They brewed a drink lang-syne,
’Twas sweeter far than honey,
’Twas stronger far than wine.”
The story goes that, after the bloody victory of the Scots under Kenneth MacAlpine, in 860, only two Picts who knew the secret of the brew survived the general slaughter. Some say they were father and son, some say they were master and man. When they were offered their lives in exchange for the recipe, the older captive said he dared not reveal it while the younger lived, lest he be slain in revenge. So the Scots tossed the lad into the sea, and waited expectantly. Then the last of the Picts cried, “I only know!” and leaped into the ocean and was drowned. It is a brave tale. One wonders if a man would die to save the secret of making milk-toast.
From the pages of history the prohibition-bred youth may glean much off-hand information about the wine which the wide world made and drank at every stage of civilization and decay. If, after the fashion of his kind, he eschews history, there are left to him encyclopædias, with their wealth of detail, and their paucity of intrinsic realities. Antiquarians also may be trusted to supply a certain number of papers on “leather drinking-vessels,” and “toasts of the old Scottish gentry.” But if the youth be one who browses untethered in the lush fields of English literature, taking prose and verse, fiction and fact, as he strays merrily along, what will he make of the hilarious company in which he finds himself? What of Falstaff, and the rascal, Autolycus, and of Sir Toby Belch, who propounded the fatal query which has been answered in 1919? What of Herrick’s “joy-sops,” and “capring wine,” and that simple and sincere “Thanksgiving” hymn which takes cognizance of all mercies?
“Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
The pulse is thine,
The worts, the purslane, and the mess
Of water-cress.
’Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth