“At Giggleswick, Yorkshire. By the will of William Clapham (1603) 4s. 4d. was left towards a potation for the poor scholars of the Freeschool there on St. George’s Day; and the custom was formerly to give figs, bread, and ale.”

“At Edgcott, Buckinghamshire. Robert Marcham, Esq., pays the overseers £3 a year, a rent charge upon an acre of land.” This was formerly distributed to the tenants in the shape of two cakes each, and as much beer as they could drink at the time.

“At St. Giles’, Norwich. By the will of John Ballestin, 1584, the {278} rent from three tenements was to be distributed to the poor in the following manner: viz., that in the week before Christmas, the week before Michaelmas, and the week after Easter, in the Church of St. Giles, the Minister should request the poor people, all that should receive or have need of alms, to come to Church, and pray for the preservation of the Prince, &c.; that the poor should place themselves four and four together, all that should be above the age of eleven years, and that every four of them should have set before them a twopenny wheat loaf, a gallon of best beer, and four pounds of beef and broth.”

“At Prince’s Risborough, Buckinghamshire. Up to 1813, a Bull and a boar, a sack of Wheat, and a sack of Malt were given away to the poor by the Lord of the Manor, every Christmas morning about six o’clock.”

In many houses small beer was always kept to dispense in charity, Ben Jonson, in The Alchemist, describes a mean, stingy person as—

. . one who could keep The buttery-hatch still locked, and save the chippings, Sell the dole beer to aqua vitæ men.

Visitors at Leicester’s Hospital, Warwick, may have noticed a huge copper beer-tankard reposing on a shelf. This great cup holds six quarts, and is filled with strong ale thrice a year on gaudy days, and passed round among the old brethren, pensioners of the house.

In the fourteenth century there was a custom for one of the fishermen engaged upon the river Thames to present a salmon to the Abbot of Westminster once a year. The fisherman who bore the tribute had that day a right to sit at the prior’s table, and might demand bread and ale of the cellarer; the cellarer on his part might take from the fish’s tail as much as he could with “four fingers and his thumb erect.”

Superstitious observances were rife in former times. The Roman augurs observed the flight of birds, and scrutinised the palpitating vitals of fresh slain victims, thinking thereby to steal a march upon the future. Our ancestors would draw omens from the barking of dogs, the cries of wild fowl, or from the manner in which beer, accidentally spilt from the cup, distributed itself upon the floor. Melton, in his Astrolagaster, observes that “if the beere fall next a man it is a signe of good luck.”

The customs and ceremonies attending the actual consumption of ale and other liquors now require some few words. First in order stands the old custom of pledging, which was in origin distinct from {279} toasting or health-drinking. William of Malmesbury says that the treacherous murder of King Edward while drinking a horn of wine presented to him by his stepmother Elfrida, gave rise to the old custom of pledging. A person before drinking would ask one who sat next to him whether he would pledge him. The other thereupon drew his sword and held it over the drinker as a pledge to him that no secret foe should strike him in an unguarded moment while he drained the bowl. Others have referred the origin of the custom to the treachery of the Danes, who would take advantage of the attitude of a man when drinking a horn of ale or mead, to stab him unawares. Be the origin what it may, the custom prevailed for many centuries, and was one of the things noted by that lively and inquisitive French physician, Stephen Perlin, who visited England about the middle of the sixteenth century. Amongst many other entertaining observations made by him is the following:—“The English, one with the other, are joyous, and are very fond of music; they are also great drinkers, . . . and they will say to you usually at table, ‘Goude chere,’ and they will also say to you more than one hundred times, ‘Drind oui,’ and you will reply to them in their language, “I plaigui’ (‘I pledge you’).”