or, as we may put it, “Bubble it up!” they cried, and “Wassail!” and “Let it come,” and “Drink hail!” “Drink hinderwards and drink to me, drink health and drink to me!” Modernised, and applied to beer, which is to our times what mead or metheglin was to the Saxons, “Bubble it up!” would appear to mean “Froth it up,” or “Put a good head on it”; while “Let it come” and “Drink hail!” are simply “Pass the bottle” and “Here’s your health!” But how you drink “hinderwards,” unless it means “Pass the bottle back again,” I cannot conceive.
At any rate, it is quite evident, by this account, that these English warriors had each a thoroughly good skinful of booze overnight. They seem to have almost wallowed in it, and were precisely the men who would have appreciated the bibulous spirit of that drinking ballad of modern times, which ran something after this style:
Beer, beer, glorious beer;
Fill yourself right up to ’ere.
Up with the sale of it,
Down with a pail of it,
Glorious, glorious beer.
Up with the trade of it,
Drink till you’re made of it,
and so forth, in a style eminently calculated to win the hearts of my lords Ardilaun, Iveagh, Hindlip, and Burton.