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THE
HISTORY OF TOASTING,
OR
DRINKING OF HEALTHS
IN ENGLAND.
BY THE REV.
RICHARD VALPY FRENCH,
D.C.L., F.S.A.,
Hector of Llanmartin and Wilcrick.
LONDON:
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE PUBLICATION DEPOT,
337, STBAND, W.C.
PKEFACE.
This little work is the substance of a paper
read at a
Conference held at the Shire Hall, Gloucester, October 11th,
1880. The chair was taken by Dr. Kayner Batten, and same
important comments were made upon the Paper by the Rev.
Prebendary Grier, and Samuel Bowly, Esq., President of the
National Temperance League. It is published in compliance
with a wish expressed upon the platform by Mr. Varley that
it might assume some permanent form.
Llanwiartin Rectory,
April 4th, 1881.
DEDICATED
TO MY FRIEND
Dr. B. W. RICHARDSON, F.R.S.,
OF WHOM I AM AN ARDENT ADMIRER,
AND TO WHOSE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES
I AM DEEPLY INDEBTED.
mam
M
CONTENTS.
Chapter I. Pre-historic ... ... ...
9
Chapter II. Toasting among the Greeks and
Romans ... ... ...
18
Chapter III. Toasting among the Saxons, Danes,
and Norfch-men ... ...
28
Chapter IV. Toasting from the Twelfth to the
Sixteenth Century ... ...
53
Chapter V. Toasting in the Seventeenth Century
64
Chapter VI. Toasting in the Eighteenth Century
80
Chapter VII. Toasting in the Nineteenth Century
86
Chapter VIII. Conclusion ... ... c..
97
CHAPTER I.
Pke-historic.
The present is an age. of severe criticism. Men,
customs, institutions, ceremonies, are submitted to
test; if they stand the crucible, well and good ; if not,
they are rejected. It is proposed in the present paper
to drag to trial a ceremony which can plead antiquity,
prevalence, and catholicity, viz., that of
health-drinking
or. toasting.
An extract from the report of an educational
dinner
may serve as a plea for investigating the history and
questioning the good sense of the national accompani-
ment of public feasts. " The cloth having been
withdrawn, after the usual loyal and national toasts,
6 The Royal Family ' was drunk; ' Her Majesty's
Ministers ' were drunk ; ' The Houses of Parliamentr
were drunk; < The Universities of Scotland' were
drunk;
' Popular Education in its extended senser
was drunk ; 'The Clergy of Scotland of all Denomi-
nations ' were drunk ; 'The Parish Schoolmasters'
were drunk; othei^ parties not named were drunk;
' The Fine Arts' were drunk; ' The Press' was
A
10
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
drunk; 'The Strangers' were drunk."
Such is the
description of the after-dinner arrangements. And
they are instructive, as you would expect every part of
an
educational dinner to be. Let us try, %then, to
derive the instruction they contain. And who can lay
better claim to impart it than an educationalist, one who
but the other day, occupied that honourable position,
a patient instructor of the youthful mind ? Duty
demands that they should have a spokesman to vindi-
cate their postprandial claims to historical antiquity.
It must have often happened, on the occasion of
some public banquet, when the host or president of
the entertainment, or, as at the dinners of the Lord
Mayor and the various city companies, an official
known as the toastmaster has gravely called upon the
guests to drink a glass of wine or bumper in honour
of some person or institution, that persons of an
inquiring turn of mind have asked themselves " What
is the origin, what is the meaning of this custom ?'r
It is more than doubtful if anyone can assign its
precise origin. Better is it frankly to avow at the
outset that materials are not forthcoming which might
unveil the secret who it was that proposed the first
health, what was the occasion thereof, and what were
the circumstances leading thereto. Evidence is forth-
coming that the practice obtained in ages of remote
antiquity—ages of which the history at one's disposal
is sparse and often mythical.
