NORTHERN DRINKING.
Beowulf—Ale—Beer—Mead—English Wine—The Mead Hall—Drinking Horns—Tosti and Harold—Pigment, etc.—The Clergy, etc., drinking—Northern Wine drinking—King Hunding—Brewing—Strange Drinking Vessels, and their Use—Punishment of Drunkards.
Sailing from the north, being lured to the south with visions of plunder and luxury, came the Danish and Norwegian Vikings, and, as England was the nearest to them, she received an early visit. With them they brought their habit of deep drinking, which was scarcely needed, as on that score the then inhabitants of England could pretty well hold their own. Their liquors seem to have been ale, ealu, beer, beor, wine, win, and mead, medo.
There was a difference between those that drank ale and those that drank beer, as we find in Beowulf[8]:—
“Full oft have promis’d,
with beer drunken,
Over the ale cup,
sons of conflict,
that they in the beer-hall
would await
Grendel’s warfare
with terrors of edges:
then was this mead-hall,
at morning tide,
this princely court, stain’d with gore;
when the day dawn’d,
all the bench-floor
with blood bestream’d,
the hall, with horrid gore;
of faithful followers I own’d the less,
of dear nobles,
who then death destroyed.
Sit now to the feast,
and unbind with mead
thy valiant breast with my warriors
as thy mind may excite.
Then was for the sons of the Goths
altogether
in the beer hall
a bench clear’d;
there the strong of soul
went to sit
tumultuously rejoicing:
the thane observ’d his duty,
who in his hand bare
the ornamented ale-cup,
he pour’d the bright, sweet liquor:
the gleeman sang at times
serene in Heorot:
there was joy of warriors,
no few nobles
of Danes and Weders.”
In Dugdale’s Monasticon (ed. 1682, p. 126), in a Charter of Offa to the Monastery of Westbury, three sorts of ale are mentioned. Two tuns full of hlutres aloth (Clear ale), a cumb full of lithes aloth (mild ale), and a cumb full of Welisces aloth (Welsh ale), which is again mentioned as cervisia Walliæ.
But though beer and ale were the drinks of the common folk, yet they were not despised by their leaders.
[9]“At times before the nobles
Hrothgar’s daughter
to the earls in order
the ale cup bore.”
We see the social difference between ale and wine drinkers in one of the Cotton MSS. (Tib. A. 3), where a lad having been asked what he drank replied: “Ale, if I have it; Water, if I have it not.” Asked why he does not drink wine, he says: “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 English at that time grew the Vine for wine-making purposes; indeed, very good wine can now be, and is, made from English grapes. Every monastery had its vineyard, and to this day London has six Vine Streets and one Vineyard Walk. The wine-hall seems to have been a different apartment to either the mead or ale-halls, and of a superior order.
[10]“The company all arose;
one man another
Hrothgar Beowulf,
and bade him hail,
gave him command of the wine-hall.”
...[11]
“He strode under the clouds,
until he the wine-house,
the golden hall of men,
most readily perceiv’d,
richly variegated.”
The mead-hall seems to have answered the purpose of a common hall, as we see by the following. Speaking of Hrothgar, the poet says:—
[12]“It ran through his mind
that he a hall-house
would command,
a great mead-house,
men to make,
which the sons of men
should ever hear of;
and there within
all distribute
to young and old,
as to him God had given,
except the people’s share,
and the lives of men.
Then I heard that widely
the work was proclaim’d
to many a tribe
through this mid-earth
that a public place was building.”
Mead was considered a glorified liquor fit for Men and is thus sung of by the bard Taliesin:—
“That Maelgwn of Mona be inspired with mead and cheer us with it,
From the mead-horn’s foaming, pure, and shining liquor,
Which the bees provide, but do not enjoy;
Mead distilled, I praise; its eulogy is everywhere
Precious to the creature whom the earth maintains.
God made it to man for his happiness,
The fierce and the mute both enjoy it.”
Mead was made from honey and water, fermented, and in many languages its name has a striking similarity. In Greek, honey is methu, in Sanskrit, madhu, and the drink made therefrom in Danish, is miod, in Anglo-Saxon, medu, in Welsh, medd, whence metheglyn—medd, mead, and llyn, liquor. In Beowulf we frequently find mention of the mead-horns, and we see it vividly portrayed in the heading of this chapter, which is taken from the Bayeux Tapestry. These horns were generally those of oxen, although some were made of ivory, and were probably used because fictile ware was so easily broken in those drinking bouts in which they so frequently indulged. Another reason was doubtless that they promoted conviviality, for, like the classical Rhyton, they could not be set down like a bowl, but must either be nursed, or their contents quaffed.
