The Hop-Picking Season By Vita Sackville-West

March 9, 2019 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of English poet, novelist, and garden designer Vita Sackville-West. “She was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her lifetime and 13 novels. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the inspiration for the androgynous protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her famous friend and lover, Virginia Woolf.”

She wrote seventeen novels and a dozen collections of poetry, along with several biographies and works of non-fiction. But she was also well-known for her garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson. It was located in the Weald of Kent in England, and became one of the most famous gardens in Great Britain. It also gave her quite the vantage point to observe the hops industry in Kent, and in 1939 she wrote Country Notes, which included several entries concerned with hops and hop production. The book is a collection of small pieces she wrote for a variety of periodicals, such as the New Statesman, The Nation, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Time and Tide, Travel Nation and Athenæum. The photographs were taken by Bryan or Norman Westwood. Below are the articles about hops.

The Kentish Landscape

At the moment of writing these words, Kent is looking absurdly like itself. Cherry, plum, pear, and thorn whiten the orchards and the hedgerows; lambs frolic; the banks are full of violets and primroses; the whole landscape displays itself as an epitome of everything fresh and innocent which has drawn ridicule upon the so-called school of Georgian poets. It is a simple delight which pleases everyone, from the unsophisticated to the sophisticated. Why affect to despise it? Year after year I enjoy it more, and reflect with pride that my own county offers a fair presentment of the English scene to the foreigner travelling in his Pullman between Dover and London.
He, of course, cannot know it as we know it, though on his way up to London he is accorded a generous glimpse of the valleys of the Beult and the Medway. He sees the orchards and the hop-gardens; orchards he has seen before in his own Normandy, but the hop-gardens strike him as very peculiar and individual, opening and shutting as they do while the train flashes past. If he does not already know what they are, he is reduced to asking an obliging stranger for the explanation. Those tall bare poles, that elaborately knotted string, those ploughed acres—what does it all mean? The explanation is forthcoming: it is English beer. Of course: this is Kent. He looks out again with renewed interest, he remembers that this is called the garden of England.

Orchidaceæ

I went on such an expedition recently with two friends. We did not find much, it is true; or, rather, we found none of the real rarities. That, however, never matters, for the compensations are so rich: the small, lost, down-land churches, miles from the villages they are supposed to serve; the wide windy skies, the grassy slopes, the deep valleys with farm-buildings exquisitely composed into the group of barns, house, and oasts with steep brown roofs. I heard someone say the other day that when he saw or read about such things, nothing else seemed to matter, neither European complications, nor wars, nor threats of wars—they were all forgotten. I felt the same myself, when eventually we found the Bee orchis growing beside a partridge’s nest.

The Hop-picking Season

The hoppers are arriving in Kent. It is curious to observe that the moment the East-ender leaves his slum in Bermondsey or Rotherhithe for this annual expedition, he starts to cut quite a different figure in the public mind, ceases to be a mere and rather vulgar Cockney, and is instantly invested with all the attributes of romance. For three weeks in his drab year he is allowed to rank in picturesqueness with the gipsy. Why this should be so is a little difficult to explain. He dresses in the same way as he does in London, yet there is a difference between the Cockney and the hopper; perhaps the red handkerchief knotted round the throat looks better in a field than in the slum. The tawdry muslins of his women make a bright and oddly foreign effect among the bines. The presence of many children turns the serious business of picking into something like a pagan festival, reminding me of the Neopolitan celebration when the local little boys spray their naked sunburnt bodies with the copper-sulphate used for the prevention of Phylloxera and prance about stained in turquoise blue between the olives and the vines at dawn, a scene which Leonardo might have found it in his taste to record in paint. The Londoners’ children are neither so gay nor so pagan, but still a certain light-heartedness descends on all. It is very un-English in spite of being so essentially English. The hop-garden is a fair substitute for the vineyard, with its swags of green bunches so like the white muscat, its long leafy tunnels dappled with light, its brown canvas troughs filled with the pale flowers. Colour and gaiety reign in a way they never do at the other great country events such as hay-making or harvest.
This gaiety is reflected also in the trouble that the Cockney family takes to make its temporary home as lively as possible. The sleeping quarters provided are usually no better than a range of wooden huts—sometimes even an old railway coach—lime-washed inside, and supplied with a wooden bench and a couple of trusses of straw for bedding. Nothing more. It is all very clean, bare, and hard. Little can be said for it save that it is clean and (one hopes) weather-proof. Fortunately the families who have descended yearly upon the same hop-garden for several generations, grandmother, mother, and child, know exactly what to bring with them in order to turn the hut into a home. They bring coloured lithographs and lace curtains; bedspreads and china ornaments, and by the time they have set out their treasures their little hovel looks as attractive as a Dutch interior. Then when the working day is over they gather round bonfires and rouse the quiet night with songs and piano-accordions.
In damp sunless weather the picture is different. We remember then that perhaps thanks to our climate we are a glum race. A peddler comes round crying mackerel at five a shilling; alive they were, and swimming, this morning at sunrise, for the sea is not so very far away, but now the dead protruding eyes of fish stare at the pickers over the edge of the basket; this has to do duty for song and sunburnt mirth. The pickers then contribute nothing of jollity. Sordid, pasty bundles, sitting on camp stools or wooden boxes, their muslins hidden away beneath their mackintoshes, their babies uncomfortably asleep in go-carts beside them, they strip the bines in gloomy silence, preoccupied solely with the completion of their tally. A tally to a family; a big thing to fill, and only 1s. 5d. when you have done it. No wonder they are sometimes gloomy, especially when it rains. The grape is a fruit, the hop only a flower; perhaps that makes all the difference.
It appears also that they do not wholly like being in the country. So long as the weather is fine they make the best of it, regarding it as a holiday to be enjoyed, almost an obligation, but then as day dies a certain alarm disquiets their souls. Away from traffic and street lights, they are frightened. The silence and the darkness of the fields perplexes them. They will not go about after dusk except in little bands. Toughs though they may be at home, they are not tough enough to stand the desolation of the darkened country-side. On the whole they feel rather relieved when the moment comes for them to climb into their charabancs or cars again and return to a mode of life they understand.
Perhaps, however, they will not much longer be called upon to add their picturesque touch to the country year. The bines, it is said, will soon be stripped by machinery. Oh, brave new world!

The Garden and the Oast

It is the annual outing of the East End, but the East End cannot be expected to take any affectionate interest in our peculiarly local crops. These acres, representing several thousands of pounds, tended all the year by expert, almost instinctive, country hands, from the first training of the bine to the last fingering of the swollen flower, are turned over in the height of their fulfilment to the unskilled, unsympathetic mercies of the Cockney. Consider for a moment the care and vigilance which throughout the months of winter, spring, and summer have brought the gardens to their autumn state of fecundity. First, after the harvesting, the old bines must be cleared away; then the pruning-knife must sever and select; then, with the shooting of the new bine, up go the strings—strings reckoned by the ton; six hundred miles of string, fixed to the ground at the bottom by women and boys, and to the permanent wires overhead by men on stilts, giant figures stalking between the poles in the bleak spring day. The bine begins to grow; heavily fed, it will grow as much as two feet in a night, twining round the strings from right to left, for the hop cannot be persuaded to grow widdershins. You may think that a plant with so much energy might now be left for a little to its own devices. Make no such mistake. It has its enemies: mould and insects; it has its remedies: wash and powder; the enemy must be looked for, and the remedy applied unsparingly, even though the men with knapsacks blow hundreds of pounds sterling in fine sulphur dust into the air. The wind, too—a proper gale will do grand damage in the hop-garden. But the garden survives these dangers, and towards the end of August you are rewarded by the pale, imponderable clusters, well grown out, as you walk down the green, lovely aisles or mount your fixed ladders for a final inspection. It is then, when your expert judgment decides that the flower is ripe for picking, that London lets loose its hordes and the garden is profaned by the presence of these philistines, and the fish-peddler cries his mackerel at five a shilling.
The profanation, however, marks but a brief stage in the history of the hop from bine to bottle. At the sole moment of its picking is the hop subjected to the hands that neither love, hate, nor understand it. Once picked into the pokes, when the garden begins to assume a dirty, dejected air, with the cut bines withering in their fallen heaps, the poles sticking up gaunt and useless, the wires overhead fluffy with the fringe of cut strings—once picked, the flower is hurried to the oasts, where skilled driers receive it. These are men who have been for thirty, forty, fifty years at their job. They handle their material and their implements as though they knew what they were about. Indeed, they disregard some of their implements, with a sort of contempt, such as the thermometer and the weighing-machine, referring to them only as a concession to convention, to corroborate their human judgment, or to satisfy the overseer, when their instinct is rarely proved at fault. This is pleasing, and as it should be. The hop is once more in hands that have the mastery over it.

All day the chimneys of the kilns have been smoking blue, but the life of the kiln does not slacken with dusk, when the pickers go home to their camp; all night the process of drying goes on, to keep pace with the supply that has been pouring in from the garden. Inside the oast, we choke and cough with the sulphur; the doors of the furnaces stand open for a fresh stoking, like the entrails of a ship, the pan of sulphur blue in the midst of the fire; the men, demoniacal figures redly lit, shovel on the coal, slam the doors, throw down their shovels with horrible clang; this ground-level of the oast is a place of violence. Propped against the wall, too, are brutal shapes, sacks as big as bullocks, with the white horse of Kent prancing painted across them, and their corners tied into ears like the ears of killed beasts.

But on the upper story the hop reassumes its character of pale colour and feather weight. In the long, low, raftered loft, where everything is whitewashed, the lanterns swing from the beams above mountains of dried flowers on the floor, billowing heaps of a ghostly pallor, an exquisite imponderability. Impossible to give a name to their colour. It is a cross between ash and gold; the colour of dust-motes, of corn in moonlight, of fair hair under a lamp. All the green has been taken from them in the drying; they are crisp and airy; everything you touch is sticky with resin, even the bristles of the brooms are knobby with resin gathered in sweeping up the floor; the pungent smell is in the air. The lanterns throw the shadows of the rafters in sharp designs on roof and floor. The men, dressed in white overalls, pile the heaps higher with rake and scupper—huge scoops made of white canvas. In one corner, where a hole gapes in the boards, two men shovel the hops down the hole into the mouth of the sack which hangs below, out of sight; a great wheel spins round, the shadow of its spokes whirling over the whitewashed wall, and the weight descends into the sack, pressing, packing, till the flowers are squeezed into solidity, and one believes at last what had always seemed so unconvincing, that a ton of feathers weighs as much as a ton of lead.

