392 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. No 46., Nov. 15. '56, 



1566 the cultivation of hops was not of great ex- 

 tent in Flanders : 



" Allst (where most of the hopps groweth) viij miles 

 from Antwerp." 



These hops appear to have been chiefly intended 

 for home consumption, and for the English 

 market ; even the fame of them seems to have 

 been quite unknown to the Venetians, notwith- 

 standing their extensive foreign commerce. Sig. 

 Giovanni Michele, writing from this country in 

 1557, enumerates " among the articles of com- 

 merce . . . things called hops (the flowers of a 

 certain tree or plant), necessary as ingredients for 

 making beer." In Spain, if hops were not culti- 

 vated, their value appears to have been at least 

 well-known. Sir Richard Wingfield, in his last 

 illness at Toledo (1525), — 



" Did eat melons and drank wine without water unto 

 them, and afterwards drank beer, which is made here by 

 force bitter of the hop, for to be preserved the better 

 against the intolerable heat of this country." — Ellis's 

 Original Letters, 3rd Series, vol. ii. p. 21. 



In the preface to his volume on Manners and 

 Household Expences, Mr. Botfield quotes an En- 

 glish MS. of the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury (Shane, No. 4. p. 166.), in which beer is 

 directed to be well hopped. W. Denton. 



E. G. R. askf, whence humulus and lupulus ? Lin- 

 na3us ingeniously derives the former from ^'^humns, 

 moist earth, such as the plant in question prefers." 

 From a comparison of the Svv. and Dan. humle 

 with humhletoft and humhleyard (in Sw. humle- 

 gijrd), cited, one would imagine that humle, Sfc, 

 were derived from humilis, humble (also small, 

 weak, base, ignoble) ; but humle, Low Lat., humulus, 

 humulo, and humlo, are from Gall, houblon, from 

 lupulum (by dropping the I), lupulus, dim. of 

 lupus, a wolf, also hops ; and in the latter sense 

 allied, perhaps, to \ofihs. Dufresne gives also, 

 " Ilumularium ager humulo seu lupulo consitus, 

 nostris Houblionniere, alias umeau et umelaye^ Lu- 

 pulus is found in Latin dictionaries. See Dufresne 

 (^Gloss. Med. et Inf. Lot., vol. iii.) ; Linn. Gen., 

 522. ; Schreh., 689. ; Willd. Sp. PL, vol. iv. 769. ; 

 Mart. Mill. Diet, vol. ii. ; Sm. Fl. Brit. 1077. ; 

 Juss. 404. ; Lamar ch. Illusir., vol. i. 815. 



R. S. Chabnock. 



Gray's Inn. 



It is curious to observe the changes which take 

 place in the tastes of Englishmen for the good 

 things of this life. 



Our ancestors were very fond of sweet things. 

 Hentzner, describing Queen Elizabeth, says : 



" Her lips were narrow, and her teeth black, a defect 

 the English are subject to, from their too great use of 

 sugar." 



Lalehara, a gay courtier of that day, says : 



"In the morning I rise ordinarily at 7 o'clock ; then ready, 

 I get me commonly into my Lord's Chamber, or into my 

 Lord President's ; there, at the cupboard, after eating the 

 manchet, served over night for levey, I drink me a good 

 bowl of ale. When in a sweet pot it is defecated by all 

 night's standing, the drink is better, take that from me." 



Honey, and liquors made from it, such as mead, 

 were great favourites. It is not likely, therefore, 

 that hops should be popular ; and when they were 

 used, it was more from necessity than choice, and 

 only in the case of ale which was intended to be 

 kept for some time. It appears that beer, of 

 which there was probably a quick draught, con- 

 tained no hops at all. 



A great change has taken place, and a taste for 

 bitter things is now prevailing ; which is shown 

 in the freqvient omission of sugar as an ingredient 

 in tea; and still more in the love of bitter beer, — 

 a dose of which would have been rejected by our 

 ancestors with dismay. 



It is singular that the word " brewing," which, 

 notwithstanding the philippic of one of the Hon. 

 Members for Surrey against porter, is connected 

 in the minds of Englishmen with most agreeable 

 associations, when applied figuratively is always 

 used in a bad sense. We talk of " a storm brew- 

 ing ;" " there is some mischief brewing ;" but we 

 never hear of " any good brewing." R. W. B. 



It may assist your correspondents in coming to 

 a right conclusion on the relative value of the 

 testimony of the old rhyming tradition and Ful- 

 ler's statement of a petition of the Commons 

 against hops in the time of Henry VI., if I repeat 

 what I have before stated, that in a search a few 

 years since amongst the records of Great 'Yar- 

 mouth, I found and noted under the 32nd year of 

 Henry VI. that one sack of " hoppes " paid a tron- 

 age of 3d. to the Water Bailiff in that year, and 

 there are probably earlier entries of a similar 

 kind which escaped my notice. During the reign 

 of Henry VI. it will be seen by a reference to 

 the Rolls of Parliament, or to Cotton's Records^ 

 that much discussion was going on in Parliament 

 about beer, and a petition on the subject of hops 

 by no means so unlikely as your correspondent 

 Mr. Yeowell would infer. Henry Harrod. 



Norwich. 



LONG LANKYN BALLAD. 



(2°'^ S. ii. 324.) 

 In the Drawing-Room Scrap-Booh for 1835, 

 edited by L. E. L. (the late lamented Miss Lan- 

 don, afterwards Mrs. Maclean), at p. 11. there 

 are thirteen stanzas, and some fragments of the 

 curious ballad of "Long Lonkin," appended to 

 her poetical illustration of a view of Honister crag 

 and glen in Cumberland, traditionally the scene 



