing up
-the result of modern medical opinion, we are contented to rest our
-case on what has been said on this point by the two great authorities
-we have before quoted, viz., Sir James Paget and Dr. Bernays; the
-former writes: “As for the opinions of the medical profession, they
-are, by a vast majority, in favour of moderation. It may be admitted
-that, of late years, the number of cases has increased in which
-habitual abstinence from alcoholic drinks has been deemed better
-than habitual moderation. But, excluding those of children and young
-persons, the number of these cases is still very small, and few of
-them have been observed through a long course of years, so as to test
-the probable influence of a life-long habitual abstinence. Whatever
-weight, then, may be assigned to the balance of opinions among medical
-men, it certainly must be given in favour of moderation, not of
-abstinence.” Dr. Bernays is still stronger. “The experience of mankind
-is better than individual experience, and so, for every medical man of
-distinction who is in favour of total abstinence, I would find twenty
-men who are against it.” Hardly anyone who has lived among teetotallers
-will deny that they are large eaters. Now the greater the amount of
-solid food that is required to keep a human being up to the normal
-level of health and strength, the greater amount of nervous energy
-will be consumed {435} in the process of digestion, and the less
-superfluity of energy will that person have in reserve to meet the
-other exigencies and activities of life. It therefore seems to follow
-with the certainty of a mathematical demonstration, that if, as those
-who are best qualified to judge assure us is the case, the moderate
-consumption of alcoholic liquors enables a person to keep himself in
-health and strength upon a less amount of solid food than would be
-necessary without the aid of alcohol, the life of that man, other
-things being equal, must be fuller of capacities for all kinds of work,
-both mental and bodily, than that of a man who takes no alcohol, and
-who is in consequence forced to use up a greater amount of nerve force
-in the consumption of a sufficiency of solids to support himself. It
-is an uncontrovertible fact that the best work has always been done by
-the moderate drinkers. The physical condition of rigid abstainers has
-frequently been commented upon; and without wishing to say anything
-unkind, or uncharitable, about men who are doubtless honest and
-conscientious, though, in our view, misguided, we cannot but suggest
-the question—Is the appearance of the average abstainer, who now,
-happily for the cause of truth, is known to all the world by the blue
-ribbon he wears, such as may be considered a good advertisement for the
-opinions he advocates? Does his appearance seem to indicate a physical
-or intellectual superiority to the average member of the _genus homo_?
-We think there can be but one opinion on this point, and it is that
-each and every of these questions must be answered with an emphatic
-negative.
-
-On the action of the Temperance Societies, Dr. Moxon, in a very able
-article, _Alcohol and Individuality_, after relating how a poor cooper,
-having a fever caused by a wound, died rather than take the alcohol
-which was absolutely necessary to sustain him, says: “I believe that
-to a large extent teetotalism lays firmest hold on those who are
-least likely ever to become drunkards, and are most likely to want at
-times the medicinal use of alcohol—sensitive, good-natured people, of
-weak constitution, to whom the Sacred Ecclesiast directed his strange
-sounding but needful advice, ‘Be not righteous over much, neither make
-thyself over wise: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’”
-
-In August, 1884, _The Times_ devoted several columns to an exhaustive
-consideration of teetotal theories and the use of alcohol, and it
-may be said, without fear of contradiction, that neither before nor
-since has a more valuable treatise appeared on the subject. The writer
-divides total abstainers into three classes. Of the first class
-he says: “There are some persons who seem not to require alcohol
-because they easily {436} digest a large quantity of solid food, and
-especially of saccharine and starchy matters, . . . . but it is fairly
-questionable whether their work in life would not be better in quantity
-or in quality, or both, if they were to consume less solid food, and
-to make up for the deficiency by a little beer or wine. There are
-others who have a distinctly morbid tendency towards excess, . . . .
-which leaves them no safety except in total abstinence. The difficulty
-with these persons is to keep them from drink, however hurtful they
-may know it to be, for their condition is one of disease, and they
-have seldom sufficient resolution to abstain. When they do abstain
-they furnish striking examples of the success of teetotalism by being
-changed from a state closely bordering on insanity into responsible
-members of society; but the ordinary experience with regard to them
-is that they have a succession of relapses into intemperance, and
-that they ultimately die, directly or indirectly, from the effects of
-drink. . . . The third class of abstainers is formed by those who are
-actuated in the main by benevolent and conscientious motives, which,
-unfortunately, are seldom controlled by the possession of adequate
-knowledge. Many clergymen abstain ‘for the sake of example,’ without
-pausing to consider whether the example may not, in some cases, be a
-bad one, and whether they would not discharge their manifest duties
-more efficiently by help of the added force which alcohol would give.
-Many persons get on fairly well without alcohol because their powers
-are never subjected to any considerable strain, and these persons too
-often break down when any strain comes upon them, unless they will
-consent to modify their mode of living. This, as is too well known,
-they will not always do; and every medical man has seen instances of
-fanatical teetotalism leading to complete destruction of the health of
-those who were governed by it.”
-
-With regard to teetotal societies, the writer considers that they do
-very little good and a great deal of harm. “They fail,” he says, “to
-touch the evils of drunkenness, except in a very limited fashion, and
-they take away alcohol from vast numbers who would be better for the
-moderate use of it. We think the time has come when philanthropists
-should cease to listen to mere declamation, and should try to look
-calmly and fearlessly at the results of observation and experience.
-Many a good man is injuring his health and diminishing his usefulness
-in order to adhere, ‘for the sake of example,’ to a fantastic
-deprivation.”
-
-To check the evils of drunkenness, we rely not on prohibitory
-legislation, which has been tried elsewhere and found wanting, but
-on the gradual spread of education and enlightenment; the effects
-of public {437} opinion, the improvement of the well-being of the
-humbler classes more particularly with reference to their habitations
-both in town and country. Perhaps also, but here we speak with greater
-diffidence on account of the practical difficulties in which such a
-proposal is involved a remedy is to be found in the confinement of
-those persons who have shown by their conduct that their inability to
-refrain from vile excesses arises from actual mental disease.
-
-Lord Bramwell, in a pamphlet called _Drink_, has written to very
-much the same effect. He also calls in question the right of society
-to interfere with individual liberty to the extent proposed by the
-teetotallers. Is it reasonable, he asks, that because some people drink
-to excess, alcoholic liquors are to be denied to millions to whom it
-is a daily pleasure and enjoyment with no attendant harm? If a man is
-drunk in public, punish him; but it does seem hard that the sober man
-should be punished—for withholding a pleasure and inflicting a pain are
-equally punishment. “Then see the mischief of such laws,” he continues.
-“The public conscience does not go with them. It is certain they will
-be broken. Every one knows that stealing is wrong; disgrace follows
-conviction. But every one knows that drinking a glass of beer is not
-wrong; no discredit attaches to it. It is done, and when done against
-the law you have the usual mischiefs of law-breaking, smuggling,
-informations, oaths, perjury, shuffling, and lies. Besides, as a matter
-of fact, it fails. Nothing can show this more strongly than the failure
-in Wales of the Sunday Closing Act.” Lord Bramwell in the end comes to
-the conclusion that drunkenness cannot be prevented by legislation.
-“Whether it is desirable to limit the number of drink shops,” he
-writes, “is a matter as to which I have great doubt and difficulty. But
-grant that there is the right to forbid it, wholly or partially, in
-place or time, I say it is a right which should not be exercised. To do
-so is to interfere with the innocent enjoyment of millions in order to
-lessen the mischief arising from the folly or evil propensities, not
-of themselves, but of others. And, further, that such legislation is
-attended with the mischiefs which always follow from the creation of
-offences in law which are not so in conscience. Punish the mischievous
-drunkard, indeed, perhaps, even punish him for being drunk in public,
-and so a likely source of mischief. Punish, on the same principle, the
-man who sells drink to the drunken. But go no further. Trust to the
-good sense and improvement of mankind, and let charity be shown to
-those who would trust to them rather than to law.”
-
-Other arguments in opposition to those who would introduce what {438}
-is known as local option may be briefly summed up as follows:—Such a
-system would establish the principle that a majority of ratepayers in
-one district may put a stop to any trade or calling to which they may
-happen to object, although the same trade remains perfectly legitimate
-in other places; it would concentrate the evil, shifting the area of
-the sale of drink, and thus intensifying the mischiefs complained of;
-it would introduce invidious class distinctions, since its effects
-would principally be felt by the poor and the labouring classes, and in
-place of a trade which is now subject to inspection and regulation, it
-would substitute a secret and irresponsible one.
-
-In this discussion, the balance of experience, of reason, and of
-authority is vastly in favour of the temperate man rather than the
-abstainer, and it may be said without fear of contradiction from any
-reasonable or unbiassed person that, for the great majority of the
-people of this country, the most wholesome, the most nutritious, and
-the most pleasing alcoholic liquor, is the “wine of the country,” good,
-sound ale and beer.
-
-To the reader who has been patient enough to follow us thus far, we
-give our best thanks, hoping that he may have found something to amuse,
-something, perhaps, to instruct in these pages—our best thanks, we say,
-and, as a parting word, a few verses by old John Gay, entitled
-
-A BALLAD ON ALE.
-
- Whilst some in epic strains delight,
- Whilst others pastorals invite,
-     As taste or whim prevail;
- Assist me all ye tuneful Nine,
- Support me in the great design,
-     To sing of nappy Ale.
-
- Some folks of cider make a rout,
- And cider’s well enough no doubt
-     When better liquors fail;
- But wine that’s richer, better still,
- Ev’n wine itself (deny ’t who will)
-     Must yield to nappy Ale.
-
- Rum, brandy, gin with choicest smack,
- From Holland brought, Batavia rack,
-     All these will nought avail {439}
- To cheer a truly British heart,
- And lively spirits to impart,
-     Like humming nappy Ale.
-
- Oh ! whether thee I closely hug
- In honest can, or nut-brown jug,
-     Or in the tankard hail,
- In barrel or in bottle pent,
- I give the generous spirit vent,
-     Still may I feast on Ale.
-
- But chief when to the cheerful glass,
- From vessel pure, thy streamlets pass,
-     Then most thy charms prevail;
- Then, then, I’ll bet and take the odds
- That nectar, drink of Heathen Gods,
-     Was poor compared to Ale.
-
- Give me a bumper: fill it up:
- See how it sparkles in the cup;
-     O how shall I regale !
- Can any taste this drink divine,
- And then compare rum, brandy, wine,
-     Or aught with nappy Ale?
-
- Inspired by thee, the warrior fights,
- The lover wooes, the poet writes
-     And pens the pleasing tale;
- And still in Britain’s isle confest,
- Nought animates the patriot’s breast
-     Like generous nappy Ale.
-
- High church and low oft raise a strife
- And oft endanger limb and life,
-     Each studious to prevail:
- Yet Whig and Tory, opposite
- In all things else, do both unite
-     In praise of nappy Ale.
-
- Inspired by thee, shall Crispin sing
- Or talk of freedom, church and king,
-     And balance Europe’s scale: {440}
- While his rich landlord lays out schemes
- Of wealth in golden South-Sea dreams,
-     The effects of nappy Ale.
-
- Ev’n while these stanzas I indite,
- The bar-bells’ grateful sounds invite
-     Where joy can never fail.
- Adieu, my Muse ! adieu, I haste
- To gratify my longing taste
-     With copious draughts of Ale.
-
-+ The + End +
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{441}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX.
-
-PASTEUR’S DISCOVERIES.
-
-
-One talks glibly enough of fermentation, but the majority of us would
-be puzzled if asked to say what it is. For many years it has been known
-that minute particles of life are ever present in substances undergoing
-fermentation, but until recently proved beyond question by M. Pasteur,
-it was not known that the peculiar changes are wholly caused by these
-living atoms, which are so small that they can only be seen through the
-most powerful microscope. This discovery was the key to many problems.
-Pasteur soon traced the diseases of wine to the presence of various
-organisms which, fortunately, could be easily destroyed by heat. From
-this it followed that wine once heated to a certain temperature could
-be kept an indefinite length of time, provided, of course, no exposure
-to the air took place, for from the air germs of organisms similar to
-those killed by the application of heat might again enter the wine and
-multiply themselves.
-
-The method of preserving the wine discovered by Pasteur is simple: In
-a suitable metal vessel the bottles of wine are placed, their corks
-firmly tied down. The vessel is then filled to such a depth that the
-water is level with the wires of the corks. One of the bottles, in
-which is placed the bulb of a thermometer, should be filled with water.
-The water in the vessel is then gradually heated until the thermometer
-shows that the water in the bottle has attained a temperature of 212
-Fahr.
-
-Pasteur proved by repeated experiments that the flavour of the wine
-is not in any way damaged by this operation. The discovery solved an
-important economic question, for wines heated in this manner can now be
-exported into all countries, or kept for an almost indefinite period
-without losing their flavour or perfume.
-
-We have mentioned Pasteur’s labours for the wine-growers, for on them
-were based his studies on beer. {442}
-
-At the close of the Franco-Prussian war, Pasteur, who was then
-recovering from an illness which lasted over two years, became eager
-to commence an investigation which would bring him again to the study
-of fermentation. Influenced, no doubt, by the patriotic wish of making
-for French beer a reputation equal to that of Germany, he attacked the
-diseases of malt liquors.
-
-Beer is far more difficult to keep than wine, and it is said to be
-diseased when it has turned sharp, sour, ropy or putrid. To trace the
-causes of these undesirable conditions was Pasteur’s aim, and, as
-usual with any investigation undertaken by him, he met with success.
-In studying the fermentation of wine, he had discovered a new world
-peopled with minute beings of many different species, and in the
-fermentation of beer his discoveries were of much the same nature.
-
-In wine the fermentation may be said to take place by itself, the
-organisms which cause it, finding their way into the liquid without
-the assistance of man; but in beer-brewing a small quantity of certain
-organisms (yeast) is put into the sweet wort by the brewer. These
-organisms multiply themselves, and, if of the right species, turn the
-sugar principally into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. The one remains
-in the beer, the other partly escapes and hangs about the surface of
-the liquid, as anyone who has put his nose into a fermenting tun has
-no doubt discovered. It is absolutely necessary for the production of
-drinkable beer that the right species of organism be set to work in
-the wort. If the wort was left to itself to ferment, as is wine, the
-results would be very unsatisfactory. Various kinds of organisms (from
-which wine is protected by its acidity) would enter into it from the
-air, divers ferments would take place, and more often than not an acid
-or putrid beer would be the result.
-
-Every beer-disease Pasteur found to be caused by its own peculiar
-organisms, which enter into the liquid sometimes from the air and
-often in the yeast, and the causes of many mysterious occurrences
-in breweries at once become clear. Professor Tyndall said of this
-discovery: “Without knowing the cause, the brewer not unfrequently
-incurred heavy losses through the use of bad yeast. Five minutes’
-examination with the microscope would have revealed to him the cause of
-the badness, and prevented him from using the yeast. He would have seen
-the true torula overpowered by foreign intruders. The microscope is,
-I believe now everywhere in use. At Burton-on-Trent its aid was very
-soon, invoked.”
-
-The brewer has, therefore, to keep his wort free from foreign organisms
-{443} other than the yeast plant. When the wort is boiled, any harmful
-organisms it may contain are killed, and it can be indefinitely
-preserved even in a high temperature, provided the air with which
-it comes in contact is free from the germs of the lower microscopic
-organisms. Pasteur’s son-in-law, in the account he has written of
-the great _savant’s_ life and labours, says that some brewers have
-constructed an apparatus which enables them to protect the wort while
-it cools from the organisms of the air and to ferment it with a leaven
-as pure as possible. At the Exhibition of Amsterdam were shown bottles
-only half full, containing a perfectly clear beer which had been tapped
-from the opening of the Exhibition.
-
-As the causes of disease in beer are much the same as in wine, the
-same preservative—heating—may be applied. But beer differs from still
-wines in containing carbonic acid gas which heat displaces, and as beer
-which has lost its briskness is not pleasant drinking, it can only be
-advantageously so treated when contained in bottles. Both in Europe and
-America, says M. Pasteur’s son-in-law, the heating of beer is practised
-on a large scale. The process is called _Pasteuration_ and the beer
-_Pasteurised_ beer.
-
-A very high temperature, as we have shown, kills the germs of disease
-in wine and beer. Extreme cold has the effect of indefinitely
-suspending the action of the ferment. A moderate temperature seems
-most favourable to the action of the organisms which work the wondrous
-changes in the wort. In England beer is usually fermented at a
-temperature of between 60° and 70° Fahr., and the process only lasts
-a day or two. In Germany the general practice is to ferment at about
-40°, a temperature maintained by means of vessels containing ice, which
-are thrown into the fermenting tuns. This lower temperature checks the
-action of the ferment and the process lasts for fifteen or even twenty
-days.
-
-The only other point to be noticed here in connection with fermentation
-is the peculiar fact discovered by Pasteur, that the organisms
-causing the ferment can live without air. When the wort is in the
-fermenting tun, the sides of the tun, together with the heavy carbonic
-acid gas hanging over the surface of the wort, exclude all air from
-the organisms, which can only obtain a small amount of oxygen from
-the liquid. There is, in fact, life without air. Pasteur made some
-interesting experiments which showed that there was a great difference
-in the action of the organisms according as they were placed in
-deep vats, cut off from the air by the carbonic acid gas, or in
-flat-bottomed {444} wooden troughs with sides a few inches high. In
-this latter situation the life of the ferment seemed enhanced, but
-the amount of sugar decomposed by the organisms was proportionately
-different from that decomposed in the vats. In the vats one ounce of
-ferment decomposed from seventy to a hundred and fifty ounces of sugar,
-while in the troughs the same quantity of ferment decomposed only five
-or six ounces of sugar. The experiment showed that the more the yeast
-was exposed to the air, the less was its power as a ferment, and that
-there is a remarkable relation between fermentation and life without
-air.
-
-Dumas once said to Pasteur before the Academy of Sciences: “You have
-discovered a third kingdom—the kingdom to which those organisms belong
-which, with all the prerogatives of animal life, do not require air for
-their existence, and which find the heat that is necessary for them in
-the chemical decompositions which they set up around them.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-{445}
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-INDEX.
-
-
- A.
-
- Adulteration of Beer … 423–4
-
- Ale Drinkers, Great … 421
-
- Ale, English, on the Continent … 414
-
- Ale-bench, The … 190
-
- Ale-berry, or Ale-brue … 383
-
- Ale-bush, The … 216
-
- Ale-conners … 106, 109
-
- Ale-draper … 190
-
- Ale-founder … 107
-
- Ale-gafol … 35
-
- Ale-garland, The … 216
-
- Ale-house Lattices … 188
-
- Ale-house Poetry … 226
-
- Ale-houses in Mediæval Times … 187
-
- Ale-houses in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries … 188, 191
-
- Ale-houses, Suppression of … 110
-
- Ale-pole, The … 216
-
- Ale-sellers in fourteenth century, Tricks by … 39
-
- Ale-stake … 108, 215, 219
-
- Ale-taster … 109
-
- Ale-wives … 104, 124–6, 128–9, 134, 192, 215, 314
-
- _Ale-wife’s Supplication_ … 129
-
- Ale-yard, The … 401
-
- Alice Everade, a Brewster … 104
-
- _All is ours and our Husbands_ … 112
-
- Allsopp and Sons, Messrs. … 336
-
- Ancient Britons, Use of Beer by the … 1, 28
-
- Angel at Islington, The … 198
-
- _Answer of Ale to the Challenge of Sack_ … 8
-
- Apricot Ale … 386
-
- Arboga, Beer of … 181
-
- Armenia, Xenophon’s account of Beer in 401 B.C. … 27
-
- _Arraigning and Indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, Knight_ … 20
-
- Assize of Ale … 99, 102–3, 129
-
- Atkinson, Richard, Advice to Lord Dacre … 8
-
- B.
-
- _Bacchanalian Joys Defeated_ … 192
-
- “Baiersk öl” … 180
-
- _Ballad on Ale_, Gay’s … 438
-
- Banbury Ale … 171
-
- Baptism in Ale … 38, 401
-
- Barclay, Perkins & Co. … 341, 368
-
- _Barrel of Humming Ale, The_ … 12
-
- Barnstable Ale … 172
-
- Bass, Ratcliffe and Gretton, Messrs. … 343
-
- Bavarian Beer … 180
-
- Bede-ales … 99
-
- _Beer_, an American Poem … 13
-
- Beer Brewers, The … 143, 147
-
- Beer Powders … 176
-
- Beer Street, Hogarth’s … 16
-
- Beer, the Temperance Drink … 16, 18
-
- Bees, Beer used in taking Swarms of … 403
-
- Ben Jonson … 205
-
- _Beowulf_, Mention of Ale in … 33
-
- Bid-ales … 272
-
- _Birthday Ode, A_, by Peter Pindar … 357
-
- Bitter Beer, ancient cure for Leprosy among the Jews … 26
-
- Black Boy Inn, Chelmsford, The … 220
-
- Black Jacks … 396
-
- Blackberry Ale … 386
-
- Blind Pinneaux … 385
-
- Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, The … 203
-
- Boorde, Andrew, on Ale and Beer … 6
-
- Boozer … 26
-
- Borage … 390
-
- Boswell, Anecdote of … 292
-
- Bottled Beer, Origin of, etc. … 178
-
- Bragget: Bragawd … 171, 378
-
- Brasenose College Poems, and Ale … 7, 165, 389
-
- Breakfast, Ale at … 274, 275
-
- _Brewer’s Coachman, The_ … 148
-
- Brewers’ Company, Historical Notes on the, etc. … 134, 137, 143, 147
-
- Brewers of old London, The … 123, 146
-
- _Brewers’ Plea; or, a Vindication of Strong Beer_ (1647) … 116
-
- Brewhouse (German) of the sixteenth century … 131
-
- Brewhouse in sixteenth century, Contents of … 56
-
- Brewing at the present day … 331
-
- Brewing in a Teapot … 2, 339
-
- Brewing Trade in 1297, Legislation concerning the … 134
-
- Brewing Trade, Regulations for, in the fifteenth century … 104
-
- Brewsters … 100
-
- Bride-Ales … 269, 272
-
- Brown Betty … 389
-
- βρυτον, “Britain” derived from … 31
-
- _Bryng us in Good Ale_ … 230
-
- Burton Ales … 160
-
- _Burton Ale_; a Song … 161
-
- Burton-on-Trent, Historical Account of, etc. … 335
-
- Butler’s Ale, Dr. … 413
-
- Buttered Beere … 385, 413
-
- Buxton, Jedediah, a Great Beer Drinker … 293
-
- C.
-
- Cakes and Ale … 43, 239
-
- Cambridge Ale at Stourbridge Fair … 105
-
- Castle Coombe, Ancient Regulations concerning Brewing at … 107
-
- Caton, Cornelius, of the White Lion, Richmond … 194
-
- Cereris Vinum … 28
-
- Cerevisia … 28
-
- Charity, Ale Distributed in … 184, 278
-
- Chaucer’s Reference to Ale … 40
-
- Chavelier de Malte, The … 149
-
- Chester Ale … 162
-
- China Ale … 386
-
- Christian Ale … 271
-
- Christmas Carol, An Ancient … 263
-
- Christmas Customs … 239, 264
-
- Christopher North’s Brewhouse … 61
-
- Church Ales … 239, 266–70
-
- Churches, Ale Sold in … 272
-
- Clamber-clown … 385
-
- Clerk Ales … 270
-
- Cobbett on Homebrew, in 1821, 46
-
- Cock Ale … 385
-
- Cock Tavern, The … 209
-
- Cœlia … 28
-
- _Coggie o’ Yill_, a Song … 329
-
- Cold Tankard … 390
-
- Collistrigium … 101
-
- _Complete Angler, The_, Sold under the King’s Head Tavern … 205
-
- Consumption cured by Ale … 414
-
- Cookery, Beer used in … 403
-
- Cooperage, sixteenth century, A … 334
-
- Cooper, Origin of the Drink … 375
-
- Coopers, Brewers forbidden to act as … 113
-
- Coopers of Old London … 139
-
- Copus-Cup … 391
-
- Cornhill, The Taverns of … 203
-
- Cost of Brewing in the sixteenth century … 57
-
- Cotswold Games, The … 247
-
- Country Sports and Pastimes, Herrick upon … 233
-
- Cowslip Ale … 386
-
- Crown and Anchor, Strand, The … 211
-
- Cucking Stool, A Punishment for Ale-wives … 102
-
- Cuckoo Ales … 272
-
- Curmi … 28
-
- Cwrw … 28
-
- D.
-
- Darby Ale … 162
-
- Dawson, John, Butler of Christchurch, Oxford … 167
-
- Derivations of “Ale” and “Beer” … 32
-
- Devil Inn, Fleet Street, The … 208
-
- Dietetic uses of Ale … 273
-
- Dinton Hermit, The … 277
-
- Distinctions between Ale and Beer … 6, 32, 152
-
- Dogsnose … 388
-
- “_Doll thi, doll, doll this Ale, dole_” … 404
-
- Domestic uses of Ale … 403
-
- Donaldson’s Beer-cup … 391
-
- Dorchester Ales … 172
-
- Dover’s Games … 247
-
- _Drinke and Welcome_ … 4, 41, 147, 153, 158, 161, 188, 414
-
- Drinking Customs … 279, 280, 290, 383
-
- Drinking Vessels … 393
-
- Drink-Lean … 247
-
- Drunkenness in Olden Times … 108, 114, 116, 282, 292
-
- E.
-
- Early Closing, temp. Edward I. … 109
-
- Edinburgh Ales … 169
-
- Egg-Ale … 387
-
- Egg-hot … 388
-
- Egypt, Ancient use of Beer in … 25
-
- Egypt, Suppression of Beer Shops in … 1, 25
-
- Elderberry Beer … 386
-
- English Ale, famous among foreigners in fourteenth century … 37
-
- Epitaphs on Ale-drinkers, Brewers, and Innkeepers … 150, 164, 196, 208
-
- Eucharist, use of Ale in the Administration of the … 402
-
- Everlasting Club, The … 214
-
- Export of Ale in Ancient Times … 113
-
- Extraordinary Tithes … 91
-
- F.
-
- Falcon Inn, Chester, The … 197
-
- Falcon Tavern, Bankside, The … 205
-
- _Farmer’s Delight in the Merry Harvest, The_ … 253
-
- Farmer’s Return, Hogarth’s … 45
-
- Fever Cases cured by Ale … 415
-
- Fire, Ale used to Extinguish … 407
-
- Fish, Ale used as Food for … 402
-
- Fishing Lines, Ale used to Stain … 402
-
- Flip … 388, 389
-
- Foot Ales … 273
-
- Fowls, Beer as a Drink for … 403
-
- Foxcomb … 385
-
- Francis Francis on Bitter Beer … 5
-
- Freemason’s Cup … 391
-
- Frozen Ale … 169
-
- Furry Day at Helston, The … 244
-
- G.
-
- Gentleman’s Cellar of the twelfth century … 52
-
- George Inn, Salisbury, The … 196
-
- German Beer … 178, 180
-
- _Geste of Kyng Horn_, Extract from … 32
-
- Gin Lane, Hogarth’s … 17
-
- Give Ales … 272
-
- Glutton-Masses … 286
-
- _Good Ale for my Money_, a Ballad … 317
-
- Grace-cup, The … 384
-
- Grains … 145, 403
-
- _Grand Concern of England, etc., The_ (1673) … 118
-
- Greyheards, Anecdote of the … 398
-
- Grout Ale … 164
-
- Guild Feasts … 271
-
- Guinness, Messrs … 348
-
- Gustator Cervisiæ … 107
-
- H.
-
- Hacket, Marian, Ale-wife … 128
-
- _Hal-an-low_, The; a Song … 244
-
- Halders, Dame, of Norwich, Ale-wife, Anecdote of … 192
-
- Hanaps … 395
-
- Harrison on Homebrew and Malting in 1587, 54
-
- Harvest Home Customs and Songs … 256–9
-
- Harwood, Ralph, supposed Inventor of Porter … 366
-
- Haymaker’s Song, The … 252
-
- _Health to all Good Fellowes_, a Ballad … 325
-
- Heather Ale … 175
-
- Heaving … 241
-
- Help Ales … 272
-
- Herodotus on Egyptian Brewing … 25
-
- Herrick … 15
-
- Hicks, William, Brewer to the King … 149
-
- _High and Mightie Commendation of a Pot of Good Ale_ … 71, 320
-
- Highgate Oath, The … 198
-
- Hobby Horse Dance … 239
-
- Hock-Cart, The … 254
-
- Hock-tide … 241
-
- Hollowing Bottle, The … 255
-
- Homebrew and Malting, Earliest Account of … 47
-
- Hop-bine Ensilage … 82
-
- Hop-Gardens of England … 87
-
- Hop-Growers’ Troubles … 89
-
- Hop-growing countries of Europe … 87
-
- Hop-Pickers … 92
-
- Hop-poles and wires … 88
-
- Hop-Searchers … 70
-
- Hop-Substitutes … 78
-
- Hop-Substitutes, Anecdote … 425
-
- Hops, Early Introduction into England of … 67
-
- Hops, Early Mention of … 66
-
- Hops in America and Australia … 87
-
- Hops in Saxon times … 66
-
- Hops, Legislation concerning … 73, 78
-
- Hops, Medicinal uses of … 85
-
- Hops, Mention of, in the City Records … 68
-
- Hops, Prosecutions for using … 69
-
- Hops, Various uses of … 82, 84
-
- Horkey Beer, The … 256
-
- Horses’ Feet Washed with Ale … 402
-
- Hospitality in England in Early Times … 183, 190
-
- Hot Pint … 237
-
- Hot Pot … 388
-
- _How Mault doth deale with Everyone_, a Ballad … 301
-
- Huff-cap … 156
-
- Huff-cup … 421
-
- Hugmatee … 385
-
- Hum-cup … 158, 388
-
- Humming Ale … 158
-
- Humpty-Dumpty … 385
-
- Humulus Japonicus … 82
-
- Hungerford Park, A Beer Cup … 391
-
- Hymele … 66
-
- Hypocras … 384
-
- I.
-
- Ind, Coope & Co., Messrs. … 351
-
- Inn-keepers, Anecdotes of … 192
-
- Ireland, Malt Liquors in … 30
-
- Isaak Walton on Barley Wine … 191
-
- J.
-
- Jillian of Berry, Ale-wife … 128
-
- Johnson, Dr. … 182, 209
-
- _Jolly Good Ale and Old_ … 11
-
- K.
-
- Kentish Hop Gardens, Origin of … 70
-
- Kent, Restrictive Enactment on Malting and Brewing in … 110
-
- _King James and the Tinkler_, a Ballad … 405
-
- Knock-me-down … 385
-
- L.
-
- Laboragol … 164
-
- Labouring Classes, Advantage of Ale to … 425, 433
-
- Lager Beer … 179
-
- Lamb-Ales … 272
-
- Lambswool … 381
-
- _Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth, The_ … 117
-
- _Lamentations of the Porter Vat, etc._ … 371
-
- Leet Ales … 272
-
- Licensing Laws in Ancient Times … 113
-
- _Little Barley-Corn, The_, a Ballad … 303
-
- London Ale … 160
-
- _London Chanticleers, The_, Song from … 306
-
- London Taverns … 183
-
- Lord of the Tap … 105
-
- Loving-Cup, The … 384
-
- Lupuline … 80, 86
-
- _Lupus Salictarius_ … 65
-
- M.
-
- Magpie and Crown, The … 221
-
- Malt Liquor _v._ Cheap French Wines … 10
-
- Malt, Medicinal Preparations of … 417
-
- Malt, Sermon on … 289
-
- Malting and Brewing by Women Servants in 1610, 47
-
- Malting in Early Times … 120
-
- Manchester Ale … 162
-
- Mary-Ales … 273
-
- Maule, Mr. Justice, Anecdote of … 376
-
- May-Day Customs … 241–5
-
- Measures, Legislation concerning … 101
-
- Medical Opinions, Ancient and Modern, on Ale and Beer
-     … 403, 408, 419, 433
-
- Mermaid in Bread Street, The … 206
-
- _Merry Bagpipes_, The … 251
-
- _Merry Fellows, The_, a Song … 290
-
- _Merry Hoastess, The_, a Ballad … 308
-
- Meux’s, Bursting of the Great Vat, etc. … 368, 371
-
- Midsummer-Ales … 272
-
- Mitre, Fleet Street, The … 210
-
- Monasteries, Entertainment at … 183
-
- _Monday’s Work_, a Ballad … 326
-
- Monks as Brewers and Beer-drinkers … 37, 41, 50, 96, 285
-
- Morocco, A Strong Ale … 169
-
- Moss Ale, Irish … 176
-
- Mother-in-Law … 392
-
- Mother Louse, Ale-wife … 129
-
- Muggling … 290
-
- Mug House Club, The … 213
-
- Mulled Ale … 378
-
- Mum … 172
-
- N.
-
- _Newcastle Beer_ … 168
-
- Newcastle Cloak … 116
-
- _Newe from Bartholomew Fayre_ … 203
-
- Newnton, Curious Custom at … 271
-
- Nippitatum: Strong Ale … 157
-
- Norfolk Ales—Norfolk Nog … 171
-
- Northdown Ale … 162, 171, 385
-
- North, Florence, Ale-wife … 215
-
- Norwegian Beer … 180
-
- _Nottingham Ale_ … 162, 167, 210
-
- O.
-
- October Club, The … 212
-
- _Ode to Sir John Barleycorn_ … 20
-
- Old Ale, The: an Anecdote … 15
-
- Old Parr … 421
-
- Origin of Ale … 25, 42
-
- _Origin of Beer, The_ … 29
-
- Origin of Inns, The … 185
-
- P.
-
- _Panala Alacatholica_ … 412
-
- _Panegyric on Ale_ … 165
-
- _Panegyric on Oxford Ale_ … 13
-
- Parnell, Paul, A Great Beer Drinker … 59
-
- Parsons, Humphrey, Brewer and Lord Mayor … 149
-
- _Parson, The_, a Ballad … 287
-
- Parsonage Alehouses … 187
-
- Parting Cup, The … 389
-
- Pasteur’s Discoveries … 441
-
- _Patent Brown Stout_ … 369
-
- Peg-tankards … 97, 394
-
- Pennilesse Pilgrimage, Taylor’s … 162, 169, 190
-
- _Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden_ … 73
-
- Pharaoh … 158
-
- _Philosopher’s Banquet_, Extract from … 44
-
- Pig Drinking Ale out of a Jug … 15
-
- Pledging … 383
-
- Pliny on German Beer … 28
-
- Plough Monday … 240
-
- Plum-pudding Weighing 1,000 lbs., The … 203
-
- _Pointes of Good Huswiferie_, Extract from … 56
-
- Pope Innocent III., Anecdote of … 36
-
- Porter at Oxford … 367
-
- Porter Drinkers, Actors and Actresses as … 374
-
- Porter in Ireland … 373
-
- Porter, Origin of … 365
-
- Porter, Professor Wilson on … 370
-
- Posset Ale … 385
-
- _Pot of Porter oh ! A_ … 376
-
- Proverbs of Hendyng (thirteenth century) … 38
-
- Purl … 387, 389
-
- _Pye upon the Pear Tree Top, The_ … 256
-
- Q.
-
- Queen Elizabeth’s Breakfast … 275
-
- _Quod Petis Hic Est_ … 328
-
- R.
-
- _Rape of Lucrece, The_ … 204
-
- Receipts for Keeping and Flavouring Homebrew … 62
-
- Rents Paid in Ale … 35
-
- Rheumatism cured by New Ale … 416
-
- _Robin Rough, the Plowboy_ … 426
-
- Rouen, English Beer at, in 1582, 113
-
- _Roxburghe Ballads_, The … 295
-
- Ruddle … 388
-
- Rumyng, Eleanor … 126, 216, 223
-
- Russia, Burton Ale Exported to … 338
-
- Russia, Burton Beer in … 181
-
- S.
-
- Salt & Co., Messrs. … 353
-
- Saxon Leechdoms … 151
-
- Scarcity of labour in fourteenth century … 39
-
- Scot-Ales … 98, 267, 272
-
- Scotch Ales … 169, 170, 171
-
- Scotland, Ale Brewing and Selling in Early Times … 129
-
- Scotland, Assize of Ale, etc., in … 129
-
- Scurvy cured by Ale … 418
-
- _Senchus Mor_, References to Ale in the … 30
-
- Shakspere and Ale … 203, 270, 428
-
- Shandy Gaff … 392
-
- Sheep-shearing Customs and Songs … 250
-
- Sicera … 26
-
- Sign of the Red Lion, The, an Anecdote … 229
-
- Signboard and Alehouse Poetry … 211, 223–7
-
- Signboard Artists … 228
-
- Signboards … 214–20
-
- _Sir John Barley-corne_, The Ballad … 295
-
- _Skelton’s Ghost_ … 110, 153
-
- Small Beer … 159, 160, 277, 284
-
- Smoke Question in London, Early Mention of the … 146
-
- _Songs of the Session_, Extract from … 14
-
- _Sonnet on Christmas_ … 262
-
- Spiced Ale … 382
-
- St. Dunstan, Legend of … 97
-
- Steen, Jan, Brewer, temp. Chas. II. … 148
-
- Stephony … 385
-
- Stickback … 385
-
- Stiffle … 385
-
- Stout … 374
-
- Strength of Malt Liquors Compared … 154
-
- Sugar Beer … 177
-
- Sulphuring of Hops … 81
-
- Sunday Closing in Early Times … 115
-
- Superstitions relating to Beer and Ale … 278
-
- Swanne Taverne, The, by Charing Cross … 207
-
- Swift’s _Polite Conversation_ on Homebrew … 59
-
- _Symposii Ænigmata_, A Saxon Riddle … 34
-
- T.
-
- Tabard, The … 200
-
- Tapstere, The Chester … 125
-
- Taverns of Old London … 188, 203
-
- Taxes on Ale … 38
-
- Taylor’s, John, Signboard … 211
-
- Temperance Drinks … 373
-
- Temperance _v._ Total Abstinence … 14, 19, 423, 429
-
- Tewahdiddle … 389
-
- Thames Water used in Brewing … 122
-
- Thrale’s Brewery … 340, 368
-
- _Time’s Alterations, or the Old Man’s Rehersal_ … 396
-
- Timothy Burrell, Extracts from the Journal of … 59
-
- _Tinker’s Song_, Herrick’s … 291
-
- Tithe Ale … 172, 273
-
- Toasting … 383
-
- _Toby Philpot_ … 399
-
- Toll on Ale … 35
-
- _Toper, drink, and help the house_ … 15
-
- Treacle Beer … 177
-
- _Treatise of Walter de Biblesworth_ … 47
-
- Trinity Audit … 165
-
- Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co., Messrs. … 355, 366
-
- Tumbrel, Punishment of the … 100
-
- Tusser on Hops … 76
-
- Twelfth-day Customs … 238
-
- Typhus-fever, Malt Liquor beneficial in … 419
-
- V.
-
- _Village Alehouse, The_ … 186
-
- Vinegar made from Malt Liquor … 403
-
- W.
-
- Wadlow, Sim … 208
-
- Wages Paid Anciently in Ale … 36
-
- _Warme Beere_, Verses in Commendation of … 410
-
- _Warrington Ale_ … 168
-
- Wassail Bowl, The … 380
-
- Wassailing … 234
-
- Wassailing the Fruit Trees … 236
-
- Weddyn Ales … 272
-
- Welsh Ales … 30, 171
-
- Weobley Ale … 127, 171
-
- Wheat Malt, Ancient Use of … 105
-
- Whitbread & Co., Messrs. … 359, 368
-
- White Ale, Devonshire … 163
-
- Whitington and the London Brewers … 135
-
- Whitsuntide Ales and Customs … 246, 267
-
- _Will Russell_, a Ballad … 195
-
- _Wine, Beer, Ale and Tobacco; a Dialogue_ … 72
-
- “Wine is but Single Broth” … 9
-
- Women Brewers … 124
-
- X.
-
- X, Origin of the Symbol … 113
-
- Y.
-
- Yorkshire Ale … 161
-
- _Yorkshire Ale, The Praise of_: A Poem … 312
-
- Z.
-
- Zythum … 28
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Note.
-
-
-Original spelling and grammar have been generally retained, with some
-exceptions noted below. Original printed page numbers are shown like
-this: {52}. Original small caps are now uppercase. Italics look _like
-this_. Footnotes have been relabeled 1–75, and moved from within
-paragraphs to nearby locations between paragraphs. The transcriber
-produced the cover image and hereby assigns it to the public domain.
-Superscripted letters are shown as for examples: “y^e”, or “Ma^{tie.}”.
-Original page images are available from archive.org—search for
-“cu31924029894759”.
-
-The poetry indents are approximately correct in limited circumstances.
-The indents were measured and adjusted using a monospace font: “Adobe
-Source Code Pro”. Variable-width fonts will look less accurate.
-
-Page ii. The third word of the caption seems to read “Bremhouſe”
-(printed in what appears to the transcriber to be a variety of bastard
-script), but has been rendered herein in the more likely “Brewhouſe”.
-
-Page 25. Changed “What ha h been” to “What hath been”.
-
-Page 27. Changed “οινος”—wherein the omicron was accented with psili
-and perispomeni—to “οἶνος”.
-
-Page 35. In the phrase “pay as toll to the lord   gallons of ale”, a
-number was missing.
-
-Page 35n. The footnote read “1 The translation is taken from _Nineteen
-Centuries of Drink in England_.”, but there was no anchor on the page.
-Possibly this note refers to the _Symposium Ænigmata_ that ends at the
-top of the page.
-
-Page 38. The first footnote on the page had no anchor. A new anchor was
-installed after the word “male,”, on the second line of the poem.
-
-Page 49. Closing quotation mark was added after the line “Parlom ore de
-autre chose.”
-
-Page 74, 79. These full-page illustrations have been moved out of
-their original locations inside poems to nearby locations below or
-above, and the corresponding page numbers have been removed. Full-page
-illustrations likewise situated in other places in the book have been
-likewise treated.
-
-Page 85. Full stop was added after “sometimes when opium failed”.
-
-Page 100n. There was no anchor for the footnote; a new one has been
-inserted after the word “brewster” at the top of the page.
-
-Page 180n. The footnote had no anchor. A new anchor has been inserted
-for this note, on page 179.
-
-Page 184. Changed “religous” to “religious”.
-
-Page 208n. The last word, partially illegible, is herein rendered
-“out.”.
-
-Page 235. The phrase “bring us a bowl of the bes” was changed to “bring
-us a bowl of the best,”.
-
-Page 264. Changed “carry ing over hilland dale” to “carrying over hill
-and dale”.
-
-Page 284. Changed “trusted, as we bear” to “trusted, as we hear”, and
-“strirre” to “stirre”.
-
-Page 325n. A new footnote anchor was inserted after “he that made, made
-two.”.
-
-Page 342. Full stop added after “dilutes his clay”.
-
-Page 433. Changed “to live in a wine-growing, country will” to “to live
-in a wine-growing country, will”.
-
-Page 435. Changed “alcholic” to “alcoholic”.
-
-Page 449. Changed “Weobly Ale” to “Weobley Ale”.
-
-
-
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURIOSITIES OF ALE & BEER ***
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-<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Curiosities of Ale &amp; Beer: An Entertaining History, by John Bickerdyke</div>
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-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Curiosities of Ale &amp; Beer: An Entertaining History</div>
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: John Bickerdyke</div>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: September 22, 2017 [eBook #55602]<br />
-[Most recently updated: August 3, 2021]</div>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
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-<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Turgut Dincer, RichardW, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURIOSITIES OF ALE &amp; BEER ***</div>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" width="600" height="800" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h1 class="h1herein">The Cu­ri­os­i­ties of Ale &amp; Beer,<br />
-<span class="fsz8">By</span> John Bic­ker­dyke.</h1>
-
-<div class="dfront dfrontborder">
-<div class="dctr05" id="p-ii">
-<img src="images/p000.02.png" width="471" height="700"
- alt="An Ancient Brewhouſe. 1568." /></div></div>
-
-<div class="dfront dfrontborder">
-<div class="fsz5"><i>The Curiosities</i></div>
-
-<div class="fsz8">OF</div>
-
-<div class="fsz2"><i>Ale &amp; Beer</i>:</div>
-
-<div class="fsz6">An Entertaining History.</div>
-
-<div class="fsz7">(<i>Illustrated with over Fifty Quaint Cuts.</i>)</div>
-
-<div class="fsz6 padtopa">BY</div>
-
-<div class="fsz4">John Bickerdyke.</div>
-
-<p class="pfirst fsz7">In Part collected by the late <span
-class="smcap">J. G. F<b>ENNELL</b>;</span> now largely augmented with
-manifold matters of singular note and worthy memory by the Author and
-his friend <span class="nowrap">J. M. D——.</span></p>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
- <img src="images/p000.03.png" width="501"
- height="328" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">“For a quart of Ale is a dish for a
- King.”—<i>Shakspere.</i></div></div>
-
-<div class="fsz6 padtopc">LONDON:</div>
-<div class="fsz5">SWAN SONNENSCHEIN &amp; Co.,</div>
-<div class="fsz6">PATERNOSTER SQUARE.</div>
-
-<div class="fsz6">1889.</div>
-</div><!--dfront-->
-
-<div class="dfront dfrontborder">
-<div class="dctr05 padtopa">
-<img src="images/p000.04.png" width="411" height="208" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="fsz8 padtopc">PRINTED BY</div>
-<div class="fsz8">CHAS. STRAKER AND SONS, BISHOPSGATE AVENUE, LONDON;</div>
-<div class="fsz8">AND REDHILL.</div>
-</div><!--dfront-->
-
-<div class="dfront dfrontborder">
-<div class="fsz4 padtopa"><i>Dedicated</i></div>
-
-<div class="fsz8 padtopa">TO THE</div>
-
-<div class="fsz4 padtopa"><i>Brewers of the United Kingdom</i></div>
-
-<div class="fsz8 padtopa">AND ALL WHO VALUE</div>
-
-<div class="fsz4 padtopa"><i>Honest Malt Liquor</i>.</div>
-</div><!--dfront-->
-
-<div class="dfront">
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p000.06.png" width="576" height="178" alt="" /></div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr06">
-<img src="images/p000.07a.png" width="416" height="208" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein"><i>PREFACE.</i></h2>
-
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="spdropcap"><img
-class="idropcap" src="images/p000.07b.png" width="291"
-height="297" alt="T" /></span>HAT
-the history and curiosities of Ale
-and Beer should fill a bulky volume,
-may be a sub­ject for surprise to the
-un­think­ing read­er; and that sur­prise
-will probably be intens­i­fied, on his
-learning that great dif­fi­cul­ty has been
-ex­perienced in keep­ing this book within
-reason­able limits, and at the same time doing any­thing like
-jus­tice to the subject. Since the dawn of our history Barley-wine has
-been the “naturall drinke” for an “Englysshe man,” and has had
-no un­im­por­tant in­flu­ence on English life and man­ners. It is, there­fore,
-somewhat curious that up to the present, among the thousands of
-books published annually, no comp­re­hen­sive work on the antiquities
-of ale and beer has found place.</p></div>
-
-<p class="padtopc">Some
-years ago this strange neglect of so excellent a theme
-was observed by the late John Greville Fennell, best known as
-a contributor to <i>The Field</i>, and who, like “John of the Dale,”
-was a “lover of ale.” With him probably originated the idea of
-filling this void in our literature. As occasion offered he made
-extracts from works bearing on the subject, and in time amassed
-a considerable amount of material, which was, however, devoid
-of arrangement. Old age overtaking him before he was able to
-commence writing his proposed book, he asked me to undertake
-that which from failing health he was unable to accomplish.
-To this I assented, and at the end of some months had prepared
-a complete scheme of the book, with the materials for each chapter
-carefully grouped. That arrangement, for which I am responsible, has,
-with a few slight modifications, been carefully adhered to. The work
-did not then proceed further, as to carry out my scheme a large
-amount of additional matter, from sources not then available, was
-required. A few months later my friend was taken seriously ill, and,
-finding his end approaching, directed that on his decease all papers
-connected with the book should be placed at my disposal. His death
-seems to render a statement of our respective shares in the book
-desirable.</p>
-
-<p class="padtopc">When able to resume work on the book, with the object of
-hastening its publication, I obtained the assistance of my friend,
-Mr. J. M. D——. By the collection of fresh matter, in amplification of
-that already arranged, and the addition of several new features, we have
-considerably increased the scope of the work, and, it is to be hoped,
-added to its attractiveness. To my friend’s researches in the City of
-London and other Records is due the bringing to light of many
-curious facts, so far as I am aware, never before noticed. He has also
-rendered me great assistance in those portions of the book in which
-the antiquities of the subject are specially treated.</p>
-
-<p class="padtopc">The illustrations have been in most part taken from rare old
-works. As any smoothing away of defects in such relics of the
-past would be deemed by many an offence against the antiquarian
-code of morality, they have been reproduced in exact fac-simile,
-and will no doubt appeal to those interested in the art of the
-early engraver, and amuse many with their quaintness.</p>
-
-<p class="padtopc">As aptly terminating the chapter devoted to an account of the
-medicinal qualities of ale and beer, I have ventured to enter upon
-a short consideration of the leading teetotal arguments. In extending
-their denunciations to ale and beer drinkers, the total
-abstainers are, in my opinion, working a very grievous injury on
-the labouring classes, who for centuries have found the greatest
-benefit from the use of malt liquors. Barley-broth should be
-looked upon as <i>the</i> temperance drink of the people or, in other
-words, the drink of the temperate.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="padtopc">I have gratefully to acknowledge the kindness and courtesy accorded
-me during the preparation of this work by the authorities of the British
-Museum, by Dr. Sharpe, Records Clerk of the City of London, by
-Mr. Higgins, Clerk of the Brewers’ Company, and by several eminent
-brewers and a large number of correspondents.</p>
-
-<p class="psignature">JOHN BICKERDYKE.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr01">
-<img src="images/p000.09.png" width="600" height="139" alt="" /></div>
-</div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<div class="dfront"><div class="padtopa">
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p000.10.png" width="531" height="159" alt="" /></div>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr01">
-<img src="images/p000.11.png" width="600" height="129" alt="" /></div></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein"><i>CONTENTS.</i></h2>
-
-<ul>
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> I.</span>
-<span class="sptocsyn">Suppression of Beer-shops in Egypt 2,000
-<span class="smmaj">B.C.</span>&#x200a;—&#x200a;Brewing in a Teapot.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Ale
-Songs.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Dis­tinc­tions be­tween Ale and Beer.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Ale-Knights’ ob­jec­tion
-to Sack.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Hogarth and Tem­per­ance.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Im­por­tance of Ale to the
-Ag­ri­cul­tu­ral La­bourer.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Sir John Bar­ley­corne in­tro­duced to the Reader
-.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p001" title="go to p. 1">1</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> II.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Origin and An­ti­quity of Ale and Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p025" title="go to p. 25">25</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> III.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Home-brewed Ales.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Old Receipts.&#x200a;—&#x200a;His­to­ri­cal Facts.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Dean Swift on
-Home-brew.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Chris­to­pher North’s Brew-house
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p045" title="go to p. 45">45</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> IV.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Use and Im­por­tance of Hops in
-Beer: Their In­tro­duc­tion and His­tory.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Hop-growers’
-Trou­bles.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Me­di­cinal Qua­li­ties.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Eco­nom­ical
-Uses.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Hop-pickers .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p065" title="go to p. 65">65</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> V.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Ancient and Curious Laws relating to the man­u­fac­ture and sale of Ale
-and Beer .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p096" title="go to p. 96">96</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> VI.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Brewing and Malting in Early Times.&#x200a;—&#x200a;The Ale-wives.&#x200a;—&#x200a;The Brew­ers of
-Old London and the Brewers’ Company.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Anecdotes.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Quaint Epitaphs
-.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p120" title="go to p. 120">120</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> VII.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Various Kinds of Ales and Beers.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Some For­eign
-Beers.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Re­ceipts.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Songs.&#x200a;—&#x200a;An­ec­dotes .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p151" title="go to p. 151">151</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> VIII.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Ale houses: Their Origin.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Hos­pi­ta­li­ty in Me­di­æ­val Times.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Old Lon­don
-Inns and Ta­verns.&#x200a;—&#x200a;An­ec­dotes of Inns and Inn-keep­ers.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Cur­ious
-Signs.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Sign­board and Ale-house Verses.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Sign­board Ar­tists.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Ale-house
-Songs and Catches .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p182" title="go to p. 182">182</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> IX.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Ancient Mer­ry-ma­kings, Feasts and Cer­e­mo­nies pe­cu­liar to cer­tain
-Seasons, at which Ale was the prin­ci­pal Drink.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Har­vest Home,
-Sheep-shear­ing, and other songs .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p232" title="go to p. 232">232</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> X.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">The Ales.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Ale at Break­fast.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Be­quests of Ale.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Drink­ing
-Cus­toms.&#x200a;—&#x200a;A Ser­mon on Malt.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Ex­ces­ses of the Cler­gy.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Anecdotes
-.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p266" title="go to p. 266">266</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XI.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Old Ballads, Songs and Verses relating to Ale and Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p294" title="go to p. 294">294</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XII.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Brewing in the Pre­sent Day.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Anec­dotal and Bio­graph­i­cal Ac­count of
-some rep­re­sen­ta­tive London, Dublin, Burton and Country Brewing
-Firms.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Edinburgh Ales .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p331" title="go to p. 331">331</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XIII.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Porter and Stout.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Circumstances which led to their Introduction.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Value
-to the Working Classes.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Anecdotes.&#x200a;—&#x200a;“A Pot of Porter Oh!”
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p365" title="go to p. 365">365</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XIV.</span>
-
-<span class="sptocsyn">Beverages com­pound­ed of Ale or Beer, with a num­ber of Re­ceipts.&#x200a;—&#x200a;An­cient
-Drink­ing Ves­sels.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Var­ious Uses of Ale other than as a
-Drink .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p378" title="go to p. 378">378</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span>
- XV.</span>
-<span class="sptocsyn">Old Medical Writers on Ale.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Adul­ter­a­tion of Ale.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Ad­van­tages of Malt
-Li­quors to La­bour­ing Clas­ses.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Tem­per­ance <i>versus</i> To­tal Ab­sti­nence.&#x200a;—&#x200a;An­ec­dotes.&#x200a;—&#x200a;Gay’s
-Ballad .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p408" title="go to p. 408">408</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="sptocchap"><span class="smcap">A<b>PPENDIX</b>.</span></span>&#x200a;<span class="sptocsyn">—&#x200a;Pasteur’s
- Discoveries .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p441" title="go to p. 441">441</a></span>
-
-<div class="dctr08">
-<img src="images/p000.12.png" width="240" height="131" alt="" /></div>
-
-</li></ul>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<img id="glypha-p1" src="images/p001a.png"
- width="822" height="60" alt="THE CURIOSITIES OF ALE AND BEER." />
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p001" title="CHAPTER I. Introductory.">
-<span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> I.
-
-<span class="hsmall"><i>INTRODUCTORY.</i></span></h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dnowrap34">
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>For a
-   quart of ale is a dish for a King.”</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Winter’s Tale</i>, Act iv. Scene 2.</span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc"><div class="dnowrap34">
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">No doubt it is a very tedious thing</span>
-<span class="spp01">To undertake a folio work on law,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or metaphysics, or again to ring</span>
-<span class="spp01">The changes on the Flood or Trojan War:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Old subjects these, which Poets only sing</span>
-<span class="spp01">Who think a new idea quite a flaw;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But thirst for novelty can’t fail in liking</span>
-<span class="spp00">The theme of Ale, the aptitude’s so striking.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Brasenose College
- Shrovetide Verses.</i></span></div></div></div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis">
-SUPPRESSION OF BEER SHOPS IN EGYPT 2,000 B.C.&#x200a;—&#x200a;BREWING
-IN A TEAPOT.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ALE SONGS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ALE AND
-BEER.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ALE-KNIGHTS’ OBJECTION TO SACK.&#x200a;—&#x200a;HOGARTH AND
-TEMPERANCE.&#x200a;—&#x200a;IMPORTANCE OF ALE TO THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.&#x200a;—&#x200a;SIR
-JOHN BARLEYCORNE INTRODUCED TO THE READER.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p001b.png"
-width="300" height="302" alt="F" /></span>OUR thou­sand years ago,
-if old in­scrip­tions and pa­pyri lie not, Egypt was con­vulsed by the
-high-handed pro­ceed­ings of cer­tain per­sons in au­thor­i­ty who in­clined to
-the opin­ion that the beer shops were too many. Think of it, ye modern
-Sup­pres­sion­ists! ’Tis now forty cen­turies since first your theories saw
-the light, and yet there is not a town in our hap­py coun­try with­out its
-ale­house.</p>
-
-<p>While those disturbing members of the Egyptian community were
-waxing wrath over the beer shops, our savage ancestors probably contented
-themselves with such drinks as mead made from wild honey,
-<span class="xxpn" id="p002">{2}</span>
-or cyder from the crab tree. But when Ceres sent certain of her
-votaries into our then benighted land to initiate our woad-dressed
-forefathers into the mysteries of grain-growing, the venerable Druids
-quickly discovered the art of brewing that beverage which in all
-succeeding years has been the drink of Britons.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Of true British growth is the Nectar we boast,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The homely companion of plain boiled and roast,</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">most
-truly wrote an Oxford poet, whose name has not been handed
-down to posterity.</p>
-
-<p>Almost every inhabitant of this country has tasted beer of some
-kind or another, but on the subject of brewing the great majority have
-ideas both vague and curious. About one person out of ten imagines
-that pale ale consists solely of hops and water; indeed, more credit is
-given by most persons to the hop than to the malt. In order to give a
-proper understanding of our subject, and at the risk of ruining the
-brewing trade, let us then, in ten lines or so, inform the world at large
-how, with no other utensils than a tea-kettle and a saucepan, a quart
-or two of ale may be brewed, and the revenue defrauded.</p>
-
-<p>Into your tea-kettle, amateur brewer, cast a quart of malt, and on it
-pour water, hot, but not boiling; let it stand awhile and stir it. Then
-pour off the sweet tea into the saucepan, and add to the tea-leaves
-boiling water again, and even a third time, until possibly a husband
-would rebel at the weak liquid which issues from the spout. The
-saucepan is now nearly full, thanks to the frequent additions from the
-tea-kettle, so on to the fire with it, and boil up its contents for an hour
-or two, not forgetting to add of hops half-an-ounce, or a little more.
-This process over, let the seething liquor cool, and, when at a little
-below blood-heat, throw into it a small particle of brewer’s yeast. The
-liquor now ferments; at the end of an hour skim it, and lo! beneath
-the scum is bitter beer—in quantity, a quart or more. After awhile
-bottle the results of your brew, place it in a remote corner of your
-cellar, and order in a barrel of XXX. from the nearest brewer.</p>
-
-<p>If the generality of people have ideas of the vaguest on the subject
-of brewing, still less do we English know of the history of that excellent
-compound yclept ale.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">O ale! aurum potabile!</span>
-<span class="spp01">That gildest life’s dull hours,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When its colour weareth shabbily,</span>
-<span class="spp01">When fade its summer flowers.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p id="p003">Old ballad makers have certainly sung in its praise, but it is a
-subject which few prose writers have touched upon, except in the
-most superficial manner. Modern song writers rarely take ale as
-their theme. The reason is not far to seek. The ale of other days—not
-the single beer rightly stigmatised as “whip-belly vengeance,”
-nor even the doble beer, but the doble-doble beer brewed against law,
-and beloved by the ale-knights of old—was of such mightiness that
-whoso drank of it, more often than not dashed off a verse or two in its
-praise. Now most people drink small beer which exciteth not the brain
-to poesy. Could one of the ancient topers be restored to life, in tasting
-a glass of our most excellent bitter, he would, in all likelihood, make a
-wry face, for hops were not always held in the estimation they obtain
-at present. There is no doubt, however, that we could restore his
-equanimity and make him tolerably happy with a gallon or two of old
-Scotch or Burton ale, double stout or, better still, a mixture of the
-three with a little <i>aqua vitæ</i> added.</p>
-
-<p>In these pages it will be our task, aided or unaided by strong ale as
-the case may be, to remove the reproach under which this country
-rests; for surely a reproach it is that the history of the bonny nut-brown
-ale, to which we English owe not a little, should have been so
-long left unwritten.</p>
-
-<p>Now ale has a curious history which, as we have indicated, will be
-related anon, together with other matters pertaining to the subject.
-At present let us only chat awhile concerning the great Sir John
-Barleycorn, malt liquors of the past and present, their virtues, and
-importance to the labouring classes. Also may we consider the foolish
-ideas of certain worthy but misguided folk, halting now and again,
-should we find ourselves growing too serious, to chant a jolly old
-drinking song, that the way may be more enlivened. If on reaching
-the first stage of our journey you, dear reader, and ourselves
-remain friends, let us in each other’s company pass lightly and cheerfully
-over the path which Sir John Barleycorn has traversed, and fight
-again his battles, rejoicing at his victories; grieving over his defeats—if
-any there be. If, on the other hand, it so happens that by the time we
-arrive at our first halting place you should grow weary of us—which
-the Spirit of Malt forbid!—let us at once part company, friends none
-the less, and consign us to a place high up on your bookshelf, or with
-kindly words present us to the President of the United Kingdom
-Alliance.</p>
-
-<p>In accusing modern poets of neglecting to sing the praises of our <span class="xxpn" id="p004">{4}</span>
-national drink, we must not forget that in one place is kept up the good
-old custom of brewing strong beer and glorifying it in verse. At
-Brasenose College, Oxford, beer of the strongest, made of the best malt
-and hops, is brewed once a year, distributed <i>ad. lib.</i>, and verses are
-written in its praise. Mr. Prior, the college butler, to whom is due the
-honour of having kept alive the custom for very many years, writes
-us<a class="afnanc" href="#fn1" id="fnanc1">1</a>
-that it is proposed to pull down the old college brewery. Should
-this happen, Brasenose ale will become a thing of the past.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">A fig for Horace and his juice,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Falernian and Massic,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Far better drink can we produce,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Though ’tis not quite so <span class="nowrap">classic—</span></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">wrote
-a Brasenose poet. Alas, that both poets and ale should soon
-become extinct!</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc1" id="fn1">1</a>
-May, 1886. See also pp. <a href="#p165" title="go to page 165">165</a>;
-<a href="#p389" title="go to page 389">389</a>.</p></div>
-
-<p>Among the few prose writers past or present who have taken ale for
-their subject, John Taylor, of whom a good deal will be heard in these
-pages, stands pre-eminent. His little work, <i>Drinke and Welcome</i>, written
-some two hundred years ago, and which glorifies ale in a manner most
-marvellous, is one of the most curious literary productions it has ever
-been our good fortune to read. “Ale is rightly called nappy,” says
-the old Thames waterman and innkeeper, “for it will set a nap upon a
-man’s threed-bare eyes when he is sleepy. It is called <i>Merry-goe-downe</i>,
-for it slides downe merrily; It is fragrant to the <i>Sent</i>, it is most pleasing
-to the <i>taste</i>. The flowring and mantling of it (like chequer worke)
-with the verdant smiling of it, is delightefull to the <i>Sight</i>, it is <i>Touching</i>
-or <i>Feeling</i> to the Braine and Heart; and (to please the senses all) it
-provokes men to singeing and mirth, which is contenting to the
-Hearing. The speedy taking of it doth comfort a heavy and troubled
-minde; it will make a weeping widowe laugh and forget sorrow for
-her deceas’d husband. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. It will set a Bashfull
-Suiter a wooing; It heates the chill blood of the Aged; It will cause
-a man to speake past his owne or any other man’s capacity, or understanding;
-It sets an Edge upon Logick and Rhetorick; It is a friend to
-the Muses; It inspires the poore Poet, that cannot compasse the price
-of <i>Canarie</i> or <i>Gascoign</i>; It mounts the Musician ’bove Eccla; It
-makes the Balladmaker Rime beyond Reason; It is a Repairer of a <span class="xxpn" id="p005">{5}</span>
-decaied Colour in the face; It puts Eloquence into the Oratour; It will
-make the Philosopher talke profoundly, the Scholler learnedly, and the
-Lawyer acute and feelingly. <i>Ale</i> at Whitsontide, or a <i>Whitson Church</i>
-Ale, is a repairer of decayed Countrey Churches; It is a great friend
-to Truth; so they that drinke of it (to the purpose) will reveale all
-they know, be it never so secret to be kept; It is an Embleme of
-Justice, for it allowes, and yeelds measure; It will put Courage into a
-Coward, and make him swagger and fight; It is a Seale to many a good
-Bargaine. The Physittian will commend it; the Lawyer will defend
-it; It neither hurts or kils any but those that abuse it unmeasurably
-and beyond bearing; It doth good to as many as take it rightly; It is
-as good as a Paire of Spectacles to cleare the Eyesight of an old Parish
-Clarke; and in Conclusion, it is such a nourisher of Mankinde, that if
-my Mouth were as bigge as Bishopsgate, my Pen as long as a Maypole,
-and my Inke a flowing spring, or a standing fishpond, yet I could not
-with Mouth, Pen or Inke, speake or write the true worth and worthiness
-of <i>Ale</i>.” Bravo, John Taylor! He would be a bold man who could
-lift up his voice against our honest English nappy, after reading your
-vigorous lines.</p>
-
-<p>It is not uninteresting to compare this sixteenth century work with
-a passage taken from <i>By Lake and River</i>, the author of which rarely
-loses an opportunity of eulogising beer. Anglers and many more will
-cordially agree with Mr. Francis Francis in his remarks. “Ah! my
-beloved brother of the rod,” he writes, “do you know the taste of beer—of
-bitter beer—cooled in the flowing river? Not you; I warrant, like
-the ‘Marchioness,’ hitherto you have only had ‘a sip’ occasionally—and,
-as Mr. Swiveller judiciously remarks, ‘it can’t be tasted in a sip.’
-Take your bottle of beer, sink it deep, deep in the shady water, where
-the cooling springs and fishes are. Then, the day being very hot and
-bright, and the sun blazing on your devoted head, consider it a matter
-of duty to have to fish that long, wide stream (call it the Blackstone
-stream, if you will); and so, having endued yourself with high wading
-breeks, walk up to your middle, and begin hammering away with your
-twenty-foot flail. Fish are rising, but not at you. No, they merely
-come up to see how the weather looks, and what o’clock it is. So fish
-away; there is not above a couple of hundred yards of it, and you don’t
-want to throw more than about two or three-and-thirty yards at every
-cast. It is a mere trifle. An hour or so of good hard hammering will
-bring you to the end of it, and then—let me ask you <i>avec impressement</i>—how
-about that beer? Is it cool? Is it refreshing? Does it <span class="xxpn" id="p006">{6}</span>
-gurgle, gurgle, and ‘go down glug,’ as they say in Devonshire? Is it
-heavenly? Is it Paradise and all the Peris to boot? Ah! if you have
-never tasted beer under these or similar circumstances, you have, believe
-me, never tasted it at all.”</p>
-
-<p>A word or two now as to the distinctions between the beverages
-known as ale and beer. Going back to the time of the Conquest, or
-earlier, we find that both words were applied to the same liquor, a
-fermented drink made usually from malt and water, without hops.
-The Danes called it ale, the Anglo-Saxons beer. Later on the word
-beer dropped almost out of use. Meanwhile, in Germany and the
-Netherlands, the use of hops in brewing had been discovered; and in
-the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Flemings having introduced
-their <i>bier</i> into England, the word “beer” came to have in this country
-a distinct meaning—viz., hopped ale. The difference was quaintly
-explained by Andrew Boorde in his <i>Dyetary</i>, written about the year
-1542. “Ale,” said Andrew, “is made of malte and water; and they
-which do put any other thynge to ale than is rehersed, except yest,
-barme, or godesgood, doth sofystical theyr ale. Ale for an Englysshe
-man is a naturall drinke. Ale must have these propertyes: it must be
-fresshe and cleare, it muste not be ropy nor smoky, nor it must have no
-weft nor tayle. Ale shuld not be dronke vnder v. dayes olde. Newe
-ale is vnholsome for all men. And sowre ale, and deade ale the which
-doth stande a tylt, is good for no man. Barly malte maketh better ale
-then oten malte or any other corne doth: it doth ingendre grose
-humoures; but yette it maketh a man stronge.”</p>
-
-<h3>OF BERE.</h3>
-
-<p>“Bere is made of malte, of hoppes, and water; it is the naturall
-drynke for a Dutche man, and nowe of late dayes it is moche vsed in
-Englande to the detryment of many Englysshe people; specyally it
-kylleth them the which be troubled with the colycke, and the stone,
-and the strangulion; for the drynke is a colde drynke; yet it doth
-make a man fat, and doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the
-Dutche men’s faces and belyes. If the bere be well serued, and be fyned,
-and not new, it doth qualyfy heat of the liquer.”</p>
-
-<p>The distinction between ale and beer as described by Boorde lasted
-for a hundred years or more. As hops came into general use, though
-malt liquors generally were now beer, the word ale was still retained,
-and was used whether the liquor it was intended to designate was <span class="xxpn" id="p007">{7}</span>
-hopped or not. At the present day beer is the generic word, which
-includes all malt liquors; while the word ale includes all but the black
-or brown beers—porter and stout. The meanings of the words are,
-however, subject to local variations. This subject is further treated of
-in Chapter VII.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The union of hops and malt is amusingly described in one of the
-Brasenose College ale<span class="nowrap">poems:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A Grand Cross of “Malta,” one night at a ball,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Fell in love with and married “Hoppetta the Tall.”</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hoppetta, the bitterest, best of her sex,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By whom he had issue—the first, “Double X.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Three others were born by this marriage—“a girl,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">Transparent as <i>Amber</i> and precious as <i>Pearl</i>.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then a son, twice as strong as a Porter or Scout,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And another as “Spruce” as his brother was “Stout.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00"><i>Double</i> X, like his Sister, is brilliant and clear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like his Mother, tho’ bitter, by no means severe:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like his Father, <i>not small</i>, and resembling each brother,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Joins the spirit of one to the strength of the other.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>In John Taylor’s time there seems to have existed among ale
-drinkers a wholesome prejudice against wine in general, and more
-especially sack. The water poet writes very bitterly on the
-<span class="nowrap">subject:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thus Bacchus is ador’d and deified,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And we <i>Hispanialized</i> and <i>Frenchifide</i>;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whilst <i>Noble Native Ale</i> and <i>Beere’s</i> hard fate</span>
-<span class="spp00">Are like old Almanacks, quite out of date.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thus men consume their credits and their wealths,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And swallow Sicknesses in drinking healths,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Untill the Fury of the spritefull Grape</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mountes to the braine, and makes a man an Ape.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">Another poet wrote in much the same
-<span class="nowrap">strain:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thy wanton grapes we do detest:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here’s richer juice from Barley press’d.</span>
-<span class="sppctr"><img
- class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00" id="p008">Oh let them come and taste this beer</span>
-<span class="spp00">And water henceforth they’ll forswear.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Our ancestors seem, indeed, almost to have revered good malt
-liquor. Richard Atkinson gave the following excellent advice to
-Leonard Lord Dacre in the year 1570: “See that ye keep a noble
-house for beef and beer, that thereof may be praise given to God and
-to your honour.”</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<p>The same subject—comparison of sack with ale to the disadvantage
-of the former—is still better treated in an old ale song by Beaumont; it
-is such a good one of its kind that we give it in
-<span class="nowrap">full:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">ANSWER OF ALE TO THE CHALLENGE OF SACK.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come all you brave wights,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That are dubbed ale-knights,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Now set out yourselves in sight;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And let them that crack</span>
-<span class="spp00">In the presence of Sack</span>
-<span class="spp04">Know Malt is of mickle might.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Though Sack they define</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is holy divine,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Yet it is but naturall liquor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale hath for its part</span>
-<span class="spp00">An addition of art</span>
-<span class="spp04">To make it drinke thinner or thicker.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sack; fiery fume,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Doth waste and consume</span>
-<span class="spp04">Men’s humidum radicale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It scaldeth their livers,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It breeds burning feavers,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Proves vinum venenum reale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But history gathers,</span>
-<span class="spp00">From aged forefathers,</span>
-<span class="spp04">That Ale’s the true liquor of life,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Men lived long in health,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And preserved their wealth,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Whilst Barley broth only was rife. <span class="xxpn" id="p009">{9}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sack, quickly ascends,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And suddenly ends,</span>
-<span class="spp04">What company came for at first,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And that which yet worse is,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It empties men’s purses</span>
-<span class="spp04">Before it half quenches their thirst.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ale, is not so costly</span>
-<span class="spp00">Although that the most lye</span>
-<span class="spp04">Too long by the oyle of Barley;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet may they part late,</span>
-<span class="spp00">At a reasonable rate,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Though they came in the morning early.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sack, makes men from words</span>
-<span class="spp00">Fall to drawing of swords,</span>
-<span class="spp04">And quarrelling endeth their quaffing;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whilst dagger ale Barrels</span>
-<span class="spp00">Beare off many quarrels</span>
-<span class="spp04">And often turn chiding to laughing.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sack’s drink for our masters,</span>
-<span class="spp00">All may be Ale-tasters,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Good things the more common the better,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sack’s but single broth,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale’s meat, drinke, and cloathe,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Say they that know never a letter.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But not to entangle</span>
-<span class="spp00">Old friends till they wrangle</span>
-<span class="spp04">And quarrell for other men’s pleasure;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let Ale keep his place,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And let Sack have his grace,</span>
-<span class="spp04">So that neither exceed the due measure.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<p>“Wine is but single broth, ale is meat, drink and cloth,” was a
-proverbial saying in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and occurs
-in many writings, both prose and poetical. John Taylor, for instance,
-writes that ale is the “warmest lining of a naked man’s coat.” “Barley
-broth” and “oyle of barley” were very common expressions for ale.
-“Dagger ale” was very strong malt liquor. The word “ale-tasters”
-will be fully explained later on. <span class="xxpn" id="p010">{10}</span></p>
-
-<p>The nearest approach in modern times to a denunciation of wine by
-an ale-favouring poet occurs in a few lines—by whom written we know
-not—cleverly satirising the introduction of cheap French wines into
-this country. Cheap clarets command, thanks to an eminent statesman,
-a considerable share of popular favour. If unadulterated, they are no
-doubt wholesome enough, and suitable for some specially constituted
-persons. Let those who like them drink them, by all means.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="padtopb">MALT LIQUOR, OR CHEAP FRENCH WINES.</div>
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">No ale or beer, says Gladstone, we should drink,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Because they stupefy and dull our brains.</span>
-<span class="spp00">But sour French wine, as other people think,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Our English stomachs often sorely pains.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The question then is which we most should dread,</span>
-<span class="spp00">An <i>aching belly</i> or an <i>aching head</i>?</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>Among famous ale songs of the past, <i>Jolly Good Ale and Old</i>, which
-has been wrongly attributed to Bishop Still, stands pre-eminent. Of
-the eight double stanzas composing the song, four were incorporated in
-“a ryght pithy, plesaunt, and merie comedie, intytuled, <i>Gammer
-Gurton’s Nedle</i>, played on stage not longe ago, in Christe’s Colledge, in
-Cambridge. Made by Mr. S——, Master of Art” (1575). According
-to Dyer, who possessed a MS., giving the song in its complete form, “it
-is certainly of an earlier date,” and could not have been by Mr. Still
-(afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells), the Master of Trinity College,
-who was probably the writer of the play. The “merrie comedie” well
-illustrates the difference of tone and thought which divides those days
-from the present, and it is a little difficult to understand how it could
-have been produced by the pen of a High Church dignitary. The prologue
-of the play is very quaint, it runs
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="padtopb">PROLOGUE.</div>
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">As Gammer Gurton, with manye a wyde styche,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sat pesynge and patching of Hodge her man’s briche,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By chance or misfortune, as shee her geare tost,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In Hodge lether bryches her needle shee lost.</span>
-<span class="spp00">When Diccon the bedlam had hard by report,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That good Gammer Gurton was robde in thys sorte,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He quyetlye perswaded with her in that stound,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Dame Chat, her deare gossyp, this needle had found.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet knew shee no more of this matter, alas, <span class="xxpn" id="p011">{11}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Then knoweth Tom our clarke what the Priest saith at masse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hereof there ensued so fearfull a fraye,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mas. Doctor was sent for, these gossyps to staye;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Because he was curate, and esteemed full wyse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who found that he sought not, by Diccon’s device.</span>
-<span class="spp00">When all things were tumbled and cleane out of fashion,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whether it were by fortune, or some other constellation,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Suddenlye the neele Hodge found by the prychynge,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And drew out of his buttocke, where he found it stickynge,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Theyr hartes then at rest with perfect securytie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With a pot of Good ale they stroake up theyr plauditie.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>The song, <i>Jolly Good Ale and Old</i>, four stanzas of which occur in
-the second act, is a good record of the spirit of those hard-drinking
-days, now passed away, in which a man who could not, or did
-not, consume vast quantities of liquor was looked upon as a milksop.
-It is given as follows in the
-<span class="nowrap">Comedy:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Back and syde go bare, go bare,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Booth foote and hande go colde;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But belly, God send thee good ale ynoughe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Whether it bee newe or olde.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I can not eate but lytle meate,</span>
-<span class="spp01">My stomache is not goode,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But, sure, I thinke, that I can drynk</span>
-<span class="spp01">With him that wears a hood.<a class="afnanc"
- href="#fn2" id="fnanc2">2</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">Thoughe I go bare, take ye no care,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I am nothynge a colde;</span>
-<span class="spp00">I stuffe my skyn so full within</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of jolly good ale, and olde.</span>
-<p class="pright">Back and syde go bare, go bare, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00"><a class="afnanc" href="#fn3" id="fnanc3">3</a>I
- love no rost, but a nut-brown toste,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And a crab layde in the fyre;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A lytle bread shall do me stead,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Much bread I not desyre.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p012">{12}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">No froste nor snow, no winde, I trow,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Can hurte mee if I wolde,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of joly good ale and olde.</span>
-<p class="pright">Back and syde go bare, go bare, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And Tyb, my wife, that as her lyfe</span>
-<span class="spp01">Loveth well good ale to seeke,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Full ofte drinkes shee, tyll ye may see,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The teares run down her cheekes;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then doth she trowle to mee the bowle<a class="afnanc" href="#fn4" id="fnanc4">4</a></span>
-<span class="spp01">Even as a <i>mault worme</i> shuld</span>
-<span class="spp00">And sayth, sweet hart, I tooke my part</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of this joly good ale, and olde.</span>
-<p class="pright">Back and syde go bare, go bare, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now let them drynke, tyll they nod and winke,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Even as good fellowes shoulde doe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They shall not misse to have the blisse</span>
-<span class="spp01">Good ale doth bringe men to:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And all poor soules, that have scoured boules,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Or have them lustely trolde,</span>
-<span class="spp00">God save the lyves of them and their wyves,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Whether they be yonge or olde.</span>
-<p class="pright">Back and syde go bare, go bare, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc2" id="fn2">2</a>
-Alluding to the drunkenness of the clergy.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc3" id="fn3">3</a>
-<i>Cf:</i></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>And
- sometimes lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In very likeness of a roasted crab.”</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>,
- Act ii. Scene 1.</span></div>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc4" id="fn4">4</a>
-The word “trowle” was used of passing the vessel about, as
-appears by the beginning of an old catch:</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00"><i>Trole</i>, <i>trole</i> the <i>bowl</i> to me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And I will <i>trole</i> the same again to thee.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dftnt-->
-
-<p>Charles Dibdin the younger has, in a couple of verses, told a very
-amusing little story of an old fellow who, in addition to finding that
-ale was meat, drink and cloth, discovered that it included friends as
-well—or, at any rate, when he was without ale he was without friends,
-which comes to much the same thing.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="padtopb">THE BARREL OF HUMMING ALE.</div>
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Old Owen lived on the brow of an hill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And he had more patience than pelf;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A small plot of ground was his labour to till, <span class="xxpn" id="p013">{13}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">And he toiled through the day by himself.</span>
-<span class="spp00">But at night crowds of visitors called at his cot,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For he told a right marvellous tale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet a stronger attraction by chance he had got,</span>
-<span class="spp03">A barrel of old humming ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Old Owen by all was an oracle thought,</span>
-<span class="spp00">While they drank not a joke failed to hit;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Owen at last by experience was taught,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That wisdom is better than wit.</span>
-<span class="spp00">One night his cot could scarce hold the gay rout,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The next not a soul heard his tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The moral is simply they’d fairly drank out</span>
-<span class="spp03">His barrel of old humming ale.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>For the sake of contrast with the foregoing songs, if for nothing else,
-the following poem (save the mark!) by George Arnold, a Boston
-rhymster, is worthy of perusal. The “gurgle-gurgle” of the athletic
-salmon-fisher, described by Mr. Francis, is replaced by the “idle sipping”
-(fancy sipping beer!) of the beer-garden frequenter.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="padtopb">BEER.</div>
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp04">Here</span>
-<span class="spp04">With my beer</span>
-<span class="spp00">I sit,</span>
-<span class="spp00">While golden moments flit:</span>
-<span class="spp04">Alas!</span>
-<span class="spp04">They pass</span>
-<span class="spp00">Unheeded by:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, as they fly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Being dry,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Sit, idly sipping here</span>
-<span class="spp04">My beer.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>The new generation of American poets do not mean, it would
-appear, to be confined in the old metrical grooves. Very different in
-style are the verses written on ale by Thomas Wharton, in 1748. <i>A
-Panegyric on Oxford Ale</i> is the title of the poem, which is prefaced by
-the lines from
-<span class="nowrap">Horace:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp08">Mea nec Falernæ</span>
-<span class="spp00">Temperant vites, neque Formiani</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pocula colles.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p014">{14}</span></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The poem opens
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Balm of my cares, sweet solace of my toils,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hail, Juice benignant! O’er the costly cups</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of riot-stirring wine, unwholesome draught,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let Pride’s loose sons prolong the wasteful night;</span>
-<span class="spp00">My sober evening let the tankard bless,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With toast embrown’d, and fragrant nutmeg fraught,</span>
-<span class="spp00">While the rich draught with oft repeated whiffs</span>
-<span class="spp00">Tobacco mild improves. Divine repast!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where no crude surfeit, or intemperate joys</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of lawless Bacchus reigns; but o’er my soul</span>
-<span class="spp00">A calm Lethean creeps; in drowsy trance</span>
-<span class="spp00">Each thought subsides, and sweet oblivion wraps</span>
-<span class="spp00">My peaceful brain, as if the leaden rod</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of magic Morpheus o’er mine eyes had shed</span>
-<span class="spp00">Its opiate influence. What though sore ills</span>
-<span class="spp00">Oppress, dire want of chill-dispelling coals,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or cheerful candle (save the makeweight’s gleam</span>
-<span class="spp00">Haply remaining), heart-rejoicing Ale</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cheers the sad scene, and every want supplies.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>There exist, sad to relate, persons who, with the notion of promoting
-temperance, would rob us of our beer. Many of these
-individuals may act with good motives, but they are weak, misguided
-bodies who, if they but devoted their energies to promoting ale-drinking
-as opposed to spirit-drinking, would be doing useful service to
-the State, for malt liquors are the true temperance drinks of the working
-classes. The Bill (for the encouragement of private tippling) so
-long sought to be introduced by the teetotal party, was cleverly hit off
-in <i>Songs of the Session</i>, published in <i>The World</i> some years
-<span class="nowrap">back:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr"><img
- class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span></div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">If with truth they assure us that liquors allure us,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I don’t think ’twill cure us the taverns to close;</span>
-<span class="spp00">When in putting drink down, sirs, you’ve shut up the Crown, sirs,</span>
-<span class="spp01">You’ll find Smith and Brown, sirs, drunk under the rose.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">“Men are slaves to this custom,” you cry; “we can’t trust ’em!”</span>
-<span class="spp01">Very good; then why thrust ’em from scenes where they’re known</span>
-<span class="spp00">If the daylight can’t shame ’em, or neighbours reclaim ’em,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Do you think you can tame ’em in haunts of their own? <span class="xxpn" id="p015">{15}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And if in Stoke Pogis no publican lodges,</span>
-<span class="spp01">It don’t follow Hodge is cut off from good cheer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">In the very next parish the tap may be fairish,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And the vestry less bearish and stern about beer.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
- <img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Men in time will refrain when that goes with their grain;</span>
-<span class="spp01">Till it does ’tis in vain that their wills you coerce;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For the man whom by force you turn out of his course,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Without fear or remorse will soon take to a worse.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Of course, in asserting malt liquors to be the temperance drink,
-or drink of the temperate, it must be understood that we refer to the
-ordinary ales and beers of to-day, in which the amount of alcohol is
-small, and which are very different from the potent liquor drank by the
-topers of the past, who were rightly designated malt worms.</p>
-
-<p>It has been said that even pigs drank strong ale in those days, but
-the only evidence of the truth of that statement is the tradition that
-Herrick, a most charming but little read poet, succeeded in teaching a
-favourite pig to drink ale out of a jug. Old ale is now out of fashion,
-its chief strongholds being the venerable centres of education. We all
-know the tale of the don who, about once a week, reminded the butler
-of a certain understanding between them, in these words: “Mind,
-when I say ‘beer’—<i>the old ale</i>.” Ancient writers are full of allusions
-to the potent character of the strong ales of their day. Nor are more
-modern authors wanting in that respect. Peter Pindar, who wrote
-during the reign of George III., when ale was still of a “mightie”
-character, thus
-<span class="nowrap">sings:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Toper, drink, and help the <span class="nowrap">house—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">Drink to every honest fellow;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Life was never worth a louse</span>
-<span class="spp01">To the man who ne’er was mellow.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">How it sparkles! here it goes!</span>
-<span class="spp01">Ale can make a blockhead shine;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Toper, torchlike may thy nose</span>
-<span class="spp01">Light thy face up, just like mine.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">See old Sol, I like his notion,</span>
-<span class="spp01">With his whiskers all so red;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sipping, drinking from the ocean,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Boozing till he goes to bed.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft" id="p016">
-<span class="spp00">Yet poor beverage to regale!</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>Simple stuff</i> to help his <span class="nowrap">race—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Could he turn the sea to Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">How ’twould make him mend his pace!</span>
-</div></div><!--dpoemlft-->
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p016.png" width="583" height="688" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">BEER STREET.</div></div>
-
-<p>Hogarth, who was perhaps the most accurate and certainly the
-most powerful delineator of mankind’s virtues and vices that the world
-has ever seen, has left us in his pictures of “Beer Street” and “Gin
-Lane” striking illustrations of the advantages attending the use of our
-national beverage, and the misery and want brought about by dram
-drinking. In <i>Beer Street</i> everybody thrives, and everything has an
-air of prosperity. There is one exception—the pawnbroker, gainer by
-the poverty of others. He, poor man, with barricaded doors and <span class="xxpn" id="p017">{17}</span>
-propped-up walls, awaits in terror the arrival of the Sheriff’s officer,
-fearing only that his house may collapse meanwhile. Through a hole
-in the door which he is afraid to open, a potboy hands him a mug of
-ale, at once the cause and consolation of his woes. The bracket which
-supports the pawnbroker’s sign is awry, and threatens every minute to
-fall. Apart from this unfortunate all else flourishes. The burly butcher,
-seated outside the inn with no fear of the Sheriff in his heart, quaffs his
-pewter mug of foaming ale, and casts now and again an eye on the
-artist who is repainting the signboard. The sturdy smith, the drayman,
-the porter and the fishwife—all are well clad and prosperous.
-Houses are being built, others are being repaired, and health and
-wealth are visible on every side.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Beer! happy produce of our isle,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Can sinewy strength impart,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And wearied with fatigue and toil,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Can cheer each manly heart.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Labour and art upheld by thee,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Successfully advance,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We quaff thy balmy juice with glee;</span>
-<span class="spp01">And water leave to France.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Genius of Health! thy grateful taste</span>
-<span class="spp01">Rivals the cup of Jove,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And warms each English generous breast</span>
-<span class="spp01">With liberty and love.</span>
-</div></div><!--dpoemlft-->
-
-<p>Look now at the noisome slum where the demon Gin reigns tri­um­phant.
-Squalor, poverty, hun­ger, wretch­ed­ness and sin are depicted
-on all sides. <i>Here</i> flourish the pawn­broker and the keeper of the
-gin-palace—but the picture is too speaking a one to need comment.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="padtopb">GIN.</div>
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Gin! cursed fiend with fury fraught,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Makes human race a prey,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It enters by a deadly draught,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And steals our life away.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Virtue and truth, driven to despair,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Its rage compels to fly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But cherishes with hellish care,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Theft, murder, perjury.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft" id="p018">
-<span class="spp00">Damn’d cup that on the vitals preys,</span>
-<span class="spp01">That liquid fire contains,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which madness to the heart conveys,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And rolls it through the veins.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p018.png" width="545" height="695" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">GIN LANE.</div></div>
-
-<p>A medical writer of some thirty years ago
-<span class="nowrap">says:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“There are well-meaning persons who wish now-a-days to rob, not
-only the poor, but the rich man of his beer. I am content to remember
-that Mary, Queen of Scots, was solaced in her dreary captivity at
-Fotheringay by the brown beer of Burton-on-Trent; that holy Hugh <span class="xxpn" id="p019">{19}</span>
-Latimer drank a goblet of spiced ale with his supper the night before he
-was burned alive; that Sir Walter Raleigh took a cool tankard with his
-pipe, the last pipe of tobacco, on the very morning of his execution;
-and that one of the prettiest ladies with whom I have the honour to be
-acquainted, when escorting her on an opera Saturday to the Crystal
-Palace I falteringly suggested chocolate, lemonade and vanilla ices for
-her refreshment, sternly replied, ‘Nonsense, sir! Get me a pint of
-stout immediately.’ If the ladies only knew how much better they
-would be for their beer, there would be fewer cases of consumption for
-quacks to demonstrate the curability of.”</p>
-
-<p>The question of beer drinking as opposed to total abstinence, is one
-intimately connected with the welfare of the agricultural labourer. The
-lives of the majority of these persons are, it is to be feared, somewhat
-dull and cheerless. From early morn to dewy eve—work; the only
-prospect in old age—the workhouse. Weary in mind and body, the
-labourer returns to his cottage at nightfall. At supper he takes his
-glass of mild ale. It nourishes him, and the alcohol it contains, of so
-small a quantity as to be absolutely harmless, invigorates him and
-causes the too often miserable surroundings to appear bright and cheerful.
-Contentedly he smokes his pipe, chats sociably with his wife, and
-forgets for awhile the many long days of hard work in store for him.
-Soon the soporific influence of the hop begins to take effect, and the
-toiler retires to rest, to sleep soundly, forgetful of the cares of life.</p>
-
-<p>Then there is Saturday night, when the villagers meet at the alehouse,
-not perhaps so much to drink as to converse, and, with church-wardens
-in mouth and tankard at elbow, to settle the affairs of the State.
-The newspaper, a week old, is produced, and one, probably the village
-tailor or maybe the barber, reads passages from it. “A party of
-fuddled rustics in a beer-shop,” exclaims the teetotaler, with a sneer.
-Not so; one or two may have had their pewter tankards filled more
-often than is prudent, but the majority will be moderate, drinking no
-more than is good for them. Drunkenness and crime are not the
-outcome of the village alehouse; for them, go to the gin-palaces of the
-towns. Nothing, we feel certain, more tends to keep our agricultural
-labourers from intemperance than the easy means of obtaining cheap
-but pure beer. What we may term temperance legislation (unless it be
-of a criminal character, punishing excess by fines) will always defeat its
-own object. Shut up the alehouses, Sundays or week-days, and the
-poorer classes at once take to dram drinking. This subject will be
-found fully considered in the last chapter.
-<span class="xxpn" id="p020">{20}</span></p>
-
-<p>One does not hear much now-a-days of that gallant Knight, Sir John
-Barleycorn. The song writers of the past were, however, loud in his
-praises, and Sir John used to be as favourite a myth with the people of
-England as was our patron saint, St. George. Elton’s play of <i>Paul the
-Poacher</i> commences with the following charming
-<span class="nowrap">verses:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth dwthem38">
-<div class="padtopb">ODE TO SIR JOHN BARLEYCORN.</div>
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Though the Hawthorn the pride of our hedges may be,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And the rose our gardens adorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet the flower that’s sweetest and fairest to me,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Is the bearded Barleycorn.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Then hey for the Barleycorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Bonny Barleycorn,</span>
-<span class="spp01">No grain or flower</span>
-<span class="spp01">Has half the power</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of the Bearded Barleycorn.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Tho’ the purple juice of the grape ne’er find</span>
-<span class="spp01">Its way to the cup of horn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis little I care—for the draught to my mind,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Is the blood of the Barleycorn.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Then hey, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Tho’ the Justice, the Parson and eke the Squire,</span>
-<span class="spp01">May flout us and hold us in scorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our staunch boon friend, the best Knight in the shire,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Is stout Sir John Barleycorn.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Then hey for John Barleycorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The merry John Barleycorn,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Search round and about,</span>
-<span class="spp01">What Knight’s so stout</span>
-<span class="spp00">As bold Sir John Barleycorn?</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>A whimsical old pamphlet, the writer of which must have possessed
-keen powers of observation, is “<i>The Arraigning and Indicting
-of Sir John Barleycorn, Knight</i>, printed for Timothy Tosspot.” Sir
-John is described as of noble blood, well-beloved in England, a great
-support to the Crown, and a maintainer of both rich and poor. The
-trial takes place at the sign of the “Three Loggerheads,” before Oliver <span class="xxpn" id="p021">{21}</span>
-and Old Nick his holy father. Sir John, of course, pleads not guilty to
-the charges made against him, which are, in effect, that he has compassed
-the death of several of his Majesty’s loving subjects, and brought
-others to ruin. Vulcan the blacksmith, Will the weaver, and Stitch
-the tailor, are called by the prosecution, and depose that after being
-first friendly with Sir John, they quarrel with him, and in the end get
-knocked down, bruised, their bones broken, and their pockets picked.
-Mr. Wheatley, the baker, complains that, whereas he was the most
-esteemed by Lords, Knights and Squires, he is now supplanted by the
-prisoner. Sir John, being called on for his defence, asks that his brother
-Malt may be summoned, and indicates that the fault, if any, lies mostly
-at Malt’s door. Malt is thereupon summoned, and thus addresses the
-<span class="nowrap">Court:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“My Lords, I thank you for the liberty you now indulge me with,
-and think it a great happiness, since I am so strongly accused, that I
-have such learned judges to determine these complaints. As for my
-part, I will put the matter to the Bench—First, I pray you consider
-with yourselves, all tradesmen would live; and although Master Malt
-does make sometimes a cup of good liquor, and many men come to
-taste it, yet the fault is neither in me nor my brother John, but in such
-as those who make this complaint against us, as I shall make it appear
-to you all.</p>
-
-<p>“In the first place, which of you all can say but Master Malt can
-make a cup of good liquor, with the help of a good brewer; and when
-it is made, it will be sold. I pray you which of you all can live without
-it? But when such as these, who complain of us, find it to be good,
-then they have such a greedy mind, that they think they never have
-enough, and this overcharge brings on the inconveniences complained
-of, makes them quarrelsome one with another, and abusive to their
-very friends, so that we are forced to lay them down to sleep. From
-hence it appears it is from their own greedy desires all these troubles
-arise, and not from wicked designs of our own.”</p>
-
-<p><i>Court.</i>—“Truly we cannot see that you are in the fault. Sir John
-Barleycorn, we will show you as much favour that, if you can bring any
-person of reputation to speak to your character, the court is disposed to
-acquit you. Bring in your evidence, and let us hear what they can say
-in your behalf.”</p>
-
-<p><i>Thomas the Ploughman.</i>—“May I be allowed to speak my thoughts
-freely, since I shall offer nothing but the truth?”</p>
-
-<p><i>Court.</i>—“Yes, thou mayest be bold to speak the truth, and no <span class="xxpn" id="p022">{22}</span>
-more, for that is the cause we sit here for; therefore speak boldly,
-that we may understand thee.”</p>
-
-<p><i>Ploughman.</i>—“Gentlemen, Sir John is of an ancient house, and is
-come of a noble race; there is neither lord, knight, nor squire, but they
-love his company and he theirs: as long as they don’t abuse him he
-will abuse no man, but doth a great deal of good. In the first place,
-few ploughmen can live without him; for if it were not for him we
-should not pay our landlords their rent; and then what could such
-men as you do for money and clothes? Nay, your gay ladies would
-care but little for you if you had not your rents coming in to maintain
-them; and we could never pay but that Sir John Barleycorn feeds us
-with money; and you would not seek to take away his life? For
-shame! let your malice cease and pardon his life, or else we are all
-undone.”</p>
-
-<p><i>Bunch the Brewer.</i>—“Gentlemen, I beseech you, hear me. My
-name is Bunch, a brewer; and I believe few of you can live without a
-cup of good liquor, nor more than I can without the help of Sir John
-Barleycorn. As for my own part, I maintain a great charge and keep
-a great many men at work; I pay taxes forty pounds a-year to his
-Majesty, God bless him, and all this is maintained by the help of Sir
-John; then how can any man for shame seek to take away his life?”</p>
-
-<p><i>Mistress Hostess.</i>—“To give evidence on behalf of Sir John Barleycorn
-gives me pleasure, since I have an opportunity of doing justice to
-so honourable a person. Through him the administration receives large
-supplies; he likewise greatly supports the labourer, and enlivens his
-conversation. What pleasure could there be at a sheep-clipping without
-his company, or what joy at a feast without his assistance? I know him
-to be an honest man, and he never abused any man if they abused not
-him. If you put him to death all England is undone, for there is
-not another in the land can do as he can do, and hath done; for he can
-make a cripple go, the coward fight, and a soldier feel neither hunger nor
-cold. I beseech you, gentlemen, let him live, or else we are all undone;
-the nation likewise will be distressed, the labourer impoverished, and the
-husbandman ruined.”</p>
-
-<p><i>Court.</i>—“Gentlemen of the jury, you have now heard what has
-been offered against Sir John Barleycorn, and the evidence that has been
-produced in his defence. It you are of opinion that he is guilty of those
-wicked crimes laid to his charge, and has with malice prepense conspired
-and brought about the death of several of his Majesty’s loving subjects,
-you are then to find him guilty; but, if, on the contrary, you are of <span class="xxpn" id="p023">{23}</span>
-opinion that he had no real intention of wickedness, and was not the
-immediate, but only the accidental cause of these evils laid to his charge,
-then, according to the statute law of this kingdom you ought to acquit
-him.”</p>
-
-<p>Verdict—Not Guilty.</p>
-
-<p>A somewhat lengthy extract has been given from the report of the
-trial, because the facetious little narrative contains a moral as applicable
-at the present time as on the day on which the worthy Knight was
-acquitted.</p>
-
-<p>And now, dear reader, your introduction to Sir John Barleycorn being
-complete, it is for you, should the inclination be present, to become
-acquainted with all that pertains to him, from the barley-wine of the
-Egyptians and other nations of the far past to those excellent beverages
-in which the people of this country do now delight. On the way you
-will meet with strange things and strange people, queer customs and
-quaint sayings and songs; you will watch malting and brewing as it
-was carried on five hundred years ago; you will stand by while the
-Flemings, who have just come to London, brew beer with the assistance
-of a “wicked weed called hoppes;” meanwhile Parliament will re-enact
-strange sumptuary laws and order that you brew only two kinds of ale
-or beer; you will be at times in the bad company of dissolute alewives
-who will whisper sad scandals in your ear; fleeing from them, you will
-find yourself in a solemn place where lines on stone tell how, when he
-lived, he brewed good ale; then being perhaps sad at heart, you shall
-pass into the village ale-house and join the ploughboys in their merry
-chorus, or sit awhile with the roystering blades in some London tavern;
-later you shall see the sign and learn its signification and history, and
-delay a moment to read the verses over the door and admire the quaint
-architecture and curious carving. In the ale-house you will have tasted
-and drank wisely, let it be hoped, of London or Dublin black beer, of
-Plymouth white ale, of old Nappy and Yorkshire Stingo, and as many
-more as your head can stand.</p>
-
-<p>Then you shall take part in ancient ceremonies—wassailing, Church
-ales, bride ales, and the like; the merry sheep-shearers will sing for
-you, and for you the villagers shall dance round the ale-stake; then
-the old ballad-writers will lay before you their ballads praising ale, and
-headed with wood-cuts, humorous, but sometimes fearful to look upon.
-Having rested awhile in perusing these relics of the past, the doors of
-John Barleycorn’s greatest palaces will fly open before you, and while
-exploring these wonders of the present, you will chat pleasantly with <span class="xxpn" id="p024">{24}</span>
-their founders, Dr. Johnson joining in with ponderous remarks on the
-brewery of his friend Thrale. The history of porter shall then be
-unfolded to you, after which you shall be introduced to the college
-butler, who is in the very act of compounding a noble wassail-bowl, and
-who, good man, whispers in your willing ear instructions for the
-making of a score or more of ale-cups; then the old Saxon leeches and
-their successors shall be summoned, and, in a language strange to
-modern ears, they shall relate how ale and certain herbs will cure all
-diseases; then shall you see a curious but not a wondrous sight—water
-passing through holes in teetotal arguments; and lastly the great
-French savant shall take you into his laboratory, and shall make you
-see in a grain of yeast a world of wonders. Last of all we beg you to
-treasure up in your memory these old
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">He that buys land buys many stones,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He that buys flesh buys many bones,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He that buys eggs buys many shells,</span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>But he that buys good ale
- buys nothing else</i>.</span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p024.png" width="144" height="58" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p025a.png" width="144" height="46" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p025">
- <span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> II.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<p>“What hath been and now is used by the English, as well
- since the Conquest, as in the days of the Britons, Saxons
- and Danes.”—<i>Drinke and Welcome.—Taylor.</i></p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">“Not
- of an age, but for all time.”—<i>Ben Jonson.</i></div>
-</div><!--depigraph-->
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF ALE AND BEER</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap"
-src="images/p025b.png" width="227" height="230" alt="W"
-/></span>E must go back several thousand years into the
-past to trace the origin of our modern ale and beer. The
-ancient Egyptians, as we learn from the <i>Book of the
-Dead</i>, a treatise at least 5,000 years old, understood the
-manufacture of an intoxicating liquor from grain. This
-liquor they called <i>hek</i>, and under the slightly modified
-form <i>hemki</i> the name has been used in Egypt for beer until
-comparatively modern times. An ancient Egyptian medical
-manual, of about the same date as the <i>Book of the Dead</i>,
-contains frequent mention of the use of Egyptian beer in
-medicine, and at a period about 1,000 years later, the
-papyri afford conclusive evidence of the existence even in
-that early age, of a burning liquor question in Egypt, for
-it is recorded that intoxication had become so common that
-many of the beer shops had to be suppressed.</p>
-
-<p>Herodotus, after stating that the Egyptians used “wine made from
-barley” because there were no vines in the country, mentions a tradition
-that Osiris, the Egyptian Bacchus, first taught the Egyptians how to
-brew, to compensate them for the natural deficiencies of their native
-land. Herodotus, however, was frequently imposed upon by the persons
-from whom he derived his narrative, and no trace of any such
-tradition is to be found elsewhere. Wine was undoubtedly made in
-Egypt two or three thousand years before his time. <span class="xxpn" id="p026">{26}</span></p>
-
-<p>It is maintained by some that the Hebrew word <i>sicera</i>, which occurs
-in the Bible and is in our version translated “strong drink,” was none
-other than the barley-wine mentioned in Herodotus, and that the
-Israelites brought from Egypt the knowledge of its use. Certain it is
-that they understood the manufacture of <i>sicera</i> shortly after the exodus,
-for we find in Leviticus that the priests are forbidden to drink wine or
-“strong drink” before they go into the tabernacle, and in the Book of
-Numbers the Nazarenes are required not only to abstain from wine
-and “strong drink,” but even from vinegar made from either; and in
-all the passages where the word occurs it is formally distinguished
-from wine. It may be mentioned in passing, that this word
-<i>sicera</i> has been regarded as being the equivalent of the word cider.
-The passage in Numbers is translated in Tyndale’s version, “They
-shall drink neither wyn ne sydyr,” and it is this rendering
-that has earned for Tyndale’s translation the name of the cider
-Bible.</p>
-
-<p>It seems highly probable that the word <i>sicera</i> signified any intoxicating
-liquor other than wine, whether made from corn, honey or
-fruit.</p>
-
-<p>In support of the theory that beer was known amongst the Jews, may
-be mentioned the Rabbinical tradition that the Jews were free from
-leprosy during the captivity in Babylon by reason of their drinking
-“<i>siceram veprium, id est, ex lupulis confectam</i>,” or <i>sicera</i> made
-with hops, which one would think could be no other than bitter
-beer.</p>
-
-<p>Speaking of this old Egyptian barley-wine, Aeschylus seems to
-imply that it was not held in very high esteem, for he says that only
-the women-kind would drink it.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn5" id="fnanc5">5</a>
-Evidently the phrase, “to be learned
-in all the learning of the Egyptians,” had no reference to a competent
-knowledge of brewing. Before leaving the land of the Pharaoh, it
-may be mentioned that in that country the labourers still drink a kind
-of beer extracted from unmalted barley. A traveller in Egypt some
-years ago recorded in one of the London daily papers that his crew on
-the Nile made an intoxicating liquor from the fermentation of bread in
-water; he says that it was called <i>boozer</i>, but whether by himself or crew
-is not clear. <span class="xxpn" id="p027">{27}</span></p>
-
-<p>A goodly number of instances may be found in various old Greek
-writers of the mention of barley-wine under the various terms of
-κρίθινον πεπωκότες οινον,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn6" id="fnanc6">6</a>
-ἐκ κριθῶν μεθυ, βρῦτον ἐκ τῶν κριθῶν, but
-it does not appear that beer was ever a popular beverage in Hellas.
-Further north, the Thracians, as Archilochus tells, brewed and drank
-a good deal of beer.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc5" id="fn5">5</a>
-Aesch. Supp. 953.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc6" id="fn6">6</a>
-Hipp. 395. 1, Athen. 1 &amp; 10, Aesch. Fr. 116, Archil. 28.</p></div>
-
-<p>Among the Greek writers, Xenophon gives the most interesting
-and complete account of beer in the year 401 <span class="smmaj">B.C.</span> In describing the
-retreat of the Ten Thousand, he tells how, on approaching a certain
-village in Armenia which had been allotted to him, he selected the most
-active of his troops, and making a sudden descent upon the place captured
-all the villagers and their headman. One man alone escaped—the
-bridegroom of the headman’s daughter, who had been married nine
-days, and was gone out to hunt hares. The snow was six feet deep at
-the time. Xenophon goes on to describe the dwellings of this singular
-people. Their houses were under ground, the entrance like that of a
-well, but wide below. There were entrances dug out for the cattle, but
-the men used to get down by a ladder. And in the houses were goats,
-sheep, oxen, fowls and their young ones, and all the animals were fed
-inside with fodder. And there was wheat, and barley, and pulse, and
-barley-wine (οἶνος κρίθινος) in bowls. And the malt, too, itself was
-in the bowl, and level with the brim. And reeds lay in it, some long,
-some short, with no joints, and when anyone was thirsty he had to take
-a reed in his hand and suck. The liquor was very strong, says Xenophon,
-unless one poured water into it, and the drink was pleasant to one
-accustomed to it. And whenever anyone in friendliness wished to drink
-to his comrade, he used to drag him to the bowl, where he must stoop
-down and drink, gulping it down like an ox. The inhabitants of the
-Khanns district of Armenia, through which Xenophon’s world-famed
-march was made, still pursue much the same life as they did more than
-two thousand years ago. They live in these curious subterranean dwellings
-with all their live stock about them, but, alas! modern travellers
-aver that they have lost the art of making barley-wine.</p>
-
-<p>Enough has been said as to the use of beer among Eastern nations
-to disprove the theory of the old author of the <i>Haven of Health</i>, who
-asserts, quoting “Master Eliote” as his authority, that ale was never
-used as a common drink in any other country than in “England,
-Scotland, Ireland, and Poile.” <span class="xxpn" id="p028">{28}</span></p>
-
-<p>Ale or beer was in common use in Germany in the time of Tacitus,
-and Pliny, who may have tasted beer while serving in the army in
-Germany, says, “All the nations who inhabit the west of Europe have a
-liquor with which they intoxicate themselves, made of corn and water
-(<i>fruge madida</i>). The manner of making this liquor is somewhat
-different in Gaul, Spain, and other countries, and it is called by various
-names; but its nature and properties are everywhere the same. The
-people of Spain in particular brew this liquor so well that it will keep
-good for a long time. So exquisite is the ingenuity of mankind in
-gratifying their vicious appetites, that they have thus invented a method
-of making water itself intoxicate.” Among the many various kinds of
-drink so made were <i>zythum</i>, <i>cœlia</i>, <i>ceria</i>, <i>Cereris vinum</i>, <i>curmi</i>, and
-<i>cerevisia</i>. All these names, except <i>zythum</i>, are probably merely local
-variations of one word, whose British representative may be found in
-the Welsh <i>cwrw</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Turning to the earliest records of the use of malt liquors in this
-country, we find that, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Britons made
-use of a very simple diet which consisted chiefly of milk and venison.
-Their usual drink was water; but upon festive occasions they drank a
-kind of fermented liquor, made of barley, honey, or apples, and were
-very quarrelsome in their cups. Dioscorides wrote in the first century
-that the Britons, instead of wine, use “curmi,” a liquor made from barley.
-Pytheas (300 <span class="smmaj">B.C.</span>) said a fermented grain liquor was made in Thule.</p>
-
-<p>The drinks in use in this island at the time of its conquest by the
-Romans seem to have been metheglin, cider, and ale. Metheglin, or
-mead, was probably the most ancient and universally used of all intoxicating
-drinks among European nations. Cider is in all probability
-the next in order of antiquity of the drinks in use amongst our Celtic
-predecessors. It was made from wild apples, but its use was probably
-not so wide-spread as that of either mead or ale.</p>
-
-<p>The two drinks, mead and cider, are appropriate to nations who
-have made but slight advances on the path of civilisation. Tribes of
-nomads, or of hunters, would find the wherewithal for their manufacture—the
-honey in the hollow tree, the crabs growing wild in the
-woods. The manufacture of ale, however, indicates another step
-forward; it implies the settlement in particular districts, and the
-knowledge and practice of agriculture. It is, therefore, not surprising to
-find that the Celtic inhabitants of the midland and northern parts of
-this country, at the time of the first Roman attack, knew no drink but
-mead and cider; while, in the southern districts, where contact with <span class="xxpn" id="p029">{29}</span>
-the outer world had brought about a somewhat more advanced civilisation
-and a more settled mode of life, agriculture was practised, and
-<i>cerevisia</i>, or ale, was added to the list of beverages.</p>
-
-<p>Given below is a metrical version of the origin of ale. It is put in
-this place between the account of the use of ale by the Britons and
-its use by the Saxons, because our anonymous poet does not seem to
-have quite made up his mind whether he is recording a British or a
-Saxon myth. The name of the king would seem to point to a British
-origin, whilst some of the gods on whom he calls are Teutonic.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="padtopb">THE ORIGIN OF BEER.</div>
-<div class="dpoemfarlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">In a jolly field of barley good King Cambrinus slept,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And dreaming of his thirsty realm the merry monarch wept,</span>
-<span class="spp00">“In all my land of Netherland there grows no mead or wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And water I could never coax adown this throat of mine.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">“Now list to me, ye heathen gods, and eke ye Christian too,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Both Zernebock and Jupiter, and Mary clad in blue;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And mighty Thor the Thunderer, and any else that be,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The one who aids me in my need his servant I will be.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And as this sinful heathen all in the barley lay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">There came in dreams an angel bright who soft these words did
- <span class="nowrap">say—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">“Arise, thou poor Cambrinus, for even all around,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In the barley where thou sleepest a nectar may be found.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">“In the barley where thou sleepest there hides a nectar clear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which men shall know in later times as <i>porter</i>, <i>ale</i> or <i>beer</i>.”</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then in terms the most explicit he “put the monarch through,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">And gave him ere the dream was out the recipe to brew.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Uprose good King Cambrinus and shook him in the sun.</span>
-<span class="spp00">“Away, ye wretched heathen gods—with you I’m quit and done!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ye’ve left me with my subjects in error and in thirst;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till in our dreadful dryness we scarce know which is worst.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It was the good Cambrinus unto his palace went,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And messengers through all the land unto his lords he sent,</span>
-<span class="spp00">“Leave Odin, under pain of death!”—his orders were severe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet touched with mildness—for he sent the recipe for beer. <span class="xxpn" id="p030">{30}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Oh, then a merry sound was heard of building through the land,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the churches and the breweries went up on every hand;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For the masons they were hard at work where’er a spot seemed pat,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And some had bricks within their hods, and some within their hats.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>In the sister Island are to be found very early references to ale.
-The <i>Senchus Mor</i>, which contains some of the oldest and most
-important of the ancient laws of Ireland, has the following passages
-in which mention of this drink
-<span class="nowrap">occurs:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“What is a human banquet? The banquet of each one’s feasting-house
-to his chief according to his due (<i>i.e.</i>, the chief’s), to which his
-(<i>i.e.</i>, the tenant’s) deserts entitle him; viz., a supper with ale, a feast
-without ale, a feast by day. The feast without ale is divided; it is
-distributed according to dignity; the feeding of the assembly of the
-forces of a territory, assembled for the purpose of demanding proof and
-law, and answering to illegality. Suppers with ale, feasts without ale,
-are the fellowship of the Feini.” It is difficult to understand the ideas
-contained in these old Erse laws and customs, but the main thing for
-the present purpose is the evidence they give that ale was known and
-commonly used in Ireland as early as the fifth century.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn7" id="fnanc7">7</a></p>
-
-<p>From the Brehon law tracts it may be gathered that the privileges
-of an Irish king included the right to have his ale supplied him with
-food;<a class="afnanc" href="#fn8" id="fnanc8">8</a>
-he was also to have a brave army and <i>an inebriating ale-house</i>.
-The Irish chief is always to have two casks in his house, one of ale,
-another of milk; he should also have three sacks—a sack of malt, a sack
-of salt, and a sack of charcoal.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc7" id="fn7">7</a>
-The <i>Senchus Mor</i> was composed in the time of Lœghaire, son of
-Niall, King of Erin, about <span class="smmaj">A.D.</span> 430, a few years after the arrival of
-St. Patrick in Ireland.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc8" id="fn8">8</a>
-Doubtless an allusion to the old <i>food rents</i> once common in Ireland.</p></div>
-
-<p>Wales was also to some extent an ale-producing country, and we
-find in Anglo-Saxon times Welsh ale frequently alluded to as a luxury.
-When <i>Offa</i> renders the lands at <i>Westbury</i> and <i>Stanbury</i> to the church
-of Worcester, he accepts at <i>Westbury</i> these <i>services</i>: 2 tunne full of clear
-Ale, and a cumbe (16 <i>quarts</i>) full of smaller Ale, and a cumbe of Welsh
-Ale, besides other services. There was a payment to the said church
-also out of the lands at <i>Breodune</i> of 3 cuppes full of Ale, 111 <i>dolea
-Brytannicæ cervissiæ</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, casks of British Ale),
-and 3 hogsheads of <span class="xxpn" id="p031">{31}</span>
-Welsh Ale, <i>quorum unum fit melle dulcoratum</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, of which one was
-to be sweetened with honey). Henry, in his <i>History of England</i>,
-in treating of the drinks used in England and Wales during
-five centuries before the Norman Conquest, remarks on the rarity
-of the use of ale in Wales at that time. “Mead,” he says, “was
-still one of their favourite liquors, and bore a high price; for a cask of
-mead, by the laws of Wales, was valued at 120 pence, equal in quantity
-of silver to thirty shillings of our present money, and in efficacy to
-fifteen pounds. The dimensions of a cask of mead must be nine palms
-in height, and so capacious as to serve the King <i>and one of his counsellors</i>
-for a bathing tub.” By another law its diameter is fixed at
-eighteen palms. The Welsh had also two kinds of ale, called <i>common
-ale</i> and <i>spiced ale</i>, and their value was thus ascertained by law—“If a
-farmer hath no mead (to pay part of his rent) he shall pay two
-casks of <i>spiced ale</i>, or four casks of <i>common ale</i> for one cask of mead.”
-By the same law, a cask of <i>spiced ale</i>, nine palms in height and eighteen
-palms in diameter, was valued at a sum equal in efficacy to
-seven pounds ten shillings of our present money; and a cask of
-<i>common ale</i>, of the same dimensions, at a sum equal to three pounds
-fifteen shillings. This is a sufficient proof that even <i>common ale</i>
-at this period was an article of luxury among the Welsh which
-could only be obtained by the great and opulent. Wine seems to have
-been quite unknown even to the Kings of Wales at this period, as it is
-not so much as once mentioned in their laws; though Giraldus Cambrensis,
-who flourished about a century after the Conquest, acquaints
-us that there was a vineyard in his time, at Maenarper, near Pembroke,
-in South Wales.</p>
-
-<p>Before leaving the subject of the British use of ale, it will perhaps
-amuse some of our readers to find that the very name of Britain has
-been derived by some from the word βρῡτον, the Greek for beer. The
-following extract from Hearne’s Discourses is a good instance of that
-reckless ingenuity in guessing derivations, for which our older school of
-philologists was ever so justly famed:—“There is one thing,” he says,
-“which upon this occasion the antiquaries should have observed, and
-that is our Mault Liquor, called βρῡτον in Athenæus. Which being
-so, it is humbly offered to the consideration of more judicious persons
-whether our Britannia might not be denominated from βρῡτον, the
-whole nation being famous for such sort of drink. ’Tis true, Athenæus
-does not mention the Britains among those that drunk mault drink;
-and the reason is, because he had not met with any
-writer that had <span class="xxpn" id="p032">{32}</span>
-celebrated them upon that account, whereas the others that he mentions
-to drink it were put down in his Authors. Nor will it seem a wonder,
-that even those people he speaks of were not called Britaines from the
-said liquor, since it was not their constant and common drink, but was
-only used by them upon occasion, whereas it was always made use of in
-Britain, and it was looked upon as peculiar to this Island, and other
-liquors were esteemed as foreign, and not so agreeable to the nature
-of the country. And I have some reason to think that those few other
-people that drunk it abroad did it only in imitation of the Britains,
-though we have no records remaining upon which to ground this
-opinion.”</p>
-
-<p>It is rather unfortunate that, in the cause of science, our author did
-not inform us what that “some reason to think” of his in fact was.
-However, let us honour his patriotism if we may not his learning.</p>
-
-<p>It would appear that ale and beer were different words signifying the
-same thing, ale being the Saxon <i>ealu</i> and Danish <i>öl</i>, probably connected
-with our word oil, and beer being the Saxon <i>beor</i>. Horne Tooke, in
-his <i>Diversions of Purley</i>, says that “ale” is derived from a Saxon verb
-<i>ælan</i>, which signifies to inflame.</p>
-
-<p>The word “beer” has been the occasion of some ingenuity and not
-a little diversity of opinion among the philologists. Goldast derived it
-<i>a pyris</i>, because (he asserts) beer was first made from pears; Vossius from
-the Latin <i>bibere</i>, to drink, thus: <i>Bibere</i>, <i>Biber</i> and (<i>extrito b</i>) <i>Bier</i>;
-Somner from the Hebrew <i>Bar</i>, corn. Probably the true derivation is
-that which connects the word with the root of the verb, to <i>brew</i>.
-However this may be, the connection of the word barley with the word
-<i>beere</i>—denoting a coarse kind of barley—is unmistakeable. <i>Beer</i> was
-originally used to denote the beverage and also the plant from which it
-was brewed. <i>Beere</i> or <i>bigge</i> is still to be found growing in some parts
-of Scotland and Ireland, but in England it has given place to the more
-refined <i>barley</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, <i>beer-lec</i> or beer plant).</p>
-
-<p>The attempt to connect the word “yule” with “ale” is probably
-fanciful, and may have originated from the use of the word “ale” as
-denoting not only the liquor, but also any festival at which it formed
-the principal beverage (<i>e.g.</i> the Whitsun Ale). Yule or Jule is probably
-derived, along with the festival it represents, from the Celts. It was a
-feast in honour of the sun, the Celtic name for which was <i>heol</i> or <i>houl</i>
-and was designed to celebrate the time when the Sun-god, after sinking
-to his lowest point in the heavens in mid-winter, begins again to ascend
-the sky, ushering in a period of warmth and plenty.
-When the Saxons <span class="xxpn" id="p033">{33}</span>
-were converted to Christianity, their teachers, instead of entirely doing
-away with the older forms of religion, allowed them to remain, adapting
-them to the new faith. This was very usual in early days of Christianity,
-and thus we find the heathen “Yule” merged in the great
-Christian festival of Christmas.</p>
-
-<p>The very ancient Anglo-Saxon poem entitled <i>Beowulf</i>, a poem
-which may be said to be the earliest considerable fragment of our
-language now extant, shows that ale was the chief drink amongst our
-Anglo-Saxon ancestors in the far-off days, before they had seized upon
-this land of England. It contains a mythological account of the rescue
-by the hero Beowulf of his friends from the Grendel, a monster who was
-constantly slaughtering and carrying some of them away. The feast is
-thus described: “Then was for the sons of the Geats, altogether,
-a bench cleared in the beer-hall; there the bold in spirit went to sit;
-the thane observed his office, he that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup;
-he poured the bright sweet liquor.” Further on, the Danish
-queen comes in to greet the victors. “There was laughter of heroes,
-the noise was modulated, words were winsome; Wealtheow, Hrothgar’s
-queen, went forth; mindful of their races, she, hung round with gold,
-greeted the men in the hall; and the freeborn lady gave the cup first to
-the prince of the East Danes; she bade him be blithe at the service of
-beer, dear to his people. He, the king, proud of victory, joyfully
-received the feast and hall-cup .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.”</p>
-
-<p>That it was customary among our ancestors for the lady of the house
-herself to fill the guests’ cups after dinner, may be gathered from the
-poem called the <i>Geste of Kyng Horn</i>, which in its present form is of
-thirteenth century date, but is probably founded upon a much earlier
-work. The poem thus describes Rymenhild, the queen and wife of King
-Horn, performing this
-<span class="nowrap">duty:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Rymenhild ros of benche</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wyn for to schenche;<a class="afnanc" href="#fn9" id="fnanc9">9</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">After mete in sale,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn10" id="fnanc10">10</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">Bothe wyn and ale.</span>
-<span class="spp00">On horn he bar in honde.</span>
-<span class="spp00">So laye was in londe,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn11" id="fnanc11">11</a>
-<span class="xxpn" id="p034">{34}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Knightes and squier</span>
-<span class="spp00">Alle dronken of the ber.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc9" id="fn9">&#x2007;9</a>
-<i>Schenche</i>&#x200a;=&#x200a;to pour out.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc10" id="fn10">10</a>
-<i>Sale</i>&#x200a;=&#x200a;hall.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc11" id="fn11">11</a></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A horn she bare in her hand,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So was the custom in the land.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>These lines also show that ale and beer were used at that time as
-interchangeable words.</p>
-
-<p>Our Saxon ancestors seem to have made use of several kinds of
-beverage; they had wine and mead, cider, which they called <i>æppelwin</i>,
-and piment, which was a compound of wine, honey, and spices. Ale
-and beer, however, seem, to use the quaint words of old Harrison, to
-have “borne the brunt in drincking,” and to have formed the national
-beverage of the English people from the earliest times to the present
-day. Ale, honest English ale, was the general drink, and wine was a
-luxury of the rich, as may be gathered from the old Anglo-Saxon
-dialogue, entitled <i>Alfric’s Colloquy</i>, in which a lad, on being asked
-what his drink is, replies, “Ale, if I have it, water, if I have it not.”
