The southern district of Devon, which is locally known as South Hams, has long been famed for a curious liquor known as “white ale.” The beverage is of great antiquity, and has been subject to tithe from time immemorial. Kingsbridge is supposed to have been the place where white ale was first brewed. It used to be made of malt, a small quantity of hops, flour, spices, and a mysterious compound known as “grout,” or “ripening,” the manufacture of which was, and may be still, preserved as a great secret in a few families. In another receipt for making this ale it is stated that a number of eggs should be added to the liquor before it is allowed to ferment, and this seems to have been an essential of the original brew, or at any rate was so considered in 1741. A writer at that date says:—“The Ale-wives, whose province of making this Ale it commonly falls under to manage from the beginning to the end, are most of them as curious in their brewing it, as the Dairy women in making their butter, for as it is a White Ale it soon sullies by dirt . . . . ; the wort is brewed by the hostess, but the fermentation is brought on by the purchase of what they call ‘ripening,’ or a composition, as some say, of flower of malt and white of eggs . .” This luscious liquid has been described as “not the sparkling beverage brewed from malt and hops, but a milky-looking compound, of which, judging from the flavour, milk, spice and gin seemed to be among the ingredients. It does not improve by keeping, and is brewed only in small quantities for immediate consumption. It is kept in large bottles, and you will scarcely pass a public-house from Darmouth to Plymouth without seeing evidence of its consumption by the empty bottles piled away outside the premises.” At the present time a considerable quantity of white ale is made in and about Tavistock. It is now, however, brewed in a simpler manner than of yore, and consists simply of common ale with eggs and flour {164} added. The labourers of that part of the country much affect it, and as it is highly nutritious it is regarded by many of them as “meat, drink and cloth” combined. A bloated habit of body is said to arise from a too faithful adherence to this luscious fluid. A former great connoisseur of this West-country ale, one Bone Phillips, lies buried just outside the church door at Kingsbridge; the following lines were inscribed over his grave at his request:— Here lie I at the church door, Here be I because I’m poor, The further in the more you pay, Here lie I as warm as they. While on the subject of epitaphs, the following may be quoted as having some bearing on the subject specially treated of in this chapter:— Poor John Scott lies buried here; Tho’ once he was both _hale_ and _stout_, Death stretched him on his bitter bier: In another world he _hops_ about.