This is all activity; but the hops at their drying are quiet and private. Doors along one side of the loft open on to the upper chambers of the kilns, white, circular, the roof rising to a point. The hops are spread knee-deep upon the floor. They are green still, and a faint blue smoke rises through them. It is very quiet in there, with a quality of solitude and vigil; very warm too, and heavily scented, inside the circular oast. The drier steps into the sea of hops, and slouches through them, kicking them up. Especially on the outside edges is it necessary to see that they shall be evenly dried; so he slouches round the wall, an old man in white corduroys, travelling against the white wall, stealthily as it seems, kicking up the pale green sea that faintly rustles, disturbing the smoke into little wreaths and eddies. There is a medieval flavour about it: the round chamber, the roof pointed like a witch’s hat, the white and green, the warmth, the smoke, the ancient man, the smell that creeps so soporifically over the senses. Out in the yard, as you come away, the shafts of the waggons stick up at the stars, and the cowled chimneys point in a blacker darkness at the darkness of the sky. To the left lies the ruined garden, with aisles of bare poles waiting for next year’s bine. You stumble down the lane, and at the corner turn to throw a glance at the group of kilns. A light appears in a little window, high up. You know then that the old drier has taken his lantern into the oast, and is slouching the hops, round and round the wall, in that furtive way, a mysterious rite, while in the loft the weight sinks rhythmically into the filling sack, and the overseer scribbles another ton upon his slate. There is no sleep for the men, and to-morrow the carts will come creaking up the lane with new loads from the gardens.

Humulus Lupulus

The history of the hop is not uninteresting. Guinness is good for you; but in the reign of Henry VI popular opinion took a different view, and the hop was condemned as ‘a wicked weed’. By the time of Henry VIII the wicked weed had attained quite another status, having been officially introduced from Flanders for cultivation in Kent and two or three other counties. Even so, Henry VIII ruled that the brewer should not put any hops into the ale, since this addition would ‘dry up the body and increase melancholy’. This ruling of an autocratic King did not prevent an irreverent subject of the Crown from writing, perhaps rather inaccurately,
Hops, Reformation, Bays, and Beer
Came into England all in one year.
The overwhelming proportion of those hops which came into England, never to depart, is grown in Kent, and has had its effect upon the landscape of the county in those characteristic pointed oast-houses, with their white vanes swinging to the wind. Most people must be strangely incurious. Nearly everybody must surely have seen oasts dozens of time, if only from the window of a train, yet if one lives near a group of them one is constantly asked what ‘those odd-looking buildings’ are for. During the first weeks of September, anyone can see for himself what they are for. He can climb up into the upper loft and glance into the round turret where the deep green carpet of cones is spread drying in the hot fumes. He can watch the men shovelling the dried heaps through a hole in the floor, packing them tightly into the great sacks called pockets in which they are to be driven away to the brewer—the last stage in the endlessly complicated process of the hop-grower’s year.

Departure

The pickers have nearly finished their job and will be leaving us at the end of this week. No longer shall we see the red light of their fires burning in the distance, nor, on a Saturday night, shall I be able to walk down to their huts, sit with them round the brushwood fire, and listen to their jokes and their songs. It is a scene which, with a difference, always carries me back to a ranch in California, where under the shelter of a great rock the cowboys would light their bonfire and sit round chanting endless sagas of the trail. There is no great rock here, and the stars are less enormous, but even in the lameness of my own familiar fields the sole illumination of the flames casts a wild beauty over the rough faces and the coloured scarves. The doors of the huts stand open, a little oil-lamp revealing each miniature interior; the head of a sleepy child droops suddenly; an armful of fresh brushwood makes the embers flare; the plaintive notes of the accordion continue to rise and fall. It is nearly two o’clock in the morning; the jokes, the dancing, and the ribald songs have ceased; they have stopped dancing the Lambeth Walk; the songs are all sentimental now—eternal Sehnsucht and eternal pain.
I shall miss the hoppers.

Song In Praise Of Ale

February 10, 2019 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Charles Lamb, who “was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children’s book Tales from Shakespeare, co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb.” In addition to his own works, and adapting others, he also collected works of earlier authors. One such work was entitled “Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, Selected by Charles Lamb,” published in 1803.

One of his choices has an anonymous author, and is ascribed to the London Chanticleers, and is characterized as “a rude sketch of a play, printed 1659, but evidently much older.” It’s entitled “Song in praise of Ale.”

Song in praise of Ale

Submit, bunch of Grapes,
To the strong Barley ear;
The weak Vine no longer,
The Laurel shall wear.

II.

Sack and drinks else,
Desist from the strife,
Ale’s th’ only Aqua vitae,
And liquor of life.

III.

Then come my boon fellows,
Let’s drink it around;
It keeps us from th’ grave,
Though it lays us o’ th’ ground.

IV.

Ale’s a Physcian,
No Mountebank bragger,
Can cure the chill ague,
Though ’t be with the stagger.

Ale’s a strong wrestler,
Flings all it hath met;
And makes the ground slippery,
Though ’t be not wet.

VI.

Ale is both Ceres,
And good Neptune too,
Ale’s froth was the Sea,
From whence Venus grew.

VII.

Ale is immortal:
And be there no stops,
In bonny Lads’ quaffing,
Can live without hops.

VIII.

Then come my boon fellows,
Let’s drink it around;
It keeps us from the grave,
Though it lays us o’ th’ ground.

Charles_Lamb_by_William_Hazlitt — Charles Lamb (February 10, 1775 – 27 December 27, 1834)

Lewis Carroll’s Scheme To Get People Drinking Beer At Home

January 27, 2019 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll. He was “an English writer of world-famous children’s fiction, notably Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He was noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy. The poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer, and Anglican deacon.” One of his lesser known books, two really, was Sylvie and Bruno and its sequel Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, published in 1889 and 1893, respectively.

In the latter, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Carroll writes about his idea on how to keep drunkards at home, drinking their beer there and not throwing away the family’s money, all to the betterment of society. It begins in Chapter V: Mathilda Jane.

When the full stream of loving memories had nearly run itself out, I began to question her about the working men of that neighbourhood, and specially the ‘Willie,’ whom we had heard of at his cottage. “He was a good fellow once,” said my kind hostess: “but it’s the drink has ruined him! Not that I’d rob them of the drink—it’s good for the most of them—but there’s some as is too weak to stand agin’ temptations: it’s a thousand pities, for them, as they ever built the Golden Lion at the corner there!”
“The Golden Lion?” I repeated.
“It’s the new Public,” my hostess explained. “And it stands right in the way, and handy for the workmen, as they come back from the brickfields, as it might be to-day, with their week’s wages. A deal of money gets wasted that way. And some of ’em gets drunk.”
“If only they could have it in their own houses—” I mused, hardly knowing I had said the words out loud.
“That’s it!” she eagerly exclaimed. It was evidently a solution, of the problem, that she had already thought out. “If only you could manage, so’s each man to have his own little barrel in his own house—there’d hardly be a drunken man in the length and breadth of the land!”
And then I told her the old story—about a certain cottager who bought himself a little barrel of beer, and installed his wife as bar-keeper: and how, every time he wanted his mug of beer, he regularly paid her over the counter for it: and how she never would let him go on ‘tick,’ and was a perfectly inflexible bar-keeper in never letting him have more than his proper allowance: and how, every time the barrel needed refilling, she had plenty to do it with, and something over for her money-box: and how, at the end of the year, he not only found himself in first-rate health and spirits, with that undefinable but quite unmistakeable air which always distinguishes the sober man from the one who takes ‘a drop too much,’ but had quite a box full of money, all saved out of his own pence!
“If only they’d all do like that!” said the good woman, wiping her eyes, which were overflowing with kindly sympathy. “Drink hadn’t need to be the curse it is to some——”
“Only a curse,” I said, “when it is used wrongly. Any of God’s gifts may be turned into a curse, unless we use it wisely. But we must be getting home. Would you call the little girls? Matilda Jane has seen enough of company, for one day, I’m sure!”

So Carroll insists that it’s not beer or drink that’s bad for them, it’s over-indulging in it. That seems a rather progressive idea for 1893, especially in the face of temperance movements of the day.

But his solution is sublime. To avoid so many people wasting their wages down at the pub, just give every household its own Kegerator and barrel of beer so they’ll instead come home most nights and drink their beer there with their family. Genius.

Later in the chapter, Sylvie and Bruno find themselves outside The Golden Lion.

“And that’s the new public-house that we were talking about, I suppose?” I said, as we came in sight of a long low building, with the words ‘The Golden Lion’ over the door.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Sylvie. “I wonder if her Willie’s inside? Run in, Bruno, and see if he’s there.”
I interposed, feeling that Bruno was, in a sort of way, in my care. “That’s not a place to send a child into.” For already the revelers were getting noisy: and a wild discord of singing, shouting, and meaningless laughter came to us through the open windows.
“They wo’n’t see him, you know,” Sylvie explained. “Wait a minute, Bruno!” She clasped the jewel, that always hung round her neck, between the palms of her hands, and muttered a few words to herself. What they were I could not at all make out, but some mysterious change seemed instantly to pass over us. My feet seemed to me no longer to press the ground, and the dream-like feeling came upon me, that I was suddenly endowed with the power of floating in the air. I could still just see the children: but their forms were shadowy and unsubstantial, and their voices sounded as if they came from some distant place and time, they were so unreal. However, I offered no further opposition to Bruno’s going into the house. He was back again in a few moments. “No, he isn’t come yet,” he said. “They’re talking about him inside, and saying how drunk he was last week.”
While he was speaking, one of the men lounged out through the door, a pipe in one hand and a mug of beer in the other, and crossed to where we were standing, so as to get a better view along the road. Two or three others leaned out through the open window, each holding his mug of beer, with red faces and sleepy eyes. “Canst see him, lad?” one of them asked.
“I dunnot know,” the man said, taking a step forwards, which brought us nearly face to face. Sylvie hastily pulled me out of his way. “Thanks, child,” I said. “I had forgotten he couldn’t see us. What would have happened if I had staid in his way?”

In Chapter VI, they decide to rescue Willie from his pub crawling ways.

He made for the door of the public-house, but the children intercepted him. Sylvie clung to one arm; while Bruno, on the opposite side, was pushing him with all his strength, with many inarticulate cries of “Gee-up! Gee-back! Woah then!” which he had picked up from the waggoners.
‘Willie’ took not the least notice of them: he was simply conscious that something had checked him: and, for want of any other way of accounting for it, he seemed to regard it as his own act.
“I wunnut coom in,” he said: “not to-day.”
“A mug o’ beer wunnut hurt ’ee!” his friends shouted in chorus. “Two mugs wunnut hurt ’ee! Nor a dozen mugs!”84
“Nay,” said Willie. “I’m agoan whoam.”
“What, withouten thy drink, Willie man?” shouted the others. But ‘Willie man’ would have no more discussion, and turned doggedly away, the children keeping one on each side of him, to guard him against any change in his sudden resolution.

