The step from this to sheer ale is not very difficult.
It may be remarked that, at present, we apply several arbitrary adjectives, in this sense of sheer, to different liquors. Thus, to spirits we apply "raw," to wines and brandy "neat," to malt drink "stout" or "strong;" and then we reduce to "half and half," until at length we come to the very "small," a term which, like other lowly things, seems to have been permitted to endure from its very weakness.
A. E. B.
Leeds.
"Clamour your tongues," &c.—
"Clamour your tongues, and not a word more."
Wint. Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.
Notwithstanding the comments upon this word clamour, both in the pages of "N. & Q.," and by the various editors of Shakspeare, I have not yet seen anything that appears to my mind like a satisfactory elucidation.
Gifford, not being able to make anything of the word, proposed to read charm, which at all events is plausible, though nothing more. Nares says the word is in use among bell-ringers, though now shortened to clam. Unfortunately the meaning attached to the term by the ringers is at variance with that of clamour in the text; for to clam the bells is what we should now call putting them on sette or setting them, and this is but preparatory to a general crash: still it is possible that the words may be the same.
Mr. Arrowsmith (Vol. vii., p. 567.) maintains the genuineness of clamour in preference to charm; and, without a word of comment, quotes two passages from Udall's translation of Erasmus his Apothegms—"oneless hee chaumbreed his tongue," &c.; and again—"did he refrein or chaumbre the tauntying of his tongue." I confess I cannot fathom Mr. Arrowsmith's intention; for the obvious conclusion to be drawn from these quotations is, that charm, and not clamour, is an abbreviation of the older word chaumbre.