Beer was the current name in England for every description of malt liquor before the introduction of “the wicked weed called hops” from the Netherlands in 1524. According to the _Alvismal_, a didactic Scandinavian poem of the tenth century, this malt liquor was called ale amongst men, and beer by the gods; and it was probably from this Scandinavian poem that the author of the anything-but-didactic poem quoted above got his ideas as to the real nature of the beverage partaken of on Olympus. In the Eastern counties of England, and over the greater part of the kingdom, ale signifies strong, and beer small, malt liquor, but in the West these names mean exactly the reverse—which must be confusing in the extreme to the intelligent foreigner on his travels in search of facts and—refreshment. As now used, ale is distinguished from beer—I am alluding to the more civilized parts of our country—chiefly by its strength, and by the quantity of sugar remaining in it undecomposed. Strong ale is made from the best pale malt, and the fermentation is allowed to proceed slowly, and the ferment to be exhausted and separated. This, together with the large quantity of sugar still left undecomposed, enables the liquor to keep long, without requiring a large amount of hops. The last few lines may give the reader the impression that the writer served his time in Burton-on-Trent; but this is not the case. I {51} have conveyed the bulk of my technical knowledge of brewing from standard works on the subject. It will be gathered from some previous remarks that all is not beer that’s bitter; and although it would seem impossible to find a cleaner, healthier, or more strengthening drink than the “pure beer” of commerce, brewed from good English or Scotch barley, Kentish hops, and fair spring-water, how about the wash sold in some licensed houses which is “fetched up” with foot-sugar, bittered with quassia, and mixed with salt and any nasty flavourer which is handy? The old stories about the carcass of a horse placed in the London stout, to give it “body,” and the mysterious disappearance of an Italian organ-grinder, together with his monkey and infernal machine, just outside a high-class brewery, are probably apocryphal. And although the ancients undoubtedly put a red cock—the older the better—into ale, on occasion, the nineteenth century Briton, for the most part, if the rooster be too tough to serve as a boiled _bonne bouche_ with parsley-and-butter, usually makes Cock-a-Leekie of him. And thereby hangs a tale.