-To the question why he does not drink wine his answer is, “I am not
-so rich that I can buy me wine; and wine is not the drink of children
-or the weak-minded, but of the elders and the wise.”</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Exeter Book</i>, which contains a collection of Anglo-Saxon songs
-and poems, and was presented to the church at Exeter by Bishop
-Leofric in the eleventh century, contains one of those curious rhyming
-riddles so popular among the Saxons, which were known as <i>Symposii
-Ænigmata</i>. It is as
-<span class="nowrap">follows:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A part of the earth is</span>
-<span class="spp00">Prepared beautifully,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With the hardest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And with the sharpest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And with the grimmest</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of the productions of men,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cut and&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Turned and dried,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bound and twisted,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bleached and awakened,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ornamented and poured out,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Carried afar</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the doors of the people,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It is joy in the inside</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of living creatures,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It knocks and slights</span>
-<span class="spp00">Those, of whom while alive
- <span class="xxpn" id="p035">{35}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">A long while</span>
-<span class="spp00">It obeys the will,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And expostulateth not,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And then after death</span>
-<span class="spp00">It takes upon it to judge,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To talk variously.</span>
-<span class="spp00">It is greatly to seek,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By the wisest man,</span>
-<span class="spp00">What this creature is.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Those who remember the more elaborate legend of <i>John Barleycorn</i>
-will not have far to seek for the solution of this somewhat ponderous
-riddle.</p>
-
-<p>The Anglo-Saxons, before their conversion to Christianity, believed
-that some of the chief blessings to be enjoyed by departed heroes were
-the frequent and copious draughts of ale served round to them in the
-halls of Odin. Even after the spread of Christianity had dispelled this
-heathen notion, all the evidence available seems to point rather to an
-enlarged than a diminished consumption of malt liquors. Whether our
-forefathers, practically-minded like their descendants, resolved to make
-up here upon earth for the loss of the expected joys of which their new
-creed had robbed them, it is impossible at this distance of time to
-determine; but certain it is that the popularity of our national beverage
-has gone on increasing from that day to this.</p>
-
-<p>In these early days rents were not infrequently paid in ale. In 852
-the Abbot of Medeshampstede (Peterborough) let certain lands at
-Sempringham to one Wulfred, on this condition, amongst others, that
-he should each year deliver to the minster two tuns of pure ale and ten
-<i>mittans</i> (measures) of Welsh ale. The ale-gafol mentioned in the laws
-of Ine was a tribute or rent of ale paid by the tenant to the lord of the
-manor. By an ancient charter granted in the time of King Alfred, the
-tenants of Hysseburne, amongst other services, rendered six church-mittans
-of ale.</p>
-
-<p>Ale was also in olden days frequently liable to the payment of a toll
-(<i>tollester</i>) to the lord of the manor. In a Gloucestershire manor it was
-customary for a tenant holding in villeinage to pay as toll to the lord
-gallons of ale, whenever he brewed ale to sell. At Fiskerton,
-in Notts, if <span class="xxpn" id="p036">{36}</span>
-an ale-wife brews ale to sell she is to satisfy the lord for <i>tollester</i>. In the
-manor of Tidenham, in Saxon times the villein is to pay to the lord at
-the Martinmass six sesters of malt; and in the same manor, in the reign
-of Edward I., we find the rent changed into a toll, the tenant at the later
-period being bound to render to the lord 8 gallons of beer at every brewing.</p>
-
-<p>Similarly, wages were in some manors paid in kind. At Brissingham,
-Norfolk, the tenants, amongst other services, might perform 125 <i>ale-beeves</i>
-in the year, <i>i.e.</i>, carting-days, on which attendance was not compulsory,
-but on which the tenants, if they did attend, were entitled to
-bread and ale in lieu of wages. The word “bever” still occurs in some
-places, denoting a harvest-man’s drink between breakfast and dinner.</p>
-
-<p>The Saxons and Danes were of a social disposition, and delighted in
-forming themselves into fraternities or guilds. An important feature of
-these institutions was the meeting for convivial purposes, and their
-object was to promote good fellowship among the members. The laws
-for the regulation of some of these bodies are still in existence, and it
-seems were enforced by fines of honey, or malt, to be used in the making
-of mead or ale for the use of the members of the confraternity. It seems
-that both clergy and laity were members of certain of the guilds, at any
-rate at one period of their history, and allusion is probably made to these
-mixed fraternities in the Canons of Archbishop Walter,
-<span class="smmaj">A.D.</span> 1200, in
-which he directs “that clerks go not to taverns and drinking bouts, for
-from thence come quarrels, and then laymen beat clergymen, and fall
-under the Canon.”</p>
-
-<p>During the Middle Ages ale was the usual drink of all classes of
-Englishmen, and the wines of France were a luxury, in general only
-consumed by the upper classes. In France, however, wine was the
-common drink, and ale a luxury. William Fitz-Stephen, in his Life of
-Thomas à Becket, states that when the latter went on an embassy to
-France, he took with him two waggons laden with beer in iron-bound
-casks, as a present to the French, “who admire that kind of drink, for
-it is wholesome, clear, of the colour of wine, and of a better taste.”</p>
-
-<p>As an instance of the fame which English ale had attained abroad
-in the twelfth century, may be cited the reply of Pope Innocent III. to
-those who were arguing before him the case of the Bishop of Worcester’s
-claims against the Abbey of Evesham. “Holy father,” said they, “we
-have learnt in the schools, and this is the opinion of our masters, that
-there is no prescription against the rights of bishops.” His Holiness’s
-reply was blunt and somewhat personal: “Certainly, both you and
-your masters had drunk too much English ale when you learnt this.”
-<span class="xxpn" id="p037">{37}</span></p>
-
-<p>A curious extract may here be added as indicative of the fame of
-English ale amongst foreigners in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
-It is taken from a work entitled “<i>A Relation; or rather a true account
-of the Island of England</i>, <span class="smmaj">A.D.</span> 1500, translated from the Italian by
-C. A. Sneyd.” “The deficiency of wine, however,” says our author,
-“is amply supplied by the abundance of ale and beer, to the use of which
-these people have become so habituated, that at an entertainment where
-there is plenty of wine, they will drink them in preference to it, and in
-great quantities. Like discreet people, however, they do not offer them
-to Italians, unless they should ask for them, and they think that no
-greater honour can be conferred, or received, than to invite others to
-eat with them, or be invited themselves; and they would sooner give
-five or six ducats to provide an entertainment for a person, than a groat
-to assist him in any distress. They are not without vines; and I have
-eaten grapes from one, and wine might be made in Southern parts, but
-it would probably be harsh. The natural deficiency of the country is
-supplied by a great quantity of excellent wines from Candia, Germany,
-France, and Spain; besides which, the common people make two
-beverages from Wheat, Barley, and Oats, one of which is called beer, and
-the other Ale; and these liquors are much liked by them, nor are they
-disliked by foreigners, after they have drank them four or six times;
-they are most agreeable to the palate, when a person is by some chance
-rather heated.”</p>
-
-<p>The regulations of the religious houses nearly always make reference
-to ale; and it may be inferred from the evidence we possess, that the
-holy fathers, who were always strong sticklers for the rights and privileges
-of their order, would brook no interference either with the quantity
-or quality of their liquor. In the Institutes of the Abbey of Evesham,
-drawn up by Abbot Randulf about the year 1223, the directions as to
-the diet of the inmates of the Abbey, are of great particularity. The
-Prior is to have one measure of ale at supper (except when he shall sup
-with the Abbot). Each of the fraternity shall every day receive two
-measures of ale, each of which shall contain two pittances, of which
-pittances six make up a “sextarium regis.” In the same rules it is laid
-down that the monks are to have “two semes of beans from Huniburne,
-to make <i>puddings</i> throughout all Lent.” Bean-pudding seems indeed
-a mortification of the flesh! Further on we find: “On every day every
-two brethren shall have one measure of ale from the cellar, but after
-being let blood they shall have one for dinner and another for supper.
-The servant who shall let the monks’ blood shall have
-bread and ale <span class="xxpn" id="p038">{38}</span>
-from the cellar, if he have blooded more than one.” A further account
-of the monks as brewers will be found in the succeeding chapter.</p>
-
-<p>The Proverbs of Hendyng (thirteenth century) give good advice as
-of the duties of charity and
-<span class="nowrap">hospitality:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr"><div>
-<span class="spp00">Gef thou havest bred and ale</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ne put thou nout al in thy male<a
- class="afnanc" href="#fn12" id="fnanc12">12</a>,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Thou del hit sum aboute.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Be thou fre of thy meeles,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wherso me eny mete deles,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Gest thou nout with-oute.<a
- class="afnanc" href="#fn13" id="fnanc13">13</a></span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span><i>Betere
- is appel y-geve then y-ete,</i>”</span></div><!--dstanzactr-->
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Quoth Hendyng</i>.</span></div><!--no class-->
-</div><!--dpoemctr-->
-
-<p>In the fourteenth century taxes seem to have been
-occasionally levied on ale for certain specific purposes.
-In 1363 the inhabitants of Abbeville were granted a tax
-on ale for the purpose of repairing their fortifications.
-For each <i>lotus of ale of gramville</i> the tax was one penny
-<i>Parisien</i>; for each <i>lotus of god-ale</i> the tax was ½d.
-(Rhymer 2. 712.).</p>
-
-<p>In a curious old poem of the early part of the
-fourteenth century entitled <i>De Baptismo</i>, by William of
-Shoreham, it appears to the poet, necessary to lay down
-that ale must not be used for purposes of baptism, but
-“kende water” (<i>i.e.</i>, natural water) only. The verse is as
-<span class="nowrap">follows:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Therefore ine wine me ne may,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Inne sithere ne inne pereye,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ne inne thing that neuere water nes</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thory cristning man may reneye,</span>
-<span class="spp07">Ne inne ale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For thei hight were water ferst,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of water neth hit tale.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn14" id="fnanc14">14</a></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc12" id="fn12">12</a>
-Male&#x200a;=&#x200a;bag or wallet.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc13" id="fn13">13</a></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Whether men give any meat away or no,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Go thou not without (giving).</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc14" id="fn14">14</a>
-See p. 401.</p></div>
-
-<p>This old English requires some little explanation, and may be rendered
-thus:—Therefore man may not renounce (his sins) through christening
-in wine, in cider, nor in perry, nor in anything that never was water,
-nor yet in ale, for though this (<i>i.e.</i>, ale) was water first, it is
-acounted water no longer. <span class="xxpn" id="p039">{39}</span></p>
-
-<p>Whilst Christmas, as far as eating was concerned, always had its
-specialities, its liquor <i>carte</i> seems even in the thirteenth century to
-have been of a very varied character. An old carolist of the period thus
-sings (we follow Douce’s
-<span class="nowrap">translation):―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Lordlings, Christmas loves good drinking,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Wines of Gascoigne, France, Anjou,</span>
-<span class="spp00">English ale that drives out thinking,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Prince of liquors, old or new,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Every neighbour shares the bowl,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Drinks of the spicy liquor deep;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drinks his fill without control,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Till he drowns his care in sleep.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p><i>Piers the Ploughman</i>, a poem by William Longland, written
-towards the close of the fourteenth century, contains a curious confession
-of the tricks played by the ale-sellers upon their
-<span class="nowrap">customers:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I boughte hire Barly heo breuh hit to sulle;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Peni-ale and piriwhit heo pourede to-gedere</span>
-<span class="spp00">For laborers and louh folk that liuen be hem-seluen.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Beste in the Bed-chaumbre lay bi the wowe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hose Bummede therof Boughte hit ther-after,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A galoun for a grote, God wot, no lasse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whon hit com in Cuppemel; such craftes me usede.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>This, being interpreted, in modern English would read somewhat as
-follows:—I bought her barley they brew it to sell; Peny ale (<i>i.e.</i>, ale at
-a penny a gallon) and small perry she poured together for labourers and
-poor folk that live by themselves. The best lay in the bed chamber by
-the wall, whoso drank thereof bought it (<i>i.e.</i>, the penny ale) by the
-sample (<i>i.e.</i>, of the best) a gallon for a groat, God knows, no less, when
-it came in by cupfulls; such craft I used.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Piers the Ploughman, in describing the scarcity of labour after the
-great plague in the fourteenth century and the independence of the
-labouring men that arose from the high wages they were enabled to
-demand, says that after harvest they would eat none but the finest bread,</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ne non half-penny Ale In none wyse drynke,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bote of the Beste and the Brouneste
- that Brewesters sullen.</span></div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Mai no peny-Ale hem paye ne no pece of Bacun,
- <span class="xxpn" id="p040">{40}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Bote hit weore Fresch Flesch or elles Fisch y-Friyet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Both chaud and plus chaud for chele of heore mawe.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn15" id="fnanc15">15</a></span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc15" id="fn15">15</a>
-As we should say, “hot and hot,” for chill of their stomach.</p></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Chaucer has many references to ale. The Cook, who was no mean
-proficient in his proper art, was a judge of ale as
-<span class="nowrap">well:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A coke thei hadde with them for the nones,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To boyle the chickens, and the marrie bones,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And pouder marchaunt tarte, and galengale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Well coude he know a pot of London ale.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">The Miller prepares himself to
-tell his tale aright by swallowing mighty draughts
-of the same liquor. He knows he is drunk, and is not
-ashamed, thinking it quite sufficient excuse to lay
-the blame upon that seductive fluid, “the ale of <span
-class="nowrap">Southwerk”:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now herkeneth, quod the miller, all and some</span>
-<span class="spp00">But first I make a protestatioun,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That I am dronke, I know it by my soun;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And therefore if that I misspeke or say,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wite it the ale of Southwerk, I you pray.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">The two Cambridge students who lodge a night at the miller of
-Trompington’s are feasted by their host in this
-<span class="nowrap">wise:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The miller the toun his daughter sent</span>
-<span class="spp00">For ale and bred, and roasted hem a goos,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">They soupen and they speken of solace,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And drinken ever strong ale at the best.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Abouten midnight wente they to rest.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">Before they went, however, they had “dronken all that was in crouke,”
-and the miller, who appears to have had the lion’s share, had decidedly
-imbibed too much.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Well hath this miller vernished his hed,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Full pale he was, for-dronken, and nought red.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">This miller hath so wisely bibbed ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That as an hors he snorteth in his slepe.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">Geoffrey Chaucer, along with other poets and writers of his times, was
-unsparing in his denunciations of the vices of the clergy, their sloth,
-gluttony, drunkenness and other grievous lapses.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thei side of many manir metes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With song and solas sitting long; <span class="xxpn" id="p041">{41}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">And filleth their wombe, and fast fretes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And after mete with harp and song,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And hot spices ever among;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And fille their wombe with wine and ale.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Piers the Ploughman, in his <i>Crede</i>, which is a satire upon the clergy,
-makes the Franciscan say, in contrasting his own order with other
-religious
-<span class="nowrap">bodies:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">We haunten not tavernes, ne hobelen abouten</span>
-<span class="spp00">At merketes and miracles we medeley us never.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>The frequent directions to the monks and clergy to abstain from
-taverns, from drinking bouts and revels, all point to the necessity then
-felt of tightening the bonds of church discipline, and show the laxity
-that had prevailed.</p>
-
-<p>John Taylor, the Water Poet, frequently selected ale as his theme,
-and, when once mounted on his favourite hobby, soon travelled into
-such realms of marvellous history and miraculous philology, that it
-almost takes away one’s breath to follow him. The chief work in which
-he glorifies our English Ale has for its full title,</p>
-
-<div class="fsz6" id="p41ad">
-<div class="fsz5">DRINKE AND WELCOME</div>
-<div class="fsz7">OR THE</div>
-<div class="fsz5">FAMOUS HISTORIE</div>
-<div><span class="smmaj">OF THE MOST PART OF</span>
- <span class="smcap">D<b>RINKS</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">IN USE NOW IN THE</span>
- <span class="smcap">K<b>INGDOMES</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">OF</span> <span class="smcap">G<b>REAT</b> B<b>RITTAINE</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">AND</span> <span class="smcap">I<b>RELAND</b>,</span>
- <span class="smmaj">WITH AN ESPECIALL DECLARATION</span>
- <span class="smmaj">OF THE POTENCY</span>,
- <span class="smmaj">VERTUE AND OPERATION OF</span></div>
- <div><span class="smmaj">OUR</span> <span class="smcap">E<b>NGLISH</b></span>
- <span class="smcap">A<b>LE</b>,</span></div>
-<div><span class="smmaj">WITH A DESCRIPTION</span>
- <span class="smmaj">OF ALL</span>
- <span class="smcap">S<b>ORTS</b></span> <span class="smmaj">OF</span> <span class="smcap">W<b>ATERS</b>,</span>
- <span class="smmaj">FROM THE</span> <span class="smcap">O<b>CEAN</b> S<b>EA</b>,</span>
- <span class="smmaj">TO THE TEARES OF A WOMAN.</span></div>
-<div><span class="smmaj">AS ALSO,</span></div>
-<div><span class="smmaj">THE CAUSES OF ALL</span>
- <span class="smcap">S<b>ORTES</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">OF</span>
- <span class="smcap">W<b>EATHER</b>,</span>
- <span class="smmaj">FAIRE OR FOULE,</span>
- <span class="smcap">S<b>LEET</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">R<b>AINE</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">H<b>AILE</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">F<b>ROST</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">S<b>NOWE</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">F<b>OGGES</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">M<b>ISTS</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">V<b>APOURS</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">C<b>LOUDS</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">S<b>TORMES</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">W<b>INDES</b>,</span>
- <span class="smcap">T<b>HUNDER</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">AND</span> <span class="smcap">L<b>IGHTNING</b></span></div>
-<div><span class="smcap">C<b>OMPILED</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">FIRST IN THE</span> <span class="smcap">H<b>IGH</b> D<b>UTCH</b>
- T<b>ONGUE</b></span> <span class="smmaj">BY THE PAINEFULL AND</span>
- <span class="smmaj">INDUSTRIOUS</span> <span class="smcap">“H<b>ULDRICKE</b> V<b>AN</b>
- S<b>PEAGLE</b>,</span> <span class="smmaj">A GRAMMATICALL</span>
- <span class="smcap">B<b>REWER</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">OF</span> <span class="smcap">L<b>UBECK</b>,</span>
- <span class="smmaj">AND NOW MOST LEARNEDLY ENLARGED, AMPLIFIED,</span>
- <span class="smmaj">AND TRANSLATED INTO</span>
- <span class="smcap">E<b>NGLISH</b> P<b>ROSE</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">AND</span> <span class="smcap">V<b>ERSE</b></span></div>
-<div class="fsz6"><span class="smcap">B<b>Y</b></span> JOHN TAYLOR.</div>
-<div class="fsz7">LONDON</div>
-<div class="fsz6"><span class="smcap">P<b>RINTED</b></span> <span class="smmaj">BY</span>
- <span class="smcap">A<b>NNE</b></span> <span class="smcap">G<b>RIFFIN</b></span> 1637.</div>
-</div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p042">{42}</span></div>
-
-<p>After speaking of cider, perry, &amp;c., the author goes on to speak of
-ale, which “hath been and now is used by the English, as well since
-the Conquest as in the times of the Brittains, Saxons, and Danes (for
-the former-recited drinks are to this day confined to the Principality)
-so as we enjoy them onely by a Statute called the courtesie of Wales.
-And to perfect any discourse in this I shall onely induce them into two
-heads, viz., the unparalleled liquor called Ale with his abstract Beere;
-whose antiquity amongst a sort of Northerne pated fellowes, is, if not
-altogether contemptible, of very little esteeme; this humour served the
-scurrilous pen of a shamelesse writer<a class="afnanc" href="#fn16" id="fnanc16">16</a>
-in the raigne of King Henry the
-third; detractingly to inveigh against this unequal’d liquor. Thus</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">‘</span>For
- muddy, foggy, fulsome, puddle, stinking,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For all of these, Ale is the onely drinking.’</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc16" id="fn16">16</a>
-Henry D’Avranches.</p></div>
-
-<p>“Of all the Authors that I have ever yet read, this is the only one
-that hath attempted to brand the glorious splendour of that <i>Ale-beloved</i>
-decoction; but observe this fellow, by the perpetuall use of water
-(which was his accustomed drinke) he fell into such convulsions and
-lethargick diseases, that he remained in opinion a dead man; however,
-the knowing Physicians of that time, by the frequent and inward
-application of <i>Ale</i>, not onely recouvered him to his pristine state of
-health, but also enabled him in body and braine for the future, that he
-became famous in his writings, which for the most part were afterwards
-spent with most <i>Aleoquent</i> and <i>Alaborate</i> commendation of that admired
-and most superexcellent Imbrewage.”</p>
-
-<p>“Some there are,” he says, “that affirme that Ale was first invened
-by <i>Alexander the Great</i>, and that in his conquests this liquor did infuse
-such vigour and valour into his souldiers. Others say that famous
-Physician of Piemont (named <i>Don Alexis</i>) was the founder of it. But
-it is knowne that it was of that singular use in the time of the <i>Saxons</i>
-that none were allowed to brewe it but such whose places and qualities
-were most <i>Eminent</i>, insomuch that we finde that one of them had the
-credit to give the name of a <i>Saxon</i> Prince, who in honour of that rare
-quality, he called <i>Alle</i>. Some <i>ale</i>adge that it being our drinke when our
-land was called <i>Albion</i>, that it had the name of the countrey; <i>Twiscus</i> in
-his <i>Euphorbinum</i> will have it from <i>Albanta</i> or <i>Epirus</i>, <i>Wolfgang
-Plashendorph</i> of <i>Gustenburg</i>, saies that <i>Alecto</i> (one of the three furies)
-gave the receipt of it to <i>Albumazar</i>, a Magician, and
-he (having <i>Aliance</i> <span class="xxpn" id="p043">{43}</span>
-with <i>Aladine</i>, the Soldan at <i>Aleppo</i>) first brew’d it there, whereto may
-be <i>Aleuded</i>, the story how <i>Alphonsus</i> of <i>Scicily</i>, sent it from thence to
-the battell of <i>Alcazar</i>. My Authour is of Anaxagoras’ opinion, that <i>Ale</i>
-is to be held in high price for the nutritive substance that it is indued
-withall, and how precious a nurse it is in generall to Mankinde.</p>
-
-<p>“It is true that the overmuch taking of it doth so much exhilerate
-the spirits, that a man is not improperly said to be in the <i>Aletitude</i> (observe
-the word, I pray you, and all the words before or after for you shall
-find their first syllable to be <i>Ale</i>), and some writers are of opinion that
-the Turkish <i>Alcoran</i> was invented by Mahomet, out of such furious
-raptures as <i>Ale</i> inspired him withall; some affirme Bacchus (<i>Al’as
-Liber Pater</i>) was the first Brewer of it, among the <i>Indians</i>, who being
-a stranger to them they nam’d it <i>Ale</i>, as brought by an <i>Alien</i>: in a
-word, <i>Somnus altus</i> signifies dead sleepe: <i>Quies alta</i>, Great rest; <i>Altus</i>
-and <i>Alta</i>, noble and excellent: It is (for the most part) extracted out of
-the spirit of a Graine called Barley, which was of that estimation
-amongest the ancient <i>Galles</i> that their Prophets (whom they called
-<i>Bards</i>) used it in their most important prophesies and ceremonies:
-This Graine, after it had beene watered and dryed, was at first ground in
-a Mill in the island of <i>Malta</i>, from whence it is supposed to gaine the
-name of Malt; but I take it more proper from the word <i>Malleolus</i>,
-which signifies a Hammer or Maule, for <i>Hanniball</i> (that great <i>Carthaginian</i>
-Captaine) in his sixteene yeeres warres against the Romans, was
-called the <i>Maule</i> of <i>Italie</i>, for it is conjectured that he victoriously
-Mauld them by reason that his army was daily refreshed with the
-Spiritefull Elixar of <i>Mault</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“It holds very significant to compare a man in the <i>Aletitude</i> to be in
-a planetarie height, for in a Planet, the Altitude is his motion in which
-he is carried from the lowest place of Heaven or from the Center of the
-Earth, into the most highest place, or unto the top of his circle, and
-then it is said to be in <i>Apogee</i>, that is the most <i>Transcendant</i> part of
-all, so the Sublunarie of a Stupified Spirit, being elevated by the
-efficacious vigour of this uncontrolleable vertue, renders him most
-capable for high actions.”</p>
-
-<p>After much more in the same vein, sufficient to astonish the most
-reckless of modern punsters, our author winds up his account of the
-antiquity of ale as
-<span class="nowrap">follows:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“I will therefore <i>shut up</i> with that admirable conclusion insisted upon
-in our time by a discreet Gentleman in a Solemne Assembly, who by a
-Politick observation, very aptly compares <i>Ale</i> and Cakes
-with Wine and <span class="xxpn" id="p044">{44}</span>
-Waters, neither doth he hold it fit that it should stand in competition
-with the meanest wines, but with that most excellent composition which
-the Prince of Physicians <i>Hippocrases</i> had so ingeniously compounded
-for the preservation of Mankinde, and which (to this day) speakes the
-Author by the name of <i>Hippocras</i>. So that you see for Antiquity—<i>Ale</i>
-was famous amongst the <i>Troians</i>, <i>Brittaines</i>, <i>Romans</i>, <i>Saxons</i>,
-<i>Normans</i>, <i>Englishmen</i>, <i>Welch</i>, besides in <i>Scotland</i>, from the highest
-and Noblest Palace to the poorest and meanest Cottage.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Other curious details with respect to the use of ale in the Middle
-Ages and in modern times will be found in their appropriate places,
-and having established clearly enough the highly respectable antiquity
-of the Prince of liquors, old or new, it is time, in the elegant language
-of the Water Poet, to “shut up” this portion of the subject; and so
-we pass on, concluding here with an extract from the <i>Philosopher’s
-Banquet</i>, on the pre-eminence of
-<span class="nowrap">ale:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Ale for antiquity may plead and stand</span>
-<span class="spp00">Before the conquest, conquering in this land;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Beere, that is younger brother of her age,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was not then borne, nor right to bee her page;</span>
-<span class="spp00">In every pedling village, borough, town,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale plaid at football, and tript all lads down;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And tho’ shee’s rivall’d now by beere, her mate,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Most doctors aiwt on herthis shewes her state.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p044.png" width="144" height="59" alt="" /></div>
-</div><!--dpoemlft-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p045a.png" width="144" height="44" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p045">
-<span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> III.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Heap high the fire, and, O ye Lares, smile;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, Innocence, with plenty hither bring</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hilarity; while Friendship brims the cup</span>
-<span class="spp00">With home-brewed Ale, and every welcom’d guest</span>
-<span class="spp00">Forgets the storm .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Booker’s Sequel Poem to the
- Hop Garden.</i></span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc"><div class="dnowrap38"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With your pockets full of money, and
- your cellar full of beer.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Old Carol.</i></span></div></div>
-</div><!--depigraph-->
-
-<p class="psynopsis">
-<i>HOME-BREWED ALES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;OLD RECEIPTS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;HISTORICAL
-FACTS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;DEAN SWIFT ON HOME-BREW.&#x200a;—&#x200a;CHRISTOPHER
-NORTH’S BREW-HOUSE.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p045b.png"
-width="231" height="228" alt="H" /></span>OGARTH’S
-<i>Farmer’s Return</i> re­pre­sents
-the worthy man just come in from his
-mor­ning round or from dis­tant mar­ket
-town. As he rests awhile in the farm­house
-kitch­en he draws sweet solace from
-the pipe brought him by his daugh­ter,
-while he eyes with keen ex­pec­tance the
-jug of foam­ing home-brew which his
-bux­om wife, in her hur­ry to serve her
-lord, is spil­ling on the tiled floor. These two old friends, firm sup­por­ters
-of each other, the farmers and home-brewed ale, have almost
-parted com­pany. Home-brew, indeed, has become, in some places, an
-extinct and almost forgotten beverage. It is a curious fact, however,
-that between the years 1884 and 1886 there was a slight increase in the
-number of persons brewing
-their own ale. <span class="xxpn" id="p046">{46}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p046.png" width="252" height="317" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Farmers Return.</div></div>
-
-<p>The late Mr. Wm. Cobbett, writing in 1821 on the subject of
-brewing, says, “To show Englishmen, forty years ago, that it was
-good for them to brew beer in their houses, would have been as
-impertinent as gravely to insist that they ought to endeavour not to
-lose their breath; for in those times, to have a <i>house</i> and not to
-brew was a rare thing indeed. Mr. Ellman, an old man and a large
-farmer in Sussex, has recently given, in evidence before a Committee
-of the House of Commons, this fact: that forty years ago there was
-not a labourer in his parish that did not brew his own beer; and
-that now there is not one that does it, except by chance the malt be
-given him.”</p>
-
-<p>The decadence of the art of domestic brewing is, for some reasons, a
-matter for regret. The causes are not far to seek. The improved machinery
-of the modern brewer, which enables him to make an uniformly
-excellent beer, and to sell it at a low price; and the railways which now
-traverse every part of the country, carrying his single, double, or treble
-X, as the case may be, to places where half a century back no one
-dreamt of purchasing ale for home consumption—to these great changes
-is undoubtedly due the partial downfall of home-brew
-that has taken <span class="xxpn" id="p047">{47}</span>
-place. Not only has the practice of domestic brewing much declined,
-but from the same causes there has been of late years an extraordinary
-and lamentable decrease in the numbers of small country brewers.</p>
-
-<p>Although the name of home-brew carries with it many old associations
-and sentiments which we abandon with regret—memories of bright
-March beer and mellow old October, of snug ingle-nooks and raftered
-ceilings, and of kind, if homely, welcome—we cannot but admit, as on
-a hot day we drain our tankard of Burton bitter, or of world-famed
-London stout, that life has still its compensations.</p>
-
-<p>“To make barley-water was an invention which found out itself
-with little more than the joyning the ingredients together,” said old
-Fuller, in his <i>Worthies of England</i>; “but to make mault for drinke,
-was a master-piece indeed.” This old writer would seem to give the
-maltster more credit than the brewer. In his day, however, the distinction
-between the two was slight, for nearly every country gentleman
-or farmer was both his own brewer and his own maltster.</p>
-
-<p>In 1610, the justices of Rutland, in settling the rate of domestic
-servants’ wages, adjudged that a chief woman, who could bake and brew
-<i>and make malt</i>, should have the sum of 24<i>s</i>. 8<i>d</i>. by the year; while a
-second best, who could brew but not malt, was to have 23<i>s</i>. 4<i>d</i>.</p>
-
-<p>The earliest connected account of domestic malting and brewing
-which we have been able to find, occurs in a poetical work of the
-thirteenth century, called the <i>Treatise of Walter de Biblesworth</i>. The
-treatise deals with most matters of domestic concern and every-day life,
-and the passage in which the malting of barley and the brewing of ale
-are described, is so curious that it is given below in full length from the
-text to be found in <i>National Antiquities</i>, vol. i. (priv. pub. Th. Wright,
-Ed.).</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Seyoms
- ore entour cerveyse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pur fere gens ben à eyse.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Alumet, amy, cele lefrenole,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn17" id="fnanc17">17</a>
-<span class="xxpn" id="p048">{48}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">E kaunt averas manges de brakole,</span>
-<span class="spp00">En une cuwe<a class="afnanc" href="#fn18" id="fnanc18">18</a>
- large e leez,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cel orge là enfoundrez;</span>
-<span class="spp00">E kaunt sera enfoundré,</span>
-<span class="spp00">E le ewe seyt escouloé,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mountez cel haut soler,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Si le festes nette baler,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn19" id="fnanc19">19</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">E là cochet votre blée,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Taunke seyt ben germée,</span>
-<span class="spp00">De cele houre appelleras,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Brès, ke blée avant nomas.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Le brès de vostre mayn muez</span>
-<span class="spp00">En mounceus ou en rengeés;<a class="afnanc" href="#fn20" id="fnanc20">20</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">Pus le portez en un corbel,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pur ensechier au toral.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn21" id="fnanc21">21</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">Le corbel e le corbiloun</span>
-<span class="spp00">Vous serviront au fusoyn.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Kaunt vostre brez est molu,</span>
-<span class="spp00">E de ewe chaude ben enbeu,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Des bertiz<a class="afnanc" href="#fn22" id="fnanc22">22</a>
-ver cervoyse</span>
-<span class="spp00">Par art contrové teise.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ky fet miracles e merveyles,</span>
-<span class="spp00">De une chaundelie deus chandelis,</span>
-<span class="spp00">De homme lay fet bon clerc,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A homme desconu doune merk,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Homme fort fet chatoner, <span class="xxpn" id="p049">{49}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">E homme à roye haut juper,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn23" id="fnanc23">23</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">Taunt de vertu de la grees</span>
-<span class="spp00">De servoyse fet de brès,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ke la coyfe<a class="afnanc" href="#fn24" id="fnanc24">24</a>
-de un bricoun</span>
-<span class="spp00">Teyndre seet sanz vermilloun.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ceste matyre cy repose,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Parlom ore de autre chose.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc17" id="fn17">17</a>
-Some old Englishman has written in the MS. over difficult words
-his interpretation of them; an interpretation frequently of great assistance,
-but occasionally in itself not a little puzzling. This word <i>lefrenole</i>,
-however, he much elucidates by annotating it “kex;” in Gloucestershire
-and in other parts of the country the word is still used to signify the
-hemlock, and may be found in many old writers. Lygones, in <i>A King
-and No King</i>, refers to his legs as “withered kexes.” The word was
-probably occasionally used to denote a candle, and this is the meaning
-assigned to it here. Langland, in the <i>Vision of Piers Ploughman</i>, says
-that glowing embers do not serve the workman’s purpose so well,</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>As dooth a kex or a candle</span>
-<span class="spp00">That caught hath fire and blazeth.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Allusion is also made to the use of stalks of hemlock as candles in
-<i>Turn. of Tottenham</i>, 201.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc18" id="fn18">18</a>
-Our annotator says “a mikel fat.” The word “kive” is found
-in later English for the same utensil.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc19" id="fn19">19</a>
-Suepet klene.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc20" id="fn20">20</a>
-“On hepe
-other on rowe” is the quaint gloss.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc21" id="fn21">21</a>
-<i>Toral</i> is noted “kulne.”</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc22" id="fn22">22</a>
-<i>Bertiz</i> is probably a form of <i>bertzissa</i>, which seems to be a
-barbarous rendering of <i>wort</i>.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc23" id="fn23">23</a>
-<i>Juper</i> is annotated <i>houten</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, to hoot or shout.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc24" id="fn24">24</a>
-The word <i>coyfe</i> here
-seems to signify not <i>cap</i>, but <i>head</i> or <i>face</i>; another such use of the
-word is to be found in the <i>Chron. de Nangis</i> (1377), and is mentioned
-in Sainte-Palaye’s <i>Hist. Dict. of the French Language</i>.</p></div>
-
-<p>It is believed that no translation of this curious old poem has been
-published, and a rendering is accordingly added in which literal accuracy
-rather than poetical elegance has been aimed at.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ale shall now engage my pen,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To set at rest the hearts of men.</span>
-<span class="spp00">First, my friend, your candle light,<a
- class="afnanc" href="#fn25" id="fnanc25">25</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">Next of spiced cake take a bite;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then steep your barley in a vat,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Large and broad, take care of that;</span>
-<span class="spp00">When you shall have steeped your grain,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the water let out-drain,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Take it to an upper floor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If you’ve swept it clean before,</span>
-<span class="spp00">There couch,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn26" id="fnanc26">26</a>
-and let your barley dwell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till it germinates full well.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Malt now you shall call the grain,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Corn it ne’er shall be again.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Stir the malt then with your hand,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In heaps or rows now let it stand;</span>
-<span class="spp00">On a tray then you shall take it,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To a kiln to dry and bake it.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The tray and eke a basket light</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will serve to spread the malt aright. <span class="xxpn" id="p050">{50}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">When your malt is ground in mill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And of hot water has drank its fill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And skill has changed the wort to ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then to see you shall not fail</span>
-<span class="spp00">Miracles and marvels; Lo!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Two candles out of one do grow;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale makes a layman a good clerk,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To one unknown it gives a mark,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale makes the strong go on all fours,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And fill the streets with shouts and roars.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The good ale from the malt at length,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So draws the barley’s pride and strength,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That a royster’s figure-head</span>
-<span class="spp00">Needs no dye to make it red.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here, then, let the matter rest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To talk of other things were best.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">As
-everybody knows, the monks of old were famous for their home-brewed
-ales, and the brewer and cellarer, whether in mitred abbey or in
-the less dis­tin­guished re­li­gious houses, were of­ficials of con­sid­er­able
-im­por­tance. The of­fice of cel­lar­er was one held in especial estimation.
-An old glossary describes his position in the monastery as follows:—“<i>Pater
-debet esse totius con­gre­ga­tion­is</i>,” and in the priory of St.
-Swithin at Winchester special prayers were offered up for this func­tion­ary.
-Such a person is depicted on this page. The monk whose
-anxious eye proclaims the sad fact that in tasting the liquor entrusted
-to his charge he is exceeding his duty, is a cellarer who evidently
-makes the most of his opportunities. The drawing is taken from a
-manuscript in the Arundel collection.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc25" id="fn25">25</a>
-<i>i.e.</i>, you must
-rise betimes.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc26" id="fn26">26</a>
-The word “couch” has still a technical meaning in
-malting.</p></div>
-
-<div class="dctr09">
-<img src="images/p050.png" width="200" height="259" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">“Is it in condition?”</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p051">{51}</span></div>
-
-<div class="dright dwth-f">
-<img src="images/p051.png" width="462" height="585" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Mediæval Cellarer.</div></div>
-
-<p>Some curious entries relating to
-home-brew are to be found in the registry
-of the priory of Worcester, <span class="smmaj">A.D.</span> 1240.
-At each brewing “<i>VIII. cronn: de
-greu</i> and x <i>quarteria de meis</i>” were
-used; which probably signifies eight
-cronns or four quarters of growte (here
-meaning ground malt), and ten quarters
-of mixed barley and oat malt. A long
-list then follows of the allowances of beer
-amongst the different officials of the
-house. The beer was of three different
-kinds, <i>prima</i> or <i>melior</i>, <i>secunda</i>, and
-<i>tertia</i>. The cellarer is to have one measure of prime and one of
-second. In the brewhouse four measures of the prime are to be
-distributed, and two measures on the day on which the ale is to be
-moved. The servant of the church is to have the holy-water bucket
-full of “mixta,” <i>i.e.</i>, part prime and part second, or, it may be, a
-mixture of all three sorts. This “mixta” seems to have been an
-anticipation of the “half-and-half” and “three threads” of more modern
-times. Each of those who help to carry the ale are to have two
-measures of the first and second mixed, and so the list proceeds through
-all the officers and servants of the priory. Ale, indeed, seems to have
-been their chief drink, and even the invalid (<i>potionandus</i>) about to
-undergo a course of physicking was allowed his measure of ale. Our
-doubts as to the wisdom of this dieting hardly require the confirmation
-they receive from the further direction that he was to have pork, fowl
-with stuffing, cheese, and eggs.</p>
-
-<p class="pclearfix">Sometimes the records tell sad tales
-of the poor monks being robbed of their beer by reason of
-the malt failing.</p>
-
-<p>This misfortune is recorded in the annals of Dunstable as having
-happened in 1262. The annalist ruefully mentions that “in this year,
-about the Feast of John the Baptist, our ale failed.” Very soon after
-this, however, they made provision for the deficiency by purchasing
-from H. Chadde £20 worth of malt; the quantity is not mentioned,
-but at the rates of the day it would no doubt considerably exceed 100
-quarters, so that for some time the monks could have known no want.
-In 1274 the same disaster occurred:—“At the Feast of Pentecost our malt
-failed.” This time the holy fathers were equal to the occasion. “We
-drank,” so run the annals, “five casks of wine, and it did
-us much good.” <span class="xxpn" id="p052">{52}</span></p>
-
-<p>The crimes and misdeeds of Roger Noreys, the wicked abbot of Evesham
-at the end of the twelfth century, seem to have culminated when
-he not only called the monks “puppies, vassals, and ribalds,” but, adding
-injury to insult, compelled them to live for many days on hard bread
-and “ale little differing from water.” This was too much, and the
-monks petitioned the archbishop against such ill-treatment. The
-abbot, it may be remarked, appears from the records of the House to
-have taken very good care of himself, though he treated the monks so
-ill, and it might have been said of him as it was of another ecclesiastic
-whose name, unfortunately, has not accompanied the
-<span class="nowrap">verse:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Bonum vinum cum sapore</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bibit abbas cum priore</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sed conventus de pejore</span>
-<span class="spp03">Semper solet bibere.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>John of Brokehampton, who became abbot of Evesham in 1282, had
-himself filled the office of cellarer, and amongst many other benefits
-conferred by him upon the House during his abbacy, he built a bakehouse
-and a brewhouse “not only strongly but sumptuously.”</p>
-
-<p>On certain special days set apart for “<i>doing the great O</i>,”<a class="afnanc" href="#fn27" id="fnanc27">27</a>
-which
-was a facetious way of saying that they were holidays when nothing
-was done, a more liberal allowance of ale was made, and on the occasion
-of the election of a Canon for St. Paul’s, foreign wine and other delicacies
-were added to the feast.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc27" id="fn27">27</a>
-“Facere O” in some places had ref­er­ence to the in­troit be­gin­ning “O
-Sa­pien­tia.”</p></div>
-
-<p>Some slight idea of a monastic feast in the thirteenth century may
-be gathered from the accompanying illustration. The presence of
-women is significant, and the quaint spit, and the round-bottomed glass
-which one of the monks holds in his hand and which cannot be set
-down until empty, are noteworthy.</p>
-
-<p>What a gentleman’s cellar ought to contain is thus described by
-Alexander Neckam, a twelfth-century writer:—“In promptuario sive
-in celario,” he writes, “sunt cadi, utres,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn28" id="fnanc28">28</a>
-dolea, ciphi,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn29" id="fnanc29">29</a>
-cophini, .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.
-vina, scicera, cerevicia, sive celia, mustum,
-claretum, nectar,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn30" id="fnanc30">30</a>
-medo <span class="xxpn" id="p053">{53}</span>
-sive ydromellum,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn31" id="fnanc31">31</a></p>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p053a.png" width="351" height="428" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">piretum, vinum rosetum, vinum feretum, vinum
-falernum, vinum girofilatum.” Some old scribe has noted this work
-in the same way as the annotator of the <i>Treatise of Walter de Biblesworth</i>,
-and taking up the hints he has given, the passage may be
-translated:—“In the cellar are barrels, leather bottles or wine skins,
-tuns, beakers, baskets, .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. wines, cyder, ale, new wine, claret,
-piment, meed or ydromellum, perry, Mount Rose wine, Falernian,
-garihofilac, &amp;c. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.” Not a bad assortment of liquors for an Early
-Englishman! Our cut, taken from the Roxburghe ballads, represents a
-well-stocked cellar of the olden times.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc28" id="fn28">28</a>
-Utres is noted ‘coutreus.’</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc29" id="fn29">29</a>
-Ciphi&#x200a;=&#x200a;anaps, cophini&#x200a;=&#x200a;anapers.
-On this word anaps, or hanaps, see page
-<a href="#p395" title="go to p. 395">395.</a></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc30" id="fn30">30</a>
-Nectar or Piment was
-a luscious kind of drink compounded of wine, honey and spices; it was
-called after the pigmentarii, or apothecaries who prepared it, and was
-in fact a liqueur.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc31" id="fn31">31</a>
-Ydromellum is explained in the <i>Ortus</i> as <i>potus ex aqua
-et melle</i>, <i>Anglice mede or growte</i> (Growte&#x200a;=&#x200a;wort in an early stage of the brewing).
-In <i>Alfric’s Colloquy</i>, however, it is said to be <i>beor</i>, or <i>mulsum</i>.
-The true explanation of this discrepancy seems to be that ydromellum,
-while properly signifying an inferior sort of mead, was also used by
-analogy to denote the sweet liquor <i>wort</i>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p053b.png" width="340" height="235" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p054">{54}</span></div>
-
-<p>The requisites of a brewhouse of the fourteenth or fifteenth century
-are described in a Latin-English Vocabulary of the
-<span class="nowrap">period:―</span></p>
-
-<div id="p054list"><ul>
-<li class="lihanga">Brasiatrix, a brewster (a female brewer).</li>
-<li class="lihanga">Cima, a kymnelle (a mash tub). Fornax, a furnasse.</li>
-<li class="lihanga">Alveum, a trogh. Brasium, malte. Barzissa, wortte.</li>
-<li class="lihanga">Dragium, draf (grains). Calderium, a caldron.</li>
-<li class="lihanga">Taratantarum, a temse (sieve). Cuvella, a kunlion (small tub).</li>
-<li class="lihanga">Ydromellum, growte. Mola, a quern (handmill).</li>
-<li class="lihanga">Pruera, ling (a broom made of ling).</li></ul></div>
-
-<p>That graphic old writer, Harrison, in his Preface to <i>Hol­lin­shed’s
-Chron­i­cles</i>, 1587, gives a cap­i­tal de­scrip­tion of home-brewing as it was
-carried on at the end of the six­teenth cen­tury; and “once in a moneth
-prac­tised by my wife,” as he informs us.</p>
-
-<p>It may be remarked incidentally, that brewing seems to have usually
-fallen to the share of the housewife, whose duties in this respect are
-indicated in the old Durham
-<span class="nowrap">rhyme:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp01">I’ll no more be a nun, nun, nun,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I’ll be no more a nun!</span>
-<span class="spp00">But I’ll be a wife,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And lead a merry life,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And brew good ale by the tun, tun, tun.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>To return to old Harrison and his home-brew. “Nevertheless,”
-he says, “sith I have taken occasion to speake of bruing, I will exemplifie
-in such a proportion as I am best skilled in, bicause it is the usuall
-rate for mine owne familie, and once in a moneth practised by my wife
-and hir maid servants, who proceed withall after this maner, as she
-hath oft informed me. Having therefore groond eight bushels of good
-malt upon our querne, where the toll is saved, she addeth unto it half
-a bushel of wheat meale, and so much of otes small groond, and so
-tempereth or mixeth them with the malt, that you cannot easily discerne
-the one from the other, otherwise these later would clunter, fall into
-lumps, and thereby become unprofitable. The first
-liquor which is full <span class="xxpn" id="p055">{55}</span>
-eightie gallons according to the proportion of our furnace, she maketh
-boiling hot, and then powreth it softlie into the malt, where it resteth
-(but without stirring) untill hir second liquor be almost ready to boile.
-This doone she letteth hir mash run till the malt be left without liquor,
-or at the leastwise the greater part of the moisture, which she perceiveth
-by the staie and softe issue thereof, and by this time hir second
-liquor in the furnace is ready to seeth, which is put also to the malt as
-the first woort also againe into the furnace, whereunto she addeth two
-pounds of the best English hops, and so letteth them seeth together by
-the space of two hours in summer, or an houre and a halfe in winter,
-whereby it getteth an excellent colour and continuance without impeachment,
-or anie superfluous tartnesse. But before she putteth her
-first woort into the furnace, or mingleth it with the hops, she taketh
-out a vessel full, of eight or nine gallons, which she shutteth up close,
-and suffereth no aire to come into it till it become yellow, and this she
-reserveth by it selfe unto further use, as shall appeare hereafter, calling
-it Brackwoort or Charwoort, and as she saith it addeth also to the
-colour of the drinke, whereby it yeeldeth not unto amber or fine gold
-in hew unto the eie. By this time also hir second woort is let runne,
-and the first being taken out of the furnace and placed to coole, she
-returneth the middle woort into the furnace, where it is striken over,
-or from whence it is taken againe.</p>
-
-<p>“When she hath mashed also the last liquor (and let the second to
-coole by the first) she letteth it runne and then seetheth it againe with
-a pound and an half of new hops or peradventure two pounds as she
-seeth cause by the goodness or basenesse of the hops; and when it hath
-sodden in summer two hours, and in winter an houre and an halfe, she
-striketh it also and reserveth it unto mixture with the rest when time
-dooth serve therefore. Finallie when she setteth hir drinke together,
-she addeth to hir brackwoort or charwoort halfe an ounce of arras and
-halfe a quarterne of an ounce of baiberries finelie powdered, and
-then putteth the same into hir woort with an handful of wheate floure,
-she proceedeth in such usuall order as common bruing requireth. Some
-in steed of arras and baies add so much long peper onely, but in hir
-opinion and my lyking it is not so good as the first, and hereof we make
-three hoggesheads of good beere, such (I meane) as is meet for poore men
-as I am to live withall whose small maintenance (for what great thing is
-fortie pounds a yeare computatis computandis able to performe) may
-indure no deeper cut, the charges whereof groweth in this manner. I
-value my malt at ten shillings, my wood at foure shillings
-which I buie, <span class="xxpn" id="p056">{56}</span>
-my hops at twenty pence, the spice at two pence, servants wages two
-shillings sixpence, both meat and drinke, and the wearing of my vessell
-at twentie pence, so that for my twenty shillings I have ten score gallons
-of beer or more, nothwithstanding the loss in seething. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. The
-continuance of the drinke is alwaye determined after the quantitie of
-the hops, so that being well hopped it lasteth longer. For it feedeth
-upon the hop and holdeth out so long as the force of the same endureth
-which being extinguished the drinke must be spent or else it dieth and
-becometh of no value.”</p>
-
-<p>A brewhouse was in the sixteenth century an essential for a gentleman’s
-house. Boorde, in his directions for building a country house,
-mentions this:—“And also” he says, “the backe-house and brew-house
-shall be a dystance from the place and from other buyldyng.”</p>
-
-<p>Strutt gives an inventory of the contents of a private brewhouse of
-the sixteenth century. “<i>Im primis</i> a meshe fatt—<i>Item</i>, a great ledde
-(leaden vessel)—<i>Item</i>, a brasse panne set in the walle (the copper for
-boiling the wort)—<i>Item</i>, 6 wort leeds, callyd coolars—<i>Item</i>, a greate
-c’linge fatt with 2 other fattes, and other tubs and kimnelles.”</p>
-
-<p>The poetic soul of Thomas Tusser, which has condescended to celebrate
-in quaint and homely verse most subjects of domestic interest or
-savouring of country life, has left us a short effusion on home-brew,
-which, though not perhaps so complete as a novice in the art of brewing
-might desire for his instruction, yet contains some pithy and, doubtless,
-useful rules. The verses are to be found in the <i>Pointes of Good
-Huswiferie</i>, and run
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp07">Brew somewhat for thine,</span>
-<span class="spp07">Else bring up no swine.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where brewing is needful, be brewer thyself,</span>
-<span class="spp00">what filleth the roofe will helpe furnish the shelfe;<a
- class="afnanc" href="#fn32" id="fnanc32">32</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">In buying of drinke by the firkin or pot</span>
-<span class="spp00">the tallie ariseth, but hog amendes not.<a
- class="afnanc" href="#fn33" id="fnanc33">33</a></span>
-<span class="spp07">Well brewed, worth cost,</span>
-<span class="spp07">Ill used, halfe lost.</span>
-<span class="spp00">One bushell well brewed, outlasteth some twaine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">and saveth both mault, and expenses in vaine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Too new is no profite, too stale is as bad,</span>
-<span class="spp00">drinke deade, or else sower, makes laborer sad.</span>
-<span class="spp07" id="p057">Remember, good Gill,</span>
-<span class="spp07">Take paine with thy swill.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Seeth grains in more water, while graines be yet hot,</span>
-<span class="spp00">and stirre them in copper as poredge in pot,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Such heating with straw, to make offall good store,<a
- class="afnanc" href="#fn34" id="fnanc34">34</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">both pleseth and easeth, what would you have more?</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc32" id="fn32">32</a>
-<i>i.e.</i>, we presume, brewing which fills the roof with steam is good
-economy.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc33" id="fn33">33</a>
-The score at the ale-house mounts up, but your pig is
-none the better for it. The allusion is to feeding pigs on the spent
-grains.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc34" id="fn34">34</a>
-The grains are to be used again to make “offall,” or small beer.</p></div>
-
-<p>Pain was not always taken by Gill with her swill, as may be seen by
-the sad account of the <i>Distracted Maid, an Ancient Garland</i>, in which
-the evil results of a pre-occupied mind are shown. One verse of this
-effusion will doubtless be deemed
-<span class="nowrap">sufficient:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To tell you as I am true,</span>
-<span class="spp01">When ever I bake or brew,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The thoughts of Will come uppermost still,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I hardly know what to do;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Instead of malt I put in salt,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And boils my copper dry;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The perjured Act, and wicket Fact,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My brains are rack’d and I am crack’d,</span>
-<span class="spp01">There’s no body knows but I,</span>
-<span class="spp01">There’s no body knows but I.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>It is interesting to compare the cost of brewing in the sixteenth
-century with that at the present day. Harrison’s brewing, as he
-has shown us, cost him a fraction over a penny the gallon. The
-following account of a brewing in the household of the Duke of
-Northumberland, in the eighth year of the reign of Henry VIII.,
-brings out somewhat the same result, though the “painful scribe” seems
-to have got a little confused in his arithmetic towards the end of his
-account; however, a good deal must be excused to those who have
-to work sums in Roman numerals.</p>
-
-<p>“A Brewyng at Wresill and carryede to Topclif. Fyrste paide for
-vj quarters malt at Wresill after vs. the quarter—xxxs. Item, paide
-for vj lb Hopps for the saide Brewyng after j d. ob.
-the lb—jxd. Item, <span class="xxpn" id="p058">{58}</span>
-paide for v score Faggotts for the saide Brewyng after v faggots j d—xxd.
-Item, paide for the Cariage of the saide Brewyng from Wresill to Borrowbrigg
-by watir—viz xij Hoggeshedes whiche makith iij Tonns after
-iiijs. vd. the Tonne and a penny more at all—xiijs. iiijd. Item paide
-for the Hire of iij Wanys for carrying of the said iij Tonne from
-Barrow-brigg to Topclyf after viijd for the Hire of every Wayne—ijs.</p>
-
-<div>“Summa xlvijs. ixd.</div>
-
-<p>“Whereof is made xij Hoggeshedes of Beyr. Every Hoggeshede
-contenyng xlviij gallons whiche is in all cccciiij xvj gallons after a
-Penny the Gallon and iijd. les at all which is derer by qu in every
-gallon save iijs iiijd. les at all—xlvijs ixd.”</p>
-
-<p>Not so many years later the prices of ale and beer seem to have
-risen unaccountably, for in the charges for the diet of Mary Queen of
-Scots at Tutbury, Chartley, and Fotheringaye the item is to be found
-“for ale bought at dyerse pryces 1148 gallons at 9d. the gallon,
-£43 13s. 9d.”</p>
-
-<p>“Three hundred and fifty-three tons 2 hogs of beare” were also
-bought at an average price of 39s. 11d. the ton, £706 13s. 5d. Burton
-ale may even at that time have commanded a higher price than
-ordinary ale, and the cost of transit would, no doubt, be heavy. In
-addition to the ale bought at “dyerse pryces,” some must have been
-brewed at home; for in further accounts are the following items:—“Hopps
-1s., a brewinge fatte with the charges for settyng it up
-£4 5s. 8d. A new pompe for the brewhouse 28s. 8d.”</p>
-
-<p>Although brewing, as we have seen, was carried on during every
-month in the year for the commoner household uses, March and
-October were the favourite months for making strong ale, “the
-authenticall drinke of England, the whole barmy tribe of ale-cunners
-never layd their lips to the like.” The summer months were especially
-eschewed by those who wished to keep their liquor, and hence the old
-<span class="nowrap">saying:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Bow-wow,
- dandy-fly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Brew no beer in July.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">“Oh! but my grandmother,” says
-Gluttony, in the <i>Tragical History of Doctor Faustus</i>,
-“she was a jolly gentlewoman, and well beloved in every
-good town and city; her name was Mistress Margery March
-Beer.”</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Ale</i> and <i>beere</i>,” says Harrison,
-“beare the greatest brunt in <span class="xxpn" id="p059">{59}</span>
-drincking, which are of so many sortes and ages as it pleases the brewar to
-make them. The beer that is used at noblemen’s tables, is commonly of
-a yeare olde, (or peradventure of twoo yeres tunning or more, but this is
-not general) it is also brued in Marche, and is therefore called Marche
-bere, but for the household it is usually not under a monethes age, eache
-one coveting to have the same as stale as he might, so that it was not
-soure.”</p>
-
-<p>And a serious “brunt” it was if the following obituary notice, which
-appeared in the <i>Gentleman’s Magazine</i> in 1810, may be taken as a
-sample of our fathers’ devotion to
-<span class="nowrap">home-brew:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“At the Ewes farm-house, Yorkshire, aged 76, Mr. Paul Parnell,
-farmer, grazier, and maltster, who, during his lifetime, drank out of one
-silver pint cup upwards of £2,000 sterling worth of Yorkshire Stingo,
-being remarkably attached to Stingo tipple of the home-brewed best
-quality. The calculation is taken at 2d. per cupful. He was the bon-vivant
-whom O’Keefe celebrated in more than one of his Bacchanalian
-songs under the appellation of Toby Philpott.”</p>
-
-<p>The Journal of Timothy Burrell, Esquire, of Ockenden House,
-Cuckfield, Sussex, proves him to have been a true devotee of the rites of
-Ceres. With what particularity he mentions his purchases of malt and
-hops—“May 3, 1683. Quarter of malt, £1. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. 23 July. For 28lbs.
-of hops I gave 7s. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. October. I paid Jo. Warden for 30 bushels
-of malt, just 4 months, £4 3s.” Then with what care he notes the day
-on which he brewed, as thus—“3 May, 1702, <i>Pandoxavi</i>” and with
-what satisfaction the day on which he tapped the barrel,—“12 June
-<i>Relinivi</i>”—illustrating his manuscript as he goes along with quaint
-sketches of barrels, quart pots, pockets of hops and such-like. John
-Coachman, who seems to have been worthy Timothy’s servant for many
-years, frequently comes in for a remark by reason of his excessive devotion
-to the barley bree:—“Oct. 8th, 1698. Payd John Coachman, in
-full of his half year’s wages, to be spent in ale, £2 6s. 6d. I paid him
-for his breeches (to be drunk,) in part of his wages, 6s.” “Paid to John
-Coachman, in part of his wages, to be fooled away in syder or lottery,
-5s.” “March 26th, 1710, I paid the saddler for John Coachman falling
-drunk off his box, when he was driving to Glynde, in part of his wages,
-£1 7s. 6d.” Rest well, honest Timothy, thy quaint pen is still, thy
-brewing days are over!</p>
-
-<p>In Dean Swift’s <i>Polite Conversations</i> we have the following amusing
-dialogue on the subject of
-<span class="nowrap">home-brew:―</span></p>
-
-<p><i>Lady Smart.</i> Pray, my lord, did you order the
-butler to bring <span class="xxpn" id="p060">{60}</span>
-up a tankard of our October to Sir John? I believe they stay to
-brew it.</p>
-
-<div class="dstagedirection"><i>The butler brings up the tankard
-to Sir John.</i></div>
-
-<p><i>Sir John Linger.</i> Won’t your ladyship please to drink first?</p>
-
-<p><i>Lady S.</i> No, Sir John; ’tis in a very good hand; I’ll pledge you.</p>
-
-<p><i>Col. Atwit</i> (to Lord Smart). My lord, I love October as well as Sir
-John; and I hope you won’t make fish of one and flesh of another.</p>
-
-<p><i>Smart.</i> Colonel, you’re heartily welcome. Come, Sir John, take it
-by word of mouth, and then give it to the Colonel.</p>
-
-<div class="dstagedirection"><i>Sir John drinks.</i></div>
-
-<p><i>Smart.</i> Well, Sir John, how do you like it?</p>
-
-<p><i>Sir J.</i> Not as well as my own in Derbyshire; ’tis plaguy small.</p>
-
-<p><i>Lady S.</i> I never taste malt liquor: but they say it is well hopp’d.</p>
-
-<p><i>Sir J.</i> Hopp’d? why if it had hopp’d a little further it would
-have hopp’d into the river. O, my lord, my ale is meat, drink, and
-cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.</p>
-
-<p><i>Lady S.</i> I was told ours was very strong.</p>
-
-<p><i>Sir J.</i> Ay, madam, strong of the water; I believe the brewer
-forgot the malt, or the river was too near him. Faith, it is mere whip-belly
-vengeance; he that drinks most has the worst share.</p>
-
-<p><i>Col.</i> I believe, Sir John, ale is as plenty as water at your house.</p>
-
-<p><i>Sir J.</i> Why, faith, at Christmas we have many comers and goers;
-and they must not be sent away without a cup of Christmas ale for fear
-they
-<span class="nowrap">should——</span></p>
-
-<p><i>Lady S.</i> I hear Sir John has the nicest garden in England; they
-say ’tis kept so clean that you can’t find a place where to spit.</p>
-
-<p><i>Sir J.</i> O, madam; you are pleased to say so.</p>
-
-<p><i>Lady S.</i> But, Sir John, your ale is terribly strong and heady in
-Derbyshire, and will soon make one drunk or sick; what do you then?</p>
-
-<p><i>Sir J.</i> Why, indeed, it is apt to fox one; but our way is to take a
-hair of the same dog next morning. I take a new-laid egg for breakfast;
-and faith one should drink as much after an egg as after an ox.</p>
-
-<p>Thompson, in his <i>Autumn</i>, makes reference to the strong October
-brew.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Nor wanting is the brown October, drawn</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mature and perfect from his dark retreat</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of thirty years; and now his honest front</span>
-<span class="spp00">Flames in the light refulgent, not afraid</span>
-<span class="spp00">Even with the vineyard’s best produce to vie.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p061">{61}</span></div>
-
-<p>Seldom, it may be imagined, even in the sphere of domestic brewing,
-has so small a “browst” been brewed as that described by Hone in his
-<i>Table Book</i> as having been made by Widow Wood, of Beckenham Alms
-House. She brewed with her ordinary cooking utensils, and the fireplace
-of her little room; a tin kettle served her for boiler, she mashed in
-a common butter-firkin, ran off the liquor in a “crock,” and tunned it
-in a small beer barrel. She thought that poor folk might do a great
-deal for themselves if they only knew how; “but,” said she, “where
-there’s a will there’s a way.”</p>
-
-<p>Among modern writers Christopher North has left perhaps the best
-description of what a modern private brewhouse should be. “We dare
-say,” he says, “that many personages who never in the whole course of
-their polished existences dreamed or thought of dreaming of brewing
-anything (except mischief), will shrug their shoulders at the idea of
-being introduced like his Majesty George the Third, at Whitbread’s,
-into an odorous brewhouse, redolent of wash, wort, grains, hops, yeast,
-and carbonic acid gas; peeping into pumps—tumbling into vats.
-Silence, good exquisite! and let us inform you—(but first take that
-cigar out of your mouth, or you will infallibly burn the carpet)—let us
-inform you that a <i>gentleman’s brewhouse</i>, like his greenhouse, his hothouse,
-his dairy, or even his cellar, <i>is no such unpleasant place</i>. No
-place, indeed, can be so that has anything of the rural about it. There
-is our own brewhouse at Buchanan Lodge; it might pass for a summer-house.
-We shall describe it to you. It stands, good reader (mark us
-well), at the back of the house, just at the edge of the little ravine or
-dell, and half hid by the laburnums. It is also separated from the other
-offices by a lowish beech hedge. Around, below, and opposite are
-growing the wild cherry, the tall chestnut, the sycamore, the fir, the
-thorn, and the bramble, which clothe the sides of the deep glen. From
-its chimneys, as soon as the soft March gales begin to blow, curls the
-white smoke before the hour of dawn. The fire within burns brightly.
-Everything is clean and ‘sweet as the newly-tedded hay.’ Precisely
-as six o’clock strikes we march forth—ay, even we, Christopher North—with
-our old fishing jacket and our apron on; our old velvet study-cap
-close about our ears, and our thermometer in our hand. The primroses
-are basking in the morning rays; the dewdrops are sparkling the
-last upon the leaves; the unseen violets are breathing forth sweets; the
-blackbird trills his mellow notes in the thicket; the wren twitters in
-the hedge; and the redbreast hops round the door. We enter. All is
-right. We try our heat. ‘Donald, a leetle more cold.
-That will do. <span class="xxpn" id="p062">{62}</span>
-In with the malt. Every grain, you hound.’ ‘Ech! Donald’s no the
-man to pench the maut.’ ‘Now stir, for life;’ and the active stirrer
-turns over and over the fragrant grain in the smoking liquid. All is
-covered up close, and the important mash (twelve bushels to the hogshead)
-is completed.</p>
-
-<p>“But of what sort of malt? ‘Another question for the swordsmen,’
-for of ‘malts’ there are as many flavours, almost, as of vintages. They
-who think that if malt be but sweet, mealy, and well crushed—that is
-all—know, begging their pardons, little of the matter. We have heard
-brewers, who thought themselves no fools, assert that the hops alone
-give the ale its flavour; and that the difference between pale and high
-dried malt is only in colour. They might as well have argued that the
-lemon gives all the flavour to punch! We, Christopher North, aver,
-that upon the degree of dryness which has been given to the malt, the
-distinguishing flavour of malt liquor mainly depends. The bitter principle
-of the hop is only the ground or substratum upon which the skilful
-brewer builds his peculiar flavour of beer. As more or less of hops
-is put in, no doubt the saccharine principle of the malt is subdued, or
-is suffered to predominate. But in malt there is, besides the mere sugar
-which it contains in common with so many other vegetables, a flavour
-peculiar to itself: and this is brought out and modified by the application
-of more or less of the great chemical agent, heat, to the malted
-barley. In short, fire makes malt more or less savoury, much as it
-makes a brandered fowl, or a mutton steak, or a toasted oaten cake,
-more or less savoury.”</p>
-
-<p>Countless receipts have been preserved for making, flavouring, and
-keeping home-brew from the days of the Saxon Leechbooks down to the
-present time. Some of the older ones were supposed to depend for
-their efficacy on supernatural intervention. “If the ale be spoilt,” says
-an old <i>Saxon Leechdom</i>, “take lupins, lay them on the four quarters of
-the dwelling, and over the door, and under the threshold, and under
-the ale-vat, put the wort (the herb) into the ale with holy water.”</p>
-
-<p>In a Scotch brewer’s instructions for Scotch ale, dated 1793, may be
-found a mystical note: “I throw a little dry malt, which is left on purpose,
-on the top of the mash, with a handful of salt, <i>to keep the witches
-from it</i>, and then cover it up.” Perhaps the idea that witches could
-spoil the ale by their evil charms gave rise to the phrase “water
-bewitched,” signifying very weak beer or other liquor.</p>
-
-<p>The plant, ale-cost (ground ivy), was, during the sixteenth and seventeenth
-centuries, used for “dispatching the maturation” of
-ale and beer. <span class="xxpn" id="p063">{63}</span>
-Gerard, in his <i>Herball</i> (1579), mentions the same plant under the name
-of ale-houve. “The women of our northern parts,” he says, “do tun
-the herb ale-houve into their ale, but the reason thereof I know not.”</p>
-
-<p>Our ancestors either must have had some means of very rapidly
-“maturing” their ale, or they must have been content to drink it unmatured;
-for it is recorded in the <i>Munimenta Academica Oxon.</i> that a
-brewer of Oxford was, in 1444, compelled to solemnly swear before the
-Chancellor that he would let his ale stand twelve hours to clear, before
-he carried it to hall or college for sale; and in London it was the
-custom to drink ale even newer, so much so, that on complaint being
-made, in the fourteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, that the brewers
-deliver ale and beer but two or three hours after it has been cleansed
-and tunned, an ordinance was made that the brewers should not deliver
-their liquors until eight hours after it had been tunned in the summer
-months, and six hours in the winter.</p>
-
-<p>Ivory shavings have been recommended for rapidly maturing beer,
-and it is related that a woman, who lived at Leighton Buzzard, in
-Bedfordshire, and had the best ale in the town, once told a gentleman
-she had drink just done working in the barrel, and that she would
-wager it was fine enough to drink out of a glass even before it was bunged.
-It was as she said, and the ivory shavings, that she boiled in the wort,
-were the cause of it.</p>
-
-<p>Among the many receipts given in old works for “recovering” ale
-or beer when it has turned sour, is one directing the housewife to put a
-handful or two of ground malt into the beer, stir it well together, which
-will make the beer work and become good again. In another receipt
-the brewer is directed to put a handful of oatmeal into a barrel of beer
-when first laid into the cellar, which will cause it to carry with it a
-quick and lively taste. The root of flower-de-luce or iris suspended
-in ale is said to be a specific against sourness.</p>
-
-<p>Another plan is to calcine oyster shells, beat them to powder with a
-like quantity of chalk, put them in a thin bag into the liquor,
-hanging it almost to the bottom, and in twenty-four hours the work will
-be effected. It may be suggested that in these cases prevention is better
-than cure—drink your beer while it is good, and do not give it an
-opportunity of getting sour. An old receipt for preserving small beer
-without the help of hops, is to mix a small quantity of treacle with a
-handful of wheat and bean flour and a little ginger, to knead the
-mixture to a due consistence, and put it into the barrel. “It has been
-a common observation,” said an old writer, “that both beer
-and ale are <span class="xxpn" id="p064">{64}</span>
-apt to be foul, disturbed, and flat in bean season; the same is observed
-of wines in the vintage countries. Thunder is also a spoiler of good
-malt liquor, to prevent the effects of which, laying a solid piece of iron
-on each cask has hitherto been esteemed an effectual prevention of the
-above injuries.” In some places, too, an iron pad fitting closely over the
-bunghole is used, and in others an iron tray answers the same purpose.
-An old receipt book contains the following remarkable directions for
-making forty sorts of ale out of one barrel of liquor.</p>
-
-<p>“Have ale of good body, and when it has worked well bottle it off,
-but fill not the bottles within three spoonfuls; then being ripe, as you
-use it, fill it up with the syrup of any fruit, root, flower, or herb you
-have by you for that purpose, or drop in chimical oyls or waters of
-them, or of spices, and with a little shaking the whole mass will be
-tinctured and taste pleasantly of what you put in; and so you may
-make all sorts of physical ales with little trouble, and no incumbrance,
-more healthful and proper than if herbs were soaked in it or drugs,
-which in the pleasant entertainment will make your friends wonder how
-you came by such variety on a sudden.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Thus much then, of home-brew; the subject is almost inexhaustible
-and pleasant withal, but the laws of space are inexorable, and forbid
-further tarrying. As Walter de Biblesworth quaintly
-<span class="nowrap">remarks:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Ceste matyre cy repose,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Parlom ore de autre chose.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p064.png"
- width="144" height="46" alt="" />
-</div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p065a.png" width="144" height="53" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p065">
-<span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> IV.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Then long may here the ale-charged Tankards shine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Long may the Hop plant triumph o’er the Vine.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Brasenose College Shrovetide
- Poem.</i></span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc"><div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">The Hop for his profit I thus do exalt.</span>
-<span class="spp00">It strengtheneth drink, and it favoureth Malt;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And being well brewed, long kept it will last,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And drawing abide—if ye draw not too fast.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Thomas Tusser.</i></span></div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>USE AND IMPORTANCE OF HOPS IN BEER: THEIR
-INTRO­DUC­TION AND HIS­TORY.&#x200a;—&#x200a;HOP-GROW­ERS’
-TROU­BLES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;MED­IC­INAL QUALITIES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ECO­NOM­I­CAL
-USES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;HOP-PICK­ERS.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="spdropcap"><img
-class="idropcap" src="images/p065b.png" width="221"
-height="225" alt="T" /></span>HE hops used in beer-brewing
-are the female flowers of the hop plant known to botanists
-as the <i>Humulus lupulus</i> of Linnæus. At first sight it may
-seem strange that hops and wolves should have anything in
-common, but it has been explained that the word <i>lupulus</i>
-comes from the name by which the Romans called the hop
-plant—<i>Lupus Salictarius</i>—the idea being that the hop was
-as destructive among the willows (where it grew) as a wolf
-among sheep. Though hops are now staple articles of a large
-commerce, and largely cultivated in England, America,
-Belgium, France, and our colonies, some few hundred years
-ago their valuable qualities were little known in this
-country.</p>
-
-<p>How, when, and where the flowers of the hop plant were first
-used to give to beer its delicious flavour and keeping
-qualities, is not <span class="xxpn" id="p066">{66}</span>
-accurately known. Pliny, in his <i>Natural History</i>, states that the
-Germans preserved ale with hops, and there is a Rabbinical tradition,
-referring to still earlier times, to the effect that the Jews, during their
-captivity in Babylon, found the use of hopped ale a protection against
-their old enemy, leprosy. In a letter of donations, the great King Pepin
-uses the word “Humuloria,” meaning hop gardens. Mesne, an
-Arabian physician, who wrote about the year 845, also mentions hops;
-and Basil Valentine, an alchemist of the 14th century, specifically refers
-to the use of the hop in beer. Dr. Thudichum, in his pamphlet,
-<i>Alcoholic Drinks</i>, tells us that in early days of beer production wild
-hops only were used, as is the practice at the present day in Styria, but
-that in some foreign countries the plant has been largely cultivated for
-nearly a thousand years. It is a well-known fact that in the eighth and
-ninth centuries, hop gardens, called Humuloria or Humuleta, existed in
-France and Germany.</p>
-
-<p>That the hop was known to the English before the Conquest in
-some form or other, is proved by the reference to the hymele, or hop
-plant, in the Anglo-Saxon version of the <i>Herbarium</i>, of Apuleius.
-Although no trace of the word hymele now remains in our every-day
-language, it is found in Danish as “humle,” and is only the English
-form of the Latin <i>humulus</i>. The <i>Herbarium</i> just mentioned contains
-a remarkable passage with reference to “hymele.” “This wort,” it says,
-“is to that degree laudable that men mix it with their usual drinks.”
-The usual drinks of the English were undoubtedly malt liquors, and
-this passage would go far to show that even in Saxon times the hop was
-used in English brewing. Cockayne, the learned editor of <i>Saxon
-Leechdoms</i>, is inclined to this opinion, and he instances in confirmation
-of it that special mention is made of the hedge-hymele, as though there
-existed at that time a cultivated hop from which it had to be
-distinguished; he also cites the name Hymel-tun, in Worcestershire
-(now Himbleton), which he states is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon deeds,
-and which could hardly have signified anything less than hop yard.
-The word <i>hopu</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, hops) also occurs in Saxon documents. <i>Ewe-hymele</i>
-is mentioned in <i>Saxon Leechdoms</i>, and would probably signify the
-female hop. In the year 822 there is a record that the millers of Corbay
-were freed by the abbot from all labours relating to hops, and a few
-years later hops are mentioned by Ludovicus Germanicus.</p>
-
-<p>The introduction of hops into England has been generally assigned
-to the early part of the sixteenth century. The old but unreliable
-distich, <span class="xxpn" id="p067">{67}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Hops, Reformation, bays and beer</span>
-<span class="spp00">Came into England all in one year,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn35" id="fnanc35">35</a></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">points to a period subsequent to 1520 as the time when the great
-improvement of adding hops to malt liquors was first practised in this
-country. This rhyme probably refers to the settling of certain
-Flemings in Kent, to be mentioned anon, which no doubt gave a great
-impulse to the use of hops; it cannot well refer to their first introduction,
-as they were known in England for many years previously
-and were used in beer-brewing nearly a century before the Reformation.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc">
-<a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc35" id="fn35">35</a>
-Two other versions are to be found:</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Hops
- and turkeys, carp and beer</span>
-<span class="spp00">Came into England all in one year;”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div>and</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Turkeys,
- carps, hops, pickerel, and beer</span>
-<span class="spp00">Came into England all in one year.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The couplets also err as to pickerel, which are mentioned in mediæval
-glossaries at a date long before the Reformation.</p></div>
-
-<p>In that curious old work the <i>Promptorium Parvulorum</i> (1440),
-which is, in fact, an old English-Latin dictionary, occur some passages
-which, when taken in conjunction with the London Records of a slightly
-later date, seem to show that the introduction of hops into English
-brewing (excepting their possible use in Saxon times) should be assigned
-to a period a little before the middle of the fifteenth century.</p>
-
-<p>The word “hoppe” is defined as “sede for beyre. Humulus
-secundum extraneos.” “Bere” is defined as “a drynke. Humulina,
-vel humuli potus, aut cervisia hummulina.” The inference to be drawn
-from these passages is that hops and beer, in the sense of hopped ale,
-were known in England some time previous to the year 1440. The
-compiler, however, shows by his definition of “bere” as a “drynke,”
-that the word required some explanation, for when he mentions
-“ale,” he simply gives the Latin equivalent, “cervisia.” He certainly
-regarded beer as an interloper, as shown by his note on ale, “Et nota
-bene quod est <i>potus Anglorum</i>.” Four years after the date of the
-publication of the Promptorium, William Lounde and Richard Veysey
-were appointed inspectors or surveyors of the “bere-bruers” of the City
-of London, as distinguished from the ale-brewers who were at this time
-a company governed by a master and wardens. Ten
-years later an <span class="xxpn" id="p068">{68}</span>
-ordinance for the government of the beer-brewers was sanctioned by the
-Lord Mayor. From this date the City Records contain frequent
-mention of the beer-brewers as distinct from the ale-brewers. However,
-beer, “the son of ale,” as an old writer calls it, did not rapidly attain
-popularity. Ten years after the date last referred to, the beer-brewers
-petitioned the Lord Mayor and “Worshipfull soveraignes the Aldermen”
-of the City of London, in these terms:—“To the full honourable
-Lord the Maire, etc. Shewen mekely unto youre good Lordshipp and
-maistershippes, the goode folke of this famous citee the which usen
-Bere-bruyng within the same, that where all mistiers and craftys of the
-sd citee have rules and ordenances by youre grete auctoritees for the
-common wele of this honourable citee made, and profite of the same
-craftys,” but the petitioners have none such rules, and therefore the
-citizens are liable to be imposed upon “in measure of barell, kilderkyns
-and firkyns, <i>and in hoppes and other greynes</i> the which to the said
-mistiere apperteynen. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. It is surmysed upon them that often
-tymes they make their bere of unseasonable malt the which is of little
-prise and unholsome for mannes body for their singular availe, forasmuch
-as the comon peple <i>for lacke of experience cannot know the
-perfitnesse of bere as wele as of the ale</i>,” the petitioners pray that certain
-regulations of the trade may be established by authority. Passing over
-another period of twenty years, during which the City Records contain
-nothing to show whether hops and beer advanced or declined in popularity,
-we find that in the first year of Richard III. a petition was
-presented to Lord Mayor Billesdon, by the Brewers’ Company,
-showing “that whereas by the sotill and crafty means of foreyns<a class="afnanc" href="#fn36" id="fnanc36">36</a>
-dwelling withoute the franchises .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. a deceivable and
-unholsome fete in bruyng of ale within the said citee nowe of late
-is founde and practised, that is to say, in occupying and puttyng of
-hoppes and other things in the said ale, contrary to the good and holesome
-manner of bruynge of ale of old tyme used, .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. to the great
-deceite and hurt of the King’s liege people. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Pleas it therefore
-your saide good lordshyppe to forbid the putting into ale of any hops,
-herbs, or any other like thing, but onely licour, malte and yeste.” The
-petition is granted and a penalty of 6s. 8d. is laid on every barrel of ale
-so brewed contrary to the ancient use. This early use
-of the technical <span class="xxpn" id="p069">{69}</span>
-term “licour,” or liquor, instead of water is noteworthy. We learn by
-a note in the Letter-book that the fine on putting hops into ale was
-shortly afterwards reduced to 3s. 4d. the barrel, while any other kind of
-adulteration is still to subject the offender to the full fine of 6s. 8d. It
-will have been observed that it is not the making of <i>beer</i> which is
-forbidden, but the putting of hops into <i>ale</i>, and selling the drink as ale.
-There is abundant evidence to show that beer continued to be made and
-sold with the sanction of the authorities, and that the beer-brewers,
-many of whom at this time were Dutchmen, practised a separate craft
-from that of the ale-brewers. Two years after the date of the last
-petition a regulation was made that no beer-brewer is to be “affered”
-(fined) more than 6s. 8d., nor an ale-brewer more than two shillings,
-for breaking the assize. The oath of the ale-searchers contains the
-following passage:—“Ye shall swear .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. to search and assay .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.
-that the ale be holsom, weell soden and able for mannes body, and
-made with none other stuff but only with holsom and clere ale-yest,
-watyr and malt, and such as you find unholsom for mannes body or
-brewed with any other thing except with watyr and malt, be it with
-rosen, <i>hoppes</i>, <i>bere-yest</i>, or any other craft, .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.” you shall duly report
-for punishment. In the same year it is recorded that the <i>beer-brewers</i>
-were ordered to use “gode clene, sweete, holsom greyne and <i>hoppes</i>,”
-and the rulers of the <i>beer-brewers</i> are to have powers of inspection
-of hops and other grains.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc36" id="fn36">36</a>
-A “foreyn” was one who was not a freeman of the City—no
-reference to nationality.</p></div>
-
-<p>Prosecutions for the use of hops were frequent, but they were for
-putting hops into <i>ale</i>, and not for brewing beer. In the twelfth year of
-Henry VII., John Barowe was presented by the wardens of the brewers
-because he brewed <i>ale</i> with <i>beer-yeast</i>, “<i>quod est corpori humano
-insalubre</i>.” Nine years later Robert Dodworth, brewer’s servant,
-confessed that he had brewed “a burthen of <i>ale</i> in the house of his
-master in Fleet Street with hops, contrary to the laws and laudable acts
-and customs of the city.” In the tenth year of Henry VIII., William
-Shepherd, brewer’s servant to Philip Cooper, “occupying the feat of
-bruing,” made a deposition that he had “once since Michaelmas last
-brewed <i>ale</i> with hops, but that his master knew not of it,” but that he
-had heard that other servants had brewed with hops, “and that was the
-cause why he brewed with hoppes, and more he would not say.” Philip
-Cooper, however, was evidently suspected, for in the same records we
-find that he was compelled to bring into the Court “a standing cup with
-a cover of gylt with three red hearts in the bottom of the cup to stand
-to the order of the Court touching the brewing with
-hoppes.” On <span class="xxpn" id="p070">{70}</span>
-payment of a fine of five shillings, his gage is ordered to be returned to him.
-Many other passages could be quoted from the City Records in support
-of the view that beer-brewing was not forbidden, but only the adulteration,
-as it was considered, of the old English ale with an admixture of
-hops. We have dwelt somewhat fully upon this part of the subject, as
-there appears to be an almost universal misconception as to the date of
-the introduction of hops into England, and as to their use having
-been for some time altogether prohibited by the law of the land.
-The only authority for this last mentioned idea, seems to be the statement
-of Fuller, in his <i>Worthies of England</i>, that hops were forbidden
-as the result of a petition which was presented in the time of Henry VI.
-against “the wicked weed called hops.” No statute to this effect is in
-existence, no record is to be found in the rolls of Parliament of any such
-petition, and the statement is in opposition to the evidence we have been
-able to collect on the subject.</p>
-
-<p>About the year 1524 a large number of Flemish immigrants settled
-in Kent, cultivated hops and brewed beer, and soon caused that county to
-become famous for its hop gardens and the excellence of their produce.
-To these strangers is perhaps due the chief credit of having enlightened
-the British mind on the subject of bitter beer, and their advent is
-probably the event pointed to in the old couplet already quoted.</p>
-
-<p>Among the numerous officials appointed to enforce the regulations
-of the City, were persons called hop-searchers, whose duty it was to
-search for defective hops, which, when found were burnt. Wriothesley’s
-Chronicle mentions that “on the 10th daie of September, 1551, was
-burned in Finsburie Field XXXI sacke and pokettes of hopps in the
-afternoune, being nought, and not holsome for man’s bodie, and condemned
-by an Act made by my Lord Maior and his bretheren the
-aldermen the 10th daie of September, at which court six comeners of
-the Cittie of London were apoynted to be serchers for a hole yeare for
-the said hopps; and they were sworne the fifth daie of this moneth and
-made search ymediatlie for the same.”</p>
-
-<p>The popular taste is not a thing to be changed in a day, and at that
-happy period of history when railways, penny posts, newspapers, stump
-orators and other nineteenth-century methods of enlightenment were
-unknown and undreamt of, it may well be understood that the knowledge
-of this great improvement spread but slowly. Not only were the
-English slow to appreciate what the Flemings had done for them, but
-they believed that they were like to be poisoned by the new-fangled
-drink which was not in their eyes to be compared to
-the sweet and <span class="xxpn" id="p071">{71}</span>
-thick, but honest and unsophisticated English ale. The writers of the
-day are loud in their abuse of beer. In the passages from Andrew Boorde’s
-<i>Dyetary</i> (1542), quoted in Chapter I. (p. 6), ale is described as being
-the natural drink of Englishmen, and made of malt and water, while
-beer, which is composed of malt, hops, and water, is the natural drink
-of a Dutchman, and of late is much used in England, to the great
-detriment of many Englishmen. There is a truly insular ring about
-this. We should like to enlighten old Andrew’s darkness by a draught
-of sparkling Burton. Boorde undoubtedly expresses the popular opinion
-of the period, for from Rastall’s <i>Book of Entries</i> we learn that an ale-man
-brought his action against his Brewer for spoiling his ale, by putting
-in it a certain <i>weed</i> called a <i>hopp</i>, and recovered damages. Even Harry
-the Eighth, who of all our kings was the greatest lover of good things—and
-a few bad ones—was blind to the merits of the hop, and enjoined
-the Royal brewer of Eltham that he put neither hops nor brimstone into
-the ale. Possibly sulphuring, of which a word or two anon, was then
-in use; we cannot otherwise account for the mention of brimstone.
-This was in 1530, only six years after the Flemings had settled in
-Kent.</p>
-
-<p>Abused by medical writers as drink only fit for Dutchmen, objected
-to by the king, and disliked by the majority of the people, the song-writers
-of the day, of course, had a good deal to say against the new
-drink. In the <i>High and Mightie Commendation of the Virtue of a Pot
-of Good Ale</i>, it is hardly surprising to find the following
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And in very deed, the hops but a weed</span>
-<span class="spp01">Brought over ’gainst law, and here set to sale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Would the law were removed, and no more Beer brewed,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But all good men betake them to a pot of good ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
- <span class="sppctr"><img
- class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But to speak of killing, that am I not willing,</span>
-<span class="spp01">For that in a manner were but to rail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Beer hath its name ’cause it brings to the Bier,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Therefore well fare, say I, to a pot of good ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Too many, I wis, with their deaths proved this,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And therefore (if ancient records do not fail)</span>
-<span class="spp00">He that first brewed the hop, was rewarded with a rope,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And found his Beer far more bitter than Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p072">{72}</span></div>
-
-<p>The ale-wives and brewers, however, were wiser than their customers,
-and, induced also by the fact that their hopped ale went not
-sour as of yore, stuck to their colours—nailed to a hop pole no doubt—and
-slowly but surely educated the taste of the people. It was, however,
-a long process.</p>
-
-<p>Henry, in his <i>History of England</i>, vol. 6, referring to the Scottish
-diet about the end of the sixteenth century,
-<span class="nowrap">writes:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“<i>Ale</i> and gascony wines were the principal liquors; but mead,
-cyder, and perry were not uncommon. Hops were still scarce, and
-seldom employed in <i>Ale</i>, which was brewed therefore in small quantities,
-to be drunk while new. At the King’s table <i>Ale</i> was prohibited as
-unfit for use till <i>five days old</i>.”</p>
-
-<p>From a whimsical old book, entitled <i>Wine, Beer, Ale, and Tobacco,
-a dialogue</i>, in which the two leading malt liquors of the day (1630)
-converse, and give their own views on the subject, it appears that even
-as late as the seventeenth century beer was little known in country
-districts, though popular in London.</p>
-
-<p>Beer is introduced making a pun on his own name; he says to
-Wine, “Beere leave, sir.” The chief points in Ale’s argument, which
-is better than that of any of the others, are contained in the following
-passage:—“You, Wine and Beer, are fain to take up a corner anywhere—your
-ambition goes no farther than a cellar; the whole house where
-I am goes by my name, and is called Ale-house. Who ever heard of a
-Wine-house, or a Beer-house? My name, too, is, of a stately etymology—you
-must bring forth your latin. Ale, so please you, from alo, which
-signifieth nourish—I am the choicest and most luscious of potations.”
-Wine, Beer, and Ale at last compose their differences, each having a
-certain dominion assigned to him, and join in singing these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Wine.—I, generous Wine am for the court.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Beer.—The citie call for Beere.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale.—But Ale, bonnie Ale, like a lord of the soile.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">In the country shall domineere.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Chorus.—Then let us be merry, wash sorry away,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Wine, Beer and Ale shall be drunk this day.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In the end Tobacco appears—He arrogates an equality
-with Wine—“You and I both come out of a pipe.” The reply
-is, “Prithee go smoke elsewhere.” “Don’t incense me,
-don’t inflame Tobacco,” he retorts; but is told, “No
-one fears your puffing—turn over a new <i>leaf</i>, Tobacco,
-most high and mighty Trinidado.” <span class="xxpn"
-id="p073">{73}</span></p>
-
-<p>In an old play printed a few years later (1659) it is indicated that
-ale was still generally made without
-<span class="nowrap">hops:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Ale is immortal:</span>
-<span class="spp01">And, be there no stops</span>
-<span class="spp00">In bonny lads quaffing,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Can live without hops.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>If Defoe’s statement on the subject, in his <i>Tour Through Great
-Britain</i>, is correct, it must, indeed, have been many years before the
-use of hops made any headway in the northern portions of the kingdom.
-“As to the North of England,” he writes, “they formerly used but few
-Hops there, their Drink being chiefly pale smooth ale, which required
-no hops; and consequently they planted no hops in all that part of
-England North of Trent. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. But as for some years past, they not
-only brew great quantities of Beer in the North, but also use hops in
-the brewing of their ale, much more than they did before, so they all
-come south of Trent to buy their hops.”</p>
-
-<p>In the reign of Edward VI., by the Statute 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 5
-(repealed 5 Eliz. c. 2), it was enacted that all land formerly in tillage
-should again be cultivated, excepting “land set with saffron or
-hops.” This is, we believe, the first mention of hops in the Statute
-book. The next Act on the subject was one passed in 1603, by which
-regulations were made for the curing of hops, which process had thenceforward
-to be carried out under the inspection of the officers of excise.
-From a petition presented by the Brewers’ Company to Lord Burleigh,
-a few years previously (1591), we learn that the price of hops was then
-£3 16s. 8d. to £4 10s. 6d. per cwt., instead of 6s. 8d. as formerly, and
-was, the Brewers said, in quality well worth three hundredweight of
-those sold at that time. Hops were evidently coming into favour. We
-gather from an old receipt that about the end of the century, Beer was
-made with “40 lbs. of hoppeys to 40 qrs. of grain.”</p>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p074a.png" width="609" height="398" alt="
- A Perfite Platform of a Hoppe Garden. &#x7c;
-
- Of ramming of Poales. &#x7c;
-
- “Then with a peece of woode as bigge belowe as the great
- ende of one of youre Poales, ramme the earth that lieth at
- the outsyde of the Poale.”" />
-
-<img src="images/p074b.png" width="609" height="333" alt="
- Cutting Hoppe Rootes. &#x7c;
-
- “When you pull downe your hylles .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. you
- should undermine them round about.”" />
-
-<img src="images/p074c.png" width="609" height="377" alt="
- Of Tying of Hoppes to the Poales. &#x7c;
-
- “When your hoppes are growne about one or two foote high,
- bynde up (with a rushe or grasse) such as decline from the
- Poales, wynding them as often about the same Poales as you
- can, and directing them alwayes according to the course of
- the Sunne.”" /></div></div><!--dfullpgimg-->
-
-<p>About the earliest English work on the culture of hops is an old
-black-letter pamphlet published in 1574 “at the Signe of the Starre, in
-Paternoster Rowe.” It is entitled, “<i>A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe
-Garden</i>, and necessarie instructions for the making and mayntenance
-thereof, with notes and rules for reformation of all abuses, commonly
-practised therein, very necessary and expedient for all men to have,
-which in any wise have to doe with hops.” The author was one
-Reynolde Scot, and the little volume is adorned with quaint illustrations,
-and tastefully designed initial letters. The work
-is dedicated to <span class="xxpn" id="p075">{75}</span>
-“Willyam Lovelace Esquire, Sergeaunt at the Lawe,” whom the author
-desires to accompany him in a consideration of “a matter of profite, or
-rather with a poynt of good Husbandrie, (in aparance base and
-tedious, but in use necessarie and commodious, and in effect pleasant
-and profitable) (that is to saye) to look downe into the bowels of your
-grounde, and to seeke about your house at Beddersden (which I see you
-desire to garnish with many costly commodities) for a convenient plot
-to be applyed to a Hoppe Garden, to the furtherance and accomplishing
-whereof, I promyse and assure you, the labour of my handes, the
-assistance of my advise, and the effect of myne experience.”</p>
-
-<p>This little work is recommended to the reader (the recommendation
-covers four pages) more particularly “as a recompence to the
-labourer, as a commoditie to the house-keeper, as a comfort to the
-poor, and as a benefite to the Countrie or Commonwealth, adding
-thus much hereunto, that there cannot lightly be employed grounde to
-more profitable use, nor labour to more certain gaynes; howbeit,
-with this note, that no mysterie is so perfect, no floure so sweete,
-no scripture so holy, but by abuse a corrupt body, ascending to his
-venomous nature, may draw poyson out of the same, and therefore
-blame not this poore trade for that it maketh men riche in yielding
-double profite.” The author goes on to say that it grieves him to see how
-“the Flemings envie our practise herein” and declare English hops to
-be bad, so that they may send the more into England. From this it
-would seem clear that at all events foreign hops were extensively used
-in English beer at that date, and English hop gardens by no means
-common. Scot, who must have been a man of common sense, gives
-good advice to intending hop growers. They are to consider three things:
-“First, whether you have, or can procure unto yourself, any grounde
-good for that purpose” (<i>i.e.</i>, the cultivation of hops). “Secondly, of the
-convenient standing thereof. Thirdly, of the quantitie. And this I
-saye by the way, if the grounde you deale withall, be not your own
-enheritance, procure unto your selfe some certayne terme therein, least
-another man reape the fruite of your traveyle and charge.”</p>
-
-<p>From the epilogue, which concludes with a tremendous denunciation
-of those who allow strangers from beyond the seas to bring into the
-country that which we ought to grow ourselves, we cull the following
-quaint passage:</p>
-
-<p>“There will some smell out the profitable savour of this herbe,
-some wyll gather the fruit thereof, some will make a sallet therewith
-(which is good in one respect for the bellye, and in
-another for the <span class="xxpn" id="p076">{76}</span>
-Purse), and when the grace and sweetenesse hereof conceived, some will
-dippe their fingers therein up to the knuckles, and some will be glad to
-licke the Dishe, and they that disdayne to be partakers hereof, commonly
-prove to be such as have mountaynes in fantasie, and beggary in
-possession.”</p>
-
-<p>Reynolde Scot’s pamphlet is most complete in the directions it gives
-concerning hop-growing, and, strange to say, the system of cultivation
-seems little changed since then. The author levels the following
-remarks at the heads of those who might, yet will not, grow hops:—
-“Methinks I might aptlye compare such men as have grounde fitte for
-this purpose, and will not employ it accordingly, to ale-house knightes,
-partly for the small devotion which both the one and the other have
-unto Hoppes, but especially for that many of these ale knights havyng
-good drinke at home of their owne, can be content to drinke moore
-abroade at an ale-house, so they may sit close by it. Let them
-expounde this comparison that buy their hoppes at Poppering, and may
-have them at home with more ease, and lesse charge.”</p>
-
-<p>Honest old Thomas Tusser, in his “<i>Five Hundred Points of Good
-Husbandry</i>” (1580), has a good deal to say about hops. He gives a
-charmingly quaint but very practical “lesson where and when to plant
-a good hop-yard.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Whom fancy persuadeth among other cropps</span>
-<span class="spp00">To have for his spending, sufficient of hopps,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Must willingly follow, of choyses to chuse;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Such lessons approved, as skilful do use.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ground gravely, sandly, and mixed with clay</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is naughty for hops, any maner of way,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or if it be mingled with rubbish and stone,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For drienes and barrennes, let it alone.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Chuse soile for the hop of the rottenest mould</span>
-<span class="spp00">Well donged and wrought as a garden plot should,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Not far from the water (but not overflowne)</span>
-<span class="spp00">This lesson well noted is meete to be knowne.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Sunne in the South, or els southly by west,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is joye to the hop as a welcomed gest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But wind in the North, or els northely and east,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To hop is as ill as fray in a feast.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p077">{77}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Meete plot for a hopyard, once found as is told,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Make thereof accompt, as of jewell of gold,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Now dig it, and leave it the sunne for to burne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And afterwards fence it to serve for that turn.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Among the directions for good husbandry for the various months,
-Tusser advises
-<span class="nowrap">that―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">In March at the furdest, drye season or wet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hope rootes so well chosen, let skilful go set,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The goeler<a class="afnanc" href="#fn37" id="fnanc37">37</a>
-and younger, the better I love</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wel gutted<a class="afnanc" href="#fn38" id="fnanc38">38</a>
-and pared, the better they prove.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some layeth them crosewise, along in the ground,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As high as the knee, they do come up round.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some pricke up a sticke, in the midds of the same:</span>
-<span class="spp00">That little round hillocke, the better to frame!</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some maketh a hollownes, halfe a foote deepe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With fower sets in it, set slant wise a steepe</span>
-<span class="spp00">One foote from another, in order to lye,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And thereon a hillock, as round as a pye.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
- <span class="sppctr">
- <img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">By willows that groweth, thy hopyard without,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And also by hedges, thy meadowes about,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Good hop hath a pleasure, to climbe and to spread:</span>
-<span class="spp00">If sonne may have passage to comfort her hed.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc37" id="fn37">37</a>
-goeler&#x200a;=&#x200a;goodlier.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc38" id="fn38">38</a>
-gutted&#x200a;=&#x200a;taken off from the old roots.</p></div>
-
-<p>The process of setting the hop-poles is thus
-<span class="nowrap">described:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Get into thy hopyard with plentie of poles,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Amongst those same hillocks deuide them by doles,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Three poles to a hillock (I pas not how long)</span>
-<span class="spp00">Shall yield thee more profit, set deeplie and strong.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Care must be taken to weed and to fence the hop
-<span class="nowrap">garden:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Grasse, thistle and mustard seede, hemlock and bur,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Tine, mallow and nettle, that keepe such a stur,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With peacock and turkie, that nibbles off top,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Are verie ill neighbors to seelie poore hop.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
- <span class="sppctr">
- <img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" />
- <span class="xxpn" id="p078">{78}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">If hops do looke brownish, then are ye to slow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If longer ye suffer, those hops for to growe.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Now, sooner ye gather, more profite is found,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If weather be faier, and deaw of ye ground.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Not break of, but cut of, from hop the hop string,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Leave growing a little, again for to spring.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whos hil about pared, and therewith new clad,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That nurrish more sets, against March to be had.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Hop hillock discharged, of every set</span>
-<span class="spp00">See then without breaking, ecche poll ye out get,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which being betangled, above in the tops:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Go carry to such, as are plucking of hops.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>We have quoted rather largely from Tusser’s poem, thinking that it
-may interest hop-growers of the present day.</p>
-
-<p>Reynolde Scot’s appeal was not in vain, for in 1608 there is no doubt
-that hop plantations were fairly abundant, though the plant was not
-sufficiently cultivated for home consumption. In that year an Act was
-passed against the importation of spoilt hops. Until 1690, however, the
-greater part of supply was drawn from abroad, and then, to encourage
-home production, a duty of twenty shillings per cwt. over and above all
-other charges, was put upon those imported. Walter Blith, writing in
-1643, speaks of hops as a “national commoditie.” In 1710, the duty of
-a penny per lb. was imposed upon all hops reared in England, and
-threepence on foreign hops. In subsequent years slight variations were
-made in the amount of the duty, and finally it was abolished, when hop-grounds
-at once began to increase.</p>
-
-<p>When the duty was high, and hops scarce, substitutes for <i>Humulus
-lupulus</i> were experimented with, among others, pine and willow bark,
-cascarilla bark, quassia, gentian, colocynth, walnut leaf, wormwood
-bitter, extract of aloes, cocculus indicus berries, capsicum, and others too
-numerous to mention, picric acid being perhaps the most modern.
-None of these have been found to be an equivalent for the hop, lacking
-its distinct and independent elements of activity.</p>
-
-<p>So far we have treated solely of the somewhat chequered history
-of the hop. Let us now consider its merits and uses. Thus sang
-the
-<span class="nowrap">poet:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Lo! on auxiliary Poles, the Hops</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ascending spiral, rang’d in meet array:
- <span class="xxpn" id="p080">{80}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Lo! how the arable with Barley-Grain</span>
-<span class="spp00">Stands thick, o’er-shadow’d to the thirsty hind</span>
-<span class="spp00">Transporting
- <span class="nowrap">prospect!—<i>These,———</i></span></span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>————infus’d an auburn Drink compose</i></span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>Wholesome of Deathless Fame.</i></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p079a.png" width="606" height="549" alt="
-A Perfite Platform of a Hoppe Garden. &#x7c;
-
-Training the Hoppe. &#x7c;
-
-“It shall not be amisse nowe and then to passe through your
-Garden, having in eche Hande a forked wande, directyng
-aright such Hoppes as decline from the Poales.”" /></div>
-
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p079b.png" width="606" height="474" alt="
-Gathering the Hoppe. &#x7c;
-
-“Cutte them” (the hop stalkes) “a sunder wyth a sharpe
-hooke, and wyth a forked staffe take them from the
-Poales.”" /></div></div>
-
-<p>But from poets we do not, as a rule, gather much practical information,
-except from such as worthy old Tusser. Harrison, in his
-description of England, says: “The continuance of the drinke is alwaie
-determined after the quantitie of the hops, so that being well hopped it
-lasteth longer.” A modern writer puts it thus: “The principal use of
-hops in brewing is for the preservation of malt liquor, and to communicate
-to it an agreeably aromatic bitter flavour. The best are used for
-ale and the finer kinds of malt liquor, and inferior kinds are used for
-porter.”</p>
-
-<p>“Brew in October and hop it for long keeping,” was the excellent
-advice given by Mortimer. Dr. Luke Booker, in his sequel poem to
-the Hop Garden, of course devotes some lines to this
-<span class="nowrap">subject:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Hop’s potent essence, Ale.——bring hither, Boy!</span>
-<span class="spp00">That smiling goblet, from the cask just brimmed</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where floats a pearly star. By it inspired,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No purple wine—no Muse’s aid I ask,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To nerve my lines and bid them smoothly flow.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">And in another
-<span class="nowrap">place:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp07">Then whencesoever the Hop,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That flavouring zest and spirit to my cask</span>
-<span class="spp00">Imparts, preservative—a needless truth</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twere to reveal. There are, whose accurate taste</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will tell the region where it mantling grew.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>In relation to his allusion to a “pearly star,” Dr. Booker tells us
-that, “When ale is of sufficient strength and freshness, there will always
-float a small cluster of minute pearl-like globules in the centre of the
-drinking vessel, till the spirit of the liquor is evaporated.”</p>
-
-<p>Hops are an essential to the brewer, not only keeping the beer and
-giving it an exquisite flavour, but also assisting, if we may be pardoned
-for using a technical term in a work intended to be anything but
-technical, to break down the fermentation.</p>
-
-<p>Hops are valuable according as they contain much or little of a
-yellow powder called lupuline, and technically known as “condition,”
-which is deposited in minute yellow adhesive
-globules underneath the <span class="xxpn" id="p081">{81}</span>
-bracts of the flower tops, and amounts to from 20 per cent. to 30 per
-cent. of the dry hops. This powder has a powerful aromatic smell, and
-is bitter to the taste. It contains hop resin, bitter acid of hops (flavour
-familiar to bitter beer drinkers), tannic acid, and hop oils, the chemical
-composition of which is not accurately known. Hops contain most
-lupuline when the flower is fully matured. Year-old hops only
-command about half the price of new. Those two years old are called
-“old-olds,” and are still less valuable. After having been five years in
-store they are worthless to brewers. Nearly all hops intended to be
-kept are more or less (the less the better) subjected to the fumes of
-sulphur, which, oxidising the essential oil, converts it into valerianic
-acid, and combines with the sulphur to form a solid body. Thus the
-oil, which would otherwise be the cause of mould, is destroyed, and
-the hops can be kept. We believe it is the practice of the best
-brewers to use a mixture of new and old hops, the latter being
-slightly sulphured, so slightly, indeed, that the smell of the sulphur
-cannot be detected.</p>
-
-<p>Much has been written on the injurious effects of sulphuring, both
-to the fermentation and the health of beer-drinkers, and some people
-have very strong views on the subject. In 1855 a commission, which
-included Liebig among its members, was appointed by the Bavarian
-Government to inquire into the matter. After experiments which
-lasted over a period of two years, a report was issued in which it was
-stated that in the opinion of the commissioners, sulphuring was beneficial
-to the hops, and in no way prejudicial to the fermentation. In
-1877, a method was made known of preserving hops without sulphur.
-The oil which prevents the hops from keeping was separated from them
-by a chemical process, and bottled. The hops were then pressed and
-kept in the usual way. When required for brewing, the hops and oil
-could again be united by adding ten or twelve drops of the latter to
-every twenty-two gallons of beer. This system does not seem to have
-found favour with hop merchants.</p>
-
-<p>Aloes have occasionally been used to restore decayed hops, though
-with such poor success that we should hardly think the experiment
-was often repeated. Professor Bradly, a Cambridge professor of
-botany, wrote as follows:—“I cannot help taking notice here of a
-method which has been used to stale and decayed hops, to make them
-recover their bitterness, which is to unbag them, and sprinkle them
-with aloes and water, which, I have known, has spoiled great quantities
-of drink about London; for even where the water, the
-malt, the brewer, <span class="xxpn" id="p082">{82}</span>
-and the cellars are each good, a bad hop will spoil all: so that every
-one of these particulars should be well chosen before brewing, or else
-we must expect a bad account of our labour.”</p>
-
-<p>The age of hops is known by their appearance, odour, and feel. New
-unsulphured hops, for instance, when rubbed through the hand feel oily.
-In their first year they are of a bright green colour, have an aromatic
-smell and the lupuline is a bright yellow. In the second year they get
-darker, have a slightly cheesy odour, and the lupuline becomes a golden
-yellow. In the third year the lupuline is a dark yellow, the smell being
-about the same as in the second year.</p>
-
-<p>In the hedges about Canton is found a variety of hop growing wild.
-It has been named the <i>Humulus Japonicus</i>. “Although this species,”
-says Seemann, in his <i>Botany of the Voyage of H.M.S. Herald</i>, “was
-published many years ago by Von Siebold and Zuccarini, we still find
-nearly all our systematic works asserting that there is only <i>one</i>
-species of Humulus, as there seems to be only one species of Cannabis.
-This, however, is a very good species, at once distinguished from the
-common Hop by the entire absence of those resinous spherical glands,
-with which the scales of the imbricated heads of the latter are scattered,
-and to which they owe their value in the preparation of beer, making
-the substitution of the one for the other for economical purposes an
-impossibility.”</p>
-
-<p>So much then for the first and principal use of hops—and yet a few
-lines more on the same subject; from Christopher Smart’s poem of the
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Hop Garden</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp17">Be it so.</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Ceres, rural Goddess, at the best</span>
-<span class="spp00">Meanly supports her vot’ry, enough for her</span>
-<span class="spp00">If ill-persuading hunger she repell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And keep the soul from fainting: to enlarge,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To glad the heart, to sublimate the mind</span>
-<span class="spp00">And wing the flagging spirits to the sky,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Require the united influence and aid</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of Bacchus, God of Hops, with Ceres joined,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis he shall generate the buxom beer.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>But hops have other uses than the generation of “the buxom beer.”
-The discovery, which we consider an important one, was made a few
-years back that hop-bine makes excellent ensilage.
-The subject was <span class="xxpn" id="p083">{83}</span>
-first mentioned, so far as we know, in a letter to <i>The Field</i> of December
-6th, 1884, from A. L., probably, agent to H. A. Brassey, Esq., of
-Aylesford. The writer gave an account of the opening of a silo, in one
-compartment of which had been placed eight tons of hop-bines, in the
-beginning of the previous September. An account of the experiment
-was also sent by a visitor at the farm, from whose letter the following
-extract seems to us well worth perusal:—“The hop-bine is at present an
-entirely waste material, except for littering purposes; and not a few of
-the local farmers were anxious to see how it would turn out, and
-whether stock would eat the hop-bine ensilage or not. No experiment
-could be more satisfactory. The apparent condition and smell of a
-great deal of it was even superior to that of several of the other
-varieties; and when a bag of it was taken to the homestead and offered
-to some fattening steers, which had been well fed just before, and were
-not in the least hungry, they devoured it with great alacrity, and
-seemed heartily to enjoy the new food; consequently this will be good
-news to hop-growers.”</p>
-
-<p>Early in ’85, the following important letter on the subject appeared
-in the <i>Kentish Gazette</i>, from Mr. T. M. Hopkins, Lower Wick,
-<span class="nowrap">Worcester:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“Having learnt from Mr. Seymour, agent to H. A. Brassey, Esq., that
-hop-bine made first-rate ensilage, last Oct. I made two stacks of it 16ft.
-by 16ft., and 18ft. high. After letting it ferment freely, I pressed down
-with Reynolds and Co.’s patent screw press, and next day filled up
-again; and, when sufficiently fermented, again pressed down, and this
-lasted all through the hop-picking. I have now used nearly the whole
-of it, and calculate that it has saved me some 80 tons of hay; no more
-hop-bine do I waste in future as I have hitherto done. My horses have
-had nothing else for two months, excepting their usual allowance of
-corn, and I never had them looking better. I have also had 100 head
-of cattle, stores, cows, and calves feeding on it for a fortnight, and they
-do well. Dr. Voelcker, chemist to the R.A.S.E., who has analysed it,
-says: ‘It has plenty of good material in it, and is decidedly rich in
-nitrogen, nor is the amount of acid excessive or likely to harm cattle.’
-Another analyst, Mr. W. E. Porter, F.C.S., says: ‘It contains more
-flesh-forming matter and less indigestible fibre than hay dried at 212.’
-Planters should leave off growing hops to sell at present average prices,
-40s. to 50s., which is a dead loss. Let the plant run wild, and they
-may every season cut two or three immense crops of material that will
-make ensilage
-of unexceptionable quality.” <span class="xxpn" id="p084">{84}</span></p>
-
-<p>To this there is little we can add.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn39" id="fnanc39">39</a>
-The importance of the subject is
-evident. We may, however, express a hope that hop-growers will not
-act on Mr. Hopkins’ suggestion, and only grow hops for the sake of the
-bine—English hops are too good for that. We have spoken of hop-bine
-ensilage as a discovery, but French farmers have for years mixed
-green hop-leaves with their cows’ food, under the belief, rightly or
-wrongly we know not, that it increases the flow of milk. Possibly in
-the far past hops were cultivated as fodder, and even used as ensilage.
-Silos we know were used anciently, though only recently re-introduced
-owing principally to the attention called to them in <i>The Field</i> and the
-agricultural journals.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc39" id="fn39">39</a>
-In a letter with which we have recently been favoured by Mr.
-Hopkins, that gentleman says: “I have every reason to believe in the
-great value of Hop-Bine Ensilage .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. milking-cows do well with
-it, and it does not affect the flavour of the milk.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The stem of the hop contains a vegetable wax, and sap from which
-can be made a durable reddish brown. Its ash is used in the manufacture
-of Bohemian glass; and it also makes excellent pulp for paper.
-From its fibres ropes and coarse textile fabrics of considerable strength
-have been made. The Van de Schelldon process of cloth-making from
-the stem of the hop, invented, we believe, in 1866, is shortly as follows:
-The stalks are cut, done up in bundles, and steeped like hemp. After
-steeping they are dried in the sun. They are then beaten with mallets
-to loosen the fibres, which are afterwards carded and woven in the usual
-way. It is from the thicker stems that ropes can be made.</p>
-
-<p>Several patents have been taken out for manufacturing paper from
-hops. One taken out by a Mr. Henry Dyer was for paper made of
-fresh or spent hops, or spent malt, alone or combined with other
-materials. In 1873 a meeting of paper-makers was held in France,
-before whom was exhibited a textile material made from the bark of
-the hop-stalk, the outer skin being removed and subjected to chemical
-treatment. It was in long pieces, and supple and delicate of texture.</p>
-
-<p>About ten years ago it was announced, in a journal devoted to
-photography, that an infusion of hops, mixed with pyrogallic acid,
-albumen of eggs, and filtered in the ordinary way, could be used as a
-preservative for the plates then in use by photographers. Plates preserved
-with this, dried hard with a fine gloss, and yielded negatives of
-very high quality. A mixture of beer and albumen
-was formerly used <span class="xxpn" id="p085">{85}</span>
-for the same purpose, but owing to the varying quality and properties
-of the beer, was very uncertain in its action.</p>
-
-<p>The root of the hop is not without its uses, containing starchy
-substances which can be made into glucose and alcohol. It also contains
-a certain amount of tannin, which, it has been suggested, might be
-used with advantage in tanneries.</p>
-
-<p>Until recently trumpeted forth in the advertisements of a certain
-patent medicine, it was not generally known outside the medical profession
-that hops possessed medicinal qualities of considerable value. Old
-medical writers, however, must have changed their views on the subject
-within a hundred years after the time of Andrew Boorde, from whose
-works we have already quoted a few lines. Wm. Coles, Herbalist, in
-his <i>History of Plants</i>, published in 1657, states that certain preparations
-of hops are cures for about half the ills that flesh is heir to.
-Another old writer declares the young shoots of the hop, eaten like
-asparagus, to be very wholesome and effectual to loosen the body (the
-poorer classes in some parts of Europe still eat the young hops as a
-vegetable); the head and tendrils good to purify the blood in the scurvy
-and most other cutaneous diseases (which scurvy is not), and the
-decoctions of the flower and syrup thereof useful against pestilential
-fevers. Juleps and apozems are also prepared with hops for hypochondriacal
-and hysterical affections; and a pillow stuffed with hops is used
-to induce sleep. This last method, by the way, was taken advantage of
-by the medical advisers of George III. That unfortunate king, when in
-a demented condition, always slept on a pillow so prepared. Another
-writer tells us that the Spaniards were in the habit of boiling a pound of
-hop roots in a gallon of water, reducing it to six pints, and drinking
-half a pint when in bed of a morning, under the belief that it possessed
-the same qualities as sarsaparilla. Dr. Brooks, in his <i>Dispensatory</i>,
-published in 1753, concurs with the older writers on the subject.</p>
-
-<p><i>Observations and Experiments on the Humulus Lupulus of
-Linnæus, with an account of its use in Gout and other Diseases</i>,
-is the title of a pamphlet by a Mr. Freake, of Tottenham Court Road,
-published in 1806. The author states that a patient of his, who was in
-want of a bitter tincture, found all the usual remedies disagree with
-him, and after numerous unsatisfactory experiments, fell back upon a
-preparation of hops, which appeared to answer its purpose. This led
-Mr. Freake to try further experiments with the hop, when he came to
-the conclusion that it was an excellent remedy for relieving the pains of
-gout, acting sometimes when opium failed. <span class="xxpn" id="p086">{86}</span></p>
-
-<p>Hops have also been employed with good effect in poultices. Dr.
-Trotter, in one of his medical works, quotes a letter from an assistant of
-Dr. Geach, once senior surgeon of the Royal Hospital at Plymouth, in
-which the writer says that he had during six months experimented with
-hops, and found that a poultice made of a strong decoction of hops, oatmeal,
-and water was an excellent remedy for ulcers, which should first
-be fomented with the decoction.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Paris, writing of the hop about the year 1820, says, “It is now
-generally admitted that they constitute the most valuable ingredient in
-malt liquors. Independently of the flavour and tonic virtues which they
-communicate, they precipitate, by means of their astringent principle,
-the vegetable mucilage, and thus remove from the beer the active principle
-of its fermentation; without hops, therefore, we must either drink
-our malt liquors new and ropy, or old and sour.”</p>
-
-<p>In the introduction to Murray’s <i>Handbook of Kent</i> it is stated that
-invalids are occasionally recommended to pass whole days in hop
-grounds as a substitute for the usual exhibition of Bass or Allsopp. In
-hop gardens the air is no doubt impregnated with lupuline, so there
-may be something in this.</p>
-
-<p>At the present day lupuline is often used in medicine. Lupuline
-was the name given by Ives to the yellow dust covering the female
-flower of hops. Later, Ives, Chevallier, and Pellatau gave that name,
-not to the dust, but to the bitter principle it contains. The recognized
-preparations of hops are an infusion, a tincture, and an extract. They
-are stomachic, tonic, and soporific. Dr. John Gardner, in one of his
-works on medicine, says that “bitter ale, or the lupuline in pills which
-it forms by simply rubbing between the fingers and warming, are the
-best forms for using hops in dyspepsia and feeble appetite, which they
-will often relieve.” The lupuline powder is easily separated from the
-hops by means of a sieve. A hop bath to relieve pain is also recommended
-by Dr. Gardner for certain painful internal diseases. It is made
-thus: two pounds of hops are boiled in two gallons of water for half an
-hour, then strained and pressed, and the fluid added to about thirty
-gallons of water. This bath has been much praised. Hop beer (without
-alcohol) is another preparation of the plant which has been recommended.</p>
-
-<p>In America the hop is highly appreciated for medicinal purposes.
-There are three preparations of it in the authorized code: a tincture,
-a liquid extract, and an oleo-resin.</p>
-
-<p>So much, then, for the history and economic and
-medicinal uses of <span class="xxpn" id="p087">{87}</span>
-the hop. Before we close this chapter it is our intention to give a short
-account of the hop-growing countries and districts, of hopfields, of hop-growers’
-multifarious troubles, and some description of what are perhaps
-the greatest curiosities of the subject—the hop-pickers.</p>
-
-<p>The European hop-growing countries stand in the following order:
-Germany takes the lead with about 477,000 acres of hop gardens,
-England following, and then Belgium, Austria, France, and other states
-(Denmark, Greece, Portugal, &amp;c.), in which the acreage is insignificant.
-According to Dr. Thudichum, 53,000,000 kilogrammes of hops are
-produced annually in Europe, and in good years production may rise to
-over 80,000,000. In America hops have been cultivated for more than
-two centuries, having been introduced into the New Netherlands in 1629
-and into Virginia in 1648. Hop-culture is now common in most of the
-northern states.</p>
-
-<p>We believe we are correct in saying that the best hop years America
-has ever known, were 1866 to 1868, when the amount produced was from
-2,400 lbs. to 2,500 lbs. per acre. In 1870 the total production was
-25,456,669 lbs. In Australia hops are extensively cultivated; they are
-also grown in China and India. In the latter place they have not been
-introduced many years, but beer of a fair quality is made in some of
-the hill stations. The following table shows approximately the acreage
-of hops in England at the present time:</p>
-
-<div class="dtablebox"><div class="nowrap">
-<table summary="">
-<tr>
- <th>District.</th>
- <th>Acreage.</th></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Mid Kent</td>
- <td class="tdright">17,150</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Weald of Kent</td>
- <td class="tdright">12,601</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">East Kent</td>
- <td class="tdright">11,885</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Sussex</td>
- <td class="tdright">9,501</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Hereford</td>
- <td class="tdright">6,087</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Hampshire</td>
- <td class="tdright">2,938</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Worcester</td>
- <td class="tdright">2,767</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Surrey</td>
- <td class="tdright">2,439</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Other Counties</td>
- <td class="tdright">251</td></tr>
-</table></div>
-</div><!--dtablebox-->
-
-<p class="pcontinue">From the eastern limits of the hop
-gardens at Sandwich to the western boundary in Hereford,
-hard by the borders of Wales, there are, then, about 65,619
-acres of hop gardens, or hop “yards,” as they are called in
-some districts, <i>e.g.</i>, Worcester and Hereford. North Cray,
-in Nottinghamshire, formerly grew a good quantity of hops,
-but the plantations are now considerably reduced, and this
-applies also to the Stowmarket district, in Suffolk, and to
-Essex. The number of acres devoted to the cultivation of
-hops has always been subject to great <span class="xxpn"
-id="p088">{88}</span> fluctuations; thus in 1807 they
-numbered 38,218; in 1819, 51,000; in 1830, 46,727; and in
-1875, 70,000.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Booker wrote that for quality of hops, Herefordshire stood first
-Worcestershire second, Kent third, and North Cray fourth; but he was
-probably mistaken, for the hops of East Kent have always been held to
-be the best in all England, pre-eminent alike for strength and flavour;
-those of Farnham, however, run them very closely. Our English
-hops, indeed, are far superior to most of those imported, and the
-foreigners are rarely used in beer without an admixture of home-grown
-hops. Immense quantities now come from abroad; in 1828 only 4 cwt.
-were imported!</p>
-
-<p>Until quite recently, the whole of the hops in this country were
-poled upon much the same system as that described in Reynolde Scot’s
-old pamphlet—that is, three or four plants would be grown on a hillock,
-each having a pole to climb. Now, the poles are largely supplemented
-by wires arranged in various ways, sometimes, when covered with bine,
-forming bell-tents of hops; and sometimes running from pole to pole.
-Other wires leaving them at right angles are attached to pegs in the
-ground. The aspect of the gardens is greatly changed, but they are not
-less beautiful than of yore. Train the hop as you will, you cannot
-make it unlovely. The vines twist lovingly round the slender wires and
-tall poles, the former bending under their weight and swaying to and
-fro in the breeze. From pole to pole run the topmost shoots, and the
-whole field is one large arbour, roofed, if it be autumn, with verdant
-foliage and golden green fruit. Then, may be, the sunlight here and
-there touches the glorious clusters, giving them still richer colours.
-“The hop for his profit I thus do exalt,” wrote old Tusser, “and for
-his grace and beauty,” he might have added, but the worthy Thomas
-was nothing if not practical. Howitt, in his <i>Year Book of the Country</i>
-thus writes of the hop country in autumn: “But all is not sombre and
-meditative in September. The hopfield and the nutwood are often
-scenes of much jolly old English humour and enjoyment. In Kent and
-Sussex the whole country is odorous with the aroma of hop, as it is
-breathed from the drying kilns and huge wagons filled with towering
-loads of hops, thronging the road to London. But not only is the
-atmosphere perfumed with hops, but the very atmosphere of the
-drawing-room and dining-room too. Hops are the grand flavour of conversation
-as well as of beer. Gentlemen, ladies, clergymen, noblemen,
-all are growers of hops, and deeply interested in the state of the crop
-and the market.” <span class="xxpn" id="p089">{89}</span></p>
-
-<p>The use of wires is a serious matter for hop-pole growers if the
-following calculation, made by some ingenious person, be correct.
-Suppose that 45,000 acres of hops are under cultivation, and each acre
-annually requires 800 new poles, the total annual requirement will be
-36,000,000 poles. Each acre of underwood from which poles are cut
-produces about 3,000. Every year, therefore, 12,000 acres of underwood
-must be cut to supply the demand. If each acre produces on an
-average 2,000 poles, which is nearer the truth than 3,000, then 18,000
-acres must be cut annually to supply the hop-gardens with poles.</p>
-
-<p>Poets, in their search for similes, have not overlooked hops and hop
-poles. In Gay’s <i>A New Song of New Similes</i> occur the following
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Hard is her heart as flint or stone,</span>
-<span class="spp00">She laughs to see me pale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And merry as a grig is grown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And brisk as <i>bottled ale</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ah me! as thick as <i>hops</i> or hail</span>
-<span class="spp00">The fine men crowd about her.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Then Cotton, in his verses to John Bradshaw, Esq.,
-<span class="nowrap">writes:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Mustachios looked like heroes’ trophies</span>
-<span class="spp00">Behind their arms in th’ Herald’s office;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The perpendicular beard appeared</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like <i>hop-poles</i> in a <i>hopyard</i> reared.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Hop-growers’ troubles, furnish a theme of which, were we hop-growers,
-we fear our readers would weary, for a volume might very well be filled
-with a relation of them. Not being hop-growers, and having much to
-write about ere we inscribe the sad word “finis,” we must content ourselves
-only with such an account as will give our readers a general idea
-of the subject. To begin with, the annual outlay per acre in the gardens
-is very great, being about £36. A hop acre, be it observed, is not an
-ordinary acre, but contains a thousand hop plants in rows, six or seven
-feet apart, and is equal to about two-thirds the statutory acre.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>No crops are more precarious than the <i>humulus lupulus</i>. How said
-Dr. <span class="nowrap">Booker?―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The spiral hop, high mantling, how to train</span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>No common care</i> to Britain’s gen’rous sons,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Lovers of “nut-brown ale”—sing fav’ring Muse!</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p090">{90}</span></div>
-
-<p>A glance at statistics will show the truth of our statement. In 1882
-the return per acre did not average more than 1½ cwt. on account of a
-perfect plague of aphides; while in 1859, which is about the best
-hop year of the century, the return was 13¼ cwt. per acre. The average
-yield during the last seventy-six years is about 6¾ cwt. per acre; not a
-very large return for the outlay. In 1839 a certain hop plantation in
-Kent of about 21½ acres, produced 15 cwt. per acre, and in the following
-year only 1 cwt. per acre.</p>
-
-<p>These extraordinary variations in the production of hop gardens are
-caused by insects and the weather. Early in the year, when the vines
-appear well grown and sturdy, the hop-grower may with a light heart,
-perhaps, prophesy a good crop. In May a few aphides—winged
-females—are noticed, and in August the silvery brightness of the
-delicate bracts is blackened and spoilt by the filth of the lice—larvæ of
-the hop aphis. About September a mighty wind comes; poles are
-blown down in all directions, the ground is strewn with the cones
-blown from the vines, and branches are bruised, causing the cones on
-them to wither and decay before picking-time. Just as the hops are
-ripening two or three cold nights perhaps occur, which throw them
-back and materially reduce the value of the crop. Then they may be
-attacked with mildew, or even when all evils have in most part been
-avoided, picking-time has all but arrived, and the hop-grower is congratulating
-himself on his good fortune, a shower of hail may happen,
-stripping the vines and reducing the value of the crop by three-fourths.</p>
-
-<p>Miss Ormerod, consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural
-Society, has given much study to, and thrown considerable light upon,
-the hop aphis. The course of the attack upon the hop she has discovered
-to be as follows:—The aphis first comes upon the hop in the
-spring in the form of wingless females (depositing young), which ascend
-the bine from the ground. The great attack, however, which usually
-occurs in the form of “fly” about the end of May, comes from damson
-and sloe bushes as well as from the hop; the hop aphis and the damson
-aphis being, in Miss Ormerod’s opinion, very slight varieties of one
-species, and so similar in habits that for all practical purposes of inquiry
-they may be considered one.</p>
-
-<p>From experiments made on hop grounds in Hereford, the use of
-various applications round the hills in the late autumn or about the
-beginning of April, completely prevented attacks to the vines of those
-hills until the summer attack came on the wing. Paraffin in any dry
-material spread on the hills, proved serviceable both
-as a preventive <span class="xxpn" id="p091">{91}</span>
-and a remedy, and petroleum and kerosine were also used with advantage.
-Among the methods of washing, the application of steam power
-opens up a possibility of carrying out these operations with rapidity and
-at less cost. When the fly is very bad, the common practice is, after
-the picking is over, to clear the land of bine and weeds and to place
-quicklime round the hills or plant centres.</p>
-
-<p>When the hop is fully formed, shortly before picking, if the weather
-be hot and close, almost the whole crop may be destroyed in a few days.
-The aphides penetrate the hop and suck from the tender bracts the juice,
-some of which exudes; this, the moist weather retarding evaporation,
-produces decay at the point of puncture, and a black spot shows, technically
-called “mould.” The great enemies to the lice are the ladybirds,
-which devour them greedily, and a hop-grower would as soon destroy
-a ladybird as a herring fisherman a seagull.</p>
-
-<p>It has been recently suggested that the suitability or not of soil for
-hop-growing, depends upon the presence or absence of sulphur, which is
-an essential ingredient of hops. There is more than one instance on
-record where hops treated with gypsum (sulphate of lime) were free
-from mould, while in adjoining gardens the hops not so treated suffered
-severely. The hops least liable to blight and mould contain the largest
-amount of sulphur. A curious fact has been proved in Germany by
-careful analysis. In plants attacked by the hop bug the proportion of
-sulphur is much greater in the healthy and unattacked leaves than in
-those infested with the bug. This subject hardly comes within the
-range of our work, and we merely mention it to bring it into
-notice among hop-growers, whom further experiments with gypsum
-may possibly benefit. It is obvious that as the chief attack is made by
-aphis on the wing, dressings put on the ground with a view to kill the
-aphides in the soil are of little avail, for from a neighbouring or even a
-distant garden where the hills have been not so treated, may come
-a flight of aphides causing desolation in their track. If, however, sulphur
-can be imported into the live plant, and such plants are untouched by the
-fly, it would seem that we are near a solution of this very vexed problem.
