The Black Jack is a jug or pitcher, made of leather, which was sometimes ornamented with a silver rim and a silver plate with the owner’s name or coat of arms engraved thereon. Here is a short lyric, “In praise of the Black Jack.”[112] “Be your liquor small, or as thick as mudd, The cheating bottle cryes, good, good, good, Whereat the master begins to storme, Cause he said more than he could performe. _And I wish that his heires may never want Sack,_ _That first devis’d the bonny black Jack._ No Tankerd, Flaggon, Bottle nor Jugg Are half so good, or so well can hold Tugg, For when they are broke, or full of cracks, Then they must fly to the brave black Jacks. _And I wish_, etc. When the Bottle and Jack stands together, O fie on’t, The Bottle looks just like a dwarfe to a Gyant; Then had we not reason Jacks to chuse For this’l make Boots, when the Bottle mends shoes. _And I wish_, etc. And as for the bottle you never can fill it Without a Tunnell, but you must spill it, ’Tis as hard to get in, as it is to get out, ’Tis not so with a Jack, for it runs like a Spout _And I wish_, etc. And when we have drank out all our store, The Jack goes for Barme to brew us some more; And when our Stomacks with hunger have bled, Then it marches for more to make us some bread. _And I wish_, etc. I now will cease to speak of the Jack, But hope his assistance I never shall lack, And I hope that now every honest man, Instead of Jack will y’clip him John. _And I wish_, etc.” But the composer of “A Song in praise of the Leather Bottel” could rise to the magnitude of his subject in a far superior manner than the preceding poet, the refrain of his song being of a higher type. “And I wish in Heaven his Soul may dwell, That first devised the Leather Bottel.” [Illustration] The uses of the Bottel were so manifest, and its material so superior to any other, that it occupied a higher position. It was better than wood, for it would not run, and was unbreakable. When a man and his wife fell out, as will occasionally happen even in the best matrimonial existence, the bottel could be thrown at each other, without great injury either to human, or the bottel. It held no temptation to steal, as if it were of silver; nor could it be broken, as if it were of glass—because, as the song justly says,—