29 / 248
DRINKS ANCIENT AND MODERN 19
ating any sort of drinks) you may preserve your
juice ofrasberries at the proper season. And when
you make your metheglin, decoct your honey and
water together, and when it is cold then add your
juice of rasberries which was before prepared to
keep, and purifie your metheglin by the means before
prescrib'd, or ferment it, either by a tost dipp'd in
yest, or by putting a spoonful of yest unto it, to
which you may add the little bagg of spices before
mention'd. Then let it stand about a month to be
thorowly "purified, and then bottle it, and preserve
it for use, and it may in time become a curious
drink."
I should think so.
This is what Howell (Clerk to the Privy
Council in 1640) wrote about metheglin ;—
The juice of Bees, not Bacchus, here behold.
Which British Bards were wont to qualF of old ;
The berries of the grape with Furies swell,
But in the honeycomb the Graces dwell.
" Neither Sir John Barleycorn or Bacchus had
anything to do with it, but it is the pure juice of
the bee, the laborious bee, and the king of insects ;
the Druids and old British Bards were wont to
take a carouse hereof before they entered into
their speculations. But this drink always carried
a kind of state with it, for it must be attended
with a brown toast; nor will it admit but of one
good draught, and that in the morning ; ifmore
it will keep a humming in the head, and so
speak too much of the house it comes from, I
mean the hive."
M'yes. I question the advisability ofany sort