Ben Jonson, in his Gipsies Metamorphosed, gives the following amusing version of the origin of these vessels:—
“Gaze upon this brave spark struck out of Flintshire upon Justice Jug’s daughter, then sheriff of the county, who, running away with a kinsman of our captain’s, and her father pursuing her to the Marches, he great with justice, she great with jugling, they were both for the time turned into stone upon sight of each other here in Chester; till at last (see the wonder!) a jug of the town ale reconciling them, the memorial of both their gravities—his in beard, and hers in belly—hath remained ever since preserved in picture upon the most stone jugs of the kingdom.”
In another place he says:—
“Whose, at the best, some round grown thing, a jug
Faced with a beard, that fills out to the guests.”
In another play, the Ordinary, is the following:—
“Thou thing,
Thy belly looks like to some strutting hill,
O’ershadowed by thy rough beard like a wood;
Or like a larger jug that some men call