Willie went home and gave all his wages to his wife, and she was pretty happy, as were his children. The only thing that would have made the ending better is if his wife had installed a barrel of beer so he could come home every day after work and have a drink of beer there, as was the earlier suggestion Carroll made.

Sylvie_and_Bruno — Sylvia and Bruno, from the inside cover of the original edition, with illustrations by Harry Furniss.

Beer In “A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English”

August 24, 2018 By Jay Brooks

book
Yesterday was the birthday of William Ernest Henley, who was an English poet, critic and editor of the late-Victorian era in England.

William_Ernest_Henley

In looking for a quotation in his poems yesterday, I stumbled upon another work of his, “A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English,” which he wrote with John Stephen Farmer, a British lexicographer, spiritualist and writer. The original dictionary ran to seven volumes and was entitled “Slang and its analogues past and present. A dictionary historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years.” It was first published in 1890, and they continued working on it until 1904.

They appear to have referenced at least 55 earlier dictionaries, published between 1440 and 1900, in compiling their work. In 1912, a single-volume abridged version was also published, and I worked from that one, further abridging it to include only a few select beer-related entries. The abridged version is only 552 pages, and I can only imagine how long the original is. There’s a number of slang terms still in use here, and quite a few I was already familiar with, but most interesting was a large number of terms I was unaware of before this. So like “The Princess Bride,” this is the good parts version, with a selection of the entries having to do with beer, brewing or drinking. There’s a lot of gems here, and I confess I got lost in the text more than a few times. Read it from top to bottom, skip around, skim it for a few tidbits, but whatever you do, I believe you’ll find a wealth of interesting beer and language history.

A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English

(The Good Parts Version)

