Beowulf - Ale - Beer - Mead - English Wine - The Mead Hall-drinking Horns - Tosti and Harold - Pigment, etc. - The Clergy, etc., drinking - Northern Wine drinking - King Hund-ing - Brewing - Strange Drinking Vessels, and their Use -Punishment of Drunkards.

Sailing from the north, being lured to the south with visions of plunder and luxury, came the Danish and Norwegian Vikings, and, as England was the nearest to them, she received an early visit. With them they brought their habit of deep drinking, which was scarcely needed, as on that score the then inhabitants of England could pretty well hold their own. Their liquors seem to have been ale, ealu. beer, teor, wine, win, and mead, medo.

There was a difference between those that drank ale and those that drank beer, as we find in Beowulf1:

"Full oft have promis'd, with beer drunken, Over the ale cup, sons of conflict, that they in the beer-hall would await Grendel's warfare with terrors of edges: then was this mead-hall, at morning tide, this princely court, stain'd with gore; when the day dawn'd, all the bench-floor with blood bestream'd, the hall, with horrid gore; of faithful followers I own'd the less, of dear nobles, who then death destroyed. Sit now to the feast, and unbind with mead thy valiant breast with my warriors as thy mind may excite. Then was for the sons of the Goths altogether in the beer hall a bench clear'd; there the strong of soul went to sit tumultuously rejoicing: the thane observ'd his duty, who in his hand bare the ornamented ale-cup, he pour'd the bright, sweet liquor: the gleeman sang at times serene in Heorot: there was joy of warriors, no few nobles of Danes and Weders."

1 Line 964, etc.

In Dugdale's Monasticon (ed. 1682, p. 126), in a Charter of Offa to the Monastery of Westbury, three sorts of ale are mentioned. Two tuns full of hlutres aloth (Clear ale), a cumb full of lithes aloth (mild ale), and a cumb full of Welisces aloth (Welsh ale), which is again mentioned as cervisia Wallice.

But though beer and ale were the drinks of the common folk, yet they were not despised by their leaders,

1 "At times before the nobles Hrothgars daughter to the earls in order the ale cup bore."

We see the social difference between ale and wine drinkers in one of the Cotton Mss. (Tib. A. 3), where a lad having been asked what he drank replied: "Ale, if I have it; Water, if I have it not." Asked why he does not drink wine, he says: "I am not so rich that I can buy me wine; and wine is not the drink of children or the weak-minded, but of the elders and-the wise."

The English at that time grew the Vine for wine-making purposes; indeed, very good wine can now be, and is, made from English grapes. Every monastery had its vineyard, and to this day London has six Vine Streets and one Vineyard Walk. The wine-hall seems to have been a different apartment to either the mead, or ale-halls, and of a superior order.

2 "The company all arose; greeted then one man another

1 Line 4044, etc.

2 Line 1387, etc.

Hrothgar Beowulf, and bade him hail, gave him command of the wine-hall."

* * * *

1 "He strode under the clouds, until he the wine-house, the golden hall of men, most readily perceiv'd, richly variegated."

The mead-hall seems to have answered the purpose of a common hall, as we see by the following. Speaking of Hrothgar, the poet says:

2 "It ran through his mind that he a hall-house would command, a great mead-house, men to make, which the sons of men should ever hear of; and there within all distribute to young and old, as to him God had given, except the people's share, and the lives of men. Then I heard that widely the work was proclaim'd to many a tribe through this mid-earth that a public place was building."

Mead was considered a glorified liquor fit for Men, and is thus sung of by the bard Taliesin:

"That Maelgwn of Mona be inspired with mead and cheer us with it, From the mead-horn's foaming, pure, and shining liquor, Which the bees provide, but do not enjoy; Mead distilled, I praise; its eulogy is everywhere Precious to the creature whom the earth maintains. God made it to man for his happiness, The fierce and the mute both enjoy it."

1 Line 1432, etc.

2 Line 135, etc.

Mead was made from honey and water, fermented, and in many languages its name has a striking similarity. In Greek, honey is methu, in Sanskrit, madhu, and the drink made therefrom in Danish, is miod, in Anglo-saxon, medu, in Welsh, medd, whence metheglyn - medd, mead, and llyn, liquor. In Beowulf we frequently find mention of the mead-horns, and we find it vividly portrayed in the heading of this chapter, which is taken from the Bayeux Tapestry. These horns were generally those of oxen, although some were made of ivory, and were probably used because fictile ware was so easily broken in those drinking bouts in which they so frequently indulged. Another reason was doubtless that they promoted conviviality, for, like the classical Rhyton, they could not be set down like a bowl, but must either be nursed, or their contents quaffed.

Many examples of drinking horns remain to us, and illustrations of two are here given: one that of Ulph, belonging to, and now kept at, York Minster, and the other the Pusey horn. These are veritable drinking horns; but there are many other tenure horns in existence, which are hunting horns.