The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-10-18
a JUG OF ALE.
From An The Year Round. ]

white as swans down, In the long taper glass
fresh. bright, sparkling with the pleasant aroma
of the Kentish hop pervsding the draught, CRATE
fully nourishing and gently exhilarating-that Is
what glass of good English ale should be--ale
that Autolycus, q great judge on such matters,
declared stoutly, as he went singing along the
road to the shepherds cottage, was "a dish for
q king"
We can fancy the artful rascal, with oblique
eyes and greasy cap with broken feather, sitting
at the ale bench outside the Peal OF Bells, ale
fellow well met. with Christopher Sly, whose
illustrious family came in with Richard Con
queror." Sly, being thirsty and more dry even
than usual has Just called for "pot o, small
ale" He is telling Autolycus of his descent from
old Sly of Burton Heath, and has also informed
him that he (Christopher) was by birth peddler,
by education cardmaker. by transmutstion a
bearherd. and now, by recent profession, a
tinker. Fourieen.pence is the score for sheer ale
chalked against him by the fat ale wife Of Win
cot.
Picture the scene at an Ostade alehouse. The
sunset is red on the old faded sign, and on the
dusky wagon a. the door, red on the vine-leaves
over the porch red on the cups Of the ale bench.
1t makes the face of Autolycus to glow with the
cunning of Mercury, and Sly's Bardolphian coun-
tenaDce 10 blaze again, as If he were peeping in
at o furnace door. The fat Falstaf of q landlord
breaks out laughing over the red curtain of the
open lattice window; the fat landlady and the
buxom servant roar from the upper window. at
the jokes Of the two merry guests. The wagner
and the oster and the hsrvestmen laugh too,
while q great bear of a shepherds dog barks with
delight. as Autolycus clears his pipes and sings
his favorite song Of
THE JUG OF ALE.
As I was sitting one afternoon
OF pleasant day in the month of June,
heard thrush sing down the vale,
And the tune he Gang was the jug Of ale,"
And the tune be sang was the jug of ale.
The white sheet blesched on the hedge,
And II sets my wisdom teeth on edge,
When dry with telling your peddler's tale,
Your only comforts jug Of ale.
Your only comforts q jug Of ale.
] jog along the footpath way,
For a merry heart goes all the day;
But at night, whoever may fout and rail.
] sit down with my friend-the jug of ale,
With my good old friend-the jug of ale.
Whether the sweet or sour Of the year,
] tramp and tramp though the gallows be near.
o, while I've a shilling, will not fail
To drown my cares in a jug of ale,
Drown my cares in jug of ale
This song is very unjustly COMPOUNDED by some
commentators with Mr.. Lovers old Irish song-the
jug OF Punch. As to the lines in it, which some
what resemble those in the Winters Tale, there
can be no dopbt that Shakespeare stole them. Our
copy OF the jog of Ale dates back to at least 1920
and is generally attributed to Bishop Still. that
convivial prelate worthy descendant Of earnest
Walter Maps Bishop Golss, who wished Gin
taberna mort" and, what's worse. rhymed that
disreputsble wish with "angelorum chori.n The
Bishop Still we alude to was the writer OF the
old farce comedy, Gammer Gurton's Needle,
which contained the bacchanalian chant:
Z" cannot eat but little meal,
Ny stomach is not good
But sure think that / can drink
With him that wears hood"
That fine old song of The Elk ale-tation of Ale
draws one of the earliest distinctions between
beer and ale; distinction still regarded in Som.
ersetshire, Worcestershire and stsffordshire
where ale is the common liquor and beer is the
gentleman. The writer observes quantity:
q" But now. as they say. beer bears it away.
The more is the pity, II right might prevail;
For with this same beer came up heresy here,
The old Catholic drink is pot Of good ale.
" Ard in very deed, the hops but weed,
Brought oyer gaiDst law and here set to sale.
Would the law were renewed, and no more beer
brewed.
But all good men betake them to pot of good
ale
=" Too many. I wis, with their deaths proved this,
And therefore (if ancient records do not fall
He that first brewed the hop was rewarded with
rope,
And found his beer far more bitter than aleu-
This is one Of the earliest denunciations of the
newly invented drink, favored with the Flemish
hop. introduced in Henry the Eighth's time, aud
denounced at first by the physicians as I'm whole
and creamy, like that of the Bsvsrians now.
Heresy and hops according to the men Of the old
faith, came IN together.
When the vine wsuld not grow, the barry rose,
and shook its ears 10 soothe and soace man. The
Egyptians drank their beer hundreds OF centuries
ago. and they drink 1t now. IL is, no wever, what
Beaumont would have called "a muddy drench,"
tasting too much Of earth, and the malt retain
ing a scnrvy touch of the dull hand
that sowed il. Warriors under the festhery
palms of Phil@, with the asps of Egypt
on their helmets, and the vult1re wings for
their crests, pulled that horrible beer. The
Nile boatmen give it you still. 1t is whltish,
thick and s3ur like the worst Belgian brew. At
the foot Of the Pyramids, with their backs to the
hot stone blocks, the warriors of the Phsraohs
drank that execrsble tap; and with the bliss of
ignorance no doubt discussed the various merits
Of the Barclay and Perkinses Of Thehes and Ed
fou. That was the poor but mprovsole beverage
which Joseph and his brethren quafed. aud which
supported the lsraeites at their toisome tasks Ia
those brick fields whose fires have long gone out
1t must have been tossed of in those tremendous
tombs of the Kings at Thebes, as the swarthy
workmen rested after coloring their fourteenth
room of bieroglyphcs. and sat down to sup
snuely upon onions just within the keen black
shadow of the scorching doorway hewn square in
the rock, waiting till the high priest himself came
down at sunset, with all his fan-bearers, and
harpera- and spearmen. TO see the great ALA