-We know of an instance where the hops on one side of a valley were
-totally destroyed by the fly, while on the other side they were untouched.
-The wind setting in one direction during the flight, had carried the fly
-over the sheltered side, and deposited them on the exposed side of the
-valley.</p>
-
-<p>Not to mention extraordinary tithes in this portion of our subject
-would be a serious omission. Formerly our worthy
-pastors were paid <span class="xxpn" id="p092">{92}</span>
-with a tenth of the actual produce of the land, now they receive what
-are in theory equivalent money payments. As orchards, market gardens,
-and hop gardens were deemed to yield much greater returns than other
-land, the tithe on them was fixed at a much greater rate than on pasture
-and arable land. While the tithe on these latter is but trifling, the
-tithe on the former is about thirty shillings per acre. When few foreign
-hops were imported, these very extraordinary tithes could be paid, but
-now they are a most serious, not to say unjust, tax on the hop-grower
-who in very bad years may not make thirty or even twenty shillings
-per acre. It is common knowledge that a great agitation is on foot to
-obtain their abolition, and there appears to be a very general feeling
-that no land ought in the future to become subject to extraordinary
-tithe by reason of any crop which may be grown on it. At present the
-extraordinary tithes are a check on production and the most advantageous
-cultivation of land. Being thus prejudicial to the welfare of the
-State, they should have been abolished long ago, and no doubt would
-have been, but for the circumstance that the immediate sufferers are
-comparatively few in number.</p>
-
-<p>The hop gardens of Kent not only provide the brewer with the best
-hops, but, as each autumn comes round, afford to some thirty thousand
-or so of the poorer classes living in the densely-populated districts of the
-east of London a few weeks of country life. The East-Enders, indeed,
-look upon hop-picking in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex as their particular
-prerogative, and mix but little with the “home” pickers, who, however,
-are almost equal to them in numbers.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>When
- the plants are laden with beautiful bloom</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the air breathes around us its rich perfume,”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">the
-grower sends word to the pickers, most of whom have had their
-names down for a bin, or a basket, for weeks or even months previously.
-In Mid Kent “bins” are used. These consist of an oblong framework of
-wood supported on legs, and to which a piece of sackcloth is fastened.
-The bins are divided down the centres, so that two families may pick
-into one bin. At certain times in the day the hops in each bin are
-measured and the number of bushels credited to the pickers. In East
-Kent baskets are used; these contain distinct marks for each bushel, so
-that the labour of measuring is dispensed with. From the baskets the
-hops are emptied into sacks and carried to the oast house to be dried.
-This is a simple operation. The oast house is a square brick building
-with a chimney of large size in the centre of the roof.
-The hops are <span class="xxpn" id="p093">{93}</span>
-laid on cloths stretched between beams. The necessary heat is obtained
-from a brick fireplace which is open at the top. After having been
-sufficiently baked, the hops are allowed to cool, and are then put into
-pockets, <i>i.e.</i>, long sacks, stamped down as tightly as possible, and are
-ready for the market.</p>
-
-<p>As in Chaucer’s time pilgrims wound their way through the garden
-of England, so now do pilgrims, but with different object, tramp along
-the dusty highway or shady lane into that beautiful country. In
-Chaucer’s time the monasteries provided food and shelter for the
-pilgrims; but now they in most part are content with the blue sky or
-spreading branch of tree as a roof, and hedge-row for a wall. If the
-weather be but reasonably fine, the life of these latter-day pilgrims is not
-a hard one, for the balmy country air, the soft turf and beautiful surroundings
-must seem to these poor creatures a kind of paradise after
-the dens of filth, disease, and darkness from which they have come.</p>
-
-<p>Not pleasant company are these pilgrims. As a rule they are uncleanly,
-their habits coarse, their language foul, and their morality doubtful.
-Many persons in Kent prefer to lose several pounds rather than let their
-children go into the fields and associate with the mixed company from
-the East-End. Poor people! they are after all what their circumstances
-have made them; a sweep can hardly be blamed for having a black
-face. A few years since men, women, and children all slept together
-indiscriminately in barns and outhouses. Now, as regards sleeping
-accommodation, there have been changes for the better,</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04"><span class="spquotebox">“</span>And far and near</span>
-<span class="spp04"><span class="spquotespace">With</span> accent clear</span>
-<span class="spp00">The hop-picker’s song salutes the glad ear:</span>
-<span class="spp04"><span class="spquotespace">The</span> old and the young</span>
-<span class="spp04"><span class="spquotespace">Unite</span> in the throng,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And echo re-echoes their jocund song,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The hop-picking time is a time of glee,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So merrily, merrily now sing we:</span>
-<span class="spp00">For the bloom of the hop is the secret spell</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of the bright pale ale that we love so well;</span>
-<span class="spp00">So gather it quickly with tender care,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And off to the wagons the treasure bear.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The high road from London to the hopfields of Kent presents a
-curious appearance immediately before the hop-picking season. A
-stranger might imagine that the poorer classes of a big
-city were flying <span class="xxpn" id="p094">{94}</span>
-before an invading army. Grey-haired, decrepit old men and women
-are to be seen crawling painfully along, their stronger sons and daughters
-pressing on impatiently. Children by the dozens, some fresh and
-leaping for very joy at the green fields and sunshine, others crying from
-fatigue, for the road is long and dusty. Nearly all these people carry
-sacks or baskets, or bundles, and some even push hand carts laden with
-clothing, rags, and odds and ends. Most of these folk are careless, merry
-people, and beguile the way as did Chaucer’s pilgrims, with many a
-coarse jest, but here and there will be seen some hang-dog bloated-faced
-ruffian tramping doggedly along, a discontented weary woman dragging
-slowly a few yards in his rear, as likely as not carrying a half-starved
-sickly child in her shawl. Such as these cause the coming of the hop-pickers
-to be regarded with anything but satisfaction in country districts,
-and at such time householders are doubly careful to see that their
-windows and doors are properly barred. But the majority of the pickers
-are well-behaved according to their lights, and guilty at most of a little
-rough horseplay towards the solitary traveller or among themselves.</p>
-
-<p>Towards evening the pickers cease their tramp, and take up their
-quarters for the night in woodland copse, or under hedge-row or
-sheltering bank. Baskets, sacks, and hand carts are unpacked, and here
-and there will be seen a whole family seated round a blazing wood fire,
-over which boils the family kettle. Others, less fortunate in having no
-family circle to join, betake themselves to more secluded quarters to
-munch the lump of bread of which their supper consists.</p>
-
-<p>About half the pickers are taken into Kent by special trains, a larger
-number, as might be expected, returning that way. The secretaries of
-the South Eastern and London and Chatham Railway Companies have
-very kindly furnished us with a few figures on the subject. In 1882—<i>the</i>
-bad year for hops—the S.E.R. Company only carried 173 pickers to
-the fields, and 3,094 on the return journeys; but in previous years the
-numbers varied from 6,000 to 17,000 on the outgoing journey, and
-9,000 to 19,000 on the return journey. Last year the L.C. &amp; D.R.
-Company carried 1,785 pickers to the fields, and brought back 4,035.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>But if the pickers are light-hearted and merry on the way to the
-fields, with empty pockets, what are they on their return, after work is
-over and wages paid? Everything is then the height of merriment,
-and of such an uproarious kind as the people of the East End delight in.
-Young men and girls, invigorated by their sojourn in the bracing
-country air, alike garland themselves with hops, and decorate themselves
-with gay ribbons. Laughing, dancing, and
-singing, they hurry <span class="xxpn" id="p095">{95}</span>
-to the station, or along the road to London. Practical jokes are played
-by the score, the railway officials are distracted, the police look the other
-way. As train after train full of shouting people leaves the station, the
-crowd gradually becomes less thick. Night comes on, and many return
-to their barns, obliged to put off their return home for another day. In a
-few days this lively throng of humanity has disappeared; the hopfields,
-robbed of their bright crops, are again quiet; and the more nervous of
-the dwellers in Kent again breathe freely.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p095.png" width="144" height="42" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11"> <img src="images/p096a.png"
-width="144" height="48" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p096"><span
-class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> V.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<p class="pverse"><span class="smcap">J<b>ACK</b></span>
-<span class="smcap">C<b>ADE</b></span>—“There shall be in
-England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny, the three
-hooped pot shall have seven hoops, and I will make it
-felony to drink small beer.”<span class="nowrap">—<i>Hen.</i></span>
-VI., Part II. Act iv. Scene 2.</p>
-</div><!--depigraph-->
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>ANCIENT AND CURIOUS LAWS RELATING TO THE
-MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF ALE AND BEER.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p096b.png"
-width="225" height="230" alt="K" /></span>INGS,
-Par­lia­ments and Lo­cal Au­thor­i­ties
-have, from very early times up to the pre­sent,
-more or less in­ter­fered with the pro­duc­tion
-and sale of al­co­ho­lic li­quors. As
-a rule, the laws and reg­u­la­tions made by
-them had the be­nev­o­lent object of pre­serving
-the pub­lic health and pocket, but
-to modern notions they ap­pear for the most
-part arb­i­trary and vex­a­tious enact­ments
-which un­duly op­pressed an im­por­tant industry.</p>
-
-<p>Before dealing with the many early references to laws concerning
-the brewing and sale of ale, it will be interesting to notice a few of the
-curious regulations to be found in the Canons of ancient religious orders
-enjoining sobriety on the members of their communities. Almost, if
-not quite, the earliest of the kind is attributed to St. Gildas the Wise,
-who lived towards the close of the sixth century, and is to the effect that,
-if any monk through drinking too freely gets thick of speech, so that
-he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of his supper.</p>
-
-<p>The Canons of St. David’s contain further rules on the same matter.
-Priests about to minister in the temple of God, and drinking wine or
-strong drink through negligence, and not ignorance, must do penance
-three days. If they have been warned, and despise, then forty days.
-Those who get drunk from ignorance must do penance fifteen days;
-if through negligence, forty days; if through
-contempt, three <span class="xxpn" id="p097">{97}</span>
-quarantains. He who forces another to get drunk out of hospitality, must do
-penance as though he had got drunk himself. But he who out of hatred
-or wickedness, in order to disgrace or mock at others, forces them to
-get drunk, if he has not already sufficiently done penance, must do
-penance as a murderer of souls.</p>
-
-<p>That these restrictions were not confined to clerics may be seen from
-the decree of Theodore, seventh Archbishop of Canterbury (<span class="smmaj">A.D.</span> 668–693),
-that if a Christian layman drink to excess, he must do a fifteen-days’
-penance.</p>
-
-<p>King Edgar seems to have gone nearer to the programme of the
-United Kingdom Alliance. Strutt says of him that under the guidance
-of Dunstan he put down many alehouses, suffering only one to exist in
-a village. He also ordered that pegs should be fastened in the drinking
-horns at intervals, that whosoever drank beyond these marks at one
-draught should be liable to punishment. We find, however, that this
-last-mentioned device defeated its own end, and became a provocative of
-drinking, so that in 1102, Anselm decreed, “Let no priest go to drinking
-bouts, nor drink to pegs (ad pinnas).” The custom was called
-pin-drinking or pin-nicking, and is the origin of the phrase, “He is in a
-merry pin,” and, doubtless, also of the expression, “Taking him down
-a peg.”</p>
-
-<p>The peg-tankards, as they were called, contained two quarts, and
-were divided into eight draughts by means of these pegs; they passed
-from hand to hand, and each must drink it down one peg, no more, no
-less, under pain of fine.</p>
-
-<p>In a code of Dunstan, for the regulation of the religious orders, were
-further injunctions to the priesthood, in which it was enjoined that no
-drinking be allowed <i>in the Church</i>, that men should be temperate at
-Church-wakes, that a priest should beware of drunkenness, and should
-in no wise be an ale-scop (<i>i.e.</i>, a reciter at an ale-house). If we may
-believe the strange story of St. Dunstan, as recorded by the graphic pen
-of the author of the <i>Ingoldsby Legends</i>, we shall have little difficulty in
-accounting for the Saint’s abhorrence of strong drink. The legend is a
-good illustration of the maxim, “A little knowledge is a dangerous
-thing.” Lay-brother Peter discovers that the Saint’s miraculous powers
-are due to his magical control over a broomstick, and that, on his
-uttering certain mystic words, the broomstick is compelled to do his
-bidding. Lay-brother Peter determines to apply his knowledge of the
-broomstick’s powers to his own temporal advantage. Having spoken
-the mystic words, <span class="xxpn" id="p098">{98}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp11">Peter, full of his fun,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cries, “Broomstick! you lubberly son of a gun!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bring ale!—bring a flagon—a hogshead—a tun!</span>
-<span class="spp02">’Tis the same thing to you; I have nothing to do;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, ’fore George, I’ll sit here, and I’ll drink till all’s blue.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Alas! too literally the broomstick obeys the command; and the poor
-lay-brother, not having at command the spell that may compel the
-broomstick to desist, “after floating a while like a toast in a tankard,”
-is at last overwhelmed, and perishes in the brown flood he has so
-incautiously called up.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">In vain did St. Dunstan exclaim, “Vade retro</span>
-<span class="spp00">Strongbeerum! discede a Lay-fratre Petro!”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">However, the impression made upon the good Saint’s mind was
-indelible, and has left its traces in the regulations made by him relating
-to drunkenness.</p>
-
-<p>Elfric’s Canons, also, are directed towards putting down the custom
-of drinking in churches. They lay down that men ought not to drink
-and eat immoderately in churches, for “men often act so absurdly as to
-sit up by night, and drink to madness in God’s house.”</p>
-
-<p>Some of the earliest laws directed against a particular custom in
-which ale figured as the principal beverage, were the prohibitions to be
-met with in the records of the 13th century with regard to what were
-called scot-ales. A scot-ale was a meeting for the purpose of consuming
-ale, and its name was derived from the fact that the drinkers <i>divided</i><a class="afnanc" href="#fn40" id="fnanc40">40</a>
-the expenses of the entertainment amongst them. These feasts were
-forbidden in the reign of King John by Fitz-piers and Peter of Winchester,
-the regents of the kingdom, on the ground that they were
-made occasions for extortion. The forests, which then spread over
-great tracts of country, were not subject to the common law, but to the
-laws of the forest only, and we are told that the foresters and their
-minions not only set up ale-houses, but even compelled people living
-near to come in and join in scot-ales, for the sake of the revenue
-accruing therefrom. In 1256 Giles of Bridport,
-Bishop of Salisbury, <span class="xxpn" id="p099">{99}</span>
-interdicted scot-ales, and commanded rectors, vicars, and other parish
-priests to exhort their parishioners that they violate not rashly the
-prohibition. In certain places the term scot-ale was used to denote one
-of the services paid by tenants to the lord or his bailiff on the periodical
-tour of inspection, and Bracton mentions that the Itinerant Justices were
-directed to inquire whether any viscounts or bailiffs brew their own ale,
-“which they call scot-ale or filct-ale,” for the purpose of extorting
-money from the tenants.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc40" id="fn40">40</a>
-<i>Cf.</i> The modern expressions
-<i>scot free</i> and <i>paying the shot</i>.</p></div>
-
-<p>Somewhat similar in practice, though distinct in origin and in the
-purpose of their institution, were the festivals called Bede-ales. These
-curious celebrations are described in Prynne’s <i>Canterburie’s Doome</i>
-(1646) as public meetings, “when an honest man decayed in his fortune
-is set up again by the liberal benevolence and contribution of friends at
-a feast; but this is laid aside at almost every place.” The custom
-somewhat reminds one of the saying that the British are wont to drink
-themselves out of debt, an allusion, of course, to the enormous revenue
-collected on malt and other liquors. We must suppose, however, that
-the practice of bede-ale was abused; the more generous and kindly-hearted
-a man might be, the more tipsy he would have to make himself
-in order to help his unfortunate “decayed” friend in the manner
-prescribed. Accordingly we find in ancient records prohibitions of this
-custom. One such may be cited from the records of the Borough of
-Newport, Isle of Wight: “Atte the Lawday holden here in the 8th day
-of October, the second yeare of the Reigne of King Edward the iiijth in
-the time of William Bokett and Henry Pryer, Bayliffs, Thomas Capford
-and William Spring, Constables, it is enacted furthermore that none
-hereafter, whether Burgesse or any other dweller or inhabitant, within
-this Towne aforesaid, shall make or procure to bee made, any Ale,
-commonly called Bede-Ale, within the liberty, nor within this Towne
-or without, upon payne of looseing xxd. to be payde to the Keeper of
-the Common Box.”</p>
-
-<p>About the time of Henry III., we begin to find mention
-in the records of the period, of persistent attempts to
-fix the prices of bread and ale. Laws made with this end
-in view were termed collectively the <i>Assisa Panis et
-Cervisiæ</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, The Assize of Bread and Ale). In the
-fifty-first year of that reign, we find it enacted that
-when a quarter of wheat is sold for iiis. or iiis. ivd.,
-and a quarter of barley for xxd. or iis., and a quarter
-of oats for xvid., then brewers (<i>braciatores</i>) in cities
-ought, and may well afford, to sell two gallons of ale
-for a penny, and out of cities to sell three or four
-gallons for the same sum. By a statute <span class="xxpn"
-id="p100">{100}</span> passed in the same year it is
-enacted that if a baker or a brewster<a class="afnanc"
-href="#fn41" id="fnanc41">41</a> (<i>braciatrix</i>) be
-convicted, because he or she hath not observed the Assise
-of Bread and Ale, the first, second, or third time, he or
-she shall be amerced according to the offence, if it be not
-over grievous; but if the offence be grievous and often,
-and will not be corrected, then he or she shall suffer
-corporal punishment, to wit, the Baker to the pillory,
-the brewster to the tumbrel (a cart for ignominious
-punishment), or to flogging. (The illustration represents a
-woman undergoing the punishment</p>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p100.png" width="473" height="417" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Tumbrel.</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">of the tumbrel, and is taken from the
-MS. <i>Cent Nouvelles</i> in the Hunterian Library.) A jury of
-six lawful men is to be summoned in every township, who are
-to be sworn faithfully to collect all measures of the town,
-to wit, bushels, half and quarter bushels, gallons, pottles
-and quarts, as well from taverns as from other places. The
-jurymen are to inquire how the assise of bread has been
-kept, and adjudge accordingly; they are then to inquire of
-the assise of Ale in the Court of the Town, what it is, and
-whether it has been observed; and if <span class="xxpn"
-id="p101">{101}</span> not, they are to inquire what
-brewsters have sold contrary to the assises and they shall
-present their names distinctly and openly, and adjudge them
-to be fined or to the tumbrel.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc41" id="fn41">41</a>
-The old word brewster is here used in its proper signification of a
-female brewer. The Brewster Sessions, as Licensing Sessions are called
-in many parts of the country, preserve the name, though the original
-feminine signification has disappeared. For an account of the early
-brewsters and ale-wives the reader is referred to Chapter VI.</p></div>
-
-<p>By another statute, of rather uncertain date, but passed about this
-period, it is enacted that the standard of bushels, gallons, and ells
-(<i>standardum busselli galonis et ulne</i>) is to be marked with an Iron Seale
-of our Lord the King, and safe kept, under pain of £100, and no
-measure is to be used in any town unless it do agree with the King’s
-measure, and be marked with the seal of the shire town; and if any do
-sell or buy by measures unsealed, and not examined by the Mayor or
-Bailiffs, he shall be grievously amerced and all the measures of every
-Town, both great and small, shall be viewed and examined twice in the
-year; and if any be convict for a double measure, to wit, a greater for
-to buy with, and a lesser for to sell with, he shall be imprisoned for his
-falsehood (<i>tanquam falsarius</i>) and shall be grievously punished.</p>
-
-<div class="dright dwth-h">
-<img src="images/p101.png" width="153" height="322" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Pillory.</div></div>
-
-<p>The manner in which the various standard measures of capacity were
-arrived at is worthy of mention. It is enacted that: “One English penny,
-called a stirling, round and without any clipping, shall weigh twenty-two
-wheat corns in the midst of the ear, and twenty pence shall make
-an ounce, and twelve ounces a pound, and eight pounds shall make a
-gallon of wine, and eight gallons of wine shall make one bushel London,
-and eight bushels one quarter.”</p>
-
-<p>We are glad to observe that a subsequent statute was passed which
-provided that both the pillory, or stretch-neck (<i>collistrigium</i>) as it was
-called, and also the tumbrel, must be of suitable strength, so that
-offenders might be punished without bodily peril.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>collistrigium</i> given below is taken from an old drawing in the
-City Records, temp. Ed. III.</p>
-
-<p>In the City of London the com­par­a­tive se­ver­i­ty
-of the punish­ments of the fraud­u­lent baker and
-brewer seems to have been the re­verse of that
-or­dained by sta­tute; the baker suf­fered the heavier
-penalty, being con­demned to what was called the
-“<i>judicium claye</i>,” or con­dem­na­tion to the hur­dle,
-which, as de­scribed in the Liber Albus, was
-cer­tain­ly a most un­pleas­ant form of pun­ish­ment.
-On con­vic­tion for sel­ling short weight the
-de­fault­ing ba­ker was to be drawn upon a hurdle
-from the Guild­hall to his own house, “through
-the great streets where there
-be most people <span class="xxpn" id="p102">{102}</span>
-as­sembled, and through the great streets <i>that are most dirty</i>.”
-The illus­tra­tion is taken from the <i>Assissa Panis</i> (temp. Edw. I.),
-preserved among the City Records. The defaulting brewer or
-brewster, in the reign of Edw. III., for the first offence was to forfeit the
-ale, for the second to forswear the mistier (the mystery or art of brewing),
-and on the third offence to forswear the City for ever. However,
-the</p>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p102.png" width="451" height="241" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Punishment of the Hurdle.</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">penalties
-varied from time to time, for in the reign of Henry V.,
-when the Liber Albus was compiled, the punishment of a brewster convicted
-of selling ale contrary to the assize was, that for the first offence
-she was to be fined 10s., for the second 20s., and for the third that she
-should suffer the “punishment provided for her in Westchepe,” which
-would probably be the tumbrel or the pillory. Some confusion as to the
-appropriate punishment occasionally arose. In 1257, Sir Hugh Bygot,
-as Grafton’s Chronicle tells us, “came to the Guylde-hall, and kept his
-Court and Plees there, without all order of law, and contrary to the
-libertyes of the citie, and there punished the bakers for lack of size by
-the tombrell, where beforetymes they were punished by the Pillorye.”</p>
-
-<p>Offending brewers and bakers, in some places, suffered on the Cucking
-Stool. In the Borrow Lawes of Scotland, speaking of Browsters
-(“Wemen quha brewes aill to be sauld,”) it is said, “Gif she makes gude
-ail, that is sufficient. Bot gif she makes euel ail, contrair to the use and
-consuetude of the burg, and is convict thereof, she sall pay ane unlaw
-of aucht shillinges, or sal suffer the justice of the brugh, that is, <i>she sall</i>
-be put upon the Cock-&#x202f;stule, <i>and the aill sall be distributed to the pure
-folke</i>.”</p>
-
-<p>In April, 1745, an ale-wife of Kingston-on-Thames was ducked in
-the river, for scolding, in the presence of two thousand or more people.</p>
-
-<p>The following extracts from the old Assembly
-Books of Great <span class="xxpn" id="p103">{103}</span>
-Yarmouth give some idea of the powers possessed by corporate bodies
-for the regulation of trade in olden
-<span class="nowrap">times:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“Friday before Palm Sunday, 7 Edwd. VI. Agreed that no inhabitant
-shall buy any beer to sell again but such as was brewed in the
-town, under pain of 6s. 8d. a barrel.</p>
-
-<p>“Feb. 14. 1 Philip and Mary, 1554. M. Swansey, of Hickling,
-being a foreigner, bought of a merchant stranger certain hopps—the
-buyer to forfeit the Hopps, and he may buy them again of the Chamberlain.</p>
-
-<p>“March 19. 1 Mary, 1554. No inhabitant shall buy nor no ship
-shall receive any beer brewed out of the town, under a penalty of 3s. 4d.
-per gallon.</p>
-
-<p>“July 2. 1 Philip and Mary, 1554. No baker or brewer to bake or
-brewe in the town unless appointed by the bailiffs.</p>
-
-<p>“Apl. 8. 15 Eliz., 1573. That brewers be ordered to brew with
-coals instead of wood, from the latter’s exhorbitant price.”</p>
-
-<p>The Articles of the Free Fair (1658) held at Great Yarmouth, contain
-the following
-<span class="nowrap">regulation:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“Also that no brewer selle nor doe to be solde, a gallon of the beste
-ale above <i>two pence</i>: a gallon of the second ale above one pennye
-uppon the payne and perrille above sayde.”</p>
-
-<p>The records of the old municipal corporations of England that have
-survived the destroying hand of time are very few, but it can hardly be
-doubted that they contained very similar regulations to those given
-above. In the <i>Domesday Book of Ipswich</i> an order of the reign of
-Edward I. provides as to Brewsters, that “after Michelmesse moneth,
-whan men may have barlych of newe greyn, the ballyves of the forseid
-toun doo cryen assize of ale by all the toun, after that the sellyng of the
-corn be. And gif ther be founden ony that selle or brewe a geyns the
-assise and the crye, be he punysshed be the forseyed ballyves and by
-the court for the trespas, after the form conteyned in the Statute of
-merchaundise (13 Edw. I., s. 3) of oure lord the kyng, and after law
-and usage of the same toun.”</p>
-
-<p>Ricart’s <i>Kalendar of the City of Bristol</i> contains the following record:
-“Item, hit hath be usid, in semblable wyse, the seid maire anon aftir
-Mighelmas, to do calle byfore theym in the seide Counseill hous, all the
-Brewers of Bristowe; and yf the case require that malt be scant and
-dere, then to commen there for the reformacion of the same, and to
-bryng malte to a lower price, and that such price as shall be sette by the
-maier upon malte, that no brewer breke it, upon payne
-of XLs. forfeitable <span class="xxpn" id="p104">{104}</span>
-to the Chambre of the Toune. And the shyftyng<a class="afnanc" href="#fn42" id="fnanc42">42</a>
-daies of the woke,
-specially the Wensdaies and Satirdaies, the mair hath be used to walke
-in the morenynges to the Brewers howses, to oversee thym in servyng
-of theire ale to the pouere commens of the toune, and that they have
-theire trewe mesures; and his Ale-konner with hym to taste and undirstand
-that the ale be gode, able, and sety keeping their sise, or to be
-punyshed for the same, aftir the constitucion of the Toune.”</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc42" id="fn42">42</a>
-The days when the ale was being moved to customers’ houses.</p></div>
-
-<p>Sometimes a whole township was fined for the default of some of
-its members. In 1275 the township of Dunstable was fined 40s., because
-the brewers had not kept the assize.</p>
-
-<p>Some curious and amusing entries are to be found in the <i>Munimenta
-Academica</i> of the University of Oxford, as to the regulations for the
-brewing trade in the fifteenth century. In the year 1434 we find it
-recorded that, “Seeing how great evils arise both to the clerks and to
-the townsmen of the City of Oxford, owing to the negligence and dishonesty
-of the brewers of ale,” Christopher Knollys, commissary,
-assembles the brewers together in the church of the Blessed Mary the
-Virgin, and commands them to provide sufficient malt for brewing;
-and that two or three shall twice or thrice in the week carry round
-their ale for public sale, under a penalty of 40s.; and John Weskew
-and Nicholas Core, two of their number, are appointed supervisors of
-the brewers. Each brewer is then made to swear on the Blessed
-Evangelists to brew good ale and wholesome, and according to the
-assize, “so far as his ability and <i>human frailty permits</i>.”</p>
-
-<p>It would appear that very considerable disorders prevailed in that
-ancient seat of learning at this period. The Warden of Canterbury
-College, for instance, is accused of having incited his scholars to make a
-raid upon the ale of other scholars of the town, which they accordingly
-did, and carried off ale to the value of 12d.</p>
-
-<p>The fair brewsters of the period seem to have held much the same
-ideas as to the relative importance of the patronage of Town and Gown
-as a fashionable Oxford tailor of the present day may be supposed to
-entertain. In 1439 Alice Everarde is suspended “ab arte pandoxandi”
-(from practising brewing) for ever, because she refused to brew ale for
-sale for the common people of Oxford.</p>
-
-<p>In 1444 the brewers were made to swear before the Chancellor that
-they would brew wholesome ale, and in such manner
-that the water <span class="xxpn" id="p105">{105}</span>
-should boil until it emitted a froth, that they would skim the froth
-away, and that they would give the ale sufficient time to settle before
-they sold it in the University; and Richard Benet swore that he would
-let his ale stand twelve hours to clear, before he carried it to hall or
-college, and that he would not mix the dregs with the ale when he
-carried it for sale within the University.</p>
-
-<p>In 1449 the stewards and manciples of the college swear that nine of
-the brewers have broken the assize and have brewed “an ale of little or
-no strength, to the grave and no mean damage of the University and
-Town, and that they are obstinate and rebels and refuse to serve the
-Principals and others of the Halls with ale.” In 1464 John Janyn is
-ordered by the Commissary to refund to Anisia Barbour, without the
-east gate of Oxford, the sum of 8d., because he had sold her a cask of
-ale for 20d., and “in our opinion and that of others who have just tasted
-it, it is not worth more than 12d.”</p>
-
-<p>The sister University exercised a similar jurisdiction over the brewing
-trade, and it is mentioned in Rymer’s <i>Fœdera</i> (R. 2. 934) that in the
-year 1336, on a petition of the Chancellor and scholars of the University
-of Cambridge, the <i>ancient</i> privilege of the University, that, on the
-demand of the Chancellor, the Mayor and bailiffs should make trial or
-assize of the bread or ale, was restored. A curious survival of the
-municipal jurisdiction over the vendors of Cambridge ale is recorded in
-Hone’s <i>Every-Day Book</i>, as existing at the annual fair on Stourbridge
-Common during the latter half of last century: “Besides the eight
-servants called <i>red coats</i>, who are employed as constables attendant upon
-the Mayor of Cambridge, who held a court of justice during the fair,
-there was another person dressed in similar clothing, with a string over
-his shoulders, from whence were suspended spigots and fossets, and also
-round each arm many more were fastened. He was called <i>Lord of the
-Tap</i>, and his duty consisted in visiting all the booths in which ale was
-sold, to determine whether it was a fit and proper beverage for the
-persons attending the fair.”</p>
-
-<p>In making the ale of Old England, wheat was frequently malted and
-used with barley malt. In times of scarcity this practice was now
-and again forbidden as tending to unduly enhance the price of bread.
-In 1316, ground malt having risen during the preceding fourteen years
-from 3s. 4d. to 13s. 4d. the quarter, a proclamation was issued prohibiting
-the malting of wheat. The regulation, however, was unpopular and
-difficult to enforce, and wheat continued to be malted and mixed with
-the more appropriate grain. Receipts of more
-recent times frequently <span class="xxpn" id="p106">{106}</span>
-mention this use of wheat malt. One of these of the sixteenth century
-is as
-<span class="nowrap">follows:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“To brewe beer. 10 quarters of malte, 2 quarters of wheete, 2 quarters
-of oates, 40 pound weight of hoppys—to make 60 barellys of sengyll
-beer; the barel of aell contains 32 galones, and the barell of beer 36
-gallons.”</p>
-
-<p>The restrictive legislation was not confined to ale, for in 1330 we find
-it enacted: “Because there are more taverners in the realm than were
-wont to be, selling as well corrupt wines as wholesome, and have sold
-the gallon at such price as they themselves would, because there was no
-punishment ordained for them, as hath been for them that sell bread
-and ale, to the great hurt of the people,” therefore wine must be sold at
-a reasonable price. No sum, however, appears to have been fixed, and
-we can well imagine that the ideas of the innkeeper and his customer
-might not altogether agree on the question of what was a <i>reasonable</i>
-price.</p>
-
-<p>Not only was the price of ale fixed, but its strength and quality were
-also subjected to the experienced taste of the ale-conner, an officer
-appointed to test the goodness of the brew. The ale-conner’s appellation
-appears to be derived from his power of conning, <i>i.e.</i>, knowing of or
-judging the liquor, and reminds one of Chaucer’s
-<span class="nowrap">line:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">“Well coude he knowe a draught of London ale.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The ale-conners were appointed annually in the courts leet of every
-manor; also in boroughs and towns corporate; and in many places, in
-compliance with charters and ancient custom, appointments to this
-office are still made, though the duties have fallen into disuse.</p>
-
-<p>The following is the oath of this ale official, taken from the <i>Liber
-Albus</i>, compiled in the reign of Henry V. by John Carpenter, clerk,
-and Richard Whittington, mayor:—“You shall swear, that you shall
-know of no brewer, or brewster, cook, or pie-baker, in your ward, who
-sells the gallon of best ale for more than one penny halfpenny, or the gallon
-of second for more than one penny, or otherwise than by measure sealed
-and full of clear ale; or who brews less than he used to do before this
-cry, by reason hereof, or withdraws himself from following his trade the
-rather by reason of this cry; or if any persons shall do contrary to any
-one of these points, you shall certify the Alderman of your ward and of
-their names. And that you, so soon as you shall be required to taste
-any ale of a brewer or brewster, shall be ready to do the same; and in
-case that it be less good than it used to be before this cry,
-you, by assent <span class="xxpn" id="p107">{107}</span>
-of your Alderman, shall set a reasonable price thereon, according to
-your discretion; and if any one shall afterwards sell the same above the
-said price, unto your Alderman you shall certify the same. And that for
-gift, promise, knowledge, hate or other cause whatsoever, no brewer,
-brewster, huckster, cook, or pie-baker, who acts against any one of the
-points aforesaid, you shall conceal, spare or tortuously aggrieve; nor
-when you are required to taste ale, shall absent yourself without reasonable
-cause and true; but all things which unto your office pertains to
-do, you shall well and lawfully do. So God you help, and the saints.”
-No doubt this oath was regularly repeated with due solemnity,
-but we can imagine with what a subtle irony the official described
-in <i>The Cobler of Canterburie</i> would have repeated the part of
-the oath having reference to absenting himself when required to
-taste ale.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">A nose he had that gan show,</span>
-<span class="spp00">What liquor he loved I trow;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For he had before long seven yeare,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Beene of the towne the ale-conner.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Absent himself—not if he knew it!</p>
-
-<p>The ale-conners also had the power of presenting, <i>i.e.</i>, accusing at the
-court leet, any brewer who refused to sell ale to his neighbours though
-he had some for sale.</p>
-
-<p>The officials who tested ale bore various appellations. At the Court
-Leet of the Manor of New Buckenham, in Norfolk, the name under
-which this person was known was the <i>ale-founder</i>. In rolls of the same
-Manor of earlier date he is called Gustator Cervisiæ. In the records of
-the Manor Court of Hale in the 15th century, in a list of persons fined,
-occurs the entry, “Thomas Layet, quia pandocavit semel iid., et quia
-concelavit le fowndynge pot iiid.;” that is, a fine of 2d. was inflicted
-because he brewed in some manner contrary to the custom of the manor;
-as by not putting out his sign when he brewed, or by not summoning
-the ale-founder to taste the brew as soon as he had finished; and a fine
-of 3d. because he concealed the “fowndynge” pot, the vessel, probably,
-in which he had brewed.</p>
-
-<p>In Scrope’s <i>History of Castle Coombe</i> we are told that the rules of
-that place in reference to the making and sale of ale were numerous and
-perplexing. No one was permitted to brew ale so long as any church-ale
-lasted, nor so long as the keeper of the park had any to
-sell, nor at <span class="xxpn" id="p108">{108}</span>
-any time without licence of the lord or court; nor to sell without a
-sign, or, during the fair, without an ale-stake hung out, nor to ask a
-higher price for ale than that fixed by the jury of assize, nor to lower
-the quality below what the ale-tasters approved, nor to sell at times of
-Divine service, nor after nine o’clock at night, nor to sell at all without
-entering into a bond for £10, with a surety of £5, to keep orderly
-houses. The frequent changes in the price allowed show the difficulty
-the authorities had in settling the problem, how to have good liquor
-cheap. In the reign of Elizabeth all systematic attempts to set the
-price of ale seem to have been discontinued. At a court held in May
-in the tenth year of that queen, the tithing-man reported that “the
-ale-wyves had broken all the orders of the last laweday.” The court
-received the announcement in silence, and made no order. The
-ale-wives had conquered; let us hope they used their victory with
-discretion.</p>
-
-<p>The practice seems to have prevailed here as elsewhere of compelling
-a brewer to put out his sign or ale-stake when he had brewed, as a
-signal to the local ale-conner that his services were required. In 1402
-we find that John Lautroppe was presented to the court “quia brasiavit
-iij vicibus sub uno signo,” <i>i.e.</i>, he had brewed three times but had only
-displayed the legal signal once. The only penalties recorded as being
-imposed for drunkenness appear to be one in 1618 and one in 1631;
-but it would hardly be safe to argue that the inhabitants of the district
-were an exceptionally sober race, for though the manor rolls of Castle
-Coombe date from 1346, no legislative effort to restrain excess in
-drinking was made till the reign of James I., and such laws were always
-highly unpopular, and were very sparingly or not at all enforced.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Tierney, in his <i>History of Sussex</i>, gives the following extract from
-the rolls of Arundel: “John Barbs, Roger Shadyngden, and others,
-brewers, refuse to sell a gallon of ale for one farthing according to the
-proclamation of the mayor, and are consequently fined twopence each.”
-The passage in the <i>Taming of the Shrew</i>, in which the servant, seeking
-to convince Christopher Sly that his former life is nothing but the
-delusion of a crazy brain, tells him how he would</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;rail upon the mistress of the house,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And say you would present her at the leet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Because she brought stone jugs and no sealed quarts,</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">shows
-that this jurisdiction of the manor courts was still in full force in
-Shakspere’s day. <span class="xxpn" id="p109">{109}</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Kitchen, in his work on <i>Courts</i> (1663), in writing of courts leet,
-says:—“Also if tapsters sell by cups and dishes, or measures, sealed or
-un­sealed, is en­quir­able.” It is noted in Dr. Lang­baine’s col­lec­tions,
-under January 23, 1617, that John Shurle had a patent from Arthur
-Lake, Bishop of Bath and Wells and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, for the
-office of ale-taster (to the University). The office required “that he
-go to every ale-brewer that day they brew, according to their courses,
-and taste their ale; for which his ancient fee is one gallon of strong ale,
-and two gallons of less strong worth a penny.”</p>
-
-<p>In some places the office of ale-conner still survives. The appointment
-of four ale-conners for the City of London is said to date as far
-back as the first charter of William the Conqueror. Originally they
-were elected by the folkesmote, afterwards at the wardmote, and from
-the time of Henry V. till the present day by the livery. We have
-before us an extract from a daily paper of the 16th September, 1884, in
-which is recorded the appointment of an ale-taster for the ancient
-borough of Christchurch.</p>
-
-<p>The following curious application was made in the year 1864 to the
-manorial court of the Duke of Buccleuch:—“To the Manorial Court of
-the Right Hon. Walter Francis, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury,
-sitting at Haslingden, this 18th day of October, 1864.—This is to give
-notice to your honourable court, that I, Richard Taylor, by appointment
-for the last five years Ale-taster for that part of her Majesty’s
-dominions called Rossendale, do hereby tender my resignation to hold
-that office after this day, as I am wishful, while young and active, and
-as my talents are required in another sphere of usefulness, to devote
-them to that purpose. For five successive years your honourable court
-has done me the honour of electing me to the above office, which I have
-held, and performed the duties thereof efficiently, and without disgrace.
-Having won your confidence by holding this office, at a late sitting of
-your honourable court it pleased you to appoint me bellman for Bacup,
-and while I resign the former office, am wishful to hold my connexion
-with his Grace the Duke Francis Walter, to continue to cry aloud as
-bellman for Bacup, and, as heretofore, to cry for nothing for those who
-have nothing to pay with. Given under our hand and seal this 18th
-day of October, in the year of our Lord 1864. Signed, Richard Taylor,
-Ale-taster for Rossendale. God save the Queen.”</p>
-
-<p>As early as the days of Edward I. attempts were made to bring about
-the early closing of taverns; but the authorities seem to have moved
-rather in the interests of peace
-than of temperance. <span class="xxpn" id="p110">{110}</span></p>
-
-<p>In a preamble to a statute passed in that reign it is stated that
-“offenders, going about during the night, do commonly resort and
-have their meetings and evil talk in taverns more than elsewhere, lying
-in wait and watching their time to do mischief.” It is therefore enacted
-that taverns are to be closed at the tolling of the curfew bell. And if any
-taverner does otherwise, he shall be put on his surety, the first time
-by the hanap (a two-handled tankard, sometimes of silver) of his tavern,
-or by some other good pledge therein found, and fined 40d., with
-various cumulative punishments for successive offences until on the
-fifth conviction he shall forswear such trade in the City for ever.</p>
-
-<p>In the year 1455 it was enacted “that no person that in the County
-of Kent shall commonly brew any ale or beer to sell, shall make nor do
-to be made any malt in his house, or in any other place to his own use,
-at his costs and expences above an C quarters in the year, under penalty
-of x li., and this statute is to be in force for the space of 5 years.” This
-act appears to have been passed to protect the maltsters of other places
-from the competition of the Kentish men. An act was passed in 1496
-“against vacabonds and beggars,” which directs two justices of the peace
-to “rejecte and put away comen ale-selling in townes and places where
-they shall think convenyent, and to take suertie of the keepers of ale-houses
-of their gode behavyng, by the discrecion of the seid justices,
-and in the same to be avysed and aggreed at the time of their sessions.”</p>
-
-<p>In 1531 brewers were forbidden to take more than such prices
-and rates as should be thought sufficient, at the discretion of the
-justices of the peace within every shire, or by the mayor and sheriffs
-in a city.</p>
-
-<p>By 5 and 6 Edward VI. c. 25, entitled “An Act for Keepers of Ale-houses
-to be bounde by Recognizances,” it is enacted that “forasmuch as
-intolerable hurts and troubles to the commonwealth do daily grow and
-increase through such abuses and disorders as are had and used in
-common ale-houses, the Justices of the Peace are authorized to close
-such houses at their discretion.” And we find later, in Elizabeth’s time,
-that Lord Keeper Egerton, in his charge to the judges when going on
-circuit, bade them ascertain, for the Queen’s information, how many
-ale-houses the justices of the peace had <i>pulled down</i>, so that the good
-justices might be rewarded and the evil removed. Surely the advocates
-for total suppression of the sale of alcoholic drinks were born some two
-or three centuries too late! A quaint jingle, entitled “Skelton’s Ghost,”
-which may be attributed to some post-Elizabethan rhymer, contains
-an allusion to the legal
-price of ale. <span class="xxpn" id="p111">{111}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To all tapsters and tiplers,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And all ale-house vitlers,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Inne-keepers and cookes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That for pot-sale lookes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And will not give measure,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But at your owne pleasure,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Contrary to law,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Scant measure will draw</span>
-<span class="spp00">In pot and in canne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To cozen a man</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of his full quart a penny,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of you there’s too many.</span>
-<span class="spp00">For in King Harry’s time,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When I made this rime</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of Elynor Rumming,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With her good ale tunning,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our pots were full quarted,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We were not thus thwarted</span>
-<span class="spp00">With froth canne and neck pot</span>
-<span class="spp00">And such nimble quick shot,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That a dowzen will score</span>
-<span class="spp00">For twelve pints and no more.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The
-views of a cozening hostess of the period are amusingly set forth
-in a quaint old ballad taken from the Roxburghe collection, a portion of
-which finds place on the following page.</p>
-
-<p>The varying prices and qualities of ale and beer, as sanctioned by
-legal authority, have been so fully treated of in another part of this
-work (Chapter VIII.) that it is not necessary to dwell further upon the
-subject.</p>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr02" id="p112img">
-<img src="images/p112.png" width="600" height="562" alt="
-All is ours and our Huſbands, or the Country Hoſtelles
-Vindication. &#x7c;
-
-To the tune of The Carman’s Whiſtle, or High Boys up go
-we." /><div class="dcaption">
-
-<div class="dpoemctr">
-<div><span class="sppctr"><img
- class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span></div>
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">For if any honeſt company</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of boon good fellows come,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And call for liquor merrily</span>
-<span class="spp01">In any private room,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then I fill the Jugs with Froth,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Or cheat them of one or two,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If I can ſwear them out of both</span>
-<span class="spp01">The reckoning is my due.</span></div>
-<div><span class="sppctr"><img
- class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;"
- /></span></div>
-<div><span class="poemcite"><i>Roxburghe Ballads.</i></span></div>
-</div></div><!--dcaption--></div><!--dctr01--></div>
-
-<p>In the year 1531, brewers were forbidden to make the barrels in
-which their ale was sold. The reason for this extraordinary prohibition
-is thus given in the quaint words of the preamble of the act:—“Whereas
-the ale-brewers and beer-brewers of this realm of England have used,
-and daily do use, for their own singular lucre, profit, and gain, to make
-in their own houses their barrels, kilderkins, and firkins, of much less
-quantity than they ought to be, to the great hurt, prejudice, and damage
-of the King’s liege people, and contrary to divers acts, statutes, ancient
-laws and customs heretofore made, had, and used, and to the destruction
-of the poor craft and mystery of coopers,” therefore
-no beer-brewer or <span class="xxpn" id="p113">{113}</span>
-ale-brewer is to “occupy .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. the mystery or craft of coopers.” The
-coopers are commanded to make every barrel, which is intended to contain
-beer for sale, of the capacity of xxxvi. gallons; ale barrels, however,
-are to contain but xxxii. gallons, and so in proportion for smaller vessels.
-The wardens of the coopers are empowered to search for illegal vessels,
-and to mark every correct vessel with “the sign and token of St.
-Anthony’s cross.” This cross is possibly the origin of the X, double X
-and treble X now in use upon casks. A correspondent of <i>Notes and
-Queries</i>, however, thinks that the letter X on brewers’ casks is probably
-thus derived:—Simplex—single X or X. Duplex—double X or XX.
-Triplex—treble X or XXX. This was suggested by Owen’s epigram,
-<i>lib.</i> xii. 34.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Laudatur vinum simplex, cerevisia duplex</span>
-<span class="spp00">Est bona duplicitas, optima simplicitas.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>From early times laws concerning our exports and imports were
-considered as specially appertaining to the royal prerogative. Corn
-and malt, ale and beer, could only be exported by royal licence. This
-is instanced by the order of Edward III., in 1366, to the ports of
-London, Sandwich, Bristol, Southampton, and eight other
-<span class="nowrap">places:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“The King, to the collectors of customs in the port of London,
-Greeting.</p>
-
-<p>“We command you, that all merchants and others, who wish to
-export corn, malt, ale, and other victuals, be allowed, after first taking
-an oath or some other sufficient security from them, to export such
-things to our town of Calais and to other of our possessions, but not
-elsewhere.”</p>
-
-<p>In later times a considerable revenue was raised for the Crown by
-the profits of these export licences. In the reign of Edward VI. the
-export of beer was regulated by an act (1543) which provides that no
-larger vessel than a barrel was to be used for export purposes, under fine
-of 6s. 8d., and that every exporter should give security for importing so
-much “clapboard” as would be an equivalent for the barrels he took
-out of the country. Queen Elizabeth jealously guarded the prerogative
-in this matter, and in her thrifty way seems to have made a pretty
-penny from the licences. English beer had at that time become widely
-famed, and could be obtained in foreign parts, as may be learnt by
-a letter from Charles Paget to Walsingham (1582), in which he
-announces that he is going to Rouen for his health, and intends to
-drink <i>English beer</i>. <span class="xxpn" id="p114">{114}</span></p>
-
-<p>In 1572, Thomas Cantata, a Venetian, sought permission to export
-200 tuns of beer, on condition of his making known to her Majesty
-certain inventions useful for the defence of the realm. In the same year
-one Th. Smith had licence to export 4,000 tuns of beer.</p>
-
-<p>In 1586, Th. Cullen, of Maldon, Essex, applies to the Council by
-letter in which he asks, as a recompense for having discovered Mr.
-Mantell, a traitor, that he may have a licence as a free victualler for
-twenty-one years, or a licence to transport 400 tuns of beer, or else to
-have £40 in money. Even noblemen engaged in the export trade,
-for in 1603, licence was granted to Lord Aubigny to export 6,000
-tuns of double beer.</p>
-
-<p>The power of granting licences to inns and ale-houses in the days of
-Elizabeth and her immediate successors, was frequently given by letters
-patent to favourites or to persons prepared to pay for the privilege. In
-1590 Wm. Carr received a licence for seven years, to give leave to any
-persons in London and Westminster to brew beer for sale. The abuses
-that grew out of this system formed one of the grievances examined into
-by Parliament in 1621.</p>
-
-<p>A statute was passed in the fourth year of James I. enacting that
-“whereas the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness is of late grown
-into common use, being the root and foundation of many other
-enormous sins, as bloodshed, etc., to the great dishonour of God and of
-our nation, the overthrow of many good arts, and manual trades, the
-disabling of divers good workmen, and the general impoverishment of
-many good subjects, abusively wasting the good creatures of God,” a fine
-of five shillings is imposed for drunkenness, together with six hours in
-the stocks. Some attempt had been previously made at legislation in this
-direction. In Townsend’s <i>Historical Collections</i> (1680) an account is
-found under date Tuesday, November 3rd, 1601, of a debate on a Bill to
-restrain the Excess and Abuse used in Victualling Houses. Mr. Johnson
-moved, that “bodily punishment might be inflicted on Alehouse keepers
-that should be offenders, and that provision be made to restrain Resort
-to Alehouses.” In the same bill Sir George Moore spoke against
-drunkenness, and desired “some special provision should be made against
-it;” and, “touching the Authority of Justices of the Assize and of the
-Peace, given by this bill, That they shall assign Inns, and Inn Keepers.
-I think that inconvenient: for <i>an Inn is a man’s inheritance</i>, and they
-are set at great rates, <i>and therefore, not to be taken away from any
-particular man</i>.” The attempt of James who, to tell the truth, was
-himself not by any means free from “the loathsome and
-hideous sin,” to <span class="xxpn" id="p115">{115}</span>
-make his subjects sober by compulsion, seems to have met with but poor
-success, for in 1609 another statute was passed which, while confessing
-that, “notwithstanding all former laws and provisions already made, the
-inordinate and extreme vice of excessive drinking and drunkenness doth
-more and more abound,” enacts that a person convicted under the
-former act shall be deprived of his licence for the space of three years.
-In 1627 a fine of twenty shillings and a whipping is imposed for keeping
-an ale-house without a licence.</p>
-
-<p>Drunkenness seems to have been prosecuted with some severity
-during the Commonwealth time, and the entries in the records of
-convictions for being “drunk in my view” would seem to point to
-the fact that the offenders were haled before the judgment seat ere
-the effects of their debauches had passed away.</p>
-
-<p>As early as the middle of the fifteenth century some attempts were
-made to bring about “Sunday closing.” They seem to have taken the
-form, for the most part, of bye-laws of corporations, and to have been
-generally unsuccessful. In 1428 the corporation of Hull prohibited the
-vintners and ale-house keepers from delivering or selling ale upon the
-Sunday, under penalty of 6s. 8d. for sellers and 3s. 4d. for buyers. In
-1444 an act was made by the Common Council of London “that upon
-the Sunday should no manner of thing within the franchise of the City
-be bought or sold, neither victual nor other things.” The attempt was
-apparently unsuccessful, as we are told that “it held but a while,” but
-it was renewed from time to time in some form or other. In 1555 an
-order was made by the Privy Council of Queen Mary, and directed to
-the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, whereby taverns,
-ale or beer houses, &amp;c., are directed to be closed on “Sondaye, or other
-festeyvall or hollye daye duringe all the severall tymes of mattyns, highe
-masse, and evynsonge, or of eny sermon to be songe or sayde within
-their severall parishe Churches upon payne of ymprysonmente, as well
-of the boddyes of every suche howseholder, as also of the boddyes of
-every suche persone as shall so presume to eate or drynke.” A hundred
-years later many entries occur in parish and other records of penalties
-for Sunday drinking.</p>
-
-<hr class="hrtb" />
-
-<p>The books of St. Giles’ parish furnish the following
-<span class="nowrap">extracts:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dtablebox">
-<table class="fsz6" summary="">
-<tr>
- <td class="tdright">1641.</td>
- <td class="tdright"><p class="pfirst">Received of the
- Vintner at the Catt in Queene Streete, for p’mitting of
- tipling on the Lord’s day</p></td>
- <td class="tdright">£1</td>
- <td class="tdright">10</td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdright" id="p116">1644.</td>
- <td class="tdright"><p class="pfirst">Received of three
- poor men, for drinking on the Sabbath daie at Tottenham
- Court</p></td>
- <td class="tdright">£0</td>
- <td class="tdright">4</td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdright">1646.</td>
- <td class="tdright"><p class="pfirst">Received of Mr.
- Hooker, for brewing on a Fast day</p></td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td>
- <td class="tdright">2</td>
- <td class="tdright">6</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdright">1648.</td>
- <td class="tdright"><p class="pfirst">Received from Isabel
- Johnson, at the Cole Yard, for drinking on the sabbath
- day</p></td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td>
- <td class="tdright">4</td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdright" rowspan="2">1655.</td>
- <td class="tdright"><p class="pfirst">Received of a Mayd
- taken in Mrs. Jackson’s Ale-house on the sabbath day</p></td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td>
- <td class="tdright">5</td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdright"><p class="pfirst">Received of a
- Scotchman drinking at Robert Owen’s on the Sabbath</p></td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td>
- <td class="tdright">2</td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdright">1658.</td>
- <td class="tdright"><p class="pfirst">Received of Joseph
- Piers, for refusing to open his doores to have his house
- searched on the Lord’s daie</p></td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td>
- <td class="tdright">10</td>
- <td class="tdright">0</td></tr>
-</table>
-</div><!--dtablebox-->
-
-<p>In 1641, an amusing pamphlet was published on the subject of
-Sunday closing. Its title, frontispiece, and an extract from its contents
-are given on the opposite page.</p>
-
-<div class="dleft dwth-g">
-<img src="images/p116.png" width="175" height="292" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>About this period was in vogue that curious old form of punish­ment
-which was known as the drunkard’s, or Newcastle,
-cloak. This gar­ment was noth­ing more nor less
-than a beer bar­rel, worn in the man­ner shown
-in the ac­comp­any­ing il­lus­tra­tion. Possibly the
-in­ven­tor of sand­wich men de­rived his idea from
-this source.</p>
-
-<p>Locke, in his second letter on Tol­er­a­tion,
-informs us that the in­tol­er­ance of the age with
-regard to Dis­sent was car­ried to such length
-that hardly any walk in life was free from
-ob­sta­cles thrown in the way of Dis­sent­ers pursuing it.
-Amongst other things he men­tions that those who had
-licences to sell ale were compelled to receive the Sac­ra­ment
-ac­cord­ing to the rites of the Church of England. We are unable
-to find in con­temp­orary records any con­fir­mation of this alleged
-regulation.</p>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr03" id="p117img">
-<img src="images/p117.png" width="652" height="700"
-alt="The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapſter,
-and Ruleroſt the Cooke, concerning the reſtraint lately ſet
-forth, againſt drinking, potting, and piping on the Sabbath
-day and againſt ſelling meat." />
-<div class="dcaption">
-<p><i>Cook.</i>—“There is ſuch news in the world will anger thee
-to heare of, it is as bad, as bad may be.”</p>
-
-<p class="padtopc"><i>Froth.</i>—“Is there ſo? I pray thee what is it, tell me
-whatever it be.”</p>
-
-<p class="padtopc"><i>Cook.</i>—“Have you not heard of the reſtraint lately come
-out againſt us, from the higher powers; whereby we are
-commanded not to ſell meat nor draw drink upon Sundays, as
-will anſwer the contrary at our perils.”</p>
-
-<span class="sppctr"><img
- class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;"
- /></span>
-
-<p class=""><i>Froth.</i>—“I much wonder, Maſter Ruleroſt, why my
-trade ſhould be put downe, it being ſo neceſſary in a
-Commonwealth.”</p>
-</div><!--dcaption--></div><!--dctr01--></div>
-
-<p>Efforts were made by the brewers from time to time to bring about
-an alteration in the law restricting the quality of beer to two sorts, the
-strong and the small. <i>The Brewers’ Plea or a Vindication of Strong
-Beer</i>, London, 1647, thus gives the views of the brewers on the advantages
-to be obtained by allowing stronger beer to be brewed:—“For of
-hops and malt, our native commodities (and therefore the more agreeable
-to the constitutions of our native inhabitants), may be made such
-strong beer (being well boiled and hopped, and kept its full
-time) as that <span class="xxpn" id="p118">{118}</span>
-it may serve instead of Sack, if authority shall think fit, whereby they
-may also know experimentally the virtue of those creatures, at their full
-height; which beer being well brewed, of a low, pure amber colour,
-clear and sparkling, noblemen and the gentry may be pleased to have
-English Sack in their wine cellars, and taverns also to sell to those who
-are not willing, or cannot conveniently lay it in their own houses;
-which may be a means greatly to increase and improve the tillage of
-England, and also the profitable plantations of hop grounds .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.
-and produce at lesser rates (than wines imported) such good strong beer
-as shall be most cherishing to poor labouring people, without which
-they cannot well subsist; their food being for the most part of such
-things as afford little or bad nourishment, nay, sometimes dangerous;
-and would infect them with many sicknesses and diseases, were they not
-preserved (as with an antidote) with good beer, whose virtues and
-effectual operations, by help of the hop well boiled in it, are more
-powerful to expel poisonous infections than is yet publicly known, or
-taken notice of.”</p>
-
-<p>Another ineffectual plea, somewhat later in date, may be here
-mentioned. In <i>The grand concern of England explained in several
-proposals to the consideration of the Parliament</i>, London, 1673, petition
-is made to Parliament that legislation of a protective nature may be
-granted to the brewers’ trade. The proposal is “That Brandy, Coffee,
-Mum, Tea, and Chocolate may be prohibited,” for these greatly hinder
-the consumption of Barley, Malt, and Wheat, the product of our land.</p>
-
-<p>“But the prohibition of Brandy would be otherwise advantageous to
-the Kingdom, and prevent the destruction of his majesty’s subjects;
-many of whom have been killed by drinking thereof, it not agreeing
-with their constitutions.</p>
-
-<p>“Before brandy (which is now become common and sold in every
-little alehouse) came over into England in such quantities as it now doth,
-we drank good strong beer and ale; and all laborious people (which are
-far the greatest part of the Kingdom), their bodies requiring, after hard
-labour, some strong drink to refresh them, did therefore every morning
-and evening use to drink a pot of ale, or a flagon of strong beer; which
-greatly promoted the consumption of our own grain, and did them no
-great prejudice; it hindered not their work, neither did it take away
-their senses, nor cost them much money.”</p>
-
-<p>This petition, like the last, seems to have been of no effect, for we
-find these “destructive” drinks, brandy, coffee, tea, and chocolate, still
-in use in this country, and not yet
-prohibited by law. <span class="xxpn" id="p119">{119}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Arriving now at a period where the ancient gives way to the comparatively
-modern, this chapter necessarily ends. In the laws of the
-present day relating to ale and beer, are curiosities by the score; but we
-should hardly earn the thanks of our readers for devoting half this book
-to matters which are common knowledge. Suffice it to quote a verse
-from the lays of the Brasenose College butler, written, doubtless, at a
-time when it was first proposed to repeal the old beer tax, and which
-tells in simple words the probable
-<span class="nowrap">result:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Yet beer, they tell us, now will be</span>
-<span class="spp01">Much cheaper than before;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Still, if they take the duty off,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>In duty</i> we drink more.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p119.png" width="144" height="49" alt="" /></div>
-</div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p120a.png" width="144" height="49" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p120"><span
-class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> VI.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dnowrap30"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Come all that love good company,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And hearken to my ditty,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis of a lovely Hoastess fine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">That lives in London City,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which sells good ale, nappy and stale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And always thus sings she,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>My
- ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And a little above my knee.”</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>The Merry
- Hoastess.</i></span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc"><div class="dnowrap30"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>.&#xa0;.&#xa0;doughty
- sons of Hops and Malt.”</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>A Vade Mecum for
- Malt Worms.</i></span></div></div></div><!--depigraph-->
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>BREWING AND MALTING IN EARLY
-TIMES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;THE ALE-WIVES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;THE BREWERS OF OLD LONDON AND THE
-BREWERS’ COMPANY.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ANECDOTES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;QUAINT EPITAPHS.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap"
-src="images/p120b.png" width="229" height="232" alt="I"
-/></span>T seemeth well that before we record the doings of
-departed brewers, brewsters, and ale-wives, a page or so
-should be devoted to the two principal ingredients—malt and
-water—used by those ancient worthies in compounding their
-“merrie-goe-downe.”</p>
-
-<p>Old Fuller thus moralizes on the art of
-malting:—“Though commonness causeth contempt, excellent
-the Art of first inventing thereof. I confesse it facile
-to make Barley Water, an invention which found out itself,
-with little more than the joyning of the ingredients
-together. But to make mault for Drink, was a masterpiece
-indeed. How much of Philosophy concurred to the first Kill
-of Mault, and before it was turned on the floor, how often
-was it toss’d in the brain of the first inventor thereof.
-First, to give it a new growth more than the earth had
-bestowed thereon. Swelling it in water to make it last the
-longer by breaking it, and taste the sweeter by corrupting
-it. Secondly, by making it to passe the fire, the grain (by
-Art fermented) <span class="xxpn" id="p121">{121}</span>
-acquiring a lusciousnesse (which by nature it had not)
-whereby it doth both strengthen and sweeten the water
-wherein it is boyled.”</p>
-
-<p>Those practically engaged in the production of our English national
-drink, whether maltsters or brewers, will no doubt be interested to
-compare the art of malting as it was carried on three hundred years
-ago in this country, with the more familiar processes of to-day. A
-description of malting in the sixteenth century is given by Harrison.
-“Our drinke,” he says, “whose force and continuance is partlie touched
-alreadie, is made of barleie, water and hops, sodden and mingled together,
-by the industrie of our bruers, in a certain exact proportion. But
-before our barleie doo come unto their hands, it susteineth great alteration,
-and is converted into malt, the making whereof I will here set
-downe in such order as my skill therein may extend unto.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Our
-malt is made all the yeare long in some great townes, but in gentlemen’s
-and yeomen’s houses, who commenlie make sufficient for their owne
-expenses onelie, the winter half is thought most meet for that commoditie,
-howbeit the malt which is made when the willow doth bud, is
-commonlie worst of all, nevertheless each one indeuereth to make it of
-the best barleie, which is steeped in a cesterne, in greater or less
-quantitie, by the space of three daies and three nights, untill it be
-thoroughly soaked. This being doone, the water is drained from it by
-little and little, till it be quite gone. Afterward they take it out and
-laieng it upon the cleane floore on a round heape, it resteth so
-until it be readie to shoote at the roote end, which maltsters call
-‘comming.’ When it beginneth, therefor, to shoote in this maner,
-they saie it is ‘come,’ and then foorthwith they spread it abroad, first
-thick and afterward thinner and thinner upon the said floore (as it commeth)
-and there it lieth (with turning every day foure or five times) by
-the space of one and twenty daies at the least, the workemen not suffering
-it in any wise to take any heat, whereby the bud end should spire, that
-bringeth foorth the blade, and by which oversight or hurt of the stuffe
-it selfe the malt would be spoiled, and turne small commoditie to the
-bruer. When it has gone or been turned so long upon the floore, they
-carie it to a kill covered with haire cloth, where they give it gentle
-heats (after they have spread it there verie thin abroad) till it be dry,
-in the meane while they turne it often that it may be uniformelie
-dried. For the more it be dried (yet must it be doone with soft fire)
-the sweeter and better the malt is, and the longer it will continue,
-whereas if it be not dried downe (as they call it) but slackelie
-handled, it will breed a kind of worme, called
-a wivell, which <span class="xxpn" id="p122">{122}</span>
-groweth in the floure of the corne, and in processe of time will
-so eat out it selfe, that nothing shall remaine of the graine
-but even the verie rind or huske. The best malt is tried by
-hardnesse and colour for if it looke fresh with a yellow hew and
-thereto will write like a peece of chalke, after you have bitten a kirnell
-in sunder in the middest, then you may assure yourselfe that it is dried
-downe. In some places it is dried at leisure with wood alone, or strawe
-alone, in other with wood and straw together, but of all the straw dried
-is the most excellent. For the wood dried malt when it is brued, beside
-that the drinke is higher of colour, it dooth hurt and annoie the head
-of him that is not used thereto, bicause of the smoake. Such also as
-use both indifferentlie doo barke, cleave, and drie their wood in an oven,
-thereby to remove all moisture that should procure the fume, and this
-malt is in the second place, and with the same likewise, that which is
-made with dried firze, broome, &amp;c.: whereas if they also be occupied
-greene, they are in a maner so prejudicial to the corne as is the moist
-wood. And thus much of our malts, in bruing whereof some grind the
-same somewhat groselie, and in seething well the liquor that shall be put
-unto it, they adde to everie nine quarters of mault one of headcorne,
-which consisteth of sundrie graine as wheate and otes groond&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.”</p>
-
-<p>Though the reasons which caused one kind of water to be more suitable
-than another for brewing, were not so well understood in olden
-days as they are at present, our ancestors had learned in the school of
-experience that the quality of the water had much to do with the
-quality of the ale and beer brewed from it. Speaking of brewing,
-Harrison says: “In this trade also our Bruers observe verie diligentlie
-the nature of the water, which they dailie occupy, and soile through
-which it passeth, for all waters are not of like goodnesse, sith the fattest
-standing water is alwaies the best; for although the waters that run by
-chalke and cledgie soiles be good, and next unto the Thames water which
-is the most excellent, yet the water that standeth in either of these is
-the best for us that dwell in the countrie, as whereon the sunne lyeth
-longest, and fattest fish are bred. But of all other the fennie and
-morish is the worst, and the clerist spring water next unto it.”</p>
-
-<p>The silver Thames—very different then from the turbid noisome sewer
-of to-day—by reason of the excellence of its water, formed the ordinary
-source of supply for the old London Brewers, many of whom erected
-their breweries on or near its banks. As early as 1345, however, there
-seems to have been a tendency on the part of certain brewers to get
-their water elsewhere. In that year a complaint was
-made to the <span class="xxpn" id="p123">{123}</span>
-authorities on behalf of the Commonalty of the City of London, “that
-whereas of old a certain conduit” (probably the Cheapside conduit constructed
-in Henry III.’s reign) “was built in the midst of the City of
-London, that so the rich and middling persons therein might there
-have water for preparing their food, and the poor for their drink; the
-water aforesaid was now so wasted by Brewers and persons keeping
-brewhouses and making malt, that in these modern times it will no
-longer suffice for the rich and middling, nor yet for the poor.” In consequence
-of this state of things, the brewers were forbidden to use the
-conduit water under penalty, for the first offence to forfeit the <i>tankard</i>
-or vessel in which the water was carried, on a second conviction to suffer
-fine, and on the third, imprisonment.</p>
-
-<p>More than four hundred years ago the waters of the Thames were
-at some states of the tide too turbid for use, and accordingly in the
-reign of Henry VI., the Wardens of the Brewers’ Company were
-commanded not to take water for brewing from the Thames when it was
-disturbed, but to wait till low water and the turn of the tide. In
-Queen Elizabeth’s reign the Thames was beginning to acquire an evil
-repute, if we may believe the author of <i>Pierce Penilesse, his supplication
-to the Deuill</i> (1592), who refers to the London Brewers in terms of
-contempt. “Some” says he, “are raised by corrupt water, as gnats, to
-which we may liken brewers, that, by retayling <i>filthie Thames water</i>,
-come in a few yeres to be worth fortie or fiftie thousand pound.” Stow
-remarks of the London Brewers that “for the more part they remain
-near the friendly waters of the Thames.” In his time many brewhouses
-were gathered together in the parish of St. Catharine, near the
-Tower, and are distinguished on the map of London given in the
-Civitates Orbis by the name of “Beer Houses.”</p>
-
-<p>Many years ago a canal led up from the Thames to the Stag Brewery
-at Pimlico, and provided that now famous brewhouse with water.</p>
-
-<p>All through the reign of Elizabeth, and for some time afterwards,
-the Thames in the neighbourhood of the City, continued to afford the
-greater part of the water used by the London Brewers. Until the New
-River water was brought to London, an event which took place in the
-time of James I., the Thames would naturally furnish the chief supply.</p>
-
-<p>The regulations in force touching the Thames water, had regard to
-the manner in which it was carried from the river to the Breweries, and
-did not in any way seek to restrict the use of the water as unfit for its
-purpose. For instance, in the third year of Elizabeth’s reign the
-Wardens of the Brewers were called before the
-Common Council and <span class="xxpn" id="p124">{124}</span>
-charged not to fetch the water of the Thames in a “liquor-cart,”<a class="afnanc" href="#fn43" id="fnanc43">43</a>
-but to
-make use of “boge” horses (horses carrying boges, <i>i.e.</i> water-barrels),
-according to the ancient laws and ordinances. The command was
-subsequently relaxed in favour of brewers living close to the River, and
-drawing water from “the Water-gate at the Tower Hill or at the
-Whitefriars.” The reason for this regulation is not stated, but the partial
-removal of the restriction would seem to show that it was intended
-to prevent the crowding of the narrow thoroughfares of the City with
-brewers’ carts passing and repassing. The horse with his “boge” would
-pass another horse with ease, while two “liquor carts” meeting would
-certainly block the way. This interpretation is rather confirmed by a
-subsequent regulation, made three years before the Great Fire cleared
-away many of the narrow lanes of the City, that brewers’ drays should
-not go abroad in the streets after 11 a.m. on account of the obstruction
-to traffic thereby occasioned.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc43" id="fn43">43</a>
-“Liquor” had then, and also at a far earlier date, the same
-technical sense as it now has, and meant water.</p></div>
-
-<p>Turning now from the ingredients used in brewing to the actual
-brewers, it will not surprise any one who has read the chapter immediately
-preceding the present one, to be informed that in early times
-a great part of the brewing trade was in the hands of the gentler sex.
-Alreck, King of Hordoland, is said to have chosen Geirhild for his queen,
-in consequence of her proficiency in this necessary art, and what was
-not derogatory to the dignity of a queen might of course be performed
-by a subject. Accordingly, as has been already shown, even as late as the
-seventeenth century the brewing of ale and beer for the household was
-looked upon as belonging to the special province of the housewife and
-her female servants. Anciently the same custom prevailed in regard to
-the brewing of ale for sale, and the brewsters or ale-wives had at one
-time a great part of the trade, both in the country and the city. Mr.
-Riley, in his preface to the <i>Liber Albus</i>, goes so far as to say that even
-down to the close of the fifteenth century, if not later, the London
-brewing trade was almost entirely in the hands of women, and he states
-that Fleet Street was at that time nearly wholly tenanted by ale-wives
-and felt-cap makers. With all respect for Mr. Riley’s intimate knowledge
-of the ancient lore connected with London Town, it must be said
-that this view seems to be incorrect, for in a list of the London Brewers,
-made in the reign of Henry V., and still existing in the City Records,
-out of about three hundred names, only fifteen are
-those of women. <span class="xxpn" id="p125">{125}</span>
-The ale-wives of Fleet Street were probably not brewers, but hucksters
-or retailers.</p>
-
-<p>The first ale-wife deserving of special mention is the Chester “tapstere,”
-whose evil doings and fate are recorded in one of the Chester
-Misteries, or Miracle Plays, of the fourteenth century. The good folk of
-Chester seem to have had a peculiar dislike to being subjected to the
-tricks of dishonest brewers and taverners. Even in Saxon times it was
-a regulation of the City that one who brewed bad ale should be placed
-on a cucking-stool and plunged in a pool of muddy water. For the ale-wife
-of the old play a worse fate was reserved, and though she was a
-fictitious person, many of the audience would no doubt find little
-difficulty in fitting some of their acquaintances with the character depicted.
-With that mixture of the sacred and profane which to a modern ear is,
-to say the least, somewhat startling, the Mystery in question describes
-the descent of Christ into Hell and the final redemption of all men out
-of purgatory—all, save one. A criminal remains whose sins are of so
-deep a dye that she may not be forgiven. She thus confesses her
-<span class="nowrap">guilt:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Some time I was a tavernere,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A gentel gossepp, and a tapstere</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of wine and ale, a trusty brewer,</span>
-<span class="spp03">Which woe hath me bewrought.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of cannes I kept no true measure,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My cuppes I solde at my pleasure,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Deceavinge many a creature,</span>
-<span class="spp03">Tho’ my ale were nought.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p125.png" width="491" height="325" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Sad Fate of a
- Mediæval Ale-wife.</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p126">{126}</span></div>
-
-<p>The ale-wife is then carried off into Hell’s mouth by the attendant
-demons, and the play closes.</p>
-
-<p>The illustration is taken from a <i>miserere</i> seat in Ludlow Church.
-The scene is a very similar one to that just described. A demon is
-about to cast the deceitful ale-wife into Hell’s mouth. She carries her
-gay head attire and her false measure. Another demon reads the
-roll of her offences, and a third is playing on the pipes by way of
-accompaniment.</p>
-
-<p>Elynour Rummynge, the cele­brat­ed ale-wife of Leath­er­head in the
-reign of Henry VIII., has been hand­ed down to fame by the pen of
-Skel­ton, the Poet Laureate of the day. It may be, as Mr. Dalloway, one
-of Skelton’s editors, suggests, that the poet made the acquain­tance of
-Elynour while in at­ten­dance upon the Court at Nonsuch Palace, which
-was only eight miles from her abode. That the Laureate had a very
-intimate knowledge of this lady, may be gathered from his minute
-description of her un­pre­pos­ses­sing
-<span class="nowrap">person:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem18"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Her lothely lere</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is nothynge clere</span>
-<span class="spp00">But ugly of chere,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Her face all bowsy,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Comely crynkled</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wondrously wrinkled,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Lyke a rost pigges eare,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Brystled wyth here,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Her nose somdele hoked,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And camously croked,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Her skynne lose and slacke,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Grained like a sacke;</span>
-<span class="spp00">With a croked backe.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Her kyrtel Brystow red</span>
-<span class="spp00">With clothes upon her hed</span>
-<span class="spp00">That wey a sowe of led.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p127">{127}</span></div>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p127.png" width="528" height="562" alt="
- Eleanor Rummyng, Alewife." />
-<div class="dcaption">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
- <span class="spp00">When Skelton wore the Laurell Crowne,</span>
- <span class="spp00">My Ale put all the Ale-wiues downe.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dcaption--></div><!--dctr02--></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p128">{128}</span></div>
-
-<p>Thus, and with many more unpleasing qualities, does the poet garnish
-the subject of his verse, going on to describe
-<span class="nowrap">how―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">She breweth noppy ale</span>
-<span class="spp00">And maketh thereof fast sale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To trauellers, to tynkers,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To sweters, to swinkers</span>
-<span class="spp00">And all good ale drynkers.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>So fond are many of her customers of her ale, that they will come
-to it, even though they cannot pay in coin of the realm.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Instede of coyne and monney,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some brynge her a conny,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And some a pot of honny,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some a salt, and some a spone,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some theyr hose, and some theyr shone.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The writers of the Elizabethan age make frequent reference to the
-ale-wives. “Ask Marian Hacket, the ale-wife of Wincot,” says
-Christopher Sly, “if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen
-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in
-Christendom.” One would think that the ale-wife mentioned in <i>The
-Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> would have a large, if not a very
-lucrative,
-<span class="nowrap">trade:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">For Jillian of Berry she dwells on a hill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And she hath good beer and ale to sell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And of good fellows she thinks no ill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And thither shall we go now, now, now,</span>
-<span class="spp04">And thither shall we go now.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And when you have made a little stay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">You need not ask what is to pay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But kiss your hostess and go your way,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And thither will we go now, now, now,</span>
-<span class="spp04">And thither will we go now.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">All
-ale-wives, however, had not so good a repute as Jillian of Berry.
-Harrison, whose knowledge of ale was indisputable, speaking of the
-fraudulent ale-wives of his time, says: “Such sleights have they for the
-utterance of this drink (ale) that they will mire it with resin and salt,
-but if you heat a knife red-hot, and quench it in the ale,
-so near the <span class="xxpn" id="p129">{129}</span>
-bottom of the pot as you can put it, you shall see the rosen come forth
-hanging on the knife. As for the force of salt, it is well known by the
-effect; for the more the drinker tipleth, the more he may, and so dooth
-he carry oft a drie drunken noll to bed with him, except his luck be the
-better.”</p>
-
-<p>The lady, whose tall hat and large white frill appear upon the
-next page, went by the unpleasant name of Mother Louse. She is
-mentioned by Anthony Wood, in 1673, as an ale-wife of Hedington
-Hill, and was supposed to be the last woman who wore a ruff in
-England. The verses under the engraving indicate that the dun hat
-and ruff had gone out of vogue, and were objects of merriment.</p>
-
-<p>From the <i>Accounts of the Lord Treasurer of Scotland</i> (fifteenth
-century) it may be gathered that the customs and regulations respecting
-the brewing and sale of ale were much the same in Scotland as in
-this country. The price of ale was fixed from time to time “efter the
-imposicioune of the worthi men of the toune,” who regulated it according
-to the price of malt. “Browster wives” brewed the greater part
-of the ale, and kept most of the ale-houses. Their ale was frequently
-made from a barley and oat malt, as was the practice in England at the
-same date. As in this country, the lack of piquant flavour, afterwards
-supplied by the hop, was in those days compensated by the addition of
-ginger, pepper, spices, and aromatic herbs. Though the use of hops
-spread but slowly into Scotland, a considerable import trade in beer
-(hopped ale) was carried on with Germany. In 1455 the accounts
-already quoted show a payment for German beer supplied to the garrison
-at Dunbar. Some curious entries also appear for the years 1497–8:
-“Item, to Andrew Bertoune, for ten pipe of cider and beir, the price of
-all IX li; item, for <i>aill that the Kinges horse drank</i>, viiijd.; item, for
-the King’s ships, xij barrellis of ail; for ilk barrell xiiijs. iiijd.”</p>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p130.png" width="538" height="746" alt="
-Mother Louſe of Louſe Hall, near Oxford. &#x7c;
-
-An Alewife at Hedington Hill (1678) mentioned by Anthony Wood.
-Probably the laſt woman in England who wore a ruff." />
-<div class="dcaption">
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
- <div>AN ALEWIFE.</div>
- <div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
- <span class="spp00">You laugh now Goodman two ſhoes, but at what?</span>
- <span class="spp00">My Grove, my Manſion Houſe, or my dun Hat;</span>
- <span class="spp00">Is it for that my loving Chin and Snout</span>
- <span class="spp00">Are met, becauſe my Teeth are fallen out;</span>
- <span class="spp00">Is it at me, or at my Ruff you titter;</span>
- <span class="spp00">Your Grandmother, you Rouge, nere wore a fitter.</span>
- <span class="spp00">Is it at Forehead’s Wrinkle, or Cheeks’ Furrow,</span>
- <span class="spp00">Or at my Mouth, ſo like a Coney Borrough,</span>
- <span class="spp00">Or at thoſe Orient Eyes that nere ſhed tear</span>
- <span class="spp00">But when the Exciſemen come, that’s twice a year.</span>
- <span class="spp00">Kiſs me and tell me true, and when they fail,</span>
- <span class="spp00">Thou ſhalt have larger potts and ſtronger Ale.</span></div>
-</div></div></div><!--dcaption--></div><!--dctr02--></div>
-
-<p>The following extracts from old Scotch laws show the similarity of
-the old English and Scotch usages:—“All women quha brewes aill to
-be sould, sall brew conforme to the use and consuetude of the burgh all
-the yeare. And ilk Browster sall put forth ane signe of her aill, without
-her house, be the window or be the dure, that it may be sene as common
-to all men; quhilk gif she does not, she sall pay ane unlaw (fine) of foure
-pennies.” “It is statute that na woman sel the gallon of aill fra Pasch
-until Michaelmes, dearer nor twa pennies; and fra Michaelmas untill
-Pasch, dearer nor ane pennie.” A verse or two of the “<i>Ale-wife’s Supplication</i>;
-or, the Humble Address of the Scotch Brewers to his Majesty
-King George III., for taking away the License and
-charging some less <span class="xxpn" id="p131">{131}</span>
-duty on Malt and Ale,” must close this reference to the old Scotch
-brewing
-<span class="nowrap">trade:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s to thee, neighbour, ere we part,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But your Ale is not worth the mou’ing</span>
-<span class="spp00">You must make it more stout and smart,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Or else give over your brewing.</span>
-<span class="spp00">It’s nineteen Times ’courg’d thro’ the Draff,</span>
-<span class="spp01">So whipt by Willy Water,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That Barm and Hop bears a’ the Scoup;</span>
-<span class="spp01">I swear I’ve made far better.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Cries Maggy, then, you speak as you ken,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Consider our Taxations;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And brew it stout, you’ll soon run out,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of both your Purse and Patience:</span>
-<span class="spp00">For these gauging Men, with nimble Pen,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Can count each Pile of Barley;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And he that cheats them of a Gill,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Will get up very early.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Returning now to London, it is proposed to give some account of
-the brewing trade in olden times, and of the Brewers’ Company.</p>
-
-<p>The first differences that strike one in contrasting the ancient and
-modern breweries are that the former were on a very small scale
-compared with the huge establishments of to-day, and that originally
-nearly every brewer was also a retailer. In Chaucer’s time a brewhouse
-was often synonymous with an
-<span class="nowrap">ale-house:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>In
- al the toun nas brewhouse ne taverne</span>
-<span class="spp00">That he ne visited with his solas.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>We have no knowledge of any representations of brewhouses at this
-early period. The interesting picture of a sixteenth-century brewery is
-taken from a rare work by Hartman Schopper, entitled, “Πανοπλια,
-omnium illiberalium, mechanicarum, aut sedentariarun artium genera
-continens, carminibus expressa, cum venustissimis imaginibus omnium
-artificum negociationes ad vivum representantibus,” published at
-Frankfort-on-Main, 1568. The illustration would no doubt stand as
-well for a brewhouse of a much earlier period, judging from the written
-descriptions which we possess. The engraver of <i>Der Bierbreuwer</i> was
-Jost Ammon, and the engraving is considered one of
-the best examples <span class="xxpn" id="p133">{133}</span>
-of the art at this very early period. A plate taken from the same work,
-representing a cooperage, will be found on page
-<a href="#p334" title="go to p. 334">334.</a></p>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg"><div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p132.png" width="489" height="938"
- alt="Der Bierbreuwer. &#x7c;
-Auß Gerſten ſied ich gutes Bier, &#x7c;
-Feißt und ſüß, auch bitter monier, &#x7c;
-In ein Breuwfeſſel weit und groß &#x7c;
-Darein ich denn den Hopſſen ſtoß, &#x7c;
-Laß den ich denn in Brennten fühlen daß &#x7c;
-Damit ſüll ich darnach die Faß, &#x7c;
-Wohl gebunden und wohl gebicht, &#x7c;
-Denn giert er und iſt zugericht. &#x7c;
-Beschreibung aller Stände (1568)." />
-</div><!--dctr04--></div>
-
-<p>The old German lines under the engraving of the Beer-brewer may
-be thus rendered into English: From barley I boil good beer, rich and
-sweet and bitter fashion. In a wide and big copper I then cast the hops.
-Then [after boiling the wort] I leave it to cool, and therewith I straightway
-fill the well-hooped and well-pitched [fermenting] vat; then it
-[the wort] ferments, and [the beer] is ready.</p>
-
-<p>There is no doubt that the brewers’ trade was originally held in little
-esteem, and was considered as mean and sordid (<i>de vile juggement</i>).
-The ignominious punishments and restrictions (some of which have
-been already mentioned) to which the old London brewers were subjected,
-prove that their status only slowly improved. In the time of
-Henry VIII., however, their position had so far advanced in repute
-that in the grant of arms then made to them, they are specified as
-“the Worshipful Occupation of the Brewars of the City.”</p>
-
-<p>The Records of the City of London are particularly full of details
-concerning the brewers and the brewing trade, and it will probably give
-the best idea of the conditions under which the business was carried on
-in former days to mention a few of the principal regulations gathered
-from that valuable body of information, and to supplement them by
-extracts from the records of the Brewers’ Company. Truth to say, the
-brewers and the City authorities were never the best of friends, and
-long accounts are to be found from time to time of disputes between
-them as to the legal price and quality of the liquor with which the
-lieges were to be supplied—struggles in which the action of the authorities
-seems, according to our modern notions, to have been arbitrary in
-the extreme. An instance of this tyranny over a trade is given in the
-<i>Liber Aldus</i>, from which it appears that not only was a brewer compelled
-to brew ale of a specified price and quality, but he was not even
-allowed to leave off brewing in case he found it did not pay him to continue.
-The regulation runs thus: “If any shall refuse to brew, or shall
-brew a less quantity than he or she used to brew, in consequence of this
-ordinance, he or she shall be held to be a withdrawer of victual from
-this city and shall be punished by imprisonment, and shall forswear his
-trade as a brewer within the liberties of the City for ever.”</p>
-
-<p>The same idea, formerly so prevalent, that persons ought to be compelled
-by the strong hand to pursue their avocations, and the arbitrary
-manner in which the authorities acted in obtaining a supply of victuals,
-may be illustrated from the <i>Annals of Dunstaple</i> (1294), in
-which it is <span class="xxpn" id="p134">{134}</span>
-recorded that the King’s long stay at St. Albans and Langley “enormously
-injured the market of Dunstaple and all the country round.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.
-The servants of the King seized all victual coming to the market, even
-cheese and eggs; they went into the houses of the citizens and carried
-away even what was not for sale, and scarce left a tally with any one.
-They took bread and ale from the ale-wives, and if they had none <i>they
-made them make bread and ale</i>.” In 1297 the Sheriffs of Notts and
-Derby are ordered by Edward I. (Rymer R. 1. 883) to proclaim in every
-town that the bakers and brewers should bake and brew a sufficient
-store of bread and ale for certain Welshmen, who were marching to
-chastise the Scots, “because the King is unwilling that, by reason of
-such victuals failing, the men of those parts should suffer damage at the
-hands of the sd Welshmen.”</p>
-
-<p>The persons employed in the malt liquor trade, whether as manufacturers
-or retailers, are specified in an ordinance of the reign of Henry
-IV. to be Brewers, Brewsters, Hostillers (<i>i.e.</i>, Innkeepers), Kewes (<i>i.e.</i>,
-Cooks), Pyebakers, and Hucksters. The hucksters were undoubtedly
-at one time accustomed to sell their ale in the streets of London. In
-1320 they were prohibited by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen from
-selling ale on London Bridge. In the sixth year of Richard II. Juliana
-atte Vane, huckster, was charged with selling her ale in “hukkesterie;”
-she is asked from whom she bought the ale, and replies that she bought
-the said ale, viz., one barrel of 30 gallons, from Benedicta (brewster), who
-lived at “Crepulgate.” It was accordingly adjudged that Juliana had
-broken the City regulations, and the ale was forfeited. The brewers
-were forbidden at this time to sell to hucksters under pain of forfeiture
-and imprisonment <i>at the will of the Mayor</i>, the intention apparently
-being that only a brewer should be a vendor of ale.</p>
-
-<p>By the reign of Henry IV. the brewers, although they had as yet no
-royal charter, had joined themselves together for purposes of mutual
-protection and social intercourse. They are mentioned in an ordinance
-of the seventh year of that reign as the Mystery (<i>i.e.</i>, trade or craft) of
-Free Brewers within the City, and a constitution is ordained for them
-by the City Fathers. The freemen of the Mystery are yearly to elect
-eight persons, four of the part of the City east of Walbrook, viz., two
-masters and two wardens, and four like persons of the part west of
-Walbrook. These eight are to make regulations for those using the
-mystery of brewing, as to the hiring of servants, the sale of ale, and
-such like matters, as they should be charged by the Mayor and Aldermen;
-they are also to see “that the good men of
-the mystery may <span class="xxpn" id="p135">{135}</span>
-have a proper place to go to to transact their own business,” and are
-called together upon the proper occasions “by summons of their beadle
-in such a manner as other mysteries are;” they are to supervise those
-who make and supply ale, and to see that “good, able and seyn (sound)
-ale” is brewed according to the legal price, and to report offenders to
-the Chamberlain of the City.</p>
-
-<p>Considerable difficulty was at this time experienced in compelling the
-sellers of ale to keep to the lawful measures of barrel, kilderkin, and lesser
-vessels. On a complaint being made to the Common Council in the
-ninth year of Henry IV., that whereas “each barrel ought to contain
-thirty gallons of just measure, but each is deficient by two gallons or
-more .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. if the dregs are reckoned as clear ale, and that the brewers
-will make no rebate in the price on that account to the great deceit and
-damage of the Lords, Gentles and Citizens,” therefore the deputies of
-the Chamberlain are ordered to mark every barrel as containing 27
-gallons, and the half barrel as containing 14 gallons by reason of the
-aforesaid dregs. Five years later further evil doings are recorded. The
-Brewers and brewsters, “to the displeasure of God and contrary to the
-profit of the City, sell their ale three quarts for a gallon, one quart and
-a half for a potell (<i>i.e.</i>, a two-quart measure); and one hanap (<i>i.e.</i> a two-handled
-tankard), for a half quart of which six or seven hanaps scarcely
-make a gallon,” and they are therefore ordered for the future to sell
-only by sealed measure and not by hanap, tankard, or any such vessel.</p>
-
-<p>In the reign of Henry V. the famous Lord Mayor, Richard Whitington,
-and the Brewers seem to have been perpetually at daggers
-drawn.</p>
-
-<p>The records of the Brewers’ Company contain a quaint account of
-an information laid against them for selling dear ale; the complainant
-in the case being Sir Richard, whose mayoralty had then expired. The
-substance of it, translated from the original Norman French, is as
-<span class="nowrap">follows:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“On Thursday, July 30th, 1422, Robert Chichele, the Mayor, sent
-for the masters and twelve of the most worthy of our company to appear
-at the Guildhall; to whom John Fray, the recorder, objected a breach
-of government, for which £20 should be forfeited, for selling dear ale.
-After much dispute about the price and quality of malt, wherein
-Whityngton, the late mayor, declared that the brewers had ridden into
-the country and forestalled the malt, to raise its price, they were convicted
-in the penalty of £20; which objecting to, the masters were
-ordered to be kept in prison in the Chamberlain’s
-company, until they <span class="xxpn" id="p136">{136}</span>
-should pay it, or find security for payment thereof.” Whereupon, the
-Mayor and Court of Aldermen, having “gone homeward to their meat,”
-the masters, who remained in durance vile, “asked the Chamberlain and
-clerk what they should do; who bade them go home, and promised that
-no harm should come to them; for all this proceeding had been done
-but to please Richard Whityngton, for he was the cause of all the aforesaid
-judgment.” The record proceeds to state that “the offence taken
-by Richard Whityngton against them was for their having fat swans at
-their feast on the morrow of St. Martin.” Whether this unctuous dish
-had offended the famous Mayor’s mind by way of his digestion, does not
-appear.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p136.png" width="426" height="486" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Whityngton.</div></div>
-
-<p>The same Robert Chichele is recorded to have issued the fol­low­ing
-curious reg­u­la­tion in 1423:—“That re­tail­ers of ale should sell the same
-in their houses in pots of “peutre,” sealed and open; and that whoever
-carried ale to the buyer should hold the pot in one hand and a cup in
-the other; and that all who had cups unsealed should be fined.”</p>
-
-<p>Many other complaints of the “oppressive” acts of Whitington
-towards the Company are also recorded. <span class="xxpn" id="p137">{137}</span></p>
-
-<p>The Company, as appears from these records, had the power of fining
-its members for breach of discipline. In 1421 one William Payne, at
-the sign of the Swan, by St. Anthony’s Hospital, Threadneedle Street,
-was fined 3s. 4d., to be expended in a swan for the masters’ breakfast, for
-having refused to supply a barrel of ale to the King when he was in
-France. Simon Potkin, of the Key, Aldgate, was fined for selling short
-measure, whereupon he alleged that he had given money to the masters
-of the Brewers’ Company, that he might sell ale at his will. This
-excuse embroiled him with the Company, who were not to be appeased
-until he had paid 3s. 4d. for a swan to be eaten by the masters, but of
-which, it is added, “he was allowed his own share.”</p>
-
-<p>In 1420 Thomas Greene, master, and the wardens of the Company
-agreed that they should meet at “Brewershalle” every Monday for the
-transaction of their business. It would appear that the first Hall had
-then been recently erected, for, as we have seen, the Brewers had in the
-preceding reign no fixed place to which “the good men of the mystery”
-might resort. Many curious accounts are to be found of election
-feasts. The presence of females was allowed. The brothers of the
-Company paid 12d., and the sisters 8d., and a brother and his wife
-20d. A <i>menu</i> of one of these feasts, given in the ninth year of
-Henry V., is subjoined. It shows the nature of these entertainments
-at that period.</p>
-
-<div class="dtablebox">
-<table class="fsz6" summary="">
-<caption>LA ORDINANCE DE NOSTRE FESTE EN CESTE AN.</caption>
-<tr>
- <th><i>La premier Cours</i></th>
- <th><i>The First Course</i></th></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Brawne one le mustarde</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Brawn with mustard</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Caboch à le potage</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Cabbage soup</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Swan standard</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Swan standard</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Capons rostez</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Roast capons</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Graundez Costades.</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Great costard apples.</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <th><i>La seconde Cours</i></th>
- <th><i>The Second Course</i></th></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Venyson en broth one</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Venison in broth</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Blanche mortrewes<a class="afnanc" href="#fn44" id="fnanc44">44</a></td>
- <td class="tdleft">Mortreux soup <span class="xxpn" id="p138">{138}</span></td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Cony standard</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Rabbit standard</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Pertriches on cokkez rostez</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Partridges with roasted cocks</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Leche Lombard<a class="afnanc" href="#fn45" id="fnanc45">45</a></td>
- <td class="tdleft">Leche Lombard</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Dowsettes one pettiz parneux.</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Sweetmeats and pastry.</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <th><i>La troisme Cours</i></th>
- <th><i>The Third Course</i></th></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Poires en serope</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Pears in syrup</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Graundezbriddes one</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Great birds and</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Petitz ensemblez</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Little ones together</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Fretours</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Fritters</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Payne puff one</td>
- <td class="tdleft">Bread puff</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">Un cold bakemete.</td>
- <td class="tdleft">A cold baked meat.</td></tr>
-</table></div><!--dtablebox-->
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc44" id="fn44">44</a>
-<i>Mortreux</i> was a kind of white soup. Chaucer says of the Cook
-<span class="nowrap">that:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>He
- coude roste, and sethe, and broille, and frie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pye.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc45" id="fn45">45</a>
-An old receipt for <i>leche lombard</i> describes it as made of pork
-pounded with eggs; sugar, salt, raisins, currants, dates, pepper, and
-cloves were added; the mixture was put in a bladder and boiled; raisins,
-wine and more spices were added, and the whole was served in a wine
-gravy.</p></div>
-
-<p>It will be gathered from a study of this bill of fare that, though the
-Brewers frequently alluded to themselves in petitions as “the poor
-men of the Mystery of Brewers,” “your poor neighbours the Berebruers,”
-and such like, they nevertheless fared rather sumptuously than
-otherwise. Here is their drink bill for a similar
-<span class="nowrap">entertainment:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dtablebox">
-<table class="fsz6" summary="">
-<caption>BOTERYE.</caption>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">item for xxii galons of red wine</td>
- <td class="tdleft">xiiijs. viijd.</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">item for iij kilderkyns of good ale at ijs. iiijd.</td>
- <td class="tdleft">viis.</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">item for ij kilderkyn of iij halfpeny Ale at xxij</td>
- <td class="tdleft">iijs. viijd.</td></tr>
-<tr>
- <td class="tdleft">item for j kilderkyn of peny ale</td>
- <td class="tdleft">xijd.</td></tr>
-</table></div><!--dtablebox-->
-
-<p>In 1422 Parliament ordered that all the weirs or “kydells” in the
-Thames from Staines to Gravesend should be destroyed, and the Lord
-Mayor and Aldermen ordained that two men from each of the City
-Companies should assist in the work. Thomas Grene and Robert
-Swannefeld were accordingly chosen on behalf of the Brewers to go to
-Kingston. The expenses were defrayed by a general contribution by
-the members of the Company. “These be the names,”
-says the old <span class="xxpn" id="p139">{139}</span>
-writer, “of Brewers of London, the wheche dede paien diverse somes
-of monye for to helpe to destruye the weres yn Tempse for the comynalte
-of the Cite of London shulde have the more plente of fissh.” The
-names of some two hundred and fifty subscribers are subjoined to the
-record.</p>
-
-<p>In 1424 the Brewers had a Lord Mayor to their mind in John
-Michelle, who was “a good man, and meek and soft to speak with.”
-When he was sworn-in, the Brewers gave him an ox, that cost 21s. 2d.,
-and a boar valued at 30s. 1d.; “so that he did no harm to the Brewers,
-and advised them to make good ale, that he might not have any
-complaint against them.”</p>
-
-<p>Returning to the ordinances of the City, we find that about this
-time (7 Hen. V.) there were some three hundred brewers in the City
-and liberties. In that year another precaution was taken to ensure
-a proper measure of cask. The coopers were ordered by Whitington to
-mark with an iron brand all casks made by them. Each cooper was to
-have his own brand, and the marks were to be entered of record. This
-regulation was carried into effect, and the mark chosen by each cooper
-appears on the City Records with his name annexed, as
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p139.png" width="1200" height="288" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>In
-the sixteenth year of the reign of Henry VI. the first charter was
-granted to the Brewers’ Company. It empowered the freemen of the
-Mystery of Brewers of the City of London thenceforward to be a
-corporate body, with a common seal and powers of taking and holding
-land. The Company was yearly to elect four of their number as
-wardens, who were to have power to regulate the members of the
-Mystery and their brewing operations, and also to govern and rule all
-men employed in, and all processes connected with, the brewing of <i>any
-kind of liquor from malt</i> within the City and suburbs for ever. This
-last provision was probably intended to extend the power of the
-Company to the Fellowship of the Beer-brewers, then beginning to come
-into existence. Some years afterwards a coat-of-arms was granted to
-the Company by William Hawkeslowe, Clarencieux King of Arms of
-the South Marches of Ingelond. It is thus described
-in the grant: <span class="xxpn" id="p140">{140}</span>
-“They beren asure thre barly sheues gold, bound of the same, a
-cheveron, gowles, in the cheveron thre barels, Sylvir, garnyshed with
-sable.”</p>
-
-<div class="dleft dwth-d">
-<img src="images/p140a.png" width="291" height="273" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Ancient Arms.</div></div>
-
-<p class="pleft">The Brewers had taken for their patron saints St. Mary
-and St. Thomas the Martyr, and bore the arms of Thomas
-à Becket impaled with their own, until Henry VIII.,
-dis­cov­er­ing that St. Thomas was no saint after all,
-des­e­crat­ed his tomb, scat­tered his dust to the four winds
-of heaven, and com­pelled the Brewers to adopt another
-es­cut­cheon. The new coat, dis­card­ing the ob­noxious saint’s
-insignia, was a good deal like the old one, and is borne
-by the Company to this day. It is described in the grant
-as follows: “Geules on a Cheueron engrailed silver three
-kil­der­kyns sable hoped golde between syx barly sheues in
-saultre of the same, upon the Helme on a torse siluer and
-asur a demy Morien in her proper couler, vestid asur,
-fretid siluer, the here golde, holding in either hande thre
-barley eres of the same manteled sable, dobled siluer.”</p>
-
-<div class="dright dwth-c">
-<img src="images/p140b.png" width="772" height="707" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Arms of the Brewers’ Company.</div></div>
-
-<p class="pleft">With regard to the old Hall of the Brewers’ Company, it
-oc­cu­pied the site of the pre­sent Hall, and is des­cribed by
-Stowe as a “faire house;” it was des­troyed in the Great
-Fire. Of the pre­sent ed­i­fice, which sprang Phœnix-like
-from the ashes of the yet smok­ing City—it bears date
-1666—suf­fice it to say that it is a fine build­ing,
-char­ac­ter­is­tic of the arch­i­tec­tural style of the period,
-and that for lovers of old oak car­vings its in­terior is
-worthy a visit.</p>
-
-<p>This notice of the Brewers’ Company, its foundation, its
-feasts, and <span class="xxpn" id="p141">{141}</span> its
-troubles has taken us rather in advance of our tale, and we
-must hark back to the middle of the fifteenth century.</p>
-
-<p class="pclearfix">To judge from an entry in the City
-Records of the sixteenth year of Edward IV. the Brewers
-were sometimes openly resisted by force of arms. The actual
-occasion on which this was done is not specified, but it is
-recorded that Richard Geddeney was committed to prison for
-having said that the Brewers had made new ordinances, and
-that it would be well to oppose them, as had formerly been
-done, with swords and daggers, when they were assembled in
-their Hall.</p>
-
-<p>Six years afterwards a petition was presented to the Lord Mayor
-and Aldermen by the Brewers, which is so good a specimen of the usual
-style of their supplications that some portions of it are given. It begins
-by “petieously compleynyng that where in tyme passed thei have
-honestly lyved by the meanes of bruyng, and utteryng of their chaffer
-as well within the fraunchises of the saide Citee as withoute. And hath
-ben able to bere charges of the same citee after their havours and powers
-as other freemen of the saide citee. Where now it is so that for lak of
-Reules and other directions in the saide Crafte they ben disordered and
-none obedience nor goode Rule and Guydyng is hadd within the saide
-Crafte to the distruction thereof.” It is therefore prayed—“That eny
-persone occupying the Craft or feat of bruying within the franchise or
-the saide citee make or do to be made good and hable ale and holesome
-for mannys body. .&#xa0;. and that no manner ale after it be clensed and
-set on yeyst be put to sale or borne oute to eny custumers hous till that
-it have fully spourged (worked).” That no brewer shall occupy a house
-or a “seler” <i>apart from his own dwelling-house</i> for the sale of his ale.
-That no brewer shall “entice or labour to taak awey eny custumer from
-a brother brewer,” or “serve or do to be served any typler (<i>i.e.</i>, retailer
-of ale) or huxster as to hym anewe be comen custumer of any manner
-ale for to be retailed till he have verrey knowlage that the saide typler
-or huxster be clerely <i>oute of dett and daunger for ale to any other
-person</i>” .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. That every person keeping a house and being a
-<i>brother of Bruers</i> do pay to the Wardens of the Company a sum of 4s.
-yearly. “That no manner persone of the said crafte .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. presume
-to goo to the feeste of the Maior or the Sherriff <i>unless he be invited</i> .&#xa0;.
-that members of the crafte shall appear in livery when so commanded
-that is to sey gowne and hode .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. That the livery of the crafte be
-changed and renewed every third year agenst the day of the Election of
-the newe Wardeyns of the crafte&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.” That once a quarter the
-ordinances of the Company shall be read to the
-assembled brewers in <span class="xxpn" id="p142">{142}</span>
-their common hall. That no brewer is to buy malt except in the market.
-That malt brought to market must not be “capped in the sakke, nor
-raw-dried malte, dank or wete malte or made of mowe brent barly,
-belyed malt, Edgrove malte, acre-spired malte, wyvell eten malte or
-meddled<a class="afnanc" href="#fn46" id="fnanc46">46</a>, in the deceite of the goode people of the saide citee, upon
-payn of forfaiture of the same.” No one is to buy his own malt or
-corn in the market, “to high the price of corn in the Market,” under
-pain of the pillory. No one is to sell malt “at the Market of Gracechurch
-or Greyfreres before 9 of the clock till market bell therfor
-ordeigned be rongen,” and at one o’clock all the unsold malt is to be
-cleared away.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc46" id="fn46">46</a>
-“Capped in the sakke”&#x200a;=&#x200a;probably with some good malt put
-on the top and defective malt beneath. Mowe brent barley&#x200a;=&#x200a;barley
-that has heated in the stack. Belyed&#x200a;=&#x200a;swollen. Acre-spired&#x200a;=&#x200a;with
-the shoot of the plant projecting from the husk. Wyvell-eten&#x200a;=&#x200a;weevil-eaten.
-Meddled&#x200a;=&#x200a;mixed.</p></div>
-
-<p>All these rules and ordinances the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were
-graciously pleased to sanction and confirm.</p>
-
-<p>The records contain many entries showing the difficulties the
-authorities had to contend with in keeping the brewers to the legal
-price and qualities of ale, a subject already touched on in Chapter V.
-The prices being fixed by law, and no allowance being made for the natural
-fluctuations of the market, it is not to be supposed that the brewers
-would give their customers any better ale than they were absolutely
-compelled by law to give. As old Taylor quaintly
-<span class="nowrap">says:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I find the <i>Brewer</i> honest in his <i>Beere</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He sels it for small Beere, and he should cheate,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Instead of <i>small</i> to cosen folks with <i>Greate</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But one shall seldome find them with that fault,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Except it should invisibly raine Mault.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Disputes arising between the officers of the Brewers’ Company and
-any members of the guild, were sometimes referred for settlement to
-the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. In 1520 there was “variance and
-debate in the Court of Aldermen between the Master and Wardens of
-the ale-brewers and Thomas Adyson, ale-brewer, concerning the making
-of a growte” by the latter. The parties having submitted their case to
-the Court, it was adjudged that Adyson should go to
-the Brewers’ Hall, <span class="xxpn" id="p143">{143}</span>
-and there, before the Master and Wardens, “with due reverence as to
-them apperteynyng, standing before them his hed uncovered, shall say
-these words: ‘Maysters, I pray you to be good masters to me, and fromhensforth
-I promytte you that I shall be good and obedient to you .&#xa0;.
-and obey the laws and customs of the house.’”</p>
-
-<p>Foreign brewers (<i>i.e.</i>, brewers not members of the Company) were
-only allowed to sell ale within the City on paying 40s. annually to the
-use of the City, and in default of payment the Chamberlain “shall
-distreyne their carts from tyme to tyme.” There was also a duty called
-ale-silver, which had been paid from time immemorial to the Lord
-Mayor by the sellers of ale within the City.</p>
-
-<p>Complaints of short measure were still common, and as it is shown
-that the barrels were delivered to customers without being properly filled,
-so that “thynhabitants of the City paye for more ale and bere than
-they doo receive, which is agenst alle good reason and conscience,”
-therefore the brewers were ordered to take round “filling ale” to fill up
-their customers’ casks.</p>
-
-<p>In the eighteenth year of Henry VIII. a striking instance of the insubordination
-of the Brewers is recorded. The four Wardens of the
-Company were ordered to produce their books of fines, “the whiche to
-doo they utterly denyed.” Therefore the four Wardens and their Clerk,
-Lawrence Anworth, “were comytted to the prisn of Newgate ther to
-remayne.” This seems to have awakened the Wardens to a sense of
-their duties, for on the same day they brought in “ij. boks inclosed in a
-whytte bagge.” A committee was appointed to inspect the same, “forasmuche
-as it is thought that mayne unreasonable fynes and other
-ordynannces be conteyned in theym.”</p>
-
-<p>It has been already mentioned (p. 68) that from the time of Henry
-VI. beer had begun slowly to displace the old English ale. The Beer-brewers
-had gathered themselves together into a “fellowship” for the
-protection of their interests, and were quite distinct from the Ale-brewers,
-who composed the Brewers’ Company. Whatever may have
-been the case earlier, in the reign of Henry VIII. the Beer-brewers
-numbered in their fellowship a certain proportion of Dutchmen. In
-the twenty-first year of that reign it was ordained that “no maner Berebruer,
-<i>Ducheman or other</i>, selling any bere shall, etc.” “Also that
-no maner of berebruer <i>Englise</i> or <i>straunger</i>, shall have and kepe in
-his house above the nomber of two Coblers to amende their vessells.”
-Constant reference is made to the Beer-brewers as being a fellowship
-separate from the Ale-brewers until the reign of Edward
-VI., by which <span class="xxpn" id="p144">{144}</span>
-time they had united, apparently without obtaining the sanction of any
-authority to the change. In the fifth year of that reign a resolution
-was passed by the Court of Common Council that, “forasmoche as the
-beare-bruers in the last commen counseyll here holden most dysobedyentlye,
-stubborenelye, and arrogantlye behaved theymselfes toward this
-honourable Courte,” the whole craft of the Beer-brewers are for ever
-disqualified from being elected to serve upon the Common Council; if,
-however, the Beer-brewers make humble submission, they may be
-restored to their old status, “if your lordship and the wysdomes of this
-Citee shall then thynke it mete.” And forasmuch as “most evydently
-yt hathe apperyd that this notable stobernes of the beare-bruers hath
-rysen by the counseyll and provocatioun of the ale-bruers, which have
-unyted to theym all the beare-bruers,” it is ordered that for the future
-the two crafts shall not unite, nor shall the Ale-brewers compel any one
-to come into their Company. This state of things continued till the
-third year of Queen Mary’s reign, when a petition was presented by
-the Brewers to the Common Council, which recited that the two crafts
-had formerly been united, “as mete and verye convenyente it was and
-yet is,” and prayed that the restriction might be removed. The petition
-ended thus: “and they with all their hartes accordinge to theire
-dueties shall daylye praye unto almightye god longe to prosper and
-preserve your honours and worshippes in moche helthe and felycytie.”
-This affecting appeal, which would have moved a heart of stone, had
-the desired effect, and from that day to the present the Beer-brewers
-and Ale-brewers have been united, “as mete and very convenyente it
-is” that they should be. Different governance, however, was applied to
-the former, and for long after this period four Surveyors of the Beer-brewers,
-being “substantyall sadd men,” were elected every year to
-supervise the trade.</p>
-
-<p>An instance of the tyranny with which the trades were regulated in
-the old days has been already given; a very similar one may be taken
-from an order of the Star Chamber in the twenty-fourth year of
-Henry VIII., which commands that “in case the Maire and Aldermen
-of the same Citie shall hereafter knowe and perceyve or understonde
-that any of the saide Brewers of their frowarde and perverse myndes
-shall at any tyme hereafter sodenly forbere and absteyne from bruynge,
-whereby the King’s subjects shulde bee destitute or onprovided of
-Drynke,” the brewhouses of such “wilfull and obstynate” brewers shall
-be taken possession of by the City, who are to allow others to brew there,
-and provide them materials “in case their lak greynes
-to brew with.” <span class="xxpn" id="p145">{145}</span></p>
-
-<p>Regrators and forestallers (<i>i.e.</i>, persons who bought large stocks of
-provisions with the object of causing a rise in price) were in old times
-severely treated by the authorities, who generally checked their
-iniquitous dealings by ordering them to sell their stores at a <i>reasonable</i>
-price. The forestaller, indeed, might think himself lucky if he escaped
-so easily. In the fourth year of Edward VI. four persons who had
-accumulated great quantities of hops in a time of scarcity were ordered
-to sell their whole stock at once at a reasonable price.</p>
-
-<p>All through the reign of Queen Elizabeth the unfortunate brewers
-were vexed with frequent and, in some cases, contradictory regulations:
-This beer was to be allowed; that beer was prohibited; prices were still
-fixed by law, and qualities must correspond to the City regulations.
-Even though a man be ruined, he could not leave off brewing, for fear of
-being held a “rebel.”</p>
-
-<p>A curious ordinance, made in the fourteenth year of Elizabeth’s
-reign, shows the extreme newness of the ale and beer consumed by the
-good men of the City of London in those days. The ordinance is
-expressed to be for the reformation of “dyvers greate and foule abuses
-disorderlye bigonne by the Brewers,” and, reciting that the Brewers
-have begun to deliver their beer and ale but two or three hours after
-the same be cleansed and tunned, it provides that no beer or ale is to be
-delivered to customers till it has stood in the brewer’s house six hours
-in summer and eight in winter.</p>
-
-<p>There seems to have been a smoke question in London even as early
-as this period, for in the twenty-first year of Elizabeth we find that
-John Platt was committed to prison, “for that he contrarye to my
-Lorde Maior’s comaundement to refraine from burninge of seacoles
-during her Majestie’s abode at Westminster, he did continually burn
-seacole notwithstanding.” A petition from the Brewers to Her
-Majesty’s Council about the same period recites that the Brewers understand
-that Her Majesty “findeth hersealfe greately greved and anoyed
-with the taste and smoke of the seacooles used in their furnaces.” They
-therefore promise to substitute wood in the brewhouses nearest to
-Westminster Palace. What would have been Her Majesty’s “grief” if
-she could have experienced a modern November in London?</p>
-
-<p>In Peter Pindar’s poem on the visit of King George III. to Whitbread’s
-Brewery, allusion is made to the once popular belief that
-brewers’ horses are usually fed on grains. The origin of this idea may
-possibly be found in the regulations enforced in London as to the price
-of and the dealings in brewers’ grains. In a
-proclamation of Elizabeth’s <span class="xxpn" id="p146">{146}</span>
-time it is recited that “forasmuche as brewers’ graines be victuall for
-horses and cattell as hey and horsebread and other provinder be,” therefore
-a price is to be set upon grains by the Lord Mayor, and the buying
-of grains to sell again is forbidden. The difficulties of enforcing the
-rules as to price and quality of ale and beer are shown in the frequent
-complaints of the brewers, and in the numerous trials that were made
-from time to time by the City authorities to ascertain how much drink
-ought to be brewed from a fixed quantity of malt. In the thirty-fifth
-year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a large Committee was appointed to
-make trial, at the charges of the City, of twenty quarters of malt, to be
-brewed into two sorts of beer, viz., strong beer at 6s. 8d. the barrel, and
-“doble” beer at 3s. 4d. the barrel. As a result of the trial, the brewers
-promised to draw only five barrels and a half of double beer from a
-quarter of malt until the price of malt had fallen to 18s. the quarter;
-a strong proof this of the growing taste for strong ale and beer.
-Shortly before this time the strongest ale allowed by law had been this
-same “doble.” Now the “doble” had taken the place of the single, and
-the strong ale of twice the strength of the “doble” had stepped into its
-place.</p>
-
-<p>A very summary way had the City authorities in the sixteenth
-century, of treating any drink or victual which did not come up to the
-required standard of excellence. In 1597 we find it ordered that two
-and fifty pipes of corrupt beer, “being nether fitt for man’s body, nor
-to be converted into sawce (<i>i.e. vinegar</i>) .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. shall have the heades
-of all the same pipes beaten owte and the beer poured out into the
-channells, part in Cheapside, part in Cornhill and part in Bishopsgate.”</p>
-
-<p>After the reign of Elizabeth the entries concerning the Brewers and
-their delinquencies become fewer and farther between. The prices of
-ale and beer were still fixed by law, but more common-sense views on
-the subject of trade and trade regulation were slowly beginning to prevail,
-and we soon lose all traces of the tyrannous and vexatious regulations
-of which so many instances occur in earlier times. One more such
-instance may be mentioned of an arbitrary attempt to force trade out of
-its natural channels, and to lower prices and compel sobriety at one and
-the same time. In 1614 the Lord Mayor, “finding the gaols pestered
-with prisoners, and their bane to take root and beginning at ale-houses,
-and much mischief to be there plotted, with great waste of corn in
-brewing heady strong beer, many consuming all their time and means
-sucking that sweet poison,” had an exact survey taken of all victualling
-houses and ale-houses, which were above a thousand.
-As above 300 <span class="xxpn" id="p147">{147}</span>
-barrels of beer were in some houses, the whole quantity of beer in
-victualling houses amounting to above 40,000 barrels, he had thought
-it high time to abridge their number and limit them by bonds as to
-the quantity of beer they should use, and as to what orders they
-should observe, whereby the price of corn and malt had greatly fallen.
-The Brewers, however, seem to have been too many for his Lordship, for
-though he limited the number of barrels to twenty per house, and the
-quality of the two sorts of beer to 4s. and 8s. a barrel, so that the price
-of malt and wheat was in a fortnight reduced by 5s. or 6s. per quarter,
-yet the Brewers brewed as before, alleging that the beer was to be
-used for export, and, “combining with such as kept tippling houses,”
-conveyed the same to the ale-houses by night, so that in a few weeks’
-time the price of malt had risen to much the same figure as before.</p>
-
-<p>In 1626 the Brewers’ Company was in evil case, as may be judged
-from a petition presented by them in that year to the City Fathers, in
-which they allege that they are in a decayed state and not able to
-govern their trade, that their Company consists of but six beer-brewers
-and a small number of ale-brewers, and that other brewers are free of
-other Companies. The petition goes on to pray that no other person
-than a freeman of the Company be allowed to set up a brewhouse in
-the City. The petition was referred to a Committee, and nothing more
-was heard of it. A similar petition, presented to the Common Council
-in the year 1752, was considered and the prayer granted.</p>
-
-<p>While, however, the Brewers’ Company had been allowed to fall
-into decay, the City regulations of the trade had become less and less
-irksome, and the brewers themselves increased in wealth and prosperity.
-Many allusions may be found in the writers of the middle of the
-seventeenth century, which prove that the status of the brewers had
-greatly improved. The old Water Poet thus describes how the
-brewers “are growne
-<span class="nowrap">rich”:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thus Water boyles, parboyles, and mundifies,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cleares, cleanses, clarifies, and purifies.</span>
-<span class="spp00">But as it purges us from filth and stincke:</span>
-<span class="spp00">We must remember that it makes us drinke,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Metheglin, Bragget, Beere, and headstrong Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">(That can put colour in a visage pale)</span>
-<span class="spp00">By which meanes many Brewers are growne rich,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And in estates may soare a lofty pitch.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Men of Goode Ranke and place, and much command,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who have (by sodden Water) purchast land:
- <span class="xxpn" id="p148">{148}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet sure I thinke their gaine had not been such</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had not good fellowes usde to drinke too much:</span>
-<span class="spp00">But wisely they made Haye whilst Sunne did shine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For now our Land is overflowne with Wine:</span>
-<span class="spp00">With such a Deluge, or an Inundation</span>
-<span class="spp00">As hath besotted and halfe drown’d our Nation.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some there are scarce worth 40 pence a yeere</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will hardly make a meale with Ale or Beere:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And will discourse, that wine doth make good blood,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Concocts his meat, and make digestion good,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And after to drink Beere, nor will, nor can</span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>He lay a churl upon a Gentleman</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth dwthem38">
-<p>A somewhat similar moral may be drawn from the humorous little
-poem, written a century and a half later by a namesake of the Water
-<span class="nowrap">Poet:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">THE BREWER’S COACHMAN.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Honest William, an easy and good natur’d fellow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Would a little too oft get a little too mellow;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Body coachman was he to an eminent brewer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No better e’er sat on a coach-box to be sure.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">His coach was kept clean, and no mothers or nurses,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Took more care of their babes, than he took of his horses;</span>
-<span class="spp00">He had these, aye, and fifty good qualities more,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But the business of tippling could ne’er be got o’er.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">So his master effectually mended the matter,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By hiring a man who drank nothing but water,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Now
- William,” says he, “you see the plain case,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had you drank as he does you’d have kept a good place.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Drink
- water!” cried William; “had all men done so,</span>
-<span class="spp00">You’d never have wanted a coachman, I trow.</span>
-<span class="spp00">They are soakers, like me, whom you load with reproaches,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That enable you brewers to ride in your coaches.”</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>A short space only may be devoted to a record of a few of the more
-remarkable brewers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jan
-Steen, of Delph, seems to have been a brewer famed rather for his
-eccentricities than for his beer. He flourished in the days of Charles II.,
-and Arnold Hinbraken, his biographer, says that a
-whole book might <span class="xxpn" id="p149">{149}</span>
-be filled with droll episodes of his life. “He was so attached to boon
-companions, that his Brewery came to grief. He bought wine with his
-money instead of malt. His wife, seeing this, said one day to him, ‘Jan,
-our living is vanishing, our customers call in vain, there is no beer in
-the cellar, nor have we malt for a Brew, what will become of us? You
-should bring life into the brewery.’ ‘I’ll keep it alive,’ said Jan, and
-walked away. He went to market and bought several live ducks, having
-first told his men to fill the largest kettle with water and heat it. He
-then threw a little malt in it, and threw in the Ducks, which, not
-accustomed to hot water, flew madly through the Brewery making a
-horrid noise, so that his wife came running in to see what the matter
-was, when Jan, turning to her, said, ‘My love, is it not lively now in
-our Brewery?’ However, he gave up brewing, and turned Painter.”</p>
-
-<p>William Hicks, who died in the year 1740, was one of the most
-remarkable Brewers of the last century. He was brewer to the Royal
-household, and left behind him a well-earned reputation for honesty
-and loyalty. A striking proof of his loyalty may be seen to this day in
-the statue of George I., which he set up on the summit of Bloomsbury
-steeple, and of which a facetious person
-<span class="nowrap">wrote:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The King of Great Britain was reckon’d before</span>
-<span class="spp00">The head of the Church by all good Christian people,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But his brewer has added still one title more</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the rest, and has made him the head of the steeple.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Another celebrated brewer of last century was Humphrey Parsons,
-twice Lord Mayor of London. This gentleman, when upon a hunting
-party with Louis XV., happened to be exceedingly well mounted, and,
-contrary to the etiquette observed in the French Court, outstripped
-the rest of the company, and was first in at the death. On the King
-asking the name of the stranger, he was indignantly informed that he
-“was un chevalier de malte.” The King entered into conversation
-with Mr. Parsons, and asked the price of his horse. The Chevalier,
-bowing in the most courtly style, replied that the horse was beyond any
-price other than his Majesty’s acceptance. The horse was delivered,
-and from thenceforward the <i>chevalier</i> Parsons had the exclusive
-privilege of supplying the French Court and people with his far-famed
-“black champagne.”</p>
-
-<p>It has been the sad reflection of many an one, on wandering in a
-churchyard and reading the epitaphs of the departed, that certainly the
-most virtuous and highly-gifted of mankind
-have already passed <span class="xxpn" id="p150">{150}</span>
-away—that is, if the epitaphs are absolutely to be relied on. Mr. Tipper, the
-Newhaven brewer, who died in 1785, and lies buried in Newhaven
-Churchyard, is an instance in point. Surely none but himself could
-have been Mr. Tipper’s parallel. His epitaph runs
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Reader! with kind regards this grave survey,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor heedless pass where Tipper’s ashes lay.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt and kind,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And dared do, what few dare do—speak his mind.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Philosophy and History well he knew,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was versed in Physick and in Surgery too.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The best old Stingo he both brewed and sold,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor did one knavish trick to get his gold.</span>
-<span class="spp00">He played thro’ life a varied comic part,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Reader, in real truth, such was the man,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Be better, wiser, laugh more if you can.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The last resting place of Mr. Pepper, sometime brewer of Stamford,
-in Lincolnshire, bears these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Though <i>hot</i> my name, yet mild my nature,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I bore good will to every creature;</span>
-<span class="spp00">I brew’d good ale and sold it too,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And unto each I gave his due.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The following lines were composed on a brewer who, becoming too
-big a man for his trade, retired from business—and
-<span class="nowrap">died:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ne’er quarrel with your craft,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Nor with your shop dis’gree.</span>
-<span class="spp00">He turned his nose up at his Tub</span>
-<span class="spp01">And the bucket kicked he.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>And so the old Brewers are dead and gone, with their virtues and
-their faults, their troubles and their successes, and the modern Brewers
-reign in their stead.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p150.png" width="144" height="37" alt="" /></div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p151a.png" width="144" height="50" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p151">
- <span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> VII.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<p>“The Almaynes with their smale Rhenish wine are
- contented; but we must have March beere, double beere,
- dagger ale, and bracket .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.”</p>
-
-<div class="psignature"><i>Gascoygne’s Delicate Dyet for
- Daintie-Mouthed Droonkards.</i></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc">
- <div class="dnowrap30">
- <div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Alum si fit stalum non est malum</span>
-<span class="spp00">Beerum si fit clerum est
- sincerum.</span></div><!--dstanzactr-->
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Old
- Rhyme.</i></span></div><!--dnowrap30-->
-</div><!--dpoemctr--></div><!--depigraph-->
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>VARIOUS KINDS OF ALES AND BEERS.—SOME
-FOREIGN BEERS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;RECEIPTS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;SONGS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ANECDOTES.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="spdropcap">
-<img class="idropcap" src="images/p151b.png" width="232"
-height="237" alt="A" /></span>N attempt to describe, or
-even to specify, all the ales and beers that have gained a
-local or more wide-spread fame, would be a lengthy task.
