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