■ \
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
11
Were the subject to be treated exhaustively, it
would be necessary to enquire into the origin of
drink
itself, and one's thoughts would naturally turn to the
first historical vine-culture, the first wine-drinking,
the first drunkenness, the first curse, when, in the
words of the sacred narrative, " Noah began to be an
husbandman, and planted a vineyard, and drank of
the wine and was drunkon, and awoke from his wine
iind said
' Cursed be Canaan.'" But although the
patriarch Noah is the first
on record who planted a
vineyard, it is scarcely to be supposed tlifit the culture
of the vine was not practiced before his time. Milton
seems to have thought that that fruit contained at any
rate the potentiality of intoxication, when he wrote:—
* Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit,
1 That with exhilarating vapour bland
1
About their spirits had
play'd, and inmost powers
1 Made err, was now exhaled ;** And again :—
4 As with new wine intoxicated both
' They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
* Divinity within them.'
It is curious that the Chaldee paraphrases
support
the same idea; thus the Targum of Jonathan Ben
Uzziel gives the legend that Noah 'lighted upon a
vine which the flood had carried away out of the
* Milton's Paradise Lost, Lib. ix
12
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
Garden of Eden, that he planted it in a
vineyard, and
in that very day it blossomed, and its grapes ripened/
which he pressed out ; and he drank from the winer
and was drunk.'
The Rabbins were of the same belief.
Dr. Light*
foot maintains it in his Talmudical Exercitations on
fit. Luke. Oral tradition is in harmony. The natives-
in the Island of Madagascar believe that the four
rivers of paradise consisted of milk, honey, oil, and
wine; and that Adam having drunk of the wine, and
tasted of the fruits contrary to the command of God7
was driven from the garden.*
Dr. Kennicott, the celebrated Hebrew
Scholar of
the last century, translates Genesis ix. 20, 'Noah
continued
to be a husbandman/ as though this occu-
pation had simply been interrupted by the flood*
Indeed, what can be implied in our Lord's words,
'as the days of Nee
were, so shall also the coming
of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were
before the flood they were eating and drinking, marry*
ing and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe
entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood
came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming
of the Son of Man be/f but that indulgence in intoxi-
cating drink formed an item in that catalogue of guilt
for which the world was doomed to deluge ? If this
* Cited by More wood, 'Hist, of Ineb. Liq.' p.
3.
t Matt. xxir. 37-39.
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
1$
be so, how remarkable the coincidence that the
same
-sin was the first recorded instance of fall after that
infliction !
Lastly, a living Divine discussing the question
whether the properties of wine to produce the given
effect upon Noah were till then unknown, remarks :
4 An attentive perusal of the narrative is sufficient to
render that hypothesis at least very doubtful.'*
Procopius believed that the vine was known
before
Noah's time, but not the use of wine,
Father Frassen, writing from an entirely
different
point of view, contends that there is no likelihood that
men contented themselves with drinking water for
1500 years together. He argues that these first men
of the world were endued with no less share of wit
than their posterity, and consequently wanted no
industry to invent everything that might contribute to
make them pass their lives agreeably. Noah there-
fore, according to this writer, was not the inventor of
the grape ; he merely planted new vines. With this
view compare that of Becman (Annal. Hist.)
So much for authority. What does common sense
iseem to suggest? In the first place the process of
obtaining wine from the grape is simple and obvious,
In the next place the sweetness and succulency of the
juice must have suggested the desire to separate the
* Dean Close ' The Book of Genesis,' Serin, ix.
14
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
juice from the fruit and use it as a
drink. The juice
when separated spontaneously ferments.* The re*
markable appearance of the fermentation would
stimulate curiosity to insure the development of the
process. Added to this, the smell and taste would
have become vinous. It would be essayed, and the
effects of it would be so enlivening that the process*
producing such influences would be repeated. It
would seem, therefore, highly probable that from the
very earliest times vines were planted and wine manu-
factured.
It would be deeply interesting to trace
the history
of drinks and drinking, in their march into Western
Europe from their cradle the East. There is generally
a basis of truth underlying the absurdities of myth-
ology. Osiris may not have been son of Ham, the
son of Noah; but the myth points to the struggle of
history to connect the vineyards of Egypt with the
vineyard-planting of the Patriarch. The same remark
will apply if, as others have it, Mizraim the grandson
of Noah were but the counsellor and friend of Osiris.
