“Brynge us home good ale, syr, brynge us home good ale, And for our der lady’s love, brynge us som good ale. Brynge us home no beff, syr, for that is full of bonys, But brynge us home goode ale y-nough, for that my love alone ys; Brynge us home no wetyn brede, for yᵗ be ful of branne, Nothyr of no ry brede, for yᵗ is of yᵉ same; Brynge us home no porke, syr, for yᵗ is verie fatt, Nothyr no barly brede, for neythir love I that; Brynge us home no muton, for that is tough and lene, Neyther no trypys, for thei be seldyn clene; Brynge us home no veel, syr, that do I not desyr, But brynge us home good ale y-nough to drynke by yᵉ fyer; Brynge us home no syder, nor no palde[111] wyne, For, and yᵘ do, thow shalt have Criste’s curse and mine.” The foregoing verses epitomise the praise of good beer. The first is from one of the earliest known drinking songs in the English language—the last is an old Wassail song—the Wassail bowl, which was of hot spiced ale, with roasted apples bobbing therein,—a kindly way of welcome on New Year’s Eve, of Saxon derivation as its name “Wes-hal,” _be of health_, or _your health_, testifies. That the Anglo-Saxon took kindly to his beer, we have already seen; and that that feeling exists at the present day is undoubted, for what says the refrain of a comparatively modern drinking song? “I loves a drop of good beer—I does— I’se partickler fond of my beer—I is— And ⸺ their eyes, If ever they tries To rob a poor man of his beer.” Its popularity has never waned—and it has reached to such a height that the brewing trade seems to be instituted for the propagation of Peers of the realm—a fact which Dr. Johnson even could not have foreseen, although, at the sale of Thrale’s brewery, he did say that they had not met together to sell boilers and vats, but “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dream of avarice.” It was the national drink—for tea and coffee were not introduced into England until the middle of the seventeenth century—and it is only of very modern times that the “free breakfast table” fad of statesmanship has made those beverages so popular, by bringing them within the means of the very poorest. Beer was, perforce, drank morning, noon and night by those, and they were the vast majority, who could not afford wine—and, as a rule, after the Norman Conquest, when the Anglo-Saxons copied the soberer customs of their conquerors, the English were not drunkards as a nation; in fact, although almost all their jests hinge on drinking, there is in most of them an underlying moral, which in print are as telling as in this illustration, which, in deference to nasty Mrs. Grundy, has been slightly toned down. Here is very cleverly satirised for reprobation the phases of men under the influence of drink. How it transforms them into beasts, some like lions, others like asses and calves, sensual as hogs, greedy as goats, stupid as gulls.