50 Wine, Beere, 



For merry tales; one, Mother Redcap hight, 

 And Mother Owlet, somewhat ill of sight, 

 For she had burnt her eyes with watching late. 

 Then Mother Bumby, a mad jocund mate 

 As ever gossipp'd; and with her there came 

 Old gammer Gurtoh. 



422. dowe, Dough. 



429. that mil scarce cut Beere and 'twere buttered. "Buttered ale" was a familiar 

 drink in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

 447. Graves Wine. A pun on Vin de Graves. 



450. New River. An artificial waterway west of the Sea, terminating in a 

 reservoir on the outskirts of London. See B. Lambert, The History and Survey of 

 London and its Environs, II, 31. 



472. the statute. The reference is to "An Acte for repressinge the odious 

 and loathsome synne of Drunckenness," first passed under James I, recited and 

 enlarged at the opening of Charles II's reign (1625). See introduction, p. 7. 

 The law provided a fine or imprisonment in the stocks for each offense. See 

 Statutes of the Reaime, I Car. I, c. iv. In much the spirit of this rather contemp- 

 tuous allusion is the following passage from Randolph's Aristippus: " SimpUcissi- 

 mus: But (methinkes) there is one scrupulum: it seems to be actus illicitus that we 

 should drink so much, it being lately forbidden, and therefore contra formam 

 statuti." 



479. The Song. It is worth noting that the meter of this piece is apparently 

 inspired by that of the old drinking song, " JoUy Good Ale and Old" : 

 "I cannot eat but little meat," 

 My belly is not good 

 But sure I think that I can drink 

 With him that wears a hood." 

 Randolph's poem, "The High and Mighty Commendation of the Virtue of a Pot 

 of Good Ale" (PForfo, ed. Hazlitt, 11, 662), has obvious coimections with the 

 same song: 



"The hungry man seldom can mind his meat 

 (Though his stomach could brook a tenpenny nail); 

 He quite forgets hunger, thinks of it no longer. 

 If his guts be but sous'd with a pot of good ale." 



512. the chimney your nose. Cf. the well-known anecdote of the servant who, 

 upon seeing smoke issue from the nostrils of his master, endeavored to quench 

 the fire with a pot of ale. This story was told of Tarleton in 161 1 (See Shakespeare's 

 Jest-Books, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1864, ii, 211); it was later attached to the name of 

 Sir Walter Raleigh and has descended to posterity associated with him. (Cf. 

 Arber, Works of James I, English Reprints, p. 88.) The nose of the tobacco smoker 

 is not infrequently referred to as a chimney. Cf. Beaumont, Knight of the Burning 

 Pestle, I, iii: "Wife. Fie, this stinking tobacco kills me! would there were none 

 in England! — Now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco do 

 you? nothing, I warrant you: make chimneys o' your faces!" 