Upon this Osiris (identified with Bacchus) Diodorus
Siculus would father Egyptian vine-culture. 'He taught
the Egyptians the management and use of the vine,
* Although not immediately, except -when
subjected to excessive
temperature. See some admirable remarks on this subject in a
pamphlet by Dr. Norman Kerr, entitled '* Unfermented Wine A
Fact."
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING*.
15
as also of wine apples, and other
fruit.'* Again, in
his first book, he says that Osiris taught the people to
make a drink from barley, not much exceeded by wine
in smell and taste.
Customs immigrated together with
peoples. The
Greeks and Eomans learnt from the Easterns the
culture of the vine. The Britons learnt it from the
Komans. And there is a strong presumption that
toasting or the drinking of healths is of much older
date than the Saxon origin usually ascribed to the
custom. Its origin
as far as we are concerned, is
Roman.
The absolute origin of toasting
is unknown. It is
however most natural to suppose that when the off-
spring of Noah dispersed and carried with them the
art of cultivating the vine and of wine-making, it
often happened that some parched and weary wayfareif
would receive a draught of wiue with gratitude, and
would express his thankfulness to the bestower in the
most complimentary terms at his disposal. In the
dry burning countries of the East, drink would often
be more acceptable than food, and much more scarce.
"Water in such regions is not only not abundant, but
often not to be obtained. Wine would in such cases
be of the utmost value. Moreover, the agony of thirst
is instantly relieved by the act of drinking, whereas
* Died. Sic. Lib. in.
16
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
the pangs of hunger are not dissipated with the
first
mouthful of food. Drinking would thus come to be
considered the most important preservative of exist-
ence, and every occasion thereof would be calculated
to excite in the drinker an expression of grateful
thanks. Whoever provided the draught would invari-
ably be looked upon as a benefactor. Instinctively,"
almost, the drinker would look about for some fellow-
being to whom he might express in words the kindly
emotions that filled his breast ; and thus, it appears
not unreasonable to surmise, arose the custom of
paying compliments in connection with the act of
drinking. How this practice developed into the cus-
tom of honouring absent friends, esteemed heroes, and
finally gods,* or anything thought worthy of veneration,-
it is not difficult to imagine. Hence we can understand
how, after a time, drink-offerings came to be considered
as peculiarly appropriate in the religious rites and
observances of primeval races.
This theory is ventured, because other writers
who
have traced the habit of health-drinking to sacrificial
usage and Pagan origin, have been content to know
that at a very early period of the world's history,
* Doran remarks that when the Greeks gave great
entertainments,
and got tipsy thereat, it was for pious reasons. They drank deeply
in honour of some god. They not only drank deeply, but progress-
ively so ; their last cup at parting was the largest, and it went by
the terrible name of the cup of necessity. There was a headache of
twenty-anguish power at the bottom of it.—Tabic Traits,
p. 515.
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
17
drink was an important factor in
various religious rites.
Though we do not find in the Bible any direct
allusions to one person
drinking to the health of or in
honour of another, there are passages which lead us
to conclude that the practice was not entirely unknown.
It is hardly probable that Ben-hadad and the thirty-
two kings, his companions, would drink themselves
drunk in the pavilions without some interchange of
courtesies (1 Kings xx. 16). And when Belshazzar
and his fellow-revellers feasted, the Bible narrative
almost inclines us to believe that the king on that
occasion filled precisely the same office as that known
amongst the Greeks as
symposiarch, and amongst the
Romans as arbiter bibendi—he
first tasted the wine,
then ordered what vessels they were to drink from,
and then " they drank wine and praised the gods."
(Dan. v. 2-4.) Again, the mention of those that
" drank wine in bowls " (Amos vi. 6.) has probably
some reference to a special form of ceremonious
drinking. It would be interesting, too, did space
permit, to inquire into the whole subject of drink-
offerings (Gen. xxxv. 14) which were made, not only
to the Almighty, but also to false gods (Jer. vii. 18)
and to ascertain, if possible, how they were connected*
with the custom of honouring or complimenting living
princes, heroes, and friends.
CHAPTER II.
Toasting among the Geeeks and Romans.
