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From The Inns of the Middle Ages, by W. C. Firebaugh, Chicago: Pascal Covici; 1924; pp. 157-171.
[This book is primarily composed of an uncredited translation of Histoire des hotelleries, cabarets, hotels garnis, restaurants et cafés, et des anciennes commonautés et confréries: d’hoteliers, de marchands de vins, de restaurateurs, de limonadiers, etc., etc., by Francisque Xavier Michel and Edouard Fournier, Paris: Librarie Historique, Arché, ologique, et Scientifique de Seré, 1851. — Elf.Ed.
THE INNS OF GREECE AND ROME
157We have devoted our time, heretofore, principally to inns and taverns of the continent. We shall now cross the channel and see what the fair land of England has to offer.
No character in all the crude life of the times is better known than the alewife.
The art of brewing was probably first discovered by the lowly serfs of prehistoric Egypt, but it remained for the people of the Low Countries to develop it until the malt liquors were able to find favor amongst the wealthy.
During the Roman occupation of Albion, the drink was wine, and there were taverns at Cher, [Londinum], and [Eboracum], or York, to say nothing of the various sutler’s booths attached to the commissariats of the legions. The years between the Roman withdrawal and the invasion of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes represent a period of upheaval, with the peoples constantly perturbed by marauding expeditions form the north, with no steel clad Romans to intervene. At their invitation, the Teutonic barbarians landed on their shores and drove the Scottish hordes back into their own dreary habitats. The country was pleasant and the new arrivals promptly proceeded to colonize what they had protected.
These barbarians had long been familiar with [213] the processes of brewing, and though they drank wine with avidity, their national tipple was beer.
Because there was little internal trade in Saxon England, there were few taverns. There were, however, many alehouses, and it was but natural that this should be the case. Monasteries were generally located at a distance from the roads, there was not sufficient custom to warrant keeping inns, as Saxon hospitality was opposed to the practise, and some way had to be found to meet the needs of wayfarers. As beer was in demand, rude shelters, often mere roofs supported by uprights, began to make their appearance at the cross-roads and along the bye-ways in the thickly settled centers. These establishments were called alehouses, and were presided over by women who were often on the wrong side of fifty. They brewed their own product and sold it retail to all comers. Such places were distinguished by a long pole which projected outwards above the door. A broom or brush was attached to the outer end of this pole, and thus we see the sign of the alehouse of the Middle Ages.
I regret that I am not sufficiently grounded in the theories of Higgins and Forlong to point out the phallic symbolism in this sign, but I have no doubt that it can be traced, and certainly the character of the ale-wife, as delineated by Langland, and especially by Skelton, is always in keeping with the emblem, whatever its symbolism.
It was at one of these ale-houses that Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims dismounted, on their way to Canterbury, to rest themselves and their beasts, and the pardoner, who could not abide abstinence, [214] when it interfered with his habits, would not begin his tale without a little refreshment:
“Thou bel amy, thou pardoner,” he seyde,
“Tel us som mirthe or Iapes right anon.”
“It shall be doon,” quod he, “by seint Ronyon!
“But first,” [quood] he, “heer at thi sale-stake
I wol both drynke and byten on a cake.”
Langland’s vivid and well-known description of the tavern of his times has already been quoted, and as a contrast, before dealing with Chaucer’s subtle realism, we will look into Skelton, who wrote about a century and a half after Langland and Chaucer. We shall then see that, notwithstanding the Renaissance and the radical changes in thought which grew out of it, the taverns and ale-houses were still the same.
Skelton’s ale-wife, Elynour Rummyng, is old trot, a veritable witch of Endor, who might have been twin sister to the Oenothea of the Satyricon, or to those whom Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote of the horrible crones who were to welcome Macbeth on Lambert heath: “Secret, black and midnight hags.”
