ERY few people, when warming themselves in the winter months with Mulled Ale, know that they are quaffing a direct descendant of that famous liquor known to our forefathers as the Wassail-Bowl, and near akin to Lambs-Wool, of which Herrick wrote in his Twelfth Night:—
Next crowne the bowle full With gentle Lambs wooll, Adde sugare nutmeg and ginger, With store of ale too And thus ye must doe, To make the Wassaile a swinger.
A beverage of still greater antiquity, but certainly a family connection, is Bragget or Bragot, which is, or was, until quite recently, drunk in Lancashire. The word, according to the writer of Cups and their {379} Customs, is of Northland origin, and derived from “Braga,” the name of a hero, one of the mythological Gods of the Edda. In its Welsh form of Bragawd, the drink is mentioned in a very ancient poem, The Hirlas or Drinking Horn of Owen, which has been thus rendered into English:—
Cup-bearer, when I want thee most, With duteous patience mind thy post, Reach me the horn, I know its power Acknowledged in the social hour; Hirlas, thy contents to drain, I feel a longing, e’en to pain; Pride of feasts, profound and blue, Of the ninths wave’s azure hue, The drink of heroes formed to hold, With art enrich’d and lid of gold ! Fill it with bragawd to the brink, Confidence inspiring drink;—
We have been at no little trouble to discover the nature of the drink called bragot, bragawd, &c., and have come to the conclusion that the composition of the beverages bearing those names varied considerably. To define Bragot with any degree of preciseness would be as difficult as to give an accurate definition of “soup.” In the fourteenth century, according to a MS. quoted in Wright’s Provincial Dialects, “Bragotte” was made from this receipt:—
“Take to x galons of ale iij potell of fyne worte, and iij quartis of hony, and put thereto canell (cinnamon) oz: iiij, peper schort or long oz: iiij, galingale (a sort of rush) oz: i, and clowys (cloves) oz i, and gingiver oz ij.”
Halliwell tells us that Bragot was a kind of beverage formerly esteemed in Wales and the West of England, composed of wort, sugar and spices. It was customary to drink it in some parts of the country on Mothering Sunday.
Bracket must at one time have been a liquor in common use in London, for in Mary’s reign the constables were ordered to make weekly search at the houses of the Brewers and “typlers,” to see whether they sold any ale or beer or bracket above ½d. a quart without their houses, and above ½d. the “thyrdendeale”[70] within. {380}
[70] The thyrdendale was a measure containing a pint and a half.