It was the good Cambrinus unto his palace went, And messengers through all the land unto his lords he sent, “Leave Odin, under pain of death!”—his orders were severe, Yet touched with mildness—for he sent the recipe for beer. { 30}
Oh, then a merry sound was heard of building through the land, And the churches and the breweries went up on every hand; For the masons they were hard at work where’er a spot seemed pat, And some had bricks within their hods, and some within their hats.
In the sister Island are to be found very early references to ale. The _Senchus Mor_, which contains some of the oldest and most important of the ancient laws of Ireland, has the following passages in which mention of this drink occurs:—
“What is a human banquet? The banquet of each one’s feasting-house to his chief according to his due (_i.e._, the chief’s), to which his (_i.e._, the tenant’s) deserts entitle him; viz., a supper with ale, a feast without ale, a feast by day. The feast without ale is divided; it is distributed according to dignity; the feeding of the assembly of the forces of a territory, assembled for the purpose of demanding proof and law, and answering to illegality. Suppers with ale, feasts without ale, are the fellowship of the Feini.” It is difficult to understand the ideas contained in these old Erse laws and customs, but the main thing for the present purpose is the evidence they give that ale was known and commonly used in Ireland as early as the fifth century.[7]
From the Brehon law tracts it may be gathered that the privileges of an Irish king included the right to have his ale supplied him with food;[8] he was also to have a brave army and _an inebriating ale-house_. The Irish chief is always to have two casks in his house, one of ale, another of milk; he should also have three sacks—a sack of malt, a sack of salt, and a sack of charcoal.
[7] The _Senchus Mor_ was composed in the time of Lœghaire, son of Niall, King of Erin, about A.D. 430, a few years after the arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland.
[8] Doubtless an allusion to the old _food rents_ once common in Ireland.
Wales was also to some extent an ale-producing country, and we find in Anglo-Saxon times Welsh ale frequently alluded to as a luxury. When _Offa_ renders the lands at _Westbury_ and _Stanbury_ to the church of Worcester, he accepts at _Westbury_ these _services_: 2 tunne full of clear Ale, and a cumbe (16 _quarts_) full of smaller Ale, and a cumbe of Welsh Ale, besides other services. There was a payment to the said church also out of the lands at _Breodune_ of 3 cuppes full of Ale, 111 _dolea Brytannicæ cervissiæ_ (_i.e._, casks of British Ale), and 3 hogsheads of { 31} Welsh Ale, _quorum unum fit melle dulcoratum_ (_i.e._, of which one was to be sweetened with honey). Henry, in his _History of England_, in treating of the drinks used in England and Wales during five centuries before the Norman Conquest, remarks on the rarity of the use of ale in Wales at that time. “Mead,” he says, “was still one of their favourite liquors, and bore a high price; for a cask of mead, by the laws of Wales, was valued at 120 pence, equal in quantity of silver to thirty shillings of our present money, and in efficacy to fifteen pounds. The dimensions of a cask of mead must be nine palms in height, and so capacious as to serve the King _and one of his counsellors_ for a bathing tub.” By another law its diameter is fixed at eighteen palms. The Welsh had also two kinds of ale, called _common ale_ and _spiced ale_, and their value was thus ascertained by law—“If a farmer hath no mead (to pay part of his rent) he shall pay two casks of _spiced ale_, or four casks of _common ale_ for one cask of mead.” By the same law, a cask of _spiced ale_, nine palms in height and eighteen palms in diameter, was valued at a sum equal in efficacy to seven pounds ten shillings of our present money; and a cask of _common ale_, of the same dimensions, at a sum equal to three pounds fifteen shillings. This is a sufficient proof that even _common ale_ at this period was an article of luxury among the Welsh which could only be obtained by the great and opulent. Wine seems to have been quite unknown even to the Kings of Wales at this period, as it is not so much as once mentioned in their laws; though Giraldus Cambrensis, who flourished about a century after the Conquest, acquaints us that there was a vineyard in his time, at Maenarper, near Pembroke, in South Wales.