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“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

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 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}

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.

5 Aesch. Supp. 953.

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 male12, 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.