The cheapness and varieties of intoxicating drinks, too, had something to do with the prevailing drunkenness. Besides mead and beer, there were numerous kinds of wine and liquors made from the grape, mulberry, apple, pear, &c., and a favourite spiced wine called “Lütertrank.”[201] The low price of wines at that time has been commemorated in a proverb of the year 1539: “Tausendfünfhundertdreissig und neun, Galten die Fässer mehr als der Wein.” Anglicised— “In Fifteen hundred and thirty-nine, The casks were valued at more than the wine.” It was about that time that the enormous casks which are still so famous were erected; that at Tübingen was twenty-four feet long and sixteen feet in height, and the one at Heidelberg is of similar proportions. The goblets which were used resembled the gigantic cups of ancient Rome, and, like them, were made of various materials. Husbands presented their wives with goblets of gold on their wedding mornings, and no greater compliment could be paid by a vassal to his lord than to offer him a handsome gold drinking vessel. Such goblets were often covered with narratives of the drunken exploits of their owners. Nor were the clergy any better than their flocks, although they preached against and denounced drunkenness loudly enough. We shall have an opportunity of studying their ways later on, but for the present one or two extracts from the ecclesiastical chronicles and canons must suffice. In the monastery of St. Gall, during the tenth century, each monk received daily five measures of beer, besides occasional allowances of wine, which were consumed at breakfast, dinner, and supper; and healths were often pledged by the abbots.[202] “Amongst these vices,” said a preacher in Germany in the ninth century, “feasting and drunkenness especially reign, since not only the rude and vulgar people, but the noble and powerful of the land, are given up to them. Both sexes and all ages have made intemperance into a custom; ... and so greatly has the plague spread, that it has infected some of our own order in the priesthood, so that not only do they not correct the drunkards, but become drunkards themselves.”[203]