Ale, and Tobacco 9 



to plead his cause against them all. The matter is referred to 

 Cupid as a connoisseur, who makes peace by declaring that each 

 Wine has its particular use and virtue but that Water, as a 

 common necessity, deserves to be held in highest honor. With 

 this decision may be compared the verdict of Parson Water in the 

 present dialogue, allowing to each of the liquors its "singularitie." 



In a few mediaeval debates Wine contends with other beverages. 

 And finally there are two Latin pieces, representatives perhaps of a 

 much older tradition,'^ in which Wine and Beer, the main antagonists 

 in Wine, Beere, and Ale, though they do not contend in person, are 

 contrasted much after the fashion of a debate. In the first of these, 

 a Goliardic AUercatio vini et cervisiae" of the twelfth century, the 

 writer, after bespeaking our attention to the iurgia of beer and wine, 

 presents the causes of the two liquors in turn, closing with an emphatic 

 pronouncement against the "daughter of straw" and in favor of the 

 nobler liquor. The second Latin poem or pair of poems in which a 

 comparison of wine and beer constitutes the theme is a Versus in 

 commendatione vini attached to a Responsio ad quemdam contra cer- 

 visiam,^^ both ascribed to Peter of Blois (died c. 1200). In the first 

 the poet lauds wine by contrast with beer, describing in detail the 

 effects of each; the Responsio is evidently a reply to some poem which 

 turned the tables on Peter's Versus by praising beer at the expense of 

 wine. The points made in the comparison are, naturally and inevi- 

 tably, much the same as those in the AUercatio, described above, and 

 in Wine, Beere, and Ale. 



Coming to English literature contemporary with our dialogue of 

 Wine, Beere, and Ale, we shall find comparison of wine and the malt 



" A Greek epigram by the Emperor Julian contrasts Celtic beer with wine. {Works, Ed. Hertlein, 

 p. 611). The former beverage is declared to have no title to the name of Bacchus. "Beer has the 

 odtir of a goat while wine has that of nectar. The Gauls made beer in default of grapes. It is the son 

 of Ceres not of Dionysus." The traditional prejudice against beer appears again in the Latin epi- 

 gram of Henri d' Avranches, quoted below, note to line 291, and in Henri d' Andeli's Bataille des Vint, 

 where a priest excommunicates beer from the fellowship of the wines. 



"S'escommenia la cervoise 

 Qui estoit fete dela Oise, 

 En Flanders et en Engleterre. 

 (Oeuvres de Henri d* Andeli, ed. Heron, p. 29.) 



" Reprinted by Bomer in Haupt's Zeitschrifl, 49 (1907-8), 161. 

 " Migne, Patrologia Lalina, 207, col. 1155. 



