Zo let’s go back and vinish the barrel o’ beer.”
Derry down, &c.
“A good cast, Doctor;” said the long scholar; “but you’ve raised the wrong fish. That isn’t what my friend here meant by a drinking song. He expects a bucolic rendering of one of Moore’s songs, and you serve him out a queer pot-house tale. Is there no enthusiasm for good drink amongst you?”
“I wish there were less,” said the Doctor, with a sigh; “at any rate, less consumption of bad drink. Tippling is our great curse, as it is that of all England; but there’s less of it than there used to be. But for a drinking song such as you mean, I’m at fault. The nearest approach to it that I know of is a song of which I only remember two lines. They run—
“Sartinly the sixpenny’s the very best I’ve see’d yet,
I do not like the fourpenny, nor yet the intermediate.
“But even here you see, though the poet was meditating on drink, it was in a practical rather than an enthusiastic spirit.”
Just then, a stout old yeoman entered the booth, dressed in a broad straight-cut brown coat with metal buttons, drab breeches, and mahogany tops; and, marching up to the bar, ordered a glass of brandy and water; while his drink was being prepared, he stood with his back to our table, talking to the landlord.
“We’re in luck,” said the Doctor in a low voice, pointing to the new-comer with the end of his pipe; “if he stays, we shall have the best old song in all the west country, sung as it should be.”