-Nearly every county in England, and nearly every town
-of any size, has been at one time or another noted for
-its malt liquors. The renown of some localities has been
-evanescent, having depended probably upon the special art
-of some “barmy” brewer or skilful ale-wife, whilst of
-others it may be said that years only increase their fame
-and spread their reputation.</p>
-
-<p>From a perusal of those queer old collections of quackery, magic,
-herb-lore and star-lore, the Saxon Leechdoms, it may be gathered that
-our Saxon ancestors brewed a goodly assortment of malt liquors. They
-made beer, and strong beer; ale, and strong ale; clear ale, lithe (clear)
-beer; and <i>twybrowen</i>, or double-brewed ale, the mighty ancestor of
-the “doble-doble” beer of Elizabethan times. Besides all these, there
-was foreign ale for those whose tastes were too fastidious to be satisfied
-with their native productions. <span class="xxpn" id="p152">{152}</span></p>
-
-<p>On the authority of the <i>Alvismál</i>, it may be said that no distinction
-was originally drawn between ale and beer, except, perhaps, that the
-latter was considered to be a somewhat more honourable designation;
-“öl heitir meth mönnum en meth Asum bjoor” (<i>i.e.</i>, ale it is called
-among men, and among the gods beer).</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Exeter Book</i>, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems, contains the
-expressions, “a good beer-drinker,” “angry with ale,” “drunken with
-beer,” in close juxtaposition and apparently without any distinction of
-meaning. A distinction must, however, have arisen in very early
-times, for in the collection of Saxon Leechdoms, mentioned above,
-a direction is to be found that a patient is on no account to drink
-beer, although he may partake in moderation of ale and wine; and
-the same work contains the remarkable and apparently impossible
-statement that while a pint of ale weighs six pennies more than a
-pint of water, a pint of beer weighs twenty-two pennies less than a
-pint of water.</p>
-
-<p>The word beer seems gradually to have given place to the word ale,
-and though the former may have lingered in some parts of the country,
-and the passage from <i>King Horn</i> already quoted shows that in the
-thirteenth century it was not quite forgotten—ale became the usual word
-to express malt liquor. It was English <i>ale</i> that strengthened the arm
-of English bowmen at Crecy and Poictiers, and on many another well-fought
-field; and English <i>ale</i> was the “barley-broth” which “decocted”
-the cold blood of the dwellers in this land of fogs and mist “to such
-valiant heat” and stubborn endurance in their constant struggles with
-the valour and chivalry of France.</p>
-
-<p>The old English word “beor,” indeed, had become so weakened and
-specialised, even as early as the tenth century, that it is to be found in
-a Vocabulary of that date as an equivalent for idromellum, a word
-properly signifying an inferior sort of mead, but also denoting the sweet
-wort, before fermentation had changed it into <i>ale</i>. It is curious to
-observe that when next the word “beer” came into common use in our
-language, it was by introduction of our neighbours the Flemings, and
-was specially applied to malt liquor in which the bitter of the hop was
-an important ingredient. The word left us in sweetness, it returned in
-bitterness, and so the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. Beer
-became the name for hopped ale, but that distinction soon began to be
-less significant, for as early as 1616 we find Gervase Markham, in his
-<i>Maison Rustique</i>, recommends the use of a small quantity of hops in
-ale-brewing. <span class="xxpn" id="p153">{153}</span></p>
-
-<p>Taylor, in <i>Drink and Welcome</i>, dwells upon this distinction between
-ale and beer in the seventeenth century as follows:—“Now to write of
-Beere I shall not need to wet my pen much with the naming of it, it
-being a drinke which Antiquitie was an <i>Aleien</i> or a meere stranger to,
-and as it hath scarcely any name, so hath it no habitation, for the places
-or houses where it is sold doth still retain the name of an Alehouse.
-This comparison needs a <i>Sir Reverence</i> to usher it, but being Beere is
-but an Upstart and a Foreigner or Alien, in respect of <i>Ale</i>, it may serve
-instead of a better; Nor would it differ from Ale in anything, but onely
-that an Aspiring <i>Amaritudinous</i> Hop comes crawling lamely in, and
-makes a Bitter difference betweene them, but if the Hop be so crippled,
-that he cannot be gotton to make the oddes, the place may poorely bee
-supply’d with chopp’d Broome (new gathered) whereby Beere hath
-never attained the sober Title of <i>Ale</i>, for it is proper to say <i>A Stand of
-Ale</i>, and a <i>Hoggeshead of Beere</i>, which in common sense is but a
-swinish phrase or appellation.”</p>
-
-<p>That curious ballad entitled <i>Skelton’s Ghost</i>, which was probably the
-work of a rhymer of the seventeenth century, points to the same
-distinction. The ghost of Skelton the Laureate is supposed to be
-addressing some of the jovial characters of the period much in the tone
-of one who, having lived in the golden age (of liquor), looks down with
-pity and scorn at a later-day’s degenerate topers. These are the
-particular lines in
-<span class="nowrap">point:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">For in King Harry’s time</span>
-<span class="spp00">When I made this rhyme</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">Full Winchester gage</span>
-<span class="spp00">We had in that age</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Dutchman’s strong beere</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was not hopt over here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To us ’twas unknowne;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bare ale of our owne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In a bowle we might bring,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To welcome the King.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>At the present day, in the eastern counties, and indeed over the
-greater portion of the country, <i>ale</i> means strong, and <i>beer</i> means small
-malt liquor; in London <i>beer</i> usually means porter (<i>i.e.</i>, the small beer
-of stout); while in the west country <i>beer</i> is the “mighty” liquor, and
-<i>ale</i> the small. In the trade, however, <i>beer</i> is the comprehensive word
-for all malt liquors. <span class="xxpn" id="p154">{154}</span></p>
-
-<p>Ale was not the only word employed in late Saxon times to signify
-the “oyle of barly,” for <i>wœt</i>, from the Saxon <i>swatan</i>, was in common
-use as a synonym, and now, perhaps, finds its representative in the slang
-phrase, “heavy wet.” The same term lingers in Scotland, and lovers of
-Burns will remember his line, “It gars the <i>swats</i> gae glibber doun.”
-In former times wheat and oats were malted, as well as barley, and
-though, as has been previously stated (p. 105), the law from time to time
-prohibited this use of wheat, as tending to enhance the price of bread,
-the practice was stronger than the precept, and continued to prevail
-down to a comparatively recent date.</p>
-
-<p>Cogan, in <i>The Haven of Health</i> (1586), thus describes the effect of
-the different malts on the resultant liquor:—“For beere or ale being
-made of wheat inclineth more to heat, for wheat is hot. If it be made
-of barley malt, it enclineth more to cold, for barley is cold. And if
-it be made of barley and otes together it is yet more temperate and of
-less nourishment.” In the reign of Edward VI. even beans were used in
-brewing, for the Brewers’ Company, in a petition to the Common Council
-asking for a revision of the prices of ale and beer, complain that the
-articles they use in brewing, viz., “wheate, malte, oates, beanes,
-hoppes .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. at these days are comen unto greate and exceeding
-pryces.”</p>
-
-<p>It has been shown that for several hundred years the prices and
-qualities of ale were fixed by law. As a rule, only two kinds were
-allowed to be brewed for sale, the better and the second, or, as they were
-called in some places, and notably in London, the double and the single.
-The prices in Henry III.’s reign for the better kind were fixed at 1d.
-for two gallons sold within cities, and 1d. for three or four gallons sold
-in country places. In Edward III.’s reign three sorts of ale might
-be brewed, the best at 1½d. a gallon, the middling at 1d., and the third
-at three farthings; and these prices seem to have been in force in the
-City of London with slight variations down to the time of Henry VIII.,
-when the Brewers upon several occasions stirred themselves to get the
-prices raised, but met with varying success. In the early part of the
-reign the retail price of the best ale was still 1½d. the gallon, and of the
-second, called threehalfpenny ale, 1d. per gallon. Double beer was to be
-1d. per gallon, and single ½d. and a half-farthing. The wholesale price
-for beer was also fixed, and three kinds were allowed, viz., “Dobyll” at
-15d. the kilderkin, “Threehalfpenny” at 12d., and “Syngyll” at 10d.</p>
-
-<p>In the twenty-fourth year of Henry VIII. the Brewers, after much
-agitation, got the prices of beer raised to 2s. the kilderkin
-for the “doble,” <span class="xxpn" id="p155">{155}</span>
-and 1s. for the “syngyll”; but even with that they were not satisfied, and
-expressed their dissatisfaction in protests to the Common Council, who
-listened to their complaint, “but after long consideration it was agreed,
-that whereas the Serjeaunt Gybson hath exhibited and rote a boke of
-the gaynes of the said bere-brewers,” their case should be remitted to
-the care of a committee appointed to look into it. In the result no
-alteration was then sanctioned, but five years afterwards the price was
-raised to 3s. 4d. the kil. for the best, and 2s. 8d. for the threehalfpenny.
-The strength of ale usually brewed about this time may be judged from
-answers given by London brewers when interrogated on the subject.
-John Sheffield, on being asked (36 Henry VIII.) how many kilderkins of
-<i>good ale</i> he draws from a quarter of malt, answers, “Little above five.”
-Other brewers say much the same thing, though Richard Pyckering
-evades the question by saying that “he commytteth the whole to his
-wife, and what she draweth from a quarter he knoweth not.” This
-would point to an ale of very considerable strength. In the thirty-seventh
-year of Henry VIII., another committee was appointed to consider
-this all-important question, “on account of the grete derthe and scarcitye
-at this present of all kinds of grayne;” but nothing resulted from their
-deliberations. The Brewers, however, seem to have stuck to their text
-with great pertinacity, and in the fifth year of Edward VI. obtained a
-decision of a committee of the Common Council, that they could no
-longer supply the City at the then existing prices. Two kinds of beer
-only are to be allowed, our old friends, “doble” and “syngyll,” and the
-strength and quality are defined as follows: “Of every quarter of grayne
-that any beare-bruer shall brewe of doble beare, he shall drawe fowre
-barrells and one fyrkyn of goode holsome drynke for mannes bodye,”
-and double that quantity of single beer. The price of the double beer
-is to be 4s. 8d. the barrel, and of single beer 2s. 4d., until the price of
-malt is reduced to 15s. the quarter, and of wheat to 12s., when the old
-prices are to be revived. Little variations of price occurred until the
-reign of Elizabeth, who seems, from contemporary accounts, to have
-been frequently exercised by the behaviour of the London Brewers. In
-a Royal proclamation of the second year of her reign, she complains
-that the Brewers have left off brewing any single beer, but brew “a
-kynde of very strong bere calling the same doble-doble-bere which they
-do commenly utter and sell at a very greate and excessyve pryce,” and
-orders the old rules and rates to be observed; and in particular that
-every Brewer shall once a week brew “as much syngyl as doble beare
-and more.” Twenty years later the “doble-doble” seems
-to have been <span class="xxpn" id="p156">{156}</span>
-sanctioned in practice if not in name, for the Brewers are ordered to
-sell two sorts of beer only, the double at 4s. the barrel and “the other
-sort of beare of the best kynde at 7s. 6d.”</p>
-
-<p>Three years later still the Queen declares that the disorders of
-the Brewers, through their “ungodly gredyness,” have grown to such
-lengths that something must be done; and an Act of Common Council
-brings back the beer to double and single, and applies other remedies.</p>
-
-<p>In 1654 three sorts of beer are allowed—the best at 8s. the barrel,
-the second at 6s., and the small at 4s.; and shortly afterwards a fourth
-kind was added at 10s. The efforts of the authorities to fix the prices
-of ale and beer by arbitrary means were not long afterwards finally
-discontinued.</p>
-
-<p>The limitation and classification of ale and beer according to their
-strength, was maintained down to quite recent times because of the
-duties laid upon them, but on the repeal of those duties ales of every
-strength, kind and description were, and have since been, extensively
-manufactured. Every want, whim, and fancy of the ale-drinker may
-now be gratified. There is old Scotch or old Burton for the lover of
-strong beer, porter for the labouring classes, stout for the weakly, and
-last, but far from least, that splendid liquid, pale ale, which, when
-bottled, vies with champagne in its excellence and delicacy of flavour,
-and beats it altogether out of the field when we take into consideration
-its sustaining and restorative powers.</p>
-
-<p>A tale is told of a man who asserted that tea was stronger than beer.
-“A pot of beer,” said he, “will seldom attract more than a couple of
-men about it, but a pot of tea will draw half-a-dozen or more old
-women.”</p>
-
-<p>A potent drink, much in vogue with the roystering blades of former
-times, was that known as “huff-cap.” The name was a cant expression
-for strong ale, which was so called because it induced people to set their
-caps in a bold huffing fashion. The term huff-cap was also used to
-denote a swaggering fellow, as may be gathered from Clifford’s <i>Note on
-Dryden</i> (1687):—“Prethee tell me true, was not this huff-cap once
-the Indian Emperour, and at another time did he not call himself
-Maximine?” <i>Fulwel’s Art of Flattery</i> thus mentions this variety of
-the juice of barley:—“To quench the scorching heat of our parched
-throtes, with the best nippitatum in this toun, which is commonly
-called <i>huff-cap</i>, it will make a man look as though he had seen the devil
-and quickly move him to call his own father a ———” (naughty name).
-Harrison, writing on the food and diet of the English
-in 1587, also <span class="xxpn" id="p157">{157}</span>
-mentions huff-cap, and speaks of the mightiness of the ale in which our
-ancestors indulged; ale, in fact, as an old Proverb has it, “that would
-make a cat speak.” “Howbeit,” he writes, “though they are so nice in
-the proportion of their bread, yet in lieu of the same their is such headie
-ale and beere in moste of them, as for the mightinesse thereof among
-suche as seeke it oute, is commonly called huffe cap, the mad dog,
-angel’s food, dragon’s milke, etc. And this is more to be noted, that
-when one of late fell by God’s prouvidence into a troubled conscience,
-after he had considered well of his reachlesse life, and dangerous estate;
-another thinking belike to change his colour and not his mind, carried
-him straightwaie to the strongest ale, as to the next physician. It is
-incredible to saie how our malte bugs lug at this liquor, even as pigs
-should lie in a rowe, lugging at their dame’s teats, till they lie still
-againe and be not able to wag. Neither did Romulus and Remus sucke
-their shee woolfe or sheepherd’s wife Lupa with such eger and sharpe
-devotion as these men hale at hufcap, till they be red as cockes, and
-little wiser than their combs.” A strong ale, called “Huff,” is still
-brewed at Winchester, and is kept for the use of the fellows (not the
-boys) of that ancient institution.</p>
-
-<p>Some idea of the strength of the ale usually drunk in the country
-districts in Elizabeth’s reign, may be gathered from a passage in a letter
-from Leicester to Burleigh, written while the Queen was on one of her
-famous progresses through the country: “There is not one drop of good
-drink here for her. We were fain to send to London, and Kenilworth,
-and divers other places where ale was; her own bere was so strong as
-there was no man able to drink it.”</p>
-
-<p>To quote again from old Harrison on the fondness of his contemporaries
-for strong ale, speaking of workmen and others attending bride-ales
-(<i>i.e.</i>, marriage feasts) and such like festivities, he says: “If they
-happen to stumble upon a peece of venison and a cup of wine or verie
-strong beere or ale (which latter they commonlie provide against their
-appointed daies) they thinke their cheere so great, and themselves to
-have fared so well, as the Lord Maior of London, with whom, when
-their bellies be full, they will not stick to make comparison.”</p>
-
-<p>In the year 1680, during the debate on the Act to restrain the
-excess and abuse used in Victualling Houses, one member said that he
-wished “there might be a reformation of Ale, which is now made so
-strong, that he offered to affirm it upon oath, that it is commonly
-sold for a Groat a quart. <i>It is as strong as wine, and will burn
-like Sack.</i>” <span class="xxpn" id="p158">{158}</span></p>
-
-<p>The Water Poet thus describes the different qualities of mild and
-stale beer as known to the topers of the seventeenth century: “The
-stronger <i>Beere</i> is divided into two parts (viz.), mild and stale; the first
-may ease a man of a drought, but the latter is like water cast into
-a Smith’s forge, and breeds more heart-burnings, and as rust eates into
-Iron, so overstale Beere gnawes aulet holes in the entrales, or else my
-skill failes, and what I have written of it is to be held as a Jest.”</p>
-
-<p>Nipitatum or nipitato was another slang name for very strong ale.
-It is mentioned in <i>The Knight of the Burning</i> <span class="nowrap"><i>Pestle</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">My father oft will tell me of a drink,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In England found and <i>Nipitato</i> called,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which driveth all the sorrow from your hearts.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Another epithet applied to ale, and denoting great strength, was
-“humming,” and a reason for the term is shown by the extract from
-a letter from John Howell to Lord Ciffe (seventeenth century), who, in
-speaking of metheglin, says “that it keeps a humming in the brain,
-which made one say that he loved not metheglin because he was used
-to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive.” The
-humming in the head would be equally applicable to the effects of ale as
-of metheglin, though the hive would only apply to the latter. The
-same idea is sometimes expressed by the term <i>hum-cup</i>, as in the lines
-from the old Sussex sheep-shearing song,
-<span class="nowrap">beginning:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Tis a barrel then of <i>hum-cup</i>, which
- we call the black ram.</span></div></div>
-
-<p>Besides these strong ales and others too numerous to mention, there
-was, at the beginning of last century, a certain strong beer called
-Pharaoh, which gave its name to an ale-house at Barley, in Cambridgeshire.
-The reason of the name is not certainly known, although it was
-said in the county that it was so called because it <i>would not let the
-people go</i>. This drink is no longer made in England, but a strong beer
-of the same name is much appreciated in Belgium. The same liquor is
-mentioned in the <i>Praise of Yorkshire Ale</i> (1685):</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Coffee, Twist, Old Pharaoh and old Hoc,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Juniper Brandy and Wine de Langue-Dock.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>As there have been many strong and mighty ales since the days
-<span class="nowrap">when―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">King Hardicanute, ’midst Danes and Saxons stout,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Carous’d on nut-brown ale and dined on growt,
- <span class="xxpn" id="p159">{159}</span></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">so
-there have been an abundance of small poor drinks, which have been
-from time to time known by various terms of contempt, the titles
-“whip-belly-vengeance” and “rotgut” being, perhaps, on the whole,
-the most expressive. Shakspere sums up the humdrum of retired
-matronly life in the well-known line, “To suckle fools and chronicle
-small beer.” Beer which had been kept so long that it had turned
-sour was at one time known as “broken beer,” much as we speak now
-of broken victuals. Ben Jonson, in his <i>Masque of Gypsies</i>, makes
-mention of an infant “very carefully carried at his mother’s back,
-rock’d in a cradle of Welsh cheese like a maggot, and there fed with
-<i>broken beer</i>, and blown wine of the best daily.”</p>
-
-<p>In olden times small beer discharged that friendly office assigned by
-later and more fastidious days to soda-water, namely, the cooling of the
-parched throat after a too earnest devotion to the rites of <i>Bacchus</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Welcome to my lips, great king of frolic,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Stern foe to headache, devils blue, and <span class="nowrap">cholic—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">No dandy soda-water bring to me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No Lady’s lemonade, no soft bohea;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy sterner aid I claim, and ask thy might</span>
-<span class="spp00">To quell the riots of that punch last night;</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">wrote
-one of the Brasenose College poets. Christopher Sly, awakening
-from his debauch, cries aloud for “a pot of small ale .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. and once
-again a pot of the smallest ale,” and Prince Hal “remembers the poor
-creature small beer.”</p>
-
-<p>A nameless author, writing in the <i>Gentleman’s Magazine</i>, 1746,
-describes this function of small beer, and in poetic vein tells how after
-a “wine,” awaking from a feverish sleep, he sees before him a venerable
-man,</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Old, but not bending with the weight of years;</span>
-<span class="spp00">His face was ruddy, and he smiled benign,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As if nor sickness had his form impair’d,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor anxious cares his soul: his silver’d head</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was bound with wreaths of salutary flow’rs,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Call’d <i>Hops</i> by men, but <i>Panace</i> by Gods.</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>My
- son,” he said (and at his voice divine</span>
-<span class="spp00">New life beat vig’rous in each throbbing vein)</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Long
- has my friendly influence mov’d the scorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My name the laughter of the sons of men,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The sons of men, regardless of their weal
- <span class="xxpn" id="p160">{160}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">And health, the greatest sublunary good!</span>
-<span class="spp00">The genius I of liquor, call’d below</span>
-<span class="spp00">Small Beer, and doubtless you have heard me damn’d</span>
-<span class="spp00">Full oft, by Belials rude, outrageous sons;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But yet, were honour due, to Temp’rance given,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mine were the favours of th’ applauding crowd,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">——Here, taste and live, live soberly and well.”</span>
-<span class="spp00">This said, a vase with steady hand he gave,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Full to the brim, I quaft’d the tender’d draught;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Swift the cool stream refresh’d my burning <span class="nowrap">throat,—</span></span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">In haste my visionary guest retir’d,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And left me deep in contemplation drown’d</span>
-<span class="spp00">Resolving reason never more to quench</span>
-<span class="spp00">In floods <i>Lethean</i> of deceitful wine;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Deceitful wine! embrew’d with mixtures dire,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By the curs’d vintner’s art for sordid pelf.</span>
-<span class="spp00">O! grant me, Heav’n, to live with health and ease,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My books, a sober friend, <i>Small Beer</i>, and sense:</span>
-<span class="spp00">So shall my years the smiling fates prolong,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And each auspicious morn shall see me happy.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Even in distant times particular localities became noted for the
-excellence of their brewers. London early attained, and has maintained
-until the present day, a great reputation for its ale. Chaucer alludes to
-the taste of the Cook for a “draught of London ale.” Tyrwhitt says
-that in 1504 London ale was of such excellence that it fetched 5s. a
-barrel more than Kentish ale. This can hardly be, as we have already
-seen that at that period the barrel of London double ale only fetched 4s.
-Probably Tyrwhitt intended to refer to a tun and not to a barrel. The
-occasion referred to was the enthronement of William Wareham as
-Archbishop of Canterbury, when the provision made for washing down
-the vast stores of eatables was something tremendous. Besides great
-quantities of wine of many sorts, there were four tuns of London ale, six
-of Kentish, and twenty of English beer.</p>
-
-<p>The malt liquors of London, and especially London porter and stout,
-are known from pole to pole, and Burton ales have a no less world-wide
-reputation. Indeed, the word Burton has in itself come to be
-synonymous with ale, and the expression “a glass of Burton” has
-become a household word. <span class="xxpn" id="p161">{161}</span></p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem38">
-<p>Burton and its famous brew are treated of elsewhere in these pages,
-and it must suffice here to insert an old song in praise of this nineteenth
-century <span class="nowrap">nectar:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">BURTON ALE.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ne’er tell me of liquors from Spain or from France,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They may get in your heels and inspire you to dance,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But the Ale of Old Burton if mellow and right</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will get in your head and inspire you to fight.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Your Claret and Rhenish and fine Calcavella</span>
-<span class="spp00">Were never yet able to make a good fellow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But of stout Burton Ale, if you drink but enough,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make you all jolly and hearty and tough.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then let meagre Frenchmen still batten on Wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They ne’er will digest a good English Sirloin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Parbleu they may caper and Vapour along,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But right Burton can make us both valiant and strong.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come here then ye Mortals who’re prone to despair</span>
-<span class="spp00">From frowns of Dame Fortune or frowns of the fair,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whate’er your disorder, three nips will prevail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the best Panacea you’ll find, Burton Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then Molly approach with your Peacock and <span class="nowrap">Cann—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Not Juno herself brought more blessings to <span class="nowrap">Man—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">With nip after nip, all my sorrows beguile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And my Fortune and Mistress shall presently smile.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Old strong beer is sometimes known by the name of Stingo, and
-this appellation seems, for a couple of hundred years at least, to have
-been specially applied to Yorkshire Ale. The estimation in which this
-liquor was held at the end of the eighteenth century, and the wonders it
-was deemed capable of bringing about, may be learned from a perusal of
-<i>The Praise of Yorkshire Ale</i>, an old poem, extracts from which may be
-found in the chapter devoted to Ballads. We have been given to
-understand that the brewers of Yorkshire Stingo have not forgotten
-their ancient skill.</p>
-
-<p>Our old friend Taylor mentions a goodly number of places where
-especially good ale was brewed in his day. “I should be voluminous,”
-he says, “if I should insist upon all pertinent
-and impertinent passages <span class="xxpn" id="p162">{162}</span>
-in the Behalfe of <i>Ale</i>, as also of the retentive fame that <i>Yorke</i>, <i>Chester</i>,
-<i>Hull</i>, <i>Nottingham</i>, <i>Darby</i>, <i>Gravesende</i>, with a Toaste, and other Countries
-still enjoy, by making this untainted liquor in the primitive way, and
-how <i>Windsor</i> doth more glory in that composition than all the rest of
-her speculative pleasures. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Also there is a Towne neere
-<i>Margate in Kent</i> (in the Isle of Thanet) called <i>Northdowne</i>, which
-Towne hath ingrost much Fame, Wealth, and Reputation from the
-prevalent potencie of their attractive <i>Ale</i>.”</p>
-
-<p>Derby had as early as the sixteenth century a great reputation for its
-ales. Sir Lionel Rash, in <i>Green’s Tu Quoque</i>, an Elizabethan comedy,
-says: “I have sent my daughter this morning as far as Pimlico to fetch
-a draught of Derby Ale, that it may fetch a colour into her cheeks.”
-Fuller, in his <i>Worthies of England</i>, with an evident conservative taste
-for ale, that “authenticall drinke of old England,” mentions the repute
-of Derby ale with some circumlocution, but with no stinted praise. “Ceres
-being our English Bacchus,” he remarks, “this was our ancestors’
-common drink, many imputing the strength of their Infantry (in drawing
-so stiff a bow) to their constant (but moderate) drinking thereof. Yea,
-now the English begin to turn to Ale (may they in due time regain their
-former vigorousnesse) and whereas in our remembrance, Ale went out
-when swallows came in, seldom appearing after Easter; it now hopeth
-(having climbed up May Hill) to continue its course all the year. Yet
-have we lost the Preservative, what ever it was, which (before Hops were
-found out) made it last so long in our land some two hundred years
-since, for half a year at least after the brewing thereof; otherwise of
-necessity they must brew every day, yea pour it out of the Kive into the
-Cup, if the prodigious English Hospitality in former ages be considered,
-with the multitude of menial servants and strangers entertained. Now
-never was the wine of Sarepta better known to the Syrians, that of
-Chios to the Grecians, of Phalernum to the Latines, than the Canary of
-Derby is to the English thereabout.”</p>
-
-<p>Manchester at about the same period seems to have had a great
-assortment of Ales and Beers, if we are to believe Taylor, who, in his
-<i>Pennyless Pilgrimage</i>, tells</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">How men of Manchester did use me well,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">We went into the house of one John Pinners</span>
-<span class="spp00">(A man that lives among a crew of sinners)</span>
-<span class="spp00">And there eight severall sorts of Ale we had,</span>
-<span class="spp00">All able to make one starke drunke or mad. <span class="xxpn" id="p163">{163}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">But I with courage bravely flinched not,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And gave the Towne leave to discharge the shot,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We had at one time set upon the table,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Good Ale of Hisope, ’twas not Esope fable:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then had we Ale of Sage, and Ale of Malt,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And Ale of Woorme-wood, that could make one halt,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With Ale of Rosemary, and Bettony,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And two Ales more, or else I needs must lye.</span>
-<span class="spp00">But to conclude this drinking Alye tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We had a sort of Ale called scurvy Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The southern district of Devon, which is locally known as South
-Hams, has long been famed for a curious liquor known as “white
-ale.” The beverage is of great antiquity, and has been subject to tithe
-from time immemorial. Kingsbridge is supposed to have been the
-place where white ale was first brewed. It used to be made of malt, a
-small quantity of hops, flour, spices, and a mysterious compound known
-as “grout,” or “ripening,” the manufacture of which was, and may be
-still, preserved as a great secret in a few families. In another receipt for
-making this ale it is stated that a number of eggs should be added to
-the liquor before it is allowed to ferment, and this seems to have been
-an essential of the original brew, or at any rate was so considered in
-1741. A writer at that date says:—“The Ale-wives, whose province
-of making this Ale it commonly falls under to manage from the beginning
-to the end, are most of them as curious in their brewing it, as the
-Dairy women in making their butter, for as it is a White Ale it soon
-sullies by dirt .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;; the wort is brewed by the hostess, but the
-fermentation is brought on by the purchase of what they call ‘ripening,’
-or a composition, as some say, of flower of malt and white of eggs .&#xa0;.”</p>
-
-<p>This luscious liquid has been described as “not the sparkling
-beverage brewed from malt and hops, but a milky-looking compound,
-of which, judging from the flavour, milk, spice and gin seemed to be
-among the ingredients. It does not improve by keeping, and is brewed
-only in small quantities for immediate consumption. It is kept in large
-bottles, and you will scarcely pass a public-house from Darmouth to
-Plymouth without seeing evidence of its consumption by the empty
-bottles piled away outside the premises.”</p>
-
-<p>At the present time a considerable quantity of white ale is made in
-and about Tavistock. It is now, however, brewed in a simpler manner
-than of yore, and consists simply of common ale with
-eggs and flour <span class="xxpn" id="p164">{164}</span>
-added. The labourers of that part of the country much affect it, and as
-it is highly nutritious it is regarded by many of them as “meat, drink
-and cloth” combined. A bloated habit of body is said to arise from a
-too faithful adherence to this luscious fluid. A former great connoisseur
-of this West-country ale, one Bone Phillips, lies buried just outside the
-church door at Kingsbridge; the following lines were inscribed over
-his grave at his
-<span class="nowrap">request:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here lie I at the church door,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here be I because I’m poor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The further in the more you pay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here lie I as warm as they.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>While
-on the subject of epitaphs, the following may be quoted
-as having some bearing on the subject specially treated of in this
-<span class="nowrap">chapter:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Poor John Scott lies buried here;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Tho’ once he was both <i>hale</i> and <i>stout</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Death stretched him on his bitter bier:</span>
-<span class="spp00">In another world he <i>hops</i> about.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">An
-ale of a similar nature to white ale goes in Cornwall by the rather
-uneuphonious title of “Laboragol.” Somewhat similar to the foregoing
-was grout<a class="afnanc" href="#fn47" id="fnanc47">47</a>
-ale, which is said by Halliwell, on the authority of
-Dean Milles’ MS. glossary, to have been different from white ale, of a
-brownish colour, and known only to the people about Newton Bussel,
-who kept the method of preparing it a secret. A physician, a native of
-that place, informed him that the preparation was made of “malt
-almost burnt in an iron pot, mixed with some of the barm which rises
-on the first working in the keeve, a small quantity of which invigorates
-the whole mass and makes
-it very heady.” <span class="xxpn" id="p165">{165}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc47" id="fn47">47</a>
-The word grout properly signifies ground meal or malt. Kennett
-says that in Leicestershire the infusion of malt and water before it is
-fully boiled is called grout, and after it is tunned up it is called wort.
-Ray explains it as wort of the last running. Pegge says it is only drank
-by poor people, who are on that account called “grouters.” See
-Halliwell’s Dict. of Arch. and Prov. Words. In the old play, <i>Tom Tyler
-and his Wife</i>, growt is used to signify a kind of ale.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">This jolly growt is jolly and stout</span>
-<span class="spp00">I pray you stout it still-a,</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>While mentioning some few of the places specially noted for their
-ales, our ancient seats of learning must not be forgotten. Who has not
-heard of Trinity audit, and of that scarcely less famous liquor, Brasenose
-Ale? Many who have tasted the former have had no words to express
-their feelings; some have said that it is as superior to all other mortal
-brews as Chateau Lafitte is to vin ordinaire. These may seem words of
-extravagant praise; but let the reader who has never tasted this famous
-drink reserve his judgment on the point until he has, and above all let
-him lose no time in putting his judgment to the test. Trinity audit
-would justify the eulogy of the host in the <i>Beaux’ Stratagem</i>—“As
-smooth as oil, sweet as milk, clear as amber, strong as brandy; fancy it
-Burgundy, only fancy it, and it is worth ten shillings a quart.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Oh, in truth, it gladdens the heart to see</span>
-<span class="spp00">What may spring from the Ale of <span class="nowrap">Trinitie,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">A scholar—a fellow,—a rector blithe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">(Fit to take any amount of <span class="nowrap">tithe)—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Perhaps a bishop—perhaps, by grace,</span>
-<span class="spp00">One may mount to the Archiepiscopal place,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And wield the crosier, an awful thing,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The envy of all, and—the parsons’ King!</span>
-<span class="spp00">O Jove! who would struggle with learning pale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That could beat down the world by the strength of Ale!</span>
-<span class="spp00">For <i>me</i>,—I avow, could my thoughtless prime</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come back with the wisdom of mournful time,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’d labour—I’d toil—by night and day,</span>
-<span class="spp00">(Mixing liquors and books away,)</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till I conquer’d that high and proud degree,</span>
-<span class="spp00">M. A. (Master of Ale) of Trinitie.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn48" id="fnanc48">48</a></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc48" id="fn48">48</a>
-A Panegyric on Ale addressed to W. L. Birkbeck, Esq., by Barry
-Cornwall.</p></div>
-
-<p>Brasenose College, Oxford, has long been noted for its ale. As each
-Shrovetide comes round, the college butler, as a condition of the tenure
-of his office, presents a barrel of the strongest nappy, and celebrates the
-event in verse, handing on to generations yet unborn the name and
-fame of the Brasenose brew. The earlier of these ale poems, which are
-in reality the effusions of some poetical undergraduate, had a fleeting
-existence, but some years ago Mr. Prior, who was then
-and still continues, <span class="xxpn" id="p166">{166}</span>
-the butler of the College, published a collection of them in a small
-volume, entitled <i>Brasenose Ale</i>. In his little book, which we commend
-to the perusal of all good ale-knights, occur the following lines, written
-by R. J. B., in
-<span class="nowrap">1835:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Lo! Prior hastens with his motley crew,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To pour the foaming liquor to our view:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Clasps his firm hand in all a Butler’s pride</span>
-<span class="spp00">The cup no Brasenose Fellow e’er denied:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet secret triumph o’er his brow has cast</span>
-<span class="spp00">That Ale the sweetest, as that brew the last!</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Away,
- ye lighter drinks! ye swipes, away,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where masters bully, and where boys obey,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">The brewer cried; and taught the Ale to live</span>
-<span class="spp00">With all the charms that malt and hops could give.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Warm’d at his touch, behold the vapours rise</span>
-<span class="spp00">In all their genuine fragrance to the skies:</span>
-<span class="spp00">No beer-shops bev’rage, such as Cockneys buy,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Foul to the taste, and loathsome to the eye;</span>
-<span class="spp00">No dingy mixture, vulgarly call’d swipes;</span>
-<span class="spp00">No quassia juice, promoter of the gripes;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But true proportions of good hops and malt,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mingled with care, then stow’d within the vault:</span>
-<span class="spp00">The hue that tells its potency—the scent</span>
-<span class="spp00">That breathes as if from blest Arabia sent.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Still o’er his Ale fond Prior hangs confest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And joy and triumph swell his manly breast.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">Such, glorious liquor of the olden time,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When to be drunk with Ale was deem’d no crime;</span>
-<span class="spp00">When in the morn and eve and mid-day stood</span>
-<span class="spp00">Upon our fathers’ boards old English food;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Such hast thou been, ’mid war and change the same,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Link’d with the poet’s and the scholar’s name,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mellow’d by age—but still with flavour higher,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The pride of Brasenose, and the boast of Prior.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>How Brasenose College came by its peculiar name is a much disputed
-point. There is a legend that in the far-off time of long ago
-certain students of the temporary university at Stamford, the iron ring
-of whose door-knocker was fitted in a nose of brass,
-migrated to Oxford, <span class="xxpn" id="p167">{167}</span>
-and there set up a brazen nose over the entrance of their college as a
-souvenir of their former abode. Equally plausible is the tradition
-that upon the site of the college brewery once stood King Alfred’s
-brasinium (brewhouse), and that the name, clinging to the place through
-all the changes and chances of a thousand years, now appears under the
-slightly modified form of Brasenose. If the latter theory be correct, the
-Shrovetide feast and the yearly ode in praise of Brasenose Ale may be
-attributed to the desire to keep green the memory of the famous
-brewhouse of the good King, and the mighty liquor therein brewed
-for the royal table.</p>
-
-<p>The merits of a celebrated Oxford butler, John Dawson of Christ
-Church, are commemorated in the following
-<span class="nowrap">elegy:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Dawson, the butler’s dead. Although I think</span>
-<span class="spp00">Poets were ne’er infus’d with single drink</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’ll spend a farthing, Muse; a wat’ry verse</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will serve the turn to cast upon his hearse.</span>
-<span class="spp00">If any cannot weep amongst us here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Take off his cap, and so squeeze out a tear:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Weep, O ye Barrels! make waste more prodigal</span>
-<span class="spp00">Than when our Beer was good, that John may float</span>
-<span class="spp00">To Styx in beer, and lift up Charon’s boat</span>
-<span class="spp00">With wholsome waves; and as the conduits ran,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With claret at the Coronation,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So let your channels flow with single tiff,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For John, I hope is crown’d: take off your whiff,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ye men of rosemary, and drink up all,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Rememb’ring ’tis a Butler’s funeral;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had he been master of good double Beer</span>
-<span class="spp00">My Life for his, John Dawson had been here.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>For a hundred years or more the town of Nottingham has been
-famous for its ales, and the song “Nottingham Ale” commemorates
-the many virtues of this justly celebrated “barley-wine.” Amongst
-others, it has virtues
-<span class="nowrap">ecclesiastical:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ye bishops and deacons, priests, curates and vicars,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come taste, and you’ll certainly find it is true,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That Nottingham Ale is the best of all liquors,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And who understand the good creature like you?</span>
-<span class="spp00">It dispels every vapour, saves pen, ink, and paper;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For when you’re disposed in the pulpit to rail <span class="xxpn" id="p168">{168}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">It will open your throats, you may preach without notes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When inspired with full bumpers of Nottingham Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">This song, which was a great favourite at the end of last century, was
-composed by one Gunthorpe, a naval officer, by way of payment for
-a cask of the “particular,” received as a present from his brother, who
-was a Nottingham Brewer.</p>
-
-<p>To go further north, Newcastle, besides its coals, has long had the
-reputation for what, if we are to believe the townsmen of the place, is
-the best, the stoutest, the brightest “Stingo” that the heart of man
-can desire. As every Jack will have his Jill, so famous ale ever finds its
-appropriate verses. The song <i>Newcastle Beer</i>, of which a verse is,
-given below, extols the wonders wrought by English beer in general,
-and by that of Newcastle in
-<span class="nowrap">particular:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Twas Stingo like this made Alcides so bold,</span>
-<span class="spp01">It brac’d up his nerves, and enliven’d his powers;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And his mystical club, that did wonders of old,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Was nothing, my lads, but such liquor as ours.</span>
-<span class="spp04">The horrible crew</span>
-<span class="spp04">That Hercules slew,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Were Poverty—Calumny—Trouble—and Fear;</span>
-<span class="spp04">Such a club would you borrow,</span>
-<span class="spp04">To drive away sorrow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Apply for a jorum of Newcastle Beer.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p><i>Warrington Ale</i>, a song of last century, describes in glowing
-terms the good ale of that Lancashire town, and the poet, if he is to
-be believed, is evidently a man of some experience in various
-<span class="nowrap">drinks:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">D’ye mind me, I once was a Sailor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And in different countries I’ve been;</span>
-<span class="spp00">If I lie, may I go for a tailor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But a thousand fine sights I have seen.</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’ve been crammed with good things like a wallet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And I’ve guzzled more drink than a whale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But the very best stuff to my palate</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is a glass of your Warrington Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>De Foe in his <i>Tour through Great Britain</i> eulogises the Lancashire
-ale of the period. In travelling through the northern parts of the
-county, “though it was but about the middle of August, and in some
-places the harvest hardly got in, we saw the
-mountains covered with <span class="xxpn" id="p169">{169}</span>
-snow, and felt the cold very acute and piercing, but we found, as in all
-these northern countries, the people had a happy way of mixing the
-warm and the cold together; for the store of good ale which flows plentifully
-in the most mountainous parts of this country, seems abundantly
-to make up for all the inclemencies of the season, or difficulties of
-travelling.”</p>
-
-<p>A certain very strong ale called Morocco is, or was, made at Levens
-Hall, in the County of Cumberland. Beef, or other meat, is an ingredient
-of this mighty brew, but the exact receipt is kept a secret. There
-is a tradition that the method of brewing Morocco was brought by a
-Crusader named Howard from certain unknown regions beyond the
-seas, and it is said that the receipt was buried during the Parliamentary
-wars, and was only unearthed many years afterwards. It is always
-brought in an immense and curiously wrought glass to everyone who
-dines at Levens for the first time, and the visitor is expected on no
-account to refuse the glass, but to take it and say, “To the health of
-the Lady of Levens.”</p>
-
-<p>To go a little further north, the ales of Edinburgh are justly celebrated,
-old Scotch ale being as favourite a beverage as old Burton.
-Scotch brewers are great believers in malt and hops, and at the present
-day brew excellent light ales, as well as the mightier brew which has
-given them their world-wide reputation.</p>
-
-<p>A curious ale is mentioned in the <i>Buik of Chroniclis of Scotland</i>
-(fifteenth century). Owing to a very severe winter in the reign of
-William the Lion, liquids of many kinds were frozen solid, and ale was
-sold by <span class="nowrap"><i>weight</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">So furious ouir all part wes that frost</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of bestiall that thair wes mony lost;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The starkest aill of malt that mycht be browin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thocht it war keipit neuir so clois and lowin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It wald congeill <i>and freis into hard yis</i>.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The thing of all men thocht wes then most nys</span>
-<span class="spp00">That this be weycht, and nocht mesour, wes sauld</span>
-<span class="spp00">That tyme for drink as that my author told.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The wanderings of the <i>Penniless Pilgrim</i> took him to Scotland, and
-he wonders much at the powers of ale-suction shown by the natives.
-“The Scots,” he says, “doe allow almost as large measure of their miles
-as they doe of their drinke, for an English gallon either of ale or wine
-is but their quart.” After rising from a repast, he
-tells how “the <span class="xxpn" id="p170">{170}</span>
-servants of the house have enforced me into the seller or Buttery, where
-(in the way of kindnesse) they will make a man’s belly like a sowse-tub,
-and inforce mee to drinke as if they had a commission under the devil’s
-great seale, to murder men with drinking, with such a deal of complimentary
-oratory as, ‘off with your lap,’ ‘wind up your bottome,’ ‘up
-with your toplash,’ and many other eloquent phrases, which Tully and
-Demosthenes never heard of; that in conclusion I am persuaded three
-days fasting would have been more healthfull to mee, then two hours
-feeding and swilling in that manner.”</p>
-
-<p>Christopher North, in his <i>Noctes Ambrosianæ</i>, mentions some
-of the famous Scotch ales of his day. After alluding to the ales of
-Berwick and of Giles, he
-<span class="nowrap">says:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“Maitland and Davison—again—has inspired my being with a <i>new</i>
-feeling, for which no language I am acquainted with can supply an
-adequate name. That feeling impels me to say these simple words on
-behalf of the Spirit of Ale in general—speaking through me, its organ—<i>Ale
-loquitur</i>—“If not suffered by Fate to fix my abode in barrels of
-Berwick or Giles, where I have long reigned alternate years, in all my
-glory, scarcely should I feel myself priviledged to blame my stars, were
-I ordered for a while to sojourn in one of Maitland—and Davison.”</p>
-
-<p>A notice of Scoth ales, however short, would be incomplete without
-some reference to the great Scotch national poet, who sometimes, at
-any rate, would seem to have owed his inspiration to the “barley bree.”
-The song of Burns, <i>O, Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut</i>, is too well known
-to need repetition here. Who does not remember the chorus of this
-admirable
-<span class="nowrap">chanson-à-boire:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">We are na fou, we’re no that fou,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But just a drappie in our e’e,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The cock may craw, the day may daw,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And aye we’ll taste the barley bree!</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The
-occasion which the song was intended to celebrate is not so
-commonly known. The “three merry boys,” Willie, Rob, and Alan
-were respectively William Nicol, of the High School, Edinburgh, our
-poet, and Alan Masterton, who was a schoolmaster and musical
-amateur. The place of meeting was a small farm named Laggan,
-belonging to Nicol. The inspiring ale was Nicol’s, the song was
-Burns’, and the music was Alan Masterton’s. “We had such a joyous
-meeting,” says Burns, “that Mr. Masterton and I agreed, each in our
-own way, to celebrate the business.” <span class="xxpn" id="p171">{171}</span></p>
-
-<p>To pass to the Principality, Welsh ales were in Saxon times well
-known and highly esteemed. In the laws of Hywel Dda two kinds of ale
-are mentioned—Bragawd<a class="afnanc" href="#fn49" id="fnanc49">49</a>, which was paid as tribute to the King by a free
-township, and Cwrwf, which was more common, and was paid by the
-servile township in cases where the former kind ran short. It may be
-hence gathered that in early times the highly-flavoured Bragawd was
-held in greater estimation than the Cwrwf; yet the latter has out-lived
-the former, and is still to be had in various parts of Wales, where it is
-consumed with great gusto by Cambria’s patriotic sons.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc49" id="fn49">49</a>
-Bragawd or Bragot. See p. 379.</p></div>
-
-<p>The neighbouring county of Hereford, now a great cider-drinking
-locality, had in former times at least one town with a reputation for
-good ale. “Lemster bread and Weobley ale” had passed into a proverb
-before the seventeenth century. The saying seems, however, to have
-been affected chiefly by the inhabitants of the county, who, perhaps,
-were not quite impartial. Ray, writing in 1737, ventures to question
-the pre-eminence ascribed to the places mentioned. For wheat he gives
-Hesten, in Middlesex, “and for ale Derby town, and Northdown in the
-Isle of Thanet, Hull in Yorkshire, and Sandbich in Cheshire, will
-scarcely give place to Weobley.” Herrick mentions this celebrated
-Northdown ale in the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">That while the wassaile bowle here</span>
-<span class="spp00">With North-down ale doth troule here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No sillable doth fall here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To marre the mirth at all here.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Norfolk was once celebrated for a
-strong ale, bearing the euphonious name of <i>Norfolk Nog</i>.
-It is mentioned in Vanbrugh’s <i>Journey to London</i>, “Here,
-John Moody,” says Sir Francis, “get us a tankard of good
-hearty stuff presently.” “Sir,” is the reply, “here’s
-Norfolk Nog to be had next door.” Swift also knew something
-of this brew, and mentions that “Walpole laid a quart of
-nog on it.” “Clamber-skull” is probably a variety of this
-strong Norfolk ale, and earned its name from the rapidity
-with which it mounted to the heads of its votaries. Norfolk
-still holds a high place as an ale-producing county,
-and the ales of Great Yarmouth and Norwich are justly
-celebrated.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Banbury produced a mighty ale in the seventeenth century, if we
-may judge from the couplet in <i>Wit</i> <span class="nowrap"><i>Restored</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Banbury ale a half-yard pot</span>
-<span class="spp00">The devil a tinker dares stand to ’t. <span class="xxpn" id="p172">{172}</span></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">It must have been strong indeed, for according to the old
-<span class="nowrap">proverb―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Cobblers and tinkers</span>
-<span class="spp00">Are your true ale drinkers.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Dorsetshire, amongst the southern
-counties, has long been noted for a fine pale ale. This
-is the liquor mentioned in <i>English Ale</i> (1737) <span
-class="nowrap">as―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bright amber priz’d by the luxurious town,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The pale hu’d <span class="nowrap">Dorchester——</span></span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Its strength may be judged from the entry in John Byrom’s diary of
-about the same period (1725):—“I found the effect of last night’s
-drinking that foolish Dorset, which was pleasant enough, but it did
-not agree with me at all, for it made me very stupid all day.” These
-are the words of a man who has evidently loved not wisely but too
-well.</p>
-
-<p>Cox, in his <i>History of Dorsetshire</i> (1700), states that “since by the
-French wars the coming of French wine is prohibited, the people here
-have learned to brew the finest malt liquors in the kingdom, so delicately
-clean and well tasted that the best judges .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. prefer it to the ales
-most in vogue, as Hull, Derby, Burton, &amp;c.” Great quantities of Dorchester
-beer were consumed in London during the seventeenth and the
-early part of the eighteenth centuries, but from that time the trade with
-London, for some reason—probably the expense of transit—gradually fell
-away. The excellence of the Dorset beer depended in a great measure
-upon the fact that the water of the neighbourhood possessed peculiarly
-good qualities for brewing purposes, and, that advantage being of a permanent
-character, there seems to be no reason why the Dorchester ales of
-the present day should not regain throughout the country the position
-they had at the beginning of last century. In the south and south-western
-portions of England they are held in very high esteem.</p>
-
-<p>Barnstaple was famous for its ales in the middle of the last century;
-a writer in the <i>Gentleman’s Magazine</i> of Jan., 1753, says that they are
-as good as Derby ales, though not quite so famous.</p>
-
-<p>Mum, a popular drink early in the last century, was a strong ale brewed
-chiefly from wheat-malt with the addition of various aromatic herbs.
-Mum-houses were in existence in 1664, for Mr. Samuel Pepys records
-that on a certain occasion he went “with Mr. Norbury near hand to
-the Fleece, a mum-house in Leadenhall, and there drank <i>mum</i>, and
-by-and-by broke up.” A receipt of the date 1682, describes the
-brewing of mum as follows:— <span class="xxpn" id="p173">{173}</span></p>
-
-<p>“To make a vessel of sixty-three gallons, we are instructed that, the
-water must be first boiled to the consumption of a third part, then let
-it be brewed according to art with seven bushels of wheat-malt, one
-bushel of oat-malt, and one bushel of ground beans. When the mixture
-begins to work, the following ingredients are to be added: three pounds
-of the inner rind of the fir; one pound each of the tops of the fir and
-the birch; three handfuls of <i>Carduus Benedictus</i>, dried; two handfuls
-of flowers of <i>Rosa solis</i>; of burnet, betony, marjoram, avens, pennyroyal,
-flowers of elder, and wild thyme, one handful and a half each;
-three ounces of bruised seeds of cardamum; and one ounce of bruised
-bayberries. Subsequently ten new-laid eggs, not cracked or broken, are
-to be put into the hogshead, which is then to be stopped close, and not
-tapped for two years, a sea voyage greatly improving the drink.”</p>
-
-<p>The origin of the word “mum” is somewhat disputed, but the best
-derivation seems to be from the name of Christopher Mummer, who is
-said to have been the first to brew it. Others assign to the word an
-origin from <i>mummeln</i>, to mutter, and this seems to have been Pope’s idea
-when he wrote the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The clamorous crowd is hushed with mugs of mum,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till all, turned equal, send a general hum.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Others, again,
-find the derivation in the word mum, meaning silence.</p>
-
-<p>Brunswick is always given as its birthplace, and it was certainly
-known as early as the sixteenth century, for in an old work, <i>De generibus
-ebriosorum et ebrietate vitanda</i> (1515), “mommom sive mommum
-Brunsvigen” is mentioned as one of the drinks of Germany.</p>
-
-<p>An old book, <i>England’s Improvement by Sea and Land</i> (1677),
-contains a remarkable proposition for bringing over the mum trade
-from Brunswick, and establishing it at Stratford-on-Avon.</p>
-
-<p>The old writer, from whom the receipt before-quoted is taken, lays
-considerable stress on the fact that “the ingredients in its composition
-are very rare and choice simples, there being scarcely any disease
-in nature against which some of them is not a sure specific,” the
-implication apparently being that the combination of these ingredients
-would largely increase their healing power.</p>
-
-<p>In one of the 400 letters addressed by Sir Richard Steele to his wife
-we find him writing under date December 6th, 1717:—“I went to bed
-last night after taking only a little broth; and all the day before a little
-tea and bread and butter, with two glasses of mum and a
-piece of bread. <span class="xxpn" id="p174">{174}</span>
-at the House of Commons. Temperance and your company, as
-agreeable as you can make it, will make life tolerable if not easy,
-even with the gout.”</p>
-
-<p>A particular variety of this beverage was known as Hamburgh mum,
-and a catch in its praise of the early part of last century mentions it as
-hailing from that
-<span class="nowrap">city:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There’s an odd sort of liquor</span>
-<span class="spp01">New come from Hamborough,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill stick a whole wapentake</span>
-<span class="spp01">Thorough and thorough;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis yellow, and likewise</span>
-<span class="spp01">As bitter as gall,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And as strong as six horses,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Coach and all.</span>
-<span class="spp00">As I told you ’twill make you,</span>
-<span class="spp01">As drunk as a drum;</span>
-<span class="spp00">You’d fain know the name on’t,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But for that my friend, <i>mum</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember that Mr. Oldbuck is
-described at breakfast as despising the modern slops of tea and coffee
-and substantially regaling himself “more majorum, with cold roast beef
-and mum.”</p>
-
-<p>An Act of Parliament, which was passed annually during the greater
-part of the first half of this century, prescribed certain duties on “malt,
-mum, cyder and perry,” and a tale is told that when Mr. Perry, editor of
-the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, was indicted for libel, he conducted his own case,
-and by his able defence secured a verdict of “Not guilty.” Cobbett,
-who was shortly afterwards tried on a similar charge, also conducted his
-own defence, but was convicted. Erskine remarked that Cobbett had
-tried to be Perry, when he should have been mum.</p>
-
-<p>In the eighteenth century patriotic sentiment was invoked to
-support the failing popularity of mum, as may be gathered from
-the old work <i>Political Merriment, or Truths to some Tune</i> (1714), in
-which these lines
-<span class="nowrap">occur:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now, now true Protestants rejoice,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Stand by your laws and King,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Now you’ve proclaimed the nation’s choice,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Let traitorous rebels swing;
- <span class="xxpn" id="p175">{175}</span></span></div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Let Royal George, the Papists scourge,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To England quickly come;</span>
-<span class="spp00">His health till then, let honest men,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Drink all in Brunswick Mum.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">But
-all would not avail, and the liquor is now as dead as Christopher
-Mummer, the first inventor of it.</p>
-
-<p>There is a tradition lingering in the northern parts of this
-island, that the Picts possessed the secret of making an ale from
-heather. Sir David Smith, in a MS. in the possession of the Duke of
-Northumberland, mentions a large trough cut in the solid rock at
-Kutchester, near the Roman wall. “The old peasants,” he says,
-“have a tradition that the Romans made a beverage somewhat like
-beer, of the bells of heather, and that this trough was used in the
-process of making it.” The tradition in Caithness runs that three Picts—an
-old blind man and his two sons—survived the rest of their race;
-that these alone of all mankind possessed the secret of making heather
-ale; that they guarded their secret with jealous care, and that they were
-in consequence much persecuted by their conquerors. At last the old
-Pict, in answer to the frequent importunities of his persecutors,
-promised to tell the secret, on condition that his two sons should be
-put to death. This was done, but the task was as far from accomplishment
-as ever, and nothing could be got from the old man but the truly
-Delphic words which are handed down in the
-<span class="nowrap">couplet:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Search Brockwin well out and well in,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And barm for heather crop you’ll find within.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The secret died with him.</p>
-
-<hr class="hrtb" />
-
-<p>True or false, this is the legend as related in the north, and certain
-it is that <i>a</i> heather beer was made until quite recently in some parts
-of Scotland and Ireland. The heather, however, is used as a flavouring
-rather than as an actual basis for making the drink. The blossoms of
-the heather are carefully gathered and cleansed, and are then placed
-in the bottom of vessels; wort of the ordinary kind is allowed to drain
-through the blossoms, and gains in its passage a peculiar and agreeable
-flavour, which is well known to all who are familiar with heather
-honey.</p>
-
-<p>Pennant, in his <i>Voyage to the Hebrides</i>, mentions
-heather <i>ale</i>, and says that the proportions were
-two-thirds of the plant to one of hops (hops being
-sometimes added); and Mr. Weld, in his <i>Two Months in the
-Highlands</i>, <span class="xxpn" id="p176">{176}</span>
-says that “although the art of brewing the Pictish
-heather ale is lost, old grouse shooters have tasted a
-beverage prepared by shepherds, on the moors, principally
-from heather flowers, though honey or sugar, to produce
-fermentation, was added.”</p>
-
-<p>In some parts of Ireland there is a tradition that the Danes possessed
-the knowledge of making an intoxicating liquor from heather bells;
-this drink the peasants speak of as beoir-lochlonnach (<i>i.e.</i>, strong at sea),
-an epithet by which the savage Northmen were known to the Celtic
-races. It is possible that there is some connection between this heather
-ale and the ale formerly made by the Swedes and flavoured with the
-<i>Myrica gale</i>. Reference to this plant is made in a Swedish law of the
-fifteenth century, in which it is forbidden to gather the blossoms before a
-certain period. The probability of this connection seems to be increased
-by the fact that in Yorkshire, a county which contains many descendants
-of the old Northmen, a beer is still made called “gale beer,” and is
-flavoured with the blossoms of a species of heather found growing on the
-moors in that part of the country.</p>
-
-<p>As late as the commencement of this century an ale flavoured with
-heather, and differing little from the heather ale described, was brewed
-in many parts of Ireland. The practice, it is believed, is now almost if
-not quite extinct.</p>
-
-<p>Irish moss ale is made in the following manner:—Take one ounce
-of Irish moss, one ounce of hops, one ounce of ginger, one ounce of
-Spanish juice, and one pound of sugar. Ten gallons of water are added
-and the mixture is boiled, fermented, and bottled. The consideration of
-the name of this liquor and the actual constituents may possibly remind
-readers of the old tale of that very clever person who made soup out of
-a stone with the assistance of a few such trifles as beef, vegetables, and
-flavourings.</p>
-
-<p>Beer powders have been made, from which a good and refreshing
-drink may be procured by the simple addition of water. Various
-substances and juices have been used from time to time to improve the
-flavour or strength of ale. In Wales berries of the Mountain Ash
-were once used, and were said to greatly improve the flavour of the
-beverage. The sap of the sycamore tree is mentioned by Evelyn as
-being a most useful adjunct to the brewhouse; he says that one
-bushel of malt with sycamore sap makes as good ale as four bushels
-with water alone.</p>
-
-<p>The service tree, the name of which is said to be a corruption of
-cerevisia, was so called because in former times a kind of
-ale was brewed <span class="xxpn" id="p177">{177}</span>
-from its berries. Evelyn says that ale and beer, “brewed with these
-berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink.”</p>
-
-<p>Maize, beet-root, potatoes, parsnips, and other vegetables have each
-and all been used in the making of beer, but it seems very doubtful
-whether any combination of ingredients will ever equal the time-honoured
-partnership of malt and hops.</p>
-
-<p>A writer in the <i>Gentleman’s Magazine</i> in 1758 says: “In many parts
-of the Kingdom, a beer is made of treacle—thus: to eight quarts of
-boiling water put a pound of treacle, a quarter of an ounce of ginger,
-and two bay leaves. Boil these for a quarter of an hour, then cool and
-work with yeast the same as beer.”</p>
-
-<p>From treacle we naturally come to sugar. This chapter would be
-very incomplete without some mention of a kind of beer which is
-extensively brewed in England at the present day. It is brewed sometimes
-wholly of sugar, or sugar and malt. Occasionally rice is added.
-Looking at this sugar-beer from a chemist’s point of view, there is
-absolutely no fault to find with it; it is perfectly pure and perfectly
-wholesome. Nor is it found to differ, when analysed, from beer made
-from malt. There is certainly a popular prejudice against it, which may
-arise in a great measure from the love of the people for the historic
-drink made from malt. Though analysts cannot distinguish between
-malt liquors and beers made from sugar, there is usually a slight
-difference in flavour between them. It is a noteworthy fact that most
-of the largest firms, having extensive <i>private</i> businesses, brew from malt
-and hops. Their success certainly indicates the direction in which the
-popular taste runs. If Englishmen prefer malt liquors, it is surely to
-the interest of the brewers to give them the genuine barley-bree, and
-not beer brewed from sugar, however excellent it may be.</p>
-
-<p>The use of malt by brewers is of no little importance to English
-grain-growers, and is rightly looked upon by many as of national
-concern. Considerable misconception, however, may exist on this point,
-for the brewing trade generally, say that of late years English
-barley, from climatic or other causes, has not been found altogether
-suitable for brewing purposes, rendering an admixture of foreign grain
-necessary. All we can do is to express a hope that the brewers are
-somewhat mistaken in their estimate of English barley; but that if they
-are correct, England may in future years be accorded its due share of
-sunshine—that blessing of which Dame Nature has been somewhat
-niggardly of late, so that malt made from English grain alone, may
-again fill our mash-tuns. <span class="xxpn" id="p178">{178}</span></p>
-
-<p>A distinction between beers arises, in name at least, from the vessels
-in which they are contained. We have beer in casks and beer in bottles.
-Fuller, in his <i>Worthies of England</i>, ascribes the invention of bottled
-beer to Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul’s and a master of Westminster
-School in the reign of Queen Mary. The Dean was a devoted
-angler. “But,” says old Fuller, “whilst Newell was catching of fishes,
-Bishop Bonner was catching of Newell, and would certainly have sent
-him to the shambles, had not a good London merchant conveyed him
-away upon the seas.” Newell was engaged in his favourite pursuit on
-the banks of the Thames, when such pressing notice of his danger
-reached him, that he was obliged to take immediate flight. On his
-return to England, after Mary’s death, he remembered, when resuming
-his old amusement, that on the day of his flight he had left his simple
-repast, the liquor of which consisted of a bottle of beer, in a safe place in
-the river bank; there he sought it, and, as the quaint language of Fuller
-informs us, he “found it no bottle, but a gun, such the sound at the
-opening thereof; and this is believed (casualty is the mother of more
-invention than industry) the original of bottled ale in England.” If
-this be the true origin of bottled ale, the use of it must have spread
-rapidly, for we find it mentioned in many Elizabethan writers. In Ben
-Jonson’s <i>Bartholomew fair</i>, Ursula calls to the drawer to bring
-“A Bottle of Ale, to quench me, rascal,” and many other quotations
-could be given proving its use in those days. Of course ale must have
-been carried in bottles long before Newell’s time, almost as early, indeed,
-as bottles came into use, but the bottled ale referred to is that which
-has been so long in bottle as to have acquired a peculiar and delicious
-flavour combined with a certain briskness not found in draught ale.</p>
-
-<p>The country which next to our own has for generations stood
-pre-eminent in matters of beer and brewing is Germany; there, as here,
-beer is the national drink, though the character of the liquors is somewhat
-different. The usual German beer is of an exceedingly light
-character, and so perishable that it is impossible to preserve it for any
-length of time even in the coolest cellar; four-and-twenty hours after a
-cask is tapped it must be emptied, or what remains is spoilt. Nearly
-every considerable town in Germany gives its name to the beer that is
-brewed there and consumed by the inhabitants. The beer of each town
-has its own peculiarities, and the worthy burghers are, of course, always
-ready to support both in deed and in word the superiority of their
-native drink. There is, for instance, the Jena beer, famous in that
-university, which is of a very peculiar character, and is
-only made at <span class="xxpn" id="p179">{179}</span>
-Lichtenhain, a little village adjoining the university town. It is a
-species of white beer, and is brewed from wheat malt. The taste for
-this liquor must be one not easy of acquisition, for the author of
-<i>German Life in Saxony</i> describes it as being much like “cider and
-water, with a dash of camomile tea added to it.” The students, however,
-assure you that the taste once acquired remains so strong through life
-that Lichtenhainer is preferred to any other kind of beer.</p>
-
-<p>So much has been written about student life and drinking customs
-that the subject will hardly bear repetition. Suffice it to say that in
-Heidelberg, Jena, and other large German universities there exist
-elaborate codes of drinking rules, in which <i>Persons</i> are classified in
-accordance with their seniority at the university, and the beer-honours
-and labours which their position entail; <i>Things</i> are divided into
-Principal things, subordinate things and appurtenances; Principal
-things are specified as “Lager-beer,” “black Cöstritzer-beer,” “Lichtenhainer-beer,”
-and all other white beers; appurtenances are “cans,
-doctors (a kind of measure), popes (another measure)” and other
-necessities of the drinking bouts. The actual laws of the code are
-far too long and complicated to be more than referred to here.</p>
-
-<p>Lager beer is not unknown in England, and is sold at restaurants
-and hotels in most of our large towns. Much of it is imported; the
-rest comes from Lager-beer brewers, who have, within the last few
-years, started business in this country. Neither German nor Anglo-German
-beers appear to make much headway over here, nor is this
-very surprising when we remember how far superior our own ales and
-beers are to any brewed in Germany. The chief difference between
-lager<a class="afnanc" href="#fn50" id="fnanc50">50</a>
-and English beers is in the time occupied in the fermentation.
-Lager-beer brewers keep the wort at an exceedingly low temperature all
-through the process, the result being that fermentation is delayed over
-several days. Lager beer simply means beer which can be kept in lagers
-or stores. Germany has from very early times maintained a large
-export trade in Beer. It has already been shown that in the fifteenth
-century large quantities were exported into Scotland, and another
-instance is to be found in Rymer (H. 5. 1. 22), where there is a record of
-an appeal made by the consuls of Hamburgh to Henry VI. The appeal
-states “that certain of your Magnificence’s Subjects and Servants to wit
-Michael Schotte and Molchun Poerter of Calais, rulers or captains of a
-certain great ship of war specially fitted out, did with their Complices
-in that present year, about the feast of St. James the Apostle, hostilely
-seize, detain, and carry off at their pleasure two
-vessels laden with <span class="xxpn" id="p180">{180}</span>
-Hamburg ale, to the no small hurt and injury of our fellow townsmen.”
-They therefore pray that the ships may be restored to them and
-compensation made for the outrage.”</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc50" id="fn50">50</a>
-Readers curious as to the technical details of the
-brewing of Lager Beer are referred to Liebig’s Chemistry of Agriculture
-(Playfair).</p></div>
-
-<p>Roberts, in his <i>Map of Commerce</i> (1638), says of Lubeck: “The place
-is famous for the beere made, and hence transported into other regions,
-and by some used medicinally for bruises of the body .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. though by
-them in use commonly both for their own drinke and food and
-rayment.”</p>
-
-<p>One of the characteristics of Bavaria is the inordinate love of its
-inhabitants for their Bavarian beer, a love remarkable even amongst the
-beer-drinking Germans. In the towns the brewhouses are amongst the
-most important buildings, and the traveller remarks the number of beer
-cellars, whither the inhabitants resort to drink their favourite liquor.
-Brewing is the most flourishing trade, and the produce of Bavarian
-brewhouses is the best of continental beers. One of its chief peculiarities
-is that, although exposed to the air for lengthened periods, it will not
-turn acid as other beers do. This valuable quality is obtained for it by
-the peculiar management of the fermentation, and has been already
-referred to. Very little space can be afforded even for a general
-description of German beers, suffice it to say that their name is legion;
-there is black beer, white beer, brown beer, thin beer, strong beer,
-double beer, bitter beer, and countless local varieties of each and all
-these various liquors. One more <i>special</i> variety may be noted, and
-that is the strong ten-years-old ale known by the people of Dortmund
-as “Adam.” It is mentioned by Corvin in <i>An Autobiography</i>, who
-relates that “when King Frederick William IV. of Prussia visited
-Dortmund a deputation of the magistrates waited upon him, one of
-them bearing a salver with a large tankard filled with Adam. When
-the King asked what it was, and heard that it was the celebrated beer, he
-said ‘Very welcome; for it is extremely warm,’ and drained off the
-contents of the tankard at a draught. The members of the deputation,
-who were better acquainted with old Adam than the unsuspecting King,
-smiled at each other, for they knew what would be the result. His
-Majesty was unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.”</p>
-
-<p>The best beer brewed in Norway is a more or less faithful imitation
-of the Bavarian beer, and travellers should be careful to ask for
-“Baiersk öl,” <span class="xxpn" id="p181">{181}</span>
-as the ordinary “barley-wine” of the country is not described as being
-of a very choice character. Much the same may be said of Swedish
-beer, one variety of which, however, has obtained a place in history.
-The beer of Arboga was of so seductive a character that on the occasion
-of the invasion of Hako and his Norwegian and Danish levies, a large part
-of the army loitered behind in the various inns of the place, quaffing the
-luscious beverage, and their King, in consequence, lost the day.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Russia has been behindhand in matters of brewing from the days
-when Catherine had to send to Burton for her private supply, even until
-now; but during the last few years the gentle Mujik has been taking so
-kindly to his “Bavarski Peavah” (Russo-Bavarian beer), that a triumph
-apparently awaits John Barleycorn in Russia similar to that old victory
-of his over Bacchus commemorated in the song of “Yorkshire Ale,”
-which finds place in the chapter devoted to Ballads.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p181.png" width="144" height="47" alt="" /></div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p182a.png" width="144" height="42" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p182"><span
- class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> VIII.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<p>“Come on, you mad-cap. I’ll to the Alehouse with you presently, where,
-for one shot of fivepence, thou shalt have five thousand welcomes.”</p>
-
-<p class="psignature"><i>Two Gentlemen of Verona.</i> Act ii., sc. 5.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc"><div class="dnowrap30"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Where’er his stages may have been,</span>
-<span class="spp00">May sigh to think he still has found</span>
-<span class="spp01">The warmest welcome at an inn.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Shenstone.</i></span></div></div></div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>ALE HOUSES: THEIR
-ORIGIN.&#x200a;—&#x200a;HOSPITALITY IN MEDIÆVAL TIMES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;OLD LONDON INNS
-AND TAVERNS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ANECDOTES OF INNS AND INN KEEPERS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;CURIOUS
-SIGNS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;SIGN-BOARD AND ALE-HOUSE VERSES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;SIGN-BOARD
-ARTISTS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ALE-HOUSE SONGS AND CATCHES.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p182b.png"
-width="229" height="234" alt="“N" /></span>O,
-SIR;” said Dr. Johnson, “there is
-no­thing which has yet been con­trived by
-man, by which so much hap­pi­ness is pro­duced,
-as by a good ta­vern or inn.” The
-ar­gu­ment by which the great Doc­tor leads
-up to this oracular de­li­ver­ance is as fol­lows:—“There
-is no pri­vate house in
-which people can enjoy them­selves so well
-as in a cap­i­tal ta­vern. Let there be ever
-so great plen­ty of good things, ever so much gran­deur, ever so much
-ele­gance, and ever so much de­sire that every­body should be easy, in the
-nature of things it cannot be; there must always be some degree of
-care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his
-guests, the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him, and no man but a
-very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what
-is in another <span class="xxpn" id="p183">{183}</span>
-man’s house as if it were his own; whereas, at a tavern there is a general
-freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome, and the more
-noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call
-for, the welcomer you are. No servant will attend you with the alacrity
-which waiters do who are incited by the prospect of an immediate
-reward in proportion as they please.” The Doctor seems most conscientiously
-to have made his practice square with his preaching. Till
-the end of his life, although generally an abstemious man, he was regular
-in his attendance at the various taverns he patronised, and his burly
-figure was as well known amongst the frequenters of the inns and
-taverns of Fleet Street, as that of the most notorious roysterer of the
-time.</p>
-
-<p>In his day the tavern—the London tavern especially—attained the
-highest point of social importance which it has ever reached; and many
-of those convivial and social functions, now for the most part discharged
-by the clubs and by private hospitality, were then considered to fell
-within its special province. During the last century the tavern gathered
-around its hospitable hearth those groups of savants and wits, which
-have been the starting points of many a scientific and literary society of
-the present day.</p>
-
-<p>It is, of course, impossible for us in the space we are able to devote to
-the history of public hospitality in England, to do more than give a
-very slight sketch of the subject.</p>
-
-<p>Most of the functions of the modern inn were in early days discharged by the
-hospitality of the Church. In the laws and constitutions of the various
-religious bodies are to be found directions to the clergy to observe the rites
-of hospitality, and a law of Ecgbright commands bishops and priests to have a
-house for the entertainment of strangers, not far from the church. The house
-here referred to would probably be the Almonry, where strangers and travellers,
-too poor or lowly to be entertained within the walls of the monastery, were fed
-and tended.</p>
-
-<p>Persons of higher rank were received into the monastery,
-which was always furnished with a <i>hospitium</i>, or guest hall, for the
-entertainment of visitors and travellers. The importance of this
-monastic function may be judged from the size of some of the guest
-halls belonging to the larger religious bodies: one at Canterbury was
-a hundred and fifty feet long, and forty feet wide.</p>
-
-<p>Visitors on their arrival at a monastery were met by the <i>hosteler</i> in
-the <i>parletory</i>, and after receiving greeting were conducted to the guest
-hall, where they were refreshed with meat and drink
-according to their <span class="xxpn" id="p184">{184}</span>
-rank and importance. A small present was usually given at the gate
-on arrival, but, save for that, the entertainment seems to have been free.
-The guests were allowed to stay on these terms for two days and two
-nights; but on the third day after dinner, unless prevented by sickness
-or other just cause, they were to depart in peace.</p>
-
-<p>Many constitutions of religious houses enjoin that hospitality should
-be shown to all comers, clerical or lay, and we are told that in some
-cases this liberality was much abused. The heirs of persons who had
-made large donations to religious houses, when they could not injure
-the monks by means of law, did their best to ruin them by constant
-visits with large retinues, and thus literally eat them out of house and
-home; and to such lengths did this custom extend that, in the reign of
-Edward I., it was found necessary to pass certain laws restraining such
-abuses.</p>
-
-<p>By the rules of the Benedictine order, an officer was appointed,
-called the <i>terrer</i>, whose duty it was to see that the guest-chambers were
-kept clean. He was always to have on hand two tuns of wine for the
-entertainment of strangers, and also provender for their horses; and
-four yeomen were appointed to attend upon strangers, that nothing
-might be wanting to pilgrims and travellers of whatever rank they
-might be. In the middle ages the denial of hospitality was looked upon
-as disgraceful, and an ancient anecdote is related of the revenge taken
-by a travelling minstrel upon his host, on account of the meagre nature
-of the entertainment afforded. The minstrel sought a night’s food and
-lodging at an Abbey, when the abbot, a parsimonious man, happened
-to be absent. The monk in attendance at the hospitium, acting upon
-instructions, gave the poor minstrel nothing but black bread and water
-and a bed of straw. Next morning the traveller proceeded on his way,
-and meeting the abbot in the course of the journey, took occasion to
-thank him in good set phrase for the princely hospitality dispensed at
-his house, enlarging upon the choice viands and costly presents he had
-received. The abbot hastened home in great rage, and caused the monk,
-whom he believed to be guilty of the lavish waste, to be flogged and
-dismissed from his office.</p>
-
-<p>One of the few instances of the public hospitality of the religious
-orders surviving down to our own days is to be found at the Hospital of
-Saint Cross, Winchester, where whoever knocks at the porter’s lodge is
-entitled to a slice of bread and a mug of small beer—<i>very small</i>, if
-rumour lies not.</p>
-
-<p>Side by side with this monastic hospitality were
-the shelter and <span class="xxpn" id="p185">{185}</span>
-entertainment afforded at the houses of the nobility and gentry when
-their owners were absent; and when they were at home, the practice
-of keeping open house seems to have been by no means rare. The
-traveller of gentle blood would be entertained at the lord’s table,
-while the servant, the travelling mechanic, the disbanded soldier,
-and other wanderers of lowly rank, would find rest and refreshment
-in the keep.</p>
-
-<p>In process of time, however, this custom of pro­mis­cuous en­ter­tain­ment
-seems to have fal­len into disuse; the ac­com­mo­da­tion before
-provided by the castle or manor house being now af­ford­ed by a sep­a­rate
-inn set up close by, and fre­quent­ly kept by some worn-out servant of
-the castle, who would naturally bear upon his sign the arms of the
-dom­i­nant family, and would, for the purpose of en­ter­tain­ing tra­vel­lers,
-be regarded as representing the lord. It is possible that to this custom,
-or the preceding one, may be attributed the use of the expression landlord,
-as signifying the host of an inn.</p>
-
-<p>In towns, those of the citizens who had large enough houses
-frequently made a practice of receiving guests, and taking money for
-their pains, thus adding the profession of a host to their other callings.
-Persons who practised this letting of lodgings were called <i>herbergeors</i>
-(<i>i.e.</i>, harbourers), to distinguish them from the hostelers or innkeepers;
-and a further extension of the use of coats-of-arms for signs was thus
-brought about, the herbergeor frequently taking as his sign the arms of
-his most frequent or most influential guest. The <i>Liber Albus</i> mentions
-both classes of entertainers, and records that by the regulations of the
-City of London herbergeours and hostelers must be freemen of the City,
-and persons of a strange land desirous of being herbergeour or hosteler
-within the City must dwell in the heart of the City and not upon the
-waterside of the Thames.</p>
-
-<p>Although hospitality was so freely exercised by the monks and great
-landowners, it must not be imagined that inns were unknown. Even
-in Saxon days, to go no further back, inns and village alehouses seem to
-have existed. Bracton tells us of a regulation of Edward the Confessor
-that if any man lay a third night in an inn he was called a <i>third-night-awn-hinde</i>,
-that is to say, he was looked upon in the same light as a servant
-of the house would be, and the host was answerable for him if he
-committed any offence—a curious illustration of that local and vicarious
-responsibility for crime which was so prominent a feature of our ancient
-polity. In much later times a similar regulation is to be found applying
-to “hostelers” in the City of London. The <i>Liber
-Albus</i> gives, as <span class="xxpn" id="p186">{186}</span>
-one of the City rules, that no hosteler shall harbour a man beyond a day
-and a night, if he be not willing to produce such person to stand his
-trial, and in case such a person shall commit an offence, and absent
-himself, his host shall answer for him.</p>
-
-<p>Goldsmith’s description of a village inn is probably as applicable to
-the old Saxon <i>eala-hus</i> of a thousand years ago as it was to the alehouse
-of his own time, and as it is to many in the present
-<span class="nowrap">day:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And news, much older than the Ale, went round.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart</span>
-<span class="spp00">An hour’s importance to a poor man’s heart,</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">and the following descriptive verses of Leigh Hunt, entitled <i>The Village
-Alehouse, a Picture in Detail</i>, with but slight alterations, would serve
-equally as
-<span class="nowrap">well:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Dear ramblers all—an Alehouse sign</span>
-<span class="spp01">You’ll own as good a sight as greets ye;</span>
-<span class="spp00">When summer’s long, long mornings shine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Where leisure reigns, and ‘All hail’ meets ye.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There rests the waggon in its <span class="nowrap">track,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">A corn bag round each horse’s nose is;</span>
-<span class="spp00">There comes the miller and his sack:</span>
-<span class="spp01">And there at ease the beggar dozes.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There limps the ostler with his pails,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And there the landlord stalks inspector;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Two farmers there discuss their sales,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And drain by turns one goblet’s nectar.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Hay ricks are near and orchard fruit;</span>
-<span class="spp01">The cock’s shrill crow and flapping wing;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The low contented neigh of brute;</span>
-<span class="spp01">The pipe’s perfume, and tankard’s ding.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The fiddle’s scrape,—the milking <span class="nowrap">cows,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">The snapping cork,—the roaring <span class="nowrap">joke:—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">The birds by thousands in the <span class="nowrap">boughs:—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">The creaking wheel and whip’s loud stroke. <span class="xxpn" id="p187">{187}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sunshine strews all the kitchen floor,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Reposes on the home-field <span class="nowrap">crop—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Blisters the Doctor’s fine new door,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And kisses copse and chimney top.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Clouds fleecy dot the blue <span class="nowrap">immense—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">Farm-houses—cities—vales—and <span class="nowrap">streams—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">And seats and parks and forests dense,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Sleep stretch’d afar, in floods of beams.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dright dwth-e">
-<img src="images/p187.png" width="250" height="270" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">A Mediæval Innkeeper.</div></div>
-
-<p>An inn or an alehouse, how­ever, was at the time of the
-Con­quest and for long after, far to seek. In the reign of
-Ed­ward I. there were on­ly three tav­erns in Lon­don, one
-in Chepe, one in Wall­brooke, and one in Lom­bard Street,
-and in coun­try dis­tricts the pro­por­tion to the pop­u­la­tion
-would doubt­less be as
-small, the want being sup­plied in the man­ner be­fore
-al­luded to. Even in the year 1552 the following list of the
-numbers of taverns allowed for the chief towns in England,
-no doubt shows a much smaller proportion to population
-than is seen at the present day. There were to be allowed
-forty in London, eight in York, four in Norwich, three
-in Westminster, six in Bristol, four in Hull, three in
-Shrewsbury, four in Exeter, three in Salisbury, four in
-Gloucester, four in Chester, three in Hereford, three
-in Worcester, three in Oxford, four in Cambridge, three
-in Southampton, four in Canterbury, three in Ipswich,
-three in Winchester, three in Colchester, and four in
-Newcastle-upon-Tyne.</p>
-
-<p>Even parsonages seem to have been licensed as alehouses in very
-out-of-the-way districts. A survival of this custom, almost to our own
-times, is mentioned by Southey, who states that the parsonage house of
-Langdale was licensed as an alehouse, because it was so poor a living
-that the curate could not have otherwise supported himself.</p>
-
-<p>The regulation previously mentioned as to the number of taverns,
-seems never to have been formally repealed; it could, however, only
-have been very slackly enforced, and doubtless soon became a dead
-letter. It was not, however, altogether forgotten, for in
-a letter from <span class="xxpn" id="p188">{188}</span>
-the Lords in Council, in reply to a petition presented in the year 1618
-by the parishioners of St. Mildred, in London, it is stated that “whereas
-the number of taverns had been limited to forty, and their places
-assigned,” there were then no less than four hundred in the City alone.
-The Lord Mayor and Common Council are therefore directed to put
-some restraint on this “enormous liberty of setting up taverns.”</p>
-
-<p>The latter part of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth
-centuries seem to have been remarkable for a great excess of alehouses,
-having regard to the wants of the population at the time. In 1591 a
-report of the Queen’s Council on the state of Lancashire and Cheshire
-states that the streets and alehouses are so crowded during service time
-that there was none in church but the curate and his clerk; that alehouses
-were innumerable, and that great abuses prevailed. In 1639 the
-Justices of Middlesex made presentment to the Council that there were
-twenty-four alehouses in Covent Garden, and that most of their
-keepers were chandlers who had got licensed surreptitiously at general
-meetings, and that the said Justices had reduced the number of the alehouses
-to <i>four</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Old John Taylor, in <i>Drinke and Welcome</i>, gives evidence of the excessive
-facilities for drinking afforded at the fairs then so common. “Concerning
-the fructifying or fruitfulnesse of ale,” he says in his quaint way, “it
-is almost incredible, for twice every yeere there is a Faire at a small
-Towne called Kimbolton or Kimolton in Northamptonshire (as I take
-it), in which towne there are but thirty-eight Houses, which at the Faire
-time are encreased to thirty-nine <i>Alehouses</i>, for an old woman and her
-daughter doe in those dayes divide there one house into two, such is the
-operation and encreasing power of our English Ale.” Decker, writing
-in 1632, says that “a whole street is in some places but a continuous alehouse,
-not a shop to be seen between red lattice and red lattice.” This
-mention of the red lattice recalls the custom now extinct, but once well
-nigh universal, for the alehouses to have open windows to enable the
-guests to enjoy the fresh air. Privacy was ensured by a trellis or lattice,
-which was fixed in front of the window, and prevented a passer-by from
-seeing in, though those within could see out. Whether or not the red
-colour of the lattices was intended to harmonise with the noses of the
-frequenters may be considered a moot point; the page seems to have
-intended some such insinuation when he says of Bardolph, “He called
-me even now, my Lord, through a red lattice, and I could see no part of
-his face from the window; at last I spied his eyes and methought he had
-made two holes in the ale-wife’s new petticoat,
-and peeped through.” <span class="xxpn" id="p189">{189}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr01">
-<div class="dcaption">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">A merry new Ballad, bothe pleaſant and ſweet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In praiſe of a Blackſmith, which is very meet.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<img src="images/p189.png" width="742" height="391"
- alt="An Ale-Houſe Lattice." />
-
-<div class="dcaption">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Of
- all the trades that ever I ſee</span>
-<span class="spp00">There is none which the Blackſmith
- compared may be.”</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Roxburghe Ballads.</i></span></div>
-</div></div><!--dctr01--></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p190">{190}</span></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">So usual did the red lattice become that it was regarded as a distinctive
-mark, as shown in Marston’s <i>Antonio and Mellida</i>, in which occurs the
-passage, “As well known by my wit as an alehouse by a red lattice.”
-Green lattices were occasionally used, and the memory of them still
-survives in the sign of <i>The Green Lettuce</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Another feature peculiar to old country inns was the ale-bench, a
-seat in front of the house where the thirsty wayfarer might rest and take
-his modest quencher. An ancient institution was the ale-bench. It is
-mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon poem <i>Beowulf</i> and in the sixteenth
-century seems to have been considered the appropriate resting place of
-sententious and argumentative persons. One of the old Homilies (1547)
-alludes to those “which upon the ale-benches delight to set forth
-certain questions.”</p>
-
-<p>Another institution of the old alehouse, corresponding in fact to the
-modern <i>bar</i>, was called the <i>ale-stond</i>, an allusion to which is to be
-found in <i>Marprelate’s Epistle</i>: “Therefore at length Sir Jefferie
-bethought him of a feat whereby he might both visit the ale-stond
-and also kepe his othe.”</p>
-
-<p>In the sixteenth century the keeper of an alehouse was fancifully
-called an <i>ale-draper</i>. Chettle, in his <i>Kind-Hearts’ Dreame</i> (1592), has
-the following:—“I came up to London and fell to be some tapster,
-hostler, or chamberlaine in an inn. Well, I got me a wife; with her a
-little money; when we are married seeke a house we must; no other
-occupation have I but an ale-draper.” <i>The Discoverie of the Knights of
-the Poste</i> (1597) also contains an allusion to the phrase:—“‘So that
-nowe hee hath left brokery, and is become a draper.’ ‘A draper!’
-quoth Freeman, ‘what draper? of woollin or of linnen?’ ‘No,’ qd
-he, ‘an ale-draper, wherein he hath more skil then in the other.’”
-Innkeepers in Whitby are denominated ale-drapers in the parish
-registers of last century.</p>
-
-<p>In those good old days before the introduction of mail-coaches, to
-say nothing of the more modern means of transit, hospitality to the
-traveller was the rule in country districts. The Water Poet tells in his
-<i>Pennilesse Pilgrimage</i> that he travelled “on foot from London to
-Edinburgh in Scotland, not carrying money to or fro, neither begging,
-borrowing or asking meat.” However, from what he goes on to relate,
-this description of his journey needs to be accepted with some slight
-reservation, for he gives a comical recital of how “from Stamford we
-<i>rode</i> the next day to Huntingdon, where we lodged at the Post-master’s
-house at the signe of the Crowne.” The landlord
-appears, and “very <span class="xxpn" id="p191">{191}</span>
-bountifully called for three quarts of wine and sugar and some jugges of
-beere. He did drink and begin healths like a horse-leach, and swallowed
-downe his cuppes without feeling, as if he had had the dropsie, or nine
-pound of spunge in his maw. In a word, as he is a Poste, he dranke
-poste, striving and calling by all means to make the reckoning great,
-or to make us men of great reckoning. But in his payment he was
-tyred like a jade, leaving the gentleman that was with me to discharge
-the terrible shott, or else one of my horses must have laine in pawne for
-his superfluous calling and unmannerly intrusion.”</p>
-
-<p>The opinion of the great Doctor already quoted was not confined
-either to himself or to his times. Bishop Earle, writing in the seventeenth
-century of those social functions of the tavern or alehouse, now in a
-great measure discharged by the Clubs, sums up his description as
-follows:—“To give you the total reckoning of it, it is the busy man’s
-recreation, the idle man’s business, the melancholy man’s sanctuary, the
-stranger’s welcome, the inns of court man’s entertainment, the scholar’s
-kindness, and the citizens’ courtesy. It is the study of sparkling wits,
-and a cup of comedy their book; whence we leave them.”</p>
-
-<p>Old Izaak Walton had a lively appreciation of the comforts of an
-inn and the virtues of English ale. Piscator, of <i>The Complete Angler</i>,
-thus addresses the hostess of an inn: “Come, hostess, dress it (a trout)
-presently, and get us what other meat the house will afford, and give
-us some of your best barley wine, the good liquor that our honest forefathers
-did use to drink of; the drink which preserved their health, and
-made them live so long and do so many good deeds.”</p>
-
-<p>The quaint old author of <i>The Haven of Health</i> (1584) gives his readers
-directions how to find out the best alehouse in a strange town, and also
-some prudent maxims as to the behaviour there:—“But if you come as
-a stranger to any towne, and would faine know where the best ale is,
-you neede do no more than marke where the greatest noyse is of good
-fellows, as they call them, and the greatest repaire of beggars. But
-withall take good heed that malt bee not above wheat before you part.
-For it is worse to be drunke of Ale than wine, and the drunkenness
-indureth longer: by reason that the fumes and vapours of ale that
-ascend to the head, are more grosse, and therefore cannot be so soone
-resolved as those that rise up of wine.”</p>
-
-<p>Malvolio is alluding to the custom of alehouse singing when he
-says: “Do you make an alehouse of my lady’s house, that ye squeak out
-your cozier’s catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice?”</p>
-
-<p>The English custom of wives following their
-husbands to the ale <span class="xxpn" id="p192">{192}</span>
-house is mentioned with reprehension by Gascoigne in <i>A Delicate Diet
-for Daintie-mouthed Droonkards</i> (1576). “What woman,” he exclaims,
-“(even among the droonken Almaines), is suffered to follow her husband
-into the Alehouse or Beerhouse?” However, if we are to believe the
-author of the following verses, the practice does not always seem to
-have been unfavourable to
-<span class="nowrap">temperance:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth dwthem26">
-<div class="padtopb">BACCHANALIAN JOYS DEFEATED.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">While I’m at the Tavern quaffing,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Well disposed for t’other quart,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come’s my wife to spoil my laughing,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Telling me ’tis time to part:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Words I knew, were unavailing,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Yet I sternly answered, no!</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Till from motives more prevailing,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Sitting down she treads my toe:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Such kind tokens to my thinking,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Most emphatically prove</span>
-<span class="spp00">That the joys that flow from drinking,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Are averse to those of love.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Farewell friends and t’other bottle,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Since I can no longer stay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Love more learn’d than Aristotle,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Has, to move me, found the way.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Many a tale is told of wordy passages of arms between travellers and
-innkeepers. Dame Halders, of Norwich, was a stingy ale-wife. Upon
-one occasion a passing pedlar begged of her a mug of water. “You had
-better,” said she, “have a jug of my home-brewed.” The pedlar
-complied and paid for it, remarking after tasting it that it was a very
-satisfying tipple. “Yes,” rejoined the dame, pleased at the supposed
-compliment uttered in the hearing of her country customers, “it’s my
-own brewing—nothing but malt and hops.” “Indeed,” exclaimed the
-pedlar; “what!—no water?” “O yes,” cried the dame, “I forgot the
-water.” “No,” quickly added the pedlar, “I’m d—d if you did.”</p>
-
-<p>“I say,” a wag asked of a publican, “if we were to have a Coroner’s
-Inquest on your beer, what verdict should we arrive at?” “Give it
-up,” said Boniface. “Found drowned,” was the cruel reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Have you a pair of steps?” asked a customer of an ale-wife, who was
-notorious for giving short measure. “Yes; what do you
-want it for?” <span class="xxpn" id="p193">{193}</span>
-inquired the woman. “To go down and get at this ale,” was the reply
-pointing to the half-filled pewter.</p>
-
-<p>It is not, however, always the host or the ale-wife who is made the
-object of these shafts of wit; as often as not it is Boniface who assumes
-the character of the joker. In illustration of his jests, the following
-extract is taken from the <i>Mirror</i>: “About half a century ago, when it
-was more the fashion to drink ale at Oxford than it is at present,
-a humorous fellow, of punning memory, established an alehouse near
-the pound, and wrote over his door, ‘Ale sold by the pound.’ As his
-ale was as good as his jokes, the Oxonians resorted to his house in great
-numbers, and sometimes staid there beyond the college hours. This
-was made a matter of complaint to the Vice-Chancellor, who was
-directed to take away his licence by one of the Proctors of the
-University. Boniface was summoned to attend, and when he came into
-the Vice-Chancellor’s presence he began hawking and spitting about
-the room; this the Chancellor observed, and asked what he meant by
-it. ‘Please your worship,’ said he, ‘I came here on purpose to <i>clear</i>
-myself.’ The Vice-Chancellor imagined that he actually weighed his
-ale and sold it by the pound. ‘Is that true?’ ‘No, an’t please your
-worship,’ replied the wit. ‘How do you, then?’ said the Chancellor.
-‘Very well, I thank you, sir,’ replied he; ‘how do you do?’ The
-Chancellor laughed, and said, ‘Get away for a rascal; I’ll say no more
-to you.’ The fellow departed, and crossing the quadrangle met the
-Proctor who laid the information. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘the Chancellor wants
-to speak to you,’ and returned with him. ‘Here, sir,’ said he when he
-came into the Chancellor’s presence, ‘you sent me for a <i>rascal</i>, and I’ve
-brought you the greatest that I know of.’”</p>
-
-<p>There is a good tale told of a certain innkeeper, who, had he received
-the advantages of an university education, would certainly have taken
-high mathematical honours. To him came a traveller, who demanded
-a tankard of treble X. Thereupon the innkeeper, having hesitated
-a moment, left the tap-room, to reappear shortly afterwards with a foam-crowned
-pewter. The traveller tasted, and exclaimed angrily, “This is
-not what I ordered!” “It is,” shortly replied Boniface; and retired to
-avoid discussion. The traveller was a connoisseur in beer, and knew he
-had been given table ale. Calling the potboy, he questioned him
-“No, master kept no strong beer,” said the lad; “nothing more than
-double X.” The traveller then summoned the landlord, and the
-meeting was stormy. The traveller asserted, the host denied, and
-came off finally triumphant with, “I know I don’t
-keep treble X, <span class="xxpn" id="p194">{194}</span>
-but I can make it. I just gave you half double X and t’other half
-single X, and if two and one don’t make three, my name’s not
-Boniface.”</p>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p194.png" width="500" height="650" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Cornelius Caton.</div></div>
-
-<p>The very grotesque figure which adorns this page represents
-Cornelius Caton, landlord of the “White Lion,” Richmond, about the
-middle of last century. Beginning life as a potboy, he rose through
-various stages till he became landlord of the house. He was almost a
-dwarf, and his whimsical character and unfailing good humour brought
-him much custom. The illustration is taken from a very rare print.</p>
-
-<p>The portrait of an old Cumberland landlord of the hard-drinking
-days is drawn in the following ballad, which was written by some
-wandering bard, in the album kept at the “Rising Sun,” Pooley
-Bridge:— <span class="xxpn" id="p195">{195}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Will Russell was a landlord bold,</span>
-<span class="spp01">A noble wight was he,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Right fond of quips and merry cranks,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And every kind of glee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Full five and twenty years agone,</span>
-<span class="spp01">He came to Pooley Height,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And there he kept the Rising Sun,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And drunk was every night.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">No lord, nor squire, nor serving man,</span>
-<span class="spp01">In all the country round,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But lov’d to call in at the Sun,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Wherever he was bound.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To hold a crack with noble Will,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And take a cheerful cup</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of brandy, or of Penrith ale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Or pop, right bouncing up.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But now poor Will lies sleeping here,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Without his hat or stick,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No longer rules the Rising Sun,</span>
-<span class="spp01">As he did well when quick.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Will’s honest heart could ne’er refuse</span>
-<span class="spp01">To drink with ev’ry brother:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then let us not his name <span class="nowrap">abuse—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">We’ll ne’er see sic another.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But let us hope the gods above,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Right minded of his merits,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Have given him a gentle shove</span>
-<span class="spp01">Into the land of spirits.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Tis then his talents will expand,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And make a noble figure,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In tossing off a brimming glass,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To make his belly bigger.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Adieu, brave landlord, may thy portly ghost</span>
-<span class="spp01">Be ever ready at its heavenly post;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And may thy proud posterity e’er be</span>
-<span class="spp01">Landlords at Pooley to eternity. <span class="xxpn" id="p196">{196}</span></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Rather profane the last verse; but, perhaps, not more so than the
-epitaph on one Matilda
-<span class="nowrap">Brown:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here lies the body of Matilda Brown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who while alive was hostess of the Crown.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Her son-in-law keeps on the business still,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Patient, resigned to the Eternal Will.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">At King’s Stanley, in Gloucestershire, is the following epitaph to
-another hostess, one Ann
-<span class="nowrap">Collins:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Twas as she tript from cask to cask,</span>
-<span class="spp01">In at a bung-hole quickly fell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Suffocation was her task,</span>
-<span class="spp01">She had no time to say farewell.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p196.png" width="344" height="464" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The George Inn, Salisbury.</div></div>
-
-<p>The ancient George Inn, Salisbury, depicted in our illustration, was
-in the vicinity of the Royal residence at Clarendon, and four hundred
-years ago was one of the best and most commodious inns in the west
-of England. In the records of the Corporation of the town a lease of
-this house is found, dated April 9th, 1473; it is made to one John
-Gryme, a saddler, and contains a description of the rooms of the inn,
-and an inventory of furniture. The house contained
-at that date <span class="xxpn" id="p197">{197}</span>
-thirteen guest chambers, viz.:—The Principal Chamber, the Earl’s
-Chamber, the Pantry adjoining, the Oxford Chamber, the Abingdon
-Chamber, the Squire’s Chamber, the Lombard’s Chamber, the Garret,
-the George, the Clarendon, the Understent, the Fitzwaryn, and the
-London Chamber.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr01">
-<img src="images/p197.png" width="591" height="542" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Falcon Inn, Chester.</div></div>
-
-<p>There was also the <i>taberna</i> or wine-cellar, the Buttery, the Tap
-House, the Kitchen, the Hostry, and the Parlour. The furniture, of
-which a full inventory is appended, seems to have been of a very
-homely type. No difference seems to have been made between the
-living and the sleeping rooms; each room was supplied with beds, the
-relative importance of which was measured by the number of <i>planks</i>
-they contained, and the only other articles of furniture were tables on
-tressels for dining and forms of oak and beech for the guests to sit at
-table. The Principal room was distinguished by the possession of a
-cupboard, and each room contained three beds.</p>
-
-<p>Another fine old inn is the Falcon of Chester. It is notable as
-a good example of old half-timbered work. <span class="xxpn" id="p198">{198}</span></p>
-
-<p>Malone, in his <i>Supplement</i> to Shakspere, mentions the fact that
-many of our old plays were acted in the yards of Carriers’ Inns, in
-which, he says, “in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the
-comedians, who then first united themselves in companies, erected an
-occasional stage. The form of these temporary play-houses seems to be
-preserved in our modern theatre. The galleries are in both ranged
-over each other, on three sides of the building. The small rooms
-under the lowest of these galleries answer to our present boxes; and it
-is observable that these, even in theatres which were built in a subsequent
-period, expressly for dramatic exhibitions, still retained their
-old name, and are frequently called rooms by our ancient writers. The
-yard bears a sufficient resemblance to the pit, as at present in use. We
-may suppose the stage to have been raised in this area, on the fourth
-side, with its back to the gateway of the inn, at which the money for
-admission was taken. Here, in the middle of the Globe, and, I suppose,
-of the other public theatres in the time of Shakespeare, there was an
-open yard or area, where the common people stood to see the exhibition,
-from which circumstances they are called groundlings, and by Ben
-Jonson, ‘the understanding gentlemen of the ground.’”</p>
-
-<p>At the beginning of the present century the Angel at Islington was
-a typical, old-fashioned country inn, long and low, with deep overhanging
-eaves, and a central yard surrounded by double galleries,
-open to the air and communicating with the bedrooms. Travellers
-approaching London from the north would frequently remain at the
-Angel the night, rather than venture into London by dark along a road
-dangerous alike from its ruts and its footpads. Persons whose business
-took them to Islington after dark usually waited at an avenue, which
-then existed on the site of John Street, until a sufficient number of
-them had assembled to go on in safety to their destination, whither
-they were escorted by an armed patrol appointed for that purpose.
-What a striking picture of the insecurity of life and limb in districts
-close to the metropolis not one hundred years ago!</p>
-
-<p>A curious custom, known as the Highgate Oath, held its ground for
-many a long year, and has only fallen into disuse within living memory.
-When a traveller passed through Highgate towards London for the
-first time he was brought before a pair of horns at one of the taverns,
-and there a mock oath was administered to him, to the effect that he
-would never drink small beer when he could get strong, unless he liked
-it better; that, with a similar saving clause, he would never drink gruel
-when he could command turtle soup; nor make love to
-the maid, when <span class="xxpn" id="p199">{199}</span>
-he could court the mistress, unless he preferred the maid; with much
-more to the same effect. In the old coaching days scarcely a coach
-passed through Highgate without some of its occupants being initiated
-and we may well imagine that copious streams of ale would flow to
-“wet” the time-honoured custom. It is to this custom that Byron
-makes allusion in Childe
-<span class="nowrap">Harold:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;.&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;.&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;many
- to the steep of Highgate hie;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ask ye, Bœotian shades, the reason why?</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis to the worship of the solemn horn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Grasped in the holy hand of Mystery,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till morn.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The privileges belonging to a freeman of Highgate who had taken
-the oath are described as follows:—“If at any time you are going
-through Highgate, and want to rest yourself, and you see a pig lying in
-the ditch, you have liberty to kick her out and take her place; but if
-you see three lying together, you must only kick out the middle one
-and lie between the two others.”</p>
-
-<p>The custom is said to have been originated by a club of graziers
-who were wont to tarry at Highgate on their way to London, and who,
-in order to keep their company select, would admit none to their society
-before he had gone through a process of initiation, which consisted of
-kissing between the horns, one of their oxen brought to the door for
-the purpose.</p>
-
-<p>Interesting as are many of our old country inns and village ale-houses,
-and numberless the tales that might be told of the doings within
-their time-stained walls; “of quips and cranks and wanton wiles”; of the
-village feast, the village minstrelsy, the “jocund rebeck’s” sound to ears
-long since deaf; the song; the toast pledged by lips long since cold—interesting
-as all these are, it is when we come to the history of our old
-London taverns, fragmentary though it be, that we really find ourselves
-face to face with the clearest pictures of the social life and customs of the
-past. It is here that memories gather thickest of the</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Peals of genial clamour sent</span>
-<span class="spp00">From many a tavern door,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With twisted quirks and happy hits,</span>
-<span class="spp01">From misty men of letters;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The tavern hours of mighty <span class="nowrap">wits—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">Thine elders and thy betters.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p200">{200}</span></div>
-
-<p>In the history of the old London taverns may be seen the habits, the
-customs, and the amusements of by-gone generations of Londoners.
-Innumerable pictures of society, and modes of life and thought, might
-be gathered from among the records of these houses of entertainment.
-For centuries before these days of telegraphs and newspapers, it was to
-the tavern that men resorted to hear the latest news, to exchange ideas
-and to refresh their minds, as well as bodies, after the labours of the day.
-It was here the traveller told his tale of marvels, of “contrees and the
-yles that ben beyond Cathay”; it was here the stay-at-home gathered
-what information he possessed of lands and nations over the seas.</p>
-
-<p>Space forbids us to mention more than a very few of these old
-London Inns. That old Tabard—what a picture of fourteenth-century
-life does its very name recall! The earliest mention of this typical old
-Southwark Inn—an inn which after seeing all the changes and chances
-of five centuries, fell a victim but yesterday to that modern Vandal, the
-improver (save the mark!)—occurs in a register of the Abbey of Hyde,
-near Winchester, where we find that two tenements were conveyed by
-William de Ludegarsale to the Abbot in 1306, the site being described as
-extending in length from the common ditch of Southwark eastwards, as
-far as the royal way towards the west. This royal way was none other
-than the old Roman road which connected London with Kent and the
-south. Stow, writing three centuries later, thus mentions the inn and
-its sign: “From thence towards London Bridge,” he writes, “bee many
-faire Innes, for receit of travellers, by these signes, the Spurre, Christopher,
-Bull, Queen’s Head, <i>Tabard</i>, George, Hart, King’s Head, etc.
-Amongst the which the most ancient is the Tabard, so called of the
-signe, which as wee do now terme it, is of a Jacket or sleevelesse coate
-whole before, open on both sides, with a square collar, winged at the
-shoulders; a stately garment, of old time commonly worne of noblemen
-and others, both at home and abroad in the warres; but then, (to wit
-in the warres) their Armes embroidered, or otherwise depict upon them
-that every man by his coate of Armes might be knowne from others:
-But now these Tabards are onely worne by the Heralds, and bee called
-their coates of Armes in service. Of the Inne of the Tabard,
-Geffrey Chaucer Esquire, the most famous poet of England, in commendation
-thereof, writeth
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Byfel,
- that in that sesoun, on a day</span>
-<span class="spp00">In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage</span>
-<span class="spp00">To Caunterbury with ful devout corage, <span class="xxpn" id="p201">{201}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">At night was come into that hostelrie</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wel nyne and twenty in a compainye,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of sondry folk, by aventure i-falle,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In felawship and pilgrims were thei alle,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That toward Caunterbury wolden ryden.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Then follows an un­riv­alled des­crip­tion of typ­i­cal four­teenth-cen­tury
-society.</p>
-
-<p>The Knight,</p>
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp06">.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;a worthy man,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That from the tyme that he first bigan</span>
-<span class="spp00">To ryden out, he lovede chyvalrye,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">He was a very perfight gentil knight.”</span>
-</div></div><!--dpoemlft--></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">—The Squire, whose gay dress is thus
-<span class="nowrap">described:―</span></p>
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Embrowded was he, as it were a mede</span>
-<span class="spp00">Al ful of fresshe flouers, white and <span class="nowrap">reede—</span></span>
-</div></div><!--dpoemlft--></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">—The Yeoman attending him,
- “clad in coote and hood of greene.”</p>
-<p class="pcontinue">—The “Nonne, a Prioresse,”
- so “symple and coy,” whose “gretteste
- ooth was but by seynt
-<span class="nowrap">Loy”:―</span></p>
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And Frensch sche spak ful faine and fetysly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe</span>
-<span class="spp00">For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe.</span>
-</div></div><!--dpoemlft--></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">—The Sporting Monk, the prototype of the
- Hunting Parson of more recent
-<span class="nowrap">days:―</span></p>
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">An outrydere that lovede venerye;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A manly man, to ben an abbot able.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ful many a deynte hors hadde he in stable:</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">Greyhoundes he hadde as swifte as fowel in flight;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of prikyng and of huntyng for the hare</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.</span>
-</div></div><!--dpoemlft--></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">—The easy-going Friar, who
- “sweet­ely herde
-<span class="nowrap">con­fes­sioun”:―</span></p>
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And pleasant was his absolucioun</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">He knew the tavernes well in every toun,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And everych hostiler and tappestere.</span>
-</div></div><!--dpoemlft--></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p202">{202}</span></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">—The Merchant with his forked beard
-and “Flaundrisch bevere hat”—The Clerk of Oxenford—The
-Sergeant of Law, “war and wys”—The Franklin—The
-Ploughman—The Cook, and every other of that goodly
-company—How fresh their pictures are to-day! Each touch,
-each tint, as clear, as bright, as though the great father
-of English poetry had but yesterday laid aside his pencil!
-And then the Host, none other than the Henry Bayley of
-the Tabard, who represented the borough of Southwark in
-Parliament in 1376, and again in 1378, how interesting it
-is to observe his demeanour, as depicted by Chaucer. Quite
-at his ease, and on an equality with his guests, he talks
-with them, jests with them, in person presides over the
-table, acts as umpire and judge of the tales they tell upon
-the journey, and generally behaves more like a man who
-entertains his friends than a landlord serving his guests;
-and, be it remembered, these guests were not by any means
-of the lowest rank of life:</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A seemly man our hoste was withal,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For to have ben a marshall in an hall,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A large man he was with eyen steep,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A fairer burgess was there none in Chepe:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bold of his speeche, and wys and well y-taught,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And of manhood him lackede righte noughte.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dleft dwth-e">
-<img src="images/p202.png" width="277" height="205" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Tabard in 1722.</div></div>
-
-<p>The old Tabard was partly burnt down in the great
-South­wark fire in 1676, and on re­build­ing the ruined
-portion “that ig­no­rant land­lord or ten­ant,” Aubrey tells
-us, “in­stead of the an­cient sign of the Ta­bard put up the
-Tal­bot or doge.” In this con­di­tion it re­mained un­til a few
-years ago, when, de­spite the pro­tests of the an­ti­quarian
-world, de­spite the pages of re­mon­strance with which the
-news­papers and mag­a­zines were filled, it was pulled down,
-and is now re­placed by a tall brick build­ing. Had we not
-enough and to spare of these tall brick build­ings?</p>
-
-<p>At the time when Knight wrote his <i>History of London</i>, the original
-house was sufficiently complete for him to leave us a description of the
-old arched entrance to the inn-yard, the balustraded galleries on which
-the bedrooms opened, the gabled roofs, the panelled
-rooms, and last, <span class="xxpn" id="p203">{203}</span>
-but not least, the Pilgrim’s room, which tradition said was the
-veritable scene of the supper on the night before the guests set out
-upon their world-famed pilgrimage.</p>
-
-<p>John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds, writing
-about the same time as Chaucer, mentions that Cornhill was in his time
-noted for its taverns, where was “wine one pint for a pennie, and bread
-to drink it was given free at every tavern.”</p>
-
-<p class="pclearfix">In
-a black-letter sheet entitled <i>Newes from Bartholomew Fayre</i>, of
-probably the early part of the seventeenth century, some of the most
-famous inns of London are thus whimsically
-<span class="nowrap">enumerated:―</span></p>
-
-<div id="p203list"><ul>
-<li class="lihangb">There has been great sale and utterance of wine,</li>
-<li class="lihangb">Besides Beer, Ale, and Hippocrass fine,</li>
-<li class="lihangb">In every country, region, and Nation,</li>
-<li class="lihangb">Chiefly at Billings-gate, at the Salutation;</li>
-<li class="lihangb">And Boreshead near London Stone,</li>
-<li class="lihangb">The Swan at Dowgate, a tavern well knowne;</li>
-<li class="lihangb">The Mitre in Cheap, and the Bull-head,</li>
-<li class="lihangb">And many like places that make noses red;</li>
-<li class="lihangb">The Boreshead in Old Fish Street, Three Cranes in the Vintree</li>
-<li class="lihangb">And now, of late, Saint Martin’s in the Sentree;</li>
-<li class="lihangb">The Windmill in Lothbury, the Ship at the Exchange,</li>
-<li class="lihangb">King’s Head in New Fish Street, where Roysters do range;</li>
-<li class="lihangb">The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand,</li>
-<li class="lihangb">Three Tuns in Newgate Market, in Old Fish Street the Swan.</li>
-</ul></div>
-
-<p>Most of these hostelries, famous in their day and generation, were
-swept away in the Great Fire of London.</p>
-
-<p>The Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, “near London stone,” was one of the
-oldest inns in London. It stood near the site whereon the statue to
-William IV. in King William Street has been erected. It was there that
-Prince Hal and “honest Jack Falstaff” played their wildest pranks. Carved
-oak figures of the two worthies stood at the door of the house until the
-Great Fire; and the proud inscription, “This is the chief tavern in
-London,” appeared upon the signboard until the house was finally
-pulled down in 1831, to make way for the approaches of London Bridge.
-In the year 1718 one James Austin, the inventor of “Persian inkpowder,”
-whatever that may have been, desiring to entertain his chief customers,
-and also, no doubt, to advertise his wonderful powder, issued invitations
-for a Brobdingnagian repast to be partaken of at the Boar’s Head. The
-feast was to consist of an enormous plum-pudding,
-weighing 1,000 lbs., <span class="xxpn" id="p204">{204}</span>
-and the best piece of an ox roasted; this wonderous pudding was put to
-boil on Monday, May 12th, in a copper at the Red Lion Inn in Southwark,
-where it had to boil for fourteen days. As soon as this mighty
-feat of cookery was accomplished, a triumphant procession was formed,
-and the pudding set out on its journey, escorted by a band playing
-<i>What lumps of pudding my mother gave me</i>; but, alas, for the vanity of
-all things human! the tempting dish had not proceeded far upon its
-way, when the mob, goaded to madness by the savoury odour of the
-pudding, fell upon the escort, and, having put them to the rout, tore
-the pudding in pieces, and devoured it there and then.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p204.png" width="422" height="398" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">The Boar’s Head.</div></div>
-
-<p>Some years ago a great mound of rubbish in Whitechapel, supposed
-to be the carted remains of the City after the Great Fire, was cleared
-away, and the relic, of which we give a representation, was discovered.
-It is an oak carving, dated at the back 1568, and had a name written
-upon it which was found to correspond with that of the landlord of the
-Boar’s Head, Eastcheap, in that year.</p>
-
-<p>A ballad, which assigns to each inn its particular class of customers,
-is introduced by Thomas Heywood into his <i>Rape of</i> <span class="nowrap"><i>Lucrece</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Gintry to the King’s Head,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The Nobles to the Crown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Knights unto the Golden Fleece,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And to the Plough the Clowne. <span class="xxpn" id="p205">{205}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Churchman to the Mitre,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The Shepherd to the Star,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Gardiner hies him to the Rose,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To the Drum the Man of War.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Huntsman to the White Hart,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To the Ship the Merchants goe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And you that doe the Muses love,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The sign called River Po.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Banquer out to the World’s End,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The Fool to the Fortune hie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Unto the Mouth the Oyster-wife,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The Fiddler to the Pie.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The taverns of the seventeenth century seem in many cases to have
-occupied the upper part of a house, the lower portion being devoted to
-some other trade. Izaak Walton’s <i>Complete Angler</i> was to be “sold at
-his shopp in Fleet Street, under the King’s Head Tavern.” Bishop
-Earle, who wrote in the early part of that century, seems to signify that
-there was often a tavern above and an alehouse below. “A tavern,” he
-says, “is a degree or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an alehouse
-where men are drunk with more credit and apology. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Men
-come here to be merry, and indeed make a noise, and the music above
-is answered with a clinking below.”</p>
-
-<p>Amongst the inns and taverns frequented by Shakspere may be
-mentioned the Falcon Tavern, by the Bankside, which was the place
-of meeting of the mighty poets and wits of the Elizabethan age—of
-Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Ford, Beaumont,
-Fletcher, Drayton, Herrick, and a host of lesser names. An assemblage,
-indeed, unique in any country or in any age! Here took place those
-“wit combats,” of which Fuller speaks, between Shakspere and Ben
-Jonson, “which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an
-English man-of-war; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far
-higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakspere,
-like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing,
-could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds
-by the quickness of his wit and invention.”</p>
-
-<p>An example of the kindly passages of wit between these two great
-spirits has come down to us, having been preserved from the oblivion
-that shrouds the bulk of them by Sir Nicholas
-Lestrange, in his <span class="xxpn" id="p206">{206}</span>
-<i>Merry Passages and Jests</i>. The passage, in the compiler’s own words
-is as follows:—“Shakspere was god-father to one of Ben Jonson’s
-children; and after the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came
-to cheer him up, and asked him why he was so melancholy. ‘No,
-faith, Ben,’ (says he), ‘not I; but I have been considering a great while
-what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god-child;
-and I have resolved at last.’ ‘I prythee what?’ says he, ‘I ’faith, Ben,
-I’ll e’en give him a dozen good Latin spoons (<i>i.e.</i> latten, an inferior
-metal), and thou shalt translate them.’” Whether the Spanish great
-galleon could bring his guns to bear upon his nimble antagonist in this
-encounter is left unrecorded; but we can imagine that the great scholar
-would not be without a retort to a jest which was directed against his
-classic learning by one who had “little Latin and less Greek.”</p>
-
-<p>The great poet seems to have had many god-children. Of one, Sir
-William Davenant, while yet a boy, the following tradition remains.
-The father of Sir William was host of the Crown at Oxford, and at this
-house Shakspere would frequently lodge on his journeys between
-Stratford-on-Avon and London. Malicious rumour had it that the lad
-was of a closer relationship than that of god-son only, and upon
-one occasion, on the poet’s arrival at Oxford, the boy, who was sent for
-to meet him, was asked by a grave master of one of the colleges
-whither he was going. “Home,” said the lad, “to see my god-father.”
-“Fie, child,” said the don, “why art thou so superfluous? Hast not
-thou yet learnt not to use the name of God in vain?”</p>
-
-<p>The Mermaid, in Bread Street, was often the place of meeting of
-these convivial wits. Beaumont, then a mere lad, addressing Jonson in
-verse,
-<span class="nowrap">writes:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">—What things have we seen</span>
-<span class="spp00">Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been</span>
-<span class="spp00">So nimble and so full of subtle flame,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As if that everyone from whence they came</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And had resolved to live a fool the rest</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of his dull life:&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.</span>
-<span class="spp00">We left an air behind us, which alone</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was able to make the two next companies</span>
-<span class="spp00">Right witty;—though but downright fools, mere wise.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Sir
-Walter Raleigh established a literary club at this house in the year,
-1603. Amongst the members were
-Shakspere, Jonson, Beaumont <span class="xxpn" id="p207">{207}</span>
-Fletcher, Selden, Donne, and many scarcely less illustrious names.
-Herrick, in graceful lyrics, bears witness to similar sparkling gatherings
-of a somewhat later date, and to other houses where they were
-<span class="nowrap">held:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">Ah, Ben!</span>
-<span class="spp04">Say how, or when,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Shall we thy guests,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Meet at those lyric feasts</span>
-<span class="spp00">Made at the Sun,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Dog, the Triple Tun?</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where we such clusters had,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As made us nobly wild, not mad;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And yet each verse of thine</span>
-<span class="spp00">Out-did the meat, out-did the wine.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Ben Jonson, in inviting a friend to sup with him at the Mermaid,
-promises
-<span class="nowrap">him―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A cup of pure Canary wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Swan at Charing Cross, however, was the house where Jonson
-was always most sure of getting the best draught of his favourite liquor.</p>
-
-<p>Aubrey relates that the poet was upon one occasion dining with
-King James, and when called upon to say grace produced the following
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Our King and Queen, the Lord God blesse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And God blesse every living thing</span>
-<span class="spp00">That lives and breathes and loves the King.</span>
-<span class="spp00">God blesse the Councill of Estate,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And Buckingham the fortunate.</span>
-<span class="spp00">God blesse them all, and keep them safe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And God blesse me, and God blesse Ralph.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Whereupon
-“the King was mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph
-was. Ben told him ’twas the drawer at the Swanne Taverne by Charing
-Crosse, who drew him good canarie. For this drollerie his Ma<sup>tie.</sup>
-gave him an hundred pounds.”</p>
-
-<p>The legend of St. Dunstan, who, being tempted of the devil in bodily
-form, took the prince of darkness by the nose, and</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">With redhot tongs he made him roar</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till he was heard three miles or more, <span class="xxpn" id="p208">{208}</span></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">was
-commemorated on the signboard of a celebrated inn in Fleet Street,
-which was called “The Devil” for short. The old inn stood on the site
-now occupied by Child’s Bank, and it was there that the meetings of
-the celebrated Apollo Club were held, and rare Ben Jonson, with other
-kindred spirits, passed the sparkling wine and still more sparkling
-jest. Here over the entrance of the Apollo Chamber were inscribed the
-well-known lines beginning</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Welcome all who lead or follow</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the oracle of Apollo.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Sim
-Wadlow, whom Jonson dubbed “the king of skinkers,”<a
-class="afnanc" href="#fn51" id="fnanc51">51</a> was one of
-the famous landlords of this house. The following epitaph
-on this notorious character is recorded by Camden in his
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Remaines</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Apollo et cohors Musarum,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bacchus vini et uvarum,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ceres pro pane et cervisia,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Adeste omnes cum tristitia.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Dii, Deæque, lamentate cuncti,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Simonis Vadloe funera defuncti,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sub signo malo bene vixit, mirabile!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Si ad cœlum recessit gratias Diaboli.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">These lines may be thus
-<span class="nowrap">rendered:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Apollo and the Muses nine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bacchus the god of grapes and wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ceres the friend of “cakes and ale,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">Assembled, list to my sad tale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Gods, goddesses, lament ye all,</span>
-<span class="spp00">At Simon Wadlow’s funeral,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He lived right well tho’ his sign was evil,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If heaven he won, ’tis thanks to ‘the Devil.’</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc">
-<a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc51" id="fn51">51</a>
-Skinkers&#x200a;=&#x200a;tapsters; from the old
-English verb schenchen, to pour out.</p></div>
-
-<p>Our illustration depicts two innkeepers, who were probably Sim
-Wadlow’s contemporaries. <span class="xxpn" id="p209">{209}</span></p>
-
-<p>During the last century The Devil Tavern was the resort of the
-wits and literary men of the day. Addison and Dr. Garth often dined
-here; and Dr. Johnson here once presided at a supper that lasted till
-dawn peeped in at the windows. The inn was pulled down in the year
-1788.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p209.png" width="540" height="380" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Innkeepers, 1641.</div></div>
-
-<p>Nearly opposite to the Devil stood the Cock Tavern, for centuries,
-and until a few months ago, when it was closed for alterations,
-frequented by the Templars. We hope that it was not for this reason
-that its internal arrangements were spoken of by the Laureate
-<span class="nowrap">as―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">The haunts of <i>hungry sinners</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Old boxes, larded with the steam</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of thirty thousand dinners.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">This
-Tavern, once known as the Cock and Bottle, and subsequently as
-the Cock Alehouse, was a noted house in the seventeenth century. The
-effigy of the Cock, which until recently used to stand over the door, was
-reputed to have been carved by the great Grinling Gibbons. At the time
-of the Plague of London the following advertisement appeared in the
-<i>Intelligencer</i>:—“This is to certify that the Master of the Cock and
-Bottle, commonly called the Cock Alehouse, hath dismissed his servants,
-and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to
-return at Michaelmass next, so that all persons who
-have any accounts <span class="xxpn" id="p210">{210}</span>
-or farthings belonging to the said house are desired to repair thither
-before the 8th of this instant July, and they shall receive satisfaction.”
