Not spending franklier than his flocke
Shall still defray the cost.
Wel wot I, sooth they say that say:
More quiet nightes and daies
The shepheard sleepes and wakes than he
Whose cattel he doth graize."[105:A]
The lines in Italics allude to the favourite beverage of the peasantry, and the mode in which they recreated themselves over the spicy bowl. To turne a crab is to roast a wilding or wild apple in the fire for the purpose of being thrown hissing hot into a bowl of nut-brown ale, into which had been previously put a toast with some spice and sugar. To this delicious compound Shakspeare has frequently referred; thus in Love's Labour's Lost one of his designations of winter is,
"When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl:"[105:B]
and Puck, describing his own wanton tricks in Midsummer Night's Dream, says—
"And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,