Queen Elizabeth’s breakfast seems frequently to have consisted of little else but ale and bread. In the household accounts for the year 1576, are to be found certain items of her diet. One morning it is “Cheate and mancheate 6d., ale and beare 3½d., wine 1 pint. 7d:” another day it is bread as before, “ale and beare 10½d., wine, 7d;” and considering the prices of the times, the amount of ale represented by these figures must have been very considerable. Even well into last century ale was a common drink for breakfast among those who affected the manners of the old school. Applebie’s Journal, under date September 11th, 1731, makes mention of “an old gentleman near ninety, who has a florid and vigorous constitution, and tells us the difference between the manners of the present age, and that in which he spent his youth. With regard to eating in his time, Breakfast consisted of good hams, cold sirloin, and good beer, succeeded with wholesome exercise, which sent them home hungry and ready for dinner.”
In an old song, Advice to Bachelors; or, the Married Man’s Lamentations, occurs this verse:—
If I but for my breakfast ask then doth she laugh and jeer; Perhaps give me a hard dry crust and strong four shilling beer; She tells me that is good enough for such a rogue as me; And if I do but seem to pout then hey, boys, flap goes she.
Between breakfast and dinner there was generally a “nunchion”[61] (noon draught), a word curious from its having been confounded with lunch, which signifies a large piece or hunch of bread. When uneducated people speak of their “nunchions,” they are unconsciously using a more correct form of word than more refined persons when they speak of “luncheon.” On any occasion when a drink between meals was needed, it was called a “russin,” as in the lines of the old poem, The Land of Cockaigne (thirteenth century):—
In Cockaigne is met and drink, Without care, how, or swink, The met is trie (choice), the drink is clere, To none, russin and sopper. {276}
An evening draught in the religious houses was called a “potatio.” When the afternoon reading was finished, the monks proceeded “ad potationem” (i.e., to take their evening draught of ale).
[61] From noon, and schenchen, to pour out.
Ale, generous ale, was the beverage with which all meals alike were washed down; and ale and beer were in old times considered as having a peculiar suitability to the stomach of an Englishman. A letter from John Stile to Henry VIII. (1512) on the condition of the army in France bears witness to this common notion. “And hyt plese your grace,” he writes, “the greteyst lacke of vytuals, that ys here ys of bere, for your subjectys had lyver for to drynk bere than wyne or sydere, for the hote wynys dothe burne theym, and the syder dothe caste theym yn dysese and sekenysys.”
The custom of women resorting to ale-houses and taking provisions with them wherewith to make a common feast, seems to have been an early form of the modern picnic. In one of the Chester Miracle Plays Noah is represented as being greatly annoyed at finding his wife eating and drinking with her gossips in an ale-house when it is time to be getting into the Ark. Several women meet together, and one of them proposes to the others an al fresco entertainment of this character.
The ale is recommended in these lines:—