Comparatively cheap as claret was, it is surprising, considering the general narrowness of means, how much of it was drunk. In public-houses and in considerable mansions, it was very common to find it kept on the tap. A rustic hostel-wife, on getting a hogshead to her house, would let the gentlemen of her neighbourhood know of the event, and they would come to taste, remain to enjoy, and sometimes not disperse till the barrel was exhausted. The Laird of Culloden, as we learn from Burt, kept a hogshead on tap in his hall, ready for the service of all comers; and his accounts are alleged to shew that his annual consumpt of the article would now cost upwards of two thousand pounds. A precise statement as to quantity, even in a single instance, would here obviously be of importance, and fortunately it can be given. In Arniston House, the country residence of President Dundas, when Sheriff Cockburn was living there as a boy about 1750, there were sixteen hogsheads of claret used per annum. Burt enables us to see how so much of the generous fluid could be disposed of in one house. He speaks of the hospitality of the Laird of Culloden as ‘almost without bounds. It is the custom of that house,’ says he, ‘at the first visit or introduction, to take up your freedom by _cracking his nut_ (as he terms it), that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint filled with champagne, or such other wine as you shall choose. You may guess, by the introduction, at the conclusion of the volume. Few go away sober at any time; and for the greatest part of his guests, in the conclusion, they cannot go at all. [Sidenote: 1697.] ‘This,’ it is added, ‘he partly brings about by artfully proposing after the public healths (which always imply bumpers) such private ones as he knows will pique the interest or inclinations of each particular person of the company, whose turn it is to take the lead to begin it in a brimmer; and he himself being always cheerful, and sometimes saying good things, his guests soon lose their guard, and then—I need say no more. ‘As the company are one after another disabled, two servants, who are all the while in waiting, take up the invalids with short poles in their chairs, as they sit (if not fallen down), and carry them to their beds; and still the hero holds out.’[216] Mr Burton, in his Life of President Forbes, states that it was the custom at Culloden House in the days of John Forbes—_Bumper John_, he was called—to prize off the top of each successive cask of claret, and place it in the corner of the hall, to be emptied in pailfuls. The massive hall-table, which bore so many carouses, is still preserved as a venerable relic; and the deep saturation it has received from old libations of claret, prevents one from distinguishing the description of wood of which it was constructed. Mr Burton found an expenditure of £40 sterling a month for claret in the accounts of the President. [Sidenote: OCT. 6.]