Many examples of drinking horns remain to us, and illustrations of two are here given: one that of Ulph, belonging to, and now kept at, York Minster, and the other the Pusey horn. These are veritable drinking horns; but there are many other tenure horns in existence, which are hunting horns.
The Pusey Horn.
This horn is an old tenure horn. It was once the custom, when making a gift of land, instead of making out a deed of gift, to present some article of personal use, such as a knife, a drinking or hunting horn, and with it the manor or land, the recipient keeping the present, as a proof that the land was given him. This Pusey horn is said to have been given by King Knut to William Pewse, and on the silver-gilt band, to which are appended dog’s legs and feet, is inscribed in Gothic letters—
“Kyng Knowde geve Wyllyam Pewse
This horne to holde by thy lond.”
It is an ox horn, dark brown, and is 25½ inches long, having a silver-gilt rim, and at the small end a hound’s head, also of silver-gilt, which unscrews, thus enabling it to be used either as a drinking or hunting horn.
Ulph’s horn is considered of somewhat later date, and is of ivory.
Ulph’s Horn.
Of this horn Dugdale[13] says: “About this time also, Ulphe, the son of Thorald, who ruled in the west of Deira,[14] by reason of the difference which was like to rise between his sons, about the sharing of his lands and lordships after his death, resolved to make them all alike; and thereupon, coming to York, with that horn wherewith he was used to drink, filled it with wine, and before the altar of God, and Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles, kneeling devoutly, drank the wine, and by that ceremony enfeoffed this church with all his lands and revenues. The figure of which horn, in memory thereof, is cut in stone upon several parts of the choir, but the horn itself, when the Reformation in King Edward the VIth’s time began, and swept away many costly ornaments belonging to this church, was sold to a goldsmith, who took away from it those tippings of gold wherewith it was adorned, and the gold chain affixed thereto; since which, the horn itself, being cut in ivory in an eight square form, came to the hands of Thomas, late Lord Fairfax.”
He, dying in 1671, it came into the possession of his next relation, Henry, Lord Fairfax, who restored its ornaments in silver-gilt, and restored it to the cathedral authorities. It bears the following inscription:—
“Cornv hoc, Vlphvs in occidentali parte
Deiræ princeps, vna cum omnibvs terris
et redditibvs suis olim donavit.
Amissvm vel abreptvm.
Henricvs dom. Fairfax demvm restitvit.
Dec. et capit. de novo ornavit.
A.D. MDC. LXXV.”
Most of us know Longfellow’s poem of King Witlaf’s drinking horn, a story which may be found in Ingulphus, who says that Witlaf, King of Mercia, who lived in the reign of Egbert, gave to the Abbey of Croyland the horn used at his own table, for the elder monks of the house to drink out of it on festivals and saints’ days, and that when they gave thanks, they might remember the soul of Witlaf the donor. That they had some horn of the kind is probable, for the same chronicler says that when the monastery was almost destroyed by fire, this horn was saved.
Besides the liquors above mentioned, the Anglo-Saxons had others, as we see in a passage of Henry of Huntingdon (lib. vi.), which is probably an invention, the same story being told by Florence of Worcester, of Caradoc, the son of Griffith, A.D. 1065. However, he says that in 1063, in the king’s palace at Winchester, Tosti seized his brother Harold by the hair, in the royal presence, and while he was serving the king with wine; for it had been a source of envy and hatred that the king showed a higher regard for Harold, though Tosti was the elder brother. Wherefore, in a sudden paroxysm of passion, he could not refrain from this attack on his brother.
Tosti departed from the king and his brother in great anger, and went to Hereford, where Harold had purveyed large supplies for the royal use. There he butchered all his brother’s servants, and inclosed a head and an arm in each of the vessels containing wine, mead, ale, pigment,[15] morat,[16] and cider, sending a message to the king that when he came to his farm he would find plenty of salt meat, and that he would bring more with him. For this horrible crime the king commanded him to be banished and outlawed.
