Six fois je m’en vas boire au beau nom de Cloris, Cloris, le seul desire de ma chaste pensée. Space forbids that we should go very fully into all these old drinking customs, though some of them are fantastic and curious enough. One or two more, however, may be mentioned. In Elizabethan times it was customary for hard drinkers to put some inflammable substance on the surface of their liquor, and so to swallow the draught and the blazing fragment at a gulp. This was called flap-dragoning, and the fiery morsel was known as a flap-dragon. Shakspere has many allusions to this practice. Falstaff says of Prince Hal, that he “drinks off {282} candle-ends for flap-dragons.” And in _Winter’s Tale_ an instance of the verb occurs in the passage, “But to make an end of the ship; to see how the sea flap-dragoned it.” The captain in _Rowley’s Match at Midnight_ asserts that his corporal “was lately choked at Delf by swallowing a flap-dragon.” The term hob-nob as denoting pot-companionship, has been said by some to be a corruption of “Habbe or nabbe?” _i.e._, Will you have or not have (a drink)? Others suggest a more whimsical derivation. It is said that the Maids of Honour of the Tudor Court, who we have seen were ale-ladies, if they cannot be called ale-knights, frequently liked their beer warm, and had it placed upon the hob of the grate “to take the chill off.” It was therefore natural for their attendants to ask the question, “From the hob or not from the hob?” which in process of time became “Hob or nob?”