Abraham Grains. A publican brewing his own beer.
Act of Parliament. Small beer, five pints of which, by an act of Parliament, a landlord was formerly obliged to give gratis to each soldier billeted upon him.
Ale, (1) A merry-making; and occasion for drinking. There were bride-ales, church-ales, clerk-ales, give-ales, lamb-ales, leet-ales. Midsummer-ales, Scot-ales, Whitsun-ales, and several more. (2) An ale-house. Hence alecie (or alecy), drunkenness; ale-blowm (ale-washed or alecied), drunk; ale-draper (whence ale-drapery), an inn-keeper (Grose : cf. ale-yard); ale-spinner, a brewer; ale-knight (ale-stake,
or ale-toast), a tippler, pot-companion; ale-post, a maypole (Grose); ale-passion, a headache; ale-pock, an ulcered grog-blossom (q.v.); ale-crummed, grogshot in the face; ale-swilling, tippling, etc. (1362). (3) In pL, Messrs S. Allsopp and Sons Limited Shares.
Allslops. Allsopp and Sons’ ale. [At one time their brew, formerly
of the finest quality, had greatly deteriorated.]
Angel’s-food. Strong ale. (1597.)
Apron-washings. Porter.
Archdeacon. (Oxford). Merton strong ale.
Arms-and-legs. Small beer: because there is no body in it (Grose).
Audit-ale (or Audit). A special brew of ale: orig. for use on audit days. Univ. (1823.)
Barley. In general colloquial use: thus, oil of barley (or barley – bree, -broth, -juice, -uxiter, or -wine), (1) strong ale, and (2) whisky (Grose); barley -island, an alehouse; John Barley (or Barleycorn), the personification of malt liquor: cf. proverb. Sir John Barleycorn’s the strongest knight;
barley – cup, a tippler; barley-mood (or sick) (1) drunk; and (2) ill-humour caused by tippling; also to have (or wear) a barley-hat (-cap, or -hood) (1500.)
Barrel. 1. A confirmed tippler: also beer-barrel; whence barrel-house (American), a low groggery; barrel-fever, drunkenness (or disease caused by tippling): see Gallon-distemper;
barrel-boarder, a bar loafer. 2. Money used in a political campaign (American politics); spec, that expended for
corrupt purposes : cf. Boodle; barrel-campaign, an election in which bribery is a leading feature: a wealthy candidate for office (c. 1876) is said to have remarked. Let the boys know that there’s a bar’l o’ money ready for ’em, or words to that effect. Never (or the devil) a barrel the better herring, much like, not a pin to choose between them, six of one and half a dozen of the other. (1542.)
Bass. A familiar abbreviation for Bass’ ale, brewed at Burton-on-Trent.
Beer. To drink beer, also, to do a beer. To be in beer, drunk: see Screwed. To think no small beer of oneself, to possess a good measure of self-esteem (1840); see Small-beer.
Beer and Bible. An epithet applied sarcastically to a political party which first came into prominence during the last Beaconsfield Administration, and which was called into being by a measure introduced by the moderate Liberals in 1873, with a view to placing certain restrictions upon the sale of intoxicating rinks. The Licensed Victuallers, an extremely powerful association whose influence extended all over the kingdom, took alarm, and turned to the Conservatives for help in opposing the bill. In the ranks of the latter were numbered the chief brewers; the leaders of the association, moreover, had mostly strong high-church tendencies, while one of them was president of the Exeter Hall organization. The Liberals, noting these facts, nicknamed this alliance the Beer and Bible Association; the Morning Advertiser, the organ of the Licensed Victuallers, was dubbed the Beer and Bible Gazette; and lastly, electioneering tactics ascribed to them the war cry of Beer and Bible I This so-called Beer and Bible interest made rapid strides : in 1870 the Conservatives
were at their low-water mark among the London constituencies; but, in 1880, they had carried seats in the City, Westminster, Marylebone, Tower Ham-lets, Greenwich, and Southwark. A notable exception to this strange fellowship was Mr. Bass [afterwards Lord Bass], of pale-ale fame, who held aloof from opposition to the measure
in question. Anent the nickname Beer and Bible Gazette given to the Morning Advertiser, it may be mentioned that it had already earned for itself a somewhat similar sobriquet. For a long time this paper devoted one-half of its front page to notices of publicans and tavern-keepers; while the other half was filled up with announcements of religious books, and lists of preachers at the London churches and chapels. This gained for the paper the sobriquet of the Gin and Gospel Gazette.
Beer-barrel. The human body: cf. Bacon.
Beeriness (or Beery), pertaining to a state of (or approaching to) drunkenness, intoxicated, fuddled with beer: see Screwed (1857).
Beer-jerker (or -slinger). A tippler: see Lushington.
Beerocracy, subs, (common). The brewing and beer-selling interest: a humorous appellation in imitation of aristocracy: cf. Mobocracy, Cottonocracy, etc.
Belch. Beer, especially poor beer: because of its liability to cause eructation. One of Shakespeare’s characters in Twelfth Night is Sir Toby Belch, a reckless, roystering, jolly knight of the Elizabethan period.
Belcher. 1. A neckerchief named after Jim Belcher, a noted pugilist: the ground is blue, with white spots: also any handkerchief of a similar pattern (1812). 2. A ring: with the crown and V.R. stamped upon them. 3. A beer drinker, a hard drinker (1598).
Belly-vengeance. Sour beer: as apt to cause gastralgia : Fr., pisain de clieval.
Bemused. Fuddled, in the stupid stage of drinkenness: see Screwed: usually bemused with beer (Pope).
Benbouse. Good beer (1567).
Bend. To tipple, drink hard (Jamieson) (1758). Above one’s bend, above one’s ability (power or capacity), out of one’s reach, above one’s hook: in U.S.A. above my huckleberry (q.v.).
Bilgewater. Bad beer.
Bitter. A glass of beer. To do a bitter, to drink a glass of bitter: originally (says Hotten) an Oxford term: varied by, to do a beer.
Black-and-tan. Porter (or stout) and ale, mixed in equal quantities.
Black Jack. 1. A leathern jug for beer, usually holding two gallons (1591).
Blue-cap. 1, A Scotchman (1596). 2. A kind of ale (1822).
Brighton Tipper. A particular brew of ale.
Brown. 1. A halfpenny: see Rhino (1812). 2. Porter: an abbreviation of Brown Stout.
Bub. 1. Strong drink of any kind: usually applied to malt liquor. To take bub and grub, to eat and drink (1671).
Bubber. 1. A hard drinker, confirmed tippler: see Lushington: Fr., bibassier (1653). 2. A drinking bowl (1696). 3. A public-house thief (1785).
Bubbing. Drinking, tippling (1678).
Bumclink. In the Midland counties inferior beer brewed for haymakers and harvest labourers.
Bung-juice. Beer.
Bunker. Beer: see Drinks.
Cakes and Ale. A good time: also Cakes and cheese.
Call bogus. A mixture of rum and spruce beer, an American beverage (Grose).
Cascade. 1. Tasmania beer: because manufactured from cascade water: cf. Artesian. 2. A trundling gymnastic performance in pantomime. As verb, to vomit (1771).
Cauliflower. 1. A clerical wig supposed to resemble a cauliflower; modish in the time of Queen Anne. 2. The foaming head of a tankard of beer. In Fr., linge or faux-col.
Clink. 4. A very indifferent beer made from the gyle of malt and the sweepings of hop bins, and brewed especially for the benefit of agricultural labourers in harvest time. (1588).
Cocktail. 4. (American). A drink composed of spirits (gin, brandy, whisky, etc.), bitters,
crushed ice, sugar, etc., the whole whisked briskly until foaming, and then drunk ‘hot.’ As adj., (1) under-
bred, wanting in ‘form’ (chiefly of horses). (2) Fresh, foaming: of beer.
Cold-blood. A house licensed for the sale of beer, not to be drunk on the premises.
Cooler. 1. A woman (1742). 2. A prison: see Cage. 3. Ale or stout after spirits and water: sometimes called Putting the beggar on the gentleman; also Damper (q.v.) (1821).
Copus. A wine or beer cup: commonly imposed as a fine upon those who talked Latin in hall or committed other breaches of etiquette. Dr. Johnson derives it from episcopus, and if this be correct it is doubtless the same as bishop.
Dash. 1. A tavern waiter. 2. (common). A small quantity, a drink; a go (q.v.).
Dead. An abbreviation of dead certainty. As adj., stagnant, quiet (of trade), flat (as of beer or aerated waters after exposure), cold, good, thorough, complete (1602).
Dog’s-nose. A mixture of gin and beer: see Drinks.
Drinks. The subjoined hosts will be of interest. Invitations to drink — What’ll you have? Nominate your pizen! Will you irrigate? Will you tod? Wet your whistle? How’ll you have it? Let us stimulate! Let’s drive another nail! What’s your medicine? Willst du trinken? Try a little anti-abstinence? Twy (zwei) lager! Your whisky’s waiting. Will you try a smile? Will you take a nip? Let’s get there. Try a little Indian? Come and see your pa? Suck some com juice? Let’s liquor up. Let’s go and see the baby. Responses to invitations to drink. — Here’s into your face! Here’s how! Here’s at you! Don’t care if I do. Well, I will. I’m thar! Accepted, unconditionally. Well, I don’t mind. Sir, your most. Sir, your utmost. You do me proud I Yes, sir-ree! With you — yes I Anything to oblige.
Elbow-crooker. A hard drinker.
English Synonyms: borachio, boozington, brewer’s horse, bubber, budger, mop, lushington, worker of the cannon, wet – quaker, soaker, lapper, pegger, angel altogether, bloat, ensign -bearer, fiddle – cup, sponge, tun, toss – pot, swill-pot, wet subject, shifter, potster, swallower, pot- walloper, wetster, dramster, drinkster, beer-barrel, gin-nums, lowerer, moist ‘un, drainist, boozer, mopper-up, piss-maker, thirstington.
English Burgundy. Porter: see Drinks.
Flip. I. Hot beer, brandy, and sugar; also, says Grose, called Sir Cloudesley after Sir Cloudesley Shovel.
Full. 1. Drunk: see Screwed.
Gatter. Beer; also liquor generally. Shant of gatter, a pot of beer: Fr., moussante: see Drinks.
Growler. A four-wheeled cab: cf . Sulky. English synonyms: birdcage, blucher, bounder, fever-trap, flounder-and-dab (rhyming), four-wheeler, groping hutch, mab (an old hackney), rattler, rumbler. To rush (or work) the growler, to fetch beer (workman’s).
Gutter-alley (or lane). 1. The throat. All goes doum gutter-lane. He spends all on his stomach. English synonyms: Beer Street, common sewer, drain, funnel. Gin Lane, gulf-gullet, gully-hole, gutter, Holloway, Peck Alley, Red Lane, the Red Sea, Spew Alley, swallow, thrapple, throttle, whistle. 2. A urinal.
Half-and-half. Equal quantities of ale and porter : cf. Four-half and Drinks (1824). As adj., half-drunk, half-on (q.v.): see Screwed. Half-and-half -coves (men, hoys, etc.), cheap or linsey-woolsey dandies, half-bucks (q.v.), half- tigers (q.v.).
Half-seas Over. Loosely applied to various degrees of inebriety: formerly, half way on one’s course, or towards attainment: see Screwed. [In its specific sense Gifford says, A corruption of the Dutch op-zee zober, over-sea beer, a strong heady beverage introduced into Holland from England. Up-zee Freese is Friezeland beer. The Grerman zavber means strong beer, and bewitchment.
Half-slewed. Parcel drunk: see Screwed.
Head. (2) to froth malt liquors: e.g. Put a head on it. Miss, addressed to the barmaid, is a request to work the engine briskly, and make the liquor take on a cauliflower (q.v.).
Heavy-wet. 1. Malt Hquor: specifically porter and stout: also Heavy: see Drinks (1821). 2. A heavy drinking bout.
Hedge-tavern (or ale-house). A jilting, sharping tavern, or blind alehouse (B. E.).
Hockey. Drunk, especially on stale beer: see Screwed.
Hot-pot. Ale and brandy made hot (Grose).
Hot-tiger. Hot-spiced ale and sherry.
Huckle-my-but. Beer, egg, and brandy made hot (Grose).
Huff-cap (or Huff). 1. Strong ale: from inducing people to set their caps in a bold and huffing style. (Nares) (1579.)
Hull-cheese. Hull-cheese is much like a loaf out of a brewers basket, it is composed of two simples, malt and water, in one compound, and is cousin germane to the mightiest ale in England’ (John Taylor).
Hum. 1. A kind of strong liquor: probably a mixture of beer and spirits, but also appUed to old, mellow, and very strong beer: also Hum-cap (1616).
Humming. Strong — applied to drink; brisk — applied to trade; hard — applied to blows. Humming
October, the specially strong brew from the new season’s hops, stingo (q.v.) (1696).
Humpty-dumpty. 2. Ale boiled with brandy (1696).
Jerry-shop. A beer-house: also jerry.
John-Barleycorn. Beer: see Drinks (1791).
Kiddleywink. A small village shop; and, 3. specifically (in the West country), an ale-house.
Knock-down (or Knock-me-down). Strong ale, stingo (q.v.), also, gin (1515). As adj., rowdy (1760).
Lager Beer. To think no lager beer of oneself: see Small beer.
Lamb’s-wool. Hot ale, spiced, sweetened, and mixed with the pulp of roasted apples (1189).
Legs-and-arms. Bodiless beer.
Lift-leg. Strong ale, stingo (q.v. ).
Lounce. A drink: specifically a pint of beer: i.e. allowance.
Lull. Ale (1636).
Lush. 1. Drink: from Lushington, a once well-known London brewer: see Drinks. 2. A drinking bout. 3. (Eton College), a dainty. As verb, (1) to drink, and (2) to stand treat. English synonyms: to barley-bree, to beer, to bend, to blink, to boose, to bub, to budge, to cover, to crack (or crush) a bottle (a quart, or cup), to crook, to crook (lift, or tip) the elbow (or little finger), to damp, to damp one’s mug, to dip, to dip one’s beak (or nose), to disguise oneself, to do a dram (or wet), to drown the shamrock, to flicker, to flush, to fuddle, to gargle, to give a bottle a black eye, to guttle, to guzzle, to go and see a man (or — of women — one’s pa), to grog, to have, get, or take an ante-lunch, a little anti-abstinence, an appetiser, a ball, a bead, a bit of tape, a bosom friend, a bucket, a bumper, a big reposer, a chit-chat, a cheerer, a cinder, a cobbler, a corker, a cooler, some corn juice, a damp, something damp, a damper, a dannie, a drain, a dram, a doch-an-dorroch, a digester, an eye-opener, an entr’acte, a fancy smile, a flash, a flip, a forenoon, a go, a hair of the dog that bit one, a heeltap, an invigorator, a Johnny, a jorum, a leaf of the old author, a morning rouser, a modicum, a nip, or nipperkin, a night-cap, a nut, one’s medicine, a pistol shot, a pony, a pill, a quantum, a quencher, a refresher, a revelation, a rouser, a reposer, a smile, a swig, a sleeve-button, a something, a slight sensation, a shant, a shout, a sparkler, a settler, a shift, a stimulant, a sneaker, a snifter, a soother, a thimbleful, a tift, a taste, a toothful, a Timothy, a warmer, a willy-wacht, to huff, to irrigate, to knock about the bub, to lap, to lap the gutter, to liquor, to liquor up, to load in, to look thro’ a glass, to lower, to lug, to make fun, to malt, to moisten (or soak) the chaffer (clay, or lips), to mop, to mop- up, to mug, to peg, to potato, to prime oneself, to pull, to put (or drive) another nail in one’s coffin, to read the maker’s name, to revive, to rince, to rock, to save a life, to scamander, to LashborougJi.
