"So never let a Spaniard boast, While Cheshire-men abound, Lest they should teach him, to his cost, To dance a Cheshire round!"[56] Next to Cheshire rank Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, for their cheese. In the latter county they have the proverb: "If you wid have a good cheese, and hav'n old, You must turn 'n seven times before he is old." To curdle the milk in cheese-making was formerly used the _Galium verum_ of botanists, a wild flower with square stems, shining whorled leaves, and loose panicles of small yellow flowers, popularly known as _Cheese Rennet_. The practice of mixing sage and other herbs, and the flowers or seeds of plants, with cheese, was common among the Romans; and this led to the herbs, &c. being worked into heraldic devices in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne once ate cheese mixed with parsley-seeds at a bishop's palace, and liked it so much, that ever after he had two cases of such cheese sent yearly to Aix-la-Chapelle. Our pastoral poet of the last century has noted this device: "Marbled with sage, the hardened cheese she pressed."--GAY. ALE AND BEER. The virtues of Saxon ale have already been commemorated, at pp. 66-68. We return to the subject, at a later period. "It may be remarked," says Mr. Hudson Turner, "that in the thirteenth century the English had no certain principle as to the grain best suited for brewing. A roll of household expenses of the Countess of Leicester shows that Beer was made indiscriminately of barley, wheat, and oats, and sometimes of a mixture of all. As the Hop was not used we may conjecture that the produce of their brewing was rather insipid, and not calculated for long keeping: it was drunk as soon as made. To remove the mawkish flatness of such beer it was customary to flavour it with spices and other strong ingredients: long pepper continued to be used for this purpose some time after the introduction of hops. The period at which the last-named plant became an ingredient of English beer is not precisely known. It was cultivated from a very early date in Flanders and Belgium, where it was both employed in brewing, and eaten in salads; and from those countries it was imported into England while the produce of our own hop-grounds was inconsiderable. It would appear, however, that Hops were used in this country for brewing, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, as Gilbert Kymer, in his _Dietary_, pronounces beer brewed from barley, and well hopped, also of middling strength, thin and clear, well fined, well boiled, and neither too new or too old, to be a sound and wholesome beverage. It is pretty certain, nevertheless, that in his time the hop was not _grown_ in England. In ancient days brewing was almost solely managed by women, and till the close of the fifteenth century the greater part of the beer-houses in London were kept by females who brewed what they sold."