no few nobles
of Danes and Weders.”
In Dugdale’s Monasticon (ed. 1682, p. 126), in a Charter of Offa to the Monastery of Westbury, three sorts of ale are mentioned. Two tuns full of hlutres aloth (Clear ale), a cumb full of lithes aloth (mild ale), and a cumb full of Welisces aloth (Welsh ale), which is again mentioned as cervisia Walliæ.
But though beer and ale were the drinks of the common folk, yet they were not despised by their leaders.
[9]“At times before the nobles
Hrothgar’s daughter
to the earls in order
the ale cup bore.”
We see the social difference between ale and wine drinkers in one of the Cotton MSS. (Tib. A. 3), where a lad having been asked what he drank replied: “Ale, if I have it; Water, if I have it not.” Asked why he does not drink wine, he says: “I am not so rich that I can buy me wine; and wine is not the drink of children or the weak-minded, but of the elders and the wise.”