Lushington. A sot: also lushing man and lushing cove. English synoyms: admiral of the red, after-dinner man, ale-knight, ale-wisp, artilleryman, bang-pitcher, beer-barrel, belch-guts, bencher, bench-whistler, bezzle, bibber, blackpot, bloat, blomboll, boozer, boozington, borachio, bottle-sucker, brandy-face, brewer’s horse, bubber (or bubster), budge (or budger), bung-eye, burster, common sewer, coppernose, drainist, drainpipe, dramster, D-T-ist, elbow-crooker, emperor, ensign – bearer, fish, flag-of-distress, fluffer, fuddle-cap (or fuddler), full-blown angel, gargler, gin-crawler, (or slinger), ginnums, gravel-grinder, grog-blossom, guttle (or guttle-guts), guzzler (or guzzle – guts), high-goer, jolly-nose, lapper, love- pot, lowerer, lug-pot, moist-‘un, mooner, mop, (or mopper-up), nazie-cove (or mort), nipster, O – be – joyfuUer (or O – be- joyful-merchant), pegger, piss-maker, potster, pot-walloper, pub-ornament, sapper, shifter, sipster, soaker, sponge, swallower, swill-pot (or tub), swigsby, swigster, swipester, swizzle-guts, Thirstington, tipple-arse, toddy-cask, toss-pot, tote, tun, wet-quaker, wet-subject, wetster.
Lush-crib (or ken). A public house, tavern, hotel, club, etc. English synonyms: ale draper’s, black-house, boozer, budging-ken, church, cold-blood house, confectionery, cross-dram, devil’s-house, dive, diving-bell, drum, flash-case (drum, ken, or panny), flat-iron, flatty-ken, gargle-factory, gin-mill, grocery, groggery, grog-shop, guzzle-crib, jerry-shop, hash-shop, hedge-house, kiddly-wink, little church round the comer, lush-house (panny, or ken), lushery, mop-up, mug-house, 0-be-joyful works, panny, patter-crib, piss-factory, pot-house, pub (or public) red-lattice, roosting-ken, rum-mill, shanty, she-been, side-pocket, sluicery, suck-casa, tippling-shop, Tom-and-Jerry shop, whistling-shop, wobble-shop.
Lushy. Drunk: see Screwed.
Mad-dog. Strong ale: see Drinks (1586).
Made-beer (Winchester College). College swipes bottled with rice, a few raisins, sugar, and nutmeg to make it up (Mansfield).
Malt. To drink beer (1828). To have the malt above the wheat (water, or meal), to be drunk: see Screwed (1767).
Malt-worm (bug, or horse). A tippler, Lushington (q.v.) (1551).
Merry-go-down. Strong ale, stingo (q.v.): see Drinks (1530).
Mother-in-law. A mixture of old and bitter ales. Mother-in-law’s bit, a small piece, mothers-in-law being supposed not apt to overload the stomachs of their husband’s children (Orose).
Mughouse. An alehouse: see Lush-crib (1710).
Mumper’s-hall. A hedge tavern, beggar’s alehouse (Orose).
Nale. An alehouse.
Nap. 4. Ale, strong beer: an abbreviation of nappy (q.v.).
Nappy. Strong ale: also napping-gear. As adj. (1) strong or heady; (2) drunk (1593).
Never-fear. Beer.
Nickum. A sharper; also a rooking ale-house or innkeeper, vintner, or any retailer (JS. E.).
Nippitate. Strong drink, especially ale : also Nippitato and Nippitatum (1575).
Norfolk-nog. A kind of strong ale (1726).
Oats-and-barley. Charley.
October. 1. The best ale : spec, ale or cider brewed in October. 2. Blood. Odd. Strange, peculiar, difficult (1602.)
Oil. Used in humorous or sarcastic combination : e.g. oil of barley, beer.
P and Q. To the P. and Q, to be of the first quahty, good measure (1612). To mind one’s P’s and Q’s, to be careful and circumspect in behaviour, exact. [Of uncertain origin; amongst suggested derivations are (1) the difficulty experienced by children in distinguishing between p and q; and (2) the old custom of alehouse tally, marking p for pint, and q for quart, care being necessary to avoid over- or under-charge. Probably both in combination with the phrase, to be p and q (q.v.), have helped to popularise the expression] (1779)
Perkin. 1. Weak cider or perry (Orose). 2. Beer. [From Barclay, Perkin & Co.]
Pharaoh. 1. A corruption of faro (1732). 2. A strong ale or beer: also Old Pharaoh (1685).
Pong. Beer: also Pongdow or Pongllorum. As verb, (1) to drink; (2) to vamp a part, or (circus), to perform; (3) to talk, gas (q.v.).
Pot. 1. A quart: the quantity contained in a pot: whence as verb, to drink: also (American) to potate; potting, boozing (q.v.); potations (recognised), a drinking bout; pot-Twuse (or shop), a beer-shop, a Lush-crib (q.v.); pot-house (or coffee-house) politician, an ignorant, irresponsible spouter of politics; pot-companion, (1) a cup-comrade, and (2) an habitual drunkard : as also, potfury (also, drunkenness), -knight, -head, -leach, -man, -polisher, -sucker, loaUoper, potator, potster, toss-pot, and rob-pot; pot-punishment, compulsory tippling; pot-quarrel, a drunken squabble; pot-sick (or -shot), drunk; pot-sure (-hardy, or -valiant), emboldened by liquor: cf. Dutch courage; pot-bllied, fat, bloated in stomach, as from guzzling: also pot-belly (or guts),’ a big-bellied one; pot-revel, a drunken frolic; potmania (or potomania), dipsomania; Sir (or Madam) Pint-pot, a host or hostess; pot-boy (or man), a barscullion: whence pot-boydom.
Proof. The best ale at Magdalen, Oxford.
Purge. Beer, swipes (q.v.).
Purko. Beer. [Barclay, Perkins, and Co.]
Purl. 1. Beer infused with wormwood. 2. Beer warmed nearly to boiling point, and flavoured with gin, sugar, and ginger. Purl-man, a boating vendor of purl to Thames watermen (1680).
Red-lattice (or Lettice). An ale-house sign. Hence red-lattice phrases, pothouse talk; also green lattice; red-grate, tavern or brothel, or both combined (1596).
Reeb. Beer: top of reeb, a pot of beer.
Rob-pot. A drunkard, malt-worm (q.v.) (1622).
Rot-gut. Poor drink: generic: spec, bad beer or alcohol: also rotto (1597).
Screwed (or Screwy). Drunk, tight (q.v.). Synonyms: [Further lists will be found under Drinks, Drunk, D.T.’s, Gallon-distemper. Lush, Lush-crib, and Lushington.] To be afflicted, afloat, alecied, all at sea, all mops-and-brooms, in one’s armour, in one’s altitudes, at rest, Bacchi plenum, battered, be-argered, beery, bemused, a bit on, blind, bloated, blowed, blued, boozed, bosky, a brewer, bright in the eye, bubbed, budgy, huffy, bung – eyed, candy, canon (or cannon), chirping – merry, chucked, clear, cfinched, concerned, corked, corkscrewed, corky, corned, crooked, in one’s cups, cup-shot, cut, dagged, damaged, dead – oh! disguised, disorderly, doing the Lord (or Emperor), done over, down (with barrel-fever: see Gallon-distemper), dull in the eye, full of Dutch- courage, electrified, elephant’s – trunk (rhyming), elevated, exalted, far gone, feeling funny (or right royal), fettled (or in good fettle), fighting-tight (or drunk), flawed, floored, fluffed, flummoxed, flushed, flustered, flustrated, flying-high, fly-blown, fogged (or foggy), fou (Scots), on fourth, foxed, fresh, fuddled, full, full-flavoured, full to the bung, fuzzy, gay, gilded, glorious, grape-shot, gravelled, greetin’- fou’, groggy, hanced, half-seas-over, happy, hard-up, hazy, heady, hearty, helpless, hiccius-doccius, hickey, high, hockey, hoodman, in a difficulty (see Gallon – distemper), incog, inspired, jagged, jolly, jug-bitten, kennurd (back slang, drunk), all keyhole, kisk, knocked – up, leary, hon drunk, in Liquor-pond Street-loaded, looking lively, lumpy, lushy, making indentures with one’s legs, malted, martin drunk, mashed, mellow, miraculous, mixed, moony, mopped, moppy, mortal, muckibus, muddled, mugged, muggy, muzzy, nappy, nase (or nazy), noddy – headed, noggy, obfuscated, oddish, off (off at the nail, or one’s nut), on (also on the bend, beer, batter, fuddle, muddle, sentry, skyte spree, etc.: see Flare-up and Floored), out (also out of funds, register, altitudes, etc.), overcome, overseen, overshot, over – sparred, overtaken, over the bay, palatic, paralysed, peckish, a peg too low, pepst, pickled, piper – drunk (or merry), ploughed, poddy, podgy, potted-off, pot-shot, pot-sick, pot-valiant, primed, pruned, pushed, queered, quick – tempered, raddled, rammaged, ramping-mad, rather touched, rattled, rellng (or tumbling), ripe, roaring, rocky, salubrious, scammered, scooped, sewn up, shaky, three (or four) sheets in the wind, shot, shot in the neck, slewed, smeekit, smelling of the cork, snapped, snuffy, snug, so, soaked, sow-drunk, spiffed, spoony – drimk, spreeish, sprung, squiffed (or squiffy), stale-drunk, starchy, swattled, swiggled, swilled, swinnied, swine-drunk, swiped (or swipey), swivelly, swizzled, taking it easy, tangle-footed, tap-shackled, taverned (also hit on the head by a tavern bitch, or to have swallowed a tavern token), teeth under, thirsty, tight, tipsy, top-heavy, topsy-boosy, tosticated, under the influence, up a tree, up in one’s hat, waving a flag of defiance, wet, wet – handed, what- nosed, whipcat (Florio), whittled, winey, yappish (yaupy or yappy). Also, to have a guest in the attic, the back teeth well afloat, a piece of bread and cheese in the head, drunk more than one has bled, the sun in one’s eyes, a touch of boskiness, a cup too much, a brick in the hat, a drop in the eye, got the flavour, a full cargo aboard, a jag on, a cut leg, the malt above the wheat, one’s nuff, one’s soul in soak, yellow fever. Also, to have been barring too much, bitted by a bam mouse, driving the brewer’s horse, biting one’s name in, dipping rather deep, making M’s and T’s, paid, painting the town red, shaking a cloth in the wind. Also, to wear a barley cap, to cop the brewer, to let the finger ride the thumb, to lap the gutter, to need a reef taken in, to see the devil, to take a shard (or shourd), to shoe the goose, to see one apiece.
Shandy-gaff. Beer and ginger-beer (1853).
Shant. A quart; a pot : e.g. shant of gatter, a pot of beer.
Shanty. 1. A rough and tumble hut. 2. A public-house. 3. A brothel. 4. A quart. 5. Beer money; also as verb, (1) to dwell in a hut, (2) to take shelter. 6. See Chantey.
Shearer’s Joy (Australian). Colonial beer.
She-oak. Colonial brewed ale.
Short-pot. ‘False, cheating Potts used at Ale-houses, and Brandy-shops’ (B. E.).
Single-broth (or tiff). Small beer: see Screwed (1635).
Sir Walter Scott. A pot of beer.
Six-and-tips. Whisky and small beer (1785).
Skin-disease. Fourpenny ale.
Small beer. 1. Weak beer. 2. trifles; to chronicle small beer, (1) to engage in trivial occupations, and (2) to retail petty scandal; to think small beer of anything, to have a poor opinion of it. Also small things. As adj., petty (1604).
Sour-ale. To mend like sour-ale in summer, to get worse.
Stingo. Strong liquor: spec, humming ale (q.v.).
Stitch-back. Very strong ale, stingo (q.v.).
Stout. 1. Very strong malt-drink (B. E.). 2. In pl., Guinness’s shares. Stout across the narrow, full bellied, corpulent.
Stride-wide. Ale. [Halliwell: mentioned in Harrison’s England, 202.]
Swankey. Any weak tipple: spec, small beer: also (fishermen’s) a mixture of water, molasses, and vinegar.
Swell-nose. Strong ale, stingo (q.v.) (1515).
Swinny. Drunk: see Screwed: also swinnied.
Swipe. 1. A blow delivered with the full length of the arm; as verb, to drive (q.v.), to bang: hence swiper, a hard hitter, a slogger (q.v.), a knocker-out (q.v.): at Harrow, to birch (1200). 2. In pi., thin, washy beer, small beer: also (schools) any poor tipple: as verb, to drink; hence Swish.
Swizzle (or Swizzy). 1. Generic for drink; also, 2. various compounded drinks — rum and water, ale and beer mixed, and (West Indies) what is known in America as a cocktail. As verb, to tope, to swill (q.v.);
and stoizded, drink; also see Screwed (1850).
Taplash. 1. Bad, thick beer: cask-dregs or tap-droppings. Hence, as adj., poor, washy, trivial (1630), Hence, 2. a publican: in contempt.
Tenant at will. One whose wife usually fetches him from the ale-house (Grose).
Three-threads (or thirds). Half common ale, and the rest stout or double beer (B. E.); three-thirds, and denoted a draught, once popular, made up of a third each of ale, beer, and ‘two-penny,’ in contradistinction to ‘half-and-half’; this beverage was superseded in 1722 by the very similar porter or ‘entire’ (Chambers).
Tiddlywink. An unlicensed house: a pawnbroker’s (also leaving-shop, q.v.), a beershop, a brothel, etc. As verb, to spend more than prudence or custom will sanction.
Tiff. 1. Small beer, swipes (q.v.). Hence, a moderate draught: a tiff of punch, a small bowl of punch; as verb, to drink: tiffing, eating and drinking out of meal time (Grose).
Tipper. 1. A special brew of ale: named after Mr. Thomas Tipper: also Brighton Tipper (1843). 2. See Tip.
Tomato Can Vag. Draining the dregs of an empty beer-barrel into a tomato can.
Top-o-reeb. A pot of beer. Top-joint, a pint of beer.
Toss. As verb, to drink at a draught, to gulp: e.g. to toss a can of beer: also to toss off: cf. Toast; hence toss-pot – a drunkard: see Lushington; tossed (or tosticated), drunk: see Screwed (1660).
Trickett. A long drink of beer. [New South Wales, after Trickett, the champion sculler.]
Twopenny. 1. Beer; sold at 2d. a quart: cf. Fourpenny, etc. (1771).
Upsee-Dutch (Upsee-English, Upsee-Freese). Conjecturally a kind of heady beer qualified by the name of the brew. Hence upsee-freesy, etc., drunk: see Screwed; to drink upsee-Dutch (English, etc.), to drink deeply, or in true toper fashion according to the custom of the country named. Also Upsees (1600).
Water-bewitched. Weak lap (q.v.) of any kind: spec, (modem) tea very much watered down, but orig. (1672) very thin beer: also water-damaged: cf. Husband’s-tea.
Whistle-belly-vengeance. Bad beer, swipes (q.v.); hence indifferent lap (q.v.) of any kind: cf. Whip-belly-vengeance.
Whistle-cup. A drinking cup with a whistle attached: the last toper capable of using the whistle received the cup as a prize. Also a tankard fitted with a whistle, so arranged as to sound when the vessel was emptied, thus warning the drawer that more liquor was required.
Whistle-drunk. Very drunk indeed (1749).
Whistle-jacket. Small beer.

