On the authority of the Alvismál, it may be said that no distinction was originally drawn between ale and beer, except, perhaps, that the latter was considered to be a somewhat more honourable designation; “öl heitir meth mönnum en meth Asum bjoor” (i.e., ale it is called among men, and among the gods beer).
The Exeter Book, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems, contains the expressions, “a good beer-drinker,” “angry with ale,” “drunken with beer,” in close juxtaposition and apparently without any distinction of meaning. A distinction must, however, have arisen in very early times, for in the collection of Saxon Leechdoms, mentioned above, a direction is to be found that a patient is on no account to drink beer, although he may partake in moderation of ale and wine; and the same work contains the remarkable and apparently impossible statement that while a pint of ale weighs six pennies more than a pint of water, a pint of beer weighs twenty-two pennies less than a pint of water.
The word beer seems gradually to have given place to the word ale, and though the former may have lingered in some parts of the country, and the passage from King Horn already quoted shows that in the thirteenth century it was not quite forgotten—ale became the usual word to express malt liquor. It was English ale that strengthened the arm of English bowmen at Crecy and Poictiers, and on many another well-fought field; and English ale was the “barley-broth” which “decocted” the cold blood of the dwellers in this land of fogs and mist “to such valiant heat” and stubborn endurance in their constant struggles with the valour and chivalry of France.
The old English word “beor,” indeed, had become so weakened and specialised, even as early as the tenth century, that it is to be found in a Vocabulary of that date as an equivalent for idromellum, a word properly signifying an inferior sort of mead, but also denoting the sweet wort, before fermentation had changed it into ale. It is curious to observe that when next the word “beer” came into common use in our language, it was by introduction of our neighbours the Flemings, and was specially applied to malt liquor in which the bitter of the hop was an important ingredient. The word left us in sweetness, it returned in bitterness, and so the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. Beer became the name for hopped ale, but that distinction soon began to be less significant, for as early as 1616 we find Gervase Markham, in his Maison Rustique, recommends the use of a small quantity of hops in ale-brewing. {153}
Taylor, in Drink and Welcome, dwells upon this distinction between ale and beer in the seventeenth century as follows:—“Now to write of Beere I shall not need to wet my pen much with the naming of it, it being a drinke which Antiquitie was an Aleien or a meere stranger to, and as it hath scarcely any name, so hath it no habitation, for the places or houses where it is sold doth still retain the name of an Alehouse. This comparison needs a Sir Reverence to usher it, but being Beere is but an Upstart and a Foreigner or Alien, in respect of Ale, it may serve instead of a better; Nor would it differ from Ale in anything, but onely that an Aspiring Amaritudinous Hop comes crawling lamely in, and makes a Bitter difference betweene them, but if the Hop be so crippled, that he cannot be gotton to make the oddes, the place may poorely bee supply’d with chopp’d Broome (new gathered) whereby Beere hath never attained the sober Title of Ale, for it is proper to say A Stand of Ale, and a Hoggeshead of Beere, which in common sense is but a swinish phrase or appellation.”
That curious ballad entitled Skelton’s Ghost, which was probably the work of a rhymer of the seventeenth century, points to the same distinction. The ghost of Skelton the Laureate is supposed to be addressing some of the jovial characters of the period much in the tone of one who, having lived in the golden age (of liquor), looks down with pity and scorn at a later-day’s degenerate topers. These are the particular lines in point:—
For in King Harry’s time When I made this rhyme
Full Winchester gage We had in that age The Dutchman’s strong beere Was not hopt over here, To us ’twas unknowne; Bare ale of our owne, In a bowle we might bring, To welcome the King.
At the present day, in the eastern counties, and indeed over the greater portion of the country, ale means strong, and beer means small malt liquor; in London beer usually means porter (i.e., the small beer of stout); while in the west country beer is the “mighty” liquor, and ale the small. In the trade, however, beer is the comprehensive word for all malt liquors. {154}