-The Cock, however, seems to have soon resumed its hospitality, for we
-read that Pepys shortly afterwards went “by water to the Temple, and
-then to the Cock Alehouse, and drank, and ate a lobster, and sang, and
-mighty merry. So almost night, I carried Mrs. Pierce home; and then
-Knipp and I to the Temple again, and took boat, it being darkish, and
-to Foxhall, it being now night, and a bonfire burning at Lambeth for
-the King’s coronation day.”</p>
-
-<p>A waiter at this house is commemorated in the well-known lines of
-Will Waterproof’s
-<span class="nowrap">Monologue:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">O plump head waiter at the Cock</span>
-<span class="spp01">To which I most resort,</span>
-<span class="spp00">How goes the time? ’tis five o’clock,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Go fetch a pint of port.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The old Cock alehouse is now no more; but the sign which for
-two hundred years has looked down upon the bustling Fleet Street
-crowds, together with the “old boxes” and carved oak over-mantel,
-have found a resting-place at “The Temple Bar,” on the other side
-of the way.</p>
-
-<p>The Mitre was the sign of several celebrated London Taverns, the
-most famous of all being that situated in Mitre Court, Fleet Street,
-where Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, Boswell, and other lesser lights used
-to meet. It was here that Boswell first made acquaintance with the
-great Doctor. “He agreed to meet me in the evening at the Mitre. I
-called on him, and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper
-and port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The
-orthodox, High Church sound of the Mitre,—the figure and manner of
-the celebrated Samuel Johnson—the extraordinary power and precision
-of his conversation, and the pride from finding myself admitted as his
-companion, produced a variety of sensations and a pleasing elevation of
-mind beyond what I had ever experienced.” The great name of
-Shakspere is also connected by tradition with this house.</p>
-
-<p>The old Globe Tavern in Fleet Street survived down to about the
-beginning of the present century. It was the favourite resort of Oliver
-Goldsmith, who took great delight in hearing a certain “tun of a man,”
-who frequented the house, sing the song entitled <i>Nottingham Ale</i>, in
-which Bacchus himself is said to have sprung from a barrel of that
-famous liquor:— <span class="xxpn" id="p211">{211}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Fair Venus, the Goddess of beauty and love,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Arose from the froth that swam on the sea,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Minerva leap’d out of the cranium of Jove,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A coy sullen slut, as most authors agree;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bold Bacchus they tell us, the prince of good fellows,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was his natural son, but attend to my tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For they that thus chatter mistake quite the matter,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He sprang from a barrel of Nottingham Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Nottingham Ale, boys; Nottingham Ale; no liquor</span>
-<span class="spp04">on earth is like Nottingham Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">This
-song was a great favourite in the eighteenth century, and was
-sung to the tune of “Lilabolero.”</p>
-
-<p>The Crown and Anchor in the Strand was one of the most famous
-houses in London during the first part of the present century. A tragic
-story is related of how one Thomas Simpkin, the first landlord after the
-rebuilding of the house in 1790, on the occasion of an inaugural dinner,
-in leaning over a balcony to look into the street, broke the balustrade
-and, falling to the ground, was killed on the spot. Here were held the
-famous Westminster political meetings, and here the birthday of Fox
-was celebrated in 1794, when two thousand persons sat down to
-dinner. Many another tavern in this region so famous for houses of
-entertainment, brings back memories of the past, but space forbids
-us to linger over the recital.</p>
-
-<p>John Taylor, the Water Poet (poeta Aquaticus, as he was fond of
-calling himself), who was the author of many whimsical works in prose
-as well as verse, was a Thames waterman, and the keeper of an alehouse
-in Phœnix Alley, Long Acre. It is related of him that on the death of
-Charles I. he changed his sign, which had formerly been the Crown,
-into the Mourning Bush, as expressing his grief and loyalty. He was,
-however, soon compelled to take this sign down, and he then substituted
-the Poet’s Head, his own portrait, with this
-<span class="nowrap">inscription:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There is many a head hangs for a sign;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then, gentle reader, why not mine?</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">At the same time he issued the following poetical
-<span class="nowrap">advertisement:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">My signe was once a Crowne, but now it is</span>
-<span class="spp00">Changed by a sudden metamorphosis.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Crowne was taken downe, and in the stead</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is placed John Taylor’s, or the Poet’s Head. <span class="xxpn" id="p212">{212}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">A painter did my picture gratis make,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And (for a signe) I hanged it for his sake.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Now if my picture’s drawing can prevayle,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill draw my friends to me, and I’ll draw ale.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Two strings are better to a bow than one;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And poeting does me small good alone.</span>
-<span class="spp00">So ale alone yields but small good to me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Except it have some spice of poesie.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The fruits of ale are unto drunkards such,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To make ’em sweare and lye that drink too much.</span>
-<span class="spp00">But my ale, being drunk with moderation,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will quench thirst and make merry recreation.</span>
-<span class="spp00">My booke and signe were published for two ends,</span>
-<span class="spp00">T’ invite my honest, civill, sober friends.</span>
-<span class="spp00">From such as are not such I kindly pray,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till I send for ’em, let ’em keep away.</span>
-<span class="spp00">From Phœnix Alley, the Globe Taverne neare</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Middle of Long Acre, I dwell there.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>An old dodge of some of the London tavern-keepers was to hang up
-in a conspicuous place in the taproom, a notice to the effect that no one
-could have more than one glass at a sitting. The result of this notable
-device was the very opposite to what one might expect; it is thus
-quaintly told by old Decker, in his <i>Seven Deadly Sins, seven times
-pressed to death</i>: “Then you have another brewing called Huff’s ale,
-at which, because no man must have but a pot at a sitting, and so be
-gone, the restraint makes them more eager to come in, so that by this
-policie one may huffe it four or five times a day.”</p>
-
-<p>Last century was pre-eminently the century for Clubs, some literary
-some political, and some purely social, many partaking of all these
-characters. The October Club, which was so called on account of the
-quantities of October ale which the members drank, used to meet at the
-Bell Tavern, King Street, Westminster, and drink confusion to the
-Whigs. Swift was a member. “We are plagued here,” he writes to
-Stella, “with an October Club; that is a set of above a hundred
-Parliament men of the country, who drink October beer at home, and
-meet every evening at a tavern near the Parliament, to consult affairs
-and drive matters to extremes against the Whigs, to call the old Ministry
-to account, and get off five or six heads.”</p>
-
-<p>The Mug Houses, famous early in the last
-century, were distinguished <span class="xxpn" id="p213">{213}</span>
-by the rows of pewter mugs placed in the window, or hung up outside
-as in the illustration, which is taken from the <i>Book of Days</i>. In <i>A
-Journey through England</i> (1722) the original Mug-house is thus described:
-“But the most diverting and amusing of all is the Mug-house
-Club in Long Acre. They have a grave old gentleman, in his own gray
-hairs, now within a few months of ninety years old, who is their President,
-and sits in an arm’d chair some steps higher than the rest of the
-company, to keep the whole room in order. A harp plays all the time
-at the lower end of the room; and every now and then one or other of
-the company rises and entertains the rest with a song, and (by-the-by)
-some are good masters. Here is nothing drunk but ale, and every
-gentleman hath his separate Mug, which he chalks on the table where
-he sits as it is brought in; and everyone retires when he pleases as from
-a Coffee House. The Room is always so diverted with songs, and
-drinking from one table to another to one another’s healths, that there
-is no room for Politicks, or anything that can sow’r conversation. One
-must be there by seven to get Room, and after ten the Company are for
-the most part gone. This is a Winter’s amusement, that is agreeable
-enough to a Stranger for once or twice, and he is well diverted with the
-different Humours, when the Mugs overflow.”</p>
-
-<div class="dctr06">
-<img src="images/p213.png" width="307" height="449" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Mug House.</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p214">{214}</span></div>
-
-<p>A few years earlier, however, “Politicks” had much troubled this
-House and others of which it was the parent. “On King George’s
-accession,” says the <i>Mirror</i>, “the Tories had so much the better of
-the friends to the Protestant succession, that they gained the mobs
-on all public days to their side. This induced a set of gentlemen
-to establish Mug-houses in all the corners of this great city, for well
-affected tradesmen to meet and keep up the spirit of loylty to the
-Protestant succession, and to be ready, upon all tumults, to join their
-forces to put down the Tory mobs.” The frequenters of these houses
-formed themselves into Mug-house Clubs after the fashion of their
-prototype, and discussed their Whig
-<span class="nowrap">sentiments―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>While
- ale inspires and lends its kindly aid</span>
-<span class="spp00">The thought perplexing labour to pursue.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Whenever Tory mobs assembled, these disorderly champions of
-order would sally forth and attack them with sticks and staves and
-divers other offensive weapons. “So many were the riots,” continues
-the <i>Mirror</i>, “that the police was obliged, by Act of Parliament, to
-put an end of this City strife, which had this good effect, that upon
-pulling down of the Mug-house in Salisbury Court, for which some
-boys were hanged on this Act, the City has not been troubled with
-them since.”</p>
-
-<p>A still earlier Club, more renowned than any for its marvellous
-powers of suction, was the Everlasting Club, instituted during the
-Parliamentary wars; it was so called because it sat night and day, one
-set of members relieving another. It is recorded of them early in the
-eighteenth century that “since their first institution they have smoked
-fifty tons of tobacco, drank thirty thousand butts of ale, one thousand
-hogsheads of red port, two hundred barrels of brandy, and <i>one kilderkine
-of small beer</i>. They sang old catches at all hours to encourage one
-another to moisten their clay, and grow immortal by drinking.”</p>
-
-<p>No work on the Curiosities of Ale and Beer would be complete
-without some notice of signboards. Their connection with taverns
-and alehouses is so ancient and intimate, and many of them are in
-themselves so exceedingly curious, that they may be said to constitute
-some of the chief curiosities of the subject. The history of signboards
-has been so exhaustively written by Mr. Larwood and Mr. Hotten
-that it would be superfluous, even if space did not forbid, to present
-to our readers anything but a slight sketch of so voluminous a
-subject. <span class="xxpn" id="p215">{215}</span></p>
-
-<p>Signboards at the present day may be said to inspire their historian
-with something of a melancholy feeling. A history of them is a
-history of a bygone art, which has long passed its zenith, which has
-served its purpose, and which is destined to decay more and more
-before the advance of modern education. Truly the glory of signboards
-is departed! Though one sees here and there a barber’s pole,
-a golden fleece, and a few other signs of divers trades, innkeepers and
-alehouse-keepers are the only persons who as a class keep to their old
-distinctive marks. Formerly, when persons who could read and write
-were few, every craft and occupation had its own peculiar sign, for the
-huge letters and notice-boards, now so common, would at that time
-have been of little use.</p>
-
-<p>There seems to be no doubt that we derived the signboard from the
-Romans; the old Latin proverb <i>Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non
-opus est</i> finds its counterpart in the English <i>Good wine needs no bush</i>,
-and the common sign of the Bush is the lineal descendant of the old
-Roman bunch of ivy. In the excavations at Herculaneum and
-Pompeii many examples have been brought to light of signs appropriate
-to various trades: thus, a goat is the sign of a dairy; a mule
-driving a mill is the sign of a miller or baker; and two men carrying
-a large amphora of wine is the sign of the vintner, and brings to mind
-the well-known English sign of the <i>Two Jolly Brewers</i> carrying a
-barrel of ale strung on a long pole.</p>
-
-<p>The ale-stake, which was a long pole either attached to the front of
-the house or standing in the road before the door, seems to have been
-the first sign in use with English ale-sellers. In early times every
-person who brewed ale for sale was, as has been already mentioned,
-compelled by law to exhibit the ale-stake as a signal to the local
-ale-conner that his services were required. Very early mention is to
-be found of these signs. In 1393 Florence North, a Chelsea ale-wife,
-was presented for neglecting to put up an ale-stake in front
-of her house. Similar allusions are to be found in many early writers.
-Chaucer’s Pardoner when asked to begin his
-<span class="nowrap">tale―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>It
- shall be donn,” quod he, “and that anoon.</span>
-<span class="spp00">But first,” quod he, “here at this ale-stake,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I will both drynke and byten on a cake.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The accompanying cut is taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth
-century. The figures are doubtless an ale-wife
-and a pilgrim. <span class="xxpn" id="p216">{216}</span></p>
-
-<p>“The ale-pole doth but signifie that there is good ale in the house
-where the ale-pole standeth,” writes an old author, “and will tell him
-that he muste go near the house and there he shall find the drinke, and
-not stand sucking the ale-pole in vayne.” And
-<span class="nowrap">again:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">For lyke as the jolly ale-house</span>
-<span class="spp01">Is always knowen by the good <i>ale-stake</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So are proude jelots sone perceaved, to,</span>
-<span class="spp01">By their proude folly, and wanton gate.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p216a.png" width="520" height="208" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">An Ale-stake.</div></div>
-
-<p>Skelton, writing of the fame of
- Elynour Rummynge’s “noppy ale,” alludes to the ale-pole
- <span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Another brought her bedes</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of jet or of cole,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To offer to the <i>ale-pole</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="dleft dwth-i">
-<img src="images/p216b.png" width="199" height="188" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Signboard and Bush.</div></div>
-
-<p>In process of time it became usual for the
-pub­li­can to af­fix some fur­ther dis­tinc­tive
-mark to his ale-stake. At first a mere bush or
-bunch of ivy seems to have been used, and in
-Scot­land a wisp of straw long served the
-same pur­pose. In Chaucer’s time the bush
-had de­ve­loped into an ale-gar­land of con­si­der­able
-size, as we are in­formed by the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr pclearfix"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">A garlond hadde he sette uhede</span>
-<span class="spp00">As grete as it wer for an ale-stake.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>The signboard and bush shown above are taken from a print of
-Cheapside in 1638. <span class="xxpn" id="p217">{217}</span></p>
-
-<p>Porter’s <i>Angry Woman</i> shows that a mere bush was still frequently
-used at that period (1599) by the passage: “I might have had a pumpe
-set up with as good Marche beere as this was and nere set up an ale-bush
-for the matter,” and the <i>Country Carbonadoed</i> (1632) shows that
-the bush had not yet become specialised to the use of the wine-seller.
-Referring to alehouses, it is stated that “if these houses have a boxe-bush,
-or an old post, it is enough to show their profession, but if they
-be graced with a signe compleat, it is a signe of good custome.”
-Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the ivy-bush, the sacred
-emblem of Bacchus, came to denote that wine as well as ale was sold
-within. In <i>Poor Robin’s Perambulation from Saffron Walden to
-London</i> (1678) the author mentions
-<span class="nowrap">that―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some ale-houses upon the road I saw,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And some with bushes, showing they wine did draw.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dright dwth-f">
-<img src="images/p217.png" width="254" height="332" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Ancient Alehouse.</div></div>
-
-<p>The following illustrations represent
-an ancient road-side alehouse
-and a hostel by night. The
-former is taken from a manuscript of
-the early part of the fifteenth century.
-The latter is from an illumination
-in the <i>Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles</i>
-in the Hunterian Library at Glasgow,
-and is of about the same date. In one
-a conventional bush appears above the
-door; while in the other there is both
-bush and sign. The absence of any
-night attire other than night-caps—the
-usual custom of the period—and the
-number of persons sleeping in one room, are noticeable. Night-caps
-were no doubt very necessary in an age when glass windows were
-little used.</p>
-
-<p>The next step in the his­tor­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the
-sign­board was the ad­di­tion of a carved and painted ef­fi­gy
-of a Swan, a Cock, a Hen, or some other bird or beast. The
-ef­fi­gy was fixed in a hoop and hung from the end of the
-ale-pole, and it is sug­gest­ed that the term “cock-a-hoop,”
-sig­ni­fy­ing a rather of­fen­sive­ly jub­i­lant de­mea­nour, may be
-traced to the at­ti­tude of Chant­i­cleer upon the ale-house
-hoop. Haz­litt gives a dif­fer­ent ori­gin to the phrase.
-Quo­ting from Blount’s Dic­tionary (1681), he says: “The
-Cock was the tap and being taken out <span class="xxpn"
-id="p218">{218}</span> and laid</p>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p218.png" width="424" height="431" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Night Scene in a Fifteenth-century
- Inn.</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">on the hoop of the vessel,
-they used to drink up the ale as it ran out without
-in­ter­mis­sion (in Staf­ford­shire now called stun­ning a bar­rel
-of ale) and then they were <i>cock-on-hoop</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, at the
-height of mirth and jolity).” Old Hey­wood seems to sup­port
-the latter der­i­va­tion in the <span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft pclearfix"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">He maketh havok and setteth the cock on hoope;</span>
-<span class="spp00">He is so lavies, the stooke beginneth to droope.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>From the painted effigy to the painted signboard was an easy step,
-and then began the signboard’s palmy days. If mine host were a man
-of small imagination, he might still be content with a bush or with the
-arms of some local magnate, but if he were a man of fancy, his imagination,
-in quest of a worthy sign, might revel unrestrained through the
-highways and byways of history ancient and modern, political and
-natural. The sign was and is usually painted on a board and suspended
-from the front of the house, or from a sign-post set up in the street in
-front of the door. In country places signboard ambition went so far as
-to erect a kind of triumphal arch in front of the house, from the centre
-of which the signboard swung.</p>
-
-<p>A good example of a signboard stretching across a street
-may be seen in the illustration of the Black Boy Inn,
-Chelmsford, which is taken from a print by Ryland of the
-date 1770. <span class="xxpn" id="p219">{219}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p219.png" width="578" height="495" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p>Even as early as the reign of Henry V. the eagerness of the ale-house
-keepers to outstrip one another in the size of their signboards had
-become obnoxious to the authorities. The <i>Liber Albus</i> contains a
-direction to the Wardmotes of the City of London, to make inquiry
-whether the ale-stake of any tavern “is longer or extends further than
-ordinary,” and the Common Council ordained that “whereas the ale-stakes
-projecting in front of taverns in Chepe, and elsewhere in the said
-City, extend too far over the King’s highways, to the impeding of riders
-and others, and by reason of their excessive weight, to the great
-deterioration of the houses to which they are fixed,” therefore the
-taverners are ordered that on pain of 40s. fine they shall not have a
-stake, bearing a sign or leaves extending over the King’s highway, of
-greater length than seven feet at most.</p>
-
-<p>The restriction on the length of the projecting signboards seems to
-have been little regarded. Charles I., in his Charter to the City of
-London, granted on his accession to the throne, permits the use of
-suspended signs, and the Charter contains no mention
-of any restriction <span class="xxpn" id="p220">{220}</span>
-as to size. The nuisance caused by the extravagant size of signboards
-at length became very great, and in the reign of Charles II. it was
-ordained that “in all the streets no signboard shall hang across, but
-that the sign shall be fixed against the balconies or some convenient
-part of the side of the house.” Even this specific regulation seems to
-have been generally disregarded, as we learn from an account written
-in 1719, by Misson, a French traveller. Speaking of the signs, he says:
-“At London, they are commonly very large, and jut out so far, that in
-some narrow streets they touch one another; nay, and run across
-almost quite to the other side. They are generally adorned with carving
-and gilding; and there are several that, with the branches of iron which
-support them, cost above a hundred guineas. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Out of London,
-and particularly in villages, the signs of inns are suspended in the
-middle of a great wooden portal, which may be looked upon as a kind
-of triumphal arch to the honour of Bacchus.”</p>
-
-<p>About the middle of last century various Acts of Parliament were
-passed, the result of which was that London signboards have from that
-time been fixed to the face of the house, and are no longer allowed
-to project over the street.</p>
-
-<p>We must go to the country districts, and best of all to one of our
-old cathedral towns, to see really old-fashioned signs. In some cases a signboard
-may still be seen hanging beneath beautifully scrolled iron work,
-from which in more artistic days the “ale-house painted signs” depended.
-Even in such a stronghold of conservative and antiquarian feeling as a
-cathedral city, these relics of the past are yearly becoming more and more
-scarce, though in those out-of-the-world places, where a change in the situation
-of the parochial pump must be preceded by about a proportionate
-amount of discussion as would attend the proposal to make a new underground
-railway for London, the removal of an old signboard is usually
-a matter causing grave public agitation. The authors of the <i>History of
-Signboards</i> have given an account of the demolition of the time-honoured
-sign of Sir John Falstaff, which for many a generation had
-gladdened the hearts of the good citizens of Canterbury. However, as
-a matter of fact, the signboard was only removed to be repainted, and
-in spite of the orders of Local Boards and City Authorities, in spite of
-law suits and various other disagreeable attempts at persuasion, the
-owner of the house has persisted in maintaining in its place this fine
-old sign with its elaborate iron-work, and there to this day may the
-gallant knight be seen, with sword and buckler, ready to make instant
-assault on those men in buckram, or on
-any other foes. <span class="xxpn" id="p221">{221}</span></p>
-
-<p>The close connection that existed between the profession of host and
-the signboard, may be judged from the fact that the publican who was
-deprived of his licence also had his sign removed by the minions of the
-law. <i>A New Way to Pay Old Debts</i> illustrates this fact in the
-<span class="nowrap">lines―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">For this gross fault I here do damn thy licence,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Forbidding thee ever to tap or draw;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For instantly I will in mine own person</span>
-<span class="spp00">Command the constables to pull down thy sign.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In 1629 one Price was forbidden to open a certain house in Leadenhall
-Street as a tavern, “whiche house was heretofore never used for a taverne,
-and standeth unfitly for that purpose, being neare unto the Church
-and two auncient tavernes already neere unto the same in the same
-streete.” Price, however, persisted, and accordingly the Common
-Council issued orders for the closing of his doors and the taking down
-of his bush.</p>
-
-<p>Probably the most elaborate signboard that ever existed, a marvel
-even in the palmy days of signs, was hung before The White Hart
-at Scole, in Norfolk. Sir Thomas Brown mentions it in the year 1663.
-“About three miles further,” he says, “I came to Scoale, where there
-is a very handsome inne, and the noblest signnepost in England, about
-and upon which are carved a great many stories as of Charon and
-Cerberus, Actæon and Diana, and many others; the signe itself is
-a White Hart, which hanges downe carved in a stately wreath.” This
-king of signboards was built in the year 1655 by James Peck, a merchant
-of Norwich, and is said to have cost over £1,000. It was in existence
-up till the end of the last century.</p>
-
-<p>Goldsmith, in making some comments on the influence of signs,
-relates how “an alehouse keeper, near Islington, who had long lived at
-the sign of the French King, upon the commencement of the last war,
-pulled down his old sign and put up that of the Queen of Hungary.
-Under the influence of her red face and golden sceptre, he continued to
-sell ale, till she was no longer the favourite of his customers; he
-changed her, therefore, some time ago, for the King of Prussia, who
-may probably be changed in turn for the next great man that shall be
-set up for vulgar admiration.”</p>
-
-<p>An anecdote is related which illustrates the danger incurred by
-altering a sign. It seems that the landlord of the Magpie and
-Crown in Aldgate, a house famous for its ale, was
-minded to discard <span class="xxpn" id="p222">{222}</span>
-the Magpie and to have his house known by the sign of the Crown
-only. He did so, and the results were disastrous, for the customers
-fancied that the Crown ale did not taste as good as that formerly sent
-out from the Magpie and Crown, and the custom fell off. The
-landlord died, and the business came into the hands of a waiter of the
-house, one Renton, who restored the Magpie to his old place on the
-signboard, and with such good effect that on his death the ex-waiter left
-behind him an estate worth some £600,000, chiefly the produce of the
-Magpie and Crown ale.</p>
-
-<p>Space only permits that we should mention a very few of the more
-curious signs in use. The Pig and Whistle is said to be a corruption
-of the old sign the Peg and Wassail, alluding to the peg-tankards
-introduced in Saxon times. The Goose and Gridiron is a whimsical
-variation on the Swan and Harp, which was once common, the
-inartistic execution of the latter sign no doubt affording the suggestion.
-The Tumbling Down Dick is supposed to be a derisive sign
-commemorating the fall of Richard Cromwell.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then Dick, being lame, rode holding the pummel,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Not having the wit to get hold of the rein;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell,</span>
-<span class="spp01">That poor Dick and his kindred turn’d footmen again.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Crooked Billet is a sign for which it is difficult to suggest an
-explanation. It is generally represented by a rough untrimmed stick
-hanging before the door. Near Bridlington is one such, to which are
-appended the following
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">When this comical stick grew in the wood</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our ale was fresh and very good;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Step in and taste, O do make haste,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For if you don’t ’twill surely waste.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">On the other side is the
-<span class="nowrap">verse:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">When you have viewed the other side,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come read this too before you ride,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And now to end we’ll let it pass;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Step in, kind friends, and take a glass.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Bull and Mouth, a favourite London sign in former days, and
-one still to be found, is represented by a huge gaping mouth and a small
-black bull just within its verge. This sign dates from
-the time of <span class="xxpn" id="p223">{223}</span>
-Henry VIII., and celebrates his capture of Boulogne Harbour, or
-Boulogne Mouth. The Beetle and Wedge at first sight seems a very
-strange association, but when we remember Shakspere’s line,</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Filip me with a three-man beetle,</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">the
-matter is clear enough. The “three-man beetle” was a hammer or
-mallet wielded by three men and used for pile driving. The three
-Lubberheads is a corruption of the three Libbards’ Heads, “libbard”
-being a popular form of the word leopard; Falstaff is “invited to dinner
-at the Libbard’s Head in Lumbert Street to Master Smooth’s the
-silkman.” The Two Pots was the sign under which the far-famed
-ale-wife, Eleanor Rumyng, brewed her “noppy ale” at Leatherhead,
-where, according to Skelton, she made</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp02">thereof fast sale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To travellers, to tinkers,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To sweaters, to swinkers,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And all good ale drinkers.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Stewponey Inn, between Kinver and Stourbridge, might
-suggest to some that the Parisian Hippophagic Society was not much
-of a novelty after all. It is therefore rather disappointing to find
-that the name is a popular version of the Stourponte Inn, so called
-from a bridge over the Stour hard by.</p>
-
-<p>The Four Alls, though probably once the sign of a house frequented
-by the fraternity of Cobblers, now generally presents itself in the
-following lines with suitable
-<span class="nowrap">illustrations:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">The Ploughman works for All,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Parson prays for All,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Soldier fights for All,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the Farmer pays for All.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>It seems sad to think that in some places a pessimistic
-Publican has added a fifth “All,” the picture representing
-the Prince of Darkness, rampant, and looking anything but
-“a gentleman,” with the grim legend writ beneath that he
-“takes All.” Old Pick-my-Toe would seem to be a popular
-perversion of the Roman fable of the faithful slave who
-carried his message before he stooped to remove the thorn
-which was all the while in his foot. The Shoe and Slap was
-an old sign, the “Slap” being a lady’s shoe with a loose
-sole. <span class="xxpn" id="p224">{224}</span></p>
-
-<p>A poetical landlord or a poetical customer has frequently produced
-verses, more or less appropriate, for a signboard. We give a selection
-of these effusions. At an inn at Norwich, known as the Waterman,
-kept by a barber, this couplet is written under the
-<span class="nowrap">sign:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Roam not from pole to pole, but step in here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where nought excels the shaving but the beer.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>At an Inn at Collins’ End, where the unfortunate King Charles,
-while a prisoner at Caversham, is said to have played at bowls, are
-these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Stop, traveller, stop; in yonder peaceful glade,</span>
-<span class="spp00">His favourite game the royal martyr played;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here stripped of honours, children, freedom, rank,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drank from the bowl and bowled for what he drank;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sought in a cheerful glass his cares to drown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And changed his guinea ere he lost his crown.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Robin Hood and Little John is not an uncommon sign in that
-part of the country which was the scene of their exploits, and where
-their fame still lingers. The sign is frequently accompanied with a
-rhyme, of which the following is a
-<span class="nowrap">specimen:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To Gentlemen and Yeomen good,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come in and drink with Robin Hood,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If Robin Hood is not at home,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come in and drink with Little John.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>A tale is told of how a poor author, who was once staying at the
-sign of the White Horse on the Old Bath Road, after partaking rather
-heartily of the good cheer provided, found that he could not discharge
-the <i>shot</i>. In recompense to his host for letting him off, he wrote
-beneath his signboard the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">My White Horse shall beat the Bear,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And make the Angel fly;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Shall turn the Ship quite bottom up,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And drink the Three Cups dry.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In consequence, it is alleged, of this facetious praise of his own house
-at the expense of his rivals, mine host got a good deal of their custom.
-On one of the windows of the same White
-Horse was written:— <span class="xxpn" id="p225">{225}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">His liquor’s good, his pot is just,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Landlord’s poor, and cannot trust;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For he has trusted to his sorrow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So pay to-day, he’ll trust to-morrow.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>These lines occur on the signboard of the Waggon and Horses,
-<span class="nowrap">Brighton:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Long have I travelled far and near,</span>
-<span class="spp00">On purpose to find out good beer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And at last I’ve found it here.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The couplet, written on a signboard at Chadderton, near Manchester,
-seems, at any rate from the outside of the Inn, to be what a logician
-might call a <i>non</i> <span class="nowrap"><i>sequitur</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Although the engine’s smoke be black,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If you walk in I’ve ale like sack.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The following doggerel inscription is said in the <i>Year Book</i> to have
-been written over the door of an ale house between Sutton and Potton,
-in
-<span class="nowrap">Bedfordshire:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp07">Butte Beere, Solde Hear,</span>
-<span class="spp08">by Timothy Dear.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cum. tak. a. mugg of mye. trinker. cum trink.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thin. a. ful. Kart. of mye. verry. stron. drink</span>
-<span class="spp00">Harter, that. trye. a. cann. of mye. titter, cum. tatter</span>
-<span class="spp00">And. wynde. hup. withe, mye. sivinty-tymes weaker, thin, water.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>At Creggin, Montgomeryshire, the Rodney Pillar Inn is distinguished
-by a double signboard, on one side of which is the following
-<span class="nowrap">verse:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Under these trees, in sunny weather,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Just try a cup of ale, however;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And if in tempest, or in storm,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A couple then to make you warm:</span>
-<span class="spp00">But when the day is very cold.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then taste a mug a twelvemonth old.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">On the reverse are these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Rest and regale yourself, ’tis pleasant,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Enough is all the present need,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That’s the due of the hardy peasant,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who toils all sorts of men to feed. <span class="xxpn" id="p226">{226}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Then muzzle not the ox when he treads out the corn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor grudge honest labour its pipe and its horn.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Another queer
-old inscription is the
-<span class="nowrap">following:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">John Uff</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sells good ale and that’s enough;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A mistake here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sells foreign spirits as well as beer.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>At a public-house in Devonshire the landlord has painted outside
-his door, “Good beer sold here, but don’t take my word for it;” and at
-the Bell Inn, Oxford, kept by John Good, are these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">My name, likewise my ale, is Good,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Walk in and taste my own home brew’d,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For all that know John Good can tell</span>
-<span class="spp00">That like my sign it bears the Bell.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>One more example of Boniface’s wit must conclude this notice of
-Signboard poesy. At a public-house in Sussex, the sign of which is the
-White Horse, there is painted under the figure of that animal the
-<span class="nowrap">couplet:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To the roadsters who enter a welcome he snorts,</span>
-<span class="spp00">While they fill up his quarters and empty his quarts.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In addition to signboard verses, inscriptions within the alehouse
-are by no means uncommon. Burns, who was fond of this style of
-composition, inscribed these lines on the window of the Globe Tavern
-at <span class="nowrap">Dumfries:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The grey-beard, old wisdom, may boast of his treasures,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Give me with gay folly to live;</span>
-<span class="spp00">I grant him his calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But Folly has raptures to give.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Dowie’s Tavern, in Libberton’s Wynd, Edinburgh, was the favourite
-resort of Burns, and is said by the able recorder of the <i>Traditions of
-Edinburgh</i> “to have been formerly as dark and plain an old-fashioned
-house as any drunken lawyer of the last century could have wished to
-nestle in.” <span class="xxpn" id="p227">{227}</span></p>
-
-<p>Dowie’s was much resorted to by the Lords of Session for “Meridians,”
-as well as in the evening for its Edinburgh ale. The ale was
-Younger’s. That brewer, together with his friends, instituted a Club
-there, which they sportively called the “College of Doway.” Johnnie
-Dowie is described as having been the sleekest and kindest of landlords.
-Nothing could equal the benignity of his smile when he brought in a
-bottle of “the Ale” to a company of well-known and friendly customers.
-It was a perfect treat to see his formality in drawing the cork, his precision
-in filling the glasses, his regularity in drinking the healths of all
-present in the first glass (which he always did, and at every successive
-bottle), and then his douce civility in withdrawing. Johnnie always
-wore a cocked hat, and buckles at knees and shoes, as well as a
-crutched cane.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn52" id="fnanc52">52</a>
-Not so polished as Burns’ verses, but perhaps more
-suited to the Genius loci, are the lines written up in a certain old
-<span class="nowrap">tap-room:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">He that doath upon the table sit,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A pot of porter shall for-fe-it.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc52" id="fn52">52</a>
-Hone’s Year Book.</p></div>
-
-<p>The following additional specimens of tap-room verse are typical of
-their kind, and may be said to contain the be-all and end-all of the
-host’s pro­verbial phi­los­o­phy. The first is taken from an Inn at
-Sit­ting­bourne, where it hangs framed and glazed over the
-<span class="nowrap">door:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Call frequently,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drink moderately,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pay honourably,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Be good company,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Part friendly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Go home quietly.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The
-second is longer, but perhaps not quite so
-<span class="nowrap">com­pre­hen­sive:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">All you that bring tobacco here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Must pay for pipes as well as beer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And you that stand before the fire,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I pray sit down by good desire;
- <span class="xxpn" id="p228">{228}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">That other folks as well as you,</span>
-<span class="spp00">May see the fire and feel it too.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Since man to man is so unjust,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I cannot tell what man to trust:</span>
-<span class="spp00">My Liquor’s good, ’tis no man’s sorrow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pay to-day. I’ll trust to-morrow.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">It
-may not be amiss to devote a few lines to the signboard artists. The
-following passage in <i>Whimzies: or a New Cast of Characters</i> (1631)
-gives an early example of the way in which many a village signboard
-has been painted. “He (a painter) bestowes his Pencile on an aged
-piece of decayed canvas in a sooty ale-house, when <i>Mother Redcap</i> must
-be set out in her Colours. Here hee and his barmy Hostess drew
-both together, but not in like nature; she in <i>Ale</i>, he in <i>Oyle</i>, but her
-commoditie goes better downe, which he meanes to have his full share
-of, when his worke is done. If she aspire to the Conceite of a Signe,
-and desire to have her Birch-pole pulled downe, he will supply her
-with one.”</p>
-
-<p>It seems that in the last century, the palmy days of signboards, the
-best signs were produced by the coach-painters, who derived their skill
-from the custom amongst the wealthy of having their coach panels
-decorated with a variety of subjects.</p>
-
-<p>Artists of renown have lent their genius to this branch of art.
-Hogarth painted a sign called the Man loaded with Mischief, and this
-sign is still in existence in an alehouse in Oxford Street; it represents
-a man bearing on his back and shoulders a woman, a magpie and an
-ape. A similar painting may be seen before an inn on the road to
-Madingley, about a mile from Cambridge. Richard Wilson, R.A.,
-painted a sign called The Loggerheads, which has given its name to a
-village near Mold, in North Wales. The Royal Oak, by David Cox,
-which is the sign of an inn at Bettws-y-Coed, is well known to
-all lovers of North Wales, and was a few years ago the subject of
-a law-suit. At Wargrave, a pretty Thames-side village near Henley,
-is an inn called the George and Dragon. One side of its sign was
-painted by Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A., who has chosen the battle with the
-dragon for his subject. The other side was painted by Mr. Hodgson,
-A.R.A., and is a representation of St. George refreshing himself with
-a pot of beer after the mighty encounter.</p>
-
-<p>Not often, however, has the signboard been so fortunate as to
-obtain the attention of such masters of
-the limner’s art. <span class="xxpn" id="p229">{229}</span></p>
-
-<p>In the vast majority of cases the village sign-painter has been a
-person of limited ideas and but small skill, painting and re-painting the
-old familiar patterns. The following tale is related illustrative of this
-conservative bent of the sign-painter’s mind.</p>
-
-<p>A pious old couple, who had taken a Public wherein they hoped
-peacefully to end their days, determined that they would not have any
-of your common wordly signs, such as the Crown, the Blue Boar, and
-the like, but something of a quite uncommon and even of a quasi-religious
-nature, and after much cogitation their choice fell upon the title
-of the Angel and Trumpet. The village sign-painter was summoned to
-the conclave, and the case was solemnly opened to him.</p>
-
-<p>Landlord: “Well, John, me and my missis have been thinking
-about this sign, and we hear as you’re up to painting amost anythink.”</p>
-
-<p>Sign Painter (with proper professional pride): “Yes, mister, I can
-do you pretty well what you like; the Red Lion, and so as that.”</p>
-
-<p>L.: “No, John, that a’n’t quite what we wants. Me and my missis
-has been a-thinking as we’d like to have the Angel and Trumpet.
-Now, can you do it?”</p>
-
-<p>S. P. (doubtfully): “Well, mister, I can do un; but you’d better by
-half have the Red Lion; it’s a dell a thirstier sign.”</p>
-
-<p>L. (with decision): “No, John, we must have the Angel and
-Trumpet, so if you can’t do un, say so, and we must get some un as
-can.”</p>
-
-<p>S. P. (driven to bay): “All right; I’ll paint the Angel and Trumpet,
-but (aside) I specs it’ll be a good dell like the Red Lion.”</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately the history breaks off at this point, and we are left in
-doubt as to the result. The troubles of the unfortunate sign-painter
-may be imagined; the unwilling hands striving to depict the benign
-features of the angel; the fierce and truculent visage of the lion making
-its appearance, whether the artist would or not.</p>
-
-<p>The unskilfulness of the signboard painter has even been considered
-of sufficient importance to form the subject of a Royal Proclamation.
-Our good Queen Bess, with that vigour of language which endeared her
-to the hearts of her faithful subjects, and proved her to be her father’s
-daughter, issued an order, “that portraits of herself, made by unskilful
-and common painters, should be knocked in pieces, and cast into the
-fire.” The reasons for this summary treatment, and also a promised
-remedy for the woes of her faithful subjects, thus deprived of the
-counterfeit presentment of her most gracious Majesty, are set forth in a
-proclamation shortly afterwards issued. “Forasmuch”
-said this weighty <span class="xxpn" id="p230">{230}</span>
-document, “as thrugh the natural desire that all sorts of subjects and
-people, both noble and mean, have to procure the portrait and picture
-of the Queen’s Majestie, great nomber of Paynters, and some Printers,
-and Gravers, have already, and doe daily, attempt to make in divers
-manners portraictures of hir Majestie, in paynting, graving and
-prynting, wherein is evidently shown, that hytherto none have
-sufficiently expressed the naturall representation of hir Majestie’s person,
-favor, and grace .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. “Therfor”—after much more to the same
-effect—“hir Majestie being as it were overcome with the contynuall
-requests of hir Nobility and Lords, whom she can not well deny, is
-pleased that for their contentations, some coning persons, mete therefore,
-shall shortly make a pourtraict of hir person or visage,” and, in
-short, that her loving subjects shall be enabled to take copies thereof,
-but in the meantime shall perpetrate no further libellous “pourtraicts,”
-under pains and penalties.</p>
-
-<p>The phrase “to grin like a Cheshire cat” is said to have originated
-from the well-meant but inartistic attempts of a sign-painter of that
-county to depict a Lion Rampant.</p>
-
-<p>This chapter may be appropriately concluded with one of the best
-examples of the alehouse catch of former days: <i>Bryng us in good Ale</i>,
-contained in the Ipswich Song Book (Sloane Collection of MSS.).
-Our readers will be better able to comprehend the verses, if they
-bear in mind that ys as a termination is used where we should now
-use es, s, se or ce.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth dwthem30">
-<div class="padtopb">BRYNG US IN GOOD ALE.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in good ale, and bryng us in good ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For our blyssyd lady sak, bryng us in good ale</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no browne bred, for that is mad of brane,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor bryng us in no whyt bred, for therein is no game.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">But bryng us in good ale, etc.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no befe, for ther is many bonys,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But bryng us in good ale, for that goth downe at onys.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">And bryng us in, etc.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no bacon, for that is passyng fate,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But bryng us in good ale, and give us i-nough of that.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">But bryng us in, etc.
-<span class="xxpn" id="p231">{231}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no mutton, for that is often lene,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor bryng us in no trypes, for they be syldom clene.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">But bryng us in, etc.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no eggys, for ther ar many shelles,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But bryng us in good ale, and give us nothing ellys.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">But bryng us in, etc.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no butter, for therin are many herys,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor bryng us in no pygge’s flesch, for that will make us borys.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">But bryng us in, etc.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no podynges, for therein is al Gode’s good,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor bryng us in no venesen, for that is not for our blod.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">But bryng us in, etc.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bryng us in no capon’s flesch for that is ofte der,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor bryng us in no doke’s flesch for thei slober in mer
- (mire).</span>
-<div><div id="idp231chorus">
-<span class="spp00">But bryng us in good ale, and bryng us in good ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For our blyssyd lady sak, bryng us in good
- ale.</span></div><!--idp231chorus-->
-<div class="dctr11">
- <img src="images/p231.png" width="144" height="44" alt="" /></div><!--dctr11-->
-</div><!--no class-->
-</div><!--dstanzalft--></div><!--dpoemlft-->
-</div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p232a.png" width="144" height="44" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p232"><span
- class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> IX.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<p class="pverse">Sir Toby.—“Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more
-cakes and ale?”</p>
-
-<p class="pverse">Clown.—“Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.”</p>
-
-<p class="psignature"><i>Twelfth Night.</i> Act ii. Sc. 3.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc"><div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">England was Merry England then,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Old Christmas brought his sports again,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A Christmas gambol oft would cheer</span>
-<span class="spp00">A poor man’s heart through half the year.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Marmion.</i></span>
-</div></div></div><!--depigraph-->
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>ANCIENT MERRY-MAKINGS, FEASTS AND CEREMONIES
-PECULIAR TO CERTAIN SEASONS, AT
-WHICH ALE WAS THE PRINCIPAL DRINK.&#x200a;—&#x200a;HARVEST
-HOME, SHEEP SHEARING, AND OTHER SONGS.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p232b.png"
-width="221" height="226" alt="E" /></span>NGLAND
-was merry England then, and
-whatever may be thought of the utility of
-attempting to revive the ancient sports
-and amusements of the people, it is undeniable
-that when the old customs and
-games went out of vogue, they left behind
-them a void which seems without any
-immediate prospect of being filled. We
-have no doubt gained in many ways by
-changed habits of life and modes of thought, but it must not be forgotten
-that at the same time life has lost much of its old picturesqueness
-and variety. These simple, hearty festivals of old, in which our
-ancestors so much delighted, served to light up the dull round of the
-recurring seasons, and to mark with a red letter the day in the calendar
-appropriate to their celebration. It was these that gained for our
-country in mediæval times the name of “Merrie England.” The purpose
-of this chapter, however, is not to compose a dirge
-on the departed <span class="xxpn" id="p233">{233}</span>
-glories of our English merry-makings, but rather to give in short limits
-some account of the principal feasts and ceremonies in which the
-national beverage, personified by the familiar name of John Barleycorn,
-figured as a constant and well-tried friend, a provocative to mirth and
-good feeling, to jollity and hearty enjoyment. The principal merry-makings
-of old England were associated with certain special days of the
-year, or with various events, important in the life of the people, which
-though not fixed to any particular day in the calendar, were from their
-nature connected with certain seasons. May Day and Christmas Day,
-New Year’s Eve and Twelfth Night, the Harvest Home, the Sheep-shearing
-Supper, and many another minor festival, all served to make
-the labourer’s lot seem an easier one, and to vary the monotonous round
-of toil. Herrick thus alludes to the number and variety of the sports
-and pastimes incidental to the country life in his
-<span class="nowrap">day:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thy wakes, thy quintals, here thou hast,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy maypoles too with garlands graced,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy morris dance, thy Whitsun-ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy shearing feasts which never fail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy harvest home, thy wassail bowl,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That’s tossed up after fox-i’-th’ hole,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn53" id="fnanc53">53</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy mummeries, thy twelfth-tide kings</span>
-<span class="spp00">And queens, thy Xmas revellings,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And no man pays too dear for it.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">In
-many a village at the present day the only representative, if so it
-may be called, of all these rustic jollifications, is the annual dinner of
-the members of the sick club, if funds will permit, or perhaps tea and a
-magic lantern.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc53" id="fn53">53</a>
-Fox-i’-th’ hole&#x200a;=&#x200a;the tongue.</p></div>
-
-<p>Where can we begin better than with New Year’s Day and the
-ancient custom of the wassail? New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day
-were anciently, and still are to some extent, celebrated with various
-observances; presents and good wishes for the coming year were freely
-exchanged, and sometimes the lasses and lads would pay their neighbours
-the compliment of singing a carol to bury the old and usher in
-the glad new year. But more generally the practice was
-observed of a <span class="xxpn" id="p234">{234}</span>
-crowd of youths and maidens entering their friends’ houses in the first
-hours of New Year’s Day, bearing with them the wassail-bowl of spiced
-ale, and singing verses appropriate to the occasion. The origin of the
-name wassail and of the ceremonies connected with it, is well known
-and better authenticated than that of most of our ancient customs.
-Rowena, the daughter of Hengist, on being presented to Vortigern at a
-feast which her father had prepared for him, kneeled before him and
-offered him a bowl with the words “Louerd king wœs hœil,” that is,
-“Lord King, your health.” Vortigern is represented in <i>Layamon’s
-Brut</i> as not understanding the
-<span class="nowrap">phrase―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The King Vortigerne</span>
-<span class="spp00">Haxede his cnihtes</span>
-<span class="spp00">What were the speche</span>
-<span class="spp00">That the mayde speke.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The answer
-<span class="nowrap">is―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Hit is the wone (<i>wont</i>)</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ine Saxe-londe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That freond saith to his freond,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wan he sal drink</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Leofue
- (<i>dear</i>) freond wassail,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">The other saith “drinc hail.”</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Old Geoffrey of Monmouth, after relating the legend, remarks that
-from that time down to his own day it had been the custom in Britain
-for one who drinks to another to say, “Wacht heil!” and for that
-other who pledges him in return, to answer, “Drink heil!” The word
-wassail, from being used to signify a pledge or greeting, in time came
-to denote feasting in general, and in the phrase, “wassail-bowl,” to
-con-note the particular liquor, spiced ale, with which the bowl was filled.</p>
-
-<p>Milner, in a dissertation on an ancient cup, supposed to be a wassail-cup,
-inserted in the eleventh volume of the <i>Archæologia</i>, states that
-the introduction of Christianity amongst our ancestors did not at all
-interfere with the practice of wassailing. On the contrary, the custom
-began to assume a sort of religious aspect; and the wassail-bowl itself,
-which in great monasteries was placed on the Abbot’s table, at the
-upper end of the refectory, to be circulated amongst the community
-at his discretion, received the honourable appellation of <i>Poculum
-Caritatis</i>. The wassail-bowl is probably the original of the Grace
-Cup and Loving Cup. <span class="xxpn" id="p235">{235}</span></p>
-
-<p>It was also customary in some places for the poor of a village at
-Christmas time or on New Year’s Eve, to go round to the doors of their
-richer neighbours, bearing a wassail-bowl, decked with ribbons and
-a golden apple, and singing a carol appropriate to the occasion. This
-interesting custom is still carried out to the letter at Chippenham, in
-Wiltshire. On Christmas Eve five or six burly labourers, carrying a
-bowl gaily decorated with ribbons, go round from house to house and
-sing a peculiarly quaint rhyme, of much the same character as that
-given below, which was once common in Gloucestershire, particularly
-in the neighbourhood of “Stow on the Wold where the wind blows
-cold.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Wassail! wassail! all over the town,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our toast it is white, and our ale it is brown;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our bowl is made of a maplin-tree;</span>
-<span class="spp00">We be good fellows all;—I drink to thee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s to our horse, and to his right ear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">God send our measter a happy new year;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A happy new year as e’er he did <span class="nowrap">see,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s to our mare, and to her right eye,</span>
-<span class="spp00">God send our mistress a good Christmas pie;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A good Christmas pie as e’er I did <span class="nowrap">see,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s to our cow, and to her long tail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">God send our measter us never may fail</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of a cup of good beer: I pray you draw near,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And our jolly wassail it’s then you shall hear.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Be here my maids? I suppose here be some;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sure they will not let young men stand on the cold stone!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sing hey O, maids! come trole back the pin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the fairest maid in the house, let us all in.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come, butler, come, bring us a bowl of the best,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I hope your soul in heaven will rest;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But if you do bring us a bowl of the small,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then down fall butler, and bowl, and all.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p236">{236}</span></div>
-
-<p>From this wassail-song it may be gathered that the persons visited
-were expected to contribute to the wassail-bowl. Another example of
-a wassailing song begins
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp01">Here we come a-wassailing</span>
-<span class="spp02">Among the leaves so green;</span>
-<span class="spp01">Here we come a wandering,</span>
-<span class="spp02">So fair to be seen.</span>
-</div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue"><span class="nowrap">Chorus―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp03">Love and joy come to you,</span>
-<span class="spp03">And to your wassail too,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And God send you a happy new year—new year;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And God send you a happy new year;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our wassail cup is made of the rosemary tree,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So is your beer of the best barley.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>A quaint custom, doubtless a survivor from pagan times, was
-wassailing the fruit trees with a view to a productive crop in the
-coming year. In some places the trees were wassailed on New Year’s
-Eve, in others on Christmas Eve. The pretty superstition has
-been commemorated by Herrick in the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Wassaile the trees, that they may beare</span>
-<span class="spp00">You many a plum and many a peare;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For more or lesse fruits they will bring,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As you do give them wassailing.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">In
-Devonshire the eve of the Epiphany was devoted to this custom, and
-in that apple-bearing country, cider was the wassail used on the occasion,
-and the apple tree the chief recipient of the country folks’ good wishes.
-The wassailers, with good supply of their favourite beverage, would
-proceed to some gnarled and crooked, but productive apple tree, and
-there, forming a circle about his ancient trunk, would drink his health
-with some such incantation as
-<span class="nowrap">this:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s to thee, old apple tree,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whence thou mayest bud, and whence thou mayest blow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And whence thou mayst bear apples enow.</span>
-<span class="spp04">Hats full, caps full,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Bushel, bushel, sacks full,</span>
-<span class="spp04">And my pockets full too; hurrah!</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p237">{237}</span></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">A variety of the New Year’s Wassail-Bowl custom was, until a few
-years ago, practised in Scotland. What is called a <i>hot pint</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, a great
-kettle full of hot sweetened ale), was prepared, and when the clock had
-sounded out the knell of the old year, each member of the family drank
-“A good health and a Happy New Year to all.” A move was then
-made by the revellers with what remained of the hot pint, and
-a store of short-bread and <i>bun</i> to visit their friends and neighbours,
-and to give them seasonable greeting. If the party were
-the first to enter a friend’s house since twelve o’clock had struck, they
-were called the <i>first foot</i>, and must come in with hands full of cakes, of
-which all the inmates must partake; and so they went from house to
-house until either their endurance or that long, long hot pint, failed.
-Even within this century the custom was so religiously observed that the
-streets of Edinburgh are described as having been more thronged at
-midnight than at mid-day. This old practice is said to have received its
-death-blow in 1812, when the descent of gangs of thieves and pickpockets
-upon the wassailers caused such scenes of rioting and violence
-that, after languishing for a few years, it came to an untimely end.</p>
-
-<p>It was customary at the beginning of the present century for the
-inhabitants of the parish of Deerness, in Orkney, to assemble on New
-Year’s Eve, and pay a round of visits through the district, drinking
-their neighbours’ healths, and singing various old songs, of which the
-following may be taken as a
-<span class="nowrap">specimen:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">This night it is guid New Year’s E’en night</span>
-<span class="spp00">We’re a’ here Queen Mary’s Men;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And we’re come here to crave our right,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And that’s before our lady.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Gae fill the three pint cog o’ ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The maut maun be aboun the meal.</span>
-<span class="spp00">We houp your ale is stark and stout</span>
-<span class="spp00">For men to drink the old year out.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The composition of the wassail-bowl has been dealt with elsewhere,
-and it only remains to be added that though the drinking of its spiced
-contents was very usual on New Year’s Eve, it was not peculiar to that
-day, but accompanied most occasions of mediæval festivity, and, indeed,
-was so common that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the wassail-bowl
-was frequently referred to by the writers of that Golden
-Age of English <span class="xxpn" id="p238">{238}</span>
-literature as symbolical of feasting and good cheer in general. It is thus
-that Herrick mentions it in his beautiful little poem, entitled <i>A
-Thanksgiving for his</i> <span class="nowrap"><i>House</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Lord, I confess too when I dine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The pulse is thine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And all those other bits that be</span>
-<span class="spp00">There placed by Thee.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The worts, the purslain, and the mess</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of water-cress,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And my content</span>
-<span class="spp00">Makes those, and my beloved beet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To be more sweet.</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth</span>
-<span class="spp00">With guiltless mirth;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And giv’st me wassail bowls to drink,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Spiced to the brink.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Twelfth Night was specially celebrated with wassailing, accompanied
-with the consumption of spiced cakes, the combination giving rise to
-the phrase “cakes and ale.”</p>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p238.png" width="360" height="423" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">“Cakes and Ale.”
- <div>From the “Good-Fellow’s Counsel, or
- the Bad Husband’s Recantation.”</div>
- <p class="psignature">(<i>Roxburghe Ballads</i>).</p></div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p239">{239}</span></div>
-
-<p>The twelfth day after Christmas was celebrated in the old days in
-honour of the three Kings, as the Wise Men were called who came out
-of the East to worship the Messiah. One of the chief ceremonies connected
-with the day was the election of the King and Queen of the Bean.
-A large cake—the Twelfth Cake—had been previously made, in which a
-bean and a pea were inserted, the cake was cut up and distributed by
-lot among the company, and whoever got the piece which contained the
-bean was crowned King of the Bean, while the pea conferred the
-distinction of Queen upon its happy recipient.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp03">Now, now the mirth comes,</span>
-<span class="spp03">With the cake full of plums,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where beane’s the king of the sport here;</span>
-<span class="spp03">Besides we must know,</span>
-<span class="spp03">The pea also</span>
-<span class="spp00">Must revell as queene in the court here.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp03">Give then to the king</span>
-<span class="spp03">And queen wassailing;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And though with ale ye be whet here,</span>
-<span class="spp03">Yet part ye from hence,</span>
-<span class="spp03">As free from offence</span>
-<span class="spp00">As when ye innocent met here.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn54" id="fnanc54">54</a></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc">
-<a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc54" id="fn54">54</a>
-Herrick’s <i>Twelfth Night</i>.</p></div>
-
-<p>Dr. Plot, in his <i>Natural History of Staffordshire</i> (1685), describes a
-curious custom called the Hobby-horse dance, which he says had been
-practised at Pagets Bromley within memory of persons living when he
-wrote. On Twelfth Day a man on a hobby-horse used to dance down
-the village street, holding in his hand a bow and arrow, and accompanied
-by six men, carrying deers’ heads on their shoulders. “To this Hobby-horse
-dance,” says our author, “there also belong’d a <i>pot</i>, which was
-kept by turnes by 4 or 5 of the <i>chief</i> of the <i>Tow</i>, whom they call’d
-<i>Reeves</i>, who provided <i>Cakes</i> and <i>Ale</i> to put in this <i>pot</i>; all people who
-had any kindness for the good intent of the Institution of the <i>sport</i>,
-giving pence a piece for themselves and families; and so <i>forraigners</i>
-too, that came to see it: with which mony (the charge of the
-<i>Cakes</i> and <i>Ale</i> being defrayed) they not only repaired
-their <i>Church</i> but <span class="xxpn" id="p240">{240}</span>
-kept their <i>poore</i> too: which <i>charges</i> are not now perhaps so cheerfully
-boarn.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>It would be going too far from the special subject of this work to
-detail the more elaborate festivities of the Court and the Universities, or
-the masques and revels of those ancient abodes of legal learning, the
-Inns of Court, where Twelfth Night formed the annual excuse for much
-feasting and pageantry. On these occasions, no doubt, costly wines and
-liqueurs formed the staple of the liquids consumed,</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Both Ippocras and Vernage wine</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mount Rose and wine of Greek,</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">and
-not the honest juice of barley. Suffice it to note in passing that on
-the 2nd of February, 1601, John Manningham, a student of the Middle
-Temple, records in his Diary: “At our feast we had a play called <i>Twelfth
-Night or What You Will</i>.” This is the earliest recorded mention of
-that grand Twelfth-night revel, and was, perhaps, its first performance.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The appearance of Twelfth Cake is the signal for the disappearance
-of mince pies, in accordance with the farewell words an old carolist
-puts into the mouth of
-<span class="nowrap">Christmas:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Mark well my heavy doleful tale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">For Twelfth-day now is come,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And now I must no longer stay</span>
-<span class="spp01">And say no word but mum.</span>
-<span class="spp00">For I, perforce, must take my leave</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of all my dainty <span class="nowrap">cheer—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Plum porridge, roast beef, and minced-pies,</span>
-<span class="spp01">My strong ale and my beer.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>A minor festival, Plough Monday, used to be celebrated on the first
-Monday after Twelfth Night. A plough, dressed up with ribbons by
-the villagers, was taken round from house to house. Its escort consisted
-of a number of rustics dressed up in various mummers’ guises, and
-chanting verses, the text of which was “God speed the Plough.” The
-principal performers were Bessy and the Clown, Bessy being, in fact,
-a man dressed up in fantastic female weeds. Bread, cheese, and ale
-were asked for at the farmhouses and seldom refused, and a variety
-of curious dances and uncouth antics completed the entertainment
-of the day. <span class="xxpn" id="p241">{241}</span></p>
-
-<p>The season of Lent, of course, was marked by no special festivities,
-but when Easter Sunday was passed, the reaction from the enforced
-restraint of the previous period made the enjoyment of the Easter-week
-festivities all the keener. Easter Monday and Tuesday were in some
-places noted for the curious custom known as “heaving;” on the
-Monday the men “heaved” the women (<i>i.e.</i>, lifted them off the ground
-and kissed them), and on the Tuesday the women’s turn came, and
-they heaved the men. “Many a time have I passed along the streets
-inhabited by the lower orders of people,” says one who has witnessed
-the ceremony, “and seen parties of Jolly matrons assembled round
-tables on which stood a foaming tankard of Ale. Woe to the luckless
-man that dared to invade their prerogatives! as sure as seen he was
-pursued, as sure taken, heaved and kissed, and compelled to pay a fine
-of sixpence for ‘leave and license’ to depart.”</p>
-
-<p>The antiquity of the custom is proved by an entry in one of the
-Tower Rolls of payments made to certain maids-of-honour for having
-taken Edward I. in his bed and “lifted him.”</p>
-
-<p>The second Monday and Tuesday after Easter were known in olden
-days as Hock-tide. The Tuesday was the principal day, and was designated
-Hock Day. Many derivations have been suggested for the name;
-the best seems to be that which connects it with the German <i>hoch</i> (high).
-Hock Day would thus denote a day of high festivity. Be that as it may,
-the name is of great antiquity. In the Annals of Dunstaple we read
-that in 1242 “Henry III., King of England, crossed over on <i>Ochedai</i>
-with a great army against the King of France.” On Hock Day the
-women of the village would go into the streets with cords in their hands,
-and every one of the opposite sex whom they could catch, was bound
-until he purchased his release by a contribution for the purposes of the
-common feast. On this day the feasting seems to have frequently
-passed into excess, and sometimes with direful results; the Annalist of
-Dunstaple tells that on Hokke-day in the year 1252 the village of
-Esseburne was “burned down miserably.” In 1450 a Bishop of Worcester
-prohibited the celebrations of Hock-tide, on the ground that they
-led to dissipation and other evils. There seems to be no connection
-between this festival and the Hock-cart spoken of by Herrick, and to
-be mentioned anon, save that the name of each takes its derivation,
-if our surmise be the correct one, from the word <i>hoch</i>. The Hock Day
-meaning High Day; and the Hock Cart, the harvest-home wain piled
-<i>high</i> with the trophies of autumn.</p>
-
-<p>We next come to the May Day festivities, which
-in many respects <span class="xxpn" id="p242">{242}</span>
-may be regarded as the most joyous and picturesque of all the year.
-Without staying to inquire whether the origin of the festival is to be
-traced to the old Roman Floralia, or games in honour of the goddess who
-ushered in the spring and strewed the earth with flowers, let us pause
-for a while to contemplate the old ceremony of “bringing home the
-May,” as it was performed some few centuries ago. On May Day
-morning the inhabitants of every village would go out at an early hour
-into the fields to gather garlands of hawthorn blossom and other
-flowers, with which they decorated the May-pole and every door
-and window of the village. These floral trophies were brought
-home to the tune of pipe and drum; the fairest maid in all the
-hamlet was crowned with flowers as Queen of the May, and, embowered
-in hawthorn branches, presided over the mirth and feasting of the day.
-Stubbe, in his <i>Anatomy of Abuses</i> (1585), describes the ceremony of
-raising the May-pole, in language which gives some notion of the pretty
-scene, and which is all the more likely not to be overdrawn, from the
-evident abhorrence of the writer to what he regarded as the impiety of
-the whole affair. “They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen,” he
-writes, “every one having a sweet nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe
-of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maie pole (this stinckyng
-Idoll rather) which is couered all ouer with flowers and hearbes bounde
-rounde aboute with stringes, from the top to the bottome, and sometyme
-painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred women
-and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared
-up with handkerchiefs and flagges streaming on the toppe they strowe
-the grounde aboute, binde green boughes aboute it, sett up sommer
-houses, Bowers and Arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet
-and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the Heathen people did at
-the dedication of their Idolles, whereof this is a perfect pattern or rather
-the thing itself.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The May-pole once raised, of course the next thing to be done was
-to pour a libation in honour of the day, and in most cases this would,
-equally of course, be performed with the ale of Old England.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">The May-pole is up,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Now give me the cup,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’ll drink to the garlands around it,</span>
-<span class="spp04">But first unto those,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Whose hands did compose,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The glory of flowers that crown’d it.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p243">{243}</span></div>
-
-<p>In olden days even the King and Queen condescended to mingle
-with their lieges, and to assist in commemorating the time-honoured
-custom. Chaucer, in his <i>Court of Love</i>, describes how on May Day,
-“Forth goeth all the Court both most and least, to fetch the flowers
-fresh.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Spenser, in his <i>Shepherd’s Calendar</i>, thus describes the May Day
-festival of Elizabethan
-<span class="nowrap">times:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Siker this morrow, no longer ago,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I saw a shole of shepherds out go</span>
-<span class="spp00">With singing and shouting and jolly cheer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Before them rode a lusty Tabrere,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That to the many a hornpipe played,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whereto they dancen each one with his maid.</span>
-<span class="spp00">To see these folks make such jouissance,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Made my heart after the pipe to dance.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then to the green-wood they speeden them all,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To fetchen home May with their musical;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And home they bring him in a royal throne</span>
-<span class="spp00">Crowned as king; and his queen attone</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend</span>
-<span class="spp00">A fair flock of fairies, and a fresh bend</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of lovely nymphs—O that I were there</span>
-<span class="spp00">To helpen the ladies their May-bush to bear!</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Probably the most famous May-pole that ever existed was the one
-which gave its name to the parish of St. Andrew-Undershaft. It was
-of such a height that it towered above all the houses and even above
-the church spire. Chaucer alludes to this mighty pole in the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Right well aloft and high ye beare your head,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As ye would beare the greate shaft of Cornhill.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">When this May-pole was not required for festive purposes, it lay
-suspended on great iron hooks above the doors of the neighbouring
-houses. In the reign of Edward VI., after a sermon preached at the
-cross of St. Paul’s against the iniquity of May games, the inhabitants of
-these houses in a fit of pious enthusiasm, desiring, doubtless, to replenish
-their wood-cellars and to destroy an “idoll” at the same time, cut the
-pole in pieces, each man retaining that portion of it which had been
-before his house. The May-pole in the Strand
-was another celebrated <span class="xxpn" id="p244">{244}</span>
-shaft. It was erected at the Restoration, when there was a revival of
-the popular sports which the sour-faced Puritans had so unsparingly
-condemned. It was 134 ft. high, and was raised with great ceremony
-and public rejoicings.</p>
-
-<p>At Helston, in Cornwall, on the 8th of May, called “Furry Day,”
-may still be witnessed a survival of the old May Day festivities. Very
-early in the morning the young men and maidens of the place go
-off into the country to breakfast. About seven o’clock they return
-bearing green branches, and decked with flowers, they dance through
-the streets to the tune of the “Furry Dance.” At eight o’clock
-the “Hal-an-Tow” (Heel and Toe?) song is sung, and dancing and
-merriment fill the remainder of the day.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth dwthem26">
-<div class="padtopb">THE HAL-AN-TOW.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Robin Hood and little John,</span>
-<span class="spp01">They both are gone to fair O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And we will go to the merry green wood,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To see what they to do there O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And for to chase O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp01">To chase the buck and doe O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp03">With Hal-an-tow,</span>
-<span class="spp03">Jolly rumble O&#x202f;!</span>
-</div>
-<p class="pcontinue">Chorus:</p>
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">And we were up as soon as any day O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And for to fetch the summer home,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Summer and the May O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">For Summer is a come O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And Winter is a gone O&#x202f;!</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Where are those Spaniards</span>
-<span class="spp01">That makes so great a boast O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">They shall eat the grey goose feather</span>
-<span class="spp01">And we will eat the roast O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp03">In every land O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp03">The land where’er we go,</span>
-<span class="spp04">With Hal-an-tow,</span>
-<span class="spp05">Jolly rumble O&#x202f;!</span>
-</div>
-<p class="pright">
-Chorus: And we were up, &amp;c.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p245">{245}</span></p>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">As for St. George O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp01">St. George he was a knight O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of all the knights in Christendom</span>
-<span class="spp01">St. George he is the right O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp03">In every land O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp03">The land where’er we go,</span>
-<span class="spp04">With Hal-an-tow,</span>
-<span class="spp05">Jolly rumble O&#x202f;!</span></div>
-<p class="pright">
-Chorus: And we were up, &amp;c.</p>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">God bless Aunt Mary Moyses,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And all her power and might O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And send us peace in merry England,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Both day and night O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And send us peace in merry England,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Both now and evermore O&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp03">With Hal-an-tow,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Jolly rumble O&#x202f;!</span></div>
-<p class="pright">
-Chorus: And we were up, &amp;c.</p>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The custom is popularly attributed to the escape of the town from
-the threatened attack of a fiery dragon, who, in days when dragons were
-more common than they are now, hung in mid-air over the place,
-driving the inhabitants to the greenwood tree for shelter. On his
-disappearance the people returned with great rejoicings and to
-this day commemorate their fortunate escape. The true explanation is
-probably that the festival is simply a survival of the old celebration in
-honour of <i>Flora</i>.</p>
-
-<p>In some few country villages a May-pole still survives. One such is
-to be seen in the little village of Welford, in Gloucestershire, painted in
-stripes of red, white, and blue. It was decked with flowers on May Day
-not many years ago, owing to the exertions of some of the local lovers of
-things ancient; but the genuine spirit of the festival seems to have
-entirely disappeared, and the ceremony has not been repeated.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">What’s not destroyed by Time’s relentless hand?</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where’s Troy? and where’s the May-pole in the Strand?</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In the early days of May occur what used to be known as the Gange
-Days, on which the ceremony of beating the parish bounds
-was, and still <span class="xxpn" id="p246">{246}</span>
-is in some places, undertaken, the work of the day being wound up by a
-more or less liberal distribution of buns and ale. Sums of money were
-occasionally left to provide the refreshments for these parish perambulations.
-At Edgcott, in Buckinghamshire, there was an acre of land
-called “Gang Monday Land,” the income of which was devoted to the
-provision of cakes and ale for those who took part in the business of the
-day; and in Clifton Reynes, in the same county, a devise of land for a
-like purpose provides that one small loaf, a piece of cheese, and a pint of
-ale, should be given to every married person, and half a pint of ale to
-every unmarried person, resident in Clifton, when they walked the
-parish boundaries in Rogation week.</p>
-
-<p>When Whitsuntide came round, the time arrived for those quaint
-festivals to which Ale gave not only his support, but also his name, and
-which were known as Whitsun Ales. The Whitsun Ale was a special
-form of the Church Ale, to be mentioned anon. It is thus described by
-an old writer:—“Two young men of the Parish are yerely chosen by
-their last foregoers to be wardens, who, dividing the task, make collection
-among the parishioners of whatsoever provision it pleaseth them
-voluntarily to bestow. This they employ in brewing, baking, and other
-acates<a class="afnanc" href="#fn55" id="fnanc55">55</a>
-against Whitsuntide; upon which holy days the neighbours
-meet at the Church-house, and there merrily feed on their owne victuals
-contributing some petty portion to the stock, which by many smalls,
-groweth to a meetly greatness: for there is entertayned a kind of
-emulation between these wardens, who, by his graciousness in gathering,
-and good husbandry in expending, can best advance the churche’s
-profit. Besides, the neighbour parishes at those times lovingly visit
-each one another, and this way frankly spend their money together.
-The afternoones are consumed in such exercises as olde and yong folke
-(having leisure) doe accustomably weare out the time withall. When
-the feast is ended, the wardens yield in their account to the parishioners:
-and such money as exceedeth the disbursement is layd up in store, to
-defray any extraordinary charges arising in the parish, or imposed on
-them for the good of the country, or the prince’s service: neither of
-which commonly so gripe but that somewhat still remayneth to cover
-the purse’s bottom.”</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc55" id="fn55">55</a>
-acates&#x200a;=&#x200a;purchases.</p></div>
-
-<p>The Morris Dancers regarded Whitsuntide as their chief festival.
-Introduced into this country from Spain, the
-Morisco or Moorish <span class="xxpn" id="p247">{247}</span>
-Dance had, in the reign of Henry VIII., attained a great popularity.
-There seems to have been at that time two principal performers, Robin
-Hood and Maid Marian; then there was a friar, a piper, a fool, and
-the rank and file of the dancers. In the parish accounts of Kingston-on-Thames
-for the year 1537 the Morris Dancers’ wardrobe, then in
-the charge of the churchwardens, consisted of “A fryers cote of russet
-and a kyrtele weltyd with red cloth, a Mowren’s (Moor’s) cote of
-buckram, and four morres daunsars cotes of white fustian spangelid
-and two gryne saten cotes, and disardde’s (fool’s) cote of cotton, and six
-payre of garters with belles.”</p>
-
-<p>In Elizabethan times the Morris Dance, and indeed every other kind
-of picturesque country festivity, may be said to have reached the zenith
-of popularity, soon, alas! to be followed by the chilling austerity of the
-Puritans, of whom it was so truly said that they “like nothing; no
-state, no sex; music, dancing, etc., unlawful even in kings; no kind of
-recreation, no kind of entertainment,—no, not so much as hawking;
-all are damned.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">These teach that Dauncing is a Jezabell</span>
-<span class="spp00">And barley-break the ready way to Hell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Morrice, Idolls; Whitson-ale can bee</span>
-<span class="spp00">But profane Reliques of a Jubilee.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn56" id="fnanc56">56</a></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc56" id="fn56">56</a>
-Thomas Randal—<i>Annalia Dubrensia</i>.</p></div>
-
-<p>Whitsuntide, with its length­en­ing days, was spe­cial­ly set apart for
-sports and old-fash­ioned games, and amongst the many meet­ings for
-such purposes, none at­tained a wider pop­u­lar­ity than the Cots­wold or
-Dover’s Games. Those who are familiar with the country made classic
-by its as­soc­ia­tions with the great Master of English poetry, know well
-the green hill, still called Dover’s Hill, which forms an outpost of the
-main body of the Cotswolds, and overlooks the smiling vale of Evesham.
-On this spot, time out of mind, rural sports and festivities had been held
-under the name of the Cotswold Games. “How does your fallow
-greyhound, sir?” says Slender to Page, “I heard say he was outrun at
-Cotsale.” This was the site chosen by Robert Dover, an attorney
-of Barton-on-the-Heath, for the enlargement and perpetuation of those
-national sports in which he took so keen an interest,
-and which he <span class="xxpn" id="p248">{248}</span>
-hoped would counteract the narrow spirit of bigotry which was beginning
-in his day to curtail the innocent amusements of the people.
-Armed with a formal authority from King James, Dover was so successful
-in his organization of the Games that, with a short interregnum
-during the Commonwealth days, their popularity continued until well
-into the present century. A curious old volume of poems, called
-<i>Annalia Dubrensia</i>, published in 1636, contains many quaint descriptions
-of the Games and their object. Drayton, Ben Jonson, Thomas
-Randall and others of lesser note, contributed each a poem to this
-collection. One of the contributors thus eulogises the sports and
-their
-<span class="nowrap">patron:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Oh most famous Greece!</span>
-<span class="spp00">That for brave Pastimes, wert earth’s Master-piece!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had not our English DOVER, thus out-done</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy foure games, with his Cotswoldian one.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">Dover
-himself composed the poem which closes the volume. Some
-of his motives he thus
-<span class="nowrap">describes:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I’ve heard our fine refined clergy teach,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of the commandments, that it is a breach</span>
-<span class="spp00">To play at any game for gain or coin;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis theft they say; men’s goods you do purloin;</span>
-<span class="spp00">One silly beast another to pursue</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Gainst nature is, and fearful to the view,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And man with man their activeness to try</span>
-<span class="spp00">Forbidden is—much harm doth come thereby;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had we their faith to credit what they say,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We must believe all sports are ta’en away;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whereby I see, instead of active things,</span>
-<span class="spp00">What harm the same unto our nation brings;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The pipe and pot are made the only prize</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which all our spriteful youth do exercise.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Yet I was bold for better recreation</span>
-<span class="spp00">T’invent these sports to countercheck that fashion,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And bless the troope that come our sports to see,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With hearty thankes and friendly courtesie</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p249">{249}</span></div>
-
-<p>The nature of the sports may be gathered from an inspection of the
-curious old cut taken from the frontispiece of the above-named work.
-Dancing, tumbling, wrestling, sword-play, quarter-staff, cudgel play,
-casting the hammer, dog-racing, horse-racing, coursing—must have
-made up a highly varied programme, while the table in the midst of
-the field of view shows, both by its conspicuous position and by the</p>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p249.png" width="527" height="681" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Cotswold Games.</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">size
-of the cups and tankards in use, that the good creatures, meat and
-ale, were by no means neglected. The wonderful structure at the top of
-the picture represents the wooden castle erected every year, and called
-Dover Castle in honour of the founder of the sports. The artist does
-not appear to have quite done justice to his subject if we may credit the
-account of the Castle given by one
-of the versifiers:— <span class="xxpn" id="p250">{250}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">What Ingineere, or cunning Architect</span>
-<span class="spp00">A Fabricke of such pompe did ere erect?</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’ve heard men talk, of Castles in the aire,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Inchanted Cells, Towers, Pageants most faire,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Fortifications, Trophies, Theaters,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Laborinths, Puppet-workes, strange Meteores,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of those that have their substance wholie spent</span>
-<span class="spp00">To shew their Puppets dauncing with content;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of Egypts Pharoes stately glasen Tower,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Built by King Ptolomies’ art magick power,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of Cheops, Pyramids; of Rhodes Colosse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of Joves Olympick golden Ivorie Bosse.</span>
-<span class="spp00">These to thy famous works compared will be</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of small account; like them in no degree.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The figure of the founder occupies a prominent place in the
-foreground. He used to appear in clothes that had belonged to King
-James, and it is said wore them with much greater dignity than did the
-King. Dover seems to have been a remarkable person in more ways
-than one, as may be gathered from the following quaint note, to be
-found in one of the editions of the <i>Annalia</i>:—“He was bred an
-Attorney, who never try’d but two causes, <i>always made up the
-Difference</i>.”</p>
-
-<p>The next in order of the country celebrations in which ale formed
-the principal drink, were the sheep-shearing feasts, formerly so common,
-but now in most places things of the past. Many songs have been
-preserved which record these old merry-makings when the day’s work
-was done, and the farm labourers were gathered round their master’s
-hospitable board. One of these, taken from the Sussex Archæological
-Collections, is given below. It is a sample of many.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come all my jolly boys, and we’ll together go</span>
-<span class="spp00">Abroad with our masters, to shear the lamb and ewe.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And there we must work hard, boys, until our backs do ache,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And our master he will bring us beer whenever we do lack.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And then our noble captain doth unto our master say,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Come,
- let us have one bucket of your good Ale, I pray”</span>
-<span class="spp00">He turns unto our captain, and makes him this reply <span class="xxpn" id="p252">{252}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>You
- shall have the best of beer, I promise, presently,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then out with the bucket pretty Bess she doth come,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And master says “Mind, mind and see that every man has some.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">&#xa0;</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">This is some of our pastime while the sheep we do shear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And though we are such merry boys, we work hard, I declare;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And when ’tis night, and we have done, our master is more free,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And stores us well with good strong beer, and pipes and tobaccee</span>
-<span class="spp00">So we do sit and drink, we smoke, and sing and roar,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till we become more merry far than e’er we were before,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When all our work is done, and all our sheep are shorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then home to our Captain, to drink the Ale that’s strong.</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis a barrel, then, of <i>hum cup</i>, which we call the <i>black ram</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And we do sit and swagger, and swear that we are men;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But yet before ’tis night, I’ll stand you half a crown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That if you ha’nt a special care, the <i>ram</i> will knock you down.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr03" id="p251img">
-<img src="images/p251.png" width="587" height="632" alt="
- The Merry Bagpipes. &#x7c;
-
- The Pleaſant Paſtime betwixt a Jolly Shepherd and a
- Country Damſel on a Midſummer-Day in the Morning. &#x7c;
-
- To the tune of March Boys, &amp;c." />
-<div class="dcaption">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">A Shepherd ſat him under a Thorn</span>
-<span class="spp02">he pulled out his pipe and began for to play</span>
-<span class="spp00">It was on a Mid-Summer’s-day in the Morn</span>
-<span class="spp02">for honour of that Holy-day:</span>
-<span class="spp00">A Ditty he did chant along</span>
-<span class="spp02">goes to the tune of Cater-Bordee,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And this was the burden of his ſong</span>
-<span class="spp02">if thou wilt pipe lad, I’ll Dance to thee</span>
-<span class="spp00">To thee, to thee, derry, derry, to thee, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Roxburghe Ballads.</i></span>
-</div></div></div><!--dctr03--></div>
-
-<p>The Haymakers’ song given below is, or rather was, a great favourite
-at festive gatherings during the hay
-<span class="nowrap">harvest:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">In the merry month of June,</span>
-<span class="spp01">In the prime time of the year;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Down in yonder meadows</span>
-<span class="spp01">There runs a river clear;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And many a little fish</span>
-<span class="spp01">Doth in that river play;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And many a lad and many a lass,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Go abroad a-making hay.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">In come the jolly mowers,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To mow the meadows down;</span>
-<span class="spp00">With budget and with bottle</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of ale both stout and brown.</span>
-<span class="spp00">All labouring men of courage bold</span>
-<span class="spp01">Come here their strength to try;</span>
-<span class="spp00">They sweat and blow, and cut and mow,</span>
-<span class="spp01">For the grass cuts very dry.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Gratitude to the Giver of all good things has been the mainspring
-of rejoicings that in nearly all nations have
-celebrated the safe <span class="xxpn" id="p253">{253}</span>
-ingathering of the fruits of the earth. In England the festival is
-known by the expressive title of the Harvest Home. An ancient
-ballad expresses <i>The Farmer’s Delight in the Merry</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Harvest</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come all my Lads and Lasses</span>
-<span class="spp01">Let us together go,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the pleasant Corn-field,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Our courage for to show,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With sickle and with knapsack,</span>
-<span class="spp01">So well we clean our Land,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Farmer crys work on Boys</span>
-<span class="spp01">Here’s Beer at your command.</span>
-<span class="spp00">In a good old Leather Bottle,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of ale that is so brown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We’ll cut and strip together,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Until the Sun goes down;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Every morning Sun,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The small Birds they do sing;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Echoes of their Harmony,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Do make the Wood to ring.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Young Nanny she came to me,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Some wheat-seed for to lase.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn57" id="fnanc57">57</a></span>
-<span class="spp00">She is a pretty Creature,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I must speak in her Praise:</span>
-<span class="spp00">I wish she was some keeper,</span>
-<span class="spp01">She is my whole delight</span>
-<span class="spp00">In the Groves and Forests,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To range both Day and Night.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thus the industrious Farmer</span>
-<span class="spp01">By the Sweat of his Brow</span>
-<span class="spp00">He labours and endeavours</span>
-<span class="spp01">To make his Barley Mow.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sir John produces Liquor,</span>
-<span class="spp01">’Tis very often said,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Good Beer makes Good Blood</span>
-<span class="spp01">Good Blood makes pretty maid. <span class="xxpn" id="p254">{254}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">When Harvest it is over</span>
-<span class="spp01">And the Corn secure from Harm</span>
-<span class="spp00">And for to go to Market,</span>
-<span class="spp01">We must thrash in the Barn.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Flail which we do handle</span>
-<span class="spp01">So stoutly we do swing,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And after Harvest Supper,</span>
-<span class="spp01">So merry we will sing:</span>
-<span class="spp00">With good Success to the Farmer,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Or else we are to blame,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I wish them Health and Happiness,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Till Harvest comes again.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">Beer
-has always been <i>the</i> drink in the harvest field.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Beneath some shelt’ring heap of yellow corn</span>
-<span class="spp00">Rests the hoop’d keg, and friendly cooling horn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That mocks alike the goblet’s brittle frame,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It’s costlier potions, and its nobler name.</span>
-<span class="spp00">To Mary first the brimming draught is given,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By toil made welcome as the dews of heaven,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And never lip that press’d its homely edge,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had kinder blessings or a heartier pledge.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc57" id="fn57">57</a>
-To lase or lease, provincial term for “to glean.”</p></div>
-
-<p>In most parts of England the grain last cut was brought home in the
-Hock Cart or Horkey Cart. The name “Horkey,” is probably a corruption
-of “Hock,” and is equivalent to the German <i>hoch</i>, the allusion
-being to the wain piled <i>high</i> with sheaves. The cart decked with
-ribbons and surmounted with a sheaf dressed up to represent a
-woman—perhaps
-Ceres, goddess of the harvest; the horses pranked out in gay
-trappings; a crowd of labourers and all the youthful inhabitants of
-the village hurrahing in the wake presented such a scene as that
-described by Herrick in his poem of the <i>Hock</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Cart</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come, sons of summer, by whose toile</span>
-<span class="spp00">We are the Lords of wine and oile;</span>
-<span class="spp00">By whose tough labours and rough hands</span>
-<span class="spp00">We rip up first, then reap our lands,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Crown’d with the ears of corne, now come,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, to the pipe, sing harvest home.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come forth, my Lord, and see the cart,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drest up with all the country art. <span class="xxpn" id="p255">{255}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">See here a maukin, there a sheet</span>
-<span class="spp00">As spotless pure as it is sweet;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Clad all in linen white as lillies,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The harvest swaines and wenches bound</span>
-<span class="spp00">For joy to see the hock-cart crown’d.</span>
-<span class="spp00">About the cart heare how the rout</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of rural younglings raise the shout,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pressing before, some coming after,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Those with a shout and these with laughter.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some blesse the cart; some kisse the sheaves</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some prank them up with oaken leaves;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some cross the fill-horse; some with great</span>
-<span class="spp00">Devotion stroak the home-borne wheat;</span>
-<span class="spp00">While other rusticks, lesse attent</span>
-<span class="spp00">To prayers than to merryment,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Run after with their breeches rent.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">A verse was sung to start the hock-cart on its way; generally some
-thing of this
-<span class="nowrap">kind:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Harvest home, harvest home,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We have ploughed, we have sowed;</span>
-<span class="spp00">We have reaped, we have mowed,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We have brought home every load,</span>
-<span class="spp04">Hip, hip, hip, harvest home!</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In Hampshire it was years ago the custom at the end of harvest
-to send to the harvest-field a large bottle containing seven or eight
-gallons of strong beer; and the head carter, while the beer was being
-discussed, said or sang the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Well ploughed—well sowed,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Well reaped—well mowed,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Well carried, and</span>
-<span class="spp00">Never a load overthro’d.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">He then raised his hand, and all
-cheered. This was called the custom of the Hollowing
-Bottle. <span class="xxpn" id="p256">{256}</span></p>
-
-<p>For a description of the harvest-home supper we may again turn to
-<span class="nowrap">Herrick:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Well, on, brave boyes, to your Lord’s hearth</span>
-<span class="spp00">Glittering with fire, where, for your mirth,</span>
-<span class="spp00">You shall see first the large and cheefe</span>
-<span class="spp00">Foundation of your feast, fat beefe;</span>
-<span class="spp00">With upper stories, mutton, veale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And bacon, which makes full the meale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">With severall dishes standing by,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As here a custard, there a pie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And here all-tempting frumentie.</span>
-<span class="spp00">And for to make the merry cheer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If smirking wine be wanting here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">There’s that which drowns all care, stout beer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which freely drink to your lord’s health,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then to the plough, the commonwealth,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Next to your flails, your fans, your vats;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then to the maids with wheaten hats;</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the rough sickle and the crooked scythe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drink, frolic, boys, till all be blithe.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Robert Bloomfield alludes to the horkey-beer as to a brew specially
-prepared for the
-<span class="nowrap">occasion:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And Farmer Cheerum went, good man,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And broach’d the horkey-beer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And sich a mort of folks began</span>
-<span class="spp01">To eat up our good cheer.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>When supper was finished the horkey-beer was freely sent about the
-board, with the effect noticed by old Lydgate in his <i>Story of Thebes</i>:—“They
-were in silence for a tyme tyl good ale gan arise.”—Slow
-tongues are loosened, and the time is passed in songs and mirth.</p>
-
-<p>The following extracts are taken from old Suffolk songs which have
-descended from father to son for generations. They are typical of many
-more that might be
-<span class="nowrap">given:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s a health to our master,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The founder of the feast!</span>
-<span class="spp00">God bless his endeavours</span>
-<span class="spp01">And send him increase.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p257">{257}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Now our harvest is ended</span>
-<span class="spp01">And supper is past,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here’s our mistress’ good health</span>
-<span class="spp01">In a full flowing glass!</span>
-<span class="spp00">She is a good <span class="nowrap">woman,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">She prepared us good cheer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come all my brave boys,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And drink off your beer.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Drink, my boys, drink until you come unto me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The longer we sit, my boys, the merrier shall we be!</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft padtopc">
-<span class="spp00">In yon green wood there lies an old fox,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Close by his den you may catch him, or no;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ten thousand to one you catch him, or no.</span>
-<span class="spp00">His beard and his brush are all of one
- <span class="nowrap">colour,—</span></span>
-<p class="pright">(<i>Takes the glass and empties it off.</i>)</p>
-<span class="spp00">I am sorry, kind sir, that your glass is no fuller.</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis down the red lane! ’tis down the red lane!</span>
-<span class="spp00">So merrily hunt the fox down the red lane!”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>There is another version of these concluding
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Down the red lane there lives an old fox,</span>
-<span class="spp00">There does he sit a-mumping his chops:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Catch him, boys, catch him, catch if you can;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis twenty to one if you catch him or Nan.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The red lane is the throat, and the fox is the tongue.</p>
-
-<p>A favourite old Norfolk harvest-home song was “The Pye upon the
-Pear Tree Top,” the following version of which is taken from Mr.
-Rye’s admirable <i>History of</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Norfolk</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemfarlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The pye upon the pear-tree top,</span>
-<p class="pright">(<i>The singer holds up a glass of beer</i>)</p>
-<span class="spp00">The pear-tree top—the pear-tree top,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I hold you a crown she is coming down.</span>
-<p class="pright">(<i>Brings down the glass slowly</i>)</p>
-<span class="spp00">She is coming down, she is coming down,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I hold you a crown she is come down.</span>
-<p class="pright">(<i>Offers the glass to his right-hand neighbour.</i>)
- <span class="xxpn" id="p258">{258}</span></p>
-<span class="spp00">She <i>is</i> come down, she <i>is</i> come down,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So lift up your elbow, and hold up your chin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And let your neighbour joggle it in.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The drinker then tries to drink, and his neighbour tries to prevent
-him.</p>
-
-<p>During the evening one of the reapers, who had been chosen as “lord,”
-would retire from the table, and, putting on a kind of mummer’s garb,
-return, calling “Lar-gess.” He then carried a hat or plate round and
-collected money to prolong the jollification at the village alehouse.</p>
-
-<p>A laughable custom prevalent at Sussex harvest-homes, was the
-following: Each person at the table—perhaps twenty or thirty men—had
-to drink, without spilling, a glass of ale placed on the top of a tall
-hat; when he had finished, he must toss the glass up in the air and
-catch it in the hat as it fell. Sometimes a man would fail four or five
-times, and at length get too drunk even to try. Meantime the
-company kept up the
-<span class="nowrap">refrain:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I’ve been to London, I’ve been to Dover,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’ve been a rambling, boys, all the world over,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Over, over, over and over,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drink up the liquor and turn the bowl over.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>These lines were sung over and over again, getting louder at the
-critical moments. If the drinker’s effort was crowned with success the
-fourth line was changed
-<span class="nowrap">to―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The liquor’s drinked up, and the bowl is turned over,</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">while
-ill success was greeted
-<span class="nowrap">by―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The liquor’s drinked up, and the bowl <i>ain’t</i> turned over.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Another Sussex custom practised not many years ago, and perhaps
-still, at harvest-home suppers consisted in a harvester sticking a lighted
-candle in a glass of beer and drinking the beer while he held the candle
-in position with his nose. The company meantime sing a song, of
-which the chorus
-<span class="nowrap">runs―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Your nose’s alight, your nose’s alight,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your hair’s alight, your hair’s alight,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your hair’s alight, afire. <span class="xxpn" id="p259">{259}</span></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Frequently the greasy candle would slip from between the nose and the
-rim of the glass, really bringing about a conflagration of hair or eyebrows.</p>
-
-<p>In Scotland a dish always to be met with at harvest home, or <i>Kirn</i>-suppers,
-as they are called, is composed of porridge, strong ale and
-whisky. Had such dish as this been found at Sabine harvest-homes,
-well might Horace have exclaimed, “<i>O dura messorum ilia!</i>” Much the
-same course of feasting, strong-ale drinking, and singing is observed as
-at the English
-<span class="nowrap">festival―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemfarlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp06">—the frothing bickers,<a class="afnanc"
-href="#fn58" id="fnanc58">58</a> soon as filled,</span>
-
-<span class="spp00">Are drained, and to the gauntrees<a
-class="afnanc" href="#fn59" id="fnanc59">59</a> oft
-return.</span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel"
-href="#fnanc58" id="fn58">58</a> The beakers.</p>
-
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel"
-href="#fnanc59" id="fn59">59</a> The frame supporting the
-barrel.</p></div>
-
-<p>Such were some of the principal ceremonies connected with the harvest-home.
-It is to be regretted that such observances are now comparatively rare.
-The kindly association of master and man at these and
-such-like gatherings, did much to keep alive a mutual spirit of good
-will, and to grease the wheels of toil, and it is to be feared that such
-feelings when once lost cannot easily be recalled. Bloomfield well describes
-this peculiarity of former times, which to that extent, at any rate,
-may be called the “good old
-<span class="nowrap">days”:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here, once a year, distinction lowers its crest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The master, servant, and the merry guest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Are equal all; and round the happy ring,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The reaper’s eyes exulting glances fling;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, warmed with gratitude, he quits his place,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With sun-burnt hands, and ale-enlivened face,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Refills the jug his honored host to tend,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To serve at once the master and the friend;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">His nuts, his conversation, and his Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Last of all the great festivals of the year comes Christmas, celebrated
-from early ages with feasting and hearty boisterous merriment. In
-olden times the closing days of the old year, and the opening days of
-the new, were devoted to holiday-making. From Christmas Day to
-Twelfth Night was one long Saturnalia of
-feasting, dancing, and <span class="xxpn" id="p260">{260}</span>
-wassailing. One of the chief ceremonies of the time was the bringing
-in of the Yule Log on Christmas Eve. Escorted by troops of shouting
-men and boys, and greeted with strains of village minstrelsy, the yule
-log was drawn from its resting place, lighted in the great hall fireplace
-with some of the charred fragments of the last Christmas log, and
-consumed as a token of hospitality and good cheer. Herrick thus
-describes the
-<span class="nowrap">ceremony:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come, bring with a noise, my merry, merry boys,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The Christmas log to the firing,</span>
-<span class="spp00">While my good Dame she—bids ye all be free,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And drink to your heart’s desiring.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">With the last year’s brand—light the new block, and</span>
-<span class="spp01">For good success in his spending,</span>
-<span class="spp00">On your psaltries play—that sweet luck may</span>
-<span class="spp01">Come while the log is teending.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn60" id="fnanc60">60</a></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Drink now the strong beare, cut the white loafe here,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The while the meat is a-shredding,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For the rare mince-pie, and the plums stand by,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To fill the paste that’s a-kneeding.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc60" id="fn60">60</a>
-Blazing.</p></div>
-
-<p>As an accompaniment to the yule log, an immense candle, called the
-Yule Candle, shed its light upon the scene of merriment, and neighbours
-all began</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To quaff brown Ale foam’d high from tall stone jugs</span>
-<span class="spp00">And pledge deep healths in oft-replenished mugs.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The custom of wassailing the fruit trees has been already mentioned.
-In some counties the practice extends to the field and pastures, and
-a song is still sung on Christmas Eve in Hampshire, of which the chorus
-<span class="nowrap">is:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Apples and pears with right good corn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come in plenty to every one,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Eat and drink good cake and hot ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Give Earth to drink and she’ll not fail.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p261">{261}</span></div>
-
-<p>The time-honoured amusement appropriate to Christmas Eve was
-provided by the Mummers and the Lord of Misrule.</p>
-
-<p>The Mummers (or Maskers, as the name imports) were to be found
-in every village. They dressed themselves to represent various
-characters, and the chief pageant exhibited by them was a version of
-the national legend of St. George and the Dragon. The principal
-characters of course were the gallant Knight, and as close a copy of
-the Dragon as the wit and ingenuity of the village could contrive;
-then there was Old Father Christmas, the Turk, the Maiden, and a
-Doctor with a huge box of pills ready to execute any repairs rendered
-necessary by the internecine fury of the Knight, the Turk, and the
-Dragon. The performance varied a good deal according to the fancy
-of the performers, but in all places there seems to have been a set form
-of recitation in verse describing the various antics of the players.
-The Lord of Misrule, or Master of Merry Disports, was elected as
-Master of the Ceremonies, and his term of office extended from All-hallow
-Eve to Candlemas Day. He directed the revels, exercised full
-power and authority over high and low in the ordering of the festivities,
-and played the wit and fool with what skill nature had endowed
-him.</p>
-
-<p>And so in mirth and jollity the evening rolls away, and Christmas
-Day appears. Sir Roger de Coverley says, or at any rate the <i>Spectator</i>
-reports that he said: “I have often thought it happens very well that
-Christmas should fall out in the middle of winter. It is the most dead,
-uncomfortable time of the year, when the poor people would suffer very
-much from their poverty and cold, if they had not good cheer, warm
-fires, and Christmas gambols to support them. I love to rejoice their
-poor hearts at this season, and to see the whole village merry in my
-great hall. I allow a double quantity of malt to my small beer, and set
-it a-running for twelve days for everyone that calls for it.”</p>
-
-<p>From <i>Round about our Coal Fire</i> it may be gathered that “an
-English Gentleman at the opening of the great day (<i>i.e.</i>, on Christmas
-day in the morning) had all his tenants and neighbours enter his hall
-by daybreak. The strong beer was broached, and the black jack went
-merrily about with toast, nutmeg, and good Cheshire Cheese.”</p>
-
-<p>It may not be generally known that the <i>Old English
-Gentleman</i> is but a version of a very similar song
-published in 1600, in a book entitled <i>Le Prince d’Amour</i>.
-The earlier song contains the following verse relating to
-our subject:— <span class="xxpn" id="p262">{262}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemfarlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">With an old fashion when Christmas was come</span>
-<span class="spp00">To call in all his neighbours with a bagpipe or drum.</span>
-<span class="spp00">And good cheer enough to furnish out every old rome,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And beer and ale would make a cat speak and a wise man dumb</span>
-<span class="spp06">Like an old Courtier of Queens,</span>
-<span class="spp06">And the Queen’s old Courtier.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>On Christmas Day, and indeed during all the Christmas holidays,
-the tables were spread from morn till eve; sirloins of beef, mince pies
-and foaming ale formed the chief ingredients of the feast. In many
-places, in the houses of the great, the ceremonious custom was observed
-of bringing in the boar’s head on a dish of costly plate, the whole
-company following in procession, chanting the well-known lines
-<span class="nowrap">beginning:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Caput apri defero,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Reddens laudes Domino.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The custom still observed at Queen’s College, Oxford, of bringing in
-the boar’s head at Christmas is said to have arisen from the adventure
-of a student of that house in far-off legendary days, who, according
-to the wont of students in those distant times, was walking abroad
-studying his Aristotle, when a wild boar, who happened to be in the
-neighbourhood, whether annoyed at having his lair disturbed, or out of
-mere malice, charged down upon him with open mouth. However, the
-student’s presence of mind did not desert him; with a loud cry of
-“Græcum est” he thrust the volume down the throat of the monster,
-who, choked by the tough morsel, then and there expired.</p>
-
-<p>Turning from the tables of the great to the cottage of the humble,
-we find a description of the effect of Old Father Christmas’s approach
-upon the labourer’s home in Bampfylde’s <i>Sonnet on</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Christmas</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">With footstep slow, in furry pall yclad,</span>
-<span class="spp00">His brows enreathed with holly never sere,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Old Christmas comes, to close the waned year,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And aye the shepherd’s heart to make right glad,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who, when his teeming flocks are homeward had,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To blazing hearth repairs, and nut-brown beer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And views well pleased the ruddy prattlers dear</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hug the grey mongrel; meanwhile maid and lad</span>
-<span class="spp00">Squabble for roasted crabs—Thee, Sire, we hail, <span class="xxpn" id="p263">{263}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Whether thine aged limbs thou dost enshroud,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In vest of snowy white, and hoary veil,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or wrap’st thy visage in a sable cloud:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thee we proclaim with mirth and cheer, nor fail</span>
-<span class="spp00">To greet thee well with many a carol loud.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>It is the practice in many parts of Cumberland at Christmas to roast
-apples before the fire on a string, and hold under them a bowl of spiced
-or mulled ale. The apples roast on until they drop into the ale.</p>
-
-<p>Many an ancient Christmas carol tells of the joviality which at that
-time reigned supreme. The following example is taken from a collection
-of rare old songs and
-<span class="nowrap">carols:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Mye boyes come here</span>
-<span class="spp00">Theres capital cheere</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis Christmas tyme, let myrthe goe rounde</span>
-<span class="spp00">With a flaggon of ale, by tyme well brown’d.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Drink boyes drinke</span>
-<span class="spp00">And never thinke</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of crustie old tyme, his scythe and his glasse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He cannot, nor dare not, this waye passe.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Drinke and be wise</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till red Phœbus arise</span>
-<span class="spp00">And banish colde care from the good waning year:</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Old year he shall dye, mid plenty of cheere.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">My boyes, come passe</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your empty glasse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And fill them with Ale, as the world is of strife</span>
-<span class="spp00">And toaste to the widow, the maide and the wife.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come drink success</span>
-<span class="spp00">You cannot do less,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the new coming yere, may it be loaded with funne</span>
-<span class="spp00">And ne’er bring us worse than the old one has done.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p264">{264}</span></div>
-
-<p>Another verse from a good old song specially celebrates our
-
-<span class="nowrap">theme―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">Come, help us to raise</span>
-<span class="spp02">Loud songs to the praise</span>
-<span class="spp02">Of good old England pleasures:</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the Christmas cheer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the foaming Beer.</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the buttery’s solid treasures.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Many pages might be compiled of these old English carols, all in
-praise of the same theme, the roast beef and good ale of Old England;
-but one more quotation must suffice. It is from <i>Poor Robin’s Almanack</i>
-<span class="nowrap">(1695):―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now, thrice welscome, Christmas!</span>
-<span class="spp01">Which brings us good cheer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mince pies and <span class="nowrap">plum-pudding—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">Strong Ale and strong Beer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But as for curmudgeons</span>
-<span class="spp01">Who will not be free,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I wish they may die</span>
-<span class="spp01">On a two-legged tree.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>And so the cycle of the waning year is nearly completed. Midst
-sounds of revelry and mirth the old year is dying, and dying hard, and
-New Year’s Eve comes round again. The principal customs of New
-Year’s Eve have been already described, being inextricably blended with
-those appropriate to New Year’s Day.</p>
-
-<p>One scene more; a custom of very ancient origin and still observed.
-An ivy-mantled tower, from which to-night, at all events, the moping
-owl has been driven, for within are lights and the sounds of busy
-preparation. Those who are about to perform the last offices for the
-dying year are here assembled, and a great brown bowl of foaming ale
-passes from hand to hand. The old church clock, not bating one jot
-of his accustomed space from stroke to stroke, for all the impatience of
-listeners in many a house and cottage near, but deliberately, and with a
-solemnity befitting the occasion, tolls out the hour of midnight. A
-moment’s pause; but ere the last echo of its brazen tongue has died upon
-the ear, a merry peal of clashing music bursts from the ancient pile,
-carrying over hill and dale, over flood and field, on the
-rapid wings of <span class="xxpn" id="p265">{265}</span>
-sound, the tidings that the old year is dead and the new year reigns in
-his place.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>As we gaze back on these old scenes of fun and frolic, their rougher
-outlines perchance softened by distance, their true-heartiness and
-geniality shining through the golden mist of time, which of us will
-be found to deny that in some respects the old was better?</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Happy the age and harmless were the days,</span>
-<span class="spp01">For then true love and amity were found,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When every village did a May-pole raise,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And Whitsun ales and May-games did abound.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p265.png" width="144" height="55" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p266a.png" width="144" height="42" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p266"><span
- class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> X.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>And
- then satten some and songe
- at the Ale.”</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>The Vision of Piers
- Ploughman.</i></span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc"><div class="dnowrap34">
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Be mine each morn with eager appetite</span>
-<span class="spp00">And hunger undissembled to repair</span>
-<span class="spp00">To friendly buttery; there on smoking crust</span>
-<span class="spp00">And foaming Ale to banquet unrestrained;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Material breakfast! Thus in ancient days</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our ancestors robust with liberal cups</span>
-<span class="spp00">Usher’d the morn, unlike the squeamish sons</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of modern times.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Panegyric on Oxford Ale.</i></span></div></div></div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>THE ALES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ALE AT
-BREAKFAST.&#x200a;—&#x200a;BEQUESTS OF ALE.&#x200a;—&#x200a;DRINKING CUSTOMS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;A
-SERMON ON MALT.&#x200a;—&#x200a;EXCESSES OF THE CLERGY.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ANECDOTES.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap"
-src="images/p266b.png" width="226" height="228" alt="S"
-/></span>O far we have only con­si­dered those merry-makings
-which were pe­cu­liar to cer­tain sea­sons of the year. It need
-hard­ly be said that there were also a num­ber of fest­i­vals
-in which ale fig­ured as the chief bev­er­age, in no way
-re­lat­ed to any par­ti­cu­lar day, and these, to­geth­er with a
-variety of curious cus­toms con­nect­ed with ale and beer,
-will be now treat­ed of.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Prominent among the many convivial meetings indulged in by our
-ancestors were the <i>Ales</i>, at which, as their name indicates, malt liquor
-was largely consumed. Such a feast is referred to in Chaucer:</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">“And make him grete feestes atte <i>nale</i>.”</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>And in <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>, Launce says to Speed, “Thou
-hast not so much charity in thee as to go to the <i>Ale</i> with a Christian.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Ben Jonson also mentions Wakes and Ales in his <i>Tale of a
-Tub</i>:— <span class="xxpn" id="p267">{267}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And all the neighbourhood from old records</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of antique proverbs, drawn from Whitson-lords,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And their authorities at Wakes and Ales,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With country precedents and old wives’ tales,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We bring you now to show what different things</span>
-<span class="spp00">The cotes of clowns are from the courts of kings.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Of Ales there were several kinds—Church-Ales, Bride-Ales, Scot-Ales
-and many others. The Church-Ales, of which the Easter-Ales and
-Whitsun-Ales and Wakes were varieties, must be considered the most
-important of this class of festival. The grotesque carvings on many
-old churches have been considered by some to represent the humours
-of these curious gatherings. Their origin is no doubt to be traced to
-the Agapæ, or Love Feasts of the early Christian Church. Stubbe, in his
-<i>Anatomie of Abuses</i> (1585), gives the following account of the manner
-and intent of these Ales: “In certain townes where dronken Bacchus
-beares swaie, against Christmas and Easter, Whitsondaie, or some other
-tyme, the churchwardens of every Parishe provide half a score or
-twentie quarters of mault, whereof some they buy of the churche-stocke
-and some is given them of the Parishioners themselves, everye one
-conferring somewhat, according to his abilitie; whiche maulte being made
-into very strong beere or ale, is sette to sale, either in the church or
-some other place assigned to that purpose. Then when this is set abroche,
-well is he that can gete the soonest to it, and spend the most at it. In
-this kinde of practise they continue sixe weekes, a quarter of a yeare,
-yea, halfe a year together. That money, they say, is to repaire their
-churches and chappels with, to buye bookes for service, cuppes for the
-celebration of the Sacrament, surplesses for Sir John, and other
-necessaries. And they maintain extraordinarie charges in their Parish
-besides.”</p>
-
-<p>The account contains some obvious exaggerations. Stubbe was one
-of those of whom the Earl of Dorset might have said as he said of
-Prynne,—“My Lords, when God made all His works, He looked upon
-them and saw that they were good; this gentleman, the devil having
-put spectacles on his nose, says that all is bad.” It will not do for
-Macaulay’s New Zealander in looking through the files of old newspapers,
-discovered in the ruins of the British Museum, to accept every
-statement of the modern teetotal platform as representing an actual fact.</p>
-
-<p>Carew gives an account of the matter which probably represents the
-actual state of the case:—“Touching Church-Ales:
-these be mine <span class="xxpn" id="p268">{268}</span>
-assertions, if not my proofs:—Of things induced by our forefathers,
-some were instituted to a good use, and perverted to a bad; again, some
-were both naught in the invention and so continued in the practice.
-Now that Church Ales ought to be sorted in the better rank of these
-twaine, may be gathered from their causes and effects, which I thus
-raffe up together:—entertaining of Christian love; conforming of men’s
-behaviour to a civil conversation; compounding of controversies; appeasing
-of quarrels; raising a store, which might be converted partlie
-to good and goodlie uses, as relieving all sorts of poor people; repairing
-of bridges, amending of highways, and partlie for the Prince’s service,
-by defraying, at an instant, such rates and taxes as the magistrate
-imposeth for the countrie’s defence. Briefly, they do tend to an
-instructing of the mind by amiable conference, and an enabling of
-the bodie by commendable exercise.”</p>
-
-<p>The curious old Indenture of pre-Reformation times given below, is
-an agreement between the inhabitants of the parishes of Elvarton,
-Thurlaston, and Ambaston of the one part, and the good folk of
-Okebrook of the other part, by John, Abbot of the Dale, Ralph
-Saucheverell, Esqre., John Bradshaw, and Henry Tithell. It provides
-that—“the inhabitants, as well of the said Parish of Elvarton, as of the
-town of Okebrook, shall brew four Ales, and every ale of one quarter
-of malt, and at their own costs and charges, betwixt this and the feast
-of St. John Baptist next coming. And that every inhabitant of the
-said town of Okebrook shall be at the several Ales; and every husband
-and his wife shall pay two pence, every cottager one penny; and all
-the inhabitants of Elvarton, Thurlaston and Ambaston shall have and
-receive all the profits and advantages coming of the said Ales to the use
-and behoof of the said Church of Elvarton; and that the inhabitants
-of the said towns of Elvarton, Thurlaston, and Ambaston, shall brew
-eight Ales betwixt this and the feast of St. John the Baptist; at the
-which Ales, and every one of them, the inhabitants of Okebrook shall
-come and pay as before rehearsed: and if he be away at one Ale, to pay
-at t’oder Ale for both, or else to send his money. And the inhabitants of
-Okebrook shall carry all manner of Tymber being in the Dale wood
-now felled, that the said Prestchyrch of the said towns of Elvarton,
-Thurlaston, and Ambaston shall occupye to the use and profit of the
-said Church.” Shakspere mentions these festivals in <i>Pericles</i>:</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">It hath been sung at festivals,</span>
-<span class="spp00">On ember eves and holy ales;</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p269">{269}</span></div>
-<p class="pcontinue">and
-an old writer (1544) speaks of “keapinge of Church-Ales, in the
-whiche with leapynge, dansynge and kyssynge they maynteyne the
-profett of their Church.”</p>
-
-<p>The Church-Ale was usually celebrated in a house known as the
-Church House, which was either hired for the festival, or was a house
-to which the parishioners had a right to resort upon occasions of this
-character. By an old lease, mentioned in Worsley’s <i>History of the Isle
-of Wight</i>, a house, called the Church House held by the inhabitants of
-Whitwell, parishioners of Gatcombe, of the Lord of the Manor, was
-demised by them to John Brode on condition “that, if the Quarter shall
-need at any time to make a <i>Quarter-Ale</i> or <i>Church-Ale</i>, for the
-maintenance of the Chapel, it shall be lawful for them to have the use
-of the s<sup>d</sup> house, with all the rooms, both above and beneath, during
-their Ale.”</p>
-
-<p>Considerable sums were raised by these means. The parish books
-of Kingston-upon-Thames show that in the year 1526 the proceeds of
-the Church-Ale amounted to £7 15s., and an ancient church book of
-Great Marlow contains the entry in the year 1592, “Received of the
-torchmen, for the profytte of the Whitsun Ale £5.”</p>
-
-<p>No doubt some amount of abuse and excess occurred upon these
-occasions. Many writers of the sixteenth century stigmatise the Church-Ales
-and Wakes as the sources of “gluttonie and drunkenness,” and
-other evils; and Harrison, writing in 1587, states as of a subject for congratulation,
-that “The superfluous numbers of idle wakes, church-ales,
-helpe-ales, and soule-ales, called also dirge ales, with the heathenish
-rioting at bride-ales, are well diminished.” Some, however, were found
-to uphold them. Pierce, Bishop of Bath and Wells, writes in answer
-to an inquiry of Archbishop Laud, that “Church-Ales were when the
-people went from afternoon prayers on Sundays to their lawful sports
-and pastimes in the churchyard, or in the neighbourhood, or in some
-public-house, where they drank and made merry. By the benevolence
-of the people at these pastimes, many poor parishes have cast their bells
-and beautified their churches, and raised stock for the poor.”</p>
-
-<p>The Puritan movement was, of course, strongly opposed to all these
-festivals, and the influence of these “unco’ righteous” folk in the year
-1631, procured an order from Judge Richardson, putting an end to all
-such gatherings in the county of Somerset, whereupon, on report being
-made to the King, an order was made annulling the decree of the Judge,
-and seventy-two of the most orthodox and able of the clergy of the
-county certified that “on these days (which generally fell
-on a Sunday) <span class="xxpn" id="p270">{270}</span>
-the service of God was more solemnly performed, and the services better
-attended than on other days.”</p>
-
-<p>A previous attempt by the Justices of the Peace to suppress these
-gatherings seems to have been equally unsuccessful. In 1596, John and
-Alexander Popham, George Sydenham, and seven other Justices of
-Bridgewater, ordered that no Church-Ale, Clerk’s-Ale, or tippling should
-be suffered; but the decree seems to have been disregarded. A custom
-somewhat similar to the Church-Ale was that of “drinking ale at the
-Church stile.” Ale and in some cases food as well, were consumed on
-certain occasions on the parish account. Pepys, under date April 14,
-1661, mentions that “After dinner we all went to the Church stile (at
-Walthamstow) and there eat and drank;” and a writer in the <i>Gentleman’s
-Magazine</i> (November, 1852) states that in an old book of parish
-accounts belonging to Warrington the entry occurs: “Nov. 5, 1688.
-Paid for drink at the Church steele, 13s.”</p>
-
-<p>Clerk-Ales, or lesser Church-Ales, were held for the maintenance of
-the parish clerk. Bishop Pierce, from whom we have before quoted,
-says of them that “in poor country parishes, where the wages of the
-clerk were but small, the people thinking it unfit that the clerk should
-duly attend at the church, and not gain by his office, sent him in
-provision, and then came on Sundays and feasted with him; by which
-means he <i>sold more Ale</i>, and tasted more of the liberality of the people,
-than their quarterly payments would have amounted to in many years;
-and since these have been put down, many ministers have complained
-to me (says his Lordship) that they were afraid they should have no
-parish clerks.”</p>
-
-<p>There is a tradition well known in the Vale of the Warwickshire
-Avon, which connects the name of Shakspere with the Whitsun-Ale.
-It is related that the ale of Bidford was in Shakspere’s day famed for its
-potency, and that on the occasion of a Whitsun-Ale held at that place,
-young Shakspere and some of his friends attended it, having accepted
-a challenge of the Bidford men to try their powers as ale-drinkers. The
-Bidfordians proved the better men, and the others endeavoured to
-return to Stratford. They had not gone far, however, when, overcome
-by the fumes of the ale, they were forced to rest under a crab-tree about
-a mile out of Bidford. Here sleep overcame them, and their nap lasted
-from Saturday night till Monday morning, when they were aroused by
-a labourer who was on his way to his work. Shakspere’s companions
-urged him to return and renew the contest, but he refused. “I have
-had enough” he said; “I have drunk with <span class="xxpn" id="p271">{271}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Piping
- Pebworth, dancing Marston,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Haunted Hillbro’, hungry Grafton,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Dudging Exhall, papist Wixford,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">These
-villages are all visible from the spot where the Bard’s long sleep
-is related to have taken place, and it is said retained their characteristics
-until very recently. The Crab, long known as “Shakspere’s Crab,” was
-cut down some time in the early part of this century by the Lady of
-the Manor, who is said to have given the somewhat Irish reason for
-this act of Vandalism, that the tree was gradually being demolished by
-curiosity hunters. A new crab has recently been planted upon the spot,
-and will, it is to be hoped, hand down to future generations the memory
-of the Poet’s youthful escapade.</p>
-
-<p>The term Christian-Ale was in all probability used to denote some
-kind of Church or Whitsun Ale. The expression is to be found in a
-curious old pamphlet entitled “The Virgins’ Complaint for the loss of
-their sweethearts in the present wars .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. presented to the House
-of Commons in the names and behalfes of all Damsels both of Country
-and City, Jan. 29, 1642, by sundry Virgins of the City of London,” in
-which occurs this passage: “Since the departure of the lusty young
-gentlemen, and courtiers, and cavaliers, and the ablest prentices and
-handsome journeymen, with whom we had used to walk to Islington
-and Pimlico to eat Cakes and drink Christian-Ale on holy daies.”</p>
-
-<p>Somewhat akin to Church-Ales were the guild-feasts held by the old
-fraternities. The records of the ancient guild at Lynn Regis, in
-Norfolk (Rye’s <i>Hist. of Norfolk</i>), show that in the time of Richard II.
-the annual election of officers of the fraternity was followed by “a
-guild-feast,” in which great quantities of ale were consumed. An alderman’s
-allowance of ale, “while it lasteth,” was two gallons, a steward had one
-gallon, and the dean and clerk a pottle each. The feast was apparently
-prolonged night after night, till all the ale brewed for the occasion was
-expended, and those brethren who from any urgent cause were absent,
-had a gallon of ale reserved for them. Before the carouse commenced,
-the guild-light was lit, and the clerk read prayers. Anybody who
-“jangled” during prayer-time, or who fell asleep over his ale afterwards,
-was liable to a fine.</p>
-
-<p>A curious old custom of a similar nature to the Whitsun-Ale is
-recorded in Curll’s <i>Miscellanies</i>. It was observed at Newnton, in
-Wiltshire, and was intended to preserve the memory of
-a donation from <span class="xxpn" id="p272">{272}</span>
-King Athelstan of a common, and a house for the hayward (the hay
-keeper). “Upon every Trinity Sunday, the parishioners being come to
-the door of the hayward’s house, the door was struck thrice, in honour
-of the Holy Trinity; they then entered. The bell was rung; after
-which, silence being ordered, they read their prayers aforesaid. Then
-was a ghirland of flowers made upon a hoop, brought forth by a maid
-of the town upon her neck; and a young man (a bachelor) of another
-parish, first saluted her three times in honour of the Trinity, in respect
-of God the Father. Then she put the ghirland upon his neck and
-kissed him three times in honour of the Trinity, particularly God the
-Son. Then he put the ghirland on her neck again, and kissed her three
-times, in respect of the Holy Trinity, particularly the Holy Ghost.
-Then he took the ghirland from her neck, and, by the custom, gave her
-a penny at least. The method of giving this ghirland was from house
-to house annually, till it came round. In the evening every commoner
-sent his supper up to this house, which was called the Eale-house; and
-having before laid in there equally a stock of malt which was brewed in
-the house, they supped together; and what was left was given to the
-poor.”</p>
-
-<p>Thoroton, in his <i>Nottinghamshire</i>, gives an account of a shepherd
-who kept ale to sell <i>in</i> the Church of Thorpe. He was the sole
-inhabitant of a village depopulated by inclosure. Besides the <i>Ales</i>
-already mentioned, there were Bid-Ales, Bride-Ales, Give-Ales, Cuckoo-Ales,
-Help-Ales, Tithe-Ales, Leet-Ales, Lamb-Ales, Midsummer-Ales,
-Scot-Ales, and Weddyn-Ales. Some of these are sufficiently explained by
-their names. Bid-Ales, or Bede-Ales, and Scot-Ales have been mentioned
-in Chapter V. Bride-Ale, also called Bride-bush, Bride-wain and Bride-stake,
-was the custom of the bride selling ale on the wedding-day, for
-which she received by way of contribution any sum or present which her
-friends chose to give her. In the <i>Christen State of Matrimony</i> (1545)
-we read: “When they come home from the church, then beginneth
-excesse of eatyng and drynking, and as much is waisted in one daye as
-were sufficient for the two newe-married folkes halfe a yeare to lyve
-upon.” Modern wedding breakfasts and the presents given to the
-happy pair are, doubtless, descendants of this old custom. In Norway
-at the present day, a peasant’s wedding is celebrated with much the
-same ceremony as the old English Bride-Ale. Ale is handed round to
-the guests, and they are each expected to contribute, according to their
-ability, to form a purse to assist the bride in commencing housekeeping.</p>
-
-<p>Regulations were made in some places to
-restrain the excesses <span class="xxpn" id="p273">{273}</span>
-attending on the keeping of Bride-Ales. In the Court Rolls of Hales
-Owen is an entry:—“A payne ye made that no person or persons that
-shall brewe any weddyn ale to sell, shall not brewe aboue twelve stryke
-of mault at the most, and that the said persons so marryed shall not
-keep nor have above eyght messe of persons at hys dinner within the
-burrowe, and before hys brydall daye he shall keep no unlawful games
-in hys house, nor out of hys house on payne of 20s.”</p>
-
-<p>The old custom of Cuckoo-Ale appears to have been only of local
-observance. In Shropshire the advent of the first cuckoo was celebrated
-by general feasting amongst the working classes; as soon as his first
-note was heard, even if early in the day, the men would leave their
-work and spend the rest of the day in mirth and jollity.</p>
-
-<p>The Tithe-Ale was a repast of bread, cheese and ale, provided by the
-recipient of the tithe and enjoyed by the tithe-payers. At Cumnor, in
-Berkshire, a curious custom of this kind still obtains. On Christmas
-Day, after evening service, the parishioners who are liable to pay tithe,
-repair in a body to the vicarage and are there entertained on bread and
-cheese and ale. This is not by any means considered in the light of a
-benefaction on the part of the vicar, but is demanded as a right by the
-tithe-payers, and even the quantity of the good things which the vicar
-is to give is strictly specified. He must brew four bushels of malt in
-ale and small beer, he must provide two bushels of wheat for bread
-making, and half a hundred-weight of cheese; and whatever remains
-unconsumed is given to the poor. Leet-Ales, in some parts of England,
-denoted the dinner given at the Court Leet of a Manor to the jury
-and customary tenants. Another somewhat similar custom was known
-by the name of Drink-lean, and was a festive day kept by the tenants
-and vassals of the Lord of the Manor, or, as some say, a potation of ale
-provided by the tenants for the entertainment of the Lord or his
-steward. The origin of the term is not known; it probably has no
-connection with the effect which a lover of old ale said that beverage
-had upon him. “I always find it makes me lean,” said he. “Lean!”
-cries his friend, in amazement; “why, I always thought ale made folks
-fat.” “That may be,” was the reply, “but it makes me lean, for all
-that—against a lamp-post.”</p>
-
-<p>Another variety of the Ale was called Mary-Ale, and was a feast held
-in honour of the Virgin Mary. Foot-Ales seem to have meant not so
-much feasts as sums of money paid to purchase ale on a man’s entering
-a new situation. We still talk of a man “paying his footing.”</p>
-
-<p>A short consideration may now be devoted to the use of
-ale in former <span class="xxpn" id="p274">{274}</span>
-times in the household. It is easy to picture to oneself the English
-squire or yeoman of old times, an article of whose creed it was that</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Old
- England’s cheer is beef and beer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Soup-meagre is Gallia’s boast,”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">as
-he sat in his hard, uncompromising chair before the fire on a winter’s
-evening, with perhaps a few of his cronies gathered round him, quaffing
-their bright March beer or mellow old October as they talked and
-ruminated in turns on the crops, the market or the hunt. It is not,
-however, so easy for the degenerate sons of modern days to realise the
-mighty draughts of ale taken at breakfast, soon after daylight. Yet,
-before the introduction of tea and coffee, ale was the morning drink in
-the palace of the king as in the cottage of the labourer. In 1512 the breakfast
-of the Earl and Countess of Northumberland on a fast-day in Lent
-was “a loaf of bread, two manchetts (<i>i.e.</i>, rolls of fine wheat), a quart of
-beer, a quart of wine, two pieces of salt fish, six bawned herrings, four
-white herrings, or a dish of sprats.” On flesh days “half a chyne of
-mutton or a chyne of boiled beef” was substituted for the fish. In the
-same household, the boys, “my lord Percy and Mr. Thomas Percy,”
-were allowed “half a loaf of household bread, a manchett, a pottle (2
-quarts) of beer and three mutton bones boiled.” “My lady’s gentlewoman”
-seems to have been a rather thirsty soul; she was allowed for
-breakfast “a loaf of bread, a pottle of beer and three mutton bones
-boiled.” Even the two children in the nursery were brought up on this
-diet of beer; their breakfast consisted of “a manchett, a quart of beer,
-a dish of butter, a piece of salt fish and a dish of sprats.” The <i>liveries</i>,
-or evening meal, produced even a greater supply of malt liquor. My
-Lord and Lady then had “two manchetts, a loaf of bread, a <i>gallon</i> of
-beer and a quart of wine.”</p>
-
-<p>The allowance of food and drink made from the Court to Maids of
-Honour and other attendants, was called the <i>bouche of Court</i>, a name
-corrupted into the <i>bouge of Court</i>, and “to have bouge of Court” signified
-to have meat and drink free. In the Ordinances, of Eltham, 17
-Henry VIII., Maids of Honour of the Queen are each allowed for
-breakfast “one chet lofe, one manchet, <i>two gallons of ale</i>, dim’ pitcher of
-wine.” Lady Lucy, one of the Maids of Honour in the same reign,
-was allowed for breakfast—a chine of beef, a loaf, and a gallon of ale;
-for dinner—a piece of boiled beef, a slice of roast meat and a gallon of
-ale; and for supper—porridge, mutton, a loaf and a
-gallon of ale. <span class="xxpn" id="p275">{275}</span></p>
-
-<p>Queen Elizabeth’s breakfast seems frequently to have consisted of
-little else but ale and bread. In the household accounts for the year
-1576, are to be found certain items of her diet. One morning it is
-“Cheate and mancheate 6d., ale and beare 3½d., wine 1 pint. 7d:”
-another day it is bread as before, “ale and beare 10½d., wine, 7d;” and
-considering the prices of the times, the amount of ale represented by
-these figures must have been very considerable. Even well into last
-century ale was a common drink for breakfast among those who affected
-the manners of the old school. Applebie’s Journal, under date September
-11th, 1731, makes mention of “an old gentleman near ninety, who
-has a florid and vigorous constitution, and tells us the difference between
-the manners of the present age, and that in which he spent his youth.
-With regard to <i>eating</i> in his time, <i>Breakfast</i> consisted of good hams,
-cold sirloin, and good beer, succeeded with wholesome exercise, which
-sent them home hungry and ready for dinner.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>In an old song, <i>Advice to Bachelors; or, the Married Man’s Lamentations</i>,
-occurs this
-<span class="nowrap">verse:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">If I but for my breakfast ask</span>
-<span class="spp01">then doth she laugh and jeer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Perhaps give me a hard dry crust</span>
-<span class="spp01">and strong four shilling beer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">She tells me that is good enough</span>
-<span class="spp01">for such a rogue as me;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And if I do but seem to pout</span>
-<span class="spp01">then hey, boys, flap goes she.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Between breakfast and dinner there was generally a “nunchion”<a class="afnanc" href="#fn61" id="fnanc61">61</a>
-(noon draught), a word curious from its having been confounded with
-lunch, which signifies a large piece or hunch of bread. When uneducated
-people speak of their “nunchions,” they are unconsciously using a
-more correct form of word than more refined persons when they speak of
-“luncheon.” On any occasion when a drink between meals was needed,
-it was called a “russin,” as in the lines of the old poem, <i>The Land of
-Cockaigne</i> (thirteenth
-<span class="nowrap">century):―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">In Cockaigne is met and drink,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Without care, how, or swink,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The met is trie (choice), the drink is clere,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To none, <i>russin</i> and sopper. <span class="xxpn" id="p276">{276}</span></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">An
-evening draught in the religious houses was called a “potatio.”
-When the afternoon reading was finished, the monks proceeded “<i>ad
-potationem</i>” (<i>i.e.</i>, to take their evening draught of ale).</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc61" id="fn61">61</a>
-From <i>noon</i>, and <i>schenchen</i>, to pour out.</p></div>
-
-<p>Ale, generous ale, was the beverage with which all meals alike were
-washed down; and ale and beer were in old times considered as having
-a peculiar suitability to the stomach of an Englishman. A letter from
-John Stile to Henry VIII. (1512) on the condition of the army in
-France bears witness to this common notion. “And hyt plese your
-grace,” he writes, “the greteyst lacke of vytuals, that ys here ys of bere,
-for your subjectys had lyver for to drynk bere than wyne or sydere, for
-the hote wynys dothe burne theym, and the syder dothe caste theym
-yn dysese and sekenysys.”</p>
-
-<p>The custom of women resorting to ale-houses and taking provisions
-with them wherewith to make a common feast, seems to have been an
-early form of the modern picnic. In one of the Chester Miracle Plays
-Noah is represented as being greatly annoyed at finding his wife eating
-and drinking with her gossips in an ale-house when it is time to be
-getting into the Ark. Several women meet together, and one of them
-proposes to the others an <i>al fresco</i> entertainment of this character.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The ale is recommended in these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I know a draught of merry-go-downe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The best it is in all thys towne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But yet wold I not for my gowne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My husband it wyst, ye may me trust.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>One of the women says, “God might send me a strype or two, if
-my husband should see me here.” “Nay,” said Alice, “she that is
-afraid had better go home; I fear no man.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And ich off them will sumwhat bryng,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Gosse, pygge, or capon’s wing,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pastes off pigeons, or sum other thyng.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ech of them brought forth their dysch,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sum brought flesh and sum fysh.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Nor was the “mery-go-downe” forgotten. On going home these
-revellers represent to their husbands that they have been <i>to church</i>.</p>
-
-<p>It may be gathered from Dean Swift’s satirical advice to servants that
-ale and beer in his day formed the principal dinner beverages in polite
-society. In his directions to the butler, he tells him,
-“If any one <span class="xxpn" id="p277">{277}</span>
-desires a glass of bottled ale, first shake the bottle, to see if anything be
-in it; then taste it, to see what liquor it is, that you may not be mistaken;
-and, lastly, wipe the mouth of the bottle with the palm of your
-hand, to show your cleanliness.</p>
-
-<p>“If any one calls for small beer towards the end of the dinner, do not
-give yourself the trouble of going down to the cellar, but gather the
-droppings and leavings out of the several cups and glasses and salvers
-into one; but turn your back to the company, for fear of being
-observed. On the contrary, when any one calls for ale towards the end
-of dinner, fill the largest tankard cup topful, by which you will have
-the greatest part left to oblige your fellow-servants without the sin of
-stealing from your master.”</p>
-
-<p>In the seventeenth century there lived an interesting person named
-John Bigg, better known as the Dinton Hermit, who subsisted chiefly
-on bread and ale supplied him by his friends. He only begged one
-thing—leather—with which he patched his shoes in innumerable places.
-A portrait of him is to be seen in Lipscombe’s <i>History of Buckinghamshire</i>.
-Two leather bottles hang at his girdle, the one for ale, the other
-for small beer.</p>
-
-<p>Many records are in existence illustrative of the custom of distributing
-ale for charitable purposes. The following instances are
-selected from a collection of <i>Old English Customs and various Bequests
-and Charities</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“At Piddle Hinton, Dorsetshire. An ancient custom is for the Rector
-to give away, on Old Christmas Day, annually, a pound of bread, a pint
-of ale, and a mince pie to every poor person in the parish. This distribution
-is regularly made by the Rector to upwards of 300 persons.”</p>
-
-<p>“At Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire. Before the enclosure, the
-tenant of the Abbey Farm in this parish, during those years in which
-the open field land was under tillage, used to give a slice of cake and a
-glass of ale to all parishioners who applied for it.”</p>
-
-<p>“At Giggleswick, Yorkshire. By the will of William Clapham (1603)
-4s. 4d. was left towards a potation for the poor scholars of the Freeschool
-there on St. George’s Day; and the custom was formerly to give figs,
-bread, and ale.”</p>
-
-<p>“At Edgcott, Buckinghamshire. Robert Marcham, Esq., pays the
-overseers £3 a year, a rent charge upon an acre of land.” This was
-formerly distributed to the tenants in the shape of two cakes each, and
-as much beer as they could drink at the time.</p>
-
-<p>“At St. Giles’, Norwich. By the will of John
-Ballestin, 1584, the <span class="xxpn" id="p278">{278}</span>
-rent from three tenements was to be distributed to the poor in the
-following manner: viz., that in the week before Christmas, the week
-before Michaelmas, and the week after Easter, in the Church of St.