Synonyms for beer (including stout). Act of Parliament; artesian, barley, belch, belly-vengeance, bevy or bevvy, brownstone, bum-clink, bung- juice, bunker, cold-blood, down (see Up); English burgundy (porter), gatter, half-and-half, heavy-wet, John Barleycorn, knock-down or knock-me-down, oil of barley, perkin, ponge, pongelow, or ponjeUo, rosin, rot-gut, sherbet, stingo, swankey, swipes, swizzle, up (bottled ale or stout)

Beer-word-mugs

Bass Red Triangle Trademark Renewal

July 25, 2018 By Jay Brooks

bass
On January 1, 1876, the first trademark was registered in Great Britain. The story is usually told along these lines, with this from campaign, an advertising and media website, where this is part of a series on the British History of Advertising:

On the last night of 1875, an employee of the Bass Brewery was standing at the head of a queue and facing the prospect of a chilly start to the new year.
His reward was not to be the pick of the bargains at the January sales but something far more significant. Indeed, he was to be present at a moment of history in the evolution of brands in Britain.
On 1 January 1876, the new Trade Marks Registration Act was coming into effect and the staffer had been told to queue overnight outside the registrar’s office to be the first to take advantage of it.
As a result, the distinctive Bass red triangle logo is now Britain’s oldest trademark – an instantly recognisable symbol of the brand and long integral to its advertising.

It probably didn’t happen that way. There’s no evidence that it did, but nobody ever let the facts get on the way of a good story. However it happened, Bass did register trademark No. 1.

bass-logo

This account from 2013 is from the Derbyshire Life and Countryside:

So it’s curiously apt that Trade Mark No. 1 was granted right on Derbyshire’s doorstep to Burton-on-Trent brewers Bass. It officially registered the Red Triangle which adorned their extremely popular India Pale Ale. For good measure Bass also bagged Trade Mark No. 2 – the Red Diamond symbolising Burton ales, brown beers and stouts.
Legend has it that a Bass employee spent New Year’s Eve ‘queuing’ overnight outside the Registration Office so that he could be first in line when doors opened the next morning. While the story has never been verified – they may have applied by post – Bass certainly got in first. As such their Red Triangle assumed an iconic place in the history of international brand awareness.
Why they selected a red triangle remains unclear. Some say it was an age-old shipping mark. But an 1880 edition of the Derbyshire Times offered a more romantic notion: ‘A biographer playfully suggested the Bass family descended from the ancient classical deity Bassareus to whom libations were routinely offered. Bass thereafter fixed upon the notion of adopting an ancient and powerful symbol as their mark. They settled upon Egypt’s “Great Pyramid” drenched in a burning sun. The Red Triangle was thus conceived.’
That’s wonderfully seductive but almost certainly entirely fanciful. ‘Good stories’ aside, the Red Triangle and appended Bass signature came to distinguish the company’s most cherished product. The signature also made it the world’s first ‘script logo’ – a device since adopted by Coca-Cola and countless others. These signed ‘logos’ (from the Greek logos for ‘word’) were thought to carry extra weight in fully authenticating the product. That concept of ‘branding’ merchandise was an ancient one. Blacksmiths who made swords in the Roman Empire are considered among the first users of trademarks. Others followed suit to indelibly identify their goods. This naturally led to fraudulent imitation. But centuries elapsed before the first trade mark legislation was introduced – by a 1266 Act of Parliament all bakers were required to use a distinctive mark for the bread they sold.
Disputes continued to arise but not until the late 19th century did comprehensive modern trade mark laws emerge. France was first to fully address the issue in their Manufacture and Goods Mark Act of 1857. By then Bass were already the leading supplier of beer to the overseas market, while at home their products were an absolute watchword for quality. Indeed the very word ‘Bass’ was almost a generic term for ‘beer’ itself – the poet Tennyson when visiting the Great Exhibition of 1851 asked ‘can one get a decent bottle of Bass here?’

Below is a “1890s renewal contract of the Red Triangle trade mark shows the historic first registration date 1st January 1876.” This renewal document was signed July 25, 1890, so that’s why I’m posting this today (in case you were wondering). It’s quite interesting to see.

It has certainly been a successful logo, and was almost from the beginning. Check out this testimonial by James Hogg from his 1884 book, “Fortunes Made in Business:”

It is no extravagant assertion to say that throughout the world there is no name more familiar than that of Bass. A household word amongst Englishmen, it is one of the first words in the vocabulary of foreigners whose knowledge of the English language is of the most rudimentary description. There is no geometrical figure so well known as the vermilion triangle which is the Bass trademark. It is as familiar to the eye as Her Majesty’s visage on the postage stamps. It would indeed be a difficult task to say in what part of the earth that vivid triangle does not gladden the heart of man.

bass-pale-ale-vintage-label

Chalybeate Beer

February 20, 2018 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Henry James Pye, who “was an English poet, and Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death” in 1813. In one of his works, entitled “The sportsman’s dictionary: or, The gentleman’s companion: for town and country.” and his version was based on an earlier anthology work which he “Improved and Enlarged” and published in 1807. Under the entry for “Glanders” — an infectious disease primarily in horses — something was prescribed called “Chalybeate Beer” that included directions for how to make it. From what I can tell, “Chalybeate waters, also known as ferruginous waters, are mineral spring waters containing salts of iron.” They were apparently thought to be good for you and “in the 17th century, chalybeate water was said to have health-giving properties and many people have promoted its qualities.” Water from the springs was bottles and sold as medicine. Chalybeate springs were located throughout Europe, though especially in England, Scotland Wales, and there were at least seventeen prominent springs in the United States.

A chalybeate spring, identifiable because of how the iron turns the color of the water.

Here’s the passage about how to make Chalybeate beer (followed by the original):

A Chalybeate Beer, may be made as follows: Steel filings, sixteen ounces; cinnamon and mace, each two ounces; gentian-root bruised, four ounces, anniseeds bruised, three ounces. Infuse in one gallon, fine, clear, old, strong beer for a month, stopped close, shaking often, then strain. Give half a pint for s dose, in a pint of cold water, once or twice a day, upon an empty stomach, leaving the horse an hour or two to his repose. I have taken this from the Vinum Chalybeatum of Boerhaave, substituting old beer, which I have reason to believe a good menstruum for the steel, instead of Rhenish wine; and adding one of the best bitters. Should cinnamon and mace be thought too expensive, Jamaica pepper, or allspice, would be a cheap and proper substitute. It was the opinion of that great man, that no drug, diet, or regimen, could equal the preparations of iron, for promoting that power in the animal body by which blood is made; of course, it must be a powerful specific, in all cases of over-relaxed solids, debilitation and consumption. Would not chalybeate beer be a cheap and efficacious medicine for the poor?

Now doesn’t that sound tasty?

The Sandrock Spring, looking towards Blackgang Chine, located on the Isle of Wight.

Bobbing The Beer

February 2, 2018 By Jay Brooks

This is an interesting historical tidbit that was originally published in the London Illustrated News on February 2, 1850. The short story was entitled “Bobbing the Beer” and concerned the adulteration of beer, and how it was at least in part the Malt-Tax that was responsible for its growth. Given that it was in the London Illustrated News, there was a large picture accompanying the article that was actually larger than the text.

And this is the entire page that the story was printed on, page 80 of the February 2, 1850, edition of the London Illustrated News.

The Secret Life of Machines: Adnams Brewery

January 1, 2018 By Jay Brooks

A favorite British television show of mine was The Secret Life of Machines, by Tim Hunkin, whose birthday is today, January 1, 1950. Hunkin is “an English engineer, cartoonist, writer, and artist living in Suffolk, England. He is best known for creating the Channel Four television series The Secret Life of Machines, in which he explains the workings and history of various household devices. He has also created museum exhibits for institutions across the UK, and designed numerous public engineering works, chiefly for entertainment. Hunkin’s works are distinctive, often recognisable by his unique style of papier-mâché sculpture (made from unpainted newsprint), his pen and ink cartoons, and his offbeat sense of humour.” Given that his show, three seasons between 1988-1993, was about how machines work, it’s surprisingly low-key and minimalist, but quite fascinating. And often very funny.

Anyway, in 1977, Adnams Brewery, commissioned Hunkin to create a poster of their brewery in Suffolk. Hunkin remembered. “I spent a month drawing it and so enjoyed the experience that I moved out of London to Suffolk where I’ve lived ever since. I didn’t even drink much of the beer at the time. Before drawing it, I don’t think I had ever appreciated how the combination of words and drawings can make conveying information much clearer and simpler. I was able to dramatically cut the text about the brewing process by having it integrated with the drawing of the vats and pipes. I think all journalists should be taught to draw.”

I have a couple of books by Hunkin that are filled with detailed doodle drawings with loads of text like this, and they’re great, so I’d love to see what he wrote in this poster although the biggest file of the poster I could find wasn’t quite big enough to read it all.

adnams_brewery-poster
Or you can see it full size here.

Beer and Cider by George Saintsbury

October 23, 2017 By Jay Brooks

book
Today is the birthday of George Saintsbury (October 23, 1845–January 28, 1933). He “was an English writer, literary historian, scholar, critic and wine connoisseur.

Although Saintsbury was best known during his lifetime as a scholar, he is also remembered today for his Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920), one of the great testimonials to drink and drinking in wine literature. When he was close to death, André Simon arranged a dinner in his honour. Although Saintsbury did not attend, this was the start of the Saintsbury Club, men of letters and members of the wine trade who continue to have dinners to this day.

Part of his work, Notes on a Cellar Book, was a chapter entitled “Beer and Cider.”

This is the introduction to this chapter, from a later volume of various works called “Modern Essays,” and edited by Christopher Morley. It was originally published in 1921, one year after Saintsbury’s death.

