It chanc’d as in dog days he sat at his ease, In his flower-woven arbour, as gay as you please, With his friend and a pipe, puffing sorrow away, And with honest Old Stingo sat soaking his clay, His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut, And he died full as big as a Dorchester Butt.
His body when long in the ground it had lain, And time into clay had dissolv’d it again, A potter found out, in its covert so snug, And with part of Fat Toby he form’d this brown jug: Now sacred to friendship, to mirth, and mild Ale— So here’s to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale.
The wooden ale bowls used by the Saxons continued common in England for many a century, and constant reference to them is to be {400} found. In the Miller of Mansfield King Henry II. is represented drinking out of a brown bowl:
This caus’d the King, suddenlye, to laugh most heartilye, Till the teares trickled fast downe from his eyes. Then to their supper were they set orderlye, With hot bag puddings, and good apply pyes; Nappy ale, good and stale, in a browne bowle, Which did about the board merrilye trowle.
At the time when the Liber Albus was composed (1419), the gallons, pottles and quarts used in the City of London were made of wood, as may be judged from the fact that they are mentioned as shrinking if they were stamped when green.
Dryden mentions the brown bowl as characteristic of the country life:—
The rich, tir’d with continual feasts, For change become their next poor tenant’s guests; Drink heavy draughts of Ale from plain brown bowls, And snatch the homely Rasher from the coals.
Mr. Pepys records that on the 4th of January, 1667, he had company to dinner; and “at night to sup, and then to cards, and last of all to have a flagon of ale and apples, drank out of a wood cup, as a Christmas draught, which made all merry.” Brown bowls were also the drinking vessels used in singing the old song, The Barley Mow “which cannot,” says Bell “be given in words, it should be heard to be appreciated properly, particularly with the West Country dialect.”
Here’s a health to the barley-mow, my brave boys, Here’s a health to the barley-mow! We’ll drink it out of the jolly brown bowl, Here’s a health to the barley-mow!
Chorus:—