-Giles, the Minister should request the poor people, all that should
-receive or have need of alms, to come to Church, and pray for the
-preservation of the Prince, &amp;c.; that the poor should place themselves
-four and four together, all that should be above the age of eleven years,
-and that every four of them should have set before them a twopenny
-wheat loaf, a gallon of best beer, and four pounds of beef and broth.”</p>
-
-<p>“At Prince’s Risborough, Buckinghamshire. Up to 1813, a Bull and
-a boar, a sack of Wheat, and a sack of Malt were given away to the
-poor by the Lord of the Manor, every Christmas morning about six
-o’clock.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>In many houses small beer was always kept to dispense in charity,
-Ben Jonson, in <i>The Alchemist</i>, describes a mean, stingy person
-<span class="nowrap">as―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp09">.&#xa0;.&#xa0;one who could keep</span>
-<span class="spp00">The buttery-hatch still locked,
- and save the chippings,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sell the <i>dole</i> beer to aqua vitæ men.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Visitors at Leicester’s Hospital, Warwick, may have noticed a huge
-copper beer-tankard reposing on a shelf. This great cup holds six
-quarts, and is filled with strong ale thrice a year on <i>gaudy</i> days, and
-passed round among the old brethren, pensioners of the house.</p>
-
-<p>In the fourteenth century there was a custom for one of the fishermen
-engaged upon the river Thames to present a salmon to the Abbot
-of Westminster once a year. The fisherman who bore the tribute had
-that day a right to sit at the prior’s table, and might demand bread and
-ale of the cellarer; the cellarer on his part might take from the fish’s
-tail as much as he could with “four fingers and his thumb erect.”</p>
-
-<p>Superstitious observances were rife in former times. The Roman
-augurs observed the flight of birds, and scrutinised the palpitating vitals
-of fresh slain victims, thinking thereby to steal a march upon the future.
-Our ancestors would draw omens from the barking of dogs, the cries of
-wild fowl, or from the manner in which beer, accidentally spilt from the
-cup, distributed itself upon the floor. Melton, in his <i>Astrolagaster</i>,
-observes that “if the beere fall next a man it is a signe of good luck.”</p>
-
-<p>The customs and ceremonies attending the actual consumption of
-ale and other liquors now require some few words. First in order
-stands the old custom of pledging, which was in
-origin distinct from <span class="xxpn" id="p279">{279}</span>
-toasting or health-drinking. William of Malmesbury says that the
-treacherous murder of King Edward while drinking a horn of wine
-presented to him by his stepmother Elfrida, gave rise to the old custom
-of pledging. A person before drinking would ask one who sat next to
-him whether he would <i>pledge</i> him. The other thereupon drew his
-sword and held it over the drinker as a <i>pledge</i> to him that no secret foe
-should strike him in an unguarded moment while he drained the bowl.
-Others have referred the origin of the custom to the treachery of the
-Danes, who would take advantage of the attitude of a man when
-drinking a horn of ale or mead, to stab him unawares. Be the origin
-what it may, the custom prevailed for many centuries, and was one of
-the things noted by that lively and inquisitive French physician, Stephen
-Perlin, who visited England about the middle of the sixteenth century.
-Amongst many other entertaining observations made by him is the
-following:—“The English, one with the other, are joyous, and are very
-fond of music; they are also great drinkers, .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. and they will say
-to you usually at table, ‘Goude chere,’ and they will also say to you
-more than one hundred times, ‘Drind oui,’ and you will reply to them
-in their language, “I plaigui’ (‘I pledge you’).”</p>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p279.png" width="456" height="331" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Health-Drinking.</div></div>
-
-<p>The custom of health-drinking seems to have been at one time or
-another common to all European nations. The Romans had their
-<i>commissationes</i>, or drinking bouts, and their “<i>bene te, bene tibi</i>.” Our own
-immediate ancestors the Saxons, as we have already seen, observed the
-custom of health-drinking with their “Wacht heil”
-and “Drinc heil.” <span class="xxpn" id="p280">{280}</span>
-The picture of an Anglo-Saxon dinner-party is taken from a MS.,
-supposed to be of the tenth century (Tiberius, c. vi., fol. 5, v.). The
-peculiar weapons borne by the attendants are, no doubt, spits from
-which the guests are carving meat. The preceding illustration occurs
-in Alfric’s version of Genesis (MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. IV., fol. 36, v.)
-and represents Abraham’s feast at the birth of his child.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p280.png" width="594" height="341" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Anglo-Saxons Feasting and
- Health-Drinking.</div></div>
-
-<p>The Danes, also, were great health-drinkers. It is recorded that
-previous to the invasion of England by these ravaging pirates of the
-North, in the reign of Sweyne, that monarch gave a great banquet on his
-accession to the throne. First, the ale-horns were filled and emptied in
-memory of the dead King Harold; the next draught was in honour of
-Christ, and the third of St. Michael the Archangel. A writer of the
-year 1623 thus describes the ceremonies of health-drinking as practised
-at that time:—“He that begins the health first uncovering his head,
-he takes a full cup in his hand, and setting his countenance with a
-grave aspect, he craves for audience; silence being once obtained, he
-begins to breathe out the name, peradventure, of some honourable
-personage, whose health, is drunk to, and he that pledges must likewise
-off with his cap, kiss his fingers, and bow himself in sign of a reverent
-acceptance. When the leader sees his follower thus prepared, he sups
-up his broth, turns the bottom of the cup upward, and, in ostentation
-of his dexterity, gives the cup a fillip to make it cry <i>twango</i>. And
-thus the first scene is acted. The cup being newly replenished to the
-breadth of a hair, he that is the pledger must now begin
-his part; and <span class="xxpn" id="p281">{281}</span>
-thus it goes round throughout the whole company.” To prove that
-each person had drunk off his measure, he had to turn the glass over
-his thumb, and if so much liquor remained as to make more than a
-drop which would stand on the nail of his thumb without running
-off, he had to drink off another bumper. This latter practice went
-by the name of <i>supernaculm</i>, and is mentioned in an old ballad,
-<i>The Winchester</i> <span class="nowrap"><i>Wedding</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then Phillip began her health,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And turn’d a beer-glass o’er his thumb,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Jenkin was reckoned for drinking,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The best in Christendom.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The author of <i>Memoires d’Angleterre</i> (1698) mentions the absolute
-universality of this practice of health-drinking amongst the
-English. “To drink at table,” he writes, “without drinking to the
-health of some one in especial, would be considered drinking on the
-sly, and as an act of incivility. There are in this proceeding two
-principal and singular grimaces, which are universally observed.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.”
-The person whose health is drunk must remain as inactive as a statue
-while the drinker drinks, after which the second grimace is “to make
-him an <i>inclinabo</i>, at the risk of dipping his periwig in the gravy.
-.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.
-I confess that when a foreigner first sees these manners he
-thinks them laughable.” And yet one would have thought that a
-Frenchman’s familiarity with toasting would have rendered the proceeding
-not so singular an one after all, for that custom was carried to an
-extreme in his own nation, among the choice spirits of which it was not
-unusual to give a toast which necessitated the drinking of a glass to
-each letter of a mistress’s name, as illustrated in the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Six fois je m’en vas boire au beau nom de Cloris,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cloris, le seul desire de ma chaste pensée.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Space forbids that we should go very fully into all these old drinking
-customs, though some of them are fantastic and curious enough. One
-or two more, however, may be mentioned. In Elizabethan times it was
-customary for hard drinkers to put some inflammable substance on the
-surface of their liquor, and so to swallow the draught and the blazing
-fragment at a gulp. This was called flap-dragoning, and the fiery
-morsel was known as a flap-dragon. Shakspere has many allusions to
-this practice. Falstaff says of Prince Hal,
-that he “drinks off <span class="xxpn" id="p282">{282}</span>
-candle-ends for flap-dragons.” And in <i>Winter’s Tale</i> an instance of the verb
-occurs in the passage, “But to make an end of the ship; to see how the
-sea flap-dragoned it.” The captain in <i>Rowley’s Match at Midnight</i>
-asserts that his corporal “was lately choked at Delf by swallowing a
-flap-dragon.”</p>
-
-<p>The term hob-nob as denoting pot-companionship, has been said by
-some to be a corruption of “Habbe or nabbe?” <i>i.e.</i>, Will you have or not
-have (a drink)? Others suggest a more whimsical derivation. It is said
-that the Maids of Honour of the Tudor Court, who we have seen were
-ale-ladies, if they cannot be called ale-knights, frequently liked their
-beer warm, and had it placed upon the hob of the grate “to take the
-chill off.” It was therefore natural for their attendants to ask the
-question, “From the hob or not from the hob?” which in process of
-time became “Hob or nob?”</p>
-
-<p>The above remarks on drinking customs lead to the consideration of
-the extravagant drinking and eating of days gone by. Our ancestors,
-both Saxon and Dane, were tremendous drinkers, and their sole
-amusement after the labours of the day seems to have been drinking down
-mighty draughts of ale and mead, and getting themselves under the
-table as quickly as possible. An ancient anecdote is told of a Saxon
-bishop, who invited a Dane to his house for the purpose of making him
-drunk. After dinner “the tables were taken away, and they passed the
-rest of the day until evening in drinking.” The cupbearer manages
-matters in such a manner that the Dane’s turn comes round much
-oftener than that of the others, as, indeed, “the bishop had directed
-him,” and the desired end is at last attained. Whether Iago was
-right when he gave to the English the palm in drinking over “your
-Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander,” and whether
-one taught the other his own particular drinking vices, we cannot
-stop now to inquire. The English were always famed for their
-love of strong ale, and passing over the intervening centuries and
-coming down to the Tudor period, many instances could be quoted
-from contemporary writers showing the proneness of our ancestors
-to drench deep thought in tankards of the nappy nut-brown ale.
-Stubbe, in his <i>Anatomie of Abuses</i> (1585), says that the ale-houses
-in London were crowded from morning to night with inveterate
-drunkards, whose only care was how to get as much heady ale into
-their carcases as possible. Ale, strong ale, was all the cry; one who
-could not or would not quaff of the strongest was
-counted a milksop,</p>
-
-<div class="dfullpgimg">
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p283a.png" width="800" height="279"
- alt="The Ale-Wives’ Invitation to Married Men and
- Bachelors: &#x7c;
- Shewing &#x7c;
- How a good fellow is ſlighted when he is brought to
- Poverty." />
-<div class="dcaption">
-
- <div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
- <span class="spp00">Therefore take my Counſel and Ale-wives don’t truſt.</span>
- <span class="spp00">For when you have waſted and ſpent all you have</span>
- <span class="spp00">Then out of doors ſhe will you headlong thruſt,</span>
- <span class="spp00">Calling you raſcal and ſhirking Knave,</span>
- <span class="spp00">But ſo long as you have money, come early or late</span>
- <span class="spp00">You ſhall have her command, or elſe
-   her maid Kate.</span></div>
- <span class="poemcite">To a new tune, or <i>Digbys
-   Farewell.</i></span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p283b.png" width="504" height="440" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dcaption">
-<p>A Ballad ſuppoſed to be ſung by a young man who, having ſpent
-his money in Ale-houſes, offers ſome advice on the ſubject.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>And
- thus all young men, you plainly may ſee</span>
-<span class="spp00">This ſong it will learn you good
- huſbands to be.”</span></div>
-
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Collec. Eng.
- Ballads.</i></span></div>
-</div></div><!--dctr01--></div><!--dfullpgimg-->
-
-<p class="pcontinue"><span class="xxpn" id="p284">{284}</span>
-while he who could drink longest of it without (or rather before),
-getting tipsy, was the king of the company. It must have been of
-such an one that Herrick
-<span class="nowrap">wrote―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Tap, better known than trusted, as we hear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sold his old mother’s spectacles for beer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And not unlikely, rather too than fail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He’ll sell her eyes and nose for beer and ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">The love for the strong and the
-contempt for the small is illustrated in the well-known
-lines of the old <span class="nowrap">song:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">He who drinks small beer, goes to bed sober,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Falls as the leaves do fall, that fall in October;</span>
-<span class="spp00">He who drinks strong ale, goes to bed mellow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Lives as he ought to live, and dies a jolly fellow.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Such
-was the love of strong ale in the sixteenth century that a term was
-actually invented to describe madness produced by excessive ale-drinking.
-A writer in the year 1598 affords us an instance of the word in question,
-when he says that “to arrest a man that hath no likeness to a horse is
-flat lunasie or <i>alecie</i>.” Harrison, whom we have frequently had occasion
-to quote, in speaking of the heavy ale-drinking of his days, though the
-ale was then “more thick and fulsome” than the beer, says, “Certes I
-know some ale-knights so much addicted thereunto, that they will not
-cease from morow until even to visit the same, clensing house after
-house, till they either fall quite under the boord, or else, not daring to
-stirre from their stooles, sit still pinking with their narrow eies as halfe
-sleeping, till the fume of their adversarie be digested that he may go to
-it afresh.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Herrick has left us an epigram upon a person of the class described
-by
-<span class="nowrap">Harrison:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Spunge makes his boast that he’s the onely man,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Can hold of beere and ale an ocean;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is this his glory? then his triumph’s poore;</span>
-<span class="spp00">I know the Tunne of Hidleberge holds more.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Profuseness in drinking was accompanied with enormous gluttony
-in eating. At one of the feasts of the Court of King James
-<span class="nowrap">I.―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">They served up venison, salmon, and wild boars,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores. <span class="xxpn" id="p285">{285}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Muttons and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Herons, and bitterns, peacocks, swan, and bustard.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeon, and in fine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Plum puddings, pancakes, apple pie and custard.</span>
-<span class="spp00">And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With mead, and <i>Ale</i>, and cider of our own.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>This, however, was only a mild repetition of some of the prodigious
-feasts of former days. On the enthronement of George Nevile as archbishop
-of York, in the reign of Edward IV., the following was the
-list of eatables which furnished the tables:—104 oxen, 6 wild bulls,
-1,000 sheep, 304 calves, 304 swine, 400 swans, 2,000 geese, 1,000 capons,
-2,000 pigs, many thousand of various small birds such as quail, plovers,
-&amp;c., 4,000 cold venison pasties, 500 stags, 608 pike and bream, 12
-porpoises and seals, and many other delicacies. These solids were
-washed down with 300 tuns of ale and 100 tuns of wine and “one pynt
-of hypocrass.”</p>
-
-<p>Nor were the clergy behind the laity in their devotion to good living.
-In Saxon times the frequent directions to the monks and friars to abstain
-from excess in eating and drinking, from haunting ale-houses and from
-acting the ale-scop or gleeman at such places, all tell their own tale.
-The frequency with which from that period the intemperance of the
-clergy called forth the rebukes of their superiors and the satire of the
-writers of the day, show that matters did not mend much as mediæval
-times advanced. Friar Tuck, as depicted in <i>Ivanhoe</i>, is probably a type
-of many a jolly monk of his day. For his drink is assigned “a but of
-sack, a rumlet of malvoisie, and three hogsheads of ale of the first strike.
-And if,” continues the King, “that will not quench thy thirst, thou
-must come to court, and be acquainted with my butler.” Chaucer
-describes his monk as a free liver and a jolly good fellow, whose sentiments
-with regard to the duties of his order are shown in the
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The reule of seynt Maure or of seint Beneyt,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bycause that it was old and somdel streyt,</span>
-<span class="spp00">This ilke monk let olde things pace,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And held after the newe world the space.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Friar, too, who “knew the taverns well in every town,” may be
-taken as a true portrait of a prominent figure of the times. It is recorded
-that the Abbey of Aberbrothwick
-expended annually 9,000 <span class="xxpn" id="p286">{286}</span>
-bushels of malt in ale-brewing, and a popular satire, perpetuated by Sir
-Walter Scott on the monks of Melrose, declares
-<span class="nowrap">that―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The monks of Melrose made fat kail</span>
-<span class="spp01">On Fridays when they fasted;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And neither wanted beef nor ale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">So long as their neighbours’ lasted.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The names of some of the drinks in vogue are exceedingly suggestive;
-we read of Bishop, Cardinal, Lawn Sleeves, Pope, and others of
-a similar character.</p>
-
-<p>The Glutton-masses of the secular clergy, as described by Henry in
-his <i>History of England</i>, “were celebrated five times a year, in honour
-of the Virgin Mary, in this manner. Early in the morning the people
-of the parish assembled in the church, loaded with ample stores of meats
-and drinks of all kinds. As soon as mass ended, the feast began, in
-which the clergy and laity engaged with equal ardour. The church
-was turned into a tavern, and became a scene of excessive riot and
-intemperance. The priests and people of different parishes entered into
-formal contests, which of them should have the greatest glutton mass,
-<i>i.e.</i>, which of them should devour the greatest quantity of meat and
-drink in honour of the Holy Virgin.”</p>
-
-<p>The Tudor period seems to have produced but little amendment in
-this respect. Satirists of the day make constant allusion to the fondness
-of ecclesiastics, both exalted and humble, for strong drink and every
-kind of sensual indulgence. Skelton, in <i>Colin Clout</i>, speaking of the
-angry disputes of churchmen when under the influence of drink,
-<span class="nowrap">says:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Such logic men will chop,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And in their fury hop</span>
-<span class="spp00">When the good ale-sop</span>
-<span class="spp00">Doth dance in their foretop.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In the old Comedy of <i>Gammer Gurton’s Needle</i>, already referred to,
-the parson is wanted, and the old Gammer gives the boy the following
-directions for finding
-<span class="nowrap">him:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Hence swithe to Doctor Rat, hye thee that thou were gone,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And pray him come speke with me, cham not well at ease,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Shall find him at his chamber, or els at Mother Bees,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Els seek him at <i>Hobfilcher’s</i> shop; for as charde it reported</span>
-<span class="spp00">There <i>is the best Ale in the Town, and now is most resorted</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p287">{287}</span></div>
-
-<p>The boy goes forth to seek him as he is ordered; and when he
-returns, Gammer thus
-<span class="nowrap">inquires:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemfarlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00"><i>Gammer</i>: “Where did’st thou finde him,
- Boy? was he not wher I told thee?”</span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>Cock</i>: “Yes, yes, even at <i>Hobfilcher’s</i> house, by him that bought and sold me:</span>
-<span class="spp04">A <i>cup of ale</i> had in his hand, and a <i>crab</i> lay in the fier&#xa0;.&#xa0;.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Drunkenness amongst the clergy was probably at this period too
-common for much mention of it to be made in the various records of
-ecclesiastical offences. An occasional prosecution, however, seems to
-have been instituted before the Ordinary. One such may be found in
-the Records of the Ecclesiastical Court of Chester, 1575, where the
-Vicar of Whalley is charged with being “a common dronker and ale-knight.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The time has happily gone by when a Swift could write of</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Three
- or four parsons full of October,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Three or four squires between drunk and sober,”</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">or
-a Pope of “a parson much bemused with beer,” or when the
-following old Ballad could be supposed to give a true picture of the
-habits of village
-<span class="nowrap">clergymen:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth dwthem34">
-<div class="padtopb">THE PARSON.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemfarlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A parson who had the remarkable foible</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of minding the bottle much more than the Bible,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was deemed by his neighbours to be less perplex’d</span>
-<span class="spp00">In handling a tankard than handling a text.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Perch’d up in his pulpit, one Sunday, he cry’d,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Make
- patience, my dearly beloved, your guide,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And in your distresses, your troubles, your crosses,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Remember the patience of Job in his losses.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The parson had got a stout cask of beer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By way of a present—no matter from <span class="nowrap">where—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Suffice it to know, it was toothsome and good,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And he lov’d it as well as he did his own blood. <span class="xxpn" id="p288">{288}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">While he the church service in haste rambled o’er,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The hogs found a way thro’ his old cellar door,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And by the strong scent to the beer barrel led</span>
-<span class="spp00">Had knock’d out the spiggot or cock from its head.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Out spurted the liquor abroad on the ground,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The unbidden guests quaffed it merrily round,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor from their diversion and merriment ceas’d</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till ev’ry hog there was as drunk as a beast.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And now the grave lecture and prayers at an end,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He brings along with him a neighbouring friend,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To be a partaker of Sunday’s good cheer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And taste the delightful October brew’d beer.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The dinner was ready, the things were laid snug,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Here,
- wife,” says the parson, “go fetch us a mug,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">But a mug of what?—he had scarce time to tell her,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When, “yonder,” says she, “are the hogs in the cellar.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To be sure they got in when we’re at prayers,”</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>To
- be sure you’re a fool,” said he, “get you down stairs,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And bring what I bid you, and see what’s the matter.</span>
-<span class="spp00">For now I myself hear a grunting and clatter.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">She went, and returned with sorrowful face,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In suitable phrases related the case,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He rav’d like a madman about in the room,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And then beat his wife and the hogs with the broom.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Lord,
- husband,” said she, “what a coil you keep here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">About a poor beggarly barrel of beer.</span>
-<span class="spp00">You should, ‘<i>in your troubles, mischances, and crosses,</i></span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>Remember the patience of Job in his losses</i>.’”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>A
- plague upon Job,” cried the priest in his rage,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>That
- beer, I dare say, was near ten years of age;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But you’re a poor ignorant jade like <i>his</i> wife;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For Job never had such a cask in his life.”</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>A curious tale is related of one Mr. Dod, who had a country living
-near Cambridge. Being impressed by the intemperance then prevalent
-in the University, he on one occasion preached a very vigorous condemnatory
-sermon on the vice of drunkenness. Soon after,
-several of the <span class="xxpn" id="p289">{289}</span>
-undergraduates, who were disporting themselves at some little distance
-from the town, perceived Mr. Dod jogging along towards them on his
-old horse. Annoyed at the sermon on drinking, which had probably
-seemed to them as directed specially against themselves, the undergraduates
-rapidly consulted together, and determined in revenge to make
-the old man preach a sermon from a text of their own choosing. At
-first he declined, but his persecutors were inexorable, and he was forced
-to submit with the best grace he could. “Well, gentlemen,” he said,
-“as you are thus urgent for my compliance, pray what is the subject I
-am to handle?” They answered, “Sir, the word <i>malt</i>; and, for want
-of a better, here, Sir, is your pulpit,” pointing to the stump of a hollow
-tree that stood by. Whereupon the venerable man mounted the
-rostrum, and spoke as
-<span class="nowrap">follows:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="section">
-<p id="p289-pa">“Beloved,</p>
-
-<p id="p289-pb">“I am a little man, come at a short warning,—to deliver a
-brief discourse,—upon a small subject,—to a thin congregation, and from
-an unworthly pulpit.</p>
-
-<p id="p289-pc">“Beloved, my text
-<span class="nowrap">is―</span></p>
-
-<div>“M&#xa0;A&#xa0;L&#xa0;T,</div>
-
-<p>“Which cannot be divided into words, it being but one; nor into
-syllables, it being but one: therefore, of necessity, I must reduce it into
-letters, which I find to be these,</p>
-
-<div>“M—A—L—T.</div>
-
-<p>“M—my beloved, is Moral. A—is Allegorical. L—is Literal,
-T—is Theological.</p>
-
-<p>“The moral is set forth to teach you drunkards good manners,
-therefore: M—my Masters. A—All of you. L—Listen. T—to my
-Text.</p>
-
-<p>“The allegorical is when one thing is spoken, and
-another is intended: the thing expressed is <span
-class="smmaj">MALT</span>; the thing signified is the oil
-of Malt, which you Bacchanals make: M—your Meat. A—your
-Apparel. L—your liberty. T—your Text.</p>
-
-<p>“The Literal is according to the letter: M—Much. A—Ale.
-L—Little. T—Thrift.</p>
-
-<p>“The Theological is according to the effects it produces, which I
-find to consist of two kinds. The first respects this life, the second,
-that which is to come.</p>
-
-<p>“The effects it produces in this world are in some: M—Murder.
-A—Adultery. L—Licentious Lives. T—Treason. <span class="xxpn" id="p290">{290}</span></p>
-
-<p>“The effects consequent in the world to come are: M—Misery.
-A—Anguish. L—Lamentation. T—Torment.</p>
-
-<p>“Thus, sirs, having briefly opened and explained my short text, give
-me leave to make a little use and improvement of the foregoing. First,
-by way of exhortation: M—My Masters. A—All of you. L—Look
-for. T—Torment.</p>
-
-<p>“Now to wind up the whole and draw to a close, take with you
-the characteristics of a drunkard. A drunkard is the annoyance of
-modesty, the spoil of civility, his own shame, his children’s curse,
-his neighbour’s scoff, the alehouse man’s benefactor, the devil’s
-drudge, a walking swill-bowl, the picture of a beast, and monster
-of a man.”</p></div><!--section-->
-
-<p>There was a curious custom in vogue at the beginning of the seventeenth
-century known as “muggling.” It was thus described by Young,
-in <i>England’s Bane</i>: “I have seen a company amongst the very woods
-and forests drinking for a muggle. Sixe determined to try their
-strengths who could drinke most glasses for the muggle. The first
-drinkes a glasse of a pint, the second two, the next three, and so every
-one multiplieth till the last taketh sixe. Then the first beginneth
-againe and taketh seven, and in this manner they drinke thrice a peece
-round, every man taking a glasse more than his fellow, so that he that
-dranke least, which was the first, dranke one and twenty pints, and the
-sixth man thirty-six.” So great was the ale-drinking at this time, that
-the headache brought on by it was known by the common expression,
-“the ale passion,” and one in liquor was said to have been “kicked by
-the brewer’s horse.”</p>
-
-<p>One or two instances, only, of the drinking songs popular in olden
-times can be given here. The <i>Merry Fellows</i>, a song of the Restoration,
-well illustrates the old idea that merriness must be accompanied
-with potations “pottle <span class="nowrap">deep”:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now, since we’re met, let’s merry, merry be,</span>
-<span class="spp01">In spite of all our foes;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And he that will not merry be,</span>
-<span class="spp01">We’ll pull him by the nose.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<p class="pfirst"><i>Chorus.</i></p>
-<span class="spp00">Let him be merry, merry there,</span>
-<span class="spp01">While we’re all merry, merry here;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For who can know where he shall go,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To be merry another year.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p291">{291}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">He that will not merry, merry be,</span>
-<span class="spp01">With a generous bowl and a toast,</span>
-<span class="spp00">May he in Bridewell be shut up,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And fast bound to a post.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Let him, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">He that will not merry, merry be,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And take his glass in course,</span>
-<span class="spp00">May he be obliged to drink small beer,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Ne’er a penny in his purse.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Let him, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">He that will not merry, merry be</span>
-<span class="spp01">With a company of jolly boys,</span>
-<span class="spp00">May he be plagued with a scolding wife</span>
-<span class="spp01">To confound him with her noise.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Let him, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">He that will not merry, merry be,</span>
-<span class="spp01">With his sweetheart by his side,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let him be laid in the cold church-yard</span>
-<span class="spp01">With a head-stone for his bride.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Let him, &amp;c.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Cobblers have already been mentioned as devotees of strong malt
-drinks, and many a cozier’s catch celebrates this propensity. Here is
-<span class="nowrap">one:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come, sit we here by the fire-side,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And roundly drink we here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till that we see our cheeks ale-dyed,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And noses tanned with beer.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Shoemakers and cobblers used to call a red-herring a pheasant, and
-in the same inflated style term half a pint of beer half a gallon, and a
-pint of beer a gallon, much after the manner of Caleb Balderstone in
-<i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Tinkers, too, swore by Ceres and not by Bacchus, as Herrick shows
-in his <i>Tinker’s Song</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Along, come along,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let’s meet in a throng</span>
-<span class="spp01">Here of tinkers; <span class="xxpn" id="p292">{292}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And quaff up a bowl,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As big as a cowl,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To beer-drinkers.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The pole of the hop</span>
-<span class="spp00">Place in the ale shop,</span>
-<span class="spp01">To bethwack us,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If ever we think</span>
-<span class="spp00">So much as to drink</span>
-<span class="spp01">Unto Bacchus.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Who frolic will be</span>
-<span class="spp00">For little cost, he</span>
-<span class="spp01">Must not vary</span>
-<span class="spp00">From beer-broth at all</span>
-<span class="spp00">So much as to call</span>
-<span class="spp01">For canary.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>Last century may be said to have brought the vice of heavy drinking
-to its highest pitch. Statesmen, Judges, dignitaries of the Church—all
-joined in the riotous living of the time. The usual allowance for a
-<i>moderate</i> man at dinner seems to have been two bottles of port. Men
-were known as two-bottle men, three and four-bottle men, and even in
-some instances <i>six-bottle men</i>. Lord Eldon, who was himself inclined
-to get a little merry after dinner, relates an amusing story in his
-<i>Anecdote Book</i>, which is illustrative of the habits of the day. He tells
-how Jemmy Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s Biographer, while on assize, so
-exceeded the bounds of moderation one evening, that he was found by
-his friends lying on the pavement very drunk. His comrades, of whom
-Lord Eldon (then Mr. Scott) was one, subscribed a guinea amongst
-them, and sent Boswell a bogus brief, instructing him to move the
-Court the next day for a writ of <i>Quare adhæsit pavimento</i>. Much to
-the astonishment of the learned Judge who presided, Mr. Boswell
-actually made the application in due course. The whole court was
-convulsed with laughter, and the unfortunate counsel, turning this way
-and that in his perplexity, knew not what to make of it. At last a
-learned friend came to his assistance. “My lord,” he said, “Mr.
-Boswell <i>adhæsit pavimento</i> last night; there was no moving him for
-some time. At length he was carried to bed, and has been dreaming of
-what happened to himself.” Where such manners
-prevailed in the <span class="xxpn" id="p293">{293}</span>
-upper ranks of life, the lower orders were not likely to be more sober.
-As a matter of fact, gin ran riot amongst the working classes in the
-great centres of population, spreading corruption of morals and ruin of
-health on every side.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>One more instance of a huge drinker may be given: One Jedediah
-Buxton was curious enough in his drinking habits to calculate the
-number of pints of ale or strong beer that he had drunk free of cost to
-himself since he was twelve years of age, and the names of the gentlemen
-at whose houses he had consumed them. The list began with the
-Duke of Kingston, 2,130 pints; Duke of Norfolk, 266 pints; Duke of
-Leeds, 232, and so on through a long list, of which it need only be said
-the total amounted to 5,116 pints or <i>winds</i>, as he termed them, because,
-he said, he never took more than one wind, or breath, to a pint and two
-to a quart. Surely this man deserves to rank among the curiosities of
-the subject. Happily times have changed and drunkenness, we may
-hope, will soon cease to be counted a national vice. Bearing in mind
-the excesses to which drinking was carried in the last century, it
-cannot be denied that much progress has been made in the direction
-of moderation; and that the habits of the whole people—slow and
-difficult as such habits are to change—have undergone a very marked
-improvement. Ere the next century has had time to grow from
-youth to old age, it may be impossible to find in any rank of the
-population a man who could say of an evening’s amusement like the
-old Scotch Shepherd, “It was a grand treat, for before the end o’t
-there was na ane of us able to bite his ain thoomb!”</p>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p293.png" width="144" height="52" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p294a.png" width="144" height="54" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p294"><span
- class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XI.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr">
- <div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">’Tis Ale, immortal Ale I sing!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bid all the Muses throng!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bid them awake each slumbering string,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till the loud chords responsive ring</span>
-<span class="spp01">To swell the lofty song!</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Brasenose College
- Shrovetide Poem.</i></span>
-</div></div>
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc">
- <div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">These venerable ancient song inditers</span>
-<span class="spp00">Soar’d many a pitch above our modern writers;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our numbers may be more refin’d than those,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But what we’ve gained in verse we’ve lost in prose;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Their words no shuffling double meaning knew,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Their speech was homely, but their
- hearts were true.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Rowe.</i></span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>OLD BALLADS, SONGS AND VERSES RELATING TO
-ALE AND BEER.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p294b.png"
-width="225" height="227" alt="L" /></span>ONG
-ago, in the merry days when the chil­ling in­flu­ence of
-Pu­ri­tan­ism had not yet put an end to the ma­jor­ity of our
-sports and pas­times, and when any­one who had ven­tured
-to speak of a May-pole as a “Stinckyng Idoll” would
-most likely have been ducked in the nearest pond as
-a proper reward for his calumny, the lower orders of
-England were far more musical than at present; and there
-existed a great demand for bal­lads to be sung at vil­lage
-merry-makings, ale-house gath­er­ings, and dur­ing the
-long win­ter even­ings which would have been dull indeed
-without the cheer­ing in­flu­ence of song. <span class="xxpn"
-id="p295">{295}</span></p>
-
-<p>Of the quaint old ballads, written mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth
-centuries, a splendid collection was made by the Earl of Oxford
-(born in 1661), to whom we are also indebted for the Harleian MSS.,
-now in the British Museum. These ballads are known as the <i>Roxburghe
-Collection</i>, and a selection of them is given in this chapter,
-together with facsimile reproductions of the curious woodcuts with
-which the originals are adorned.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn62" id="fnanc62">62</a></p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc62" id="fn62">62</a>
-Most of the Roxburghe Ballads have been reprinted by the Ballad
-Society, and for the very scanty information we have been able to
-gather concerning them we are in a great measure indebted to the
-Editors of these reprints. Our illustrations have been taken in every
-case from the original ballads, and are, we believe, the only exact
-facsimile reproductions in existence.</p></div>
-
-<p>The most important ballad connected with the subject of ale and
-beer is <i>Sir John Barley-corne</i>, of which there are many versions. It
-seems very probable that the original is not in existence, for at a very
-early date songs bearing the same name, and containing in effect the
-same words, were known both in the North of England and in the West
-Country. In later editions of Sir John Barley-corne old printers seem
-to have frequently varied the text, and in recent times Burns has recast
-the verses of the old ballad.</p>
-
-<p>The version given below is the oldest in the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i>, and
-must have been written at some time previous to the reign of James I.
-To anyone who has perused these pages so far, the pretty allegory
-contained in the ballad will not require explanation, but it may be well
-to point out that Sir John is the grain of barley which the farmer, the
-maltster, the miller, and the brewer do their best to destroy. However,
-after having forced Sir John to go through the various processes
-of agriculture, malting, and brewing, a friend, Thomas Good-ale, comes
-to the poor fellow’s assistance with mickle might, and takes “their
-tongues away, their legs or else their sight.” The illustration is taken
-from a later version.</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<div class="padtopb">SIR JOHN BARLEY-CORNE.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A pleasant new Ballad to sing both even and morne</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of the bloody Murther of Sir John Barley-corne.</span>
-</div></div>
-<div>To the tune of <i>Shall I lye beyond thee</i>.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p296">{296}</span></div>
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p296.png" width="356" height="365" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">As I went through the North countrey,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I heard a merry greeting,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A pleasant toy and full of joy,</span>
-<span class="spp01">two noblemen were meeting.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And as they walkèd for to sport,</span>
-<span class="spp01">upon a summer’s day,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then with another nobleman,</span>
-<span class="spp01">they went to make a fray.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Whose name was Sir John Barley-corne;</span>
-<span class="spp01">he dwelt down in a dale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who had a kinsman dwelt him nigh,</span>
-<span class="spp01">they cal’d him Thomas Good-ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Another namèd Richard Beere</span>
-<span class="spp01">was ready at that time,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Another worthy Knight was there,</span>
-<span class="spp01">call’d Sir William White-wine.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some of them fought in a Blacke-Jack,</span>
-<span class="spp01">some of them in a Can;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But the chiefest in a blacke-pot,</span>
-<span class="spp01">like a worthy alderman. <span class="xxpn" id="p297">{297}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sir Barly-corn fought in a Boule,</span>
-<span class="spp01">who wonne the victorie;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And made them all to fume and swear</span>
-<span class="spp01">that Barly-corne should die.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some said Kill him some said Drown</span>
-<span class="spp01">others wisht to hang him <span class="nowrap">hie—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">For as many as follow Barly-corne,</span>
-<span class="spp01">shall surely beggers die.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then with a plough they plow’d him up,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and thus they did devise,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To burie him quicke within the earth,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and swore he should not rise.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">With harrowes strong they combèd him,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and burst clods on his head,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A joyful banquet then was made,</span>
-<span class="spp01">when Barly-corne was dead.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">He rested still within the earth,</span>
-<span class="spp01">till raine from skies did fall,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then he grew up in branches greene,</span>
-<span class="spp01">which sore amaz’d them all.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And so grew up till midsommer,</span>
-<span class="spp01">which made them all afeard;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For he was sprouted up on hie</span>
-<span class="spp01">and got a goodly beard.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then he grew till S. James’s-tide,</span>
-<span class="spp01">his countenance was wan,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For he was growne unto his strength,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and thus became a man.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">With hookes and sickles keene</span>
-<span class="spp01">into the field they hide,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They cut his legs off by the knees,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and made him wounds full wide. <span class="xxpn" id="p298">{298}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thus bloodily they cut him downe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">from place where he did stand,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And like a thiefe for treachery,</span>
-<span class="spp01">they bound him in a band.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">So then they tooke him up againe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">according to his kind,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And packt him up in severall stackes</span>
-<span class="spp01">to wither with the wind.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And with a pitchforke that was sharpe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">they rent him to the heart;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And like a thiefe for treason vile,</span>
-<span class="spp01">they bound him in a cart.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And tending him with weapons strong,</span>
-<span class="spp01">unto the towne they hie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And straight they mowed him in a mow,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and there they let him lie.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then he lay groning by the wals,</span>
-<span class="spp01">till all his wounds were sore,</span>
-<span class="spp00">At length they tooke him up againe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and cast him on the floore.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">They hyrèd two with holly clubs,</span>
-<span class="spp01">to beat on him at once,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They thwackèd so on Barly-corne</span>
-<span class="spp01">that flesh fell from his bones.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And then they tooke him up againe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">to fulfill women’s minde,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They dusted and they sifted him,</span>
-<span class="spp01">till he was almost blind.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And then they knit him in a sacke,</span>
-<span class="spp01">which grievèd him full sore,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They steep’d him in a Fat, God-wot,</span>
-<span class="spp01">for three days space and more. <span class="xxpn" id="p299">{299}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then they took him up againe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and laid him for to drie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They cast him on a chamber floore,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and swore that he should die.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">They rubbèd him and stirrèd him,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and still they did him turne</span>
-<span class="spp00">The malt-man swore that he should die,</span>
-<span class="spp01">his body he would burne.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">They spightfully tooke him up againe</span>
-<span class="spp01">and threw him on a Kill;</span>
-<span class="spp00">So dried him there with fire hot,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and thus they wrought their will.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then they brought him to the mill</span>
-<span class="spp01">and there they burst his bones,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The miller swore to murther him,</span>
-<span class="spp01">betwixt a paire of stones.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then they tooke him up againe</span>
-<span class="spp01">and serv’d him worse then that;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For with hot scalding liquor store,</span>
-<span class="spp01">they washt him in a Fat.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But not content with this, God-wot,</span>
-<span class="spp01">they did him mickle harme,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With threatening words they promisèd,</span>
-<span class="spp01">to beat him into barme.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And lying in this danger deep,</span>
-<span class="spp01">for feare that he should quarrell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They tooke him straight out of the fat</span>
-<span class="spp01">and tunn’d him in a barrell.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And then they set a tap to him,</span>
-<span class="spp01">even thus his death begun,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They drew out every dram of blood,</span>
-<span class="spp01">whilst any drop would run. <span class="xxpn" id="p300">{300}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some brought jacks, upon their backes,</span>
-<span class="spp01">some brought bill and bow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And every man his weapon had</span>
-<span class="spp01">Barly-corne to overthrow.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">When Sir John Good-ale heard of this,</span>
-<span class="spp01">he came with mickle might,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And there he tooke their tongues away,</span>
-<span class="spp01">their legs, or else their sight.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And thus Sir John in each respect,</span>
-<span class="spp01">so paid them all their hire,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That some lay sleeping by the way,</span>
-<span class="spp01">some tumbling in the mire.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some lay groning by the wals,</span>
-<span class="spp01">some in the streets downe right,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The best of them did scarcely know</span>
-<span class="spp01">what they had done ore-night.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">All you good wives that brew good Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">God turne from you all teene,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But if you put too much water in</span>
-<span class="spp01">the devill put out your eyne!</span>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<p>“Printed for John Wright and are to be sold at his Shop in Guilt
-Spurre Street at the sign of the Bible.”</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Another version
-<span class="nowrap">commences:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There were two brothers liv’d under yon hill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As it might be you and I;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And one of them did solemnly swear</span>
-<span class="spp00">That Sir John Barley-corn should die.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Burns’ ballad
-<span class="nowrap">commences:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There went three Kings into the East,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Three Kings both great and high,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And they have sworn a solemn oath</span>
-<span class="spp00">John Barleycorn should die,
-<span class="xxpn" id="p301">{301}</span></span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">and
-<span class="nowrap">ends―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then let us toast John Barleycorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Each man a glass in hand,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And may his great posterity</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ne’er fail in old Scotland.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Burns, no doubt, founded his ballad on the West Country <i>Sir John
-Barleycorn</i>, which, according to Robert Bell, in his annotated edition
-of ancient ballads, can set up a better claim to antiquity than any copy
-in the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i>. It commences
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There came three men out of the West</span>
-<span class="spp01">Their victory to try;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And they have taken solemn oath,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Poor Barleycorn should die.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">This,
-by the way, reads like the origin of a teetotal movement.</p>
-
-<p>Printed on the same sheet as the <i>Sir John Barley-corne</i> of the
-<i>Roxburghe Collection</i> is another old ballad of probably the same date,
-the author of which is unknown. It has no illustration, and is
-<span class="nowrap">entitled:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">A new Ballad for you to looke on,</span>
-<span class="spp00">How mault doth deale with everyone.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<hr class="hr08" />
-
-<div>To the tune of <i>Triumph and Joy</i>.</div>
-
-<hr class="hr08" />
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Mas Mault he is a genleman,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And hath beene since the world began,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I never knew yet any man,</span>
-<span class="spp02">That could match with Master Mault, Sir,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I never knew any match Mault but once,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Miller with his grinding stones,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He laid them so close that he crusht his bones;</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never knew the like, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Mault, Mault, thou art a flowre;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thou art beloved in every bowre,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thou canst not be missing one halfe howre;</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never saw the like, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">For laying of his stones so close</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mault gave the Miller a copper nose,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Saying, Thou and I will never be foes,</span>
-<span class="spp02">But unto thee I sticke, Sir. <span class="xxpn" id="p302">{302}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Mault gave the miller such a blow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That from his horse he fell full low;</span>
-<span class="spp00">He taught him his master Mault for to know;</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never saw the like, Sir,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Our hostesse maid she was to blame,</span>
-<span class="spp00">She stole Master Mault away from her dame,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And in her belly she hid the same,</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never saw the like, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">So when the Mault did worke in her head,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Twice a day she would be sped,</span>
-<span class="spp00">At night she could not goe to bed,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Nor scarce stand on her feet, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then came in the Master Smith,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And said that Mault he was a thief;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Mault gave him such a dash in the teeth,</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never saw the like, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">For when his iron was hot and red,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He had such an ach all in his head,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Smith was faine to get him to bed,</span>
-<span class="spp02">For then he was very Sicke, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The carpender came a peece to square,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He bad Mault come out if he dare,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He would empty his belly and beat his sides bare,</span>
-<span class="spp02">That he knew not where to sit, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To fire he went, with an arme full of chips,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mault hit him right betweene his lips,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And made him lame in both his hips;</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never saw the like, Sir.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The shooe-maker sitting upon his seat,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With Master Mault he began to fret,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He said he would the Knave so beat,</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never saw the like, Sir.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>The writer, in a number of verses, then shows how “Mas Mault”
-deals with the shoemaker, the weaver, the tailor, the tinker, and the
-sailor, including the chapman, a person of interest to us as the retailer
-of such ballads as these.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then came the Chapman travelling by,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And said, ‘my Masters I will be w’ ye, <span class="xxpn" id="p303">{303}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Indeed, Master Mault, my mouth is dry,</span>
-<span class="spp02">I will gnaw you with my teeth, Sir.</span>
-<span class="spp00">The chapman he laid on apace,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till store of blood came in his face,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Mault brought him in such a case,</span>
-<span class="spp02">You never saw the like, Sir.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Several other persons are then dealt with, and the ballad ends with
-the <span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thus of my song I will make an end</span>
-<span class="spp00">And pray my hostesse to be my friend,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To give me some drink now my money is spend,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Then Mault and I am quite, Sir.</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p>The tune to which this ballad is to be sung is probably the same as
-the old air <i>Greene Sleeves</i>.</p>
-
-<p>A song near akin to the foregoing, also showing the effects of barley
-wine, is <i>The Little Barley Corn</i>. It is evidently of the time of Charles I.,
-from the allusions it contains to the King’s great Porter, and to Banks,
-whose performing horse is mentioned.</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<div class="padtopb">THE LITTLE BARLEY-CORN.</div>
-
-<hr class="hr08" />
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Whose properties and vertues here</span>
-<span class="spp00">Shall plainly to the world appeare;</span>
-<span class="spp00">To make you merry all the yeere.</span>
-</div><div>To the tune of <i>Stingo</i>.</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p303.png" width="576" height="366" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft" id="p304"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come, and doe not musing stand,</span>
-<span class="spp01">if thou the truth discerne;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But take a full cup in thy hand</span>
-<span class="spp01">and thus begin to learne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Not of the earth nor of the ayre,</span>
-<span class="spp01">at evening or at <span class="nowrap">morne,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">But joviall boys your Christmas keep</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>with the Little Barley-corn</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It is the cunningst alchymist</span>
-<span class="spp01">that e’re was in the land;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill change your mettle when it list,</span>
-<span class="spp01">in turning of a hand.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your blushing gold to silver wan,</span>
-<span class="spp01">your silver into <span class="nowrap">brasse,—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill turn a taylor to a man,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>and a man into an asse</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make a poore man rich to hang</span>
-<span class="spp01">a sign before his doore;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And those that doe the pitcher bang,</span>
-<span class="spp01">though rich, ’twill make them poor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make the silliest poorest snake</span>
-<span class="spp01">the King’s great Porter scorne;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make the stoutest lubber weak,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>this little Barley-Corn</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It hath more shifts than Lambe ere had,</span>
-<span class="spp01">or <i>Hocus-pocus</i> too;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It will good fellowes shew more sport</span>
-<span class="spp01">then <i>Bankes</i> his horse could doe;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill play you faire above the boord,</span>
-<span class="spp01">unlesse you take good heed,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And fell you, though you were a Lord,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>and justify the deed</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It lends more yeeres unto old age,</span>
-<span class="spp01">than ere was lent by nature;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It makes the poet’s fancy rage,</span>
-<span class="spp01">more than Castalian water. <span class="xxpn" id="p305">{305}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make a huntsman chase a fox,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and never winde his horne;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill cheer a tinker in the stockes,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>this little barley-corn</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It is the only Will o’ th’ Wisp</span>
-<span class="spp01">which leades men from the way;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make the tongue-ti’d lawyer lisp,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and nought but (hic up) say.</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make the Steward droope and stoop,</span>
-<span class="spp01">his bils he then will scorne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And at each post cast his reckoning up,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>this little barley-corn</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make a man grow jealous soone,</span>
-<span class="spp01">whose pretty wife goes trim,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And raile at the deceiving moone</span>
-<span class="spp01">for making hornes at him:</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make the maidens trimly dance,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and take it in no scorne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And helpe them to a friend by chance,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>this little barley-corn</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It is the neatest serving-man,</span>
-<span class="spp01">to entertaine a friend;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It will doe more than money can</span>
-<span class="spp01">all jarring suits to end:</span>
-<span class="spp00">There’s life in it, and it is here,</span>
-<span class="spp01">’tis here within this cup;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then take your liquor, doe not spare,</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>but cleare carouse it up</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<p class="pcontinue">To this ballad there is a second part
-to much the same effect. We give the illustration and a few
-verses. Both parts are in the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">The Second Part of the Little Barley-corne</span>
-<span class="spp00">That cheereth the heart both evening and morne.</span>
-</div><div><i>To the same tune.</i></div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr02" id="p306">
-<img src="images/p306.png" width="583" height="317" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">If sicknesse come, this physick take,</span>
-<span class="spp01">it from your heart will set it;</span>
-<span class="spp00">If feare incroach, take more of it,</span>
-<span class="spp01">your head will soone forget it;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Apollo, and the Muses nine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">doe take it in no scorne;</span>
-<span class="spp00">There’s no such stuffe to passe the time</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>as the little Barley-corne</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make a weeping widdow laugh</span>
-<span class="spp01">and soone incline to pleasure;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make an old man leave his staffe</span>
-<span class="spp01">and dance a youthful measure:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And though your clothes be nere so bad</span>
-<span class="spp01">all ragged rent and torne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Against the cold you may be clad</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>with the little Barley-corne</i>.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">Thus the Barley-Corne hath power</span>
-<span class="spp01">even for to change our nature,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And make a shrew, within an houre,</span>
-<span class="spp01">prove a kind-hearted creature:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And therefore here, I say againe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">let no man tak’t in scorne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That I the vertues doe proclaime</span>
-<span class="spp01"><i>of the little Barley-corne</i>.”</span>
-</div>
-<span class="poemcite">Printed at London for E. B.</span></div>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="section">
-<p>The following song in praise of ale is taken from
-<i>London Chanticleers</i>, a rude sketch of a play printed in
-1659, but evidently much older. The <span class="xxpn"
-id="p307">{307}</span> reference to being “without hops”
-in the verse vii. is noticeable. It will be remembered that
-the ale which our forefathers drank was made without hops,
-which “pernicious weeds” were only used in the “Dutchman’s
-strong beere.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">I.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Submit, Bunch of Grapes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the strong Barley ear;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The weak wine no longer</span>
-<span class="spp00">The laurel shall wear.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">II.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Sack, and all drinks else,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Desist from the strife:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale’s the only Aqua Vitæ,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And liquor of life.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">III.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Then come my boon fellows,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let’s drink it around;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It keeps us from grave,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Though it lays us on ground.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">IIII.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Ale’s a Physician,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No Mountebank Bragger:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Can cure the chill Ague,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Though it be with the Stagger.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">V.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Ale’s a strong Wrestler,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Flings all it hath met;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And makes the ground slippery,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Though it be not wet.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">VI.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Ale is both Ceres</span>
-<span class="spp00">And good Neptune too;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale’s froth was the sea,</span>
-<span class="spp00">From which Venus grew.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">VII.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Ale is immortal:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And be there no stops</span>
-<span class="spp00">In bonny lad’s quaffing,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Can live without hops.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst" id="p308">VIII.</p>
-<span class="spp00">Then come my boon fellows,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let’s drink it around:</span>
-<span class="spp00">It keeps us from grave,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Though it lays us on ground.</span>
-</div></div>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<p>The ballad entitled the <i>Merry Hoastess</i> is probably of an earlier
-date than 1664. It bears the initials T. R., and was, perhaps, composed
-by Thomas Randal. The tune to which it was sung is a capital one,
-and is to be found in Mr. William Chappell’s <i>Popular Music</i>. This
-ballad is in the first volume of the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<div class="dctr03">THE MERRY HOASTESS<br />
-or<br />
-A pretty new Ditty, compos’d by an
-Hoastess that lives in the City,</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">To wrong such an Hoastess it were a great Pitty,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By reason she caused this pretty new Ditty.</span>
-</div><div>To the tune of <i>Buffcoat has no fellow</i>.</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p308.png" width="397" height="576" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft" id="p309"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come all that loves good company,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and hearken to my ditty,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis of a lovely Hoastess fine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">that lives in London City;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which sells good ale, nappy and stale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and alwayes thus sings she,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d, when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Her ale is lively, strong and stout,</span>
-<span class="spp01">if you please but to taste;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It is well brew’d you need not fear,</span>
-<span class="spp01">but I pray you make no waste:</span>
-<span class="spp00">It is lovely brown, the best in town,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and alwayes thus sings she,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The gayest lady with her fan,</span>
-<span class="spp01">doth love such nappy ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Both city maids and country girls</span>
-<span class="spp01">that carries the milking pail:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will take a touch and not think much</span>
-<span class="spp01">to sing so merrily,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Both lord and esquire hath a desire</span>
-<span class="spp01">unto it night and day,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For a quart or two be it old or new,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and for it they will pay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With pipe in hand, they may her command</span>
-<span class="spp01">to sing most merrily,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">You’r welcome all brave gentlemen,</span>
-<span class="spp01">if you please to come in,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To take a cup I do intend,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a health for to begin:</span>
-<span class="spp00">To all the merry joval blades,</span>
-<span class="spp01">that will sing for company,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.
-<span class="xxpn" id="p310">{310}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s a health to all brave Englishmen,</span>
-<span class="spp01">that loves this cup of ale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let every man fill up his can,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and see that none do fail;</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis very good to nourish the blood,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and make you sing with me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<div class="dctr03"><span class="smcap">S<b>ECOND</b></span>
- <span class="smcap">P<b>ART</b>.</span></div>
-
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p310.png" width="408" height="491" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The bonny Scot will lay a plot</span>
-<span class="spp01">to get a handsome tutch</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of this my ale, so good and stale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">so will the cunning Dutch:</span>
-<span class="spp00">They will take a part with all their heart,</span>
-<span class="spp01">to sing this tune with me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It will make the Irish cry A-hone!</span>
-<span class="spp01">if they but take their fill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And put them all quite out of tune</span>
-<span class="spp01">let them use their chiefest skill. <span class="xxpn" id="p311">{311}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">So strong and stout it will hold out</span>
-<span class="spp01">in any company,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Welchman on St. David’s day</span>
-<span class="spp01">will cry, Cots plutter a nail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hur will hur ferry quite away,</span>
-<span class="spp01">from off that nappy ale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It makes hur foes with hur red nose,</span>
-<span class="spp01">hur seldom can agree,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But my ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Spaniard stout will have a bout,</span>
-<span class="spp01">’cause he hath store of gold,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till at the last, he is laid fast,</span>
-<span class="spp01">my ale doth him so hold:</span>
-<span class="spp00">His ponyard strong is laid along,</span>
-<span class="spp01">yet he is good company,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There’s never a tradesman in England,</span>
-<span class="spp01">that can my ale deny,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The weaver, taylor and glover</span>
-<span class="spp01">delights it for to buy,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Small money they do take away,</span>
-<span class="spp01">if that they drink with me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There is Smug the honest Blacksmith,</span>
-<span class="spp01">he seldom can pass be,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Because a spark lies in his throat</span>
-<span class="spp01">which makes him very dry:</span>
-<span class="spp00">But my old ale tells him his tale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">so finely we agree,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The brewer, baker and butcher,</span>
-<span class="spp01">as well as all the rest, <span class="xxpn" id="p312">{312}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Both night and day will watch where they</span>
-<span class="spp01">may find ale of the best:</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the gentle craft will come full oft,</span>
-<span class="spp01">to drink a cup with me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For my ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">So to conclude good fellows all,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I bid you all adieu,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If that you love a cup of ale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">take rather old than new,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For if you come where I do dwell,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and chance to drink with me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">My ale was tunn’d when I was young,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and a little above my knee.</span>
-</div></div>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<p>The following poem in praise of Yorkshire Ale was written in the
-seventeenth century. The author is given on the title page as
-“G. M. Gent.” The little volume, somewhat rare nowadays, was
-printed at York in 1697, by F. White, for Francis Hildyard, at the
-sign of the Bible in Stone Gate.</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem38">
-<div class="dctr03">THE PRAISE OF YORKSHIRE ALE<br />
-Wherein is enumerated several sorts of Drink, and a
-Description of the Humors of most sorts of Drunkards.<br />
-To<br />
-Which is added, a Yorkshire Dialogue, in its pure
-natural Dialect, as it is now commonly spoken in the North
-parts of Yorkshire.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bacchus having called a Parliament of late,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For to consult about some things of state,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nearly concerning the honour of his Court</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the Sun, behind th’ Exchange, they did resort:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Where being met, and many things that time</span>
-<span class="spp00">Concerning the Adulterating Wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And other liquors; selling of Ale in Muggs,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Silver Tankards, Black-Pots, and little Jugs:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Stronge Beer in Rabits, and cheating penny cans,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Three pipes for two pence and such like Trepans:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Vintners’ small bottles, silver-mouthed black Jacks,
- <span class="xxpn" id="p313">{313}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And many other things were there debated,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And Bills passed upon the cases stated;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And all things ready for Adjournment, then</span>
-<span class="spp00">Stood up one of the Northern countrymen,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A boon good fellow, and lover of strong Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whose tongue well steep’d in Sack begun this Tale.</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>My
- bully Rocks, I’ve been experienced long</span>
-<span class="spp00">In most of liquors, which are counted strong;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of Claret, White-wine and Canary Sack,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Renish and Malago, I’ve had no lack,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sider, Perry, Metheglin, and Sherbet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Coffee and Mead, with Punch and Chocolet:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Rum and Tea, Azora wine, Mederry,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Vin-de-Paree, Brag, wine with Rosemary:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Stepony, Usquebath, besides all these,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Aqua Cœlestis Cinnamon, Heart’s ease;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Brave Rosa Solis, and other Liquors fine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Rasberry Wine, Pur-royal, and Shampine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Malmsey and Viper-wine, all these I pass;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Frontineack; with excellent Ipocras:</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Tent,
- Muskatine, Brandy and Alicant</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of all these liquors I’ve had no scant,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And several others; but none do I find,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like humming Northern Ale to pleas my mind,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It’s pleasant to the taste, strong and mellow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He that affects it not, is no boon fellow.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>It
- warms in winter, in summer opes the pores,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill make a Sovereign Salve ’gainst cuts and sores;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It ripens wit, exhillerates the mind,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Makes friends of foes, and foes of friends full kind;</span>
-<span class="spp00">It’s physical for old men, warms their blood,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Its spirits makes the Coward’s courage good:</span>
-<span class="spp00">The tatter’d Beggar being warmed with Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor rain, hail, frost, nor snow can him assail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He’s a good man with him can then compare,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It makes a Prentise great as the Lord Mayor;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Labouring man, that toiles all day full sore,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A pot of ale at night, doth him restore, <span class="xxpn" id="p314">{314}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">And makes him all his toil and paines forget,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And for another day’s work, hee’s then fit.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Oh
- the rare virtues of this Barly Broth;</span>
-<span class="spp00">To rich and poor it’s Meat Drink and Cloth.”</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Court here stopt him, and the Prince did say,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Where
- can we find this Nectar, I thee pray,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">The boon good fellow answered, “I can tell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">North Allerton in Yorkshire doth excell</span>
-<span class="spp00">All England, nay all Europe for strong Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If thither we adjourn we shall not fail</span>
-<span class="spp00">To taste such humming stuff, as, I dare say,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your Highness never tasted to this day.”</span>
-</div></div>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Bacchus’ Court
-then adjourns to North Allerton, and imbibes the
-noble ale kept at Madame Bradley’s, with this
-<span class="nowrap">result:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem34"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">For arguments some were and learned discourses,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Som talk’d of greyhounds, som of running horses,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Som talk’d of hounds, and some of Cock o’ th game,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Som nought but hawks, and setting dogs did name,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Som talk’d of Battels, Sieges and great wars,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And what great Wounds and cutts they had and scars,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some there were all for drinking healths about,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Others did rub the table with their Snout</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some broke the pipes, and round about them threw,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some smoak’d tobacco till their nose was blew.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some called for victuals others for a crust,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some op’d their Buttons and were like to bust,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Som challeng’d all the people that were there</span>
-<span class="spp00">And some with strange invented oaths did sweer,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some fill’d the room with noise yet could not speak,</span>
-<span class="spp00">One word of English, Latine, French and Greek</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some burnt their Hats, others the Windowes broke,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some cry’d more liquor we are like to choke,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /> <span class="xxpn" id="p315">{315}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Lame gouty men did dance about so sprightly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A boy of fifteen scarce could skip so lightly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Old crampy Capts. that scarce a sword could draw,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Swore now they’d keep the King of France in awe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And new commissions get to raise more men,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For now they swore they were grown young again;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Off went their Perriwigs, Coats and Rapers,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Out went the candles, Noses for Tapers</span>
-<span class="spp00">Serv’d to give light, while they did daunce around,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drinking full healthes with caps upon the ground:</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">This moved Bacchus presently to call</span>
-<span class="spp00">For a great jug which held about five quarts,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And filling to the Brim; come here my hearts</span>
-<span class="spp00">Said he, wee’l drink about this merry health,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To th’ honour of the Town, their state, their wealth,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">And for the sake of this good nappy ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of my great favour it shall never fail,</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">Bacchus
-and his party having once tasted the ale, drink all the casks
-<span class="nowrap">out―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp05">then out they pull’d the Taps</span>
-<span class="spp00">And stuck the Spiddocks finely in their hats,</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p class="pcontinue">The Court then adjourns to
-<span class="nowrap">Easingwold―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">With Nanny Driffield there to drink a glass</span>
-<span class="spp00">For Bacchus having heard of her strong ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He swore by Jupiter, he would not fail</span>
-<span class="spp00">To have a merry bout if he did find</span>
-<span class="spp00">Her nappy ale to please his princely Mind;</span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Bacchus
-is so delighted with the ale that he grants her letters
-patent.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Bacchus Prince of good fellows; To all to whom</span>
-<span class="spp00">These our brave letters Pattents shall now come,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whereas wee’ve been informed now of late,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That Nanny Driffield our great court and state</span>
-<span class="spp00">For many years last past has much advanced</span>
-<span class="spp00">By her strong humming ale.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /> <span class="xxpn" id="p316">{316}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">This land-lady unto the noble state,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And honour of a countess we create;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And by our merry fuddling subjects, she</span>
-<span class="spp00">Countess of Stingo henceforth call’d shall be.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Some townsmen
-then come in, and a contest is arranged between the
-ale-drinkers and the wine-drinkers, in which the latter are of course
-worsted.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">1</p>
-
-<span class="spp00">Colonus and Bacchus did meet</span>
-<span class="spp00">Each one to commend his own liquor;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Juice of the Grape was sweet;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Barly Oyle ran down the quicker;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Colonus did challenge the Gods,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To fight in defence of his Barley,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But Bacchus perceiving the odds,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Desir’d a friendly parley.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">2</p>
-
-<span class="spp00">They drunk full Bumpers about,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And Bacchus an health did begin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Bacchanalians gave a great shout,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Colonians then thronged fast in:</span>
-<span class="spp00">They drunk double Tankards around,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till the Grape Boyes begun for to glore,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Rusticks neer flinch’d their ground,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till Bacchus fell down to the Floor.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft">
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="pfirst">3</p>
-
-<span class="spp00">Colonus did heartily laugh,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And about the God they did daunce,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Full pots about they did quaff:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whilest Bacchus lay still in a Trance;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The grape boyes were beat out of play,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And at length poor Bacchus did rise;</span>
-<span class="spp00">To Colonus he yielded the day,</span>
-<span class="spp00">So the Rusticks obtainèd the Prize.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Bacchus,
-on coming to, adjourns his court to York, where they again
-<span class="nowrap">taste―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Both from North Allerton and Easingwold,</span>
-<span class="spp00">From Sutton, Thirke, likewise from Rascal Town,</span>
-<span class="spp00">.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Ale also that’s called <span class="nowrap">Knocker-down—</span></span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /> <span class="xxpn" id="p317">{317}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">They tasted all; And swore they were full glad,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Such Stingoe, Nappy, pure ale they had found,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let’s loose no time said they but drink around.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The Yorkshire Ale,
-however, proves too strong for Bacchus and his
-Court, and a final adjournment South is made,
-<span class="nowrap">though―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">Bacchus swore to come he would not fail</span>
-<span class="spp00">To glut himself with Yorkshire nappy ale.</span>
-<span class="spp00">It is so pleasant, mellow too and fine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That Bacchus swore hee’d never more drink wine.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Those who wish to peruse the “Yorkshire Dialogue in its pure
-natural Dialect” are referred to the British Museum.</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem30">
-<p>In the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i> are nineteen ballads by Lawrence
-Price, a celebrated writer of the time of Charles I. He wrote chap-books,
-riddles, and political squibs in rhyme. The following rollicking
-drinking song is from his pen. Only one copy of it is known to be in
-existence.</p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">GOOD ALE FOR MY MONEY.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">The Good-fellowes resolution of strong Ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That cures his nose from looking pale.</span>
-</div>
-<div>To the tune of <i>The Countrey Lasse</i>.</div></div>
-
-<div class="dctr05">
-<img src="images/p317.png" width="354" height="507" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft" id="p318"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Be merry my friends, and list a while</span>
-<span class="spp01">unto a merry jest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It may from you produce a smile</span>
-<span class="spp01">when you hear it exprest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of a younge man lately married,</span>
-<span class="spp01">which was a boone good fellow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">This song in ’s head he alwaies carried,</span>
-<span class="spp01">when drinke had made him mellow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I cannot go home, nor I will not go home</span>
-<span class="spp01">its long of the oyle of Barly;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ile tarry all night for my delight,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and go home in the morning early.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">No tapster stout, or Vintner fine</span>
-<span class="spp01">quoth he shall euer get</span>
-<span class="spp00">One groat out of this purse of mine</span>
-<span class="spp01">to pay his master’s debt:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Why should I deal with sharking Rookes,</span>
-<span class="spp01">that seeke poore gulls to cozen,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To giue twelue pence for a quart of wine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">of ale ’twill buy a dozen.</span>
-<p class="pright">’Twill make me sing, I cannot, &amp;c.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The old renowned Ipocrist</span>
-<span class="spp01">and Raspie doth excell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But neuer any wine could yet</span>
-<span class="spp01">my honour please to swell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Rhenish wine or Muskadine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">sweet Malmsie is too fulsome</span>
-<span class="spp00">No giue me a cup of Barlie broth,</span>
-<span class="spp01">for that is very wholesome,</span>
-<p class="pright">’Twill make me sing, I cannot, &amp;c.</p>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Hot waters ar to me as death,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and soone the head oreturneth,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And Nectar hath so strong a breath</span>
-<span class="spp01">Canary when it burneth,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It cures no paine but breaks the braine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and raps out oaths and curses,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And makes men part with heauiy heart,</span>
-<span class="spp01">but light it makes their purses,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">I cannot go home, &amp;c.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p319">{319}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some say Metheglin beares the name,</span>
-<span class="spp01">with Perry and sweet Sider,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twill bring the body out of frame,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and reach the belly wider</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which to preuent I am content</span>
-<span class="spp01">with ale that’s good and nappie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And when thereof I haue enough</span>
-<span class="spp01">I thinke myself most happy.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">I cannot go home, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">All sorts of men when they do meet</span>
-<span class="spp01">both trade and occupation,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With curtesie each other greet,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and kinde humiliation;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A good coale fire is their desire,</span>
-<span class="spp01">whereby to sit and parly</span>
-<span class="spp00">Theyle drink their ale and tell a tale,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and go home in the morning early.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">I cannot go home, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Your domineering swaggering blades,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and caualiers that flashes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That throw the Jugs against the walls</span>
-<span class="spp01">and break in peeces glasses</span>
-<span class="spp00">When Bacchus round cannot be found</span>
-<span class="spp01">they will in merriment</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drinke ale and beere and cast of care</span>
-<span class="spp01">and sing with one consent</span>
-<span class="sppctr">I cannot goe home, &amp;c.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="section dwthem38">
-<p>The title-page of the following poem tells its
-<span class="nowrap">history:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">THE HIGH AND MIGHTIE COMMENDATION OF THE
-VERTUE OF A POT OF GOOD ALE.</div>
-<hr class="hr08" />
-<div>Full of wit without offence, of mirth without
- obscenities, of pleasure without scurrelitie and of good
- content without distaste</div>
-<hr class="hr08" />
-<div id="p320">Whereunto is added the valiant battell
- fought betweene the Norfolk Cock and the Wisbich Cock.</div>
-<hr class="hr08" />
-
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p320.png" width="440" height="339" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="dcaption">
-<div>Written by Thomas Randall.</div>
-<div>London:</div>
-<div>Printed for F. Cowles; T. Bates; and J. Wright.</div>
-<div><span class="smmaj">MDCXLII</span></div></div>
-
-<div class="padtopb">THE HIGH AND MIGHTIE
- COMMENDATION OF THE VERTUE OF A POT OF GOOD ALE.</div>
-<hr class="hr08" />
-
-<div class="dpoemlft padtopc"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Not drunk nor sober, (but neighbour to both,)</span>
-<span class="spp00">I met with a friend in Alesberry vale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">He saw by my face, that I was in the case,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To speak no great harm of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And as we did meet, and friendly did greet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He put me in mind of the name of the Dale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That for <i>Alesberries</i> sake, some paines I would take,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And not burie the praise of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The more to procure me, then did he adjure me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">(If the <i>ale</i> I drank last, were nappie and stale,)</span>
-<span class="spp00">To doe it its right, and stir up my spright,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And fall to commend a Pot of Good Ale. <span class="xxpn" id="p321">{321}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Quoth I, to commend it, I dare not begin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Lest therein my cunning might happen to faile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For many there be that count it a sin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But once to look towards a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Yet I care not a pin, for I see no such sin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor any else that my courage may quaile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For this I do find, being taken in kind,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Much vertue there is in a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">When heavinesse the mind doth oppresse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And sorrow and griefe the heart doth assaile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No remedy quicker but take up your liquour,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And wash away care with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Priest and the Clark, whose sights are dark,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the print of the letter doth seeme too small,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They will con every letter, and read service better,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If they glaze but their eyes with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Poet divine, that cannot reach wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Because that his money doth oftentimes faile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will hit on the veine, and reach the high straine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he be but inspired with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">All writers of Ballads, for such whose mishap</span>
-<span class="spp00">From Newgate up Holbourne to Tyburne doe saile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Shall have sudden expression of all their confession,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If the Muse be but dew’d with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Prisoner that is enclos’d in the grate,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will shake off remembrance of bondage and jaile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of hunger or cold, or fetters or fate,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he pickle himself with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Salamander Blacksmith that lives by the fire,</span>
-<span class="spp00">While his Bellowes are puffing a blustring gale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will shake off his full Kan, and sweare each true Vulcan,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will Hazzard his witts for a Pot of Good Ale. <span class="xxpn" id="p322">{322}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The woer that feareth his suit to begin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And blushes, and simpers, and often looks pale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thogh he miss in his speech and his heart were at his breech,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he liquors his tongue: with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Widdow, that buried her husband of late,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will soon have forgotten to weep and to waile;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And think every day twaine, till she marry againe,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If she read the contents of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Plowman and Carter that toyles all the day,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And tires himself quite at the Plough-taile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will speak no lesse things, than of Queens and Kings,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he do but make bold with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And indeed it will make a man suddenly wise,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ere while was scarce able to tell a right tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">It will open his Jaw, he will tell you the Law,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And straight be a Bencher with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I doe further alledge, it is fortitudes edge,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For a very Coward that shrinks like a Snaile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Will sweare and will swagger, and out goes his Dagger,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he be but well arm’d with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The naked man taketh no care for a coat,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor on the cold weather will once turne his taile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">All the way as he goes, cut the wind with his nose,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he be but well lin’d with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The hungrie man seldome can mind his meat,</span>
-<span class="spp00">(Though his Stomach could brook a Ten Penny Nail,)</span>
-<span class="spp00">He quite forgets hunger, thinks of it no longer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If his guts be but sows’d with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Reaper, the Mower, the Thresher, the Sower,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The one with his Sithe, and the other with his flaille,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pull ’em out by the pole, on the perill of my sole,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They will hold up their caps at a Pot of Good Ale. <span class="xxpn" id="p323">{323}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Beggar, whose portion is alwayes his Prayer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Not having a tatter, to hang at his taille,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is as rich in his rags, as a Churle with his bags,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he be but entic’d with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It puts his povertie out of his mind,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Forgetting his browne bread, his wallet, his maile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He walks in the house like a six footed Lowse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If he be but well drench’d with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Souldier, the Saylor, the true man, the Taylor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The Lawyer that sels words by weight and by tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Take them all as they are, for the War or the Bar,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They all will approve of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Church and Religion to love it hath cause,</span>
-<span class="spp00">(Or else our Fore-fathers, their wisdomes did faile,)</span>
-<span class="spp00">For at every mile, close at the Church stile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">An house is ordain’d for a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And Physick will flavour <i>Ale</i> (as it is bound)</span>
-<span class="spp00">And stand against Beere both tooth and naile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They send up and downe, all over the towne,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To get for their Patients a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Your Ale-berries, Cawdles, and Possets each one,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And sullabubs made at the milking pale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Although they be many, Beere comes not in any,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But all are compos’d with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And in very deed, the Hop’s but a weed,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Brought o’re ’gainst law, and here set to sale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">He that first brought the Hop, had reward with a rope,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And found that his Beere was bitter than ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The antient tales that my Grannam hath told,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of the mirth she had in Parlour and Hall,</span>
-<span class="spp00">How in Christmas time, they would dance, sing, and rime,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As if they were mad, with a Pot of Good Ale. <span class="xxpn" id="p324">{324}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Beere is a stranger, a Dutch Upstart come,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whose credit with us, sometimes is but small;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But in the records of the Empire of Rome,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The old Catholic drink is a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To the praise of Gambinius, the old British King,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who devised for his nation (by the Welshmen’s tale),</span>
-<span class="spp00">Seventeene hundred years before Christ did spring,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The happie invention of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But he was a Pagan, and Ale then was rife,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But after Christ came, and bade us, <i>All haile,</i></span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>Saint Tavie was neffer trink peere in her life,</i></span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>Put awle Callywhiblin</i>, and excellent Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">All religions and nations, their humours and fashions</span>
-<span class="spp00">Rich or poore, knave or whoore, dwarfish or tall</span>
-<span class="spp00">Sheep or shrew, Ile avow, well I know will all bow,</span>
-<span class="spp00">If they be but wel steep’d, with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">O Ale, <i>ab alendo</i>, thou liquor of life,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I wish that my mouth were as big as a Whale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But then ’twere to little, to reach thy least title,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That belongs to the Praise of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thus many a vertue to you I have showed,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And not any vice in all this long tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But after the Pot, there commeth a shot,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And that is the Blot of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Well, said my friend, the blot I will beare,</span>
-<span class="spp00">You have done very well, it is time to strike saile,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We’ll have six Pots more, though we dye on the score,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To make all <i>this good</i> of a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">We may
-be pardoned for omitting “the valiant battell fought
-between the Norfolk Cock and the Wisbich Cock.”</p>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="section dwthem38">
-<p>Returning again to the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i>. <i>A Health to all Good
-Fellowes</i> is a very quaint old drinking song, having beneath its title a
-wood-cut no less quaint than the letterpress. It was printed about the
-commencement of the seventeenth century, for Henry Gossen. The
-author is unknown; possibly he was Martin Parker
-or Lawrence Price. <span class="xxpn" id="p325">{325}</span>
-No copy beyond that in the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i> is known to be in
-existence. The tune is a good one.</p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">A HEALTH TO ALL GOOD-FELLOWES:</div>
-
-<div>or,</div>
-
-<div>The good Companions Arithmeticke.</div>
-
-<div>To the tune of <i>To drive cold Winter away</i>.</div>
-
-<div class="dctr02">
-<img src="images/p325.png" width="593" height="364" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Be merry my hearts, and call for your quarts,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and let no liquor go lacking,</span>
-<span class="spp00">We have gold in store, we purpose to roar</span>
-<span class="spp01">until we set care a packing.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then Hostis make haste, and let no time waste,</span>
-<span class="spp01">let every man have his due,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To save shooes and trouble, bring in the pots double</span>
-<span class="spp01">for he that made one, made two.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn63" id="fnanc63">63</a></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Then while we are here, wee’le drinke Ale and Beer,</span>
-<span class="spp01">and freely our money wee’le spend,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let no man take care for paying his share,</span>
-<span class="spp01">if need be Ile pay for my friend,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then Hostesse make haste, and let no time waste;</span>
-<span class="spp01">you’re welcome all kind Gentlemen; <span class="xxpn" id="p326">{326}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Never feare to carowse, while there is beere in the house,</span>
-<span class="spp01">for he that made nine made ten.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now I thinke it is fit, and most requisit,</span>
-<span class="spp01">to drinke a health to our wives,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The which being done, wee’le pay and be gone,</span>
-<span class="spp01">strong drinke all our wits now deprives:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then Hostesse lets know, the summe that we owe,</span>
-<span class="spp01">twelve pence there is for certaine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then fill t’other pot, and here’s money for’t,</span>
-<span class="spp01">for he that made twelve made thirteen.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The poet was probably at a loss for a word to rhyme with fourteen,
-or the ballad would have been longer.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc63" id="fn63">63</a>
-The “he that made” is probably the brewer. The numbers
-increase by ones in the last line of each verse, the last verse reaching
-thirteen.</p></div>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="section dwthem38">
-<p>Another song of much the same character is <i>Monday’s Work</i>, the
-work being no work at all, but a day spent at the alehouse. The only
-known copy of this ballad is in the <i>Roxburghe Collection</i>. The author
-is unknown.</p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">MONDAYS WORK</div>
-
-<div>or</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">The Two honest neighbours both birds of a feather</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who are at the Alehouse both merry together.</span>
-</div></div>
-<div>To the tune of <i>I owe my Hostesse Money</i>.</div>
-
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p326.png" width="478" height="426" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft" id="p327"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Good morow neighbour Gamble</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come let you and I goe ramble,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Last night I was shot,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Through the braines with a pot</span>
-<span class="spp02">and now my stomach doth wamble;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your Possets and your Caudles,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Are fit for babies in Cradles;</span>
-<span class="spp00">A piece of salt Hogge,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And a haire of the old Dogge</span>
-<span class="spp02">is good to cure our drunken Noddles.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Come hither mine host, come hither,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here’s two birds of a feather,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come hither my host</span>
-<span class="spp00">With a pot and a tost,</span>
-<span class="spp00">and let us be merry together.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I rose in the morning early,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To take this juice of barly,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But if my wife Jone,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Knew where I were gone,</span>
-<span class="spp02">shee’d call me to a Parley.</span>
-<span class="spp00">My bones I do not fauour,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But honestly doe labour:</span>
-<span class="spp00">But when I am out</span>
-<span class="spp00">I must make a mad bout</span>
-<span class="spp02">come here’s halfe a pot to thee neighbour.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Come hither, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Gramarcy, neighbour Jinkin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I see thou louest no shrinking,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And I for my part</span>
-<span class="spp00">From thee will not start,</span>
-<span class="spp02">come fill us a little more drinke in.</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’th weeke we aske but one day,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And that’s next after Sunday</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our custome wee’le hold</span>
-<span class="spp00">Although our Wiues scold</span>
-<span class="spp02">the Maultman comes a Monday.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Come hither, &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Come let us haue our Liquor about us</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mine host does not misdoubt us,
- <span class="xxpn" id="p328">{328}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet if we should call,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And pay none at all,</span>
-<span class="spp02">you were better be without us:</span>
-<span class="spp00">But we are no such fellowes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Though some in clothes excell us</span>
-<span class="spp00">And yet haue no coyne</span>
-<span class="spp00">For Liquor to joyne</span>
-<span class="spp02">yet we haue both whites and yellowes.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Come hither, &amp;c.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">There is
-a second part to this song, which ends with the
-<span class="nowrap">words:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now lest our wiues should find us</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis fit we should look behind us</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let’s see what is done</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then pay and begone,</span>
-<span class="spp02">as honesty hath assigned us.</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis strong ale I conceiue it</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Tis good in time to leaue it</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or else it will make</span>
-<span class="spp00">Our foreheads to ake,</span>
-<span class="spp02">’tis vanity to outbraue it.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Come hither, &amp;c.</span>
-</div></div>
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<p>Coming now to works of a later date, the following comicality seems
-worthy of reproduction. It is hardly necessary to point out that the
-verses are a smart hit upon female ale-bibbers. They are attributed to
-Samuel Bishop, M.A., rector of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook (1783). “A
-worthy man and generally beloved,” says Dr. Hughson, LL.D., in his
-<i>London</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem26"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<div class="padtopb">QUOD PETIS HIC EST.</div>
-
-<span class="spp00">No plate had John and Joan to hoard,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Plain folks in humble plight;</span>
-<span class="spp00">One only tankard crown’d the board,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And that was filled each night.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Along whose inner bottom sketched</span>
-<span class="spp01">In pride of chubby grace,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some rude engravers hand had etch’d</span>
-<span class="spp01">A babys angels face,</span>
-<span class="spp00">John swallowed first a moderate sup;</span>
-<span class="spp01">But Joan was not like John;
- <span class="xxpn" id="p329">{329}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">For when her lips once touched the cup,</span>
-<span class="spp01">She swill’d till all was gone.</span>
-<span class="spp00">John often urged her to drink fair,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But she ne’er changed a jot;</span>
-<span class="spp00">She loved to see that angel there,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And therefore drain’d the pot.</span>
-<span class="spp00">When John found all remonstrance vain,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Another card he play’d;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And where the angel stood so plain,</span>
-<span class="spp01">He got a devil pourtrayed.</span>
-<span class="spp00">John saw the horns, Joan saw the tail,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Yet Joan as stoutly quaffed;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And ever when she seized her ale</span>
-<span class="spp01">She cleared it at a draught.</span>
-<span class="spp00">John star’d with wonder petrify’d,</span>
-<span class="spp01">His hairs rose on his pate;</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>And
- Why dose guzzle now?” he cryd,</span>
-<span class="spp01">“At
- this enormous rate?”</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Oh,
- John,” says she, “am I to blame,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I can’t in conscience stop;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For sure ’twould be a burning shame</span>
-<span class="spp01">To leave the devil a drop.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>A collection of ale ballads and songs would hardly be complete without
-at least one on the “guid yill of Scotland.” Burns’ works are so
-well known that we fall back upon a capital Scotch song written at the
-close of the last century, and bearing the title <i>A Coggie O’ Yill</i>. The
-author was Andrew Sheriffs of Shirrefs, at one time Editor of the
-<i>Aberdeen Chronicle</i>. He also wrote a Scotch pastoral entitled <i>Jamie and
-Bess</i>, which was published in 1787, and a second time in 1790. Burns,
-in his Third <i>Northern Tour</i>, speaks of Sheriffs, who was a bookbinder
-by trade, as “a little decrepit body with some abilities.” The words of
-the song were set to music by a celebrated violin player, named Robert
-Macintosh.</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<div class="padtopb">A COGGIE O’ YILL.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">A Coggie o’ Yill,</span>
-<span class="spp02">And a pickle aitmeal,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And a dainty wee drappie o’ whiskey,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Was our forefathers dose,</span>
-<span class="spp02">For to sweel down their brose</span>
-<span class="spp00">And keep them aye cheery and friskey— <span class="xxpn" id="p330">{330}</span></span>
-<span class="spp02">Then hey for the wiskey, and hey for the meal,</span>
-<span class="spp02">And hey for the Cogie, and hey for the yill,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Gin ye steer a’ thegither they’ll do unco weel,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To keep a chiel cherry and brisk aye.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">When I see our Scots lads,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Wi’ their kilts and cockauds,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That sae often ha’e loundered our foes, man:</span>
-<span class="spp02">I think to mysel’,</span>
-<span class="spp02">On the meal and the yill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the fruits o’ our Scottish Kail brose, man.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Then hey, &amp;c., &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">Then our brave Highland blades,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Wi’ their claymore and plaids,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In the field drive like sheep a’ our foes, man:</span>
-<span class="spp02">Their courage and <span class="nowrap">pow’r—</span></span>
-<span class="spp02">Spring from this to be sure,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They’re the noble effects o’ the brose, man.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Then hey, &amp;c., &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But your spyndle-shank’d sparks</span>
-<span class="spp02">Wha sae ill fill their sarks,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your pale-visaged milksops and beaux, man:</span>
-<span class="spp02">I think when I see them,</span>
-<span class="spp02">’Twere kindness to gie <span class="nowrap">them—</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">A cogie o’ yill or o’ brose, man.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Then hey, &amp;c., &amp;c.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">What John Bull despises,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Our better sense prizes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He denies eatin’ blanter ava, man;</span>
-<span class="spp02">But by eatin o’ blanter,</span>
-<span class="spp02">His mare’s grown, I’ll warrant her,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The manliest brute o’ the twa, man.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Then hey, &amp;c., &amp;c.</span>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth"><p>It would not be difficult to fill a volume of considerable size with
-songs and ballads having ale or beer for their subject, but the foregoing,
-together with many others to be found in these pages, are among the
-best of their kind, and will doubtless give a fair idea of the poetry of
-malt liquor.</p></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p331a.png" width="144" height="47" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p331">
-<span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XII.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">“Blessing of your heart,
- you brew good Ale.”</span></div>
-<div class="poemcite"><i>Two Gentlemen of Verona.</i> Act iii., Sc. 1.</div>
-</div></div>
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">“The bigger the
- brewing the better the browst.”</span></div>
-<div class="poemcite"><i>Old Yorkshire Proverb.</i></div>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>BREWING IN THE PRES­ENT
-DAY.&#x200a;—&#x200a;AN­EC­DOT­AL AND BIO­GRAPH­I­CAL AC­COUNT OF SOME
-REP­RE­SEN­TA­TIVE LON­DON, DUB­LIN, BUR­TON, AND COUN­TRY BREW­ING
-FIRMS.&#x200a;—&#x200a;EDIN­BURGH ALES.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap"
-src="images/p331b.png" width="228" height="231" alt="P"
-/></span>ASSING on to modern times and bidding adieu to the
-old brewers, brewsters, ale-wives, and tapsters, it behoves
-us to devote ourselves to giving some account of the
-brewing of the present day, thereby bringing our history
-up to date. With this intent, we cannot do better than
-commence with a few figures, startling enough, no doubt, to
-others than the <i>cognoscenti</i>, as to the magnitude of what
-are commonly called the Liquor Trades.</p>
-
-<p>From a report drawn up by Professor Leoni Levi in 1878, at the
-request of the late Mr. M. T. Bass, M.P., and from recent Parliamentary
-returns, it appears that the total amount of capital invested in the liquor
-trades of the United Kingdom amounts to about one hundred and
-seventeen million pounds sterling. This sum is equal to more than half
-the total value of our exports, and is more than double the annual
-receipts of all the railways. About one-third of the whole National
-Revenue is drawn from this source.</p>
-
-<p>Making due allowance for families, the persons
-employed directly in <span class="xxpn" id="p332">{332}</span>
-the various trades connected with the production and distribution of
-alcoholic drinks are not fewer in number than one and a half million.</p>
-
-<p>From these startling facts, it follows that teetotallers, before they
-can accomplish the total abolition of spirituous liquors, must arrange for
-either emigrating or giving employment to over a million persons, and
-must be prepared to pay one-third more taxes than they do at present.</p>
-
-<p>It may be well, before proceeding further, to give a short and very
-simple account of brewing as it is now carried on in nearly every brewhouse
-in the country, for without a few general ideas on the subject
-many of our readers would no doubt be a little puzzled by the references
-to mashing tuns, vats, union rooms and such like, which occur in this
-chapter.</p>
-
-<p>In brewing there are three principal operations: 1.—Mixing the
-malt with hot water; 2.—Adding hops to the infusion obtained and
-boiling them together; and 3.—Fermenting the liquid by putting yeast
-in it.</p>
-
-<p>The malt when brought to the brewery is first screened to remove
-dirt, dust and foreign particles; nails and other odds and ends of metal
-being caught on a bar magnet over which the malt passes. It is then
-crushed between rollers and, by an ingenious mechanical contrivance,
-is carried to large bins or hoppers situated above the mash tuns, the
-huge tubs in which the malt and hot (not boiling) water are mixed.
-This process is called mashing, and was formerly done by merely stirring
-water and malt together with a long oar or pole, a practice of course
-still followed by home brewers.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">See, the welcome Brewhouse rise,</span>
-<span class="spp00">See, the priest his duty plies!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, with apron duly bound,</span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>Stirs the liqour round and round</i>.</span>
-<span class="spp00">O’er the bubbling cauldron play</span>
-<span class="spp00">Mirth and merriment so gay;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Melancholy hides her head,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The frowns of Envy, all are fled;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Youthful Wit and Attic Salt</span>
-<span class="spp00">Infuse their savour in the Malt.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Mashing is now carried on in various ways, machinery entirely taking
-the place of manual labour. Sometimes the water—always spoken of as
-“liquor” in a brewery—rises in the tun, and the malt
-comes in from <span class="xxpn" id="p333">{333}</span>
-above, but in many breweries the malt and water run in together, a
-machine mixing them before they enter. When the malt-tea has stood
-long enough—huge revolving rakes mixing the mash meanwhile—the
-amber infusion (technically “wort”) is drawn off and more water added,
-until all the goodness has been extracted from the malt, the empty husks
-or “grains” only being left. With grains pigs and cows are often fed,
-and not brewers’ horses, as is popularly imagined.</p>
-
-<p>“Mashing” over, the next process is to give the malt-tea its bitter
-flavour, and this is done by boiling it in a huge copper with a quantity
-of hops. When sufficiently boiled, the hops and wort are run off from
-the copper into huge square vessels (technically “hop-backs”) with
-perforated bottoms, which act as strainers or colanders, the liquid passing
-through the holes, leaving the hops behind, which are subsequently
-pressed to get all the liquid out of them. The brewer has now a
-quantity of unfermented hot beer, which he must first cool by passing
-it among pipes containing icy cold water. Refrigerators and ice-making
-machines are, it need hardly be said, of the greatest assistance to the
-modern brewer, who without them could only brew in the cold months.
-Some firms have spent as much as £8,000 on their ice-making machines.
-The beer, which at present is a teetotal drink devoid of alcohol, having
-been cooled, is turned into large tubs or square boxes, and yeast is added
-to it. Fermentation now sets in, and by various ingenious contrivances
-the froth as it rises to the top is skimmed off or carried away. During
-this process the beer is kept at a low temperature by means of cold
-water-pipes which are taken through the fermenting tuns. When the
-fermentation has almost ceased, the beer is put into smaller vessels,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn64" id="fnanc64">64</a>
-where a little fermentation still goes on, and the froth either works over
-the side or is skimmed off or, as in the “union” system at Burton,
-works up through pipes. Fermentation being now practically at an
-end, the beer goes into huge vats, from which it is drawn into casks
-as required. This last operation is termed “racking.” Even then
-the bung-holes are left open for a day or two to allow a little froth
-to work out.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc64" id="fn64">64</a>
-There are several varieties of these vessels: Pontoons, unions, &amp;c.,
-the most approved being shallow trays. On these the yeast rises very
-quickly. The process is termed “cleansing.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The foregoing process seems, and is, of a simple
-character, but to <span class="xxpn" id="p334">{334}</span>
-obtain the very best results great skill is necessary. The colour of the
-malt, the temperature of the water in the mash tun, the temperature
-during fermentation, the proper proportion of the materials, and many
-other matters are of the greatest importance. Some brewers, and
-notably Messrs. Guinness &amp; Sons, keep their beer in vats for a
-considerable length of time before racking it into the casks, but the
-practice is gradually dying out, and huge vats such as that built some
-years ago by Messrs. Meux &amp; Co. are now but little used.</p>
-
-<p>The racking room of a large brewery is a wonderful sight. All
-round the sides are huge vats—twenty or thirty, perhaps—in each of
-which fifteen to twenty people could dine comfortably. These giant
-tubs tower above thousands of barrels which line the floor, and which
-look like pigmies by comparison.</p>
-
-<p>One of the most interesting portions of a modern brewery is the
-cooperage. Coopers are highly-skilled workmen, and it is more or less
-of a marvel to see how without any measurement they plane down
-planks into staves for casks, and fit them together so
-closely that the <span class="xxpn" id="p335">{335}</span>
-cask is perfectly sound and incapable of leaking. The length of the
-staves is measured, for the rest the Cooper trusts to his eye. Coopering
-is a most ancient trade, and appears from the illustration by Jost
-Ammon, in Schopper’s rare book, Πανοπλια, to be carried on in much
-the same way now as it was in Germany in the year 1568.</p>
-
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p334.png" width="499" height="700" alt="Der Bender." />
-<div class="dcaption">A Sixteenth-century Cooperage.</div></div>
-
-<p>Before giving any account of the firm known as
-Allsopp &amp; Sons,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn65"
-id="fnanc65">65</a> it is only fitting to devote a few
-lines to the Pale Ale Metropolis.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc65" id="fn65">65</a>
-The following Sketches of certain of our great brewing firms are
-in alphabetical order. The task of placing the firms according to their
-importance or size was of a character too invidious to be attempted.</p></div>
-
-<p>The history of Burton has been so exhaustively treated by Mr.
-Molyneux that it is not an easy matter to add anything fresh on the
-subject. In the monastic establishments which were inaugurated at a
-very early date in the neighbourhood of the town, enormous quantities
-of ale were brewed. There is no record, however, of any public breweries
-at that date (1295), though there is little doubt that the trade of malting
-was largely carried on. By the sixteenth century a small local trade in
-brewing had been established. In a series of letters written by Walsingham,
-in 1584, to Sir Ralph Sadler, governor of Tutbury Castle, to
-the inquiry, “What place neere Tutbury beere may be provided for her
-Majestie’s use?” is the answer that “beere” may be had “at Burton
-three myles off.” Information of the progress of the Babbington
-conspiracy is said to have been conveyed to Mary Queen of Scots,
-while in Tutbury Castle, by a Burton brewer; and a load of beer on its
-way from Burton to Fotheringay was intercepted, and among the casks
-were found correspondence throwing fatal light on the plot.</p>
-
-<p>In 1630 the fame of the Burton ale had spread to London, and that
-excellent liquor was sold at “The Peacock” in Gray’s Inn Lane. In
-the <i>Spectator</i> of May 20th, 1712, is recorded how the writer and Sir
-Roger de Coverley visit Vauxhall, where, after inspecting the garden,
-they concluded their walk “with a glass of Burton ale and a slice of
-hung beef.”</p>
-
-<p>The history of Burton as a great brewing centre cannot be traced
-back much beyond 1708, at least so far as export is concerned. When,
-as the result of an Act passed in 1698, water communication was opened
-up between Burton and the Baltic ports, the brewers were not slow to
-take advantage of their opportunities, and in 1748 a considerable export
-trade had been established, the Russians being by far
-the best customers. <span class="xxpn" id="p336">{336}</span>
-Both Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine were extremely fond
-of Burton ale. The Empress, indeed, is said to have loved it not wisely
-but too well. In 1791 there were nine brewers in the town, their
-names being Bass, Clay, Evans, Leeson, Musgrave, Sherratt, Wilson
-(two) and Worthington. Previous to the year 1822 Burton ale was
-better known on the Continent than in England, but about that time
-the brewers turned their attention to increasing their home trade, and
-met with marked success. In 1851 the breweries had increased to
-sixteen, giving employment to 867 men and 61 boys.</p>
-
-<p>The special recommendation of the spring water at Burton consists in
-the fact that whatever saccharine may be put into it, appears to remain
-there for any length of time without being chemically injured by those
-mineral combinations which are generally present in spring water.</p>
-
-<p>Burton of the present day is a city of breweries. Tall chimneys
-tower on all sides, the smell of new beer pervades the air, great red
-brick buildings block the way in every direction; engines glide noiselessly
-about dragging trucks loaded with casks; burly brewers’ men
-meet you at every corner; it is, in fact, the very home of John Barleycorn.
-The Breweries of Burton in this present year of grace are thirty
-in number, and give employment to about eight thousand men and boys.</p>
-
-<p>In a view of Burton-on-Trent, engraved in 1720, is a small brewery,
-which was then the property of one Benjamin Wilson, the founder of
-the great firm of S. Allsopp and Sons. Though not the creator of the
-Burton Beer trade, he was the first to carry on an extensive business as a
-common brewer, and was, it is believed, the originator of the extensive
-export trade which Burton carried on during the eighteenth century.
-Letters of his are still extant, from which it may be gathered that he had
-established a flourishing trade in Burton ales so early as 1748. His
-account books show that in 1770 the business done with Russia was an
-extensive one, and partly carried on by barter.</p>
-
-<p>In 1774, in a letter to Mr. Charles Best, Mr. Wilson writes: “We
-have already two large Brewhouses Employ’d, and are about to use a
-third, the whole of which will take all the money I can raise with convenience
-to myself, beyond which I do not choose to go.” In a letter
-dated Oct. 23, 1775, from Messrs. B. Wilson &amp; Co. to Messrs. J. D. Newman
-&amp; Co., St. Petersburg, occur the following interesting passages:—“To
-people who have the Credit of their own Manufacture and y inseparable
-Interest of their Friends at Heart, we cannot but feel an accumulated
-Satisfaction at every additional instance of our Ale proving fine and
-distinguishing itself, wch, in Justice to its Character,
-we have y<sup>e</sup> <span class="xxpn" id="p337">{337}</span>
-happiness to say our Friends have universally confirmed. To y<sup>e</sup> several
-Queries of y<sup>r</sup> Letter, we beg leave to acquaint you that tho’ many
-Merchants from St. Petersburg are supplied with Burton Ale from our
-House, yet there are many we are not intimately connected with, their
-orders being transmitted through y<sup>e</sup> Houses of Hull and London .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. The
-Price of Ale last year at Burton from y<sup>e</sup> extravagant
-Price of Grain sold for 17<sup>d</sup> per Gallon.”</p>
-
-<p>In the order book for 1770 are many entries which appear curious
-enough to modern readers. Some of the customers order their casks
-to be cased, <i>i.e.</i>, enclosed in a larger cask—a process necessary to prevent
-the “Gainsboro’ Captains,” as the bargees were called, from “sucking
-the monkey.” One customer writes: “Send me 24-gallon casks strong
-ale and let y<sup>e</sup> casks be iron-hooped at the head.” Another wants “two
-14-gallon casks of strong ale by <i>sea</i>” to London, and another “a hogshead
-by <i>land</i>” also to London, the carriage of which must have been
-very extensive.</p>
-
-<p>There may possibly be persons still living who recollect an old fellow
-named Dyche, who was full of information regarding the early history
-of the Burton Ale trade. He remembered John Wilson well, and described
-him as a kind, hearty, portly, well-favoured old gentleman, somewhat
-peppery withal, but never angry without a cause. Dyche’s father
-worked for Mr. Wilson during forty years as a sawyer, his business
-being to cut up into staves for the coopers, the timber brought from the
-Baltic in exchange for ale. At fourteen years of age the younger Dyche
-was apprenticed to the cooper at the brewery. The commonest ale
-was then, according to Dyche, as strong as the strongest ale now brewed.</p>
-
-<p>Dyche used to tell how old Benjamin Wilson had two sons, and
-a daughter renowned far and wide for her beauty. This Miss Wilson
-became the wife of Mr. James Allsopp, and her son Samuel was father
-of the Mr. Henry Allsopp, now Lord Hindlip of Hindlip, who for many
-years was head of the firm.</p>
-
-<p>Benjamin Wilson the younger, having no children, took his nephew
-Samuel into the business, much against the wish of Mr. James Allsopp,
-who had intended his son for the church. John Walker Wilson,
-another son of old Benjamin, also joined the firm, but soon left it and
-started a brewery (now Worthington’s) on his own account. On the
-death of Benjamin Wilson the younger, who never married, the business
-came altogether into the hands of his nephew, Mr. Samuel Allsopp, and
-was carried on under the style of “Wilson &amp; Allsopp” until 1822, when
-the name was changed to “Samuel
-Allsopp &amp; Son.” <span class="xxpn" id="p338">{338}</span></p>
-
-<p>The Allsopps come of an ancient family. One Hugh de Allsopp (or
-Elleshope) went with Richard I. to the Holy Land, and was knighted
-for good service during the siege of Acre. He married a niece of Sir
-Ralph de Farington, who presented Sir Hugh with certain lands in
-Derbyshire, which, for seventeen generations, the Allsopps-of-the-Dale
-enjoyed as their patrimony. Anthony Allsopp, who married a daughter
-of Sir John Gell of Hopton, sold the family seat in 1691 to Sir Philip
-Gell, his brother-in-law. Mr. James Allsopp, whom we have mentioned
-as being the first of the name who joined the firm, was a grandson of
-Anthony. He married a member of the old Staffordshire family of
-Fowlers.</p>
-
-<p>Several ancient deeds, some of the early part of the thirteenth
-century, in the possession of Lord Hindlip, contain conveyances of land
-to and from various members of the Alsop family, the chief names
-mentioned being Henry de Alsop, Ranulf de Alsop, and Thomas de
-Alsop.</p>
-
-<p>In Pepys’ <i>Diary</i> mention is made of a Mr. Alsop, brewer to
-Charles II. Whether any connection existed between him and the
-Allsopp family is not known.</p>
-
-<p>Returning now to the history of the firm—in 1822 high import
-duties were imposed by the Russian Government upon English ales,
-and this fact led for a time to the almost total suspension of the trade
-which Messrs. Allsopp &amp; Son had for so long carried on with Russia.
-The results were not, however, altogether disastrous, for the Burton
-firm now saw the necessity of pushing their home trade, and the ales
-which had hitherto been better known in St. Petersburg than in
-London came into considerable demand in the southern portions of this
-country.</p>
-
-<p>An eye-witness of a banquet given by Peter the Great has left the
-following description:—“As soon as you sit down you are expected to
-drink a cup of brandy, after which they ply you with great glasses of
-adulterated Tokay and other vitiated wines, and between whiles with a
-bumper of the strongest English beer.” Burton ales then were of a
-very different character to the excellent bitter of to-day; Dyche spoke
-as to their strength, and they were so rich and luscious that if a little
-was spilled on a table the glass would stick to it.</p>
-
-<p>At this time a brewer named Hodgson had the whole of the Indian
-export trade, but Messrs. Allsopp &amp; Son, at the suggestion of a Mr.
-Majoribanks, brewed and exported ale similar to Hodgson’s. Their
-venture met with marked success, and for many years the
-firm held the <span class="xxpn" id="p339">{339}</span>
-chief place among the exporters of Indian Pale Ale. The first Burton
-specimen of that beverage, many thousand hogsheads of which are now
-brewed annually, was compounded by Job Goodhead, Mr. Allsopp’s
-veteran maltster, in a <i>tea-pot</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Space forbids a long account of Mr. S. Allsopp’s life. To his
-endeavours was chiefly due the bringing of the Derby and Birmingham
-railway system close to Burton. In both public and private life Mr.
-Allsopp was charitable to a fault, and greatly beloved. He died in 1838,
-and was succeeded by his two sons, Charles James and Henry. The
-latter, so long the head of the firm, is too well known to need mention
-here. He it was who took a leading part in refuting certain mischievous
-charges, which were to the effect that the Burton brewers used noxious
-materials in the manufacture of their bitter beer. He represented
-Worcestershire from 1874 to 1880, and in 1880 was created a Baronet.
-In the early part of 1886 he had the honour of being raised to the
-peerage under the title of Lord Hindlip of Hindlip and Alsop-en-le-Dale,
-having retired from the firm for some years in favour of his three
-sons, the Hon. Charles, George and Percy Allsopp.</p>
-
-<p>A word now as to the breweries, which rank among the best and most
-perfect of their kind. They are three in number, and are connected
-together, and with the makings, cooperages, &amp;c., by about ten miles
-of railway.</p>
-
-<p>The New Brewery is an immense structure, no single building being
-in existence which has a greater brewing capacity. The union room is
-of very fine proportions, being 375 feet in length and 105 in breadth.
-It contains 1,424 unions, which can cleanse 230,688 gallons at one time.
-The union rooms, taken altogether, contain about 4,500 unions, each
-with a capacity of 695 gallons.</p>
-
-<p>Next to the New Brewery comes the Old Brewery, and lastly the
-Model Brewery, which seems a mere toy compared with the others. It
-is used chiefly for experiments, and for occasional brews of stout and
-porter. The firm also possesses extensive maltings, and, it is almost
-needless to say, large cooperages, stables, &amp;c.</p>
-
-<p>A feature in the conduct of Messrs. Allsopp &amp; Sons’ business is the
-consideration shown to the employés, who, without counting clerks and
-the office staff, number 1,600. For their benefit the firm maintains a
-cricket ground, bowling green, a sick and funeral club, and a library
-managed by a scripture reader, who also visits the men and their
-families. Here and there about the breweries and maltings may be
-seen tottering old men, who seem out of place among so
-much life and <span class="xxpn" id="p340">{340}</span>
-bustle. These are the pensioners, who work as much or as little as they
-like. We believe that Messrs. Allsopp and Sons rank third among the
-brewing firms of the United Kingdom, and the extent of their business
-may be inferred from the simple fact that they have an annual expenditure
-of £1,400 to £1,500 in postage stamps alone. In the busy periods
-of the year upwards of 20,000 casks pass weekly through their racking
-rooms. It would be presumption to attempt to criticise the malt liquor
-produced by this firm or, indeed, that of any of our leading brewers.</p>
-
-<p>Early in the eighteenth century, as early indeed as the year 1710, if
-the Commercial List is correct, a building called the Anchor Brewery
-existed on the Surrey side of the Thames, in Southwark, owned by a
-Mr. Halsey, whose beer is mentioned in State papers of Queen Anne’s
-reign as being exported to Flanders for the use of the army. This
-gentleman having amassed a large fortune, and married his daughter
-to Lord Cobham, severed his connection with trade, and sold the
-business to Mr. Thrale, the member for the Borough of Southwark, and
-Sheriff for the County of Surrey. Mr. Thrale died in 1781, and was
-succeeded by his son, whose wife Hester was the intimate friend of the
-great Dr. Johnson.</p>
-
-<p>Even at that time a great business was done by the firm, about
-30,000 barrels of beer being produced annually. According to the
-<i>Annual Register</i> for 1759, Thrale’s was the fourth largest London
-brewery, Calvert’s, Whitbread’s and Truman’s coming before it. It is
-said that Thrale lost £130,000 by unfortunate speculations, but so profitable
-was the brewery that at the end of nine years he had saved a
-sum which enabled him to pay all the debts contracted by reason
-of his losses.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Johnson’s friendship with the Thrales commenced in 1765, and
-continued until the brewer’s death. The Doctor lived sometimes in a
-house near the brewery, and sometimes in the villa at Streatham. Up
-to 1832, when the brewery was destroyed by fire, a room near the
-entrance gate used to be shown, which was said to have been the
-Doctor’s study. In Boswell’s <i>Life of Johnson</i> are numerous letters
-and reports of conversations relating more or less to the Brewery. One
-of the last letters written by the Doctor was to Sir Joshua Reynolds,
-and contained proposals for the establishment of a convivial club, as <i>The</i>
-Club was getting overweighted with Bishops. The Doctor scoffed at
-the idea that persons, however learned, could meet habitually merely for
-the purpose of discussing philosophy or the sciences without material
-refreshment, and he gravely warned Mrs. Thrale that
-if she forbade <span class="xxpn" id="p341">{341}</span>
-card-tables in her drawing room, she must at least give her guests plenty
-of sweatmeats, else nobody would come to see her. But the Doctor, and
-not the bonbons or card-tables, must have been the loadstone which
-filled Mrs. Thrale’s reception rooms. At Thrale’s death Dr. Johnson,
-Mrs. Thrale, and three gentlemen, named Cator, Smith and Crutchley,
-found themselves appointed Executors, and determined to carry on the
-business; but Dr. Johnson, who by nature could not help taking the
-lead in whatever he was concerned, was not born to be a brewer, and
-the undertaking was not a success. Mrs. Thrale, in <i>Anecdotes of Dr.
-Johnson</i>, has left a very lively account of these amateur brewers’ proceedings.
-In June, 1781, when the Executors had made the resolve to
-sell the business, she wrote: “Dear Dr. Johnson was somewhat unwilling—but
-not much at last—to give up a trade by which in some years
-£15,000 or £16,000 had undoubtedly been got, but by which in some
-years its possessor had suffered agonies of terror and tottered twice upon
-the verge of bankruptcy .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. adieu to brewing and borough wintering;
-adieu to trade and tradesmen’s frigid approbation. May virtue and
-wisdom sanctify our contract, and make buyer and seller happy in the
-bargain!”</p>
-
-<p>When the brewery was offered for sale, Dr. Johnson appeared
-bustling about with his ink-horn and pen in his buttonhole,
-like any excise man. On being asked what he really considered to be
-the value of the property, he spoke the celebrated words: “We are not
-here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing
-rich beyond the dream of avarice.” The brewery was finally sold by
-private contract for £135,000 to Messrs. Robert Barclay and John
-Perkins, who were associated in the transaction with Mr. David Barclay,
-junr., and Mr. Sylvanus Bevan, of the banking firm of Barclay,
-Bevan &amp; Co. Mr. Robert Barclay was succeeded by his son Charles,
-who represented Southwark in Parliament, and his sons and grandsons.
-In 1827, the last year of the old Beer-tax, Barclays’ headed the list of
-London firms, having brewed 341,331 barrels of beer.</p>
-
-<p>The present brewery and its belongings adjoin Bankside, extend
-from the land arches of Southwark Bridge nearly half the distance to
-London Bridge, and cover about twelve acres. Within the brewery is
-said to be the site of the old Globe Theatre. In an account of the
-neighbourhood, dated 1795, it is stated that “the passage which led to
-the Globe Tavern, of which the playhouse formed a part, was till
-within these few years known by the name of Globe Alley, and upon its
-site now stands a large
-storehouse for porter.” <span class="xxpn" id="p342">{342}</span></p>
-
-<p>In the Globe Theatre, which was built by Henslowe and his son-in-law
-Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, Shakspere produced and acted
-in several of his plays. It is curious that with Barclay and Perkins’
-brewery should be associated the names of our greatest poet and perhaps
-our most brilliant conversationalist—Dr. Johnson—who did so much to
-revive the popularity of his predecessor.</p>
-
-<p>A rather amusing anecdote used to be told of Madame Malibran,
-who, like many singers, knew the beneficial effects of stout on the voice, and
-whose favourite evening’s repast after the Opera consisted of oysters
-and bottled stout. Once hearing the name of the Honourable Craven
-Berkeley announced in company, she tripped up to him, and, with great
-animation, said, “Ah, Mr. Barclay and Perkins, I do owe you so much!”
-This reminds us of another anecdote, told of Madame Pasta. When
-in England she was asked by a literary lady of high distinction whether
-she drank as much stout as usual. “No, mia cara,” was the reply
-“prendo half and half adessa.”</p>
-
-<p>Messrs. Barclay, Perkins and Co.’s brewery ranks among the sights
-of London, and is visited by thousands of foreigners during the year.
-The present brewhouse is nearly as large as Westminster Hall, and each
-of the three malt bins could, if required, contain an ordinary three-storied
-house. The vats number a hundred and fifty, with capacities
-varying from one hundred to three thousand five hundred barrels; the
-largest of these weigh when full no less than 500 tons. The full capacity
-of the mash tuns is 690 quarters. The water used in brewing is drawn
-from an artesian well 623 feet deep, and the firm give employment to
-over six hundred men.</p>
-
-<p>Among the collection of Hearne’s Letters, in the Bodleian Library,
-is one from Saml. Catherall, dated “Luscom, near Bath, Nov. 2, 1729.”
-It contains a few semi-humorous verses on the death of two mutual
-friends, named Whiteside and Craster, and ends
-<span class="nowrap">thus:―</span></p>
-
-<div id="p342verses">
-<div class="dpoemfarlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Ev’en
- you alas! with grief o’ercome, shall lend</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some tears, and lose y<sup>e</sup> stoick in y<sup>e</sup> Friend:</span>
-<span class="spp00">So stern Achilles wept—But you, and I</span>
-<span class="spp00">Observant of Decorum, will not cry</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like children (for we all were born to Die);</span>
-<span class="spp00">Basse’s Immortal Ale shall make us gay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He Holds out longest y<sup>t</sup> dilutes his clay.</span>
-</div></div>
-<p class="pctr">“Your faithful Friend,</p>
-<p class="psignature">“<span class="smcap">S<b>AM</b></span>
- <span class="smcap">C<b>ATHERALL</b>.</span></p>
-<p>“To Mr. Thomas Hearne</p>
-<p class="pright">“At Edmund Hall, in Oxford.</p>
-<p class="pcontinue">“By the cross post.”</p></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p343">{343}</span></div>
-
-<p>Though there are records extant of persons bearing the name of Bass
-who did various notable things, such as undertaking a pilgrimage to
-Canterbury in 1506 (not forgetting a certain Mrs. Laura Bassi, who was
-promoted to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Bologna, in Italy
-“having first passed a strict examination and answered all points with
-surprising capacity and learning), this is nevertheless the first mention
-of Basse’s ale. Who was this Basse”? Frankly, we cannot say, but from
-the date of the letter it is certain that he was not the founder of the
-present firm.</p>
-
-<p>The year 1877 was the centenary of that great commercial enterprise
-now known as Bass, Ratcliff &amp; Gretton, Limited. It was when George
-the Third was King, and Pitt, the youngest Prime Minister this
-country has ever known, was in power, that Mr. William Bass, the
-proprietor of a considerable carrying business, commenced to brew ale
-at Burton. His brewhouse was situated in the High Street, and the
-building on that site, still in the hands of the firm, is always spoken of
-as the “Old Brewery.” The land occupied was about equal in extent
-to a moderately large garden, and the power in the brewery was probably
-altogether manual, for Watt had not at that time fully developed
-the greatest invention the world has ever known. Bass and Co.’s
-Brewery and its belongings now cover forty-five acres of freehold and
-over a hundred of leasehold land, on which are thirty-two steam engines
-of altogether 610 horse power!</p>
-
-<p>Mr. William Bass, finding that his new undertaking was proving a
-success, sold his carrying business to the well-known house of Pickford
-&amp; Co. The brewery did not, however, begin to take any important
-place in the trade until the beginning of the present century, some few
-years after Mr. Michael Thomas Bass, grandson of the founder, had
-been taken into the business, which then soon began to increase with
-marvellous rapidity, owing, there can be no doubt, to the fact that Mr.
-Michael Bass’s principal aim was to brew the very best beer that could
-possibly be brewed. In 1834 Mr. Ratcliff was taken into partnership,
-and a few years later Mr. Gretton joined the firm. In 1853 was built
-the middle brewery, between Guild Street and Station Street. In 1864
-a third brewhouse was opened in Station Street, only thirty-six weeks
-after the foundations were commenced. Both the Middle Brewery and
-the New Brewery have been greatly enlarged within the last few years,
-and the Old Brewery has been entirely rebuilt. In 1884 Mr. M. T.
-Bass died, and was probably more deeply lamented than any other
-inhabitant of Burton since that place became a town.
-In 1880 the <span class="xxpn" id="p344">{344}</span>
-business was turned into a private Limited Company, of which the
-eldest son of Mr. M. T. Bass is the chairman.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn66" id="fnanc66">66</a></p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc66" id="fn66">66</a>
-Created (1886) Baron Burton of Rangemore and of Burton-on-Trent,
-in the county of Stafford.</p></div>
-
-<p>Before attempting to give any idea of the enormous business transacted
-by Messrs. Bass &amp; Co., a few words respecting the man by whose
-strict integrity, business qualifications, and persistent and successful
-efforts to produce the best possible article, and none other, the name of
-Bass has been rendered a familiar word throughout the whole civilised
-world. He was born in 1799, and entered the business immediately
-after leaving school. The trade then done was so limited that he had
-for a time to act as a traveller; but year by year the demand for Bass’s
-Ale became greater and greater, and for a considerable period before his
-death Mr. Bass was at the head of the greatest pale ale brewery in the
-world. He was a genial, kindly man, and had a genuine pride in the
-success of his great undertaking. Those who had the pleasure of being
-his guests will no doubt remember his translation of two lines from
-<i>Martial</i>, Book vi. Epigram
-<span class="nowrap">69:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Non Miror quod potat aquam tua Bassa, Catulle!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Miror quod <i>Bassi filia</i> potat aquam.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">“I
-am not the least surprised, O Catullus, that your nymph
-Bassa drinks water; what I <i>am</i> surprised at is that Bass’s
-daughter drinks water.” The epigram has also been rendered
-into English <span class="nowrap">verse:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Not strange, my friend, I’m thinking,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy Bassa water drinking,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Most strange that Bass’s daughter</span>
-<span class="spp00">Should think of drinking water.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Mr. M. T. Bass represented Derby in Parliament for thirty-five
-years, being eight times elected in succession, only resigning in 1883,
-having lived to be the oldest member in the House. He gave Derby a
-Free Library, a Museum, an Art Gallery, a Public Bath, and a Recreation
-Ground, at a cost of £50,000. Railway Companies’ servants have
-reason to be grateful to him, for through his endeavours their hours of
-labour, though still in some case left far too long, have on many lines
-been considerably shortened. For some years many of them worked
-sixteen, eighteen, and even twenty hours out of the twenty-four. He
-also strenuously exerted himself to obtain the abolition of imprisonment
-for debt. His benefactions to Burton are too numerous to mention.
-The chief of them were the gifts of St. Paul’s
-and St. Margaret’s <span class="xxpn" id="p345">{345}</span>
-Churches, with a Parsonage House, Schools, and an endowment of
-£500 a year, and a Workman’s Club and Institute at a total cost of over
-£100,000. Mr. Bass was repeatedly offered a Peerage, and as often refused
-it. We cannot better conclude this short and very inadequate description
-than by quoting the words used by Sir William Harcourt when opening
-St. Paul’s Institute at Burton-on-Trent: “We are met here to-day to
-commemorate the munificent benefaction of Mr. Bass. He is a man
-advanced in years, in honour, and in wealth, which is the fruit of a life
-of intelligent industry. He was a Liberal in his youth; he is a Liberal
-in his age. Years and wealth have not brought to him selfish timidity.
-In his grey hairs he cherishes the generous sentiments which inspired
-his earlier days. He has received freely, and freely has he bestowed.”</p>
-
-<p>The liberality of the firm was not confined to Mr. Michael Bass.
-The Messrs. Gretton have erected and endowed a Church in the suburbs
-of Burton at a cost of nearly £20,000, and Public Baths and Wash-houses,
-costing nearly £10,000, have been presented to the town by
-Messrs. Ratcliff.</p>
-
-<p>The firm of Bass &amp; Co. alone contribute to the National Revenue
-upwards of £780 per day, and its breweries at Burton-upon-Trent are
-the largest of their kind in the world, the business premises extending,
-as we have said, over 145 acres of land. Locomotives have to a large
-extent superseded brewers’ drays at Burton, and this firm has connection
-with the outer railway systems by twelve miles of rails on the premises,
-and use as many as 60,000 railway trucks in the course of six months.
-The casks required to carry on the business number 600,000, of which
-46,901 are butts, and 159,608 are hogsheads. Some ingenious calculations
-have been made with regard to these casks. Piled one above another
-they would make 3,300 pillars, each reaching to the top of St. Paul’s.
-The great Egyptian Pyramid is 763 ft. square at the base; the butts,
-standing on end and placed bulge to bulge, would furnish bases for <i>five</i>
-such pyramids, and the other casks would be more than sufficient for
-the superstructure 460 ft. high.</p>
-
-<p>Though labour-saving machinery is used as much as possible, Bass
-&amp; Co. employ at Burton alone 2,250 men and boys. In 1821 only
-867 men and 61 boys were engaged in all the Burton breweries. In the
-course of a season the firm now sends out over 800,000 barrels, and
-manufacture raw material weighing 85,000 tons. In the year ending
-June 30th, 1883, 250,000 quarters of malt were used and 31,000 cwt. of
-hops. The amount of business now done by the firm in one year
-cannot be less than £2,400,000, figures which will give some idea of the
-capital employed. <span class="xxpn" id="p346">{346}</span></p>
-
-<p>A detailed description of the three brewhouses would fill the whole
-of the space devoted to this chapter; suffice it, therefore, to say that the
-racking rooms on the ground floor of the new brewery cover more than
-one and a half acre, the tunning rooms of the same area contain 2,548
-tunning casks of 160 gallons each; and the copper house contains three
-water coppers that will boil 12,000 gallons each; and eleven wort
-coppers that will each boil 2,200 gallons of wort.</p>
-
-<p>On the cooperage great demands are made, for about 40,000 casks,
-which are made in part by machinery, are annually exported. The
-firm has thirty-two maltings at Burton, and others elsewhere, which,
-during the malting season, make 7,600 qrs. per week.</p>
-
-<p>The annual issue of Bass and Co.’s labels amounts to over one
-hundred millions. Some idea of this quantity may be gathered from
-the fact that if they were put end to end in one long line they would
-reach to New York and back again, a distance of five thousand miles.</p>
-
-<p>Both the late Mr. Bass’s sons are members of the firm. The eldest,
-Lord Burton of Rangemore, late member for the Burton division
-of Staffordshire, represented Stafford from 1865 to 1868, and East
-Staffordshire from 1868 to 1886. Mr. Hamar Bass, the second son,
-represented Tamworth for some years, and in the general elections of
-1885–6 was returned for West Staffordshire.</p>
-
-<p>Between the firms of Bass and Allsopp there is a friendly rivalry as
-to which shall brew the best ale. A few years since Sir M. Arthur
-Bass and Mr. Charles Allsopp while fishing on Loch Quvich, in Inverness-shire,
-were nearly drowned. Sir Arthur had hooked a large fish, and
-Mr. Allsopp, eager to see it, stepped on one side of the boat, which at
-once capsized. The anglers and their attendants clung to the bottom
-of the boat, and were ultimately thrown on an island in an exhausted
-condition! The following paragraph shortly afterwards appeared in the
-<i>World</i>:—“The exciting accident which nearly proved the death of the
-rival brewers of Burton-on-Trent, at once so touching in its record of
-disinterested friendship, and so highly satisfactory in its sequel to the
-world at large, has suddenly inundated me with facetious rhyme and
-caustic epigram. This is how one of my correspondents treats the
-<span class="nowrap">subject:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Let friends who go fishing for salmon or wrasse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Take a hint from the story of Allsop and Bass;</span>
-<span class="spp00">When you hook a fine fish, of your brother keep clear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or your salmon, when caught, may <i>embitter your beer</i> (bier).</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p347">{347}</span></div>
-
-<p>One of the most ancient and important brewing centres in the
-kingdom is the city of Dublin. With one exception, all its breweries
-are exclusively devoted to the manufacture of stout, that sturdy beverage
-the fame of which has gone forth into all lands; and just as Burton has
-acquired the right to be termed the Pale Ale Metropolis, so does
-Ireland’s chief town contend with London for the honour of being called
-the Capital of Black Beer.</p>
-
-<p>It is remarkable that so early as the commencement of the seventeenth
-century, Dublin was already a notable brewing centre, producing
-a description of brown ale. Barnaby Ryche, writing about that time,
-gives a quaint account of the manners and customs of the people, and
-calls attention to the great number of alehouses in Dublin during the
-reign of James I.</p>
-
-<p>“I am now,” he says, “to speake of a certaine kind of commodity,
-that outstretcheth all that I have hitherto spoken of, and that is the
-selling of ale in Dublin, a quotidian commodity that hath vent in every
-house in the towne, every day in the weeke, at every houre in the day,
-and in every minute in the houre: There is no merchandise so vendible,
-it is the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin: the whole
-profit of the towne stands upon ale-houses, and selling of ale, but yet
-the cittizens, a little to dignifie the title, as they use to call every pedlar
-a merchant, so they use to call every ale-house a taverne, whereof there
-are such plentie, that there are streates of tavernes.</p>
-
-<p>“.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;This free mart of ale selling in Dublyne is prohibited
-to none, but that it is lawfull for every woman (be she better or be she
-worse) either to brewe or else to sell ale.”</p>
-
-<p>About the time of the Restoration there were ninety-one public
-brewhouses in Dublin, and in the early part of the eighteenth century
-the trade, though on the decrease, was evidently thriving, the brewhouses
-being seventy in number. It seems, however, that, as the
-century wore on, the trade died away, for in 1773 there were only
-thirty-five Breweries surviving. The decay of so important an industry
-was chiefly due to three causes: In the first place, the Irish brewers
-were saddled with a heavy tax, and, secondly, English Porter was taking
-the place of old Irish brown ale in the popular fancy. An old song
-on the Tavern of the Cross Keys, in Dublin, composed about the middle
-of the century, opens with the
-<span class="nowrap">lines―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">When London Porter was not known in town</span>
-<span class="spp00">And Irish ale or beer went glibly down.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p348">{348}</span></div>
-
-<p>It does not seem that the Dublin brewers, who were frequently
-petitioning Parliament for assistance, faced the difficulty by brewing
-Porter themselves until the year 1778. The third adverse influence was
-the taste for ardent spirits, especially rum and brandy, which had sprung
-up; and the Irish records of the day are full of allusions to the injury
-which this was working, not only to the trade of the Brewers, but to the
-morals and health of the people.</p>
-
-<p>A remarkable letter is still preserved, written by Henry Grattan on
-this subject at the close of the century. It appears to be addressed to
-the Brewers of Dublin, probably in answer to one of their numerous
-petitions for protection. It is as
-<span class="nowrap">follows:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“Gentlemen,</p>
-
-<p id="p348-pa">“The Health of Ireland
-and the prosperity of her breweries I
-consider as intimately connected. I have looked to your trade as to a
-source of life and a necessary means of subsistence. I have considered it
-as the natural nurse of the people and entitled to every encouragement,
-favour, and exemption. It is at your source the Parliament will find
-in its own country the means of Health with all her flourishing
-consequences, and the cure of intoxication with all her misery.</p>
-
-<p>“My wishes are with you always. My exertions, such as they are,
-you may ever command.</p>
-
-<p>“I have the honour to be your sincere and your humble servant,</p>
-
-<p class="psignature">“<span class="smcap">H<b>ENRY</b></span>
-<span class="smcap">G<b>RATTAN</b></span>.”</p>
-
-<p>At present (1886) there are only seven firms of any note in Dublin;
-and of those existing a hundred years ago but two survive—Messrs.
-Sweetman’s and the well-known house of Messrs. Guinness, which has
-long been at the head of the trade in Ireland. To some English readers
-it may come as a revelation that at the present time this Irish firm is
-the greatest producer of malt liquors in the whole world.</p>
-
-<p>Some account of the rise and progress of so vast a business cannot
-but be of interest to the student of industrial enterprise, but in the
-compass of the present work it will of course only be possible to give the
-merest outline of its growth.</p>
-
-<p>Arthur Guinness, the great-grandfather of Sir Edward Guinness, the
-present owner, purchased the original premises from a Mr. Ransford in
-the year 1759. The business appears to have been of very modest
-dimensions, for the plant, as acquired by Arthur Guinness, included only
-one mash tun and one seventy-barrel copper. The brewery had, even
-at that time, been worked for a considerable period, certainly from the
-earliest years of the eighteenth century, and
-probably before that. <span class="xxpn" id="p349">{349}</span></p>
-
-<p>The property, about one acre in extent, thus acquired in 1759, forms
-the nucleus of the present gigantic establishment. The principal brewhouse
-stands to-day precisely on the site once occupied by Ransford’s
-mash tun and copper; but since the commencement of the nineteenth
-century many additional properties have from time to time been
-acquired, until at present the total area occupied by the brewhouses and
-their belongings amounts to between forty and fifty statute acres.</p>
-
-<p>For many years the dimensions of the business were but moderate.
-Wakefield, writing in 1809, states that Guinness was then only the
-second brewer in Ireland, Beamish and Crawford of Cork, who brewed
-upwards of 100,000 barrels a year, standing first.</p>
-
-<p>Without attempting to account for or to describe the advance,
-since Wakefield’s day, of the great Dublin firm (made a limited liability
-company in October, 1886), we may briefly notice one or two points of
-special interest connected with the manufacture.</p>
-
-<p>The materials used are absolutely confined to malt, pale and roasted,
-and hops. Of the latter a preference has always been shown for those
-of Kent, no other English varieties being used. But of late years
-American Hops have been largely consumed as well. The water for
-brewing is drawn from the City Watercourses, and not from the Liffey,
-as some people unacquainted with Dublin have supposed.</p>
-
-<p>It would be impossible here to describe in detail the process or the
-plant of the St. James’ Gate Brewery, and owing to the position held
-by the firm it seems almost unnecessary to say that every modern
-improvement of the Engineer and the Scientist, whether for facilitating
-the operations of Brewing or for ensuring the safety and welfare of those
-employed, has been carefully investigated and judiciously applied. The
-minute attention which is paid to every detail of the process, from the
-manufacture and selection of the malt, to the treatment and storage of
-the beer in every stage, is matched by the liberal provision made for the
-men engaged in the work and their families.</p>
-
-<p>To the visitor nothing is more astonishing than the size and number
-of the vats. Some of these huge erections of Oak and Iron contain no
-less than 90,000 gallons apiece; and to a lengthened storage in these is
-due in great measure the peculiar character of the Stout devoted to the
-foreign export trade. The tendency in most modern breweries has been
-to dispense with lengthened storage in vat. Not so here, and the
-erection of vats of great capacity has kept pace with the extension
-of the export trade.</p>
-
-<p>Another remarkable feature is the large provision
-of ice machines, <span class="xxpn" id="p350">{350}</span>
-or rather of engines for the cooling, by the evaporation of ether and
-ammonia, of fluid brine, which circulates by a complicated system of
-copper pipes through every part of the vast storehouses, and ensures a
-winter temperature on the hottest summer day. It is the extent to
-which this system is applied that is so striking in this establishment,
-where all is on so vast a scale that the ordinary units of measurement
-seem inadequate to convey a notion of the truth. The same may be
-said of the multitude of mains by which the finished beer is conveyed
-from the storage vats, a distance of half a mile beneath one of the
-principal streets of the city, to the lower portion of the works where
-the beer is “racked” into cask.</p>
-
-<p>It is related that the Empress of Brazil, who a few years since visited
-the Brewery, went away under the impression—a not unnatural one—what
-beer was laid on like gas and water to all the houses in Dublin.</p>
-
-<p>A small railway of 22-inch gauge, and which is altogether about
-two miles in length, penetrates every part of the Brewery. The rolling
-stock includes six locomotives and upwards of one hundred and sixty
-trucks and bogies.</p>
-
-<p>The descent from the Brewery to the lower level of the river side
-has been engineered with remarkable skill. In order to avoid crossing
-the street which bisects the works a spiral tunnel has been constructed,
-by means of which the line descends thirty feet in three circuits, the
-diameter of which is only forty yards, while the gradient is 1 in 39.
-Much of the internal traffic of the Brewery is thus carried on with ease
-and rapidity by means of this unique underground railway.</p>
-
-<p>So far as is possible in a Brewery which has been added to from time
-to time, advantage has been taken of the physical features of the locality
-in the general arrangement of the plant. Thus the finished beer runs
-by gravitation from the Brewery to the Racking Stores, which are
-situated upon the Quays. Full advantage has been taken of this
-excellent position, and the firm possesses a fleet of steamers and barges
-which convey the filled casks to the docks, a distance of a mile and a
-half. The Export trade is entirely carried on by river, while a branch
-line from the Great Southern and Western Railway terminus bears
-away many a train-load of porter every day, to be distributed over the
-whole length and breadth of Ireland.</p>
-
-<p>We have already borne witness to the increasing popularity of porte
-in Ireland, and feel sure that no better thing could happen to the
-“distressful country” than that the drinking of whisky and the bad
-substitutes that are sold under that name should
-be brought within <span class="xxpn" id="p351">{351}</span>
-reasonable limits, and that malt liquor should become the daily drink
-of every Irish farmer, who from that source will find, to again
-quote Grattan’s words, “the means of Health with all her flourishing
-consequences, and the cure of intoxication with all her misery.”</p>
-
-<p>Romford, in Essex, is known to the few as the birthplace of Sir
-Anthony Cooke and Francis Quarles, the poet; but to the many it is
-the source whence come certain excellent and deservedly popular ales.
-Through the town wanders a little stream now called the Rom, but
-described in old country Maps as the Bourne Brooke, and which in the
-fifteenth century was called the Mercke-dyche.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn67" id="fnanc67">67</a>
-Towards the close of
-the eighteenth century there stood by the bridge which carries the High
-Street over this rivulet, a small Inn called the Star. The innkeeper,
-according to the fashion of the times, brewed his own beer, and at the
-rear of his hostel was a small brewhouse. His mash tub was no doubt
-of modest dimensions, and his “liquor” was possibly drawn from the
-Mercke-dyche, for in that day pure water could be got from most streams
-and rivers. Now, sad to say, an unpolluted stream is almost unknown,
-and nine wells supply the water which, with a due admixture of malt
-and hops, forms that admirable compound known as Romford Ale.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc67" id="fn67">67</a>
-It is curious that the river now takes its name from the town, and
-not <i>vice versa</i>, as is generally the case. “Romford” is mentioned in
-the Red Book of the Exchequer in 1166, when the stream was called the
-Mercke-dyche. Some antiquarians derive the word from Roman-ford,
-but it probably simply means broad-ford, the first syllable being the
-Saxon word for broad and akin to roomy.</p></div>
-
-<p>In the year 1799 two important events happened in the town.
-That which probably created the most profound sensation among the
-inhabitants was the death of a most eccentric person, James Wilson,
-the corpulent butcher of Romford. This worthy was in the habit of
-going to church on Sunday sometime before the hour of service, and
-loudly singing psalms by himself, until the minister came to the desk.
-On the last fast-day before his death he remained in church between
-morning and evening services, repeating the Lord’s Prayer and singing
-psalms in each of the pews, only leaving the church when there
-remained no pew in which he had not performed his devotions. Another
-peculiarity was the peripatetic manner in which he sometimes took his
-meals. Armed with a shoulder of mutton in one hand, some salt in the
-bend of his arm, a small loaf, and a large knife, he would wander up and
-down the street until all was consumed. He was,
-moreover, an <span class="xxpn" id="p352">{352}</span>
-excellent penman, as the vestry books to this day witness, and his meat bills
-were well worthy of framing. One line would be in German text,
-another in Roman characters; no two meats being written in the same
-coloured ink. The death of such a man naturally attracted more
-attention than the second event alluded to, a small commercial
-transaction, which we venture to think was of more importance to the
-community at large than the decease of the butcher. This was the
-purchase of the Star Inn and Brewery by Mr. Ind, who, in conjunction
-with a Mr. Grosvenor, carried on the business of a brewer. Seventeen
-years later the partnership was dissolved, Mr. John Smith took the place
-of Mr. Grosvenor, and until 1845 the firm traded as Ind and Smith. In
-that year Mr. Smith sold his share in the Brewery, and Mr. O. E. Coope
-and his brother, George Coope, joined the firm, which then, for the first
-time, adopted its present title of Ind, Coope &amp; Co.</p>
-
-<p>A few years back the following epigram appeared in one of the
-London comic papers in connection with the name of the firm and
-<i>Drink</i>, the English version of the play
-<span class="nowrap"><i>L’Assomoir</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The drunkards in the play of <i>Drink</i></span>
-<span class="spp01">All reeling in a group, O,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Close on intoxication’s brink,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Swill stronger stuff than soup, O,</span>
-<span class="spp00">What is their liquor do you <span class="nowrap">think?—</span></span>
-<span class="spp01">It should be Ind and Coope, O (Coupeau).</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Mr. Ind, the founder of the Romford Brewery, died in 1848, his
-place being taken by his son, the present Mr. Ind. Mr. E. V. Ind,
-another son of the founder, was also made a partner, as was Mr. Charles
-Peter Matthews, to whose skill as a brewer Romford Ales owe much of
-their reputation. In 1858, Mr. Thomas Helme (who has recently
-assumed the name of Mashiter) joined the firm, which consisted in 1886 of
-Messrs. O. E. Coope; Edward Ind; C. P. Matthews (the general
-managing partner); T. Mashiter; together with their four sons, and
-Major F. J. N. Ind, son of the late Mr. E. V. Ind.</p>
-
-<p>In 1853 Messrs. Ind, Coope &amp; Co. purchased a brewery at Burton,
-which, having been enlarged from time to time, now rivals in size the
-old brewhouse at Romford. It is under the direction of Mr. E. J. Bird,
-the Burton managing partner.</p>
-
-<p>The mash tuns, vats, coppers, &amp;c., of the Romford brewery differ
-but little from those used by other firms of the first rank. In the
-brewhouse are thirty-two malt bins, the eight largest of which hold
-900 quarters, and are each about as large as
-a small dwelling-house. <span class="xxpn" id="p353">{353}</span>
-Altogether 10,000 quarters of malt can be stored. Extensive hop rooms,
-one of which is 110 feet long by 80 feet wide, afford storage for 5,000
-pockets of hops. There are six coppers, the largest of which holds
-32,400 gallons. In the fermenting room are twenty-four squares with
-capacities ranging up to 500 barrels. The stores are in seventeen buildings
-connected by tramways, and the tram lines on which the casks are
-rolled are about eight miles in length. About 600,000 full casks of
-various sizes are sent out from the store every year. In the stores are
-twenty-three huge vats used for storing old ale.</p>
-
-<p>The cooperage is one of the largest departments in the brewery,
-giving employment to thirty-two coopers and fifty-six assistants. In the
-stables are some forty or fifty horses, and the more thoroughly to dispel
-the popular delusion that brewers’ horses are fed on grains, it may be
-worth while stating that these have each an allowance of 42 lbs. per day
-of oats, beans, clover, meadow-hay, oat-straw and bran, all either cut or
-bruised and mixed together.</p>
-
-<p>On the brewery are kept three fire-engines (a steamer and two
-manuals) and a well organised fire-brigade of ten men, which is ever
-ready to render its services at fires in the neighbourhood. A laudable
-feature in connection with the brewery is a Friendly Society, to which
-all the employés belong, and which ensures their receiving, among other
-benefits, a substantial allowance during sickness.</p>
-
-<p>At Romford the firm give employment to three hundred men and
-boys, exclusive of officials, collectors, &amp;c., and are large employers of
-labour at their London stores (where eighty horses are in use); at their
-Burton brewery, and at their twenty-five country depôts. The firm is a
-great supporter of the Volunteer movement. For many years Mr. Coope
-was Major of the Essex Volunteers, and one company of the battalion to
-which he was attached is entirely made up of brewery employés,
-“doughty sons of malt and hops.”</p>
-
-<p>Messrs. Ind, Coope &amp; Co. stick to the old-fashioned materials for
-their beer, and the large extent of what may be termed their private
-family trade is an indication not to be lightly disregarded that we
-English still adhere to our ancient friendship for Sir John Barleycorn.</p>
-
-<p>One other Burton Brewery yet remains to be mentioned, that of
-Messrs. Thomas Salt &amp; Company, at the head of which firm is Mr.
-Henry Wardle, the present (1886) member for South Derbyshire, the
-other partners being Messrs. Edward Dawson Salt, William Cecil Salt,
-and Henry George Tomlinson.</p>
-
-<p>To trace the origin of the firm, it is necessary to go back
-as far as <span class="xxpn" id="p354">{354}</span>
-the year 1774, when Messrs. Salt &amp; Co.’s maltings were worked in conjunction
-with the brewery of Messrs. Clay &amp; Sons. It was about this
-time that the great-grandfather of two present members of the firm
-added a brewery to the malting business, and thus, in the list of brewers,
-then few in number, given in the records of the town for 1789, we find
-the name of Thomas Salt. In 1822 the only Burton Brewers mentioned
-in Pigott’s <i>Commercial Directory</i> were S. Allsopp &amp; Co.; Bass and
-Ratcliffe; Thomas Salt &amp; Co.; John Sherrard; and William
-Worthington.</p>
-
-<p>When in 1823 the Burton brewers determined to brew an ale which
-could compete with Hodgson’s then well-known India pale ale,
-Salt &amp; Co. were among the first to bring the idea to a practical issue.
-There must indeed have been no lack of energy on the part of the firm,
-for in 1884 they came off with flying colours at the International Health
-Exhibition, gaining a gold medal for the excellence of their ale.</p>
-
-<p>Salt &amp; Co.’s brewery is bounded on the front by the High Street,
-while at the back flows the silvery Trent, the waters of which are not
-used in brewing, as many people suppose. Even in Burton, famous
-as it is for its waters, every well sunk does not produce the right sort of
-“liquor,” and Messrs. Salt &amp; Co., after many fruitless borings on their
-own premises, were obliged to sink an artesian well a quarter of a mile
-distant before they could obtain the water most suitable for their
-purpose.</p>
-
-<p>The firm have several maltings in Burton, the most important of
-which is that situated on the Wallsitch. It consists of three huge
-blocks of buildings, each of which is seventy yards long, thirty wide,
-and four storeys high. As a malting has not yet been described in
-this book, some account of the interior of John Barleycorn’s Crematory,
-taking that last erected by Messrs. Salt &amp; Co. as a sample, may be read
-with interest.</p>
-
-<p>On the ground floor is the cistern, into which the barley, after being
-cleansed (technically “screened”), is placed for the purpose of being
-steeped. At the end of about fifty hours the clear water is drained off,
-and the soaked barley is thrown into the couch frame, where it remains
-about twenty-five hours. The grain has now commenced to germinate.
-The next process is to distribute it over various floors (by means of
-baskets lowered and raised by steam windlasses), where it is spread on
-clean red tiles, in layers varying from two to four inches in thickness,
-according to the temperature of the weather. For four or five days the
-barley is left to grow. At the end of that time its vitality
-begins to flag <span class="xxpn" id="p355">{355}</span>
-for lack of moisture, and more water is added, the skill of the maltster
-being taxed to the utmost in assigning such a proportion of water as
-will develop the grain into perfect malt. At the end of about ten days
-germination is complete. A great and wonderful transformation has
-now taken place, the hard stubborn corn having been reduced to tender
-friable malt. The next process is to dry the malt, and for this purpose
-it is placed in a kiln and subjected to a high temperature until the vital
-principle of germination is extinguished, and the desired colour has been
-acquired. Any dry rootlets which adhere to the grain are then
-separated by trampling, a second screening takes place, and the malt
-is measured into sacks, every precaution being taken to prevent
-exposure to the atmosphere, until it is finally placed in the big bins
-above the mash tub.</p>
-
-<p>In the process of malting the most ingenious apparatus used is the
-screen, which may be described as a <i>multum in parvo</i> piece of mechanism.
-Of these machines there are three, each being worked by an endless
-leathern rope, and by an ingenious system of graduated riddles, performing
-four distinct operations. In one compartment the dust is
-blown away by revolving fans, in another the broken half-corns are
-removed; the third action clears all stones, rubbish, &amp;c., away, and
-finally the thin inferior corns are separated.</p>
-
-<p>To avoid repetition, we are obliged to omit a description of the
-brewery, those of the first class at Burton being very similar to one
-another. In order to give some idea of the extent of Messrs. Salt and
-Co.’s operations, it may be mentioned that in the new house are five
-mash tubs, each with a capacity of fifty-five qrs. of malt. The cooperage
-belonging to this firm is noteworthy, the casks being made by elaborate
-machinery worked by steam, a system followed in very few English
-breweries, but which is not uncommon in America.</p>
-
-<p>In the archives of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton &amp; Co., is
-a document bearing the date 1719, which purports to be “An Inventory
-of the Goods, Chattels, and Credits of Joseph Truman, which since his
-death have come into the hands, possession and knowledge of Benjamin
-Truman, Daniel Cooper, and the Executors named in the will of Joseph
-Truman.” No earlier written record of the firm is in existence, but
-there is a tradition that at some remote period of history there existed
-one John Oliver Truman, who carried on the business in Brick Lane,
-and to this day all casks leaving the brewery are branded I.O.T. Even
-in 1741 the business transacted was considerable. There were then
-four partners—Benjamin Truman, John Denne, Francis
-Cooper and the <span class="xxpn" id="p356">{356}</span>
-executors of Alud Denne. Among the customers were two hundred
-and ninety-six publicans, one of whom was John Denne, who retailed
-the beer made by this firm.</p>
-
-<p>To the Benjamin Truman above-mentioned must be given the
-credit of having made the brewery one of the most important in London.
-In 1737, when the Duchess of Brunswick (grand-daughter of George II.)
-was born, the Prince of Wales ordered bonfires to be made before
-Carlton House, and four barrels of beer to be given to the populace.
-But the brewer to the royal household provided beer of the smallest, and
-the mob threw it in each other’s faces and into the fire. The Prince
-good-naturedly ordered a second bonfire the succeeding night, and
-Benjamin Truman supplied the beer. He had the wisdom to send a
-sturdy brew, the best his cellars could produce, and the people were
-greatly pleased. With such a shrewd trader at its head, it is not
-surprising that by 1760 Truman’s had taken its place as third among
-the great London Breweries. Calvert and Seward came first with
-74,704 barrels, Whitbread’s next with 60,508 barrels, Truman’s
-following with 60,140 barrels.</p>
-
-<p>Benjamin Truman was knighted by George III., and portraits of
-him and his daughter, by Gainsborough, still hang in the drawing room
-of the house in Brick Lane. In the same room is a portrait of Mr.
-Sampson Hanbury (the first of the name who joined the firm), a famous
-sportsman, who for thirty-five years was Master of the Puckeridge
-Hounds. He entered the firm in 1780, and was subsequently joined by
-his brother. Sampson Hanbury’s sister, Anna, married Thomas Fowell
-Buxton, of Earle’s Colne. This gentleman was High Sheriff of his
-county, and served the office with special credit. He died in 1792,
-leaving a widow, three sons, and two daughters. The eldest son,
-Thomas Fowell Buxton, was only six years old at his father’s death.
-This little fellow was destined to be, perhaps, the most distinguished
-partner in the firm. He was educated at Greenwich, and Trinity
-College, Dublin, at which latter place he carried off the highest honours,
-and when only twenty-one years of age received an influential requisition
-to represent the University in Parliament. This honour he
-declined. He had originally been intended for the Bar, but in 1808,
-when on a visit to the brewery, his uncles, Osgood and Sampson
-Hanbury, being struck with his undoubted abilities, offered him a situation
-in the business, and in 1811 made him a partner. The other
-members of the firm at that time were Mr. Sampson Hanbury, Mr.
-John Truman Villebois, and
-Mr. Henry Villebois. <span class="xxpn" id="p357">{357}</span></p>
-
-<p>To the young partner was soon given the work of re-modelling the
-Establishment, a task in which he succeeded admirably. A few years
-later he began to take an interest in public affairs, devoting himself
-more particularly to a consideration of subjects connected with prison
-discipline and the criminal code, into which his early training for the
-Bar gave him some insight. In 1818 he was elected for Weymouth, and,
-owing in a great measure to his exertions and co-operation, Sir Robert
-Peel carried his Bill for the abolition of capital punishment for trivial
-offences. Mr. Buxton’s great work was in connection with the Slavery
-question. Into the cause of Liberty he threw himself heart and soul,
-and to his unceasing endeavours were in great measure due the glorious
-results ultimately achieved. The Beer Act, passed in 1830, had Mr.
-Buxton’s approval. “I have always voted for free trade when the
-interests of others are concerned,” he said, “and it would be awkward
-to change when my own are in jeopardy. I am pleased to have an
-opportunity of proving that our real monoply is one of skill and capital.”</p>
-
-<p>In June, 1831, occurred a noteworthy event in the history of the firm.
-This was a visit by a number of Cabinet Ministers to inspect the brewery.
-Mr. Buxton had provided an elaborate banquet, but Lord Brougham said
-that beef-steaks and porter were more appropriate to the occasion, so of
-those excellent comestibles the dinner in great part consisted. Of this visit
-Mr. Buxton has left a very lively account, too long, unfortunately, to
-be given here. Among the guests, who numbered twenty-three, were
-the Lord Chancellor, Lord Grey, the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis
-of Cleveland, Lords Shaftesbury, Sefton, Howick, Durham, and Duncannon,
-General Alava, Dr. Lushington, Spring Rice and W. Brougham.
-Mr. Buxton first took them to see the steam engine. Lord Brougham
-immediately delivered a little lecture upon steam power, and, as the
-party went through the brewery, had so much to say about the
-machinery that Joseph Gurney said he understood brewing better than
-any person on the premises. At dinner “the Chancellor lost not a
-moment, he was always eating, drinking, talking or laughing.” Later
-on the Ministers inspected the stables, and the Lord Chancellor surprised
-everyone by his knowledge of horseflesh. Some one proposed
-that he should mount one of the horses and ride round the yard, which
-he seemed very willing to do—such is the power of brown stout!</p>
-
-<p>On the 9th November, 1841, a large new structure was opened, and
-to celebrate the event a supper was given to the men. In the midst of
-it the good news came that the Queen had given birth to a son. In
-honour of Her Majesty’s first-born, a huge vat
-was christened. “The <span class="xxpn" id="p358">{358}</span>
-Prince of Wales.” The inscription can still be seen. Twenty-five years
-later, when on a visit to the brewery, his Royal Highness had the satisfaction
-of drinking a glass of stout drawn from his namesake.</p>
-
-<p>In 1837, after twenty years’ faithful service, Mr. Buxton was defeated
-at Weymouth. Finding his health demanded repose, though
-invited by twenty-seven constituencies to represent them, he determined
-to leave Parliamentary life, and in 1841 a baronetcy was conferred
-on him by Lord John Russell. Even when out of Parliament he
-gave himself no rest, his mind being full of philanthropic schemes. He
-died in 1845, at the age of fifty-nine, and was buried in Westminster
-Abbey.</p>
-
-<p>In 1820 Mr. Robert Hanbury, nephew of Mr. Sampson Hanbury,
-became a partner in the firm, of which he was the head for many years.
-He was born in 1796, and during the few years previous to his death
-was the oldest member of the London brewing trade. He is remembered
-for his philanthropy and benevolence. During the period when Mr.
-Thomas F. Buxton was engaged with public affairs nearly the whole
-management and control of the brewery fell on Mr. Hanbury.</p>
-
-<p>In 1814 the first steam-engine was erected in the brewery. Previously
-the mashing was accomplished with long oars worked by
-sturdy Irishmen, and each brewing occupied twenty-four hours.</p>
-
-<p>At the present time (1886) the members of the firm are Messrs.
-Arthur Pryor; C. A. Hanbury; T. F. Buxton; Sir T. Fowell Buxton,
-Bart.; Messrs. E. N. Buxton; J. H. Buxton; E. S. Hanbury; A. V.
-Pryor; R. Pryor; J. M. Hanbury; and Gerald Buxton. Of these
-perhaps the best known to the public is Mr. Edward North Buxton,
-whose name has long been before them in connection with many
-measures of national importance.</p>
-
-<p>Messrs. Truman, Hanbury, Buxton &amp; Co. have always been a little
-ahead of the times, and it is not surprising to find in the brewery appliances
-of the most improved description. As an instance of this, when
-Lord Palmerston was at the Home Office he ordered that all London
-manufacturers should erect smoke-consuming furnaces. Mr. Buxton
-had, however, already adopted the principle, so that when the Home
-Secretary was abused by the manufacturers for ordering them to do the
-impossible, he was able to point out that what he desired had been
-already done. Palmerston publicly thanked the firm for this in the
-House of Commons.</p>
-
-<p>The brewery, cooperage, and stables in Brick Lane cover about five
-acres, and near at hand are the Coverley
-Fields, where are the <span class="xxpn" id="p359">{359}</span>
-signboard and wheelwright shops, cellars, &amp;c., covering about three and a
-half acres. As may be imagined, a small army of men is employed in
-the brewery, numbering in all about four hundred and fifty.</p>
-
-<p>Worthy of special notice in the brewhouse are the cleansing vessels,
-which, being very shallow, do their work with great rapidity. On the
-ground-floor is a novelty, one room being completely filled with shallow
-slate vessels for holding the yeast in summer. Each of these vessels has
-a false bottom, under which cold liquor (in vulgar parlance, water)
-constantly circulates, rendering the yeast so cool that is may be kept
-for some time in the hottest summer weather.</p>
-
-<p>In the brewery are ninety-five vats, which have a total capacity of
-3,463,992 gallons, an amount which it has been calculated is about five
-times the capacity of all the swimming-baths in London put together.
-These huge vats are, however, but rarely used. Nearly 80,000 casks
-are always in use.</p>
-
-<p>When the light ales came into fashion Messrs. Truman &amp; Co.
-wisely determined to start a pale-ale brewery at Burton. They
-carried out their resolve in 1874. Of this it can only be said that
-everything Science could do to make the brewery perfect was done, and
-that the pale ales are brewed on the most approved Burton principles.</p>
-
-<p>The founder of the firm of Whitbread &amp; Co. was the son of a
-yeoman who lived on a small estate at Cardington, in Bedfordshire.
-On his father’s death he improved the property by building, and from
-one propitious circumstance to another gradually amassed an immense
-fortune. It was in the year 1742 that Mr. Whitbread commenced
-business as a brewer, at the Brew House, Old Street, St. Luke’s, the
-premises now occupied by the firm of More &amp; Co. In 1750 he removed
-to Chiswell Street, where for fifty years previously had been a brewery.
-Here the business was developed with great vigour, and from the
-returns made necessary in 1760 by the imposition of a Beer-tax, we learn
-that in that year Whitbread’s brewed no less than 63,408 barrels of beer,
-only one other London firm—Calvert &amp; Seward—brewing a greater
-quantity. In 1785 steam power was introduced into the brewery. In
-connection with this event are two very celebrated names, for the Sun
-and Planet engine, still in use, was manufactured by the firm of which
-Watt was a partner; and John Rennie adapted the other machinery to
-the new motive power. About the same period six huge underground
-cisterns were made, after designs by Smeaton, varying in capacity from
-700 to 3,600 barrels each. Two years later Mr. Whitbread had the
-honour of a visit from King George and Queen
-Charlotte, the particulars <span class="xxpn" id="p360">{360}</span>
-of which are recorded in a humorous poem of considerable length, by
-Peter Pindar (Dr. Walcot), a few verses from which will suffice to give
-some idea of what took place on that auspicious occasion. A more
-prosaic, and no doubt more credible, account will be found in the <i>Daily
-Chronicle</i> of that period.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-<span class="spp00">Full of the art of brewing beer,</span>
-<span class="spp02">The monarch heard of Whitbread’s fame;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Quoth he unto the queen, “My dear, my dear,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Whitbread hath got a marvellous great name;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Charly, we must, must, must see Whitbread brew—</span>
-<span class="spp00">Rich as us, Charly, richer than a Jew;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Shame, shame, we have not yet his brewhouse seen!”</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thus sweetly said the king unto the queen.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Red-hot with novelty’s delightful rage,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To Mister Whitbread forth he sent a page,</span>
-<span class="spp02">To say that Majesty proposed to view,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With thirst of knowledge deep inflam’d,</span>
-<span class="spp00">His vats, and tubs, and hops, and hogsheads fam’d,</span>
-<span class="spp02">And learn the noble secret how to <i>brew</i>.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The preparations at the brewery are then described, followed by the
-arrival of King, Queen, Princesses and Courtiers. The conversation of
-the King, who “asked a thousand questions with a laugh, before poor
-Whitbread comprehended half,” was, according to the poet, as “five
-hundred parrots, gabbling just like Jews.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Thus was the brewhouse fill’d with gabbling noise,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whilst drayman, and the brewer’s boys,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Devour’d the questions that the King did ask:</span>
-<span class="spp02">In diff’rent parties were they staring seen,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Wond’ring to think they saw a <i>King</i> and <i>Queen</i>!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Behind a tub were some, and some behind a cask.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some draymen forc’d themselves (a pretty luncheon)</span>
-<span class="spp00">Into the mouth of many a gaping puncheon;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And through the bunghole wink’d with curious eye,</span>
-<span class="spp02">To view and be assur’d what sort of things</span>
-<span class="spp02">Were princesses, and queens, and kings;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For whose most lofty stations thousands sigh!</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, lo! of all the gaping clan,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Few were the mouths that had not got a man!</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p361">{361}</span></div>
-
-<p>George III. was no doubt of opinion that a thing worth doing was
-worth doing well, and no detail of the manufacture of beer seemed too
-insignificant to interest him. “Thus microscopic geniuses explore,”
-says Peter Pindar.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And now his curious majesty did stoop</span>
-<span class="spp00">To count the nails on ev’ry hoop;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And, lo! no single thing came in his way,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That, full of deep research, he did not say,</span>
-<span class="spp00">“What’s this? he, he? What’s that? What’s this?</span>
-<span class="spp02">What’s that?”</span>
-<span class="spp00">So quick the words too when he deign’d to speak,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As if each syllable would break its neck.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The extent of the business at that time may be gathered from the
-following
-<span class="nowrap">verse:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now boasting Whitbread, serious did declare,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To make the majesty of England stare,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That he had buts enough, he knew,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Plac’d side by side, to reach along to Kew:</span>
-<span class="spp00">On which the king with wonder swiftly cry’d,</span>
-<span class="spp02">“What if they reach to Kew then, side by side,</span>
-<span class="spp02">What would they do, what, what, plac’d end to end?”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>To this Mr. Whitbread replies that they would probably reach to
-Windsor.</p>
-
-<p>After awhile the King began to take notes.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem38"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now, majesty, alive to knowledge, took</span>
-<span class="spp00">A very pretty memorandum-book,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With gilded leaves of asses’ skins so white,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And in it legibly did write—</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">Memorandum,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">A charming place beneath the grates,</span>
-<span class="spp02">For roasting chesnuts or potates,</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">Mem.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">’Tis hops that gives a bitterness to beer—</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hops grow in Kent, says Whitbread, and elsewhere.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">Quaere.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Is there no cheaper stuff? where doth it dwell?</span>
-<span class="spp00">Would not horse-aloes bitter it as well? <span class="xxpn" id="p362">{362}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">Mem.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp02">To try it soon on our small beer—</span>
-<span class="spp02">’Twill save us sev’ral pounds a year.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp04">Mem.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Not to forget to take of beer the cask</span>
-<span class="spp01">The brewers offer’d me, away.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">To Whitbread now deign’d majesty, to say,</span>
-<span class="spp01">“Whitbread are all your horses fond of hay?”</span>
-<span class="spp01">“Yes, please your Majesty!” in humble notes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The brewer answered—“also fond of oats:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Another thing my horses too maintains—</span>
-<span class="spp00">And that, an’t please your Majesty are grains.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Grains—grains,”
- said majesty, “to fill their crops?</span>
-<span class="spp00">Grains, grains, that comes from
- hops—yes, hops, hops, hops.”</span>
-<p id="p362versenote">Later on the brewery pigs were
- reviewed by the King,</p>
-<span class="spp00">On which the observant man who fills a
- throne</span>
-<span class="spp00">Declar’d the pigs were vastly like his
- own.</span></div></div>
-
-<p>After the brewery had been inspected Mr. Whitbread entertained
-the King and Queen at a banquet.</p>
-
-<p>For several sessions Mr. Whitbread sat in Parliament as the member
-for Bedford. He was a man of much benevolence, and it is said of him
-that his charity, which was as judicious as it was extensive, was felt in
-every parish where he had property. His private distributions annually
-exceeded 3,000. Among the records of the Brewers’ Company we
-came upon a conveyance from him to the Company of three freehold
-farms in Bedfordshire, the income arising from which was to be devoted
-to supporting “one or two Master brewers of the age of fifty years or
-upwards, who had carried on the trade of a brewer within the bills of
-mortality or two miles thereof for many years in a considerable and
-respectable manner with good characters but by losses in the brewing
-trade only shall have come to decay or been reduced in circumstances
-and want relief.” By another indenture of the same date three
-dwelling houses in Whitecross Street, London, are conveyed to the
-Company, the income to be devoted towards the “support and relief
-of poor freemen of the Co<sup>y</sup>. of Brewers being proper objects and their
-widows (particularly preferring such objects as shall
-be blind, lame <span class="xxpn" id="p363">{363}</span>
-afflicted with palsy or very aged).” The date of the gift is 1794. Only
-two years later the donor died. His portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
-is still to be seen in the Hall of the Brewers’ Company.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Samuel Whitbread, son of the founder, and remembered as Mr.
-Whitbread the politician, now became the head of the firm, and, having
-associated with himself partners, carried on the business as Whitbread
-&amp; Co. He sat in Parliament for several years, and was a firm
-supporter of the Liberal party. It is related of him that being one
-evening at Brooks’s he talked loudly and largely against the Ministers
-for laying what was called the <i>war-tax</i> upon malt; every one present
-of course concurred with him in opinion; but Sheridan could not
-resist the gratification of displaying his ever ready wit. Taking out his
-pencil, he wrote upon the back of a letter the following lines, which he
-handed to Mr. Whitbread across the
-<span class="nowrap">table:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">They’ve raised the price of table drink;</span>
-<span class="spp00">What is the reason, do you think?</span>
-<span class="spp00">The tax on malt’s the cause, I hear:</span>
-<span class="spp00">But what has malt to do with beer?</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Mr. Whitbread the politician is mentioned in <i>Rejected Addresses</i>,
-and it is worthy of note that he took a considerable part in the rebuilding
-of Drury Lane Theatre after it had been destroyed by fire.</p>
-
-<p>Since 1760 the business had wonderfully increased. In 1806 we
-find Whitbread &amp; Co. stand fourth among the London brewers, brewing
-101,311 barrels. In the succeeding ten years the business more
-than doubled itself, the beer brewed in 1815 amounting to 261,018
-barrels.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Whitbread, the son of the founder, died in 1820. A writer in
-the <i>London Magazine</i> of that date gives a careful study of his character
-as a politician. “He was an honest man, and a true Parliamentary
-speaker. He had no artifices, no tricks, no reserve about him. He
-spoke point-blank what he thought, and his heart was in his broad,
-honest, English face. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. If a falsehood was stated, he
-contradicted it instantly in a few brief words: if an act of injustice was
-palliated, it excited his contempt; if it was justified, it roused his
-indignation; he retorted a mean insinuation with manly spirit, and
-never shrank from a frank avowal of his sentiments.”</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Whitbread the politician left two sons, the younger of whom
-represented Middlesex for several years, and died in 1879. Of the present
-member for Bedford, grandson of the politician, we need
-say but little. <span class="xxpn" id="p364">{364}</span>
-He was born in 1830, was educated at Rugby and Cambridge, has sat for
-Bedford since 1852, and is one of the most respected members of the
-House of Commons.</p>
-
-<p>There are, it need hardly be said, many other brewing firms of the
-first rank in the United Kingdom. The length to which this chapter
-has grown absolutely prohibits us from giving, as we had intended, a
-sketch of a large Edinburgh firm. There is, however, scattered through
-these pages continual reference to the good ale—“jolly good ale and old”—of
-Scotland. The old ales of Edinburgh are now giving way somewhat
-to the pale ales affected by the temperate drinkers of the period, but old
-Scotch ale is by no means a thing of the past, and has a world-wide
-reputation. Most of the Edinburgh breweries have been established a
-very long time, in some cases over a hundred years.</p>
-
-<p>In the earlier portions of this book punning allusions to ale by old
-writers have been freely quoted; with them may be compared the
-following extract from a modern play, <i>Little Jack Sheppard</i>, written by
-Messrs. Stephens and Yardley, and which contains facetious references
-to some of the firms whose histories have just been related.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">T<b>HAMES</b></span>
- <span class="smcap">D<b>ARRELL</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp00">When out at sea the crew set me, Thames Darrell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Afloat upon the waves within a barrel.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">W<b>INIFRED</b></span>
- <span class="smcap">W<b>OOD</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp00">In hopes the <i>barrel</i>
- would turn out your <i>bier</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">T<b>HAMES</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp00">But I’m <i>stout</i>-hearted and I didn’t fear.</span>
-<span class="spp00">I nearly died of thirst.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">W<b>IN</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp14">Poor boy! Alas!</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">T<b>HAMES</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp00">Until I caught a fish—</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">W<b>IN</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp14">What sort?</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">T<b>HAMES</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp20"><i>A bass.</i></span>
-<span class="spp00">Then came the worst, which nearly proved my ruin,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A storm, a thing I can’t <i>abear, a brewin’</i>.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">W<b>IN</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp00">It makes me pale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">T<b>HAMES</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp09">It made <i>me pale</i> and <i>ail</i>.</span>
-<span class="spp00">When nearly <i>coopered</i> I descried a sail;</span>
-<span class="spp00">They didn’t hear me, though I loudly whooped.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Within the barrel I was <i>inned</i> and <i>cooped</i>.</span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>All’s up</i>, I thought, when round they quickly brought her,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That ship to me of safety was the <i>porter</i>;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Half dead and half alive. Ha! ha!</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">W<b>IN</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp20">Don’t laugh.</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twas very bitter.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<p class="p364speaker"><span class="smcap">T<b>HAMES</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spp10">No, ’twas <i>half and half</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p365a.png" width="144" height="48" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p365"><span
- class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XIII.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr">
-<div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">And what this flood of deeper brown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which a white foam does also crown,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Less white than snow, more white than mortar?</span>
-<span class="spp00">Oh, my soul! can this be Porter?</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>The Déjeunè.</i></span></div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc">
-<div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">P&#x2009;raised and caress’d, the tuneful Philips sung</span>
-<span class="spp00">O&#x2009;f Cyder fam’d, whence first his laurel sprung;</span>
-<span class="spp00">R&#x2009;ise then, my muse, and to the world proclaim</span>
-<span class="spp00">T&#x2009;he mighty charms of Porter’s potent name:</span>
-<span class="spp00">E&#x2009;ach buck from thee shall sweetest pleasure taste,</span>
-<span class="spp00">R&#x2009;evel secure, nor think to part in haste.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>An Acrostick.</i></span></div></div></div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>PORTER AND
-STOUT.&#x200a;—&#x200a;CIR­CUM­STANCES WHICH LED TO THEIR
-INTRO­DUC­TION.&#x200a;—&#x200a;VALUE TO THE WORK­ING
-CLAS­SES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;AN­EC­DOTES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;“A
-POT OF PORTER OH!”</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p365b.png"
-width="226" height="229" alt="B" /></span>EFORE
-the Blue Last, an old public-house
-situate in Curtain Road, Shoreditch,
-there formerly hung a board which bore
-this legend:—“The house where porter
-was first sold.”</p>
-
-<p>Whether this was true or false we
-cannot say; certain it is, however, that
-the drink which has made London and
-Dublin brewers famed far and wide had its
-birthplace not far from this spot.</p>
-
-<p>It appears that in the early years of last century the lovers of malt
-liquors in London were accustomed to regale themselves upon three classes
-of these beverages; they had ale, beer, and twopenny. Many who preferred
-a more subtle combination of flavours than either
-of these liquors <span class="xxpn" id="p366">{366}</span>
-alone could impart, would ask for <i>half-and-half</i>, that is, half of ale and
-half of beer, half of ale and half of twopenny, or half of beer and half of
-twopenny. Others again—and these were the real connoisseurs of malt
-liquors—would call for a pot of three threads, or three thirds, <i>i.e.</i>, one-third
-of ale, one-third of beer, and one-third of twopenny. The drawer would
-therefore have to go to three different casks, and through three distinct
-operations, before he could draw a pint of liquor. But the hour had
-come—and the man. One Ralph Harwood, whose name is too little
-known to an ungrateful posterity of beer-drinking Britons, some time
-about the year 1730, kept a brewhouse on the east side of High Street,
-Shoreditch. In that year, or perhaps a little earlier, as this great man
-brooded over the inconvenience and waste occasioned by the calls for
-the “three threads,” which became more and more frequent, he conceived
-the idea of making a liquor which would combine in itself the
-several virtues of ale, beer, and twopenny. He carried the idea into
-action, and brewed a drink which he called “Entire,” or “Entire
-Butts.” It was tasted; it was approved; it became the fruitful parent
-of a mighty offspring; and from that day to this has gone on increasing
-in name and fame.</p>
-
-<p>Visitors to the great brewery in Brick Lane are shown a hole from
-which steam issues to the accompaniment of awful rumbling noises.
-“In there once fell a man,” they are told—“a negro. Nothing but
-his bones were found when the copper was emptied, and it is said
-that the beer drawn off was of an extraordinary dark colour. Some
-say this was the first brew of porter. Oh yes” (this in answer to
-a question), “we soon learnt how to make it without the negro.”
-We must confess that we have some doubts as to this account of
-the origin of porter. We do not believe that brew could have been
-much darker on account of the accident, though no doubt, under the
-circumstances, it contained plenty of “body.” A similar tale is told
-of nearly every London porter brewery, and later on it will be
-found in verse.</p>
-
-<p>It seems to be to some extent a moot point among the learned how
-porter obtained its present name, for no record seems to have been kept
-of its christening. Harwood, no doubt, stood godfather to his interesting
-infant, but, as we have seen above, he called it “Entire;” and how
-or when it came to be known as porter is not quite clear. There are
-several theories on the subject, each more or less plausible. One is
-that being a hearty, appetizing, and nourishing liquor, it was specially
-recommended to the notice of the porters, who then, as
-now, formed a <span class="xxpn" id="p367">{367}</span>
-considerable proportion of the Shoreditch population. Pennant, in his
-<i>London</i> seems, to have held this view; he calls it “a wholesome liquor,
-which enables the London porter-drinkers to undergo tasks that ten gin-drinkers
-would sink under.” Another explanation of the origin of the
-name is that Harwood sent round his men to his customers with the
-liquor, and that the men would announce their arrival and their business
-by the cry of “Porter”—meaning, not the beer, but the bearer.
-Be this how it may, the embodiment of Harwood’s great idea had not
-attained its majority before it was known far and wide by its present
-name.</p>
-
-<hr class="hrtb" />
-
-<p>In <i>The Student</i> (1750) is thus related the first appearance of
-porter at Oxford—.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. “Let us not derogate from the merits of
-porter—a liquor entirely British—a liquor that pleases equally the
-mechanic and the peer—a liquor which is the strength of our nation,
-the scourge of our enemies, and which has given <i>immortality</i> to aldermen.
-’Tis with the highest satisfaction that we can inform our Oxford
-students that <i>Isis</i> herself has taken this divine liquor into her protection,
-and that the <i>Muses</i> recommend it to their votaries, as being far
-preferable to Hippocrene, Aganippe, the Castalian spring, or any <i>poetical
-water</i> whatever. Know, then, that in the middle of the High Street, at
-the sign of the King’s Arms, opposite to its opposite, Juggins’s Coffee
-House, lives Captain Jolly; who <i>maugrè</i> the selfish opposition of his
-brother publicans, out of a pure affection to this University, and regardless
-of private profit, reduc’d porter from its original price of Sixpence,
-and in large golden characters generously informs us that he sells</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp02">“London Porter</span>
-<span class="spp00">At Fourpence a Quart.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>“As the Captain is a genius and a choice spirit he meets with the
-greatest encouragement from the gown, and sends porter to all the common-rooms.
-He therefore intends shortly (in imitation of the great
-Ashley, of the Punch House, Ludgate Hill) to have the front of his
-house new vamp’d up, and decorated with the following
-<span class="nowrap">inscription:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="sppctr">“Pro bono academico.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Here lives Captain Jolly</span>
-<span class="sppctr">who first</span>
-<span class="spp00">reduced Porter to its’ present price</span>
-<span class="sppctr">and</span>
-<span class="spp00">Brought that liquor into University esteem.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p368">{368}</span></div>
-
-<p>Though we fear the great Harwood does not fill the niche in the
-Temple of Fame to which he is entitled, yet his praises are not entirely
-unsung. Gutteridge, himself a native of Shoreditch, has commemorated
-the discovery of porter in these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Harwood, my townsman, he invented first</span>
-<span class="spp00">Porter to rival wine, and quench the thirst:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Porter, which spreads its fame half the world o’er,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whose reputation rises more and more;</span>
-<span class="spp00">As long as Porter shall preserve its fame,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Let all with gratitude our Parish name.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>“It is not in my power,” says Pennant in the work we have before
-quoted, “to trace the progress of this important article of trade. Let
-me only say that it is now a national concern; for the duty on malt
-from July 5th, 1785, to the same day 1786, produced a million and a
-half of money to the support of the State, from a liquor which invigorates
-the bodies of its willing subjects, to defend the blessings they enjoy.
-One of these Chevaliers de Malte (as an impertinent Frenchman
-styled a most respectable gentleman of the trade) has, within one
-year, contributed not less than fifty thousand pounds to his own
-share.”</p>
-
-<p>The person to whom the Frenchman applied the title of Chevalier
-de Malte was Humphrey Parsons, a brewer of last century, and the
-incident which gave rise to the name has already been referred to.</p>
-
-<p>Pennant gives a list of the chief porter brewers of London at the end
-of last century, with the number of barrels of strong beer they brewed
-from Midsummer, 1786, to Midsummer, 1787. Samuel Whitbread heads
-the list with 150,280 barrels, and among the others may be noted
-Calvert, now the City of London Brewery; Hester Thrale, now
-Barclay and Perkins; W. Read; and Richard Meux. Most of the other
-names, though famous in their day and generation, are not familiar to
-the modern reader. The total amount produced by some twenty-four
-of the chief London brewers was considerably over one million
-barrels.</p>
-
-<p>It is interesting to contrast the state of the Brewing trade a hundred
-years ago with the proportions to which it has attained to-day. According
-to a Parliamentary return made in 1884, there are now six brewers
-of the United Kingdom who produce annually over three and a half
-million barrels of malt liquor, and who pay to the revenue in Licence
-and Beer duty nearly one million and a half
-sterling per annum. <span class="xxpn" id="p369">{369}</span></p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<p>A fine flavour has occasionally been given to stout by extraordinary
-means, as witness the following legend, entitled</p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">PATENT BROWN STOUT.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A Brewer in a country town</span>
-<span class="spp01">Had got a monstrous reputation;</span>
-<span class="spp00">No other beer but his went down.</span>
-<span class="spp01">The hosts of the surrounding station,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Carving his name upon their mugs,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And painting it on every shutter;</span>
-<span class="spp01">And though some envious folks would utter,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hints that its flavour came from drugs,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Others maintained ’twas no such matter,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But owing to his monstrous vat,</span>
-<span class="spp01">At least as corpulent as that</span>
-<span class="spp00">At Heidelberg—and some said fatter.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">His foreman was a lusty Black,</span>
-<span class="spp01">An honest fellow;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But one who had a ugly knack</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of tasting samples as he brewed,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till he was stupefied and mellow.</span>
-<span class="spp01">One day in this top-heavy mood,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Having to cross the vat aforesaid,</span>
-<span class="spp01">(Just then with boiling beer supplied),</span>
-<span class="spp00">O’ercome with giddiness and qualms he</span>
-<span class="spp01">Reel’d—fell in—and nothing more was said,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But in his favourite liquor died,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">In all directions round about</span>
-<span class="spp01">The negro absentee was sought,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But as no human noddle thought</span>
-<span class="spp00">That our fat <i>Black</i> was now <i>Brown Stout</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">They settled that the rogue had left</span>
-<span class="spp00">The place for debt, or crime, or theft.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Meanwhile the beer was day by day</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drawn into casks and sent away,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Until the lees flowèd thick and thicker,</span>
-<span class="spp01">When, lo! outstretched upon the ground,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Once more their missing friend they found,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As they had often done before—in liquor. <span class="xxpn" id="p370">{370}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>See,”
- cried his moralising master,</span>
-<span class="spp01">“I always knew the fellow drank hard,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And prophesied some sad disaster:</span>
-<span class="spp01">His fate should other tipplers strike,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Poor Mungo! there he welters like</span>
-<span class="spp01">A toast at bottom of a tankard!”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Next morn a publican, whose tap,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Had help’d to drain the vat so dry,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Not having heard of the mishap,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Came to demand a fresh supply,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Protesting loudly that the last</span>
-<span class="spp00">All previous specimens surpass’d,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Possessing a much richer <i>gusto</i></span>
-<span class="spp00">Than formerly it ever us’d to,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And begging, as a special favour,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Some more of the exact same flavour.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Zounds!”
- cried the brewer, “that’s a task</span>
-<span class="spp01">More difficult to grant than ask;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Most gladly would I give the smack</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of the last beer to the ensuing,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But where am I to find a Black</span>
-<span class="spp01">And boil him down at every brewing?”</span>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<p>Professor Wilson, writing on brewing,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn68" id="fnanc68">68</a>
-thus relates his conversion to
-the porter-drinker’s creed.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc68" id="fn68">68</a>
-<i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>, vol. xxi.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="hrtb" />
-
-<p class="padtopc">“From
-ale we naturally get to porter—porter—drink ‘fit for the
-gods,’ being, in fact, likely to be, now and then, <i>too potent</i> for mere
-mortals. With porter we are less imbued than with ale (not but that
-for some years we have imported our annual butt of Barclay); and this
-we hold to be one of the great misfortunes of our life. We were early
-nurtured in love and affection for ‘good ale’ by our great aunt, with
-whom we were a young and frequent visitant. Excellent old Aunt
-Patty! She was a Yorkshire woman, and cousin (three times removed)
-to Mr. Wilberforce (the father). She too hated <i>rum</i> as the devil’s own
-brewage, but then she loved sound ale in the same ratio. Thus it
-happened, as we derived our faith in malt liquor from
-her, that we <span class="xxpn" id="p371">{371}</span>
-penetrated not the mysteries of porter until our elder days. Our heresy
-was first effectually shaken by Charles Lamb, who, in his admirable
-way, proved to us that, in a hot forenoon, a draught of Meux or Barclay
-is beyond all cordial restoratives, and after a broiling peregrination (the
-stages were all full) from Coleridge’s lodgings at Highgate to town, gave
-us a specimen of the inspiring powers of porter in a perspiration, which
-we shall remember until the day of our death.” Lamb was known by
-all his friends to have an amiable weakness for porter, and the poet, in
-<i>An Ode to Grog</i>, thus commemorates the
-<span class="nowrap">fact:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The spruce Mr. Lamb (’pon my word it’s no flam)</span>
-<span class="spp01">With Whitbread’s Entire makes his Pegasus jog;</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’ll grant he’s a poet, but then he don’t show wit,</span>
-<span class="spp01">In thinking that Porter is better than grog.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Burns was fond of porter, as of all other extracts of malt. He
-addressed the following lines to his friend Mr. Syme, along with a
-present of a dozen of bottled
-<span class="nowrap">porter:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">O, had the malt thy strength of mind,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Or hops the flavour of thy wit,</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twere drink for first of human kind,</span>
-<span class="spp01">A gift that e’en for Syme were fit.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>We have given what we believe to be a correct historical account
-of the origin of porter. Peter Pindar, in the <i>Lamentations of the Porter
-Vat</i>, a poem in which he celebrates the bursting of a mighty porter vat
-at Meux’s Brewery, gives a somewhat less prosaic
-<span class="nowrap">account:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here—as ’tis said—in days of yore,</span>
-<span class="spp00">(Such days, alas! will come no more),</span>
-<span class="spp00">Resided Sir John Barleycorn,</span>
-<span class="spp00">An ancient Briton, nobly born,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With Mrs. Hop—a well-met pair,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For he was rich, and she was fair.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Yet they—like other married Folke,</span>
-<span class="spp00">When their past vows they can’t revoke—</span>
-<span class="spp00">Were opposite in disposition,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And quarrell’d without intermission;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For He alone produc’d the <i>Sweets</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which She, with <i>Bitters</i> only, meets! <span class="xxpn" id="p372">{372}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Howe’er by dint of perseverance,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By gentle conjugal endearance,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The <i>Sweets</i> predominating most,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In strength excelling, <i>rul’d the roast</i>;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whilst she, obedient, did her duty—</span>
-<span class="spp00">That greatest ornament of beauty.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Her <i>Bitters</i>, thus by him controll’d,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Their wholesome properties unfold,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And give to him superior pow’rs—</span>
-<span class="spp00">Superior charms for social hours;</span>
-<span class="spp00">As <i>Beauty</i>, with persuasive tongue,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Tempers the mind, by <i>passion</i> wrung.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">At length, from this domestic Pair,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was born a well-known Son and Heir;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whose deeds o’er half the world are fam’d,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By Britons, Master Porter, nam’d.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Meux’s great vat then contained about 3,555 barrels, and was 22 ft.
-high. In October, 1814, owing to the defective state of its hoops, it
-burst, and the results were most disastrous. The brewery in the Tottenham
-Court Road was at that time hemmed in by miserable tenements,
-which were crowded by people of the poorer classes. Some of
-these houses were simply flooded with porter, two or three collapsed,
-and no less than eight persons met their death, either in the ruins or
-from drowning, the fumes of the porter, or by drunkenness. At the
-inquest the jury returned the verdict: “Death by Casualty.” Seven
-huge vats—the largest holding 15,000 barrels—now take the place of
-the one that burst. The <i>Times</i> of April 1, 1785, says, “There is a cask
-now building at Messrs. Meux &amp; Co.’s brewery in Liquorpond Street,
-Gray’s Inn Lane, the size of which exceeds all credibility, being designed
-to hold 20,000 barrels of porter; the whole expense attending the same
-will be upwards of £10,000.” About this time the London porter
-brewers vied with each other in building large vats, a practice they have
-now discontinued.</p>
-
-<hr class="hrtb" />
-
-<p>It would be difficult to imagine a liquor more suitable for the
-working classes than good porter—taken in moderation, of course. Not
-only does it afford the slight stimulant which, in another place, we have
-shown to be beneficial to the human body, but it
-also contains much <span class="xxpn" id="p373">{373}</span>
-nutritive matter, both organic and inorganic, together with saccharine.
-The old writer who spoke of ale as being meat, drink, and clothing
-probably had no highly scientific knowledge of the chemical properties
-of the liquor he was extolling, but the statement—based, no doubt, on experience—can
-be called an exaggerated one.</p>
-
-<p>Very satisfactory is it to know that in Ireland porter is steadily displacing
-whisky. Even in the western portions of the island, the younger
-generation—excepting, perhaps, on holidays, at fairs, and on other festive
-occasions—are taking most kindly to their “porther.” It will be a
-happy thing for that country when “porther” shall have altogether
-displaced poteen. The whisky sold at threepence for each small wine-glassful
-in most of the country spirit shops in Ireland, and always taken
-neat by the natives, is of a most injurious character, being new, and consequently
-containing much fusel oil. Far be it from us to say a word
-against good, well-matured whisky, which, taken in moderation, is a most
-wholesome drink; but, good or bad, it is not the drink for working men
-who require a more sustaining and less expensive liquor. What have
-the total abstainers to suggest? <i>Water</i>, the diffuser of epidemics, and
-hardly ever obtained pure by the labouring classes; <i>tea</i>, which is almost
-as injurious as spirits to the nervous system, which lacks nutritive
-properties, and which is by no means an inexpensive liquor; <i>coffee</i>
-and <i>cocoa</i>, both hot drinks and most unsuitable to slake the thirst
-of a labouring man; various effervescing drinks, all more or less
-injurious to the digestive organs, when taken habitually, and
-of whose composition no man hath knowledge, save the makers,
-and <i>temperance wines</i>, certain vendors of which were not long back
-prosecuted for attempting to defraud the revenue, when this abstainer’s
-tipple was found to contain some twenty per cent. of alcohol. One
-liquor, alone, have the teetotal party invented, which is nourishing, inexpensive,
-and wholesome. This we may term <i>oatmeal mash</i>, or cold
-comfort. It consists of scalded oatmeal, water, and some flavouring
-matter. For harvesters working in the almost tropical heat of an
-August sun, this is, no doubt, a wholesome drink, but it can hardly be
-called palatable. As a matter of fact, no non-alcoholic substitute has
-been put forward by the teetotal party which is in the least likely to
-take the place of porter; and until such beverage is invented—an event
-which we feel perfectly certain will never come to pass—the porter and
-stout brewers of the United Kingdom will have every opportunity of
-continuing to confer on the working classes the benefits of cheap and
-wholesome liquor. <span class="xxpn" id="p374">{374}</span></p>
-
-<p>One temperance drink we had almost overlooked—herb-beer. In
-the House of Commons, on May 6, 1886, Mr. Fletcher asked the
-Chancellor of the Exchequer why the Excise officers had interfered
-with the sale of herb-beer, a non-intoxicating beverage. To this the
-Chancellor of the Exchequer replied, that the Inland Revenue did
-not interfere with any liquors which contained less than three degrees
-of proof spirit, though legally no beer could be brewed under the name
-of herb-beer which had more than two degrees of alcohol. Some of
-these non-intoxicating liquors, sold as temperance drinks, had been
-found to be of considerably greater strength than London porter.
-For the protection of the revenue it was necessary—and so on.
-Comment is needless.</p>
-
-<p>As illustrative of the sustaining powers of brown beer, we may
-mention an instance which recently came under our notice. A valuable
-horse belonging to a member of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton,
-&amp; Co. had a serious attack of influenza, with slight congestion of the
-lungs, and was so ill that it could take no food, and was evidently
-dying. As a last resource it was offered stout, which it drank greedily.
-For two weeks it entirely subsisted on this novel diet, and at the end
-of that time the bad symptoms had almost disappeared. The horse
-subsequently recovered.</p>
-
-<p>The name Stout was used originally to signify strong or stout
-beer. This excellent brown beer only differs from Porter in being brewed
-of greater strength and with a greater proportion of hops. Swift
-thus mentions the
-<span class="nowrap">liquor:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Should
- but the Muse descending drop</span>
-<span class="spp00">A slice of bread and mutton chop,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or kindly when his credit’s out,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Surprise him with a pint of stout;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Exalted in his mighty mind</span>
-<span class="spp00">He flies and leaves his stars<a class="afnanc" href="#fn69" id="fnanc69">69</a>
-behind.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc69" id="fn69">69</a>
-Cf. Horace’s “<i>Sublimi feriam sidera vertice</i>,” which was once
-construed by an ingenuous school-boy, “I will whip the stars with my
-sublime <i>top&#x202f;!&#x202f;!</i>”</p></div>
-
-<p>Many actors, actresses and singers imbibe largely of porter, both for
-its excellent effects upon the voice and for its restorative and sustaining
-powers. Fanny Kemble used frequently to apply herself to a vulgar
-pewter pot of stout in the green room both during
-and after her <span class="xxpn" id="p375">{375}</span>
-performances. Peg Woffington was president of the Beefsteak Club, then
-held in the Covent Garden Theatre; and after she had been pourtraying
-on the stage “The fair resemblance of a martyr Queen,” she might
-have been seen in the green room holding up a pot of porter, and exclaiming
-in a tragic voice, “Confusion to all order, let liberty thrive.”</p>
-
-<p>Macklin, the actor, who lived to be a centenarian, was accustomed to
-drink considerable quantities of stout sweetened with sugar, at the
-Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden. Porson used to
-breakfast on bread and cheese and a pot of porter.</p>
-
-<p>A favourite mixture of modern Londoners is known by the name of
-“Cooper,” and consists of porter and stout in equal proportions. The
-best account of the origin of this name is one which attributes it to a
-publican by the name of Cooper, who kept a house in Broad Street,
-City, opposite to where the Excise Office stood. Cooper was a jolly,
-talkative host, and associated a good deal with his customers—principally
-officers of the Excise, bankers’ and merchants’ clerks, and men of that
-stamp. His guests found on bits of broken plates, pieces of beef steak and
-mutton chops already priced with paper labels. These they had but to
-choose, mark their name on the ticket, and carry to the cook at the gridiron,
-which was in the room in which they dined. Cooper drank and
-recommended a mixture of porter and stout, the fame of which spread
-very rapidly. The combination became the fashion in the City, and
-finally it was brewed entire.</p>
-
-<p>An equally plausible but more invidious derivation of the name is
-given by Andrew Halliday in his <i>Every-Day Papers</i>. His account is
-that “Some brewers who are jealous for the reputation of their beer
-employ a traveller, who visits the houses periodically, and tastes the
-various beers, to see that they are not reduced too much. This
-functionary is called the ‘Broad Cooper.’ When the Broad Cooper
-looks in upon Mr. Noggins, and wants to taste the porter, and the
-porter is below the mark, Mr. Noggins slyly draws a dash of stout into
-it; and this trick is so common, and so well known, that a mixture of
-stout and porter has come to be known to the public and asked for by
-the name of ‘Cooper.’”</p>
-
-<p>It has been well observed that “Porter-drinking needs but a beginning:
-whenever the habit has once been acquired, it is sure to be kept
-up. London is a name pretty widely known in the world; some
-nations know it for one thing, and some for another. But all nations
-know that London is the place where porter was invented: and Jews,
-Turks, Germans, Negroes, Persians, Chinese,
-New Zealanders, <span class="xxpn" id="p376">{376}</span>
-Esquimaux, copper Indians, Yankees and Spanish Americans, are united in
-one feeling of respect for the native city of the most universally favourite
-liquor the world has ever known.” When the Persian ambassador left
-England some years ago, many of his suite shed tears. One of them,
-struck with the security and peace of an Englishman’s life, when compared
-to a Persian’s, declared that his highest ideal of Paradise was to
-live at Chelsea Hospital, where for the rest of his life he would willingly
-sit under the trees and drink as much porter as he could get.</p>
-
-<p>Much as porter’s praises have been sung, one depreciatory remark
-is recorded to have been made by the late Judge Maule. “Why do you,
-brother Maule, drink so much stout?” he was asked by one of the
-judges. “To bring my intellect down to the level of the rest of the
-bench,” was the not very flattering reply. It may be mentioned that
-Judge Maule’s joke was not a new one, for L’Estrange has it thus:
-“One ask’t Sir John Millesent how he did so conforme himself to the
-grave justices his brothers when they mette. ‘Why, in faith,’ sayes he,
-‘I have no way but to drink myselfe downe to the capacitie of the
-Bench.’”</p>
-
-<div class="section dwthem34">
-<p>A song well known in the early part of the century is much
-heartier, and redounds with patriotic
-<span class="nowrap">sentiment:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">A POT OF PORTER OH!</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">When to Old England I came home,</span>
-<span class="spp03">Fal lal, fal lal la&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">What joy to see the tankard foam</span>
-<span class="spp03">Fal lal, fal lal la&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">When treading London’s well-known ground,</span>
-<span class="spp01">If e’er I feel my spirits tire,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I haul my sail and look up around</span>
-<span class="spp01">In search of Whitbread’s best entire.</span>
-<span class="spp00">I spy the name of Calvert,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of Curtis, Cox, and Co.;</span>
-<span class="spp00">I give a cheer and bawl for’t,</span>
-<span class="spp01">“A pot of Porter, ho&#x202f;!”</span>
-<span class="spp00">When to Old England I come home,</span>
-<span class="spp00">What joy to see the tankard foam&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">With heart so light and frolic high,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I drink it off to liberty&#x202f;! <span class="xxpn" id="p377">{377}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Where wine or water can be found</span>
-<span class="spp03">Fal lal, fal lal la&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’ve travell’d far the world around,</span>
-<span class="spp03">Fal lal, fal lal la&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Again I hope before I die,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of England’s can the taste to try;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For many a league I’d go about</span>
-<span class="spp00">To take a draught of Gifford’s stout;</span>
-<span class="spp00">I spy the name of Truman,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Of Maddox, Meux, and Co.;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The sight makes me a new man,—</span>
-<span class="spp01">“A pot of porter, ho&#x202f;!”</span>
-<span class="spp00">When to Old England I come home,</span>
-<span class="spp00">What joy to see the tankard foam&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">With heart so light and frolic high,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I drink it off to liberty.</span>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p377.png" width="144" height="45" alt="" /></div>
-</div></div></div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p378a.png" width="144" height="45" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p378"><i>
-<span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XIV.</i></h2>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr">
-<div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Then hail, thou big and foaming bowl,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hail, constant idol of my soul;</span>
-<span class="spp00">How laughingly the bubbles ride</span>
-<span class="spp00">Upon thy rich and sparkling tide.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Brasenose College Shrovetide Verses.</i></span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr padtopc">
-<div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">This, I tell you, is our jolly <i>wassel</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And for twelfth-night more meet too.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>Christmas Masque (Jonson).</i></span>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>BEVERAGES COMPOUNDED OF ALE OR BEER WITH
-A NUMBER OF RECEIPTS.—ANCIENT DRINKING
-VESSELS.—VARIOUS USES OF ALE OTHER THAN AS A
-DRINK.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst dwthem38">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap"
-src="images/p378b.png" width="226" height="231" alt="V"
-/></span>ERY few people, when warm­ing them­selves in
-the win­ter months with Mulled Ale, know that they are
-quaf­fing a direct de­scen­dant of that famous li­quor known
-to our fore­fath­ers as the Was­sail-Bowl, and near akin
-to Lambs-Wool, of which Her­rick wrote in his <i>Twelfth</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Night</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr pclearfix">
-<div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Next crowne the bowle full</span>
-<span class="spp00">With gentle Lambs wooll,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Adde sugare nutmeg and ginger,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With store of ale too</span>
-<span class="spp00">And thus ye must doe,</span>
-<span class="spp02">To make the Wassaile a swinger.</span>
-</div></div>
-</div><!--chapter-->
-
-<p>A beverage of still greater antiquity, but certainly a family connection,
-is Bragget or Bragot, which is, or was, until quite recently, drunk
-in Lancashire. The word, according to the writer of
-<i>Cups and their <span class="xxpn" id="p379">{379}</span>
-Customs</i>, is of Northland origin, and derived from “Braga,” the name
-of a hero, one of the mythological Gods of the Edda. In its Welsh
-form of Bragawd, the drink is mentioned in a very ancient poem, <i>The
-Hirlas or Drinking Horn of Owen</i>, which has been thus rendered into
-<span class="nowrap">English:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Cup-bearer, when I want thee most,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With duteous patience mind thy post,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Reach me the horn, I know its power</span>
-<span class="spp00">Acknowledged in the social hour;</span>
-<span class="spp00"><i>Hirlas</i>, thy contents to drain,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I feel a longing, e’en to pain;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pride of feasts, profound and blue,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of the ninths wave’s azure hue,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The drink of heroes formed to hold,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With art enrich’d and lid of gold&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Fill it with <i>bragawd</i> to the brink,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Confidence inspiring drink;—</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>We have been at no little trouble to discover the nature of the
-drink called bragot, bragawd, &amp;c., and have come to the conclusion that
-the composition of the beverages bearing those names varied considerably.
-To define Bragot with any degree of preciseness would be as
-difficult as to give an accurate definition of “soup.” In the fourteenth
-century, according to a MS. quoted in Wright’s <i>Provincial Dialects</i>,
-“Bragotte” was made from this
-<span class="nowrap">receipt:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“Take to x galons of ale iij potell of fyne worte, and iij quartis of
-hony, and put thereto canell (cinnamon) oz: iiij, peper schort or long
-oz: iiij, galingale (a sort of rush) oz: i, and clowys (cloves) oz i, and
-gingiver oz ij.”</p>
-
-<p>Halliwell tells us that Bragot was a kind of beverage formerly
-esteemed in Wales and the West of England, composed of wort, sugar
-and spices. It was customary to drink it in some parts of the country
-on Mothering Sunday.</p>
-
-<p>Bracket must at one time have been a liquor in common use in
-London, for in Mary’s reign the constables were ordered to make weekly
-search at the houses of the Brewers and “typlers,” to see whether they
-sold any ale or beer or <i>bracket</i> above ½d. a quart without their houses,
-and above ½d.
-the “thyrdendeale”<a class="afnanc" href="#fn70" id="fnanc70">70</a>
-within. <span class="xxpn" id="p380">{380}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc70" id="fn70">70</a>
-The thyrdendale was a measure containing a pint and a half.</p></div>
-
-<p>In the <i>Haven of Health</i> (1584) are directions for making bragot,
-which are similar to those in the fourteenth-century receipt. “Take
-three or four galons of good ale or more as you please, two dayes
-or three after it is cleansed, and put it into a pot by itselfe, then draw
-forth a pottle thereof and put to it a quart of good English hony,
-and sett them over the fire in a vessell, and let them boyle faire and
-softly, and alwayes as any froth ariseth skumme it away, and so clarifie
-it, and when it is well clarified, take it off the fire and let it coole, and
-put thereto of peper a pennyworth, cloves, mace, ginger, nutmegs,
-cinnamon, of each two pennyworth, stir them well together and sett
-them over the fire to boyle againe awhile, then being milke-warme put
-it to the rest and stirre all together, and let it stand two or three daies,
-and put barme upon it and drinke it at your pleasure.”</p>
-
-<p>Harrison (1578), in his Preface to <i>Holinshed’s Chronicles</i>, relates
-that his wife made a composition called Brakwoort, which seems to
-have been rather used for flavouring ale than as a distinct beverage.
-It contained no honey.</p>
-
-<p>In <i>Oxford Nightcaps</i> metheglin, mead, and Bragon, or Bragget, are
-all mentioned as being compounded of honey. Idromellum, which
-by-the-by did not always contain honey,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn71" id="fnanc71">71</a>
-was sometimes spoken of as
-Bragget. In Chaucer’s <i>Miller’s Tale</i> is mention of
-<span class="nowrap">Braket:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">“Hire mouth was sweete as braket or the meth.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc71" id="fn71">71</a>
-See p. 53.</p></div>
-
-<p>The Wassail Bowl, according to Warton, was the “Bowl” referred
-to in the <i>Midsummer Night’s</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Dream</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sometimes lurk I in a <i>gossip’s bowl</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In very likeness of a roasted crab,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And on her wither’d dewlap pour the <i>ale</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In <i>Hamlet</i> our great dramatist uses the word
-<span class="nowrap">“wassail”:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Keeps <i>wassail</i>, and the swaggering upspring reels.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The chief ingredients of the ancient Wassail Bowl were, without
-doubt, strong ale, sugar, spices, and roasted
-apples. The following <span class="xxpn" id="p381">{381}</span>
-receipt—the best of some half-dozen before us—is the one adopted at
-Jesus College, Oxford, where, on the festival of St. David, an immense
-silver-gilt bowl, which was presented to the college by Sir Watkin W.
-Wynne in 1732, is partly filled with this admirable composition, and
-passed round the festive board. Into the bowl is first placed half a
-pound of Lisbon sugar, on which is poured one pint of warm beer; a
-little nutmeg and ginger are then grated over the mixture, and four
-glasses of sherry and five pints of beer are added to it. It is then stirred,
-sweetened to taste, and allowed to stand covered up for two or three
-hours. Three or four slices of thin toast are then floated on the
-creaming mixture, and the wassail bowl is ready. Sometimes a couple
-or three slices of lemon and a few lumps of sugar rubbed on the peeling
-of a lemon are introduced. The slang term at Oxford for this beverage
-is “Swig.” In another receipt it is said that the liquor, when mixed,
-should be made hot (but not boiled), and the liquid poured over roasted
-apples laid in the bowl.</p>
-
-<p>In some parts of the kingdom there are, it is to be hoped, some few
-persons who still adhere to the ancient custom of keeping Wassail on
-Twelfth Night and Christmas Eve; and these, if they are orthodox,
-should ignore the toast of the Oxford receipt in favour of the roasted
-crab. Not that there is much virtue in either apple or toast, the
-excellence of the drink being due to the spices, sack, and quality of the
-ale. It can easily be understood that when ale was for the most part
-brewed without hops, and consequently rather insipid in taste, many
-people would have a craving for something more highly flavoured, and
-would put nutmeg, ginger and other spices into their liquor. It is not
-unlikely that the introduction of hops was the cause which ultimately
-led to beer cups going out of fashion. At the present day they are but
-rarely compounded, even at the Universities. From experience we can
-say that, if skilfully made, they are excellent, and some of the receipts
-given in this chapter are well worthy a trial.</p>
-
-<p>Lambs-wool is a variety of the Wassail Bowl. Formerly the first day
-of November was dedicated to the angel presiding over fruits, seeds, &amp;c.,
-and was called <i>La Mas ubal</i> (The Day of the Apple-fruit), pronounced
-lamasool. According to Vallancey these words soon became corrupted
-by the country people into Lambswool, the liquor appropriate to the
-day bearing the same name.</p>
-
-<p>To make this beverage, mix the pulp of half a dozen roasted apples
-with some raw sugar, a grated nutmeg, and a small quantity of ginger;
-add one quart of strong ale made moderately warm.
-Stir the whole <span class="xxpn" id="p382">{382}</span>
-together, and, if sweet enough, it is fit for use. This mixture is sometimes
-served up in a bowl, with sweet cakes floating in it.</p>
-
-<p>In Ireland Lambswool used to be a constant ingredient at the
-merry-makings on Holy Eve, or the evening before All Saints’ Day, and
-milk was sometimes substituted for the ale. It is now rarely or never
-heard of in that country, having been superseded by more ardent
-potations.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Miller of Mansfield</i> contains a reference to
-<span class="nowrap">Lambswool:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Doubt not, then sayd the King, my promist secresye:</span>
-<span class="spp01">The King shall never know more on’t for mee.</span>
-<span class="spp00">A cupp of <i>lambswool</i> they dranke unto him then,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And to their bedds they past presentlie.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Old writers frequently made allusion to the spicing of ale. In
-Chaucer’s <i>Rime of Sir Thopas</i> occur these
-<span class="nowrap">lines:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And <i>Notemuge</i> to put in ale</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whether it be moist or stale—</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">and
-again, in <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, by Beaumont and
-<span class="nowrap">Fletcher:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Nutmegs and ginger, cinnamon and cloves,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And they gave me this jolly red nose.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The ale, apparently,
-had nothing to do with the colouration.</p>
-
-<p>Even the sublime Milton condescended to make allusion to spiced ale
-in his <span class="nowrap"><i>L’Allegro</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Till the livelong daylight fail</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then to the <i>spicy nut-brown ale</i>.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Wither,
-in <i>Abuses Stript and Whipt</i> (1613),
-<span class="nowrap">says:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Will he will drinke, yet but a draught at most,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That must be spiced with a nut-browne tost.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The last quotation
-is only one out of the many to be found in our
-literature having reference to the toast with which the spiced ale was
-so often crowned. Perhaps the most curious is one
-from Greene’s <i>Friar <span class="xxpn" id="p383">{383}</span>
-Bacon</i> (sixteenth century). The Devil and Miles are conversing on the
-pleasures of Hell, whence they soon afterwards proceed. “Faith ’tis a
-place,” says Miles, “I have desired long to see; have you not good
-tippling houses there?—May not a man have a lusty fire there, a pot
-of good ale, a pair of cards, a swinging piece of chalk, and a <i>brown
-toast</i> that will clap a white waistcoat on a cup of good drink?”</p>
-
-<p>Even in the last century toast and spices were not uncommonly put
-into ale. Warton, in his <i>Panegyric on Oxford Ale</i>,
-<span class="nowrap">wrote:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">My sober evening let the tankard bless</span>
-<span class="spp00">With <i>toast</i> embrown’d, and fragrant <i>nutmeg</i> fraught,</span>
-<span class="spp00">While the rich draught, with oft-repeated whiffs,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Tobacco mild improves.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Anglo-Saxon custom of drinking healths and pledging has
-been, at any rate, since the eighteenth century, termed <i>toasting</i>. In the
-twenty-fourth number of <i>The Tatler</i> the word is connected with the
-toast put in ale cups. This is probably correct, though Wedgewood
-considers it a corruption of <i>stoss an!</i> knock (glasses), a German drinker’s
-cry. The explanation given in <i>The Tatler</i> of the connection between
-the two meanings of the word “toast” is, however, open to question.
-It runs thus: “It is said that while a celebrated beauty was indulging in
-her bath, one of the crowd of admirers who surrounded her took a glass
-of the water in which the fair one was dabbling and drank her health
-to the company, when a gay fellow offered to jump in, saying, ‘Though
-he liked not the liquor, he would have the <i>toast</i>.’”</p>
-
-<p>In the reign of Charles II. Earl Rochester
-<span class="nowrap">writes:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Make it so large that, filled with Sack</span>
-<span class="spp00">Up to the swelling brim,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Vast <i>toasts</i> on the delicious lake,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like ships at sea, may swim.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>A very ancient composition was ale-brue, called later ale-berry. It
-was composed of ale boiled with spice, sugar, and sops of bread. An old
-receipt (1420) for it
-<span class="nowrap">is:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp01">Alebrue thus make thou schalle</span>
-<span class="spp00">With grotes, safroune and good ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p384">{384}</span></div>
-
-<p>Ale-brue was perhaps originally merely a brew of ale, but the word
-soon came to mean a peculiar beverage. It is mentioned in <i>The Becon
-against Swearing</i> (1543): “They would taste nothing, no not so much
-as a poor <i>ale-berry</i> until they had slain Paul,” and in Boorde’s <i>Dyetary</i>,
-“Ale brues, caudelles and collesses” are recommended for “weke men
-and feble stomackes.” The word also occurs in <i>The High and Mightie
-Commendation of the Vertue of a Pot of Good</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Ale</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Their ale-berries, cawdles and possets each one,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And sullabubs made at the milking pail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Although they be many, Beer comes not in any</span>
-<span class="spp01">But all are composed with a Pot of Good Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Taylor, in <i>Drinke and Welscome</i>, says: “Alesbury (or Aylesbury), in
-Buckinghamshire, where the making of <i>Aleberries</i>, so excellent against
-Hecticks, was first invented.” This is probably only a punning allusion.</p>
-
-<p>All who have been at City festivities have tasted the Loving Cup,
-which, so it is stated in <i>Cups and their Customs</i>, is identical with the
-Grace Cup, a beverage the drinking of which has been from time immemorial
-a great feature at Corporation dinners both in London and
-elsewhere. Mr. Timbs, in <i>Walks and Talks about London</i>, says the
-Loving Cups are filled with “a delicious composition immemorially
-termed sack, consisting of sweetened and exquisitely flavoured white
-wine,” and Will of Malmsbury, describing the customs of Glastonbury
-soon after the Conquest, says that on certain occasions the monks had
-“mead in their cans, and <i>wine</i> in their <i>Grace Cup</i>.” The Oxford
-Grace Cup, however, according to <i>Oxford Nightcaps</i> (1835), contains
-ale. The receipt runs thus: “Extract the juice from the peeling of a
-lemon and cut the remainder into thin slices; put it into a jug or bowl,
-and pour on it three half pints of strong home-brewed beer and a bottle
-of mountain wine: grate a nutmeg into it; sweeten it to your taste;
-stir it till the sugar is dissolved, and then add three or four slices of
-bread toasted brown. Let it stand two hours, and then strain it off into
-the Grace Cup.”</p>
-
-<p>Many of the cups drunk by our forefathers had medicinal qualities
-attributed to them, and did in fact, often contain drugs of various descriptions.
-The famous Hypocras, for instance, was flavoured with an
-infusion of brandy, pepper, ginger, cloves, grains of paradise, ambergris,
-and musk. A Duchess of St. Albans has left us a receipt for making
-“The Ale of health and strength,” which, it sufficeth to
-say, was a <span class="xxpn" id="p385">{385}</span>
-decoction of nearly all the herbs in the garden (agreeable and otherwise)
-boiled up in small beer. Old worthies, when induced to give up their
-receipts for the public good, described these drinks under the head
-of “Kitchen physic.” “I allowed him medicated broths, <i>Posset Ale</i>
-and pearl julep,” writes Wiseman in his book on surgery.</p>
-
-<p>The name of the unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh is dear to Britons
-in connection with tobacco and potatoes. He has yet another claim on
-our sympathy as the inventor of an excellent receipt for Sack Posset,
-which a high authority has declared to show full well the propriety of
-taste in its compounder. It runs thus:—“Boil a quart of cream
-with <i>quantum sufficit</i> of sugar, mace and nutmeg; take half a pint of
-sack<a class="afnanc" href="#fn72" id="fnanc72">72</a>” (sherry), “and the same quantity of ale, and boil them well together,
-adding sugar; these being boiled separately are now to be added.
-Heat a pewter dish very hot, and cover your basin with it, and let it
-stand by the fire for two or three hours.”</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc72" id="fn72">72</a>
-There were several kinds of Sack—Sherris, Malmsey, &amp;c. The
-word is derived from <i>saco</i>, the skin in which Spanish wines were
-imported.</p></div>
-
-<p>“We’ll have a posset at the latter end of a sea-coal fire,” wrote
-Shakspere.</p>
-
-<p>A favourite drink of the seventeenth century was Buttered Ale. It
-was composed of ale (brewed without hops), butter, sugar and cinnamon.
-In <i>Pepys’ Diary</i> for December 5th, 1662, “a morning draught of
-<i>buttered ale</i>,” is mentioned. There is also reference to it in <i>The
-Convivial</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Songster</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And now the merry spic’d bowls went round,</span>
-<span class="spp01">The gossips were void of shame too;</span>
-<span class="spp00">In <i>Butter’d Ale</i> the priest half drown’d,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Demands the infant’s name too.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>At the beginning of the eighteenth century Beer Cups were much in
-vogue. Cuthbert Bede specifies, but does not describe, cups bearing the
-following names: Humpty-dumpty, Clamber-clown, Hugmatee, Stick-back,
-Cock Ale and Knock-me-down, and there were others called Foxcomb,
-Stiffle, Blind Pinneaux, Stephony and Northdown. Cock Ale
-was supposed to be, and no doubt was, a very strengthening and restorative
-compound. The receipt runs thus:—“Take a cock of half a year
-old, kill him and truss him well, and put into a cask twelve gallons of
-Ale to which add four pounds of raisins of the sun well picked, stoned,
-washed and dryed; sliced Dates, half a pound; nutmegs
-and mace two <span class="xxpn" id="p386">{386}</span>
-ounces: Infuse the dates and spices in a quart of canary twenty-four
-hours, then boil the cock in a manner to a jelly, till a gallon of water is
-reduced to two quarts; then press the body of him extremely well, and
-put the liquor into the cask where the Ale is, with the spices and fruit,
-adding a few blades of mace; then put to it a pint of new Ale yeast, and
-let it work well for a day, and, in two days, you may broach it for use
-or, in hot weather, the second day; and if it proves too strong, you may
-add more plain Ale to palliate this restorative drink, which contributes
-much to the invigorating of nature.”</p>
-
-<p>Among the various beverages which good house-wives deemed it
-their duty to brew were Elderberry Beer, or Ebulon, Cowslip Ale,
-Blackberry Ale, China Ale and Apricot Ale. Their names indicate
-to a great extent their composition. China Ale, however, was not
-a term applied by wits to tea, as has been suggested, but was composed
-of ale flavoured with China root and bruised coriander seed,
-which were tied up in a linen bag, and left in the liquor until it had
-done working. The ale then stood fourteen days, and was afterwards
-bottled. This was the proper China Ale, but, according to an old
-cookery book, “the common sort vended about Town is nothing more
-(at best) than ten-shilling beer, put up in small stone bottles, with a little
-spice, lemon peel, and raisins or sugar.”</p>
-
-<p>Ebulon, which is said to have been preferred by some people to
-port, was made thus: In a hogshead of the first and strongest wort
-was boiled one bushel of ripe elderberries. The wort was then strained
-and, when cold, worked (<i>i.e.</i> fermented) in a hogshead (not an open tun
-or tub). Having lain in cask for about a year it was bottled. Some
-persons added an infusion of hops by way of preservative and relish,
-and some likewise hung a small bag of bruised spices in the vessel.
-White Ebulon was made with pale malt and white elderberries.</p>
-
-<p>Blackberry Ale was composed of a strong wort made from two
-bushels of malt and ¼lb. hops. To this was added the juice of a peck
-of ripe blackberries and a little yeast. After fermentation the cask
-was stopped up close for six weeks, the ale was then bottled, and was
-fit to drink at the end of another fortnight.</p>
-
-<p>In the <i>London and County Brewer</i> (1744), is this receipt for Cowslip
-Ale: Take, to a barrel of ale a bushel of the flowers of cowslip pick’d
-out of the husks, and when your ale hath done working put them
-loose in the barrel without bruising. Let it stand a fortnight before you
-bottle it, and, when you bottle it, put a lump of sugar
-in each bottle. <span class="xxpn" id="p387">{387}</span></p>
-
-<p>The same book enlightens us as to the composition of “an ale that
-will taste like Apricot Ale”:—“Take to every gallon of ale one ounce
-and a half of wild carrot seed bruised a little, and hang them in a
-leathern bag in your barrel until it is ready to drink, which will be in
-three weeks; then bottle it with a little sugar in every bottle.”</p>
-
-<p>Egg Ale was a somewhat remarkable composition, and was doubtless
-highly nutritious. To twelve gallons of ale was added the gravy of
-eight pounds of beef. Twelve eggs, the gravy beef, a pound of raisins,
-oranges and spice, were then placed in a linen bag and left in the barrel
-until the ale had ceased fermenting. Even then an addition was made
-in the shape of two quarts of Malaga sack. After three weeks in cask
-the ale was bottled, a little sugar being added. A monstrously potent
-liquor truly! Can this have been one of the cups with which “our
-ancestors robust with liberal cups usher’d the morn”?</p>
-
-<p>Coming now to beverages more familiar, a word or two as to Purl,
-once, and not so long ago either, the common morning draught of
-Londoners. Tom Hood, in <i>The Epping Hunt</i>, thus puns upon the
-<span class="nowrap">word:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Good lord, to see the riders now,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Thrown off with sudden whirl,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A score within the purling brook,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Enjoy’d their “early purl.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>According to one receipt, common Purl contained the following
-ingredients:—Roman wormwood, gentian root, calamus aromaticus
-snake root, horse radish, dried orange peel, juniper berries, seeds or
-kernels of Seville oranges, all placed in beer, and allowed to stand for
-some months. The writer who gives this receipt says a pound or two
-of galingale improves it—as if anything could improve such a perfect
-combination! According to an anecdote told of George III., a somewhat
-simpler beverage in his day went by the name of Purl. One
-morning the King, when visiting his stables, heard one of his grooms
-say to another: “I don’t care what you say, Robert, but the man at
-the Three Tuns makes the best <i>purl</i> in Windsor.”</p>
-
-<p>“Purl, purl,” said the King; “Robert, what’s Purl?”</p>
-
-<p>The groom explaining that purl was hot beer with a dash of gin
-in it, in fact, the compound now known to ’bus conductors as “dogsnose,”
-the King
-<span class="nowrap">remarked:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“Yes, yes; I daresay very good drink; but too strong for the
-morning; never drink
-in the morning.” <span class="xxpn" id="p388">{388}</span></p>
-
-<p>A mixture of warmed ale and spirits is called Hot-Pot in Norfolk
-and Suffolk, and a similar compound, to which is added sugar and
-lemon-peel, used to be called Ruddle.</p>
-
-<p>A somewhat remote ancestor of Purl, Dogsnose, Ruddle and other
-mixtures of ale or beer and spirits, was Hum, to which Ben Jonson
-refers in <i>The Devil is an</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Ass</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp16">—Carmen</span>
-<span class="spp00">Are got into the yellow starch and chimney sweepers</span>
-<span class="spp00">To their tobacco, and strong waters, <i>hum</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Meath and Obarni.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">And it is also
-mentioned in Beaumont and Fletcher’s <i>Wildgoose
-Chase</i>: “What a cold I have over my stomack; would I’d some <i>hum</i>.”
-In Shirley’s <i>Wedding</i> is a reference to hum glasses, the small size
-being indicative of the potency of the
-<span class="nowrap">liquor:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">They say that Canary sack must dance again</span>
-<span class="spp00">To the apothecarys, and be sold</span>
-<span class="spp00">For physic in hum glasses and thimbles.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Flip, once a popular drink, and not altogether without its patrons
-in the present day, is made in a variety of ways. The following receipt
-is a good one. Place in a saucepan one quart of strong ale together
-with lumps of sugar which have been well rubbed over the rind of a
-lemon, and a small piece of cinnamon. Take the mixture off the fire
-when boiling and add one glass of cold ale. Have ready in a jug the
-yolks of six or eight eggs well beaten up with powdered sugar and
-grated nutmeg. Pour the hot ale from the saucepan on to the eggs,
-stirring them while so doing. Have another jug at hand and pour
-the mixture as swiftly as possible from one vessel to the other until a
-white froth appears, when the flip is ready. One or two wine glasses
-of gin or rum are often added. This beverage made without spirits is
-sometimes called Egg-hot, and Sailor’s Flip contains no ale. A quart of
-Flip is styled in the <i>Cook’s Oracle</i> a “Yard of Flannel.”</p>
-
-<p>There is a tale told of a Frenchman, who, stopping at an inn, asked
-for Jacob.</p>
-
-<p>“There’s no such person here,” said the landlord.</p>
-
-<p>“’Tis not a person I want, sare, but de beer warmed with de
-poker.”</p>
-
-<p>“Well,” said mine host,
-“that is flip.” <span class="xxpn" id="p389">{389}</span></p>
-
-<p>“Ah! yes,” exclaimed the Frenchman, “you have right; I mean
-Philip.”</p>
-
-<p>Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose have been immortalised by Dickens in
-his description of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. The tap and parlour
-of this hostel were provided with “comfortable fireside tin utensils,
-like models of sugar-loaf hats, made in that shape that they might, with
-their pointed ends, seek out for themselves glowing nooks in the depths
-of the red coals when they mulled your ale, or heated for you those
-delectable drinks, Purl, Flip, and Dog’s Nose. The first of these humming
-compounds was a speciality of the Porters, which, through an inscription
-on its door-posts, gently appealed to your feelings as ‘The Early Purl
-House.’ For it would seem that Purl must always be taken early; though
-whether for any more distinctly stomachic reason than that, as the early
-bird catches the worm, so the early purl catches the customer, cannot
-here be resolved.”</p>
-
-<p>Of other receipts for beer cups there are many—too many, indeed,
-to be given here; most of them differ from one another more in name
-than anything else. Brown Betty, an Oxford cup, deriving its name
-from its inventor, a bedmaker, is similar to the Oxford Wassail Bowl.
-The famous Brasenose Ale, which is by no means a modern institution
-and is introduced at Brasenose College on Shrove Tuesday, immediately
-after dinner, consists merely of ale sweetened with pounded sugar, and
-served with roasted apples floating on it.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Not all the liquors Rome e’er had</span>
-<span class="spp00">Can beat our matchless Beer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Apicius self had gone stark mad,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To taste such noble cheer.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Thus wrote an undergraduate of Brasenose Ale.</p>
-
-<p>A cup bearing the euphonious name of Tewahdiddle had the reputation
-of being most excellent tipple. It consists of a pint of beer, a
-tablespoonful of brandy, a teaspoonful of brown sugar, a little grated
-nutmeg or ginger, and a roll or very thinly-cut lemon-peel.</p>
-
-<p>Among beverages which hold a high place as cool summer drinks is
-The Parting Cup, which is made thus: Place in a bowl two slices of very
-brown toast, a little nutmeg, a quart of mild ale, and two-thirds of a
-bottle of sherry; sweeten the liquor with syrup, and immediately before
-drinking add a bottle of soda-water. Another good cup is made with
-two quarts of light draught beer, the juice of five lemons, and about
-three-quarters of a pound of sugar. The mixture
-should then be <span class="xxpn" id="p390">{390}</span>
-strained and allowed to stand for a short time. If flat, a little carbonate
-of soda should be added.</p>
-
-<p>A very favourite summer drink at Oxford was Cold Tankard; and a
-certain fair damsel, who was skilful in the preparation of this pleasant
-beverage, was so honoured by the undergraduates that songs were
-written in her praise by the boating men and other frequenters of the
-riverside inn where she presided. She was, according to one poet, cheerful,
-blithe, merry, neat, comely, gay and obliging, and above all she
-excelled in making Cold Tankard.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">She looks up the oars, and the old tavern scores,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And now and then cleans out a wherry;</span>
-<span class="spp02">The sails she can mend,</span>
-<span class="spp02">And the parlour attend,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For obliging’s the Maid of the Ferry.</span>
-<span class="spp00">She serves in the bar, and excels all by far</span>
-<span class="spp00">In making Cold Tankard of Perry;</span>
-<span class="spp02">How sweet then at eve,</span>
-<span class="spp02">With her leave to receive</span>
-<span class="spp00">A kiss from the Maid of the Ferry.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Though “perry” is mentioned in the verse, Cold Tankard is also made
-with Ale or Cider. The ingredients are the juice from the peeling of
-one lemon, extracted by rubbing loaf sugar on it; two lemons cut into
-thin slices; the rind of one lemon cut thin, a quarter of a pound of
-loaf sugar, and a half pint of brandy. To make the cup, put the foregoing
-into a large jug, mix them well together, and add one quart
-of cold spring water. Grate a nutmeg into the jug, add one pint of
-white wine, and a quart of strong beer, ale, perry or cider, sweeten the
-mixture to taste with capillaire or sugar, put a handful of balm and the
-same quantity of borage in flower (<i>borago officinalis</i>) into it, stalk downwards.
-Then put the jug containing this liquor into a tub of ice, and
-when it has remained there one hour it is fit for use. The balm and
-borage should be fresh gathered.</p>
-
-<p>The use of Borage in cups is very ancient, and old writers have
-ascribed to the flower many virtues. In Evelyn’s <i>Acetaria</i> it is said
-“to revive the hypochondriac, and cheer the hard student.” In Salmon’s
-<i>Household Companion</i> (1710) Borage is mentioned as one of the four
-cordial flowers; “it comforts the heart, cheers melancholy, and revives
-the fainting spirits.” It may be doubted whether
-the comforting effects <span class="xxpn" id="p391">{391}</span>
-of this inward application were rightly attributed to the borage alone.
-A modern writer has gone so far as to say that he never found any
-benefit apparent from the presence of Borage at Lord Mayor’s feasts and
-other such festive gatherings, beyond that of so stinging the noses of those
-other persons who have desired to drink deeply that the cup undrained
-has been. Though granting this undeniable advantage, we cannot
-concur that Borage possesses no other qualities, for it gives to cups a
-peculiarly refreshing flavour which cannot be imitated.</p>
-
-<p>In <i>Cups and their Customs</i> are three Beer Cups which have not yet
-been mentioned. The first of these is Copus Cup. It consists of two
-quarts of hot ale, to which are added four wine glasses of brandy, three
-wine glasses of noyau, a pound of lump sugar, the juice of one lemon, a
-piece of toast, a dozen cloves, and a little nutmeg. Was it of such a
-cup as this that the lines were
-<span class="nowrap">written?―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Three cups of this a prudent man may take;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The first of these for constitution’s sake,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The second to the girl he loves the best,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The third and last to lull him to his rest.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Donaldson’s Beer Cup is of a more simple and lighter character. To
-a pint of ale is added the peel of half a lemon, half a liquor-glass of
-noyau, a bottle of seltzer-water, a little nutmeg and sugar, and some ice.</p>
-
-<p>“Hungerford Park” is an excellent beverage, and is especially suitable
-for shooting parties in hot weather. To make it—cut into slices
-three good-flavoured apples, which put into a jug; add the peel and
-juice of one lemon, a very little grated nutmeg, three bottles of ginger-beer,
-half a pint of sherry, two and a quarter pints of good draught ale,
-sweeten to taste with sifted loaf sugar, stir a little to melt the sugar,
-and let the jug stand in ice. “The addition of half a bottle of champagne
-makes it <i>awfully</i> good,” wrote a certain Colonel B., in <i>the Field</i>,
-a few years ago.</p>
-
-<p>Freemasons’ Cup, which may be drank either hot or cold, is of a
-very potent character, and consists of a pint of Scotch ale, a similar
-quantity of mild beer, half a pint of brandy, a pint of sherry, half a
-pound of loaf sugar, and plenty of grated nutmeg. Freemasons must
-have strong heads.</p>
-
-<p>It will, no doubt, have been noted ere this that between mulled ale
-and the majority of hot beer-cups the distinction is rather in name than
-composition, and the various receipts for mulling ale so closely resemble
-the Wassail Bowl, Flip, &amp;c., that it is quite unnecessary to
-quote any of <span class="xxpn" id="p392">{392}</span>
-them. A word or two on cup making. Cups are easily made and
-easily marred. All the ingredients must be of good quality, and the
-vessels used sweet and clean. Everything required should be at hand
-before the mixing commences, and that important process should
-proceed as quickly as possible. Few servants can be trusted to brew
-cups, but if the matter is placed in their hands you cannot do better
-than caution them in terms similar to those addressed by Dr. King to
-his maid
-<span class="nowrap">Margaret:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">O Peggy, Peggy, when thou go’st to brew,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Consider well what you’re about to do;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Be very wise—very sedately think</span>
-<span class="spp00">That what you’re going to make is—drink;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Consider who must drink that drink, and then</span>
-<span class="spp00">What ’tis to have the praise of honest men;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then future ages shall of Peggy tell,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The nymph who spiced the brewages so well.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Yet two more beverages compounded of ale or beer, and then this
-portion of the subject is completed. First, Shandy Gaff, the very
-writing of which word brings to us visions of a shining river, of shady
-backwaters, of sunny days, of two-handled tankards, and of deep cool
-draughts well earned. For the sake of the unfortunate few who are
-unacquainted with the beverage, the receipt is given: One pint of
-bitter beer, one bottle of the old-fashioned ginger-beer mixed together,
-and imbibed only on the hottest summer days, after rowing. Why,
-we cannot say; but Shandy Gaff always seems to us out of place
-anywhere but on the river.</p>
-
-<p>Secondly and lastly—Mother-in-law, which, also, to some of us may
-bring visions—but of another kind. The drink of this name is composed
-of equal proportions of “old and bitter.”</p>
-
-<p>If there is one season of the year more appropriate than another to
-hot beer-cups, be they Wassail Bowls, Lambswool, Flip or Mulled Ale, it
-is Christmas. Edward Moxon, a poet who flourished about the commencement
-of this century, presents in his <i>Christmas</i> a charming
-picture of the merry circle gathered round the crackling yule log,
-regaling themselves with mulled
-<span class="nowrap">ale:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Right merry now the hours they pass,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Fleeting thro’ jocund pleasure’s glass,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The yule-log too burns bright and clear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Auspicious of a happy year: <span class="xxpn" id="p393">{393}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">While some with joke and some with tale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But all with sweeter <i>mullèd ale</i>,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Pass gaily life’s sweet stream along,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With interlude of ancient song—</span>
-<span class="spp00">And as each rosy cup they drain,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Bounty replenishes again.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>From the excellent beverages compounded of ale or beer, concerning
-which so much has been said in this chapter, let us turn to the cups,
-flagons, horns, bowls and other vessels used by ale drinkers, and in some
-of which these beverages were compounded.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Come
- troll the jovial flagon,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come fill the bonny bowl,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come, join in laughing sympathy</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of soul with kindred soul.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>A few pages must suffice for a very short notice of this interesting
-part of our subject.</p>
-
-<div class="dright dwth-d">
-<img src="images/p393.png" width="335" height="295" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Anglo-Saxon Tumblers.</div></div>
-
-<p>Mr. Sharon Turner, in his <i>His­tory of the An­glo-Sax­ons</i>,
-gives many in­stances of the high estimation in which cups
-and drink­ing ves­sels were held by our Teu­tonic fore­fathers.
-Even in very early times the precious metals were large­ly
-used in their con­struc­tion, and gold and silver cups are
-fre­quent­ly the sub­jects of Anglo-Saxon be­quests. In the
-old poem <i>Beowulf</i> evi­dence may be found bear­ing upon
-this point. One of the trea­sures in the ancient bar­row
-guarded by the dragon Gren­del is “The solid cup, the
-costly drinking ves­sel (<i>drync fœt deore</i>).” Drink­ing
-ves­sels are fre­quent­ly found in Anglo-Saxon tombs. The
-cups rep­re­sent­ed in the cut are made of glass, and were
-found chief­ly in bar­rows in Kent. They are of the “tum­bler”
-species, <i>i.e.</i>, on being filled they must be emptied
-at a draught, and can­not be set down with any liquor in
-them. Mr. Wright sug­gests that the example to the left
-represents the “twisted” pat­tern men­tioned in <i>Beowulf</i>.</p>
-
-<p>The savage custom, observed both by the Celts and
-Saxons, of drinking ale or mead from <span class="xxpn"
-id="p394">{394}</span> a cup made out of the skull of a
-fallen foe, has left a trace in mediæval times in the word
-“scole,” signifying a cup or bowl, and may probably still
-be recognised in the provincial word “skillet,” which has
-the same meaning.</p>
-
-<p>Henry, in his <i>History of England</i>, relates that the Celtic inhabitants
-of the Western Islands of Scotland spoke in their poetical way of
-intoxicating liquors as “the strength of the shell,” from the fact that
-they used shells as drinking vessels.</p>
-
-<p>Returning to the Anglo-Saxons—besides metal and glass cups, they
-used drinking horns, and cups or bowls of wood, and in some respects
-the horn was the most important of their drinking vessels. Investiture
-of lands was frequently made by the horn both among the Saxons and
-Danes. The celebrated Horn of Ulphus, kept in the Sacristy of York
-Minster, was, according to Camden, given to the Cathedral by a noble
-Dane named Ulphus, who, when his sons quarrelled as to the succession
-to his estate, cut short the dispute by repairing to the Minster, and there
-enfeoffed the Cathedral with all his lands and revenues, draining the
-horn before the high altar as a pledge and evidence of the gift. The
-Mercian King Witlaf gave a drinking horn to the Abbey of Croyland
-“that the elder monks may drink from it on feast days, and remember
-the soul of the donor.”</p>
-
-<div class="dctr04">
-<img src="images/p394.png" width="386" height="363" alt="" />
-<div class="dcaption">Cup found in the Ruins of
- Glastonbury Abbey.</div></div>
-
-<p>The peg-tankards of the Anglo-Saxons have been already
-referred to in Chapter V. The Glastonbury Peg Tankard,
-illustrated in the cut, is made of oak. On the lid is a
-representation of the Crucifixion, and round the sides
-are the figures of the Apostles. It contains two quarts,
-and is divided with eight pegs. <span class="xxpn"
-id="p395">{395}</span></p>
-
-<p>While engaged on this subject of measured drinks, it may also be
-mentioned that hoops were used as well as pegs by the old topers, and
-hence the promise of Jack Cade that “the three-hooped pot shall have
-ten hoops.” From the same fact is derived the old phrase, “carousing
-the hunter’s hoop,” signifying a prolonged drinking bout. In certain
-parts of Essex it has been customary, until quite recently, for topers to
-drink out a pot of ale in three equal draughts, and with some ceremony;
-the first draught was called <i>neckum</i>, the second <i>sinkum</i>, and the third
-<i>swankum</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Passing on to mediæval times, We find, as might have been expected,
-a great increase of variety in the drinking vessels in common use. The
-tankard, which was one of the chief vessels used for ordinary drinking
-purposes, was originally a vessel containing three gallons, and used, not
-to drink out of, but to carry water in. Before Sir Hugh Middleton
-brought the New River water into London, the inhabitants were supplied
-by the tankard bearers. The tankard was usually made of metal
-and the common use of pewter in the fifteenth century is shown by an
-extract from a letter of that period, in which the recipient is reminded,
-that “If ye be at home this Christmas, it were well done ye should do
-purvey a garnish or twain of pewter vessel.” The <i>hanap</i> was a kind of
-first cousin to the tankard, it came down from Saxon times, and the
-name is found in old Vocabularies under the form <i>hnæp</i>. The minds
-of the learned have been greatly exercised as to the connection of this
-word hanap with our word hamper, and with the older form still found
-in the term, the Hanaper Office. We would humbly suggest that the
-old work of Alexander Neckam, to which we have already had occasion
-to refer, makes the matter tolerably clear. The writer, in describing the
-contents of a cellar, mentions <i>ciphi</i> and <i>cophini</i>, which of course mean
-<i>cups</i> and <i>baskets</i>. An ancient annotator, however, gives us just the
-hint we want by writing in the MS. over the word <i>ciphi</i> “anaps,”
-and over <i>cophini</i> “anapers.” The hanap therefore was the cup, the
-hanaper or hamper was the basket in which the cups were carried.</p>
-
-<p>As an example of the number and value of the various drinking
-vessels in use, the following extracts are given from an inventory of the
-goods of Sir John Fastolfe, who died in 1459:</p>
-
-<ul id="p395list">
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">Item</span>
- j payre galon Bottels of one sorte.</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">—</span>
- j payre of potell Bottellys one sorte.</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">—</span>
- j nother potell Bottell—Item 1 payre Quartletts of one sorte.</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">Item</span>
- iiij galon pottis of lether—Item iij Pottelers of lether.</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">Item</span>
- j grete tankard. <span class="xxpn" id="p396">{396}</span></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">Item</span>
- ij grete and hoge botellis.</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">—</span>
- ij Pottis of silver, percell gilte and enameled with violetts and
-dayseys.</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><span class="p395item">—</span>
- ij Pottes of sylver, of the facion of goods enamelyd on the toppys
-withe hys armys.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>Leather was a very usual material for drinking vessels in former
-times, and black-jacks were to be seen in every village alehouse. Many
-such are still to be found in various parts of the country, though they
-are not now used.</p>
-
-<p>The venerable song the <i>Leather Bottel</i> is too well known to bear
-repetition, but a verse or two of <i>Time’s Alterations or the Old Man’s
-Rehersal</i>, an ancient black-letter ballad, may be given to show the
-common use of the leather drinking
-<span class="nowrap">vessel:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Black jacks to every man</span>
-<span class="spp01">Were filled with wine and beer;</span>
-<span class="spp00">No pewter pot nor can</span>
-<span class="spp01">In those days did appear:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Good cheer in a nobleman’s house</span>
-<span class="spp01">Was counted a seemly shew;</span>
-<span class="spp00">We wanted no brawn nor souse,</span>
-<span class="spp01">When this old cap was new.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">We took not such delight</span>
-<span class="spp01">In cups of silver wine;</span>
-<span class="spp00">None under the degree of a Knight</span>
-<span class="spp01">In plate drunk beer or wine:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Now each mechanical man</span>
-<span class="spp01">Hath a cupboard of plate for a shew;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which was a rare thing then,</span>
-<span class="spp01">When this old cap was new.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Taylor, the water poet, in his <i>Jack a Lent</i>, makes mention of these
-vessels (<span class="smmaj">A.D.</span>
-<span class="nowrap">1630):―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">—————&#x202f;nor of Jacke Dogge, Jack Date,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Jacke foole, or Jack a Dandy, I relate:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor of Black Jacks at gentle Buttry bars,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whose liquor often breeds household wars:</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>A variety of Black Jack was the Bombard, to which Ben Jonson
-refers in the lines from the <i>Masque of Love
-Restored</i>. “With that <span class="xxpn" id="p397">{397}</span>
-they knocked hypocrisy on the pate and made room for a bombard-man,
-that brought bouge<a class="afnanc" href="#fn73" id="fnanc73">73</a>
-for a country lady or two, that fainted, he said,
-with fasting.” Shakspere calls Falstaff “that swollen parcel or
-dropsies, that huge bombard of sack.” “Baiting of bombard” was a slang
-term for heavy drinking. Small Jacks were also in use. Decker, in
-his <i>English Villaines Seven Times Pressed to Death</i>, says: “In some
-places they have little leather Jacks, tip’d with silver, and hung with
-small silver bells (these are called Gyngle-Boyes), to ring peales of
-drunkennesse.”</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc73" id="fn73">73</a>
-bouge&#x200a;=&#x200a;an allowance of meat and drink.</p></div>
-
-<p>The Black Jack was frequently taken for a sign. The house with
-that sign-board in Clare Market, London, was once the haunt of
-Joe Miller, of comic fame, and from the window of this tavern
-Jack Sheppard is said to have made a desperate leap, in escaping
-from the clutches of Jonathan Wild and his myrmidons.</p>
-
-<p>Heywood, in his <i>Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected
-and Anatomized</i> (1635), gives a very full list of the various drinking
-vessels in use in his day. “Of drinking cups,” he says, “divers and
-sundry sorts we have; some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some
-of holly, etc. Mazers, broad-mouthed dishes, naggins, whiskins,
-piggins, creuzes, ale-bowles, wassel-bowles, court dishes, tankards,
-kannes, from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles
-we have of leather, but they are mostly used amongst the shepherds
-and harvest people of the countrey; small jacks we have in many
-ale houses of the citie and suburbs tipt with silver: black-jacks and
-bombards at the court; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they
-reported at their return unto their country that the Englishmen used
-to drink out of their bootes. We have besides cups made of horns
-of beastes, of cockernuts, of goords, of eggs of estriches; others made
-of the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places,
-and shining like mother of pearle. Come to plate, every tavern can
-afford you flat bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles,
-beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feast
-to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flagons,
-tankards, beere cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some
-guilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and
-qualities.”</p>
-
-<p>During the religious feuds that raged so fearfully in Holland, the
-Protestant party gave the name of <i>Bellarmines</i> to
-the bearded jugs <span class="xxpn" id="p398">{398}</span>
-they used. This was done in ridicule of their opponent, Cardinal
-Bellarmine. The Cardinal’s figure was stout and squat, and well
-suited the form of the stone beer-jug in use. To make the resemblance
-more complete, the Cardinal’s face with his great square-cut beard was
-placed in front of the jug, which became known in England as the
-<i>Bellarmine</i> or <i>Greybeard</i> Jug. Many fragments of these jugs, of the
-reign of Elizabeth and James the First, have been exhumed, and the
-jug entire is not uncommon. Ben Jonson, alluding to the Greybeard,
-says of a drunkard that “the man with the beard has almost struck up
-his heels,” and an excellent description of this quaint old jug is to be
-found in Cartwright’s play <i>The Ordinary</i>
-<span class="nowrap">(1651):―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp17">——thou thing</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thy very looks like to some strutting hill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">O’ershadow’d with thy rough beard like a wood;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or like a larger jug that some men call</span>
-<span class="spp00">A Bellarmine, but we a conscience,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Wheron the tender hand of Pagan workman</span>
-<span class="spp00">Over the proud ambitious head hath carved</span>
-<span class="spp00">An idol large, with beard episcopal.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The Greybeard Jug is still to be found in some parts of Scotland,
-and the following tale, in which it figures, was taken down some years
-ago from the conversation of a Scotch Church dignitary. About 1770
-there flourished a Mrs. Balfour, of Denbog, in the County of Fife. The
-nearest neighbour of Denbog was a Mr. David Paterson, who had the
-character of being a good deal of a humorist. One day, when Paterson
-came to the house, he found Mrs. Balfour engaged in one of her half-yearly
-brewings, it being the custom in those days, each March and
-October, to make as much ale as would serve for the ensuing six months.
-She was in a great pother about bottles, her stock of which fell far
-short of the number required, and she asked Mr. Paterson if he could
-lend her any? “No,” said Paterson, “but I think I could bring you a
-few greybeards that would hold a good deal, perhaps that would do.”
-The lady assented, and appointed a day when he should come again and
-bring his greybeards with him. On the proper day Mr. Paterson made
-his appearance, in Mrs. Balfour’s parlour.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, Mr. Paterson, have you brought your greybeards?”</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, they are down stairs waiting for you.”</p>
-
-<p>“How many?”</p>
-
-<p>“Nae less than ten.” <span class="xxpn" id="p399">{399}</span></p>
-
-<p>“Well I, hope they are pretty large, for really I find I have a great
-deal more Ale than I have bottles for.”</p>
-
-<p>“I’se warrant ye, Mem, ilka ane o’&#x202f;them will hold twelve gallons.”</p>
-
-<p>“O, that will do extremely well.”</p>
-
-<p>Down goes the lady.</p>
-
-<p>“I left them in the dining-room,” said Paterson. When the lady
-went in she found ten of the most bibulous old lairds of the North of
-Fife. She at once perceived the joke, and entered into it. After a
-hearty laugh had gone round, she said she thought it would be as well
-to have dinner before filling the greybeards, and it was accordingly
-arranged that the gentlemen should take a ramble and come in to dinner
-at two o’clock.</p>
-
-<p>The extra ale is understood to have been duly disposed of.</p>
-
-<p>Closely allied to the Greybeard was the Toby Philpot beer jug; it
-was, however, a more elaborate article, and represented the whole
-figure of a portly toper. Its origin is thus described in the humorous
-verses entitled <i>Toby Philpot</i>, by Francis
-<span class="nowrap">Fawkes:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Dear Tom, this brown jug, which now foams with mild ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Out of which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Vale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Was once Toby Philpot, a thirsty old soul,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As e’er crack’d a bottle, or fathom’d a bowl:</span>
-<span class="spp00">In bousing about, ’twas his pride to excel,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And amongst jolly topers he bore off the bell.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">It chanc’d as in dog days he sat at his ease,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In his flower-woven arbour, as gay as you please,</span>
-<span class="spp00">With his friend and a pipe, puffing sorrow away,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And with honest Old Stingo sat soaking his clay,</span>
-<span class="spp00">His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And he died full as big as a Dorchester Butt.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">His body when long in the ground it had lain,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And time into clay had dissolv’d it again,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A potter found out, in its covert so snug,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And with part of Fat Toby he form’d this brown jug:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Now sacred to friendship, to mirth, and mild Ale—</span>
-<span class="spp00">So here’s to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The wooden ale bowls used by the Saxons continued common in
-England for many a century, and constant reference to them
-is to be <span class="xxpn" id="p400">{400}</span>
-found. In the <i>Miller of Mansfield</i> King Henry II. is represented
-drinking out of a brown bowl:</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">This caus’d the King, suddenlye, to laugh most heartilye,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Till the teares trickled fast downe from his eyes.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then to their supper were they set orderlye,</span>
-<span class="spp01">With hot bag puddings, and good apply pyes;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nappy ale, good and stale, in a browne bowle,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Which did about the board merrilye trowle.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>At the time when the <i>Liber Albus</i> was composed (1419), the gallons,
-pottles and quarts used in the City of London were made of wood, as
-may be judged from the fact that they are mentioned as shrinking if
-they were stamped when <i>green</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Dryden mentions the brown bowl as characteristic of the country
-<span class="nowrap">life:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The rich, tir’d with continual feasts,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For change become their next poor tenant’s guests;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Drink heavy draughts of Ale from plain brown bowls,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And snatch the homely Rasher from the coals.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Mr. Pepys records that on the 4th of January, 1667, he had
-company to dinner; and “at night to sup, and then to cards, and last
-of all to have a flagon of ale and apples, drank out of a wood cup, as a
-Christmas draught, which made all merry.” Brown bowls were also the
-drinking vessels used in singing the old song, <i>The Barley Mow</i> “which
-cannot,” says Bell “be given in words, it should be heard to be appreciated
-properly, particularly with the West Country dialect.”</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Here’s a health to the barley-mow, my brave boys,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Here’s a health to the barley-mow!</span>
-<span class="spp00">We’ll drink it out of the jolly brown bowl,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Here’s a health to the barley-mow!</span>
-<p class="pcontinue">Chorus:—</p>
-<span class="spp00">Here’s a health to the barley-mow, my brave boys,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Here’s a health to the barley-mow!</span>
-<span class="spp00">We’ll drink it out of the nipperkin, boys.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">Here’s, &amp;c.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">and so it proceeds, “quarter-pint,”
-“half-pint,” “pint,” “quart,” “pottle,” “gallon,”
-“half-anker,” “anker,” “half-hogshead,” “hogshead,”
-“pipe,” “well,” “river,” “ocean,” always in the third line
-repeating the whole of the previously-named “measures”
-backwards. <span class="xxpn" id="p401">{401}</span></p>
-
-<p>Among curious drinking vessels must be classed the Wager or
-Puzzle Jugs, which, in the seventeenth century, were great favourites at
-village inns. Some are to be seen in the South Kensington Museum.
-These jugs had usually many spouts, from most of which it was difficult
-to drink owing to perforations in the neck. But a secret passage for the
-liquor up the hollow handle or through one spout or nozzle afforded a
-means of sucking out the contents, the fingers of the drinker stopping
-up the other spouts and holes during the operation. On many of these
-jugs were inscriptions, such
-<span class="nowrap">as―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">From Mother Earth I claim my birth,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I’m made a joke to man,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But now I’m here, fill’d with good beer</span>
-<span class="spp00">Come, taste me if you can.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">One
-more curious drinking vessel must be mentioned, and then this
-short account of a subject upon which a large volume might well be
-written, must close.</p>
-
-<p>The “Ale-yard” has been described by a writer in <i>Notes and Queries</i>
-as “a trumpet-shaped glass vessel, exactly a yard in length, the
-narrow end being closed, and expanded into a large ball. Its internal
-capacity is little more than a pint, and when filled with ale many a
-thirsty tyro has been challenged to empty it without taking away his
-mouth. This is no easy task. So long as the tube contains fluid it flows
-out smoothly, but when air reaches the bulb it displaces the liquor
-with a splash, startling the toper, and compelling him involuntarily to
-withdraw his mouth by the rush of the cold liquid over his face and
-dress.”</p>
-
-<p>The Ale-yard is known at Eton under the name of the “Long Glass.”
-Those boys who attain to a certain standing either as Dry Bobs or Wet
-Bobs (<i>i.e.</i>, in the boats or at cricket) are invited to attend “Cellar,”
-which is held at “Tap” once a week during the summer term. On
-attending the first time the novice has to “floor the Long Glass” (<i>i.e.</i>, to
-finish it without drawing breath). Many have to make several attempts,
-and some never succeed.</p>
-
-<p>It is, no doubt, generally supposed that the uses of ale other than
-as a drink are but few in number, yet malt liquors have been applied
-to a variety of queer purposes. From a letter of Pope Gregory to
-Archbishop Nidrosiensi, of Iceland, it would seem that in the thirteenth
-century children were sometimes baptized in ale instead of water.</p>
-
-<p>“Forasmuch as we learn from your letter that
-it has sometimes <span class="xxpn" id="p402">{402}</span>
-happened that infants in your country have been baptized in ale owing
-to the lack of water in that region, we return in answer that since the
-heart ought to be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, those ought
-not to be considered as duly baptized who have been baptized in ale.</p>
-
-<p>“Given at the Lateran VIII. Idus Julii, anno XV.”</p>
-
-<p>In another letter of an earlier date (1237) the use of ale in the
-administration of the Eucharist was forbidden, though Nashe, speaking
-of the Icelanders in his <i>Terrors of the Night</i> (1594), says: “It is
-reported that the Pope long since gave them a dispensation to receive
-the Sacrament in ale, since owing to their incessant frosts there, no
-wine but was turned to red emagle” (<i>i.e.</i>, enamel) “as soone as euer it
-came amongst them.”</p>
-
-<p>To leave Theology for the Stable, it is worth recording that it is
-alleged that during the King’s progress through the country, in Norman
-times, such was the extravagance and waste of the royal household
-that the servants even washed the horses’ feet in ale. Grooms at the
-present day often mix ale with lampblack and oil for rubbing on
-the hoofs of horses. Possibly this was all that was done by the royal
-grooms. Ancient chroniclers are notoriously inaccurate.</p>
-
-<p>None appreciate good ale more than anglers, and this is clearly
-evidenced in the following receipt, written by Christopher North, for
-staining gut or hair lines a pale watery green:—“To a pint of strong
-ale add (as soon as possible, as it is so apt to evaporate when good)
-half-a-pound of soot, a small quantity of walnut leaves, and a little
-powdered alum (then drink the remaining pint of ale, if you happen
-to have drawn a quart); boil these materials for half or three-quarters
-of an hour, and when the mixture is cold, steep the gut or hair in it
-for ten or twelve hours.” Yes, good ale is apt to evaporate very
-quickly; the moral is obvious.</p>
-
-<p>Dame Juliana Berners, in <i>The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an
-Angle</i>, gives two receipts “to coloure your lynes of here,” in which
-ale is used. One consists of ale and alum, the other of ale and soot.</p>
-
-<p>When every county had its monasteries, and every monastery its fish
-stew well stocked with fine carp for Fridays’ dinners, the fattening of
-fish was a matter of no little importance. In an old angling book it is
-stated that “Raspins and Chippins of Bread, or almost any scraps from
-the Table, placed under a cask of strong Beer or Ale, in such a manner
-that the Droppings of the Liquor may fall among them, is excellent Food
-for Carp. Two quarts of this is sufficient for thirty, and if they are fed
-Morning and Evening it will be better than once a Day only.” Stilton <span class="xxpn" id="p403">{403}</span>
-cheeses, by the way, treated in a similar manner to that directed
-for the “Raspins,” are immensely improved in flavour and general
-excellence. Brewers’ grains are greedily eaten by most kinds of freshwater
-fish, and are used by anglers as groundbait for bream, roach, and
-carp in the Eastern counties.</p>
-
-<p>In a work entitled <i>Practical Economy</i>, published in 1821, persons
-desirous of fattening their fowls quickly are recommended to feed them
-on ground-rice, milk and sugar, made into a paste, and to let them drink
-beer.</p>
-
-<p>The ladies who preside over the culinary department of our households
-do not, so far as we know, make any use of ale other than as a
-drink, excepting the occasional use of beer in the preparation of Welsh
-rare-bits. From old cookery books, however, we gather that this has
-not always been the case. Beer mixed with brown sugar was a
-favourite sauce for pancakes; red herrings were steeped in small beer
-before being broiled; and catsup for sea stores was made principally of
-beer and vinegar, a few mushrooms being added for conscience’ sake.
-Then, from the same source, we find that beer has other domestic uses.
-An admirable method of cleaning crape is to steep it in beer, wring it
-gently, and hang it out to dry; stale beer formed, and still forms, the
-liquid part of the best blacking; ale or beer plus elbow grease makes
-capital furniture polish; and, leaving the interior of the house, beer
-grounds have been used for washing the outside of walls and houses
-covered with cement to harden the latter, a change which they are said
-likewise to effect on bricks and mortar.</p>
-
-<p>Beer mixed with brown sugar or honey is usually rubbed over the
-interiors of hives in which swarms of bees are intended to be taken. A
-bunch of mint and other sweet herbs forms the brush to spread the
-mixture. Not only is the sweet dressing agreeable to the taste and
-smell, but the beer has doubtless a lulling and soporific effect on the
-bees, and renders them less anxious to leave their new abode.</p>
-
-<p>In the medicine books of the Saxon Leeches are references to the use
-of ale in the composition of various lotions. Ale and beer are, indeed,
-often prescribed by medical practitioners of the present day, as will be
-seen by a perusal of Chapter XV. The valuable properties of bitter
-beer as an incentive to appetite and a promoter of digestion, and the
-nourishing qualities of the brown beers, are too well known to need
-comment.</p>
-
-<p>In many breweries large quantities of vinegar are manufactured from
-malt liquor. This is an ancient practice, for in the
-City of London <span class="xxpn" id="p404">{404}</span>
-Records of the time of Good Queen Bess it is stated that officials were
-appointed to search the premises of the brewers for “vyneagre, bear-eagre
-and ale-eagre,” and to report to the Common Council touching the same.
-The words “beare-eagre” and “ale-eagre” have now gone out of use, and
-the acid liquid made from malt liquor is improperly called Vinegar
-though in no way connected with the Vine.</p>
-
-<p>A use of ale, which is additional rather than alternative to the
-common one, is commemorated by the old proverb, “Fair chieve good
-ale, it makes folk speak what they think.” Another such supplementary
-use, but of a character less commendable, is expressed in the ancient
-<span class="nowrap">couplet:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The Good Noppy Ale of Southwerk</span>
-<span class="spp00">Keeps many a goodwife from the Kirk.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Moore, in his <i>Odes of Anacreon</i>, sings the praise of ale as an incentive
-to literary
-<span class="nowrap">labours:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">If with water you fill up your glasses,</span>
-<span class="spp00">You’ll never write anything wise,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For Ale is the horse of Parnassus</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which hurries a bard to the skies.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The following curious lines, copied from a MS. in the Cottonian
-Library, indicate some other supplementary uses, or to speak more
-correctly, the unwished-for effects of the strong ale in which our forefathers
-<span class="nowrap">indulged:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Doll thi, doll, doll, doll this ale, dole,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a man to have a doly poll.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to styk at a brere;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to ly in the myere;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And ale mak many a mane to stombyl at a stone;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to dronken home;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And ale mak many a mane to brek his tone;</span>
-<span class="sppctr">With doll.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to draw hys knyfe;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to bet hys wyf.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">With doll.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to wet hys chekes,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /> <span class="xxpn" id="p405">{405}</span></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to stomble in the blokkis;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to mak hys hed have knokkes,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And ale mak many a mane to syt in the stokkes.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">With doll.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak many a mane to ryne over the falows;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale mak a mane to swere by God and alhalows</span>
-<span class="spp00">And ale mak many a mane to hang upon the galows.</span>
-<span class="sppctr">With doll.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>A strange use of good liquor was that which anciently prevailed
-of partly intoxicating criminals before execution. The ladies of
-Jerusalem used to provide such a potion, consisting of frankincense and
-wine. There is a curious similarity between this custom and the old
-practice of giving to condemned men on their way to Tyburn Tree, a
-great bowl of ale as their last earthly refreshment. It is stated in
-Hone’s <i>Year Book</i> that a court on the south side of the High Street,
-St. Giles’, derives its name of Bowl Yard from the circumstance of
-criminals on their way to execution being presented with a bowl of ale
-at the Hospital of St. Giles. Different maxims came ultimately to
-prevail in reference to this matter, and we are told that Lord Ferrers,
-when on his way to execution in 1760, for the murder of his land
-steward, was denied his request for some wine and water, the Sheriff
-stating that he was sorry to be obliged to refuse his lordship, but by
-recent regulations they were enjoined not to let prisoners drink when
-going to execution, as great indecencies had been frequently committed
-in these cases, through the criminals becoming intoxicated. The old
-saying that the “Saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his liquor,”
-arose from the following circumstances: Being sick at heart from his
-impending death, the Saddler refused the bowl of ale offered him on his
-way to the gallows. One minute after the poor fellow’s last struggle
-his reprieve arrived, so that had he but tarried to drink the ale he had
-been saved.</p>
-
-<p>Very different was the fortune of the Tinkler who had the good luck
-to meet</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp08">——King Jamie, the first of our throne</span>
-<span class="spp00">A pleasanter monarch sure never was known.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">The little
-incident is best told in the words of the old
-<span class="nowrap">ballad:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">As he (the King) was a hunting the swift fallow deer,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He dropped all his nobles; and when he got clear,
- <span class="xxpn" id="p406">{406}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">In hope of some pastime away he did ride</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till he came to an ale-house, hard by a wood side.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">And there with a Tinkler he happened to meet,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And him in kind sort he so freely did greet:</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Pray
- thee, good fellow, what hast in thy jug,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Which under thy arm thou dost lovingly hug?”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>By
- the mass!” quoth the Tinkler, “it’s nappy brown ale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And for to drink to thee, friend, I will not fail;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For although thy jacket looks gallant and fine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I think my twopence as good as is thine.”</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>By
- my soul! honest fellow, the truth thou has spoke,”</span>
-<span class="spp00">And straight he sat down with the Tinkler to joke;</span>
-<span class="spp00">They drank to the King and they pledged to each other;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who’d seen ’em had thought they were brother and brother.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In their merry conversation the Tinkler remarks that the King is on
-the border chasing deer, and that he would much like to see a King.
