The country clergymen, at least those of the lower orders, or readers, were distinguished in Shakespeare's time by the appellation “Sir,” as Sir Hugh, in the “Merry Wives,” Sir Topas, in “Twelfth Night,” Sir Oliver, in “As You Like It.” The distinction is marked between priesthood and knighthood when Vista says, “I am one that would rather go with Sir Priest than Sir Knight.” The clergy were not models of conduct in the days of Elizabeth, but their position excites little wonder when we read that they were often paid less than the cook and the minstrel.
There was great fondness in cottage and hall for merry tales of errant knights, lovers, lords, ladies, dwarfs, friars, thieves, witches, goblins, for old stories told by the fireside, with a toast of ale on the hearth, as in Milton's allusion
“—-to the nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat”
A designation of winter in “Love's Labour's Lost” is
“When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.”
To “turne a crab” is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of his wanton pranks:
“And sometimes I lurk in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks against her lips I bob:”
I love no roast, says John Still, in “Gammer Gurton's Needle,”
“I love no rost, but a nut-browne torte,
And a crab layde in the fyre;
A lytle bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire.”
In the bibulous days of Shakespeare, the peg tankard, a species of wassail or wish-health bowl, was still in use. Introduced to restrain intemperance, it became a cause of it, as every drinker was obliged to drink down to the peg. We get our expression of taking a man “a peg lower,” or taking him “down a peg,” from this custom.