* * * * * True or false, this is the legend as related in the north, and certain it is that _a_ heather beer was made until quite recently in some parts of Scotland and Ireland. The heather, however, is used as a flavouring rather than as an actual basis for making the drink. The blossoms of the heather are carefully gathered and cleansed, and are then placed in the bottom of vessels; wort of the ordinary kind is allowed to drain through the blossoms, and gains in its passage a peculiar and agreeable flavour, which is well known to all who are familiar with heather honey. Pennant, in his _Voyage to the Hebrides_, mentions heather _ale_, and says that the proportions were two-thirds of the plant to one of hops (hops being sometimes added); and Mr. Weld, in his _Two Months in the Highlands_, {176} says that “although the art of brewing the Pictish heather ale is lost, old grouse shooters have tasted a beverage prepared by shepherds, on the moors, principally from heather flowers, though honey or sugar, to produce fermentation, was added.” In some parts of Ireland there is a tradition that the Danes possessed the knowledge of making an intoxicating liquor from heather bells; this drink the peasants speak of as beoir-lochlonnach (_i.e._, strong at sea), an epithet by which the savage Northmen were known to the Celtic races. It is possible that there is some connection between this heather ale and the ale formerly made by the Swedes and flavoured with the _Myrica gale_. Reference to this plant is made in a Swedish law of the fifteenth century, in which it is forbidden to gather the blossoms before a certain period. The probability of this connection seems to be increased by the fact that in Yorkshire, a county which contains many descendants of the old Northmen, a beer is still made called “gale beer,” and is flavoured with the blossoms of a species of heather found growing on the moors in that part of the country. As late as the commencement of this century an ale flavoured with heather, and differing little from the heather ale described, was brewed in many parts of Ireland. The practice, it is believed, is now almost if not quite extinct. Irish moss ale is made in the following manner:—Take one ounce of Irish moss, one ounce of hops, one ounce of ginger, one ounce of Spanish juice, and one pound of sugar. Ten gallons of water are added and the mixture is boiled, fermented, and bottled. The consideration of the name of this liquor and the actual constituents may possibly remind readers of the old tale of that very clever person who made soup out of a stone with the assistance of a few such trifles as beef, vegetables, and flavourings.