With the foregoing remarks as to the
possible origin
of health-drinking, we pass on to a time of which we
possess somewhat more reliable and detailed informa-
tion. Whether the old and original ancient Briton of
Celtic origin, who, before Cassar landed in this country,
passed a somewhat miserable sort of life, some of them
burying themselves up to the neck in the earth when
it was cold weather, living on herbs, roots, and nuts ;
whether they ever quaffed a born of beer, which, we
are told, they knew how to brew from barley, to the
health of their wives, or toasted the woad-staiued
maid of their affections in a bumper of the same
liquor, we are not prepared to state. But at any rate
we know that in the year 55 B.C., when Cassar invaded
Britain, the inhabitants, who transmitted to writing
no accounts whatever of the doings of their heroes or
kings, keeping but the sparsest record of public or
private accounts, grew some corn, the chief of which
was barley, of which they made their drink, Cuno-
belin, King of Britain in the time of Augustus (b.c. 23)
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
1£
coined money stamped with his portrait,
and in other
respects followed the manners and customs of the
Komans, amongst which it is reasonable to suppose
he would imitate their banquetings and entertainments.
It will therefore be interesting to glance at the drink-
ing ceremonies and usages of that nation, borrowed,
as they were, in the main from the Greeks, to whom
the custom had been handed down from remote ages,
as can be proved from Homer.
But before enquiring into the drinking
habits of the
Romans, those of the Greeks demand some notice.
For the benefit of those who desire full information on
this subject it may be mentioned that a work of the
Egyptian Grammarian Athenseus, entitled " The Deip-
nosophists, or, The Table Talk of the Sophists," is
full of information.
Homer is our principle reliable
authority for the
early manners of the Greeks. He represents the
banquets of his time as simple and unpretending.
Many species of wine were in vogue; some of great
strength, notably the Maronean wine, which would
bear being reduced by water to one-twentieth its
strength.
The guests drank one another's
health, thus Ulysses
pledged Achilles in the words
<sx<«/>\ 'AxiXtv."*
In later times the first meal in the
day derived its
* Homer. II. I' 225.
-20
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
name from the drink which formed a part
of it. The
unmixed wine {dKparos) gave the name to the breakfast,
rvncparicrfJia.
It appears that the Greeks did not
drink wine at
dinner till the first course was finished, often not till
the meal was concluded. Herein they differed from
the Romans. When the wine was brought on, the
first ceremony was—pouring out a libation to the
■" good spirit" After that
mixed had been substituted
for unmixed wine, the guests at once drank the health
of " Jupiter Preserver."
The drinking proper began after the
meal. It was
ihen that (as Plato expresses it) they " turned to the
drinking."
Drinking bouts were great
features with the Greeks,
answering pretty much to the comissatio or
convivium
of the Romans. The drinking at these symposia was
under the regulation of a master of the revels, termed
a
" Symposiarch." He directed the order and quantity
of the drinking. The
drinking of healths formed an
important feature. They drank to the health of one
another, each one being specially careful to
pledge the
person to whom he passed the cup.*
It should have been observed that after
the first
dinner course, the guests having washed their hands
* For more particulars under this head, see
Plat. Symp. IV. Diod.
Sic. IV. Xen. Sijnip. II. Lucian Gall. XII. Athen. XI. Smith,
J)ic, Antiq. Becker's CharicUs^ and Becker's Gallus.
THE HIST0KY OF TOASTING.
21!
passed round a large goblet of
undiluted wine, of which
each person poured out on the ground a few dropsr
and then drank a little, during which time the paean
was usually sung. This looks like the
grace-cup of
later days, and the loving-cup of our own time which
still passes round at some of the City Companies'
feasts. A loving-cup on a magnificent scale was that
which Alexander the Great is reported to have pro-
vided after arranging the difficulties betwreen the
Persians and the Macedonians, when nine thousand
men drank from the same bowl to the honour of
Jupiter, and in token of friendship.
That the custom of health-drinking had
been
handed down to the Greeks from very remote ages is
clear from passages in Homer unmistakably referring
to it.*
Among the Komans luxury was carried to
an un-
bounded extent, and drinking was more indulged in
by them than by the Greeks. Not only was the wine
and water introduced at an early period of the dinner,
which meal was often prolonged for many hours in
order that drinking might be kept up, but
comissa-
tiones, or drinking bouts pure and simple, at which
the only object was the consumption of wine, and
which were often only concluded at a very late hour
of the night, were frequently organised. At these
* Horn. II. IV. 4, IX. 225.
