After the mistress the master:—
Here’s health to our master, the lord of the feast,
God bless his endeavours, and give him increase,
And send him good crops, that we may meet another year,
Here’s our master’s good health, boys—Come drink half your beer.
God send him good crops, &c.—Come drink off your beer.
Where the beer flows very freely, and there is a family, it is sometimes usual to carry on the catch, through the different branches, with variations composed for the purpose, perhaps at the spur of the moment: some of these I have known very happily conceived. The other glee to which I alluded in the beginning of my letter, and which I conceive G. H. J. to have had in view, is this:—
Here’s health unto our master, the founder of the feast,
God grant, whenever he shall die, his soul may go to rest,
And that all things may prosper whate’er he has in hand,
For we are all his servants, and are at his command;
So drink, boys, drink, and mind you do none spill,
For if you do
You shall drink two,
For ’tis our master’s will!
If the foregoing be acceptable, it will be a satisfaction to have contributed a trifle to a miscellany, which has afforded a fund of instruction and amusement to
Your constant reader and admirer,
T. B. H.
Norfolk, August 20, 1827.
POTTED VENISON.
Sir Kenelm Digby, in a fanciful discourse on “Sympathy,” affirms, that the venison which is in July and August put into earthern pots, to last the whole year, is very difficult to be preserved during the space of those particular months which are called the fence-months; but that, when that period is passed, nothing is so easy as to keep it gustful (as he words it) during the whole year after. This he endeavours to find a cause for from the “sympathy” between the potted meat, and its friends and relations, courting and capering about in its native park.