King Hardicanute, ’midst Danes and Saxons stout, Carous’d on nut-brown ale and dined on growt, {159}
so there have been an abundance of small poor drinks, which have been from time to time known by various terms of contempt, the titles “whip-belly-vengeance” and “rotgut” being, perhaps, on the whole, the most expressive. Shakspere sums up the humdrum of retired matronly life in the well-known line, “To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.” Beer which had been kept so long that it had turned sour was at one time known as “broken beer,” much as we speak now of broken victuals. Ben Jonson, in his Masque of Gypsies, makes mention of an infant “very carefully carried at his mother’s back, rock’d in a cradle of Welsh cheese like a maggot, and there fed with broken beer, and blown wine of the best daily.”
In olden times small beer discharged that friendly office assigned by later and more fastidious days to soda-water, namely, the cooling of the parched throat after a too earnest devotion to the rites of Bacchus.
Welcome to my lips, great king of frolic, Stern foe to headache, devils blue, and cholic— No dandy soda-water bring to me, No Lady’s lemonade, no soft bohea; Thy sterner aid I claim, and ask thy might To quell the riots of that punch last night;
wrote one of the Brasenose College poets. Christopher Sly, awakening from his debauch, cries aloud for “a pot of small ale . . . and once again a pot of the smallest ale,” and Prince Hal “remembers the poor creature small beer.”
A nameless author, writing in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1746, describes this function of small beer, and in poetic vein tells how after a “wine,” awaking from a feverish sleep, he sees before him a venerable man,
Old, but not bending with the weight of years; His face was ruddy, and he smiled benign, As if nor sickness had his form impair’d, Nor anxious cares his soul: his silver’d head Was bound with wreaths of salutary flow’rs, Call’d Hops by men, but Panace by Gods. “My son,” he said (and at his voice divine New life beat vig’rous in each throbbing vein) “Long has my friendly influence mov’d the scorn, My name the laughter of the sons of men, The sons of men, regardless of their weal {160} And health, the greatest sublunary good! The genius I of liquor, call’d below Small Beer, and doubtless you have heard me damn’d Full oft, by Belials rude, outrageous sons; But yet, were honour due, to Temp’rance given, Mine were the favours of th’ applauding crowd,
——Here, taste and live, live soberly and well.” This said, a vase with steady hand he gave, Full to the brim, I quaft’d the tender’d draught; Swift the cool stream refresh’d my burning throat,—