The honey-bee: its nature, homes and products

The sugar of various vegetables is susceptible of alcoholic fermentation; so from the sugar of malt we get beer, from that of the grape, wine. Honey is, as we have said, a substance containing sugar, which may also be made to yield a vinous liquor. Usually only the washings of drained combs are used up for the manufacture of mead. The saccharine extract is skimmed, strained, and boiled. Then a certain proportion of raisins is added, together with a little ground ginger, and a few bay or laurel leaves for flavouring. A small quantity of brewer's yeast sets up the necessary fermentation, and after the liquor has been put into a barrel, and allowed to "work" for two or three days, it is bunged up, and at the end of six months may be bottled, and soon afterwards will be fit for use. Of course, run honey may be used for the purpose, but its employment is a more expensive mode of manufacture.

Properly speaking, the word "metheglin" was applied to the superior sorts of mead, the two beverages being related much in the same way as effervescing bottled cider and the ordinary draught cider.

Mead-making seems anciently to have been considered a matter of great interest and importance, and we are told by old authors that the Court brewer of this beverage for Princes of Wales was the physician of the household, and ranked eleventh in point of dignity. Æthelstan, King of Kent in the tenth century, on paying a visit to his relative Æthelfleda, expressed his satisfaction that there was no stint of mead. According to an antique rule of the Welsh Court, there were "three things which must be communicated to the king before they were imparted to any other person. First, every sentence of the judge; second, every new song; and third, every cask of mead."

Queen Elizabeth was so fond of this beverage as to have it made regularly every year; and her recipe has been preserved to our own day. It may interest our readers to give it entire: "Take of sweetbriar leaves and thyme each one bushel, rosemary half a bushel, bay leaves one peck. Seethe these ingredients in a furnace full of water [containing probably not less than 120 gallons], boil for half an hour; pour the whole into a vat, and when cooled to a proper temperature [about 75° Fahr.], strain. Add to every six gallons of the strained liquor a gallon of fine honey, and work the mixture together for half an hour. Repeat the stirring occasionally for two days; then boil the liquor afresh, skim it till it becomes clear, and return it to the vat to cool. When reduced again to a proper temperature [about 80° Fahr.], pour it into a vessel from which fresh ale or beer has just been emptied; let it work for three days, and then barrel it. When fit [after fermentation] to be stopped down, tie up a bag of beaten cloves and mace [half an ounce of each], and suspend it in the liquor from the bung-hole. When it has stood for half a year, it will be fit for use."

Mead remained in favour long after the introduction of malt liquors, and the northern inhabitants of Europe drank it habitually till comparatively modern times. Even so late as Dryden's day, it would appear to have been in much more common use than now: for he says of its employment for tempering strong wines:—

It was probably the liquor called by Ossian the joy and strength of skulls, and which so much delighted his heroes. It was the ideal nectar of the Scandinavian nations, which they expected to drink in heaven, using the skulls of their enemies for goblets, while they were to regale themselves also on boars' flesh. So we read in Penrose's Carousal of Odin:—

A quantity of mead sufficient for the very mundane tastes of these celestial heroes was supposed to be daily supplied by a goat, called Heidruna, of whom Cottle says:—