It puts his povertie out of his mind, Forgetting his browne bread, his wallet, his maile, He walks in the house like a six footed Lowse, If he be but well drench’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
The Souldier, the Saylor, the true man, the Taylor, The Lawyer that sels words by weight and by tale, Take them all as they are, for the War or the Bar, They all will approve of a Pot of Good Ale.
The Church and Religion to love it hath cause, (Or else our Fore-fathers, their wisdomes did faile,) For at every mile, close at the Church stile, An house is ordain’d for a Pot of Good Ale.
And Physick will flavour Ale (as it is bound) And stand against Beere both tooth and naile, They send up and downe, all over the towne, To get for their Patients a Pot of Good Ale.
Your Ale-berries, Cawdles, and Possets each one, And sullabubs made at the milking pale, Although they be many, Beere comes not in any, But all are compos’d with a Pot of Good Ale.
And in very deed, the Hop’s but a weed, Brought o’re ’gainst law, and here set to sale; He that first brought the Hop, had reward with a rope, And found that his Beere was bitter than ale.
The antient tales that my Grannam hath told, Of the mirth she had in Parlour and Hall, How in Christmas time, they would dance, sing, and rime, As if they were mad, with a Pot of Good Ale. {324}
Beere is a stranger, a Dutch Upstart come, Whose credit with us, sometimes is but small; But in the records of the Empire of Rome, The old Catholic drink is a Pot of Good Ale.
To the praise of Gambinius, the old British King, Who devised for his nation (by the Welshmen’s tale), Seventeene hundred years before Christ did spring, The happie invention of a Pot of Good Ale.
But he was a Pagan, and Ale then was rife, But after Christ came, and bade us, All haile, Saint Tavie was neffer trink peere in her life, Put awle Callywhiblin, and excellent Ale.