CHAPTER X.
THE ALES. — ALE AT BREAKFAST. — BEQUESTS OF ALE. — DRINKING CUSTOMS. — A SERMON ON MALT. — EXCESSES OF THE CLERGY. — ANECDOTES.
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.
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 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}
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:
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 sd 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}
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
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:—
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):—
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:—
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.”
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—
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’).”
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.
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:—
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:—
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,
A Ballad ſuppoſed to be ſung by a young man who, having ſpent his money in Ale-houſes, offers ſome advice on the ſubject.
{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—
The love for the strong and the contempt for the small is illustrated in the well-known lines of the old song:—
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.”