Notes and Illustrations. 305 
*“Telle neuere the more thoug thou myche heere, 
And euere be waare of had-y-wist.” 
Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 264, 1. 72. 
77. 20. See note on ch. ro. 46. 
78. 4. “‘ Beware that ye geue no persone palled drynke, for feere 
Hit mygtt brynge many a man in disese durynge many a yere.”’ 
—John Russell’s Boke of Norture, in Babees Book, p. 13. 
‘“‘ Sowre ale, and dead ale, and ale the whiche doth stande a tylte 
is good for no man.”—Andrew Boorde, Regimen of Health. 
“Of ale and beer, as well as of wine, we find various kinds men- 
tioned. There were single beer, or small ale, which could do little 
more than quench thirst,—and double beer, which was recommended 
as containing a double quantity of malt and hops,—and double- 
double beer, which was twice as strong as that,—and dagger-ale, 
which, as the name implies, was reckoned particularly sharp and 
dangerous,—and bracket, a kind of ale which we are unable dis- 
tinctly to describe. But the favourite drink, as well as the chief 
article of vulgar debauch, was a kind of ale commonly called huff- 
cap, but which was also termed ‘mad dog,’ ‘angel’s food,’ 
‘dragon’s milk,’ and other such ridiculous names, by the fre- 
quenters of ale-houses: ‘and never,’ says Harrison, ‘did Romulus 
and Remus suck their she-wolf with such eager and sharp devotion 
as these men hale at huffcap, till they be as red as cocks, and little 
wiser than their combs.’ The higher classes, who were able to 
afford such a luxury, brewed a generous liquor for their own con- 
sumption, which they did not bring to the table till it was two 
years old. This was called March ale, from the month in which it 
was brewed. But the servants had to content themselves with a 
more simple beverage that was seldom more than a month old. A 
cup of choice ale was often as richly compounded with dainties as 
the finest wines. Sometimes it was warmed, and qualified with 
sugar and spices; sometimes with a toast; often with a roasted 
crab or apple, making the beverage still known under the name of 
Lambs’-wool ; while to stir the whole composition with a sprig 
of rosemary, was supposed to give it an additional flavour. The 
drinks made from fruit were chiefly cider, perry, and mum. Those 
that had formerly been made from honey seem to have fallen into 
disuse in consequence of the general taste for stronger potations ; 
metheglin being now chiefly confined to the Welsh. A simple 
liquor, however, was still used in Essex, called by Harrison, some- 
what contemptuously, ‘a swish-swash,’ made of water with a little 
honey and spice, but ‘as differing,’ he says, ‘from true metheglin 
as chalk doth from cheese.’: He informs us, moreover, that already 
the tapsters of England had learned to adulterate their ale and 
beer with pernicious compounds.”—Pict. Hist. of England, ii. 883. 
‘In the parish of Hawsted, Suffolk, the allowance of food to the 
labourer in harvest was, two herrings per day, milk from the manor 
20 
