The chronicler, John Brompton, is right in saying, ‘by nature the Danes are mighty drinkers,’ but he errs like the rest of them in saying that they left that quality as a perpetual inheritance to the English. The Saxons had already done this. And it is a question whether in this respect the Danes did not learn quite as much as they taught. Iago was probably right in his dialogue with Cassio, ‘Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander, drink, oh! are nothing to your English.’[42] At any rate, the Danish kings adopted the Saxon drinks--ale, cider, mead, wine, morat, and pigment, and half the Danish dynasty adopted them to their ruin. The tragical end of Hardicanute is characteristic of the age in which he lived, and was in keeping with his life. A wedding-feast was given at Lamhithe (Lambeth) by Osgod Clapa, a great lord, in celebration of the marriage of his daughter Githa with Tovi Pruda, a Danish nobleman; when, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the king Harthacnut, as he stood at his drink, suddenly fell to the earth with a terrible convulsion ... and after that spake not one word. Others add that he fell in the act of pledging the company in a huge bumper.[43] Smollett attributes his immediate end to over-eating at this banquet, at the same time asserting that he was particularly addicted to feasting and drinking, which he indulged to abominable excess. To the same effect, Rapin writes: ‘All historians unanimously agree, he spent whole days and nights in feasting and carousing.’ We cannot leave this short-reigned votary of the cup without noticing the celebrated antiquarian hoax played upon Richard Gough, the famous English antiquary of the last century, by the fabrication of an inscription purporting to record the death of the Saxon king, Hardicanute. Steevens, as an act of revenge, obtained the fragment of a chimney slab, and scratched upon it the inscription in Anglo-Saxon letters, of which all I can make is, ‘HeRe HARDNUT CYNING GEDRONGE VIN HYRN’--_i.e._ ‘here Harthcanute, king, drank wine horn,’ &c.[44] It was alleged to have been discovered in Kennington Lane, where the palace of the monarch was said to be situated, and the fatal drinking bout to have taken place. Gough fell into the trap, exhibited the curiosity to the Society of Antiquaries; Mr. Pegge, F.S.A., wrote a paper on it; the society’s draughtsman, Schnebbelie, drew the inscription, and it was engraved in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. A curious festival is said to commemorate King Hardicanute’s death. John Rouse relates that the anniversary of it was kept by the English as a holiday in his time, four hundred years afterwards, and was called _Hock-day._