BARLEY. 67 



country. The green ears are boiled in water, and 

 served up to be eaten with milk. Among the Greeks 

 beer was distinguished as barley wine, a name which 

 sufficiently identifies the intoxicating property of the 

 liquid, and the material whence this was drawn. 

 From a passage in Tacitus we learn that the German 

 people were, in his day, acquainted with the process 

 of preparing beer from malted grain ; and Pliny 

 describes a similar liquid under the name of Cerevisia, 

 an appellation which it retained in Latin books of 

 more recent date. It farther appears that malt liquor 

 has formed an article of manufacture and consumption 

 in this country for a period at least coeval with the 

 titme of Tacitus ; but we do not know whether any 

 one kind of grain was exclusively employed in its 

 preparation, or whether wheat and barley were not 

 used for the purpose, either indiscriminately or in 

 conjunction. 



The general drinks of the Anglo-Saxons were ale 

 and mead : wine was a luxury for the great. In the 

 Saxon Dialogues preserved in the Cotton Library in 

 the British Museum, a boy, who is questioned upon 

 his habits and the uses of things, says, in answer to 

 the inquiry what he drank ' Ale if I have it, or 

 water if I have it not.' He adds, that wine is the 

 drink ' of the elders and the wise.' Ale was sold to 

 the people, as at this day, in houses of entertain- 

 ment ; ' for a priest was forbidden by a law to eat 

 or drink at ceapealethetum, literally, places where 

 ale was sold.'* After the Norman conquest, wine 

 became more commonly used ; and the vine was 

 extensively cultivated in England. The people, how- 

 ever, held to the beverage of their forefathers with 

 great pertinacity ; and neither the juice of the grape 

 nor of the apple were ever general favourites. The 



* Turner's ' Anglo-Saxons,' vol. iii, p. 32. 



