How Brasenose College came by its peculiar name is a much disputed point. There is a legend that in the far-off time of long ago certain students of the temporary university at Stamford, the iron ring of whose door-knocker was fitted in a nose of brass, migrated to Oxford, { 167} and there set up a brazen nose over the entrance of their college as a souvenir of their former abode. Equally plausible is the tradition that upon the site of the college brewery once stood King Alfred’s brasinium (brewhouse), and that the name, clinging to the place through all the changes and chances of a thousand years, now appears under the slightly modified form of Brasenose. If the latter theory be correct, the Shrovetide feast and the yearly ode in praise of Brasenose Ale may be attributed to the desire to keep green the memory of the famous brewhouse of the good King, and the mighty liquor therein brewed for the royal table.
The merits of a celebrated Oxford butler, John Dawson of Christ Church, are commemorated in the following elegy:—
Dawson, the butler’s dead. Although I think Poets were ne’er infus’d with single drink I’ll spend a farthing, Muse; a wat’ry verse Will serve the turn to cast upon his hearse. If any cannot weep amongst us here, Take off his cap, and so squeeze out a tear: Weep, O ye Barrels! make waste more prodigal Than when our Beer was good, that John may float To Styx in beer, and lift up Charon’s boat With wholsome waves; and as the conduits ran, With claret at the Coronation, So let your channels flow with single tiff, For John, I hope is crown’d: take off your whiff, Ye men of rosemary, and drink up all, Rememb’ring ’tis a Butler’s funeral; Had he been master of good double Beer My Life for his, John Dawson had been here.
For a hundred years or more the town of Nottingham has been famous for its ales, and the song “Nottingham Ale” commemorates the many virtues of this justly celebrated “barley-wine.” Amongst others, it has virtues ecclesiastical:—
Ye bishops and deacons, priests, curates and vicars, Come taste, and you’ll certainly find it is true, That Nottingham Ale is the best of all liquors, And who understand the good creature like you? It dispels every vapour, saves pen, ink, and paper; For when you’re disposed in the pulpit to rail { 168} It will open your throats, you may preach without notes, When inspired with full bumpers of Nottingham Ale.