Lo! Prior hastens with his motley crew, To pour the foaming liquor to our view: Clasps his firm hand in all a Butler’s pride The cup no Brasenose Fellow e’er denied: Yet secret triumph o’er his brow has cast That Ale the sweetest, as that brew the last! “Away, ye lighter drinks! ye swipes, away, Where masters bully, and where boys obey,” The brewer cried; and taught the Ale to live With all the charms that malt and hops could give. Warm’d at his touch, behold the vapours rise In all their genuine fragrance to the skies: No beer-shops bev’rage, such as Cockneys buy, Foul to the taste, and loathsome to the eye; No dingy mixture, vulgarly call’d swipes; No quassia juice, promoter of the gripes; But true proportions of good hops and malt, Mingled with care, then stow’d within the vault: The hue that tells its potency—the scent That breathes as if from blest Arabia sent. Still o’er his Ale fond Prior hangs confest, And joy and triumph swell his manly breast.
Such, glorious liquor of the olden time, When to be drunk with Ale was deem’d no crime; When in the morn and eve and mid-day stood Upon our fathers’ boards old English food; Such hast thou been, ’mid war and change the same, Link’d with the poet’s and the scholar’s name, Mellow’d by age—but still with flavour higher, The pride of Brasenose, and the boast of Prior.
How Brasenose College came by its peculiar name is a much disputed point. There is a legend that in the far-off time of long ago certain students of the temporary university at Stamford, the iron ring of whose door-knocker was fitted in a nose of brass, migrated to Oxford, {167} and there set up a brazen nose over the entrance of their college as a souvenir of their former abode. Equally plausible is the tradition that upon the site of the college brewery once stood King Alfred’s brasinium (brewhouse), and that the name, clinging to the place through all the changes and chances of a thousand years, now appears under the slightly modified form of Brasenose. If the latter theory be correct, the Shrovetide feast and the yearly ode in praise of Brasenose Ale may be attributed to the desire to keep green the memory of the famous brewhouse of the good King, and the mighty liquor therein brewed for the royal table.
The merits of a celebrated Oxford butler, John Dawson of Christ Church, are commemorated in the following elegy:—
Dawson, the butler’s dead. Although I think Poets were ne’er infus’d with single drink I’ll spend a farthing, Muse; a wat’ry verse Will serve the turn to cast upon his hearse. If any cannot weep amongst us here, Take off his cap, and so squeeze out a tear: Weep, O ye Barrels! make waste more prodigal Than when our Beer was good, that John may float To Styx in beer, and lift up Charon’s boat With wholsome waves; and as the conduits ran, With claret at the Coronation, So let your channels flow with single tiff, For John, I hope is crown’d: take off your whiff, Ye men of rosemary, and drink up all, Rememb’ring ’tis a Butler’s funeral; Had he been master of good double Beer My Life for his, John Dawson had been here.
For a hundred years or more the town of Nottingham has been famous for its ales, and the song “Nottingham Ale” commemorates the many virtues of this justly celebrated “barley-wine.” Amongst others, it has virtues ecclesiastical:—
Ye bishops and deacons, priests, curates and vicars, Come taste, and you’ll certainly find it is true, That Nottingham Ale is the best of all liquors, And who understand the good creature like you? It dispels every vapour, saves pen, ink, and paper; For when you’re disposed in the pulpit to rail {168} It will open your throats, you may preach without notes, When inspired with full bumpers of Nottingham Ale.
This song, which was a great favourite at the end of last century, was composed by one Gunthorpe, a naval officer, by way of payment for a cask of the “particular,” received as a present from his brother, who was a Nottingham Brewer.
To go further north, Newcastle, besides its coals, has long had the reputation for what, if we are to believe the townsmen of the place, is the best, the stoutest, the brightest “Stingo” that the heart of man can desire. As every Jack will have his Jill, so famous ale ever finds its appropriate verses. The song Newcastle Beer, of which a verse is, given below, extols the wonders wrought by English beer in general, and by that of Newcastle in particular:—