How pleasant it is to find the famous Professor Saintsbury — known to students as the author of histories of the English and French literatures, the History of Criticism and History of English Prosody — spending the evening so hospitably in his cellar. I print this — from his downright delightful Notes on a Cellar Book — as a kind of tantalizing penance. It is a charming example of how pleasantly a great scholar can unbend on occasion.
George Saintsbury, born in 1845, studied at Merton College, Oxford, taught school 1868-76, was a journalist in London 1876-95, and held the chair of English Literature at Edinburgh University, 1895-1915. If you read Notes on a Cellar Book, as you should, you will agree that it is a charmingly light-hearted causerie for a gentleman to publish at the age of seventy-five. More than ever one feels that sound liquor, in moderation, is a preservative of both body and wit.

BEER AND CIDER

By George Saintsbury

THERE is no beverage which I have liked “to live with” more than Beer; but I have never had a cellar large enough to accommodate much of it, or an establishment numerous enough to justify the accommodation. In the good days when servants expected beer, but did not expect to be treated otherwise than as servants, a cask or two was necessary; and persons who were “quite” generally took care that the small beer they drank should be the same as that which they gave to their domestics, though they might have other sorts as well. For these better sorts at least the good old rule was, when you began on one cask always to have in another. Even Cobbett, whose belief in beer was the noblest feature in his character, allowed that it required some keeping. The curious “white ale,” or lober agol—which, within the memory of man, used to exist in Devonshire and Cornwall, but which, even half a century ago, I have vainly sought there—was, I believe, drunk quite new; but then it was not pure malt and not hopped at all, but had eggs (“pullet-sperm in the brewage”) and other foreign bodies in it.

I did once drink, at St David’s, ale so new that it frothed from the cask as creamily as if it had been bottled: and I wondered whether the famous beer of Bala, which Borrow found so good at his first visit and so bad at his second, had been like it.

On the other hand, the very best Bass I ever drank had had an exactly contrary experience. In the year 1875, when I was resident at Elgin, I and a friend now dead, the Procurator-Fiscal of the district, devoted the May “Sacrament holidays,” which were then still kept in those remote parts, to a walking tour up the Findhorn and across to Loch Ness and Glen Urquhart. At the Freeburn Inn on the first-named river we found some beer of singular excellence: and, asking the damsel who waited on us about it, were informed that a cask of Bass had been put in during the previous October, but, owing to a sudden break in the weather and the departure of all visitors, had never been tapped till our arrival.

Beer of ordinary strength left too long in the cask gets “hard” of course; but no one who deserves to drink it would drink it from anything but the cask if he could help it. Jars are makeshifts, though useful makeshifts: and small beer will not keep in them for much more than a week. Nor are the very small barrels, known by various affectionate diminutives (“pin,” etc.) in the country districts, much to be recommended. “We’ll drink it in the firkin, my boy!” is the lowest admission in point of volume that should be allowed. Of one such firkin I have a pleasant memory and memorial, though it never reposed in my home cellar. It was just before the present century opened, and some years before we Professors in Scotland had, of our own motion and against considerable opposition, given up half of the old six months’ holiday without asking for or receiving a penny more salary. (I have since chuckled at the horror and wrath with which Mr. Smillie and Mr. Thomas would hear of such profligate conduct.) One could therefore move about with fairly long halts: and I had taken from a friend a house at Abingdon for some time. So, though I could not even then drink quite as much beer as I could thirty years earlier a little higher up the Thames, it became necessary to procure a cask. It came—one of Bass’s minor mildnesses—affectionately labeled “Mr. George Saintsbury. Full to the bung.” I detached the card, and I believe I have it to this day as my choicest (because quite unsolicited) testimonial.

Very strong beer permits itself, of course, to be bottled and kept in bottles: but I rather doubt whether it also is not best from the wood; though it is equally of course, much easier to cellar it and keep it bottled. Its kinds are various and curious. “Scotch ale” is famous, and at its best (I never drank better than Younger’s) excellent: but its tendency, I think, is to be too sweet. I once invested in some—not Younger’s—which I kept for nearly sixteen years, and which was still treacle at the end. Bass’s No. 1 requires no praises. Once when living in the Cambridgeshire village mentioned earlier I had some, bottled in Cambridge itself, of great age and excellence. Indeed, two guests, though both of them were Cambridge men, and should have had what Mr. Lang once called the “robust” habits of that University, fell into one ditch after partaking of it. (I own that the lanes thereabouts are very dark.) In former days, though probably not at present, you could often find rather choice specimens of strong beer produced at small breweries in the country. I remember such even in the Channel Islands. And I suspect the Universities themselves have been subject to “declensions and fallings off.” I know that in my undergraduate days at Merton we always had proper beer-glasses, like the old “flute” champagnes, served regularly at cheese-time with a most noble beer called “Archdeacon,” which was then actually brewed in the sacristy of the College chapel. I have since—a slight sorrow to season the joy of reinstatement there—been told that it is now obtained from outside. And All Souls is the only other college in which, from actual recent experience, I can imagine the possibility of the exorcism,

Strongbeerum! discede a lay-fratre Petro,

if lay-brother Peter were so silly as to abuse, or play tricks with, the good gift.

I have never had many experiences of real “home-brewed,” but two which I had were pleasing. There was much home-brewing in East Anglia at the time I lived there, and I once got the village carpenter to give me some of his own manufacture. It was as good light ale as I ever wish to drink (many times better than the wretched stuff that Dora has foisted on us), and he told me that, counting in every expense for material, cost and wear of plant, etc., it came to about a penny a quart. The other was very different. The late Lord de Tabley—better or at least longer known as Mr. Leicester Warren—once gave a dinner at the Athenæum at which I was present, and had up from his Cheshire cellars some of the old ale for which that county is said to be famous, to make flip after dinner. It was shunned by most of the pusillanimous guests, but not by me, and it was excellent. But I should like to have tried it unflipped.

I never drank mum, which all know from The Antiquary, some from “The Ryme of Sir Lancelot Bogle,” and some again from the notice which Mr. Gladstone’s love of Scott (may it plead for him!) gave it once in some Budget debate, I think. It is said to be brewed of wheat, which is not in its favor (wheat was meant to be eaten, not drunk) and very bitter, which is. Nearly all bitter drinks are good. The only time I ever drank “spruce” beer I did not like it. The comeliest of black malts is, of course, that noble liquor called of Guinness. Here at least I think England cannot match Ireland, for our stouts are, as a rule, too sweet and “clammy.” But there used to be in the country districts a sort of light porter which was one of the most refreshing liquids conceivable for hot weather. I have drunk it in Yorkshire at the foot of Roseberry Topping, out of big stone bottles like champagne magnums. But that was nearly sixty years ago. Genuine lager beer is no more to be boycotted than genuine hock, though, by the way, the best that I ever drank (it was at the good town of King’s Lynn) was Low not High Dutch in origin. It was so good that I wrote to the shippers at Rotterdam to see if I could get some sent to Leith, but the usual difficulties in establishing connection between wholesale dealers and individual buyers prevented this. It was, however, something of a consolation to read the delightful name, “our top-and-bottom-fermentation beer,” in which the manufacturer’s letter, in very sound English for the most part, spoke of it. English lager I must say I have never liked; perhaps I have been unlucky in my specimens. And good as Scotch strong beer is, I cannot say that the lighter and medium kinds are very good in Scotland. In fact, in Edinburgh I used to import beer of this kind from Lincolnshire, where there is no mistake about it. My own private opinion is that John Barleycorn, north of Tweed, says: “I am for whisky, and not for ale.”

“Cider and perry,” says Burton, “are windy drinks”; yet he observes that the inhabitants of certain shires in England (he does not, I am sorry to say, mention Devon) of Normandy in France, and of Guipuzcoa in Spain, “are no whit offended by them.” I have never liked perry on the few occasions on which I have tasted it; perhaps because its taste has always reminded me of the smell of some stuff that my nurse used to put on my hair when I was small. But I certainly have been no whit offended by cider, either in divers English shires, including very specially those which Burton does not include, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, or in Normandy. The Guipuzcoan variety I have, unfortunately, had no opportunity of tasting. Besides, perry seems to me to be an abuse of that excellent creature the pear, whereas cider-apples furnish one of the most cogent arguments to prove that Providence had the production of alcoholic liquors directly in its eye. They are good for nothing else whatever, and they are excellent good for that. I think I like the weak ciders, such as those of the west and the Normandy, better than the stronger ones, and draught cider much better than bottled. That of Norfolk, which has been much commended of late, I have never tasted; but I have had both Western and West-Midland cider in my cellar, often in bottle and once or twice in cask. It is a pity that the liquor—extremely agreeable to the taste, one of the most thirst-quenching to be anywhere found, of no overpowering alcoholic strength as a rule, and almost sovereign for gout—is not to be drunk without caution, and sometimes has to be given up altogether from other medical aspects. Qualified with brandy—a mixture which was first imparted to me at a roadside inn by a very amiable Dorsetshire farmer whom I met while walking from Sherborne to Blandford in my first Oxford “long”—it is capital: and cider-cup who knoweth not? If there be any such, let him not wait longer than to-morrow before establishing knowledge. As for the pure juice of the apple, four gallons a day per man used to be the harvest allowance in Somerset when I was a boy. It is refreshing only to think of it now.

Of mead or metheglin, the third indigenous liquor of Southern Britain, I know little. Indeed, I should have known nothing at all of it had it not been that the parish-clerk and sexton of the Cambridgeshire village where I lived, and the caretaker of a vinery which I rented, was a bee-keeper and mead-maker. He gave me some once. I did not care much for it. It was like a sweet weak beer, with, of course, the special honey flavor. But I should imagine that it was susceptible of a great many different modes of preparation, and it is obvious, considering what it is made of, that it could be brewed of almost any strength. Old literary notices generally speak of it as strong.

The Mug-House Riots

July 23, 2017 By Jay Brooks

beer-mug
Today, just over three-hundred years ago — July 23, 1716 — a little-known historical event took place in London, known as the Mug-House Riots, between Jacobite and Hanoverian partisans.

