Joseph Ritson gave this Bacchanalian chant in the second volume of his “English Songs,” p. 58, 1783. Forty-six verses, out of the seventy, had been repeated in the “Collection of Old Ballads,” 1723-25, (which Ambrose Philips and David Mallet may have edited,) “The Ex-Ale-tation of Ale” is in vol. iii. p. 166. Part, if not all, must have been in existence fully ten years before it appeared in the “Antidote,” as we find “O Ale ab alendo, thou Liquor of life!” with music by John Hilton, in his “Catch that Catch Can,” p. 5, 1652. It is also in Wit’s Merriment; or, Lusty Drollery, 1656, p. 118; eight verses only. These are: 1. Not drunken; 2. But yet to commend it; 3. But yet, by your leave; 4. It makes a man merry; 5. The old wife whose teeth; 6. The Ploughman, the Lab’rer; 7. The man that hath a black blous to his wife; 8. With that my friend said, &c. Still earlier, the poem had appeared, imperfectly, in a four-paged quarto pamphlet, dated 1642 (along with “The Battle fought between the Norfolk Cock and the Wisbeach Cock,” see M. D. C., p. 242) as by Thomas Randall, i.e. Randolph. Accordingly, it has been included (34 verses only) in the 1875 edition of his Works, p. 662. We personally attach no weight to the pamphlet’s ascription of it to Randolph, (who died in March, 1634-5). It is far more likely to have been the work of Samuel Rowlands, in whose Crew of Kind London Gossips, 1663, we meet it, p. 129-141, and whose style it more closely resembles. Some poems duly assigned to Randolph are in the same volume, but the “Exaltation of Ale” is not thus distinguished. There are seventy-two verses given, and the motto is Tempus edax rerum, &c. We have not been able to consult an earlier edition of S. Rowland’s “Crew,” &c., about 1650.
So long afterwards as 1788, we find an abbreviated copy of the song, six verses, in Lackington’s “British Songster,” p. 202, entitled “A Tankard of Ale.” The first verse runs thus:—
“Not drunk, nor yet sober, but brother to both,
I met with a man upon Aylesbury Vale,
I saw in his face that he was in good case
To go and take part of a tankard of ale.”
Omitting all sequence of narrative, the other verses are adapted from the Antidote’s 21st, 19th, 10th, 26th, and 50th; concerning the hedger, beggar, widow, clerk, and amicable conclusion over a tankard of ale. In a Convivial Songster, of 1807, by Tegg, London, these six are given with addition of another as fifth:—
The old parish Vicar, when he’s in his liquor,
Will merrily at his parishioners rail,
“Come, pay all your tithes, or I’ll kiss all your wives,”