“Beer small as comfort, dead as charity.”
And this may naturally lead us to look in, for a moment, on both the ancient and the modern Egyptians, when seated at table. But, previous to doing so, there is a little philological matter I would fain settle, as far as so indifferent an authority may presume to do so, and which may interest, not merely wine-bibbers, but etymologists, and zealous correspondents to “Notes and Queries.” It may be very briefly discussed.
I have noticed, in another page, the fact that nearly all our old-fashioned drinking phrases are but corruptions of foreign terms. A “carouse,” for instance, is derived from “gar aus,” “altogether empty,” sufficiently indicative of what a reveller was to do with his full glass. There is one—a rather vulgar term—of the origin of which, however, I have never heard any account. But I think I may have discovered it in a little German poem, by Pfarrius, called “Der Trunk aus dem Stiefel,” and which, thus roughly done into English, may serve to show
THE ORIGIN OF “BOOSEY.”
In the Rheingraf’s hall were of Knights a score,
And they drained their goblets o’er and o’er,
And the torches they flung a lurid glow
On the Knights who were drinking there below.
“Ho, ho!” said the Rheingraf, “Sir Knights, I find,
Our courier has left a boot behind;