The Curiosities of Ale & Beer. John Bickerdyke
be it never so secret to be kept; It is an Embleme of Justice, for it allowes, and yeelds measure; It will put Courage into a Coward, and make him swagger and fight; It is a Seale to many a good Bargaine. The Physittian will commend it; the Lawyer will defend it; It neither hurts or kils any but those that abuse it unmeasurably and beyond bearing; It doth good to as many as take it rightly; It is as good as a Paire of Spectacles to cleare the Eyesight of an old Parish Clarke; and in Conclusion, it is such a nourisher of Mankinde, that if my Mouth were as bigge as Bishopsgate, my Pen as long as a Maypole, and my Inke a flowing spring, or a standing fishpond, yet I could not with Mouth, Pen or Inke, speake or write the true worth and worthiness of Ale.” Bravo, John Taylor! He would be a bold man who could lift up his voice against our honest English nappy, after reading your vigorous lines.
It is not uninteresting to compare this sixteenth century work with a passage taken from By Lake and River, the author of which rarely loses an opportunity of eulogising beer. Anglers and many more will cordially agree with Mr. Francis Francis in his remarks. “Ah! my beloved brother of the rod,” he writes, “do you know the taste of beer—of bitter beer—cooled in the flowing river? Not you; I warrant, like the ‘Marchioness,’ hitherto you have only had ‘a sip’ occasionally—and, as Mr. Swiveller judiciously remarks, ‘it can’t be tasted in a sip.’ Take your bottle of beer, sink it deep, deep in the shady water, where the cooling springs and fishes are. Then, the day being very hot and bright, and the sun blazing on your devoted head, consider it a matter of duty to have to fish that long, wide stream (call it the Blackstone stream, if you will); and so, having endued yourself with high wading breeks, walk up to your middle, and begin hammering away with your twenty-foot flail. Fish are rising, but not at you. No, they merely come up to see how the weather looks, and what o’clock it is. So fish away; there is not above a couple of hundred yards of it, and you don’t want to throw more than about two or three-and-thirty yards at every cast. It is a mere trifle. An hour or so of good hard hammering will bring you to the end of it, and then—let me ask you avec impressement—how about that beer? Is it cool? Is it refreshing? Does it {6} gurgle, gurgle, and ‘go down glug,’ as they say in Devonshire? Is it heavenly? Is it Paradise and all the Peris to boot? Ah! if you have never tasted beer under these or similar circumstances, you have, believe me, never tasted it at all.”
A word or two now as to the distinctions between the beverages known as ale and beer. Going back to the time of the Conquest, or earlier, we find that both words were applied to the same liquor, a fermented drink made usually from malt and water, without hops. The Danes called it ale, the Anglo-Saxons beer. Later on the word beer dropped almost out of use. Meanwhile, in Germany and the Netherlands, the use of hops in brewing had been discovered; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Flemings having introduced their bier into England, the word “beer” came to have in this country a distinct meaning—viz., hopped ale. The difference was quaintly explained by Andrew Boorde in his Dyetary, written about the year 1542. “Ale,” said Andrew, “is made of malte and water; and they which do put any other thynge to ale than is rehersed, except yest, barme, or godesgood, doth sofystical theyr ale. Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall drinke. Ale must have these propertyes: it must be fresshe and cleare, it muste not be ropy nor smoky, nor it must have no weft nor tayle. Ale shuld not be dronke vnder v. dayes olde. Newe ale is vnholsome for all men. And sowre ale, and deade ale the which doth stande a tylt, is good for no man. Barly malte maketh better ale then oten malte or any other corne doth: it doth ingendre grose humoures; but yette it maketh a man stronge.”
OF BERE.
“Bere is made of malte, of hoppes, and water; it is the naturall drynke for a Dutche man, and nowe of late dayes it is moche vsed in Englande to the detryment of many Englysshe people; specyally it kylleth them the which be troubled with the colycke, and the stone, and the strangulion; for the drynke is a colde drynke; yet it doth make a man fat, and doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the Dutche men’s faces and belyes. If the bere be well serued, and be fyned, and not new, it doth qualyfy heat of the liquer.”
The distinction between ale and beer as described by Boorde lasted for a hundred years or more. As hops came into general use, though malt liquors generally were now beer, the word ale was still retained, and was used whether the liquor it was intended to designate was {7} hopped or not. At the present day beer is the generic word, which includes all malt liquors; while the word ale includes all but the black or brown beers—porter and stout. The meanings of the words are, however, subject to local variations. This subject is further treated of in Chapter VII.
The union of hops and malt is amusingly described in one of the Brasenose College alepoems:—
A Grand Cross of “Malta,” one night at a ball, Fell in love with and married “Hoppetta the Tall.” Hoppetta, the bitterest, best of her sex, By whom he had issue—the first, “Double X.”
Three others were born by this marriage—“a girl,” Transparent as Amber and precious as Pearl. Then a son, twice as strong as a Porter or Scout, And another as “Spruce” as his brother was “Stout.”
Double X, like his Sister, is brilliant and clear, Like his Mother, tho’ bitter, by no means severe: Like his Father, not small, and resembling each brother, Joins the spirit of one to the strength of the other.
In John Taylor’s time there seems to have existed among ale drinkers a wholesome prejudice against wine in general, and more especially sack. The water poet writes very bitterly on the subject:—
Thus Bacchus is ador’d and deified, And we Hispanialized and Frenchifide; Whilst Noble Native Ale and Beere’s hard fate Are like old Almanacks, quite out of date.
Thus men consume their credits and their wealths, And swallow Sicknesses in drinking healths, Untill the Fury of the spritefull Grape Mountes to the braine, and makes a man an Ape.
Another poet wrote in much the same strain:—
Thy wanton grapes we do detest: Here’s richer juice from Barley press’d.
Our ancestors seem, indeed, almost to have revered good malt liquor. Richard Atkinson gave the following excellent advice to Leonard Lord Dacre in the year 1570: “See that ye keep a noble house for beef and beer, that thereof may be praise given to God and to your honour.”
The same subject—comparison of sack with ale to the disadvantage of the former—is still better treated in an old ale song by Beaumont; it is such a good one of its kind that we give it in full:—
ANSWER OF ALE TO THE CHALLENGE OF SACK.
Come all you brave wights, That are dubbed ale-knights, Now set out yourselves in sight; And let them that crack In the presence of Sack Know Malt is of mickle might.
Though Sack they define Is holy divine, Yet it is but naturall liquor, Ale hath for its part An addition of art To make it drinke thinner or thicker.
Sack; fiery fume, Doth waste and consume Men’s humidum radicale; It scaldeth their livers, It breeds burning feavers, Proves vinum venenum reale.
But history gathers, From aged forefathers, That Ale’s the true liquor of life, Men lived long in health, And preserved their wealth, Whilst Barley broth only was rife. {9}
Sack, quickly ascends, And suddenly ends, What company came for at first, And that which yet worse is, It empties men’s purses Before it half quenches their thirst.
Ale, is not so costly Although that the most lye Too long by the oyle of Barley; Yet may they part late, At a reasonable rate, Though they came in the morning early.
Sack, makes men from words Fall to drawing of swords, And quarrelling endeth their quaffing; Whilst dagger ale Barrels Beare off many quarrels And