To quote again from old Harrison on the fondness of his contemporaries for strong ale, speaking of workmen and others attending bride-ales (_i.e._, marriage feasts) and such like festivities, he says: “If they happen to stumble upon a peece of venison and a cup of wine or verie strong beere or ale (which latter they commonlie provide against their appointed daies) they thinke their cheere so great, and themselves to have fared so well, as the Lord Maior of London, with whom, when their bellies be full, they will not stick to make comparison.” In the year 1680, during the debate on the Act to restrain the excess and abuse used in Victualling Houses, one member said that he wished “there might be a reformation of Ale, which is now made so strong, that he offered to affirm it upon oath, that it is commonly sold for a Groat a quart. _It is as strong as wine, and will burn like Sack._” {158} The Water Poet thus describes the different qualities of mild and stale beer as known to the topers of the seventeenth century: “The stronger _Beere_ is divided into two parts (viz.), mild and stale; the first may ease a man of a drought, but the latter is like water cast into a Smith’s forge, and breeds more heart-burnings, and as rust eates into Iron, so overstale Beere gnawes aulet holes in the entrales, or else my skill failes, and what I have written of it is to be held as a Jest.” Nipitatum or nipitato was another slang name for very strong ale. It is mentioned in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_:— My father oft will tell me of a drink, In England found and _Nipitato_ called, Which driveth all the sorrow from your hearts. Another epithet applied to ale, and denoting great strength, was “humming,” and a reason for the term is shown by the extract from a letter from John Howell to Lord Ciffe (seventeenth century), who, in speaking of metheglin, says “that it keeps a humming in the brain, which made one say that he loved not metheglin because he was used to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive.” The humming in the head would be equally applicable to the effects of ale as of metheglin, though the hive would only apply to the latter. The same idea is sometimes expressed by the term _hum-cup_, as in the lines from the old Sussex sheep-shearing song, beginning:— ’Tis a barrel then of _hum-cup_, which we call the black ram. Besides these strong ales and others too numerous to mention, there was, at the beginning of last century, a certain strong beer called Pharaoh, which gave its name to an ale-house at Barley, in Cambridgeshire. The reason of the name is not certainly known, although it was said in the county that it was so called because it _would not let the people go_. This drink is no longer made in England, but a strong beer of the same name is much appreciated in Belgium. The same liquor is mentioned in the _Praise of Yorkshire Ale_ (1685):