She brews her own ale, nor is too much of her time taken with matters pertaining to cleanliness; and, as the fowls roost above the vats, the ingredients of her brew must have been less [ambigious] than those in Bishop Talbot’s dish of hash, in his early days in Wyoming. Her eyes are probably pouched, while the lower lids are reddened and droop in a manner that shows bitter pessimism without failing [215] to arouse a little sentiment in discriminating customers, though she has few of the latter.
“For her vysage
It would aswage
A mannes courage.”*
Her features and expression reflect the company that frequents her pothouse:
“Woundersly wrynkled,
Lyke a rost pygges eare,
Brystled wyth here.”
NO INDENT and her nose would seem to merit all the attention it gets:
“Her nose somdele hoked,
And camously croked,
Never stoppynge,
But ever droppynge;
Her skynne lose and slacke,
Grained lyke a sacke;
With a croked backe.”
Her ale-shack is the lode-stone that draws all the leprous rustics in the vicinity of Leatherhed, in Surrey.
“She breweth noppy ale,
And maketh therof port sale
To travellars, to tynkers,
To sweters, to swynkers,
And all good ale drynkers.”
She had chosen site on the side of a hill near the highroad, manifesting in this way a shocking lack of fact as many of her customers had no desire [216] whatever to be seen either in her house or in her company:
“Some go streyt thyder,
Be it slaty or slyder;
They holde the hye waye,
They are not what men say,
Be that as be may;
Some, lothe to be espyde,
Start in at the back side,
Over the hedge and pale,
All for the good ale.”
Her following amongst her own sex reminds one strongly of some of the female characters of Fielding, notably of that of Mrs. Partridge, or of the gin-soaked crone so admirably caricatured by Jepson, in Pollyooly:
“Some wenches come unlased,
Some huswyues come unbrased,
With theyr naked pappes,
That flyppes and flappes;
It wygges and it wagges,
Lyke tawny saffron bagges.”
Far be it from [me] to put any ammunition in the hands of zealous fanatics, but the passages which follow have much that they might fasten upon. The economic situation in those times was much more difficult than it is today. True it is that money had a greater purchasing power then than at present, but it also follows as a necessary corollary, that if the purchasing power was as fifteen to one, the difficulty of obtaining the medium of exchange was as one hundred to one.
[217]Financial collapse is generally accompanied by intensive gnawing of all the appetites, and the fact that a man may be penniless is not evidence that he does not crave a tankard of corny ale. Our ale-wife was well aware of this, and based much of her business upon this human weakness:
“Instede of coyne and monny,
Some brynge her a conny,
And some a pot with honny,
Some a salt, and some a spone,
Some their hose, some theyr shone.”
Then, as in the days of Jack Sheppard, the women sometimes disrupted the household by their love for ale or for gin-an-beer. It was often difficult for them to make a settlement, but they let nothing undone which would preserve their good standing with the ale-wife. Much tribulation must have fallen on their devoted heads when their husbands came to discover the nature of the pledges which passed into the hands of the hostess:
“Anone cometh another,
As drye as the other,
And with her doth brynge
Mete, salte, or other thynge,
Her harvest gyrdle, her weddynge rynge,
To pay for her scot
As cometh to her lot.
Som bryngeth her husbandes hood,
Because the ale is good;
Another brought her his cap
To offer to the ale tap.”
[218]Were we to push our investigations through to the times of Dickens we would find little improvement in conditions. The female tipplers are a harder-boiled breed, however as ale no longer gives them sufficient kick; they must have their beer with a generous spike of gin. The writer remembers more than one charwoman in the right little tight little island who was a site adept in working the miracles of Cana, . . . with reverse English.
Skelton, of course, was guilty of some exaggeration in this colorful and malodorous scene he preserved, but the chickens and the pigs had the run of the place right enough, and the educated palate would thrive better on Allsops or Burton-on-Trent.
* Elynour Rummyng . . . . passim.
Note
1 Athenaeus, Lib. I, 61, Yonge’s translation.
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