wrote a Brasenose poet. Alas, that both poets and ale should soon become extinct!
[1] May, 1886. See also pp. [165]; [389].
Among the few prose writers past or present who have taken ale for their subject, John Taylor, of whom a good deal will be heard in these pages, stands pre-eminent. His little work, Drinke and Welcome, written some two hundred years ago, and which glorifies ale in a manner most marvellous, is one of the most curious literary productions it has ever been our good fortune to read. “Ale is rightly called nappy,” says the old Thames waterman and innkeeper, “for it will set a nap upon a man’s threed-bare eyes when he is sleepy. It is called Merry-goe-downe, for it slides downe merrily; It is fragrant to the Sent, it is most pleasing to the taste. The flowring and mantling of it (like chequer worke) with the verdant smiling of it, is delightefull to the Sight, it is Touching or Feeling to the Braine and Heart; and (to please the senses all) it provokes men to singeing and mirth, which is contenting to the Hearing. The speedy taking of it doth comfort a heavy and troubled minde; it will make a weeping widowe laugh and forget sorrow for her deceas’d husband. . . . . It will set a Bashfull Suiter a wooing; It heates the chill blood of the Aged; It will cause a man to speake past his owne or any other man’s capacity, or understanding; It sets an Edge upon Logick and Rhetorick; It is a friend to the Muses; It inspires the poore Poet, that cannot compasse the price of Canarie or Gascoign; It mounts the Musician ’bove Eccla; It makes the Balladmaker Rime beyond Reason; It is a Repairer of a {5} decaied Colour in the face; It puts Eloquence into the Oratour; It will make the Philosopher talke profoundly, the Scholler learnedly, and the Lawyer acute and feelingly. Ale at Whitsontide, or a Whitson Church Ale, is a repairer of decayed Countrey Churches; It is a great friend to Truth; so they that drinke of it (to the purpose) will reveale all they know, be it never so secret to be kept; It is an Embleme of Justice, for it allowes, and yeelds measure; It will put Courage into a Coward, and make him swagger and fight; It is a Seale to many a good Bargaine. The Physittian will commend it; the Lawyer will defend it; It neither hurts or kils any but those that abuse it unmeasurably and beyond bearing; It doth good to as many as take it rightly; It is as good as a Paire of Spectacles to cleare the Eyesight of an old Parish Clarke; and in Conclusion, it is such a nourisher of Mankinde, that if my Mouth were as bigge as Bishopsgate, my Pen as long as a Maypole, and my Inke a flowing spring, or a standing fishpond, yet I could not with Mouth, Pen or Inke, speake or write the true worth and worthiness of Ale.” Bravo, John Taylor! He would be a bold man who could lift up his voice against our honest English nappy, after reading your vigorous lines.
It is not uninteresting to compare this sixteenth century work with a passage taken from By Lake and River, the author of which rarely loses an opportunity of eulogising beer. Anglers and many more will cordially agree with Mr. Francis Francis in his remarks. “Ah! my beloved brother of the rod,” he writes, “do you know the taste of beer—of bitter beer—cooled in the flowing river? Not you; I warrant, like the ‘Marchioness,’ hitherto you have only had ‘a sip’ occasionally—and, as Mr. Swiveller judiciously remarks, ‘it can’t be tasted in a sip.’ Take your bottle of beer, sink it deep, deep in the shady water, where the cooling springs and fishes are. Then, the day being very hot and bright, and the sun blazing on your devoted head, consider it a matter of duty to have to fish that long, wide stream (call it the Blackstone stream, if you will); and so, having endued yourself with high wading breeks, walk up to your middle, and begin hammering away with your twenty-foot flail. Fish are rising, but not at you. No, they merely come up to see how the weather looks, and what o’clock it is. So fish away; there is not above a couple of hundred yards of it, and you don’t want to throw more than about two or three-and-thirty yards at every cast. It is a mere trifle. An hour or so of good hard hammering will bring you to the end of it, and then—let me ask you avec impressement—how about that beer? Is it cool? Is it refreshing? Does it {6} gurgle, gurgle, and ‘go down glug,’ as they say in Devonshire? Is it heavenly? Is it Paradise and all the Peris to boot? Ah! if you have never tasted beer under these or similar circumstances, you have, believe me, never tasted it at all.”
A word or two now as to the distinctions between the beverages known as ale and beer. Going back to the time of the Conquest, or earlier, we find that both words were applied to the same liquor, a fermented drink made usually from malt and water, without hops. The Danes called it ale, the Anglo-Saxons beer. Later on the word beer dropped almost out of use. Meanwhile, in Germany and the Netherlands, the use of hops in brewing had been discovered; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Flemings having introduced their bier into England, the word “beer” came to have in this country a distinct meaning—viz., hopped ale. The difference was quaintly explained by Andrew Boorde in his Dyetary, written about the year 1542. “Ale,” said Andrew, “is made of malte and water; and they which do put any other thynge to ale than is rehersed, except yest, barme, or godesgood, doth sofystical theyr ale. Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall drinke. Ale must have these propertyes: it must be fresshe and cleare, it muste not be ropy nor smoky, nor it must have no weft nor tayle. Ale shuld not be dronke vnder v. dayes olde. Newe ale is vnholsome for all men. And sowre ale, and deade ale the which doth stande a tylt, is good for no man. Barly malte maketh better ale then oten malte or any other corne doth: it doth ingendre grose humoures; but yette it maketh a man stronge.”
OF BERE.
“Bere is made of malte, of hoppes, and water; it is the naturall drynke for a Dutche man, and nowe of late dayes it is moche vsed in Englande to the detryment of many Englysshe people; specyally it kylleth them the which be troubled with the colycke, and the stone, and the strangulion; for the drynke is a colde drynke; yet it doth make a man fat, and doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the Dutche men’s faces and belyes. If the bere be well serued, and be fyned, and not new, it doth qualyfy heat of the liquer.”
The distinction between ale and beer as described by Boorde lasted for a hundred years or more. As hops came into general use, though malt liquors generally were now beer, the word ale was still retained, and was used whether the liquor it was intended to designate was {7} hopped or not. At the present day beer is the generic word, which includes all malt liquors; while the word ale includes all but the black or brown beers—porter and stout. The meanings of the words are, however, subject to local variations. This subject is further treated of in Chapter VII.
The union of hops and malt is amusingly described in one of the Brasenose College alepoems:—
A Grand Cross of “Malta,” one night at a ball, Fell in love with and married “Hoppetta the Tall.” Hoppetta, the bitterest, best of her sex, By whom he had issue—the first, “Double X.”