If sicknesse come, this physick take, it from your heart will set it; If feare incroach, take more of it, your head will soone forget it; Apollo, and the Muses nine, doe take it in no scorne; There’s no such stuffe to passe the time as the little Barley-corne.
’Twill make a weeping widdow laugh and soone incline to pleasure; ’Twill make an old man leave his staffe and dance a youthful measure: And though your clothes be nere so bad all ragged rent and torne, Against the cold you may be clad with the little Barley-corne.
Thus the Barley-Corne hath power even for to change our nature, And make a shrew, within an houre, prove a kind-hearted creature: And therefore here, I say againe, let no man tak’t in scorne, That I the vertues doe proclaime of the little Barley-corne.”
The following song in praise of ale is taken from London Chanticleers, a rude sketch of a play printed in 1659, but evidently much older. The {307} reference to being “without hops” in the verse vii. is noticeable. It will be remembered that the ale which our forefathers drank was made without hops, which “pernicious weeds” were only used in the “Dutchman’s strong beere.”
I.
II.
III.
IIII.
V.