There is no doubt but that the Anglo-Saxons drank to excess, and thought no shame of it. Many times in Beowulf are we told of their being dragged from the mead-benches by their enemies and slaughtered, and in a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon poem on Judith we read:—
“Then was Holofernes
Enchanted with the wine of men:
In the hall of the guests
He laughed and shouted,
He roared and dinn’d,
That the children of men might hear afar,
How the sturdy one
Stormed and clamoured,
Animated and elate with wine
He admonished amply
Those sitting on the bench
That they should bear it well.
So was the wicked one all day,
The lord and his men,
Drunk with wine;
The stern dispenser of wealth;
Till that they swimming lay
Over drunk.
All his nobility
As they were death slain,
Their property poured about.
So commanded the lord of men,
To fill to those sitting at the feast,
Till the dark night
Approached the children of men.”
Even the clergy and monks drank probably more than was good for them, for a priest was forbidden by law to eat or drink at places where ale was sold. But that did not prevent their drinking at home; their benefactors provided well for that, as one instance will show. Ethelwold allowed the Monastery of Abingdon a great bowl, from which the drinking vessels of the brothers were filled twice a day. At Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, the Nativity and Assumption of the Virgin, on the festivals of Saints Peter and Paul, and all the other saints, they were to have wine, as well as mead, twice a day; and taking the number of Saints in the Anglo-Saxon Calendar, it must have gone hard with them, if this was not almost an every-day occurrence.
The Northern nations did not lose their love of drink as time rolled on, as we may find in the pages of Olaus Magnus. They drank wine, but owing to the extreme cold it was not of native production, but imported. In this illustration we see the vessel that has brought it, and the bush outside, denoting that it was to be sold. They got it from Spain, Italy, France, and Germany, but he says that the wine most in repute was a Spanish wine called Bastard, which Shakspeare mentions more than once, as (1 Henry IV. act ii. sc. 4) Prince Henry relating his adventures with a drawer, says, “Anon, anon, sir! Score a pint of Bastard in the Half Moon.”
He gives receipts for making Hydromel, or Mead, which was to be made of one part honey, and four of boiling water, to be well stirred, boiled, and skimmed. Hops were then to be added, then casked, and brewers’ yeast added. Then to be strained, and it was fit for drinking in eight days. He tells a pathetic story of King Hunding, who being sorely grieved at the loss of his brother-in-law, Gutthorm, called all his nobility around him to a great feast, and had a large tun, filled with hydromel, placed in the middle of the hall. When his guests were sufficiently inebriated, he threw himself into the liquor, and died sweetly.
Beer had they, made of malt and hops, and he gives various methods of brewing, and also a list of divers beers and their medicinal qualities.
He also gives an illustration of various drinking vessels then (16th cent.) in use among the Danes and Swedes, where is here reproduced. Here we see some plain, others ornamental with runes, and some with very curious handles. He says they were mostly of brass, copper, or iron, because in that cold climate the liquor they held had to be warmed over the fire.
An old translation of a portion of his Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus gives the following account “Of the manner of drinking amongst the Northern People.”
“It will not displease curious Readers to hear how the custom is of drinking amongst the Northern People. First, they hold it Religion to drink the healths of Kings and Princes, standing, in reverence of them; and here they will, as it were, sweat in the contention, who shall at one or two, or more draughts, drink off a huge bowl. Wherefore they seem to sit at Table as if they had Crowns on their heads, and to drink in a certain kind of vessel; which, it may be, may cause men that know it not, to admire it. But that were more admirable to see the servants go in a long train, in troops, as Pastours of Harts with horns, that they may drink up those Cups full of beer to the Ghests. And, not content with these Ceremonies, they will strive to shew their Sobriety, by setting such a high Cup full of Beer upon their naked heads, and dance and turn round with it; in like manner they deliver other Cups which they bring in both hands to the Ghests to drink off, at equall draughts, which are full of Wine, Ale, Mede, Metheglin, or new Wine.”
He winds up with a moral dissertation on the punishment of drinkers, and, after detailing the various effects of alcohol on different races, as rendering the Gaul petulant, the German quarrelsome, the Goth obstreperous, and the Finn lachrymose, he suggests that drunkards should be seated on a sharp wedge, compelled to drink a mighty horn of beer, and then be hauled up and down by a rope.
J. A.