-James immediately says he will show him one, if he will but mount
-behind him. This the Tinkler does, “with his sack, his budget of
-leather and tools at his back.” Doubts arising in his mind as to how
-he shall recognise the King, James tells him,</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Thou’lt
- easily ken him when once thou art there;</span>
-<span class="spp00">The King will be covered, his nobles all bare.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Together
-the two ride through the merry greenwood, and come upon
-the nobles, when the Tinkler again asks to be shown the King.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">The King did with hearty good laughter reply,</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>By
- my soul! my good fellow, its thou or its I!</span>
-<span class="spp00">The rest are bare-headed, uncovered all round.”</span>
-<span class="spp00">With his bag and his budget he fell to the ground,</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">and
-beseeches mercy. Then says
-<span class="nowrap">James―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Come
- tell me thy name?” “I am John of the Dale,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A mender of kettles, a lover of ale.”</span>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Rise
- up! Sir John, I will honour thee here,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I make thee a Knight of three thousand a year.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div><span class="xxpn" id="p407">{407}</span></div>
-
-<p>“This was a good thing for the Tinkler indeed,” writes the poet, who
-concludes with the
-<span class="nowrap">verse:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sir John of the Dale he has land, he has fee,</span>
-<span class="spp00">At the Court of the King who so happy as he?</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet still in his hall hangs the Tinkler’s old sack,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And the budget of tools which he bore at his back.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>There are two instances on record of ale being used to extinguish
-fire. One January in the seventeenth century occurred a devastating
-fire which burnt down the greater portion of the Temple in the
-neighbourhood of Pump Court. “The night was bitterly cold,” writes
-Mr. Jeafferson, in <i>Law and Lawyers</i>, “and the Templars, aroused
-from their beds to preserve life and property, could not get an
-adequate supply of water from the Thames, which the unusual
-severity of the season had frozen. In this difficulty <i>they actually brought
-barrels of ale from the Temple butteries, and fed the engines with the
-malt liquor</i>.” If the ale was old and potent the flare up thereof
-must have been great indeed.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>In the year 1613 the Globe Theatre was burnt down in consequence
-of the wadding from a cannon fired off during the performance of <i>Henry
-VIII.</i>, setting fire to the thatched roof. Sir Henry Wotton, in a letter
-to his nephew giving an account of the occurrence, wrote: “One man
-had his breeches set on fire that perhaps had broiled him if he had
-not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle ale.” To
-what base uses may we return!</p>
-
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p407.png" width="144" height="40" alt="" /></div>
-</div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11"> <img src="images/p408a.png"
- width="144" height="52" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p408">
- <span class="smcap">C<b>HAPTER</b></span> XV.</h2></div>
-
-<div class="depigraph">
-<div class="dpoemctr">
-<div class="dnowrap34"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="smcap">C<b>ONSTABLE</b></span>
- <span class="smmaj">OF</span>
- <span class="smcap">F<b>RANCE</b>.</span></p>
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Dieu
- de batailes! Where have they this mettle?</span>
-<span class="spp09">.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;can sodden water,</span>
-<span class="spp00">A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley broth,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?”</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite"><i>King Henry V.</i>, Act iii., Scene 5.</span></div>
-</div><!--dpoemctr-->
-<p class="padtopc">
-“If every man is to forego his freedom of action because many make a
-licentious use of it, I know not what is the value of any freedom.”</p>
-<p class="psignature"><i>J. Risdon Bennett, M.D.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="psynopsis"><i>OLD MEDICAL WRITERS ON ALE.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ADULTERATION
-OF ALE.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ADVANTAGES OF MALT LIQUORS TO
-LABOURING CLASSES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;TEMPERANCE</i> versus <i>TOTAL
-ABSTINENCE.&#x200a;—&#x200a;ANECDOTES.&#x200a;—&#x200a;GAY’S BALLAD.</i></p>
-
-<p class="pfirst">
-<span class="spdropcap"><img class="idropcap" src="images/p408b.png"
-width="229" height="229" alt="C" /></span>HAMPIONS
-of the so-called temperance
-cause, have gone so far towards <i>in</i>temperance
-as to say that a moderate drinker is
-worse than a drunkard. This absurd
-declaration stands self-condemned, and
-without labouring thrice to slay the
-slain by disproving an assertion which
-carries upon its face the unmistakable
-marks of a suicide’s death, we propose
-in this chapter to prove beyond question, from the works of ancient,
-mediæval, and modern writers, that sound malt liquors possess valuable
-medicinal and restorative qualities, and that their proper use is in
-nowise injurious to health.</p>
-
-<p>In Anglo-Saxon times ale was considered to be pos­sessed of the
-highest medic­i­nal vir­tues. It is men­tioned in the <i>Saxon Leech­doms</i>
-as an ingredient in many of the remedies therein pre­scribed, and for
-the most serious as well as for the most trifling
-com­plaints. In lung <span class="xxpn" id="p409">{409}</span>
-disease a man is to “with­hold himself earnestly from sweet­ened ale,”
-to drink clear ale, and in the wort of the clear ale “boil young oak-rind
-and drink.” Fever patients are recommended to drink during a
-period of thirty days an infusion of clear ale and wormwood, githrife,
-betony, bishop-wort, marrubium, fen mint, rosemary and other herbs.
-For one “fiend-sick” the receipt runs thus:—A number of herbs having
-been worked up in clear ale, “sing seven masses over the worts, add
-garlic and holy water and let him drink out of a church bell”; finally
-the lunatic is to give alms and pray for God’s mercies. Another
-remedy for lunacy is much simpler: “Take skin of a mere-swine
-(porpoise), work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will
-be well, Amen.” Another remarkable receipt runs thus: “Take a
-mickle handfull of sedge and gladden, put them into a pan, pour a
-muckle bowlfull of ale upon them, boil, and then rub into the mixture
-twenty-five libcorns. This is a good drink against the devil.”</p>
-
-<p>For less serious evils the receipts in these Anglo-Saxon pharmacopœias
-are numerous. Hiccup is cured thus: Take the root of jarrow,
-pound it, and put it into good beer, and give it to the patient to sup
-lukewarm.“ Then I ween that it may be of good benefit to him either
-for hiccup or for any internal difficulty.”</p>
-
-<p>In Anglo-Saxon veterinary surgery beer was also used. “Take
-a little new ale and pour it into the mouth of each of the sheep; and
-make them swallow it quickly; that will do them good,” says the old
-<i>Lœce-boc</i>. (<i>i.e.</i>, Medicine book.)</p>
-
-<p>At the present day, in some country places, cows which have lost
-their milk soon after calving, are given warm ale in which aniseed has
-been boiled, and ale has often been given to horses with advantage.</p>
-
-<p>Not only as an inward, but also as an outward application, was ale
-recommended: For pains in the knees, woodwax and hedge-rife
-pounded and put into ale, and used both inwardly and outwardly, was
-the Saxon remedy.</p>
-
-<p>The foregoing receipts are sufficient to show the character of the
-medicine prescribed in Saxon times. At a later period ale still held its
-high position as a cure for most of the evils to which unfortunate
-humanity is subject. In the eighth <i>Book of Notable Things</i>, a rare
-work, supposed to have been written in the sixteenth century, the
-following curious remedies are
-<span class="nowrap">mentioned:―</span></p>
-
-<p>No. 45. An excellent medicine and a noble restorative for man or
-woman that is brought very low with sickness. Take two pounds of
-dates and wash them clean in Ale, then cut them and
-take out the <span class="xxpn" id="p410">{410}</span>
-stones and white skins, then cut them small, and beat them in a mortar,
-till they begin to work like wax, and then take a quart of Clarified
-Honey or Sugar, and half an ounce of the Podder of Long Pepper, as
-much of Mace of Cloves, Nutmegs, and Cinnamon, of each one Drachm,
-as much of the Powder of Lignum Aloes; beat all the Spices together
-and Seeth the Dates with the Sugar or Honey with an easie fire, and
-let it seeth; cast in thereto a little Powder, by little and little, and stir
-it with a spatula of wood, and so do until it come to an Electuary, and
-then eat every morning and evening thereof, one ounce at a time, and
-it will renew and restore again his Complexion, be he never so low
-brought. This hath been proved, and it hath done good to many
-a Man and Woman.</p>
-
-<p>No. 46. A notable Receipt for the black Jaundice. Take a Gallon
-of Ale, a Pint of Honey, and two Handfuls of Red Nettles, and take
-a penny-worth or two of Saffron, and boil it in the Ale, the Ale being
-first skimmed and then boil the Hony and Nettles therein all together
-and strain it well, and every Morning take a good Draught thereof, for
-the space of a fortnight. For in that space (God willing) it will clean
-and perfectly cure the black Jaundice.</p>
-
-<p>In the Twelfth Book is a receipt which was probably far more
-effective than most of the ancient
-<span class="nowrap">remedies:―</span></p>
-
-<p>No. 49. For a cough; Take a quart of Ale and put a Handful of
-Red Sage into it, and boyl it half away; strain it, and put to the
-Liquor a Quarter of a pound of Treacle, drink it warm going to
-Bed.</p>
-
-<p>In Ben Jonson’s <i>Alchemist</i>, of about the same date, is a mention of
-ale used as
-<span class="nowrap">medicine:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Yes, faith, she dwells in Sea-coal lane, did cure me</span>
-<span class="spp00">With sodden ale, and pellitory of the wall,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cost me but twopence.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>We have before us an old pamphlet bearing the title “<i>Warme
-Beere</i>, or a Treatise wherein is declared by many reasons, that Beere so
-qualified is farre more wholesome than that which is drunk cold. With
-a confutation of such objections that are made against it; published for
-the preservation of Health. Cambridge. Printed by R. D. for Henry
-Overton, and are to be sold at his shop entering into Pope’s-Head Alley
-out of Lumbard Street
-in London, 1641.” <span class="xxpn" id="p411">{411}</span></p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth dwthem38">
-<p>The following verses form an apt commencement to this
-whimsical old <span class="nowrap">treatise:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="padtopb">IN COMMENDATION OF WARME BEERE.</div>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">We care not what stern grandsires now can say,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Since reason doth and ought to bear the sway.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Vain grandames saysaws ne’er shall make me think,</span>
-<span class="spp00">That rotten teeth come most by warmed drink.</span>
-<span class="spp00">No, grandsire, no; if you had us’d to warm</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your mornings draughts, as I do, farre less harme</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your raggie lungs had felt; not half so soon,</span>
-<span class="spp00">For want of teeth to chew, you’d us’d the spoon.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Grandame, be silent now, if you be wise,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Lest I betray your skinking niggardize:</span>
-<span class="spp00">I wot well you no physick ken, nor yet</span>
-<span class="spp00">The name and nature of the vitall heat.</span>
-<span class="spp00">’Twas more to save your fire, and fear that I</span>
-<span class="spp00">Your pewter cups should melt or smokifie,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then skill or care of me, which made you swear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">God wot, and stamp to see me warm my beer.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Though grandsire growl, though grandame swear, I hold</span>
-<span class="spp00">That man unwise that drinks his liquor cold.</span></div>
-<span class="poemcite">W. B.</span></div>
-</div><!--dkeeptgth-->
-
-<p>After giving instances of the value of warm beer as opposed to cold,
-the author gives the following sage account of the reasons he hath for
-the faith that is in him:—“When a man is thirstie, there are two
-master-qualities which do predominate in the stomach, namely heat
-and drinesse, over their contraries, cold and moisture. When a man
-drinketh cold beer to quench his thirst, he setteth all four qualities
-together by the ears in the stomach, which do with all violence oppose
-one another and cause a great combustion in the stomach, breeding
-many distempers therein. For if heat get the mastery, it causeth inflamation
-through the whole body, and bringeth a man into fluxes and
-other diseases. But hot beer prevents all these dangers, and maketh
-friendship between all these enemies, viz., hot and cold, wet and drie,
-in the stomach; because when the coldnesse of the beer is taken away
-by actuall heat, and made as hot as the stomach, then heat hath no
-opposite, his enemie cold being taken away, and there only remains
-these two enemies, dry and wet in the stomach: which heat laboureth
-to make friends. When one is exceeding thirstie, the beer being made
-hot and then drunk into the dry stomach,
-it immediately quencheth <span class="xxpn" id="p412">{412}</span>
-the thirst, moistening and refreshing nature abundantly. Cold beer is
-very pleasant when extreme thirst is in the stomach; but what more
-dangerous to the health. Many by drinking a cup of cold beer in
-extreme thirst, have taken a surfet and killed themselves. Therefore
-we must not drink cold beer, because it is pleasant, but hot beer,
-because it is profitable, especially in the Citie for such as have cold
-stomachs, and inclining to a consumption. I have known some that
-have been so farre gone in a consumption, that none would think in
-reason they could live a week to an end: their breath was short, their
-stomach was gone, and their strength failed, so that they were not able
-to walk about the room without resting, panting and blowing: they
-drank many hot drinks and wines to heat their cold stomachs, and cure
-their diseases, especially sweet wines, but all in vain: for the more wine
-they drank to warm their stomachs, the more they inflamed their livers,
-by which means they grew worse and worse increasing their disease:
-But when they did leave drinking all wine and betook themselves onely
-to the drinking of hot beer so hot as blood, within a moneth, their
-breath, stomach and strength was so increased, that they could walk
-about their garden with ease, and within two moneths could walk four
-miles, and within three moneths were perfectly made well as ever they
-were in their lives.”</p>
-
-<p>Another curious old pamphlet of about the same period, entitled
-<i>Panala Alacatholica</i> (1623) follows the text “That ale is a wholesome
-drinke contrary to many men’s conceits,” and after a description of the
-way in which ale is spoilt in the brewing and rendered injurious we are
-told: “But let a neat huswife, or canny Alewright have the handling of
-good Ingredients (sweet Maulte and wholesome water) and you shall see
-and will say, there is Art in brewing, (as in most actions) and that many
-more, even of those that ayme at brewing the Best Ale, doe yet for all
-their supposed dexteritie, misse the marke, than hit upon the mysterie.
-For you shall then have a neat cup of Nappie Ale (right <i>Darbie</i>, not
-Dagger Ale, though effectually animating) well boyled, desecated and
-cleared, that it shall equall the best Brewed Beere in transparence,
-please the most curious Pallate with milde quicknesse of relish, quench
-the thirst, humect the inward parts, helpe concoction and distribution
-of meate, and by its moderate penetration, much further the attractive
-power of the parts (especially being rectified with that Additament and
-<i>Vehiculum</i> which the best Alistra boyles with it; to wit, such a proportion
-of Hop as gives not any the least tact of bitternesse to the Pallate
-after it growes Drinkable) and being free from all
-those former foule <span class="xxpn" id="p413">{413}</span>
-imputations, doth by its succulencie much nourish and corroborate the
-Corporall, and comfort the Animall powers.”</p>
-
-<p>A long description here follows of the manner in which Panala, a
-medicated ale, is to be manufactured. Of its virtues our quaint author
-gives the following account:—“This Ale neither offends the Eye with
-the loathed object of a muddie substance, nor the smell with any ill
-vapour or favour, nor the tast nor stomacke with disgust or ingrate
-relish, but ’tis a pure, cleere, delicate, and singular Extract impregnated
-with the sincere spirits and vertuosities of excellent Ingredients, of a
-moderate temperature, indifferently accommodated to every Age, Sex,
-and Constitution, and so familiar and pleasing to Nature.”</p>
-
-<p>Medicated ales of this nature were held in high estimation by our
-ancestors. Such was the celebrated Dr. Butler’s ale, which held its
-sway for many generations; the following receipt for this ale is given in
-the <i>Book of Notable Things</i>: “Take Senna and Polypedium each four
-ounces, Sarseperilla two ounces, Agrimony and Maidenhair of each a
-small handful, scurvy grass a quarter of a peck, bruise them grossly in a
-stone mortar, put them into a thin canvass bag, and hang the bag in
-nine or ten gallons of ale; when it is well worked and when it is three
-or four days old, it is ripe enough to be drawn off and bottled, or as you
-see fit.” This ale was sold at houses that had Butler’s head for a sign,
-and we meet with further mention of it in a news-sheet of 1664:—“At
-Tobias’ Coffee House, in Pye Corner, is sold the right drink, called Dr.
-Butler’s Ale, it being the same that was sold by Mr. Lansdale in
-Newgate Market. It is an excellent stomach drink, it helps digestion,
-and dissolves congealed phlegm upon the lungs, and is therefore good
-gainst colds, coughs, ptisical and consumptive distempers; and being
-drunk in the evening, it moderately fortifies nature, causeth good rest
-and hugely corroborates the brain and memory.”</p>
-
-<p>A few years earlier than this Thomas Cogan was advocating in <i>The
-Haven of Health</i> (1584), beer for persons inclined to “rewmes and
-gout.” Such persons must avoid “idleness, surfet, much wine and
-strong, especially fasting, and not condemn Beere as hurtful in this
-respect which was so profitably invented by that worthy Prince
-<i>Gambrinius</i>, anno 1786 years before the incarnation of our Lord Jesus
-Christ, as Lanquette writeth in his chronicle.”</p>
-
-<p>The same writer gives a curious receipt for “<i>Buttered Beere</i>,” which
-is good for a cough or shortness of wind:—Take a quart or more of
-Double Beere and put to it a good piece of fresh butter, sugar candie an
-ounce, of liquerise in powder, of ginger grated, of each
-a dramme, and <span class="xxpn" id="p414">{414}</span>
-if you would have it strong, put in as much long pepper and Greynes,
-let it boyle in the quart in the manner as you burne wine and who so
-will drink it, let him drinke it as hot as hee may suffer. Some put in
-the yolke of an egge or two towards the latter end, and so they make it
-more strengthfull.“</p>
-
-<p>The following year John Taylor published in <i>Drinke and Welcome</i>
-many modes of application of ale in the various ills to which the flesh
-is heir. He thus concludes his somewhat remarkable statements:—”<i>Ale</i>
-is universale, and for Vertue it stands allowable with the best
-recipes of the most antientest Physisians; and for its singular force in
-expulsion of poison is equall, if not exceeding that rare antidote so
-seriously invented by the Pontique King, which from him (till this time)
-carries his name of <i>Mithridate</i>. And lastly, not onely approved by a
-Nationall Assembly, but more exemplarily remonstrated by the frequent
-use of the most knowing Physisians, who for the wonderfull force that
-it hath against all diseases of the Lungs, justly allow the name of a
-<i>Pulmonist</i> to every <i>Alebrewer</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“The further I seeke to goe the more unable I finde
-myselfe to expresse the wonders (for so I may very well
-call them) operated by <i>Ale</i> for that I shall abruptly
-conclude, in consideratione of mine owne insufficiency,
-with the fagge-end of an old man’s old will, who gave
-a good somme of mony to a Red-fac’d <i>Ale-drinker</i>,
-who plaid upon a Pipe and Tabor, which was <span
-class="nowrap">this:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>To
- make your Pipe and Tabor keepe their sound,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And dye your Crimson tincture more profound,</span>
-<span class="spp00">There growes no better medicine on the ground</span>
-<span class="spp00">Than <i>Aleano</i> (if it may be found)</span>
-<span class="spp00">To buy which drug I give a hundred pound.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Prynne, the author of the famous <i>Histrio-Mastix</i>, seldom dined;
-every three or four hours he munched a manchet, and refreshed his
-exhausted spirits with <i>ale</i> brought to him by his servant; and when “he
-was put into this road of writing,” as Anthony Wood telleth, he fixed
-on “a long quilted cap, which came an inch over his eyes,” serving as a
-shade, “and then hunger nor thirst did he experience, save that of his
-voluminous pages.” Evidence of the high regard in which English ale
-was held among foreign doctors in the seventeenth century may be
-gathered from an account given in <i>Hone’s Table Book</i> of how, about
-1620 some doctors and surgeons during their attendance on an English
-gentleman, who was diseased at Paris, discoursed on
-wines and other <span class="xxpn" id="p415">{415}</span>
-beverages; and one physician, who had been in England, said the English
-had a drink which they call Ale, and which he thought the wholesomest
-liquor that could be drunk; for whereas the body of man is
-supported by natural heat and radical moisture, there is no drink conduceth
-more to the preservation of the one, and the increase of the
-other, than <i>Ale</i>, for, while the Englishmen drank <i>only ale</i>, they were
-strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long; but,
-when they fell to wine and <i>Beer</i>, they are found to be much impaired
-in their strength and age.</p>
-
-<p>English doctors would always, it may be supposed, give their approbation
-to the nut-brown ale. There must have been some who even in
-the good old days leaned to the doctrines of the abstainers; but such
-was the faith of our ancestors in the virtues of the national beverage,
-that we may imagine the doctor’s advice was disregarded and, indeed,
-was even set down to anything but an amiable motive. This we may
-see from a verse of the old ballad, <i>Nottingham</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Ale</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ye doctors, who more execution have done</span>
-<span class="spp00">With bolus and potion, and powder and pill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Than hangman with halter, and soldier with gun,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or miser with famine, or lawyer with quill,</span>
-<span class="spp00">To dispatch us the quicker, you forbid us malt liquor,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Till our bodies grow thin, and our faces look pale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Observe them who pleases, what cures all diseases,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Is a comforting dose of good Nottingham Ale.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The following receipt is quite gravely given by Dr. Solas Dodd, in
-whose <i>Natural History of the Herring</i> (1753) it may be found: “Take
-the oil pressed out of fresh Herrings, a pint, a boar’s gall, juices of henbane,
-hemlock, arsel, lettuce, and wild catmint, each six ounces, mix,
-boil well, and put into a glass vessel, stoppered. Take three spoonfuls
-and put into a quart of warm ale, and let the person to undergo any
-operation drink of this by an ounce at a time, till he falls asleep, which
-sleep he will continue the space of three or four hours, and all that time
-he will be unsensible to anything done to him.” Whether or no we
-have here an account of a genuine early anæsthetic we are not prepared
-to say.</p>
-
-<p>Instances might be recorded without number of the restorative
-effects of ale in sickness, and more particularly in fever cases where the
-patient has been brought very low, and the loss of tissue has been great.
-Of these space only allows us to include
-a very few. <span class="xxpn" id="p416">{416}</span></p>
-
-<p>When Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, lay prostrate with pleuritic
-fever, the greatest physicians in the land found their skill avail nothing;
-and all the statesman’s alarmed friends got for expending seven hundred
-guineas in fees was the cold comfort that everything that could be done
-had been done, and the case was hopeless. Whilst those gathered round
-the bedside of the supposed dying man listened for his last sigh, he
-faintly murmured, “Small beer, small beer.” The doctors did not
-think it worth while to say nay, and a half-gallon cup of small beer was
-put to the lips of the sick man, who drained it to the dregs, and then
-demanded another draught, which he served in the same way: then
-turning on his side, he went off into a deep slumber, attended with profuse
-perspiration, and awoke a new man.<a class="afnanc" href="#fn74" id="fnanc74">74</a>
-The beneficial effects of mild ale
-in fever is commemorated in an old poem, <i>Small</i>
-<span class="nowrap"><i>Beer</i>:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Oft known the deadly fever’s flame,</span>
-<span class="spp00">By the scorch’d patient crav’d, to tame.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc74" id="fn74">74</a>
-<i>Chambers’s Journal</i>, Jan. 2nd, 1875.</p></div>
-
-<p>In Sir J. Sinclair’s <i>Statistical Account</i>, an extraordinary case is
-related of a collier, named Hunter, who suffered from chronic rheumatism
-or gout. He had been confined to his bed for a year and a half,
-having almost entirely lost the use of his limbs. On Handsel Monday
-(the first Monday after New Year’s Day) some of his neighbours came to
-make merry with him. Though he could not rise, yet he always took
-his share of the new ale, as it passed round the company; and, in the
-end, became much intoxicated. The consequence was that he had the
-use of his limbs the next morning, and was able to walk about. He
-lived more than twenty years after this, and never had the smallest
-return of his complaint. This took place in 1758.</p>
-
-<p>An account of a cure, in which, no doubt, faith helped the ale,
-occurs in the <i>Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele</i>, gentleman,
-sometime student at Oxford (London, 1607). “Riding on his way to
-Oxford, he stopped all night at Mekham—At supper, he began to
-talk with the hostess, who was a simple professor of Chirurgerie, and
-conceited therewith.—Peele observing her humour and conceit, upheld
-all the strange cures she talked of and praised her, with much flattery,
-and promised on his return to teach her something that would do
-her no hurt—and added he was on his way to cure a gentleman in
-Warwickshire, who was in a consumption.
-The hostess immediately <span class="xxpn" id="p417">{417}</span>
-said there was a gentleman close by so ill with that complaint, and
-proposed that Peele should see him. Peele, knowing as much of
-doctoring as of music, declined; but after much pressure, and resisting
-as long as he could, was fain to comply. Putting on a bold face
-he went to the gentleman, his hostess praising him as a wonderful
-doctor. After feeling the pulse, &amp;c., &amp;c., he asked if they had a garden.
-Yes, they had. He then went there and cut from every plant, flower,
-herb and blossom; boiling the results in <i>Ale</i>, straining and boiling again.
-He told the patient to take some of this warm, morning, noon, and night.
-Whether anything effective was in this <i>Herbal Mixture</i>, or from the
-patient’s fancy—in eight days after the patient was able to walk about
-apparently recovered—and so delighted that he put many pounds in
-Peele’s pocket.”</p>
-
-<p>A Brown ale called Stitch is mentioned in <i>The London and County
-Brewer</i> of 1744 as having being of the greatest benefit in incipient
-consumption. It was of the first running of the malt, but of a greater
-length than is drawn out of the stout butt beer. It had few hops
-in it. Instances of the advantage of good malt liquors in certain
-cases of consumption are very numerous. Mons. Frémy, of the
-Beaujon Hospital, in Paris, made a series of experiments with malt
-powder given in the form of a decoction, and externally by means of
-baths. The substance was tried on sixty-four subjects of well-marked
-phthisis; but the results were trifling, beyond a certain degree of
-temporary amelioration. It was, however, of greater service in cases
-of chronic bronchitis, early phthisis, and chronic pulmonary catarrh;
-its utility being very marked in this last affection. In some parts of
-England it is a common practice for persons in consumption to procure
-wort (that is an infusion of malt before the hops are boiled with it for
-making beer) from the brewers, and to drink half-a-pint of it daily;
-and many have received great benefit from it. The experiments of
-Dr. Frémy verify the utility of the English practice.</p>
-
-<p>Of late years various preparations of malt have come to hold a very
-high place in popular estimation. A first-rate remedy for a cough is
-made thus: Over half a bushel of pale ground malt pour as much hot,
-but not boiling, water as will just cover it. In forty-eight hours drain
-off the liquor entirely, but without squeezing the grains: put the
-former into a large sweetmeat pan, or saucepan, that there may be room
-to boil as quick as possible, without boiling over; when it begins to
-thicken, stir constantly. It must be as thick as treacle. The dose is
-a dessert-spoonful thrice a day. This preparation has
-a very agreeable <span class="xxpn" id="p418">{418}</span>
-flavour. One of the most easily digested and most nourishing of foods
-for those minute but assertive, atoms of humanity called babies,<a class="afnanc" href="#fn75" id="fnanc75">75</a>
-is malt
-finely powdered; and chemists keep many kinds of foods, syrups,
-lozenges, &amp;c., too numerous to mention, all claiming their origin from
-Sir John Barleycorn.</p>
-
-<div class="dftnt">
-<p class="pfirst padtopc"><a class="afnlabel" href="#fnanc75" id="fn75">75</a>
-The author knows a malt-fed baby who never cries.—<i>Verb. Sap.</i></p></div>
-
-<p>Among the many virtues of good ale, that of promoting generosity
-should take a high place. This peculiar effect is capitally illustrated in
-an anecdote of the Rev. Michael Hutchinson, D.D., of Derby. “The
-people,” writes Hutton, “to whom he applied for subscriptions (the church
-was in need of repair) were not able to keep their money; it passed
-from their pockets to his own as if by magic. Whenever he could
-recollect a person likely to contribute to this desirable work he made
-no scruple to visit him at his own expense. If a stranger passed through
-Derby, the Doctor’s bow and his rhetoric were employed in the service
-of the church. His anxiety was urgent, and his power so prevailing,
-that he seldom failed of success. <i>When the waites fiddled at his door
-for a Christmas box, instead of sending them away with a solitary
-shilling, he invited them in, treated them with a tankard of ale, and
-persuaded them out of a guinea.</i>”</p>
-
-<p>Malt liquor has long been regarded by eminent medical men as
-almost a specific against the scurvy, that dread disease which in former
-times wrought such havoc amongst our brave tars. Sir Gilbert Blane,
-M.D., records the following instance of the virtues of porter in this
-<span class="nowrap">connection:―</span></p>
-
-<p>“I was furnished,” he writes, in his <i>Observations on the Diseases of
-Seamen</i>, “by Dr. Clephane, physician to the fleet at New York, with
-the following fact as a strong proof of the excellence of this liquor: In
-the beginning of the war two store ships, called the Tortoise and
-Grampus, sailed for America under the convoy of the Dædalus frigate.
-The Grampus happened to be supplied with a sufficient quantity of
-porter to serve the whole passage, which proved very long. The other
-two ships were furnished with the common allowance of spirits. The
-weather being unfavourable, the passage drew out to fourteen weeks
-and, upon their arrival at New York, the Dædalus sent to the hospital
-a hundred and twelve men; the Tortoise sixty-two; the greater part of
-whom were in the last stage of the scurvy. The Grampus sent only
-thirteen, none of whom
-had the scurvy.” <span class="xxpn" id="p419">{419}</span></p>
-
-<p>In the Geographical Society’s Journal (vol. ii. p. 286) it is recorded
-that during a severe winter on the west coast of Africa the crew of the
-Etna suffered so much from scurvy that the least scratch had a tendency
-to become a dangerous wound. Capt. Belcher states that “the only
-thing which appeared materially to check the disease was beer made of
-the essence of malt and hops; and I feel satisfied that a general issue of
-this on the coast of Africa would be very salutary, and have the effect
-especially of keeping up the constitutions of men subjected to heavy
-labour in boats.”</p>
-
-<p>Thomas Trotter, M.D., in his <i>Medicina Nautica</i>, “an Essay on the
-Diseases of Seamen, comprehending the history of the health in His
-Majesty’s Fleet under the command of Richard Earl Howe, Admiral,
-1797,” states that in typhus cases he found porter, where preferred by the
-patient, more beneficial than wine. During a low fever, he (the doctor)
-was entirely supported by bottled beer, of which he speaks very highly.
-In his practice at Haslar Hospital he found bottled porter to be one of
-the best ingredients in the diet of a convalescent, and never fail to
-strengthen them quickly for duty.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Hodgkin, writing on Health, says, “I can assert, from well-proved
-experience that the invalid who has been reduced almost to
-extremity by severe or lingering illness, finds in well-apportioned
-draughts of sound beer, one of the most important helps for
-the recovery of his health, his strength, and his spirits.” Dr. Paris,
-who is not a recent authority, but whose remarks on this subject are
-most cogent and bear the stamp of common sense, asserts that “the
-extractive matter furnished by the malt is highly nutritive; and we
-accordingly find that those persons addicted to such potations are, in
-general, fat. This fact is so generally admitted by all those who are
-skilled in the art of training, that a quantity of ale is taken at every
-meal by the pugilist, who is endeavouring to screw himself up to his
-fullest strength. Jackson, the celebrated trainer, affirms, if any person
-accustomed to drink wine would but try malt liquor for a month, he
-would find himself so much the better for it, that he would soon take to
-the one, and abandon the other .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. The addition of the hop
-increases the value of the liquor, by the grateful stimulus which it
-imparts, and in some measure redeems it from the vices with which it
-might otherwise be charged where a corresponding degree of exercise
-is not taken.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. I regard its dismissal (table or light beer) from the
-tables of the great as a matter of regret, for its
-slight but invigorating <span class="xxpn" id="p420">{420}</span>
-bitter is much better adapted to promote digestion than its more
-costly substitutes.”</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British
-Medical Association in 1862, advances the proposition that nature
-has provided in the salivary glands, the liver, and the lungs of every
-mammal, an apparatus “for converting all food, especially farinaceous,
-into alcohol, and he gives chemical reasons for believing that some such
-process actually does take place. Alcohol, he says, after being taken is
-incorporated with the blood, and passing in some form not yet explained
-into the circulation, ultimately disappears; a small portion alone passing
-from the body, and that in the breath. He further says that when
-alcohol is mingled with other food, a less amount of the latter suffices
-for the wants of the system than if water had been used as the drink.
-Dr. Inman cites his own experience of an attempt to do without his
-ordinary allowance of ale at dinner; a large increase of food was
-necessited, but the demand for this diminished at once on resuming
-the ale. Similar facts were noted in the experience of various members
-of his family. No loss of health or strength was experienced,
-except when the ordinary amount of solids was taken without the
-beer.</p>
-
-<p>A celebrated French medical man (Dr. Coulier) published an excellent
-article on beer (“Article Bière” in Vol. IX. of the <i>Dictionnaire Encyclopédique
-de Sciences Médicales</i>) considered from a medical point of view.
-He says, in effect, that beer being less rich in alcohol than even the
-poorest wines, holds an intermediate place between the latter and purely
-watery drinks. It presents, according to its mode of preparation and
-composition, a continuous scale of more or less alcoholic drinks, from
-porter and ale down to small beer containing little more than one per
-cent. of alcohol. Its bitter principles render it tonic and aperient; while
-the somnolence and heaviness that follow an over-allowance of this fluid
-are due to the action of the essential oil of the hop. He holds that of
-all fermented drinks, beer is the one whose taste <i>se marie le plus agréablement</i>
-with the use of the pipe. Beer must be considered in the
-light of an alimentary drink. In every hundred parts of beer are five
-of extract containing a little nitrogenous assimilable matter and salts
-favourable to nutrition, but consisting mainly of respiratory food. “If,”
-he says, “fermented drinks have become one of the necessities of civilisation,
-a prudent regard for health should make us as far as possible
-reduce the excitement which the alcohol occasions. In this respect beer
-presents a great advantage over wine. Thus a
-half-bottle of wine <span class="xxpn" id="p421">{421}</span>
-containing 12 per cent. of alcohol, which is the common allowance for an
-adult, contains 375 grammes of wine, and consequently 45 grammes of
-anhydrous alcohol. A bottle of beer containing 4 per cent, of alcohol is
-equally satisfying, and contains only 30 grammes of alcohol. Hence,
-supposing two meals are taken daily, the beer-drinker daily imbibes 30
-grammes less of alcohol than the wine-drinker; and this difference
-amounts in the course of the year to nearly 11 kilogrammes, or 14 litres
-(equivalent to 24 lbs. or 3 gallons), of anhydrous alcohol.”</p>
-
-<p>Examples without number might be collected of men who
-habitually used alcoholic drinks sometimes in moderation, sometimes,
-in what we, in these latter days, should certainly consider
-excess, and who yet lived in health and usefulness to the extreme
-boundary of human life. Old Parr, if we are to believe Taylor, who
-sings his praises, was a drinker of the moderate kind.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Sometimes metheglin and by fortune happy,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Cyder, or perry, when he did repair</span>
-<span class="spp00">To Whitsun ale, wake, wedding, or fair,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Else he had little leisure time to waste,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or at the ale-house huff-cup ale to taste.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Henry Jenkins, who died in 1670 at the wonderful age of 165 years,
-took his ale whenever he could get it. He lived very much in the open
-air and spent his time in thatching and salmon-fishing. At one time
-he was butler to Lord Conyers, of Hornby Castle, and he has left it on
-record that when, as often happened, his master sent him over with
-messages to Marmaduke Brodelay, Lord Abbot of Fountains, the abbot
-“always sent for him to his lodgings, and, after prayers, ordered him,
-besides wassel, a quarter of a yard of roast beef (for that the monasteries
-did deliver their meat by measure), and a great black Jack of strong ale.”
-Have we not, too, the evidence of epitaphs graven in stone, which are
-well known never to lie, all bearing out the truth of the longevity of ale
-drinkers? Here are two, the first being in Great Walford
-<span class="nowrap">churchyard:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp00">Here John Randal lies</span>
-<span class="spp00">Who counting of his tale</span>
-<span class="spp00">Lived threescore years and ten,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Such vertue was in ale.</span>
-<span class="spp03">Ale was his meat,</span>
-<span class="spp03">Ale was his drink.
- <span class="xxpn" id="p422">{422}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">Ale did his heart revive,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And if he could have drunk his ale</span>
-<span class="spp00">He still had been alive.</span>
-<span class="spp00">He died January 5,</span>
-<span class="sppctr">1699.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The second is in Edwalton, Notts:</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spp04">Ob. 1741.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Rebecca Freeland,</span>
-<span class="spp00">She drank good ale, good punch and wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And lived to the age of 99.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Macklin, the comedian, who died in 1797, for upwards of thirty
-years was a daily visitor at the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent
-Garden. His usual beverage was a pint of hot stout; he said it
-balmed his stomach and kept him from having any inward pains.
-Whether from the effects of this inward “balming” or not, Macklin
-undoubtedly lived to the age of 97 years.</p>
-
-<p>In Daniell’s <i>British Sports</i> there is an account of Joe Mann, gamekeeper
-to Lord Torrington. “He was in constant morning exercise,
-he went to bed always betimes, <i>but never till his skin was filled with ale</i>.
-This he said, ‘would do no harm to an early riser, and to a man who
-pursued field sports.’ At seventy-eight years of age he began to decline,
-and then lingered for three years. His gun was ever upon his arm, and
-he still crept about, not destitute of the hope of fresh diversion.”</p>
-
-<p>The next instance, to be found in <b>Hone’s Year Book</b>, illustrates,
-not so much the tendency of beer and ale, when taken in large
-quantities, to make men healthy, wealthy, and wise, as to make them fat.
-On November 30, 1793, died at Beaumaris, William Lewis, Esq., of
-Llandismaw, in the act of drinking a <i>cup</i> of Welsh ale, containing
-about a wine <i>quart</i>, called a “tumbler maur.” He made it a rule,
-every morning of his life, to read so many chapters in the Bible, and
-in the evening to drink eight gallons of ale. It is calculated that in
-his lifetime he must have drunk a sufficient quantity to float a seventy-four
-gun ship. His size was astonishing, and he weighed forty stone.
-Although he died in his parlour, it was found necessary to construct
-a machine in form of a crane, to lift his body in a carriage, and
-afterwards to have the machine to let him down into the grave. He
-went by the name of the King of Spain, and his family by the different
-titles of
-prince, infantas, &amp;c. <span class="xxpn" id="p423">{423}</span></p>
-
-<p>One of the great teetotal arguments against the use of malt liquors,
-one which the advocates of total abstinence generally fall back upon
-when beaten on every other point, is that beer is adulterated. This
-assertion, if it could be substantiated, would undoubtedly cut away the
-very foundation of our argument as to the wholesomeness of ale and beer.
-We must, then, shortly consider the point. Time out of mind the brewers
-have been accused of adulterating their ale and beer, with what truth,
-at any rate at the present day, we shall see anon. Opium, henbane,
-cocculus indicus, and we know not what noxious drugs besides, it has
-commonly, and we think somewhat recklessly, been asserted, find their
-way into the brewing vessels. Some time ago M. Payen, a French
-chemist of distinction, created quite a panic amongst the drinkers of pale
-ale by asserting, in a lecture at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers,
-that strychnine was prepared in large quantities in Paris for exportation
-to England, where it was employed to give, or to aid in giving, the
-esteemed bitter flavour to pale ale. This statement appearing in <i>Le
-Constitutional</i>, and other French papers, soon found its way into the
-English journals, to the consternation of the drinkers and purveyors of
-this beverage.</p>
-
-<p>The leading firms of Burton ale brewers at once threw open their
-breweries and stores in the most unreserved manner, and “The <i>Lancet’s</i>
-Analytical Sanitary Commission” undertook an inquiry on the subject.
-Forty samples of beer, all brewed before the promulgation of the
-statement, were analyzed by the commission, as well as samples taken by
-other analysts at the request of Messrs. Allsopp and Sons. Needless to
-say, not a particle of strychnine was discovered. Half a grain of
-strychnine will destroy life, and a grain would be required to impart to
-one gallon of beer its ordinary degree of bitterness. The flavour of hops
-and strychnine differs. To bitter the amount then brewed at Burton
-16,448 ounces of strychnine would be required. Not so much as 1,000
-ounces of strychnine were manufactured in the whole world yearly.</p>
-
-<p>In a quaint pamphlet entitled <i>Old London Rogueries</i>, the following
-statement is made seriously:—“There ought also to be compiled a
-delectable and pleasant treatise by such as sell bottle-ale, who, to make it
-fly up to the top of the house at the first opening, do put gunpowder
-into the bottles while the ale is new, then by stopping it close make
-people believe it is the strength of the ale, when, being truly sifted, it is
-nothing indeed but the strength of the gunpowder that worketh the
-effect, to the great heart-burning of the parties who drink the same.
-This is a truly strange and marvellous artifice, and
-must be reckoned <span class="xxpn" id="p424">{424}</span>
-among the lost inventions.” We wonder if these cunning retailers of
-the olden time ever used shot as well as powder with their bottled ale,
-which doubtless would have greatly increased the effect.</p>
-
-<p>In October, 1883, a statement was loudly trumpeted forth from
-teetotal platforms that 245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used every year
-in England in brewing. After a good deal of discussion on the subject,
-it leaked out that the figures had been arrived at by a firm of hop
-dealers, anxious to run up the price of hops. By a blunder in their
-calculations they had come to the conclusion that there was a deficit
-of 245,000 cwt. of hops in this country. From this it was argued that
-245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used. This house of cards fell when it
-was conclusively proved that there were at the time actually more hops
-in England than were required by the brewers.</p>
-
-<p>With regard to the question of adulteration at the present day, it
-could be wished that those who are induced by a fanatical hatred of
-alcohol in any shape or form to make this alleged adulteration a reason
-for further restrictive legislation on the brewing trade, would take the
-trouble to look at the reports annually published by the Inland Revenue
-Commissioners in which this point is dealt with. Here are a few
-extracts from their report for the year 1881, soon after the repeal of
-the Malt-tax. “Brewers have no doubt been experimenting with other
-descriptions of grain, as might have been expected, but we believe that
-barley, from its peculiar fitness for malting, will in the end maintain its
-superiority; and we are informed that a new method of preparing
-inferior barley for brewing purposes promises to be highly successful.”
-“So far as we are aware, no attempts have been made to use materials
-in brewing at all detrimental to the public health; and the presence of
-the Revenue officers in breweries affords fresh security to the public—if
-indeed any such were needed—against all such practices.”</p>
-
-<p>In the same report Professor Bell, the Principal of the Inland
-Revenue Laboratory, goes into detail and gives very valuable statistics,
-showing the way in which the opinion given by the Commissioners was
-arrived at. In 1881, 8,626 samples of beer were tested, of which 4,666
-were analyzed to see if any foreign body had been added, as well as to
-check the original gravity. Of this large number the whole were nearly
-correct, but actually 17 per cent, were found not alone to be up to the
-standard test, but above it; and out of nearly 20,000 brewers, which, in
-round numbers, was then the extent of the trade in the United Kingdom,
-only some 300 were even suspected of having used illegal materials. Of
-the ninety samples of beer submitted for analysis
-as being suspected <span class="xxpn" id="p425">{425}</span>
-to have been tampered with, sixty-three were found to have been
-“sugared,” but in every instance this occurred at the public-house or
-beerhouse, a matter which was beyond the control of the brewer, and
-was as much a fraud on him as on the Revenue and the public.
-Mr. Bell goes on to state that whatever adulteration prevails is wholly
-confined to the publican and the beer retailer, and even where it does
-prevail, at the most the practice means nothing worse than diluting the
-beer with water and afterwards adding sugar; still, as Mr. Bell remarks,
-“Reprehensible as the practice is, as being a fraud on the public as well
-as the Revenue, yet it is satisfactory to know that no adulterant of a
-poisonous or hurtful character has been detected.”</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Thudichum, in a work <i>Alcoholic Drinks</i>, published by the
-Executive Council of the late Health Exhibition, speaking of the
-supposition that hops are sometimes supplanted, entirely or in part,
-in the manufacture of beer by absynth, menyanthes, quassia, gentian,
-and other matters, regards such adulteration as rare and such as “if
-practised persistently would no doubt be discovered, and the liquids
-produced by their aid would be declined by the public.”</p>
-
-<p>An Irish brewer told us of a rather comic incident connected with
-hop substitutes. A traveller in these commodities was in the habit of
-pestering our friend, who informed the man that he believed his wares
-were poisonous, and that he ought to eat some to prove the contrary.
-With a wry face the traveller swallowed a portion of his sample and
-shortly afterwards left. Coming again in a week’s time the same
-performance was gone through. The traveller made yet another visit,
-when the brewer said the experiment had not satisfied him, as so small a
-quantity of the hop had been eaten. This time the traveller outdid
-himself, and when and before leaving the brewery promised to write and
-inform the brewer if the bitter meal had any evil effects. Whether the
-traveller died, or whether he discovered that he had been befooled, we
-do not know, but nothing more was heard of him.</p>
-
-<p>We believe that the importance of a supply of good, pure beer to the
-labouring classes of this country can hardly be over-estimated, particularly
-having regard to the fact—as we shall show with greater particularity,
-when we come to discuss the question of total abstinence as
-opposed to temperance, that malt liquors undoubtedly assist in the
-support of the body, and are in practical effect equivalent to so much
-easily digested food.</p>
-
-<div class="dpoemctr"><div class="dstanzactr">
-<span class="spquoteverse"><span class="spquoteblock">“</span>Thou
- clears the head o’ doited lear,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thou cheers the heart o’ drooping care;
- <span class="xxpn" id="p426">{426}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">And strings the nerves o’ labour fair,</span>
-<span class="spp10">At’s weary toil.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thou even brightens dark despair,</span>
-<span class="spp10">Wi’ gloomy smile.”</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Dr. Paris, from whose works we have already quoted, explains that
-it is the stimulus of the beer that proves so serviceable to the poor man,
-enabling his stomach to extract more aliment from his innutritive diet.
-“Happy is that country,” he writes, “whose labouring classes prefer
-such a beverage to the mischievous potations of ardent spirit.”</p>
-
-<p>Barley wine is without doubt the wine of this country, and where
-shall we find, all the world over, a more stalwart, muscular, able-bodied
-race of labouring men than we find at home? The mighty thews of
-the English navigator are renowned, and not at home only, for it
-is well known that while the French railways were making, the
-contractors actually imported English “navvies” to do the heavy work,
-paying them higher wages than their French competitors.</p>
-
-<p>We would commend to the attention of those who, as the phrase
-goes, would rob a poor man of his beer, the certainty that, though the
-evils of intoxication can hardly be exaggerated, yet in counselling the
-labouring classes everywhere, and under all circumstances, to abstain
-from all kinds of liquor, they are taking upon themselves a very grave
-responsibility.</p>
-
-<p>The following old Somersetshire song has, we believe, at any rate in
-this form, never before appeared in print. It was taken down verbatim
-from the lips of the singer at a harvest-home. The verses no doubt
-lack the elegance of the productions of our greater English poets, but
-the composer, whoever he may have been, treated his subject with
-commendable vigour of expression, and “Robin Rough, the Plowboy,”
-illustrates in a remarkable manner the love of the agricultural labourer
-for his beer, and his belief in its health-giving qualities; a belief,
-by-the-bye, founded on many centuries of
-<span class="nowrap">experience:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">I’ze Robin Rough, the plowboy,</span>
-<span class="spp01">A plowman’s son am I,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And like my thirsty feyther,</span>
-<span class="spp01">My trottle is always a-dry,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The world goes round, to me it’s reet,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Why need I interfere?</span>
-<span class="spp00">For I whistles and sings from morn till neet,</span>
-<span class="spp01">And I smokes and I drinks my beer. <span class="xxpn" id="p427">{427}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">For I likes a drop of good beer, I does;</span>
-<span class="spp01">I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is.</span>
-<span class="spp02">Let gentlemen fine</span>
-<span class="spp02">Sit down to their wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But I will stick to my beer.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">There’s Sally—that’s my wife, zurs—</span>
-<span class="spp01">Likes beer as well as me,</span>
-<span class="spp00">She’s the happiest woman in life, zurs,</span>
-<span class="spp01">As happy as woman can be.</span>
-<span class="spp02">She minds her work,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Takes care of bairns,</span>
-<span class="spp00">No gossiping neighbours near;</span>
-<span class="spp01">When every Saturday neet returns,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Like me she drinks her beer.</span>
-<span class="spp01">For Sally likes her beer, she does,</span>
-<span class="spp00">She’s fond of a drop of good beer, she is,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Let gentlemen fine</span>
-<span class="spp02">Sit down to their wine,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But my Sally will stick to her beer.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now there’s my dad, God bless him,</span>
-<span class="spp01">He’s now turned eighty-five,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hard work does ne’er distress him,</span>
-<span class="spp01">He’s the happiest man alive.</span>
-<span class="spp02">Though old in age</span>
-<span class="spp02">He’s young in health,</span>
-<span class="spp00">His head and his heart both clear,</span>
-<span class="spp01">Possessing these and blest with peace,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He smokes and he drinks his beer—</span>
-<span class="spp01">For he’s fond of a drop of good beer, he is,</span>
-<span class="spp00">He very much likes his beer, he does,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Let gentlemen fine</span>
-<span class="spp02">Sit down to their wine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">But my feyther will stick to his beer.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now, lads, need no persuasion,</span>
-<span class="spp01">But send your glasses round,</span>
-<span class="spp00">There’s no fear of an invasion</span>
-<span class="spp01">While barley grows in ground; <span class="xxpn" id="p428">{428}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">May trade increase</span>
-<span class="spp01">And discord cease</span>
-<span class="spp01">In every coming year.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Possessed of these and blest with peace,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Why, we’ll smoke and we’ll drink our beer.</span>
-<span class="spp01">For I likes a drop of good beer, I does,</span>
-<span class="spp01">I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is.</span>
-<span class="spp02">Let gentlemen fine</span>
-<span class="spp02">Sit down to their wine</span>
-<span class="spp00">But we’ll all of us stick to our beer.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>The poet Bloomfield, in the <i>Farmer’s Boy</i>, may possibly better
-please our more critical readers. In describing the harvest-homing, he
-<span class="nowrap">says:―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft dwthem30"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Now noon gone by, and four declining hours,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The weary limbs relax their boasted pow’rs;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Thirst rages strong, the fainting spirits fail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And ask the sov’reign cordial, home-brew’d ale:</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="sppctr">
-<img class="imhrask" src="images/iasterisks.png" alt="
- &#x2a;thought break&#x2a;" /></span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound,</span>
-<span class="spp00">As quick the frothing horn performs its round,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Care’s mortal foe, that sprightly joys imparts</span>
-<span class="spp00">To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts.</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Shakespere has been called by the teetotallers as a witness in favour
-of abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Does he not make Adam, in
-<i>As You Like It</i>,
-<span class="nowrap">say―</span></p>
-
-<div class="dpoemlft"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;</span>
-<span class="spp00">For in my youth I never did apply</span>
-<span class="spp00">Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo</span>
-<span class="spp00">The means of weakness and debility;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Frosty, but kindly?</span>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="pcontinue">Hot
-and rebellious liquors! yes; but would Shakespere have classed ale
-amongst them? It seems far more probable that the reference is to the
-strong wines of which the topers of his time drank deeply, the “malmsey
-and malvoisie,” the “neat wine of Orleance, the Gascony, the Bordeaux,
-the sherry sack, the liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved
-Bastard, or fat <span class="xxpn" id="p429">{429}</span>
-Aligant,” or to the “aqua vitæ,” the manufacture of which in the reign
-of Mary was the subject of restrictive legislation.</p>
-
-<p>Our consideration of the arguments put forward by the teetotal
-theorists has so far been slightly delayed by the few pages we have
-thought it well to devote to the accusations made against brewers of
-adulteration, and of the evident advantages of malt liquor to the labouring
-classes—proved beyond doubt without any necessity for learned
-disquisitions on chemistry or physiology. In turning now to a more
-particular consideration of the much-vexed question of temperance <i>v.</i>
-total abstinence, we do not propose to attempt the advancement of any
-novel or startling theories, but merely to give publicity to the arguments
-in favour of the temperate use of alcoholic drinks, as opposed to the total
-abstinence therefrom, supporting our arguments, as it will be found we
-shall be able to do, by the opinions of some of the best-known medical
-and scientific writers of the present day.</p>
-
-<p>One of the first things that strikes an observer who considers, as
-impartially as he can, the case put forward by the extreme advocates of
-abstinence, is that the controversy itself is a very modern one, and that,
-with the tendency to run into opposite extremes which is a characteristic
-of human opinion, we pass suddenly from the centuries in which it was
-held no shame for a man to be drunk, into these present years, when
-there exists a considerable, and in some sense, an influential body of
-persons, who not only will not touch alcoholic drink themselves upon
-any terms, but who think it their duty to press for such legislation as
-would deprive all men, be they temperate or otherwise, of the power of
-buying, selling, or drinking any liquor of which alcohol is a constituent.
-“Poison!” “Touch not the accursed thing!” “Away with it!” and
-so on—very voluble, occasionally eloquent, sometimes plausible. But
-will the fierce denunciations of these apostles of a new religion—a
-religion not of temperance, but, as it has been well called, of
-“intemperate abstinence,” bear the searching light of calm and quiet
-argument? We had once a friend who, while fond of his pipe, was
-always interested in reading about the terrible evils which the weed
-would, according to the infallible dicta of the anti-tobacco lecturers, be
-sure in time to bring upon his unfortunate constitution. Before sitting
-down to read one of these lectures, he used always to light a large and
-favourite briar; he said it enabled him to follow the lecturer’s points so
-much better. Now we do not ask our readers to follow the example of
-our friend <i>mutatis mutandis</i>. We do not say that such a proceeding
-would of necessity assist him in following our arguments.
-All we claim <span class="xxpn" id="p430">{430}</span>
-is a patient hearing, for there never has been a time in which an
-unprejudiced discussion of the subject would be of greater advantage
-than at present.</p>
-
-<p>Human habit of centuries, of thousands of years, of such time that
-the memory and record of the human race, to use a legal phrase, runneth
-not to the contrary, is evidence in our favour. Whenever he has
-had the requisite skill, man has produced, enjoyed, and, we maintain,
-has been improved by drinks in which alcohol formed a constituent
-part. The practice of civilised nations for thousands of years is, then, so
-far as it goes, an argument in favour of temperance as opposed to abstinence.
-We do not wish to put this part of our case too high, and our
-meaning cannot be better expressed than by the words of Sir James
-Paget, who, in an essay on this subject in the <i>Contemporary Review</i>,
-writes: “The beliefs of reasonable people are, doubtless, by a
-large majority favourable to moderation rather than abstinence, and
-this should not be regarded as of no weight in the discussion. For,
-although the subject be one in which few, even among reasonable
-people, have made any careful observations, and fewer still have thought
-with any care, yet this very indifference to the subject, this readiness to
-fall in with custom, a custom maintained in the midst of a constant love
-of change, and outliving all that mere fashion has sustained—all this
-is enough to prove that the evidence of the custom being a bad one is
-not clear.”</p>
-
-<p>It is an indisputable fact that nations who have used alcohol have
-attained to a greater perfection in power and will to do good work, and a
-longer duration of life in which such work can be performed, than those
-who have used no alcohol; and, confining our attention to Europe, may
-we not say that these powers of work, these activities of body and mind
-in enterprise, in invention, and in production, are more remarkably
-developed in the inhabitants of the northern than of the southern parts
-of the Continent, that is to say, among those who have habitually
-drank more than those who have drank less? And may we not ask how
-it is that, if the use of alcohol in moderation be pernicious, the inherited
-effects of it have not during these vast periods of time during which it
-has been used, made themselves apparent in a marked degeneracy of
-the race, since we know that these results will make themselves very
-conspicuous indeed in two generations of persons who are habitually
-intemperate?</p>
-
-<p>We are told that it is unnatural to make use of alcoholic drinks,
-and we are lectured about what man in his natural state
-would do, or <span class="xxpn" id="p431">{431}</span>
-not do. This is a misuse of terms; the state in which mankind is at any
-particular period, the point in his path of development which he has
-then reached, and his then environment, these constitute his natural
-state, and not some more or less hypothetical state of being which has
-been now left far behind.</p>
-
-<p>In order to enable them to thrust their theories upon a certainly
-unwilling audience, it would be very convenient for the abstainers to
-show, if they could, that alcohol, in any form and no matter how
-diluted, is in itself a bad thing. First, then, let us consider whether
-alcohol, as such, is food. On this point Dr. Lander Brunton says: “The
-argument in favour of alcohol being food is that it is retained in the
-body and supplies the place of other foods, so that the quantity of food
-which would without it be insufficient, with its aid becomes sufficient.”
-He also quotes Dr. Hammond, who observed in his own case that when
-his diet was insufficient, the addition of a little alcohol to it not only
-prevented him from losing weight, as he had previously done, but converted
-this loss into a positive gain.</p>
-
-<p>The late G. H. Lewes, in his <i>Principles of Physiology</i>, also speaks
-conclusively on this subject, pointing out that alcohol is one of the
-alimentary principles. “In compliance with the custom of physiologists
-we are forced to call alcohol food, and very efficient food too. If it be
-not food, then neither is sugar food.” Mr. Lewes also states that alcohol
-taken in large quantities is harmful, depriving the mucous membrane of
-the stomach of all its water, but that taken in small quantities and
-diluted it has just the opposite effect, increasing the secretion by the
-stimulus it gives to the circulation.</p>
-
-<p>The general opinion of the medical world appears to be that alcohol
-as such, is a food in a special sense, viz., that it checks the waste of tissue
-and enables a person to attain to a high standard of health and strength
-mentally and bodily while taking less food than would be necessary
-without the alcohol. Moleschott says that “although forming none of
-the constituents of blood, alcohol limits the combustion of those constituents,
-and in this way is equivalent to so much blood. Alcohol is
-the savings bank of the tissues. He who eats little and drinks alcohol
-in moderation, retains as much in his blood and tissues as he who eats
-more and drinks no alcohol.”</p>
-
-<p>The argument to the effect that alcohol must be useless, because
-chemists have as yet been unable to trace the exact form and manner
-in which it acts upon the human economy, would seem to be fallacious
-in the face of the experience, which shows that it does
-act, and act <span class="xxpn" id="p432">{432}</span>
-beneficially, when taken in a suitable form and in suitable quantity.
-Experience shows, and instances by the hundred could be given, from
-the works of medical men, that life can be sustained for long periods of
-time solely upon alcoholic drinks. Dr. Brudenell Carter mentions a case
-in his own experience of an old gentleman who lived for many months
-in moderate strength and comfort and without any remarkable emaciation
-upon alcoholic drinks alone. Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read
-before the British Medical Association, gives an instance of a lady who
-twice in succession nursed a child, subsisting upon each occasion during
-the greater part of twelve months upon brandy and bitter ale alone;
-the children, he adds, grew up strong and healthy.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Francis E. Anstie, in an article published in the <i>Cornhill
-Magazine</i> in 1862, draws attention to the fact that many substances
-have an action on the body in small doses, <i>totally different in kind</i> to
-that which they exercise in large doses <i>e.g.</i>, common salt, arsenic, and
-many others which are either food or poisons, according to the dose.
-“We are compelled, therefore,” he writes, “to believe that in <i>doses
-proportioned to the needs of the system at the time</i>, alcohol acts as a food;”
-and he instances several cases of longevity in which alcohol was the only
-aliment, excepting in some cases a little water, and in others a spare
-allowance of bread. Decisively vanquished on this ground, our opponents
-return to the attack: “You must abstain,” say they, “because your
-practice, which is now moderate, will insensibly become excessive.”
-Here we again turn to Mr. Lewes’s work on Physiology, and quote the
-pithy argument by which he refutes this fallacy. A portion is italicised
-for the benefit of tea drinkers: “To suppose there is any necessary
-connection between moderation and excess, is to ignore Physiology, and
-fly in the face of evidence .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. Men take their pint of beer or pint of
-wine daily, for a series of years. This dose daily produces its effect;
-and if at any time thirst or social seduction makes them drink a quart
-in lieu of a pint, they are at once made aware of the excess. Men
-drink one or two cups of tea or coffee at breakfast with unvarying
-regularity for a whole lifetime; but whoever felt the necessity of
-gradually increasing the amount to three, four, or five cups? Yet we
-know what a stimulant tea is; we know <i>that treble the amount of our
-daily consumption would soon produce paralysis</i>—why are we not
-irresistibly led to this fatal excess?”</p>
-
-<p>Let us now return to our authorities, and from the wealth of material
-which exists in the published opinions of medical men of distinction,
-choose a few more extracts in favour of temperance as
-opposed to total <span class="xxpn" id="p433">{433}</span>
-abstinence. Professor Liebig, for instance, says that wine, spirits, and
-beer are <i>necessary</i> principles for the important process of respiration,
-and it would seem that the stomachs of all mankind, <i>teetotallers included</i>,
-will secrete alcohol from the food which is eaten. If any man,
-therefore, is resolved to carry out total abstinence strictly, he must
-refuse every sort of vegetable food, even bread itself; for all such diet
-contains more or less of alcohol.</p>
-
-<p>Sir James Paget, in the article already referred to, asserts that the
-habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and
-that, in the question raised between temperance and abstinence, the
-verdict should be in favour of temperance.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. A. J. Bernays, in an essay on <i>The Moderate Use of Alcohols</i>,
-alluding to water as a proposed substitute, remarks on the wretched
-character of the water which is supplied in towns, and the difficulty
-of getting it pure. “Water which has gone through some form of
-preparation, especially through some form of cooking, as in beer, is
-generally better suited for meals than water itself.”</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Carpenter has also drawn attention to the wholesomeness of
-bitter beer at meals. “There is a class of cases,” he writes, “in which
-we believe that malt liquors constitute a better medicine than could be
-administered under any other form; those, namely, in which the
-stomach labours under a permanent deficiency of digestive powers.”
-Bitter beer, he asserts, assists digestion in cases in which no medicine
-would be of use.</p>
-
-<p>This question of the water reminds us of the following tale: A
-cobbler was listening to the persuasive eloquence of a teetotaller, and
-getting somewhat dry over the prosy argument. “Well,” said the
-knight of St. Crispin, “all you say amounts to this—that water is the
-best thing any man can drink. Now I am not proud, and am easily
-satisfied, and don’t want the best—stout, or ale, or even bitter-beer is
-quite good enough for the likes of me.”</p>
-
-<p>It is very often pointed out that the agricultural labourer and the
-working classes generally would be better off if they spent the money
-devoted to beer in food. This is, however, open to question, keeping
-in mind the fact that alcohol enables the human frame to exist with
-a smaller amount of food than would be otherwise necessary. Dr.
-C. D. Redcliffe, in giving his views on alcohol, in the form of a
-conversation between himself and a patient, speaks very positively on
-this point. “The glass of malt liquor,” he writes, “or cyder or perry
-or common wine, if the man have the luck to live in a wine-growing
-country, will <span class="xxpn" id="p434">{434}</span>
-cost less than the amount of ordinary food which must otherwise be
-eaten in order to preserve health. I have no doubt of the saving in
-pocket which will result from the adoption of the practice recommended
-.&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. and I am equally certain that the result will be as
-beneficial to health as it will be satisfactory financially.” Liebig also
-testifies to the same effect, stating that in families where beer was withheld,
-and money given in compensation, it was soon found that the
-monthly consumption of bread was so strikingly increased that the
-beer was twice paid for, once in money and a second time in bread.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Brudenell Carter, while he was practising his profession in
-a mining district, and daily brought into contact with the results of
-drunken habits, determined that he “should be a better advocate of
-abstinence if he practised it,” and he accordingly gave up his liquor.
-The results we give in his own words:—“After about two months of
-total abstinence, the conviction was reluctantly forced upon me that the
-experiment was a failure, and that I must give it up.” His symptoms
-pointed, he says, “in a perfectly plain way to an excess of waste over
-repair. I returned to my bitter beer, and in the course of a week was
-well again.”</p>
-
-<p>A volume could be filled with similar experiences, but in summing
-up the result of modern medical opinion, we are contented to rest our
-case on what has been said on this point by the two great authorities
-we have before quoted, viz., Sir James Paget and Dr. Bernays; the
-former writes: “As for the opinions of the medical profession, they
-are, by a vast majority, in favour of moderation. It may be admitted
-that, of late years, the number of cases has increased in which habitual
-abstinence from alcoholic drinks has been deemed better than habitual
-moderation. But, excluding those of children and young persons, the
-number of these cases is still very small, and few of them have been
-observed through a long course of years, so as to test the probable
-influence of a life-long habitual abstinence. Whatever weight, then,
-may be assigned to the balance of opinions among medical men, it
-certainly must be given in favour of moderation, not of abstinence.”
-Dr. Bernays is still stronger. “The experience of mankind is better
-than individual experience, and so, for every medical man of distinction
-who is in favour of total abstinence, I would find twenty men who are
-against it.” Hardly anyone who has lived among teetotallers will deny
-that they are large eaters. Now the greater the amount of solid food
-that is required to keep a human being up to the normal level of health
-and strength, the greater amount of nervous energy
-will be consumed <span class="xxpn" id="p435">{435}</span>
-in the process of digestion, and the less superfluity of energy will that
-person have in reserve to meet the other exigencies and activities of
-life. It therefore seems to follow with the certainty of a mathematical
-demonstration, that if, as those who are best qualified to judge assure
-us is the case, the moderate consumption of alcoholic liquors enables a
-person to keep himself in health and strength upon a less amount of
-solid food than would be necessary without the aid of alcohol, the life
-of that man, other things being equal, must be fuller of capacities for
-all kinds of work, both mental and bodily, than that of a man who
-takes no alcohol, and who is in consequence forced to use up a greater
-amount of nerve force in the consumption of a sufficiency of solids to
-support himself. It is an uncontrovertible fact that the best work has
-always been done by the moderate drinkers. The physical condition
-of rigid abstainers has frequently been commented upon; and without
-wishing to say anything unkind, or uncharitable, about men who are
-doubtless honest and conscientious, though, in our view, misguided,
-we cannot but suggest the question—Is the appearance of the average
-abstainer, who now, happily for the cause of truth, is known to all the
-world by the blue ribbon he wears, such as may be considered a good
-advertisement for the opinions he advocates? Does his appearance
-seem to indicate a physical or intellectual superiority to the average
-member of the <i>genus homo</i>? We think there can be but one opinion
-on this point, and it is that each and every of these questions must be
-answered with an emphatic negative.</p>
-
-<p>On the action of the Temperance Societies, Dr. Moxon, in a very able
-article, <i>Alcohol and Individuality</i>, after relating how a poor cooper,
-having a fever caused by a wound, died rather than take the alcohol
-which was absolutely necessary to sustain him, says: “I believe that to
-a large extent teetotalism lays firmest hold on those who are least likely
-ever to become drunkards, and are most likely to want at times the
-medicinal use of alcohol—sensitive, good-natured people, of weak
-constitution, to whom the Sacred Ecclesiast directed his strange sounding
-but needful advice, ‘Be not righteous over much, neither make
-thyself over wise: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’”</p>
-
-<p>In August, 1884, <i>The Times</i> devoted several columns to an exhaustive
-consideration of teetotal theories and the use of alcohol, and it may be
-said, without fear of contradiction, that neither before nor since has
-a more valuable treatise appeared on the subject. The writer divides
-total abstainers into three classes. Of the first class he says: “There
-are some persons who seem not to require alcohol
-because they easily <span class="xxpn" id="p436">{436}</span>
-digest a large quantity of solid food, and especially of saccharine and
-starchy matters, .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. but it is fairly questionable whether their
-work in life would not be better in quantity or in quality, or both, if
-they were to consume less solid food, and to make up for the deficiency
-by a little beer or wine. There are others who have a distinctly morbid
-tendency towards excess, .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;. which leaves them no safety
-except in total abstinence. The difficulty with these persons is to keep
-them from drink, however hurtful they may know it to be, for their
-condition is one of disease, and they have seldom sufficient resolution
-to abstain. When they do abstain they furnish striking examples of
-the success of teetotalism by being changed from a state closely bordering
-on insanity into responsible members of society; but the ordinary
-experience with regard to them is that they have a succession of relapses
-into intemperance, and that they ultimately die, directly or indirectly,
-from the effects of drink. .&#xa0;.&#xa0;. The third class of abstainers is
-formed by those who are actuated in the main by benevolent and
-conscientious motives, which, unfortunately, are seldom controlled by
-the possession of adequate knowledge. Many clergymen abstain ‘for
-the sake of example,’ without pausing to consider whether the example
-may not, in some cases, be a bad one, and whether they would not
-discharge their manifest duties more efficiently by help of the added
-force which alcohol would give. Many persons get on fairly well
-without alcohol because their powers are never subjected to any
-considerable strain, and these persons too often break down when any
-strain comes upon them, unless they will consent to modify their mode
-of living. This, as is too well known, they will not always do; and
-every medical man has seen instances of fanatical teetotalism leading to
-complete destruction of the health of those who were governed by it.”</p>
-
-<p>With regard to teetotal societies, the writer considers that they do
-very little good and a great deal of harm. “They fail,” he says, “to
-touch the evils of drunkenness, except in a very limited fashion, and
-they take away alcohol from vast numbers who would be better for the
-moderate use of it. We think the time has come when philanthropists
-should cease to listen to mere declamation, and should try to look calmly
-and fearlessly at the results of observation and experience. Many a good
-man is injuring his health and diminishing his usefulness in order to
-adhere, ‘for the sake of example,’ to a fantastic deprivation.”</p>
-
-<p>To check the evils of drunkenness, we rely not on prohibitory legislation,
-which has been tried elsewhere and found wanting, but on the
-gradual spread of education and enlightenment; the
-effects of public <span class="xxpn" id="p437">{437}</span>
-opinion, the improvement of the well-being of the humbler classes
-more particularly with reference to their habitations both in town and
-country. Perhaps also, but here we speak with greater diffidence on
-account of the practical difficulties in which such a proposal is involved
-a remedy is to be found in the confinement of those persons who have
-shown by their conduct that their inability to refrain from vile excesses
-arises from actual mental disease.</p>
-
-<p>Lord Bramwell, in a pamphlet called <i>Drink</i>, has written to very
-much the same effect. He also calls in question the right of society to
-interfere with individual liberty to the extent proposed by the teetotallers.
-Is it reasonable, he asks, that because some people drink to
-excess, alcoholic liquors are to be denied to millions to whom it is a daily
-pleasure and enjoyment with no attendant harm? If a man is drunk
-in public, punish him; but it does seem hard that the sober man should
-be punished—for withholding a pleasure and inflicting a pain are equally
-punishment. “Then see the mischief of such laws,” he continues.
-“The public conscience does not go with them. It is certain they will
-be broken. Every one knows that stealing is wrong; disgrace follows
-conviction. But every one knows that drinking a glass of beer is not
-wrong; no discredit attaches to it. It is done, and when done against
-the law you have the usual mischiefs of law-breaking, smuggling, informations,
-oaths, perjury, shuffling, and lies. Besides, as a matter of fact,
-it fails. Nothing can show this more strongly than the failure in Wales
-of the Sunday Closing Act.” Lord Bramwell in the end comes to the
-conclusion that drunkenness cannot be prevented by legislation.
-“Whether it is desirable to limit the number of drink shops,” he writes,
-“is a matter as to which I have great doubt and difficulty. But grant
-that there is the right to forbid it, wholly or partially, in place or time,
-I say it is a right which should not be exercised. To do so is to interfere
-with the innocent enjoyment of millions in order to lessen the
-mischief arising from the folly or evil propensities, not of themselves,
-but of others. And, further, that such legislation is attended with the
-mischiefs which always follow from the creation of offences in law
-which are not so in conscience. Punish the mischievous drunkard,
-indeed, perhaps, even punish him for being drunk in public, and so a
-likely source of mischief. Punish, on the same principle, the man who
-sells drink to the drunken. But go no further. Trust to the good sense
-and improvement of mankind, and let charity be shown to those who
-would trust to them rather than to law.”</p>
-
-<p>Other arguments in opposition to those who
-would introduce what <span class="xxpn" id="p438">{438}</span>
-is known as local option may be briefly summed up as follows:—Such
-a system would establish the principle that a majority of ratepayers in
-one district may put a stop to any trade or calling to which they may
-happen to object, although the same trade remains perfectly legitimate
-in other places; it would concentrate the evil, shifting the area of the
-sale of drink, and thus intensifying the mischiefs complained of; it
-would introduce invidious class distinctions, since its effects would
-principally be felt by the poor and the labouring classes, and in place
-of a trade which is now subject to inspection and regulation, it would
-substitute a secret and irresponsible one.</p>
-
-<p>In this discussion, the balance of experience, of reason, and of
-authority is vastly in favour of the temperate man rather than the
-abstainer, and it may be said without fear of contradiction from any
-reasonable or unbiassed person that, for the great majority of the people
-of this country, the most wholesome, the most nutritious, and the most
-pleasing alcoholic liquor, is the “wine of the country,” good, sound ale
-and beer.</p>
-
-<div class="section">
-<p>To the reader who has been patient enough to follow us thus far, we
-give our best thanks, hoping that he may have found something to
-amuse, something, perhaps, to instruct in these pages—our best thanks,
-we say, and, as a parting word, a few verses by old John Gay, entitled</p>
-
-<div class="padtopb dwthem34">A BALLAD ON ALE.</div>
-
-<div id="dp438poem"><div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Whilst some in epic strains delight,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Whilst others pastorals invite,</span>
-<span class="spp02">As taste or whim prevail;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Assist me all ye tuneful Nine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Support me in the great design,</span>
-<span class="spp02">To sing of nappy Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Some folks of cider make a rout,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And cider’s well enough no doubt</span>
-<span class="spp02">When better liquors fail;</span>
-<span class="spp00">But wine that’s richer, better still,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Ev’n wine itself (deny ’t who will)</span>
-<span class="spp02">Must yield to nappy Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Rum, brandy, gin with choicest smack,</span>
-<span class="spp00">From Holland brought, Batavia rack,</span>
-<span class="spp02">All these will nought avail <span class="xxpn" id="p439">{439}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">To cheer a truly British heart,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And lively spirits to impart,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Like humming nappy Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Oh&#x202f;! whether thee I closely hug</span>
-<span class="spp00">In honest can, or nut-brown jug,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Or in the tankard hail,</span>
-<span class="spp00">In barrel or in bottle pent,</span>
-<span class="spp00">I give the generous spirit vent,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Still may I feast on Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">But chief when to the cheerful glass,</span>
-<span class="spp00">From vessel pure, thy streamlets pass,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Then most thy charms prevail;</span>
-<span class="spp00">Then, then, I’ll bet and take the odds</span>
-<span class="spp00">That nectar, drink of Heathen Gods,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Was poor compared to Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Give me a bumper: fill it up:</span>
-<span class="spp00">See how it sparkles in the cup;</span>
-<span class="spp02">O how shall I regale&#x202f;!</span>
-<span class="spp00">Can any taste this drink divine,</span>
-<span class="spp00">And then compare rum, brandy, wine,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Or aught with nappy Ale?</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Inspired by thee, the warrior fights,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The lover wooes, the poet writes</span>
-<span class="spp02">And pens the pleasing tale;</span>
-<span class="spp00">And still in Britain’s isle confest,</span>
-<span class="spp00">Nought animates the patriot’s breast</span>
-<span class="spp02">Like generous nappy Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">High church and low oft raise a strife</span>
-<span class="spp00">And oft endanger limb and life,</span>
-<span class="spp02">Each studious to prevail:</span>
-<span class="spp00">Yet Whig and Tory, opposite</span>
-<span class="spp00">In all things else, do both unite</span>
-<span class="spp02">In praise of nappy Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Inspired by thee, shall Crispin sing</span>
-<span class="spp00">Or talk of freedom, church and king,</span>
-<span class="spp02">And balance Europe’s scale:
- <span class="xxpn" id="p440">{440}</span></span>
-<span class="spp00">While his rich landlord lays out schemes</span>
-<span class="spp00">Of wealth in golden South-Sea dreams,</span>
-<span class="spp02">The effects of nappy Ale.</span>
-</div>
-<div class="dstanzalft">
-<span class="spp00">Ev’n while these stanzas I indite,</span>
-<span class="spp00">The bar-bells’ grateful sounds invite</span>
-<span class="spp02">Where joy can never fail.</span>
-<span class="spp00">Adieu, my Muse&#x202f;! adieu, I haste</span>
-<span class="spp00">To gratify my longing taste</span>
-<span class="spp02">With copious draughts of Ale.</span>
-
-<div id="p440end">
-<div><div class="dctr08">
-<img src="images/p440a.png" width="456" height="96" alt="
- +&#xa0;The&#xa0;+&#xa0;End&#xa0;+" /></div></div>
-
-<div><div class="dctr08">
-<img src="images/p440b.png" width="228" height="47" alt="" /></div>
-</div></div></div></div><!--dpoemlft-->
-</div><!--section-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p441.png" width="144" height="44" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p441">APPENDIX.
-<span id="h2appendixl2">PASTEUR’S DISCOVERIES.</span></h2></div>
-
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="smcap">O<b>NE</b></span>
-talks glibly enough of fermentation, but the majority of us would
-be puzzled if asked to say what it is. For many years it has been
-known that minute particles of life are ever present in substances undergoing
-fermentation, but until recently proved beyond question by M.
-Pasteur, it was not known that the peculiar changes are wholly caused
-by these living atoms, which are so small that they can only be seen
-through the most powerful microscope. This discovery was the key to
-many problems. Pasteur soon traced the diseases of wine to the
-presence of various organisms which, fortunately, could be easily
-destroyed by heat. From this it followed that wine once heated to a
-certain temperature could be kept an indefinite length of time, provided,
-of course, no exposure to the air took place, for from the air germs of
-organisms similar to those killed by the application of heat might again
-enter the wine and multiply themselves.</p>
-
-<p>The method of preserving the wine discovered by Pasteur is simple:
-In a suitable metal vessel the bottles of wine are placed, their corks firmly
-tied down. The vessel is then filled to such a depth that the water is
-level with the wires of the corks. One of the bottles, in which is placed
-the bulb of a thermometer, should be filled with water. The water in
-the vessel is then gradually heated until the thermometer shows that
-the water in the bottle has attained a temperature of 212 Fahr.</p>
-
-<p>Pasteur proved by repeated experiments that the flavour of the wine
-is not in any way damaged by this operation. The discovery solved an
-important economic question, for wines heated in this manner can now
-be exported into all countries, or kept for an almost indefinite period
-without losing their flavour or perfume.</p>
-
-<p>We have mentioned Pasteur’s labours for the wine-growers, for on
-them were based his
-studies on beer. <span class="xxpn" id="p442">{442}</span></p>
-
-<p>At the close of the Franco-Prussian war, Pasteur, who was then
-recovering from an illness which lasted over two years, became eager to
-commence an investigation which would bring him again to the study
-of fermentation. Influenced, no doubt, by the patriotic wish of making
-for French beer a reputation equal to that of Germany, he attacked the
-diseases of malt liquors.</p>
-
-<p>Beer is far more difficult to keep than wine, and it is said to be
-diseased when it has turned sharp, sour, ropy or putrid. To trace the
-causes of these undesirable conditions was Pasteur’s aim, and, as usual
-with any investigation undertaken by him, he met with success. In
-studying the fermentation of wine, he had discovered a new world
-peopled with minute beings of many different species, and in the fermentation
-of beer his discoveries were of much the same nature.</p>
-
-<p>In wine the fermentation may be said to take place by itself, the
-organisms which cause it, finding their way into the liquid without the
-assistance of man; but in beer-brewing a small quantity of certain
-organisms (yeast) is put into the sweet wort by the brewer. These
-organisms multiply themselves, and, if of the right species, turn the sugar
-principally into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. The one remains in the
-beer, the other partly escapes and hangs about the surface of the liquid,
-as anyone who has put his nose into a fermenting tun has no doubt
-discovered. It is absolutely necessary for the production of drinkable
-beer that the right species of organism be set to work in the wort. If
-the wort was left to itself to ferment, as is wine, the results would be
-very unsatisfactory. Various kinds of organisms (from which wine
-is protected by its acidity) would enter into it from the air, divers
-ferments would take place, and more often than not an acid or putrid
-beer would be the result.</p>
-
-<p>Every beer-disease Pasteur found to be caused by its own peculiar
-organisms, which enter into the liquid sometimes from the air and often
-in the yeast, and the causes of many mysterious occurrences in breweries
-at once become clear. Professor Tyndall said of this discovery: “Without
-knowing the cause, the brewer not unfrequently incurred heavy
-losses through the use of bad yeast. Five minutes’ examination with
-the microscope would have revealed to him the cause of the badness,
-and prevented him from using the yeast. He would have seen the true
-torula overpowered by foreign intruders. The microscope is, I believe
-now everywhere in use. At Burton-on-Trent its aid was very soon,
-invoked.”</p>
-
-<p>The brewer has, therefore, to keep his wort free
-from foreign organisms <span class="xxpn" id="p443">{443}</span>
-other than the yeast plant. When the wort is boiled, any harmful
-organisms it may contain are killed, and it can be indefinitely preserved
-even in a high temperature, provided the air with which it comes in
-contact is free from the germs of the lower microscopic organisms.
-Pasteur’s son-in-law, in the account he has written of the great <i>savant’s</i>
-life and labours, says that some brewers have constructed an apparatus
-which enables them to protect the wort while it cools from the organisms
-of the air and to ferment it with a leaven as pure as possible. At the
-Exhibition of Amsterdam were shown bottles only half full, containing
-a perfectly clear beer which had been tapped from the opening of the
-Exhibition.</p>
-
-<p>As the causes of disease in beer are much the same as in wine, the
-same preservative—heating—may be applied. But beer differs from
-still wines in containing carbonic acid gas which heat displaces, and as
-beer which has lost its briskness is not pleasant drinking, it can only be
-advantageously so treated when contained in bottles. Both in Europe
-and America, says M. Pasteur’s son-in-law, the heating of beer is
-practised on a large scale. The process is called <i>Pasteuration</i> and the
-beer <i>Pasteurised</i> beer.</p>
-
-<p>A very high temperature, as we have shown, kills the germs of
-disease in wine and beer. Extreme cold has the effect of indefinitely
-suspending the action of the ferment. A moderate temperature seems
-most favourable to the action of the organisms which work the wondrous
-changes in the wort. In England beer is usually fermented at a
-temperature of between 60° and 70° Fahr., and the process only lasts a
-day or two. In Germany the general practice is to ferment at about
-40°, a temperature maintained by means of vessels containing ice, which
-are thrown into the fermenting tuns. This lower temperature checks
-the action of the ferment and the process lasts for fifteen or even twenty
-days.</p>
-
-<p>The only other point to be noticed here in connection with fermentation
-is the peculiar fact discovered by Pasteur, that the organisms
-causing the ferment can live without air. When the wort is in the
-fermenting tun, the sides of the tun, together with the heavy carbonic
-acid gas hanging over the surface of the wort, exclude all air
-from the organisms, which can only obtain a small amount of oxygen
-from the liquid. There is, in fact, life without air. Pasteur made some
-interesting experiments which showed that there was a great difference
-in the action of the organisms according as they were placed in deep
-vats, cut off from the air by the carbonic acid gas,
-or in flat-bottomed <span class="xxpn" id="p444">{444}</span>
-wooden troughs with sides a few inches high. In this latter situation
-the life of the ferment seemed enhanced, but the amount of sugar
-decomposed by the organisms was proportionately different from that
-decomposed in the vats. In the vats one ounce of ferment decomposed
-from seventy to a hundred and fifty ounces of sugar, while in the troughs
-the same quantity of ferment decomposed only five or six ounces of
-sugar. The experiment showed that the more the yeast was exposed
-to the air, the less was its power as a ferment, and that there is a
-remarkable relation between fermentation and life without air.</p>
-
-<div class="dkeeptgth">
-<p>Dumas once said to Pasteur before the Academy of Sciences: “You
-have discovered a third kingdom—the kingdom to which those
-organisms belong which, with all the prerogatives of animal life, do not
-require air for their existence, and which find the heat that is necessary
-for them in the chemical decompositions which they set up around
-them.”</p>
-<div class="padtopa">
-<div class="dctr11">
-<img src="images/p444.png" width="144" height="50" alt="" /></div>
-</div></div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="dctr03">
-<img src="images/p445.png" width="456" height="142" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h2 class="h2herein" id="p445">INDEX.</h2></div>
-
-<div id="id-index">
-<ul>
-<li class="liindexdiv">A.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Adulteration of Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p423" title="go to p. 423">423</a>–4</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale Drinkers, Great
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p421" title="go to p. 421">421</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale, English, on the Continent
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p414" title="go to p. 414">414</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-bench, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p190" title="go to p. 190">190</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-berry, or Ale-brue
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p383" title="go to p. 383">383</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-bush, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p216" title="go to p. 216">216</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-conners
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p106" title="go to p. 106">106</a>, <a href="#p109" title="go to p. 109">109</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-draper
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p190" title="go to p. 190">190</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-founder
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p107" title="go to p. 107">107</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-gafol
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p035" title="go to p. 35">35</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-garland, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p216" title="go to p. 216">216</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-house Lattices
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p188" title="go to p. 188">188</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-house Poetry
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p226" title="go to p. 226">226</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-houses in Mediæval Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p187" title="go to p. 187">187</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-houses in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p188" title="go to p. 188">188</a>, <a href="#p191" title="go to p. 191">191</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-houses, Suppression of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p110" title="go to p. 110">110</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-pole, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p216" title="go to p. 216">216</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-sellers in fourteenth century, Tricks by
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p039" title="go to p. 39">39</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-stake
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p108" title="go to p. 108">108</a>, <a href="#p215" title="go to p. 215">215</a>, <a href="#p219" title="go to p. 219">219</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-taster
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p109" title="go to p. 109">109</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-wives
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p104" title="go to p. 104">104</a>, <a href="#p124" title="go to p. 124">124</a>–6, <a href="#p128" title="go to p. 128">128</a>–9, <a href="#p134" title="go to p. 134">134</a>, <a href="#p192" title="go to p. 192">192</a>, <a href="#p215" title="go to p. 215">215</a>, <a href="#p314" title="go to p. 314">314</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Ale-wife’s Supplication</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p129" title="go to p. 129">129</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ale-yard, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p401" title="go to p. 401">401</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Alice Everade, a Brewster
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p104" title="go to p. 104">104</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>All is ours and our Husbands</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p112img" title="go to p. 112">112</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Allsopp and Sons, Messrs.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p336" title="go to p. 336">336</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ancient Britons, Use of Beer by the
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p001" title="go to p. 1">1</a>, <a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Angel at Islington, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p198" title="go to p. 198">198</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Answer of Ale to the Challenge of Sack</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p008" title="go to p. 8">8</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Apricot Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p386" title="go to p. 386">386</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Arboga, Beer of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p181" title="go to p. 181">181</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Armenia, Xenophon’s account of Beer in 401 <span class="smmaj">B.C.</span>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p027" title="go to p. 27">27</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Arraigning and Indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, Knight</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p020" title="go to p. 20">20</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Assize of Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p099" title="go to p. 99">99</a>, <a href="#p102" title="go to p. 102">102</a>–3, <a href="#p129" title="go to p. 129">129</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Atkinson, Richard, Advice to Lord Dacre
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p008" title="go to p. 8">8</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">B.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb"><i>Bacchanalian Joys Defeated</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p192" title="go to p. 192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">“Baiersk öl”
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p180" title="go to p. 180">180</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Ballad on Ale</i>, Gay’s
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p438" title="go to p. 438">438</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Banbury Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p171" title="go to p. 171">171</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Baptism in Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p038" title="go to p. 38">38</a>, <a href="#p401" title="go to p. 401">401</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Barclay, Perkins &amp; Co.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p341" title="go to p. 341">341</a>, <a href="#p368" title="go to p. 368">368</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Barrel of Humming Ale, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p012" title="go to p. 12">12</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Barnstable Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p172" title="go to p. 172">172</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bass, Ratcliffe and Gretton, Messrs.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p343" title="go to p. 343">343</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bavarian Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p180" title="go to p. 180">180</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bede-ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p099" title="go to p. 99">99</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Beer</i>, an American Poem
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p013" title="go to p. 13">13</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Beer Brewers, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p143" title="go to p. 143">143</a>, <a href="#p147" title="go to p. 147">147</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Beer Powders
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p176" title="go to p. 176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Beer Street, Hogarth’s
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p016" title="go to p. 16">16</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Beer, the Temperance Drink
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p016" title="go to p. 16">16</a>, <a href="#p018" title="go to p. 18">18</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bees, Beer used in taking Swarms of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p403" title="go to p. 403">403</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ben Jonson
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p205" title="go to p. 205">205</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Beowulf</i>, Mention of Ale in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p033" title="go to p. 33">33</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bid-ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Birthday Ode, A</i>, by Peter Pindar
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p357" title="go to p. 357">357</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bitter Beer, ancient cure for Leprosy among the Jews
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p026" title="go to p. 26">26</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Black Boy Inn, Chelmsford, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p220" title="go to p. 220">220</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Black Jacks
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p396" title="go to p. 396">396</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Blackberry Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p386" title="go to p. 386">386</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Blind Pinneaux
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p203" title="go to p. 203">203</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Boorde, Andrew, on Ale and Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p006" title="go to p. 6">6</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Boozer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p026" title="go to p. 26">26</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Borage
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p390" title="go to p. 390">390</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Boswell, Anecdote of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p292" title="go to p. 292">292</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bottled Beer, Origin of, etc.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p178" title="go to p. 178">178</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bragget: Bragawd
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p171" title="go to p. 171">171</a>, <a href="#p378" title="go to p. 378">378</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brasenose College Poems, and Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p007" title="go to p. 7">7</a>, <a href="#p165" title="go to p. 165">165</a>, <a href="#p389" title="go to p. 389">389</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Breakfast, Ale at
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p274" title="go to p. 274">274</a>, <a href="#p275" title="go to p. 275">275</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Brewer’s Coachman, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p148" title="go to p. 148">148</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewers’ Company, Historical Notes on the, etc.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p134" title="go to p. 134">134</a>, <a href="#p137" title="go to p. 137">137</a>, <a href="#p143" title="go to p. 143">143</a>, <a href="#p147" title="go to p. 147">147</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewers of old London, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p123" title="go to p. 123">123</a>, <a href="#p146" title="go to p. 146">146</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Brewers’ Plea; or, a Vindication of Strong Beer</i> (1647)
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p116" title="go to p. 116">116</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewhouse (German) of the sixteenth century
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p131" title="go to p. 131">131</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewhouse in sixteenth century, Contents of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p056" title="go to p. 56">56</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewing at the present day
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p331" title="go to p. 331">331</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewing in a Teapot
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p002" title="go to p. 2">2</a>, <a href="#p339" title="go to p. 339">339</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewing Trade in 1297, Legislation concerning the
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p134" title="go to p. 134">134</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewing Trade, Regulations for, in the fifteenth century
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p104" title="go to p. 104">104</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brewsters
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p100" title="go to p. 100">100</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Bride-Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p269" title="go to p. 269">269</a>, <a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Brown Betty
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p389" title="go to p. 389">389</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">βρυτον, “Britain” derived from
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p031" title="go to p. 31">31</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Bryng us in Good Ale</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p230" title="go to p. 230">230</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Burton Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p160" title="go to p. 160">160</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Burton Ale</i>; a Song
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p161" title="go to p. 161">161</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Burton-on-Trent, Historical Account of, etc.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p335" title="go to p. 335">335</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Butler’s Ale, Dr.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p413" title="go to p. 413">413</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Buttered Beere
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a>, <a href="#p413" title="go to p. 413">413</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Buxton, Jedediah, a Great Beer Drinker
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p293" title="go to p. 293">293</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">C.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Cakes and Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p043" title="go to p. 43">43</a>, <a href="#p239" title="go to p. 239">239</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cambridge Ale at Stourbridge Fair
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p105" title="go to p. 105">105</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Castle Coombe, Ancient Regulations concerning Brewing at
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p107" title="go to p. 107">107</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Caton, Cornelius, of the White Lion, Richmond
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p194" title="go to p. 194">194</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cereris Vinum
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cerevisia
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Charity, Ale Distributed in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p184" title="go to p. 184">184</a>, <a href="#p278" title="go to p. 278">278</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Chaucer’s Reference to Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p040" title="go to p. 40">40</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Chavelier de Malte, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p149" title="go to p. 149">149</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Chester Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p162" title="go to p. 162">162</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">China Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p386" title="go to p. 386">386</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Christian Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p271" title="go to p. 271">271</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Christmas Carol, An Ancient
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p263" title="go to p. 263">263</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Christmas Customs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p239" title="go to p. 239">239</a>, <a href="#p264" title="go to p. 264">264</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Christopher North’s Brewhouse
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p061" title="go to p. 61">61</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Church Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p239" title="go to p. 239">239</a>, <a href="#p266" title="go to p. 266">266</a>–70</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Churches, Ale Sold in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Clamber-clown
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Clerk Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p270" title="go to p. 270">270</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cobbett on Homebrew, in 1821,
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p046" title="go to p. 46">46</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cock Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cock Tavern, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p209" title="go to p. 209">209</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cœlia
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Coggie o’ Yill</i>, a Song
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p329" title="go to p. 329">329</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cold Tankard
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p390" title="go to p. 390">390</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Collistrigium
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p101" title="go to p. 101">101</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Complete Angler, The</i>, Sold under the King’s Head Tavern
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p205" title="go to p. 205">205</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Consumption cured by Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p414" title="go to p. 414">414</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cookery, Beer used in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p403" title="go to p. 403">403</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cooperage, sixteenth century, A
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p334" title="go to p. 334">334</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cooper, Origin of the Drink
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p375" title="go to p. 375">375</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Coopers, Brewers forbidden to act as
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p113" title="go to p. 113">113</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Coopers of Old London
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p139" title="go to p. 139">139</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Copus-Cup
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p391" title="go to p. 391">391</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cornhill, The Taverns of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p203" title="go to p. 203">203</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cost of Brewing in the sixteenth century
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p057" title="go to p. 57">57</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cotswold Games, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p247" title="go to p. 247">247</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Country Sports and Pastimes, Herrick upon
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p233" title="go to p. 233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cowslip Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p386" title="go to p. 386">386</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Crown and Anchor, Strand, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p211" title="go to p. 211">211</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cucking Stool, A Punishment for Ale-wives
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p102" title="go to p. 102">102</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cuckoo Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Curmi
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Cwrw
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">D.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Darby Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p162" title="go to p. 162">162</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Dawson, John, Butler of Christchurch, Oxford
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p167" title="go to p. 167">167</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Derivations of “Ale” and “Beer”
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p032" title="go to p. 32">32</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Devil Inn, Fleet Street, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p208" title="go to p. 208">208</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Dietetic uses of Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p273" title="go to p. 273">273</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Dinton Hermit, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p277" title="go to p. 277">277</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Distinctions between Ale and Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p006" title="go to p. 6">6</a>, <a href="#p032" title="go to p. 32">32</a>, <a href="#p152" title="go to p. 152">152</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Dogsnose
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p388" title="go to p. 388">388</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">“<i>Doll thi, doll, doll this Ale, dole</i>”
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p404" title="go to p. 404">404</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Domestic uses of Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p403" title="go to p. 403">403</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Donaldson’s Beer-cup
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p391" title="go to p. 391">391</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Dorchester Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p172" title="go to p. 172">172</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Dover’s Games
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p247" title="go to p. 247">247</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Drinke and Welcome</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p004" title="go to p. 4">4</a>, <a href="#p041" title="go to p. 41">41</a>, <a href="#p147" title="go to p. 147">147</a>, <a href="#p153" title="go to p. 153">153</a>, <a href="#p158" title="go to p. 158">158</a>, <a href="#p161" title="go to p. 161">161</a>, <a href="#p188" title="go to p. 188">188</a>, <a href="#p414" title="go to p. 414">414</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Drinking Customs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p279" title="go to p. 279">279</a>, <a href="#p280" title="go to p. 280">280</a>, <a href="#p290" title="go to p. 290">290</a>, <a href="#p383" title="go to p. 383">383</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Drinking Vessels
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p393" title="go to p. 393">393</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Drink-Lean
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p247" title="go to p. 247">247</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Drunkenness in Olden Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p108" title="go to p. 108">108</a>, <a href="#p114" title="go to p. 114">114</a>, <a href="#p116" title="go to p. 116">116</a>, <a href="#p282" title="go to p. 282">282</a>, <a href="#p292" title="go to p. 292">292</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">E.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Early Closing, temp. Edward I.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p109" title="go to p. 109">109</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Edinburgh Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p169" title="go to p. 169">169</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Egg-Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p387" title="go to p. 387">387</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Egg-hot
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p388" title="go to p. 388">388</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Egypt, Ancient use of Beer in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p025" title="go to p. 25">25</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Egypt, Suppression of Beer Shops in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p001" title="go to p. 1">1</a>, <a href="#p025" title="go to p. 25">25</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Elderberry Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p386" title="go to p. 386">386</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">English Ale, famous among foreigners in fourteenth century
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p037" title="go to p. 37">37</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Epitaphs on Ale-drinkers, Brewers, and Innkeepers
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p150" title="go to p. 150">150</a>, <a href="#p164" title="go to p. 164">164</a>, <a href="#p196" title="go to p. 196">196</a>, <a href="#p208" title="go to p. 208">208</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Eucharist, use of Ale in the Administration of the
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p402" title="go to p. 402">402</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Everlasting Club, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p214" title="go to p. 214">214</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Export of Ale in Ancient Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p113" title="go to p. 113">113</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Extraordinary Tithes
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p091" title="go to p. 91">91</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">F.
-
-<ul>
-<li class="lihangb">Falcon Inn, Chester, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p197" title="go to p. 197">197</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Falcon Tavern, Bankside, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p205" title="go to p. 205">205</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Farmer’s Delight in the Merry Harvest, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p253" title="go to p. 253">253</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Farmer’s Return, Hogarth’s
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p045" title="go to p. 45">45</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Fever Cases cured by Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p415" title="go to p. 415">415</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Fire, Ale used to Extinguish
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p407" title="go to p. 407">407</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Fish, Ale used as Food for
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p402" title="go to p. 402">402</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Fishing Lines, Ale used to Stain
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p402" title="go to p. 402">402</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Flip
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p388" title="go to p. 388">388</a>, <a href="#p389" title="go to p. 389">389</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Foot Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p273" title="go to p. 273">273</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Fowls, Beer as a Drink for
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p403" title="go to p. 403">403</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Foxcomb
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Francis Francis on Bitter Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p005" title="go to p. 5">5</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Freemason’s Cup
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p391" title="go to p. 391">391</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Frozen Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p169" title="go to p. 169">169</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Furry Day at Helston, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p244" title="go to p. 244">244</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">G.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Gentleman’s Cellar of the twelfth century
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p052" title="go to p. 52">52</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">George Inn, Salisbury, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p196" title="go to p. 196">196</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">German Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p178" title="go to p. 178">178</a>, <a href="#p180" title="go to p. 180">180</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Geste of Kyng Horn</i>, Extract from
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p032" title="go to p. 32">32</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Gin Lane, Hogarth’s
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p017" title="go to p. 17">17</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Give Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Glutton-Masses
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p286" title="go to p. 286">286</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Good Ale for my Money</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p317" title="go to p. 317">317</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Grace-cup, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p384" title="go to p. 384">384</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Grains
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p145" title="go to p. 145">145</a>, <a href="#p403" title="go to p. 403">403</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Grand Concern of England, etc., The</i> (1673)
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p118" title="go to p. 118">118</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Greyheards, Anecdote of the
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p398" title="go to p. 398">398</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Grout Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p164" title="go to p. 164">164</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Guild Feasts
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p271" title="go to p. 271">271</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Guinness, Messrs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p348" title="go to p. 348">348</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Gustator Cervisiæ
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p107" title="go to p. 107">107</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">H.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Hacket, Marian, Ale-wife
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p128" title="go to p. 128">128</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Hal-an-low</i>, The; a Song
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p244" title="go to p. 244">244</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Halders, Dame, of Norwich, Ale-wife, Anecdote of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p192" title="go to p. 192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hanaps
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p395" title="go to p. 395">395</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Harrison on Homebrew and Malting in 1587, <a href="#p054" title="go to p. 54">54</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Harvest Home Customs and Songs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p256" title="go to p. 256">256</a>–9</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Harwood, Ralph, supposed Inventor of Porter
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p366" title="go to p. 366">366</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Haymaker’s Song, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p252" title="go to p. 252">252</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Health to all Good Fellowes</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p325" title="go to p. 325">325</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Heather Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p175" title="go to p. 175">175</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Heaving
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p241" title="go to p. 241">241</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Help Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Herodotus on Egyptian Brewing
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p025" title="go to p. 25">25</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Herrick
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p015" title="go to p. 15">15</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hicks, William, Brewer to the King
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p149" title="go to p. 149">149</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>High and Mightie Commendation of a Pot of Good Ale</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p071" title="go to p. 71">71</a>, <a href="#p320" title="go to p. 320">320</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Highgate Oath, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p198" title="go to p. 198">198</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hobby Horse Dance
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p239" title="go to p. 239">239</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hock-Cart, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p254" title="go to p. 254">254</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hock-tide
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p241" title="go to p. 241">241</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hollowing Bottle, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p255" title="go to p. 255">255</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Homebrew and Malting, Earliest Account of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p047" title="go to p. 47">47</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-bine Ensilage
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p082" title="go to p. 82">82</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-Gardens of England
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p087" title="go to p. 87">87</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-Growers’ Troubles
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p089" title="go to p. 89">89</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-growing countries of Europe
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p087" title="go to p. 87">87</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-Pickers
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p092" title="go to p. 92">92</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-poles and wires
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p088" title="go to p. 88">88</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-Searchers
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p070" title="go to p. 70">70</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-Substitutes
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p078" title="go to p. 78">78</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hop-Substitutes, Anecdote
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p425" title="go to p. 425">425</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops, Early Introduction into England of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p067" title="go to p. 67">67</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops, Early Mention of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p066" title="go to p. 66">66</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops in America and Australia
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p087" title="go to p. 87">87</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops in Saxon times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p066" title="go to p. 66">66</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops, Legislation concerning
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p073" title="go to p. 73">73</a>, <a href="#p078" title="go to p. 78">78</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops, Medicinal uses of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p085" title="go to p. 85">85</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops, Mention of, in the City Records
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p068" title="go to p. 68">68</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops, Prosecutions for using
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p069" title="go to p. 69">69</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hops, Various uses of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p082" title="go to p. 82">82</a>, <a href="#p084" title="go to p. 84">84</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Horkey Beer, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p256" title="go to p. 256">256</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Horses’ Feet Washed with Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p402" title="go to p. 402">402</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hospitality in England in Early Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p183" title="go to p. 183">183</a>, <a href="#p190" title="go to p. 190">190</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hot Pint
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p237" title="go to p. 237">237</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hot Pot
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p388" title="go to p. 388">388</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>How Mault doth deale with Everyone</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p301" title="go to p. 301">301</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Huff-cap
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p156" title="go to p. 156">156</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Huff-cup
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p421" title="go to p. 421">421</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hugmatee
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hum-cup
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p158" title="go to p. 158">158</a>, <a href="#p388" title="go to p. 388">388</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Humming Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p158" title="go to p. 158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Humpty-Dumpty
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Humulus Japonicus
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p082" title="go to p. 82">82</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hungerford Park, A Beer Cup
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p391" title="go to p. 391">391</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hymele
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p066" title="go to p. 66">66</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Hypocras
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p384" title="go to p. 384">384</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">I.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Ind, Coope &amp; Co., Messrs.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p351" title="go to p. 351">351</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Inn-keepers, Anecdotes of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p192" title="go to p. 192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ireland, Malt Liquors in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p030" title="go to p. 30">30</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Isaak Walton on Barley Wine
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p191" title="go to p. 191">191</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">J.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Jillian of Berry, Ale-wife
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p128" title="go to p. 128">128</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Johnson, Dr.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p182" title="go to p. 182">182</a>, <a href="#p209" title="go to p. 209">209</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Jolly Good Ale and Old</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p011" title="go to p. 11">11</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">K.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Kentish Hop Gardens, Origin of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p070" title="go to p. 70">70</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Kent, Restrictive Enactment on Malting and Brewing in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p110" title="go to p. 110">110</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>King James and the Tinkler</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p405" title="go to p. 405">405</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Knock-me-down
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">L.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Laboragol
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p164" title="go to p. 164">164</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Labouring Classes, Advantage of Ale to
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p425" title="go to p. 425">425</a>, <a href="#p433" title="go to p. 433">433</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Lager Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p179" title="go to p. 179">179</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Lamb-Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Lambswool
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p381" title="go to p. 381">381</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p117img" title="go to p. 117">117</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Lamentations of the Porter Vat, etc.</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p371" title="go to p. 371">371</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Leet Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Licensing Laws in Ancient Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p113" title="go to p. 113">113</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Little Barley-Corn, The</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p303" title="go to p. 303">303</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">London Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p160" title="go to p. 160">160</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>London Chanticleers, The</i>, Song from
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p306" title="go to p. 306">306</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">London Taverns
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p183" title="go to p. 183">183</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Lord of the Tap
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p105" title="go to p. 105">105</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Loving-Cup, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p384" title="go to p. 384">384</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Lupuline
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p080" title="go to p. 80">80</a>, <a href="#p086" title="go to p. 86">86</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Lupus Salictarius</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p065" title="go to p. 65">65</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">M.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Magpie and Crown, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p221" title="go to p. 221">221</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Malt Liquor <i>v.</i> Cheap French Wines
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p010" title="go to p. 10">10</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Malt, Medicinal Preparations of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p417" title="go to p. 417">417</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Malt, Sermon on
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p289" title="go to p. 289">289</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Malting and Brewing by Women Servants in 1610, <a href="#p047" title="go to p. 47">47</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Malting in Early Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p120" title="go to p. 120">120</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Manchester Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p162" title="go to p. 162">162</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mary-Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p273" title="go to p. 273">273</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Maule, Mr. Justice, Anecdote of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p376" title="go to p. 376">376</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">May-Day Customs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p241" title="go to p. 241">241</a>–5</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Measures, Legislation concerning
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p101" title="go to p. 101">101</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Medical Opinions, Ancient and Modern, on Ale and Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p403" title="go to p. 403">403</a>, <a href="#p408" title="go to p. 408">408</a>, <a href="#p419" title="go to p. 419">419</a>, <a href="#p433" title="go to p. 433">433</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mermaid in Bread Street, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p206" title="go to p. 206">206</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Merry Bagpipes</i>, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p251img" title="go to p. 251">251</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Merry Fellows, The</i>, a Song
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p290" title="go to p. 290">290</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Merry Hoastess, The</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p308" title="go to p. 308">308</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Meux’s, Bursting of the Great Vat, etc.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p368" title="go to p. 368">368</a>, <a href="#p371" title="go to p. 371">371</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Midsummer-Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mitre, Fleet Street, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p210" title="go to p. 210">210</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Monasteries, Entertainment at
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p183" title="go to p. 183">183</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Monday’s Work</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p326" title="go to p. 326">326</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Monks as Brewers and Beer-drinkers
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p037" title="go to p. 37">37</a>, <a href="#p041" title="go to p. 41">41</a>, <a href="#p050" title="go to p. 50">50</a>, <a href="#p096" title="go to p. 96">96</a>, <a href="#p285" title="go to p. 285">285</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Morocco, A Strong Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p169" title="go to p. 169">169</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Moss Ale, Irish
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p176" title="go to p. 176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mother-in-Law
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p392" title="go to p. 392">392</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mother Louse, Ale-wife
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p129" title="go to p. 129">129</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Muggling
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p290" title="go to p. 290">290</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mug House Club, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p213" title="go to p. 213">213</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mulled Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p378" title="go to p. 378">378</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Mum
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p172" title="go to p. 172">172</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">N.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb"><i>Newcastle Beer</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p168" title="go to p. 168">168</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Newcastle Cloak
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p116" title="go to p. 116">116</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Newe from Bartholomew Fayre</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p203" title="go to p. 203">203</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Newnton, Curious Custom at
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p271" title="go to p. 271">271</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Nippitatum: Strong Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p157" title="go to p. 157">157</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Norfolk Ales—Norfolk Nog
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p171" title="go to p. 171">171</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Northdown Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p162" title="go to p. 162">162</a>, <a href="#p171" title="go to p. 171">171</a>, <a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">North, Florence, Ale-wife
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p215" title="go to p. 215">215</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Norwegian Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p180" title="go to p. 180">180</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Nottingham Ale</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p162" title="go to p. 162">162</a>, <a href="#p167" title="go to p. 167">167</a>, <a href="#p210" title="go to p. 210">210</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">O.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">October Club, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p212" title="go to p. 212">212</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Ode to Sir John Barleycorn</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p020" title="go to p. 20">20</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Old Ale, The: an Anecdote
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p015" title="go to p. 15">15</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Old Parr
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p421" title="go to p. 421">421</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Origin of Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p025" title="go to p. 25">25</a>, <a href="#p042" title="go to p. 42">42</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Origin of Beer, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p029" title="go to p. 29">29</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Origin of Inns, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p185" title="go to p. 185">185</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">P.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb"><i>Panala Alacatholica</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p412" title="go to p. 412">412</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Panegyric on Ale</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p165" title="go to p. 165">165</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Panegyric on Oxford Ale</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p013" title="go to p. 13">13</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Parnell, Paul, A Great Beer Drinker
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p059" title="go to p. 59">59</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Parsons, Humphrey, Brewer and Lord Mayor
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p149" title="go to p. 149">149</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Parson, The</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p287" title="go to p. 287">287</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Parsonage Alehouses
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p187" title="go to p. 187">187</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Parting Cup, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p389" title="go to p. 389">389</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Pasteur’s Discoveries
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p441" title="go to p. 441">441</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Patent Brown Stout</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p369" title="go to p. 369">369</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Peg-tankards
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p097" title="go to p. 97">97</a>, <a href="#p394" title="go to p. 394">394</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Pennilesse Pilgrimage, Taylor’s
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p162" title="go to p. 162">162</a>, <a href="#p169" title="go to p. 169">169</a>, <a href="#p190" title="go to p. 190">190</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p073" title="go to p. 73">73</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Pharaoh
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p158" title="go to p. 158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Philosopher’s Banquet</i>, Extract from
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p044" title="go to p. 44">44</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Pig Drinking Ale out of a Jug
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p015" title="go to p. 15">15</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Pledging
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p383" title="go to p. 383">383</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Pliny on German Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Plough Monday
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p240" title="go to p. 240">240</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Plum-pudding Weighing 1,000 lbs., The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p203" title="go to p. 203">203</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Pointes of Good Huswiferie</i>, Extract from
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p056" title="go to p. 56">56</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Pope Innocent III., Anecdote of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p036" title="go to p. 36">36</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Porter at Oxford
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p367" title="go to p. 367">367</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Porter Drinkers, Actors and Actresses as
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p374" title="go to p. 374">374</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Porter in Ireland
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p373" title="go to p. 373">373</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Porter, Origin of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p365" title="go to p. 365">365</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Porter, Professor Wilson on
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p370" title="go to p. 370">370</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Posset Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Pot of Porter oh&#x202f;! A</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p376" title="go to p. 376">376</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Proverbs of Hendyng (thirteenth century)
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p038" title="go to p. 38">38</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Purl
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p387" title="go to p. 387">387</a>, <a href="#p389" title="go to p. 389">389</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Pye upon the Pear Tree Top, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p256" title="go to p. 256">256</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">Q.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Queen Elizabeth’s Breakfast
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p275" title="go to p. 275">275</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Quod Petis Hic Est</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p328" title="go to p. 328">328</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">R.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb"><i>Rape of Lucrece, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p204" title="go to p. 204">204</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Receipts for Keeping and Flavouring Homebrew
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p062" title="go to p. 62">62</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Rents Paid in Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p035" title="go to p. 35">35</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Rheumatism cured by New Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p416" title="go to p. 416">416</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Robin Rough, the Plowboy</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p426" title="go to p. 426">426</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Rouen, English Beer at, in 1582, <a href="#p113" title="go to p. 113">113</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Roxburghe Ballads</i>, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p295" title="go to p. 295">295</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Ruddle
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p388" title="go to p. 388">388</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Rumyng, Eleanor
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p126" title="go to p. 126">126</a>, <a href="#p216" title="go to p. 216">216</a>, <a href="#p223" title="go to p. 223">223</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Russia, Burton Ale Exported to
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p338" title="go to p. 338">338</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Russia, Burton Beer in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p181" title="go to p. 181">181</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">S.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Salt &amp; Co., Messrs.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p353" title="go to p. 353">353</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Saxon Leechdoms
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p151" title="go to p. 151">151</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Scarcity of labour in fourteenth century
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p039" title="go to p. 39">39</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Scot-Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p098" title="go to p. 98">98</a>, <a href="#p267" title="go to p. 267">267</a>, <a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Scotch Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p169" title="go to p. 169">169</a>, <a href="#p170" title="go to p. 170">170</a>, <a href="#p171" title="go to p. 171">171</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Scotland, Ale Brewing and Selling in Early Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p129" title="go to p. 129">129</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Scotland, Assize of Ale, etc., in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p129" title="go to p. 129">129</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Scurvy cured by Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p418" title="go to p. 418">418</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Senchus Mor</i>, References to Ale in the
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p030" title="go to p. 30">30</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Shakspere and Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p203" title="go to p. 203">203</a>, <a href="#p270" title="go to p. 270">270</a>, <a href="#p428" title="go to p. 428">428</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Shandy Gaff
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p392" title="go to p. 392">392</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Sheep-shearing Customs and Songs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p250" title="go to p. 250">250</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Sicera
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p026" title="go to p. 26">26</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Sign of the Red Lion, The, an Anecdote
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p229" title="go to p. 229">229</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Signboard and Alehouse Poetry
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p211" title="go to p. 211">211</a>, <a href="#p223" title="go to p. 223">223</a>–7</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Signboard Artists
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p228" title="go to p. 228">228</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Signboards
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p214" title="go to p. 214">214</a>–20</li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Sir John Barley-corne</i>, The Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p295" title="go to p. 295">295</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Skelton’s Ghost</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p110" title="go to p. 110">110</a>, <a href="#p153" title="go to p. 153">153</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Small Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p159" title="go to p. 159">159</a>, <a href="#p160" title="go to p. 160">160</a>, <a href="#p277" title="go to p. 277">277</a>, <a href="#p284" title="go to p. 284">284</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb" id="p449">Smoke Question in London, Early Mention of the
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p146" title="go to p. 146">146</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Songs of the Session</i>, Extract from
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p014" title="go to p. 14">14</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Sonnet on Christmas</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p262" title="go to p. 262">262</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Spiced Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p382" title="go to p. 382">382</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">St. Dunstan, Legend of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p097" title="go to p. 97">97</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Steen, Jan, Brewer, temp. Chas. II.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p148" title="go to p. 148">148</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Stephony
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Stickback
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Stiffle
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p385" title="go to p. 385">385</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Stout
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p374" title="go to p. 374">374</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Strength of Malt Liquors Compared
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p154" title="go to p. 154">154</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Sugar Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p177" title="go to p. 177">177</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Sulphuring of Hops
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p081" title="go to p. 81">81</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Sunday Closing in Early Times
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p115" title="go to p. 115">115</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Superstitions relating to Beer and Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p278" title="go to p. 278">278</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Swanne Taverne, The, by Charing Cross
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p207" title="go to p. 207">207</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Swift’s <i>Polite Conversation</i> on Homebrew
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p059" title="go to p. 59">59</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Symposii Ænigmata</i>, A Saxon Riddle
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p034" title="go to p. 34">34</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">T.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Tabard, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p200" title="go to p. 200">200</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Tapstere, The Chester
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p125" title="go to p. 125">125</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Taverns of Old London
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p188" title="go to p. 188">188</a>, <a href="#p203" title="go to p. 203">203</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Taxes on Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p038" title="go to p. 38">38</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Taylor’s, John, Signboard
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p211" title="go to p. 211">211</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Temperance Drinks
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p373" title="go to p. 373">373</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Temperance <i>v.</i> Total Abstinence
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p014" title="go to p. 14">14</a>, <a href="#p019" title="go to p. 19">19</a>, <a href="#p423" title="go to p. 423">423</a>, <a href="#p429" title="go to p. 429">429</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Tewahdiddle
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p389" title="go to p. 389">389</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Thames Water used in Brewing
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p122" title="go to p. 122">122</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Thrale’s Brewery
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p340" title="go to p. 340">340</a>, <a href="#p368" title="go to p. 368">368</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Time’s Alterations, or the Old Man’s Rehersal</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p396" title="go to p. 396">396</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Timothy Burrell, Extracts from the Journal of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p059" title="go to p. 59">59</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Tinker’s Song</i>, Herrick’s
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p291" title="go to p. 291">291</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Tithe Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p172" title="go to p. 172">172</a>, <a href="#p273" title="go to p. 273">273</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Toasting
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p383" title="go to p. 383">383</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Toby Philpot</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p399" title="go to p. 399">399</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Toll on Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p035" title="go to p. 35">35</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Toper, drink, and help the house</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p015" title="go to p. 15">15</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Treacle Beer
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p177" title="go to p. 177">177</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Treatise of Walter de Biblesworth</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p047" title="go to p. 47">47</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Trinity Audit
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p165" title="go to p. 165">165</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Truman, Hanbury, Buxton &amp; Co., Messrs.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p355" title="go to p. 355">355</a>, <a href="#p366" title="go to p. 366">366</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Tumbrel, Punishment of the
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p100" title="go to p. 100">100</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Tusser on Hops
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p076" title="go to p. 76">76</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Twelfth-day Customs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p238" title="go to p. 238">238</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Typhus-fever, Malt Liquor beneficial in
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p419" title="go to p. 419">419</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">V.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb"><i>Village Alehouse, The</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p186" title="go to p. 186">186</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Vinegar made from Malt Liquor
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p403" title="go to p. 403">403</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">W.
-
-<ul><li class="lihangb">Wadlow, Sim
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p208" title="go to p. 208">208</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Wages Paid Anciently in Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p036" title="go to p. 36">36</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Warme Beere</i>, Verses in Commendation of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p410" title="go to p. 410">410</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Warrington Ale</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p168" title="go to p. 168">168</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Wassail Bowl, The
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p380" title="go to p. 380">380</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Wassailing
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p234" title="go to p. 234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Wassailing the Fruit Trees
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p236" title="go to p. 236">236</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Weddyn Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p272" title="go to p. 272">272</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Welsh Ales
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p030" title="go to p. 30">30</a>, <a href="#p171" title="go to p. 171">171</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Weobley Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p127" title="go to p. 127">127</a>, <a href="#p171" title="go to p. 171">171</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Wheat Malt, Ancient Use of
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p105" title="go to p. 105">105</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Whitbread &amp; Co., Messrs.
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p359" title="go to p. 359">359</a>, <a href="#p368" title="go to p. 368">368</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">White Ale, Devonshire
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p163" title="go to p. 163">163</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Whitington and the London Brewers
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p135" title="go to p. 135">135</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Whitsuntide Ales and Customs
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p246" title="go to p. 246">246</a>, <a href="#p267" title="go to p. 267">267</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Will Russell</i>, a Ballad
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p195" title="go to p. 195">195</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb"><i>Wine, Beer, Ale and Tobacco; a Dialogue</i>
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p072" title="go to p. 72">72</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">“Wine is but Single Broth”
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p009" title="go to p. 9">9</a></li>
-
-<li class="lihangb">Women Brewers
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p124" title="go to p. 124">124</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">X.
-
-<ul><li>X, Origin of the Symbol
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p113" title="go to p. 113">113</a></li></ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv">Y.
-
-<ul><li>Yorkshire Ale
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p161" title="go to p. 161">161</a></li>
-
-<li><i>Yorkshire Ale, The Praise of</i>: A Poem
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p312" title="go to p. 312">312</a></li>
-</ul></li>
-
-<li class="liindexdiv" id="id-zythum">Z.
-
-<ul><li>Zythum
- .&#xa0;.&#xa0;.&#xa0;<a href="#p028" title="go to p. 28">28</a>
-
-<div class="dctr01">
-<img src="images/p449.png" width="600" height="162" alt="" /></div>
-</li>
-</ul></li></ul>
-
-</div><!--idindex-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="transnote">
-TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE.
-
-<p>Original spelling and grammar have been generally
-retained, with some exceptions noted below. Original
-printed page numbers are shown like this: {52}. Footnotes
-have been relabeled 1–75, and moved from within paragraphs
-to nearby locations between paragraphs. The transcriber
-produced the cover image and hereby assigns it to the
-public domain. Original page images are available from
-archive.org—search for “cu31924029894759”.</p>
-
-<p>The poetry indents are ap­prox­i­mate­ly cor­rect in lim­it­ed
-cir­cum­stances. The in­dents were measured and ad­just­ed using
-a mono­space font: “Adobe Source Code Pro”. Variable-width
-fonts will look less ac­cu­rate. Moreover, the poetry was
-orig­i­nal­ly printed on pages having text-width roughly 44em,
-again using the “Source Code Pro” for the measurement.
-Ebook browser screens that are narrower than roughly 25em
-will have dif­fi­culties with some of the longer poetry
-indents—but selection of a smaller
-font-size will improve this situation.</p>
-
-<ul id="transnotelist">
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p-ii" title="go to page ii">ii.</a></span>
-The third word of the caption seems
-to read “Bremhouſe” (printed in what appears to the
-transcriber to be a variety of <i>bastarda</i> script),
-but possibly should be “Brewhouſe”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p025" title="go to page 25">25</a>.</span>
-Changed “What ha&#xa0;h been” to “What hath been”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p027" title="go to page 27">27</a>.</span>
-Changed “οινος”—wherein the omicron was accented with psili
-and perispomeni—to “οἶνος”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p035" title="go to page 35">35</a>.</span>
-In the phrase “pay as toll to the lord &#xa0; gallons of ale”, a
-number was missing.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p035" title="go to page 35">35n.</a></span>
-The footnote read “1 The translation is taken from <i>Nineteen
-Centuries of Drink in England</i>.”, but there was no anchor on the page.
-Possibly this note refers to the <i>Symposium Ænigmata</i> that ends at the
-top of the page.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p038" title="go to page 38">38</a>.</span>
-The first footnote on the page had no anchor. A new anchor was
-installed after the word “male,”, on the second line of the poem.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p049" title="go to page 49">49</a>.</span>
-Closing quotation mark was added after the line “Parlom ore de
-autre chose.”</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page 74, 79.</span>
-These full-page illustrations have been moved out of
-their original locations inside poems to nearby locations below or
-above, and the corresponding page numbers have been removed. Full-page
-illustrations likewise situated in other places in the book have been
-likewise treated.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p085" title="go to page 85">85</a>.</span>
-Full stop was added after “sometimes when opium failed”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#fn41" title="go to footnote 41">100n.</a></span>
-There was no anchor for the footnote; a new one has been
-inserted after the word “brewster” at the top of the page.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#fn50" title="go to footnote 50">180n.</a></span>
-The footnote had no anchor. A new anchor has been inserted
-for this note, on page
-<a href="#p179" title="go to page 179">179</a>.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p184" title="go to page 184">184</a>.</span>
-Changed “religous” to “religious”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#fn51" title="go to footnote 51">208n.</a></span>
-The last word, partially illegible, is herein rendered
-“out.”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p235" title="go to page 235">235</a>.</span>
-The phrase “bring us a bowl of the bes” was changed to “bring
-us a bowl of the best,”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p264" title="go to page 264">264</a>.</span>
-Changed “carry ing over hilland dale” to “carrying over hill and dale”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p284" title="go to page 284">284</a>.</span>
-Changed “trusted, as we bear” to “trusted, as we hear”, and “strirre”
-to “stirre”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#fn63" title="go to footnote 63">325n.</a></span>
-A new footnote anchor was inserted after “he that made, made two.”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p342" title="go to page 342">342</a>.</span>
-Full stop added after “dilutes his clay”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p433" title="go to page 433">433</a>.</span>
-Changed “to live in a wine-growing,
-country will” to “to live in a wine-growing
-country, will”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p435" title="go to page 435">435</a>.</span>
-Changed “alcholic” to “alcoholic”.</p></li>
-
-<li><p class="pfirst"><span class="nowrap">
-Page <a href="#p449" title="go to page 449">449</a>.</span>
-Changed “Weobly Ale” to “Weobley Ale”.</p></li></ul>
-</div><!--transnote--></div><!--chapter-->
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURIOSITIES OF ALE &amp; BEER ***</div>
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