One of my favorite old books on dates, entitled “Chamber’s Book of Days,” which was published in England, in 1869, has an account of the Mug-Houe Riots:

On the 23rd of July 1716, a tavern in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, was assailed by a great mob, evidently animated by a deadly purpose. The house was defended, and bloodshed took place before quiet was restored. This affair was a result of the recent change of dynasty. The tavern was one of a set in which the friends of the newly acceded Hanover family assembled, to express their sentiments and organise their measures. The mob was a Jacobite mob, to which such houses were a ground of offence. But we must trace the affair more in detail.
Amongst the various clubs which existed in London at the commencement of the eighteenth century, there was not one in greater favour than the Mug-house Club, which met in a great hall in Long Acre, every Wednesday and Saturday, during the winter. The house had got its name from the simple circumstance, that each member drank his ale (the only liquor used) out of a separate mug. There was a president, who is described in 1722 as a grave old gentleman in his own gray hairs, now full ninety years of age.’ A harper sat occasionally playing at the bottom of the room. From time to time, a member would give a song. Healths were drunk, and jokes transmitted along the table. Miscellaneous as the company was—and it included barristers as well as trades-people—great harmony prevailed. In the early days of this fraternity there was no room for politics, or anything that could sour conversation.
By and by, the death of Anne brought on the Hanover succession. The Tories had then so much the better of the other party, that they gained the mob on all public occasions to their side. It became necessary for King George’s friends to do something in counteraction of this tendency. No better expedient occurred to them, than the establishing of mug-houses, like that of Long Acre, throughout the metropolis, wherein the friends of the Protestant succession might rally against the partizans of a popish pretender. First, they had one in St. John’s Lane, chiefly under the patronage of a Mr. Blenman, a member of the Middle Temple, who took for his motto, ‘Pro rege et loge;’ then arose the Roebuck mug-house in Cheapside, the haunt of a fraternity of young men who had been organised for political action before the end of the late reign. According to a pamphlet on the subject, dated in 1717,
‘The next mug-houses opened in the city were at Mrs. Read’s coffee-house in Salisbury Court, in Fleet Street, and at the Harp in Tower Street, and another at the Roebuck in Whitechapel. About the same time, several other mug-houses were erected in the suburbs, for the reception and entertainment of the like loyal societies; viz., one at the Ship, in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, which is mostly frequented by loyal officers of the army; another at the Black Horse, in Queen Street, near Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, set up and carried on by gentlemen, servants to that noble patron of loyalty, to whom this vindication of it is inscribed [the Duke of Newcastle]; a third was set up at the Nag’s Head, in James’s Street, Covent Garden; a fourth at the Fleece, in Burleigh Street, near Exeter Exchange; a fifth at the Hand and Tench, near the Seven Dials; several in Spittlefields, by the French refugees; one in Southwark Park; and another in the Artillery Ground.’ Another of the rather celebrated mud houses was the Magpie, without Newgate, which still exists in the Magpie and Stump, in the Old Bailey. At all of these houses it was customary in the forenoon to exhibit the whole of the mugs belonging to the establishment in a range over the door—the best sign and attraction for the loyal that could have been adopted, for the White Horse of Hanover itself was not more emblematic of the new dynasty than was—the Mug.
It was the especial age of clubs, and the frequenters of these mug-houses formed themselves into societies, or clubs, known generally as the Mug-house Clubs, and severally by some distinctive name or other, and each club had its president to rule its meetings and keep order. The president was treated with great ceremony and respect: he was conducted to his chair every evening at about seven o’clock, or between that and eight, by members carrying candles before and behind him, and accompanied with music. Having taken a seat, he appointed a vice-president, and drank the health of the company assembled, a compliment which the company returned. The evening was then passed in drinking successively loyal and other healths, and in singing songs. Soon after ten, they broke up, the president naming his successor for the next evening, and, before he left the chair, a collection was made for the musicians.
These clubs played a very active part in the violent political struggles of the time. The Jacobites had laboured with much zeal to secure the alliance of the street-mob, and they had used it with great effect, in connection with Dr. Sacheverell, in over-throwing Queen Anne’s Whig government, and paving the way for the return of the exiled family. Disappointment at the accession of George I rendered the party of the Pretender more unscrupulous, the mob was excited to go to greater lengths, and the streets of London were occupied by an infuriated rabble, and presented nightly a scene of riot such as can hardly be imagined in our quiet times. It was under these circumstances that the mug-house clubs volunteered, in a very disorderly manner, to be the champions of order, and with this purpose it became a part of their evening’s entertainment to march into the street and fight the Jacobite mob. This practice commenced in the autumn of 1715, when the club called the Loyal Society, which met at the Roebuck, in Cheapside, distinguished itself by its hostility to Jacobitism. On one occasion, at the period of which we are now speaking, the members of this society, or the Mug-house Club of the Roebuck, had burned the Pretender in effigy. Their first conflict with the mob recorded in the newspapers occurred on the 31st of October 1715.
It was the birthday of the Prince of Wales, and was celebrated by illuminations and bonfires. There were a few Jacobite alehouses, chiefly situated on Holborn Hill [Sacheverell’s parish], and in Ludgate Street; and it was probably the frequenters of the Jacobite public-house in the latter locality who stirred up the mob on this occasion to raise a riot on Ludgate Hill, put out the bonfire there, and break the windows which were illuminated. The Loyal Society men, receiving intelligence of what was going on, hurried to the spot, and, in the words of the newspaper report, ‘soundly thrashed and dispersed’ the rioters. The 4th of November was the anniversary of the birth of King William III, and the Jacobite mob made a large bonfire in the Old Jury, to burn an effigy of that monarch; but the mug-house men came upon them again, gave them ‘due chastisement with oaken plants,’ demolished their bonfire, and carried King William in triumph to the Roebuck. Next day was the commemoration of gunpowder treason, and the loyal mob had its pageant.
A long procession was formed, having in front a figure of the infant Pretender, accompanied by two men bearing each a warmin pan, in allusion to the story about his birth, and followed by effigies, in gross caricature, of the pope, the Pretender, the Duke of Ormond, Lord Bolingbroke, and the Earl of Marr, with halters round their necks, and all of which were to be burned in a large bonfire made in Cheapside. The procession, starting from the Roebuck, went through Newgate Street, and up Holborn Hill, where they compelled the bells of St. Andrew’s Church, of which Sacheverell was incumbent, to ring; thence through Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields and Covent Garden to the gate of St. James’s palace; returning by way of Pall-Mall and the Strand, and through St. Paul’s Churchyard. They had met with no interruption on their way, but on their return to Cheapside, they found that, during their absence, that quarter had been invaded by the Jacobite mob, who had carried away all the materials which had been collected for the bonfire. Thus the various anniversaries became, by such demonstrations, the occasions for the greatest turbulence; and these riots became more alarming, in consequence of the efforts which were made to increase the force of the Jacobite mob.
On the 17th of November, of the year just mentioned, the Loyal Society met at the Roebuck, to celebrate the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth; and, while busy with their mugs, they received information that the Jacobites, or, as they commonly called them, the Jacks, were assembled in great force in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and preparing to burn the effigies of King William and King George, along with the Duke of Marlborough. They were so near, in fact, that their party-shouts of High Church, Ormond, and King James, must have been audible at the Roebuck, which stood opposite Bow Church. The ‘Jacks’ were starting on. their procession, when they were overtaken in Newgate Street by the mug-house men from the Roebuck, and a desperate encounter took place, in which the Jacobites were defeated, and many of them were seriously injured. Meanwhile the Roebuck itself had been the scene of a much more serious tumult. During the absence of the great mass of the members of the club, another body of Jacobites, much more numerous than those engaged in Newgate Street, suddenly assembled and attacked the Roebuck mug-house, broke its windows and those of the adjoining houses, and with terrible threats, attempted to force the door. One of the few members of the Loyal Society who remained at home, discharged a gun upon those of the assailants who were attacking the door, and killed one of their leaders. This, and the approach of the lord mayor and city officers, caused the mob to disperse; but the Roebuck was exposed to continued attacks during several following nights, after which the mobs remained tolerably quiet through the winter.
With the month of February 1716, these riots began to be renewed with greater violence than over, and large preparations were made for an active mob-campaign in the spring. The mug – houses were refitted, and re-opened with ceremonious entertainments, and new songs were composed to encourage and animate the clubs. Collections of these mug-house songs were printed in little volumes, of which copies are still preserved, though they now come under the class of rare books. The Jacobite mob was again heard gathering in the streets by its well-known signal of the beating of marrow-bones and cleavers, and both sides were well furnished with staves of oak, their usual arms, for the combat, although other weapons, and missiles of various descriptions, were in common use. One of the mum house songs gives the following account of the way in which these riots were carried on:
Since the Tories could not fight,
And their master took his flight,
They labour to keep up their faction;
With a bough and a stick,
And a stone and a brick,
They equip their roaring crew for action.
Thus in battle-array,
At the close of the day,
After wisely debating their plot,
Upon windows and stall
They courageously fall,
And boast a great victory they’ve got.
But, alas! silly boys!
For all the mighty noise
Of their “High Church and Ormond for ever!”
A brave Whig, with one hand,
At George’s command,
Can make their mightiest hero to quiver.’
One of the great anniversaries of the Whigs was the 8th of March, the day of the death of King William; and with this the more serious mug-house riots of the year 1716 appear to have commenced. A large Jacobite mob assembled to their old watch-word, and marched along Cheapside to attack the Roebuck; but they were soon driven away by a small party of the Loyal Society, who met there. The latter then marched in procession through Newgate Street, paid their respects to the Magpie as they passed, and went through the Old Bailey to Ludgate Hill. On their return, they found that the Jacobite mob had collected in great force in their rear, and a much more serious engagement took place in Newgate Street, in which the ‘Jacks’ were again beaten, and many persons sustained serious personal injury. Another great tumult, or rather series of tumults, occurred on the evening of the 23rd of April, the anniversary of the birth of Queen Anne, during which there were great battles both in Cheapside and at the end of Giltspur Street, in the immediate neighbourhood of the two celebrated snug-houses, the Roebuck and the Magpie, which shows that the Jacobites had now become enterprising. Other great tumults took place on the 29th of May, the anniversary of the Restoration, and on the 10th of June, the Pretender’s birthday.
From this time the Roebuck is rarely mentioned, and the attacks of the mob appear to have been directed against other houses. On the 12th of July, the mug-house in Southwark, and, on the 20th, that in Salisbury Court (Read’s Coffee-house), were fiercely assailed, but successfully defended. The latter was attacked by a much more numerous mob on the evening of the 23rd of July, and after a resistance which lasted all night, the assailants forced their way in, and kept the Loyal Society imprisoned in the upper rooms of the house while they gutted the lower part, drank as much ale out of the cellar as they could, and let the rest run out. Read, in desperation, had shot their ringleader with a blunderbuss, in revenge for which they left the coffeehouse-keeper for dead; and they were at last with difficulty dispersed by the arrival of the military. The inquest on the dead man found a verdict of wilful murder against Read; but, when put upon his trial, he was acquitted, while several of the rioters, who had been taken, were hanged. This result appears to have damped the courage of the rioters, and to have alarmed all parties, and we hear no more of the mug-house riots. Their incompatibility with the preservation of public order was very generally felt, and they became the subject of great complaints. A few months later, a pamphlet appeared, under the title of Down with the Mug, or Reasons for Suppressing the Mug-houses, by an author who only gave his name as Sir H. M.; but who seems to have shown so much of what was thought to be Jacobite spirit, that it provoked a reply, entitled The Mug Vindicated.
But the mug-houses, left to themselves, soon became very harmless.

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