22
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
drinking bouts no food was taken, save
as a relish to
the wine. Mention of healths drunk by the Eomans
occurs in many writers, and that this custom ,was
derived from the Greeks there is good reason to suppose
from Cicero's speaking of drinking
Grceco More (Verr.
i. 26), and again, " Grseci enim in conviviis solent
nominare cui poculum tradituri sunt " (Tusc. i. 40).
The following are specimens of Eoman
forms of
toasts :—
"Pro te fortissime vota,
Publica suscipimus : Bacchi tibi sumimus haustns."
And in Plautus we read: "
Bene
vos, bene vos, bene
te, bene me, bene nostram etiam Stephanium."
The Senate decreed that men should
drink to the
health of Augustus in their entertainments, audi Fabius
Maximus ordered that no man should eat or drink
before he had prayed for him and drank his health.
A later writer, Sigismundus, records that it was a
custom of the ancient Muscovites and Kussians to
drink
pro sanitate C<zsaris> and of others in high posts,
so that none dare refuse to drain the cup, no matter
how intoxicated they might become in so doing.
Apart from State and patriotic toasts,
the Eoman
gallants commonly pledged their mistresses in their
cups (Martial, Lib. i. Ep. 72). The survival of this
custom to the seventeenth century is clear from a pas-
sage in " Le nebuchement de 1'Ivrogne," by Guillaume
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
Colletot, printed in Paris, 1627, in which one
of the
characters drinking to the health of Clovis, his mis-
tress, exclaims—
44 Six-fois m'en vas boire au bon nom
de Clovis,
Clovis, le seul desir de ma chaste pensee."
In Rousaud's
" Bacchanales" the same
custom is
referred to, when a gallant drinks nine times to his
mistress Cassandra :—
44 Neuf fois, au nom de Cassandre
Je vois prendre,
Neuf fois du vin da flacon ;
Afin neuf fois le boire
Ejl memoire
Des neuf lettres de son nom."
The custom of drinking " three times three " was
apparently in the time of Horace a mark of honour to
the Graces and Muses:—
44 Tribus aut novem
44 Miscentur cyathis pocula commodis
Qui Musas amat impares,
Ternos ter cyathos attonitus petet
Vates."
—Lib. Ill, Carm. XIX.
24
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
. Another of his remarkable allusions is to be
found
in lib. i. Carm. xxvii. :—
" Voltis severi me quoque sumere
Partem Falerni ? Dicat Opuntise
Frater Megillae quo beatus
Volnere, qua pereat sagitta,
Cessat voluntas ? Non alia bibam
Mercede."
But this was no new mode of doing homage to the
fair sex. Two hundred years before, Theocritus of
Syracuse had told how a lover mingled his love in his
liquor;* and elsewhere he describes a banquet where,
as they grew warm with wine, each man filled his cup
and named whom he pleased, though compelled to
drink to someone.
Athenams describes minutely the drinking vessels
of the Komans. Amongst these were the
Asaminthus,
or vessel in form of a seat. Calices of many species.
The
Cyathus (of which we read that in drinking to a
mistress the Romans took as many
cyathi as there
were letters in her name). The Gaulus,
or round
drinking vessel. The Olmos, a drinking vase of ox-
horn shape. The
Ehytium or Rhyton, the original
form of which was also the horn of an ox, the lower
end of which was afterwards ornamented with grotesque
* Thcocr. Idyll II. 151.
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
25
heads. Dr. Smith mentions that
specimens of these
have been discovered at Pompeii.* The Triens, a
measure of four cyathi, called also
Triental\ The
number and variety of these vessels is an evidence of
the general consumption of wine at the period. They
were made of all sorts of materials, of pottery, glass
or copal resin, wood, crystal, horn, silver, bronze, and
other substances. They were of all sizes from the
Cyathus the unit measure to the huge elephant-vase.
" 'Tis a mighty cup,
Pregnant "with double springs of rosy
wine,
And able to contain three ample
measures,
, The work of Alcon. When I was at
Cypseli,
Adaeus pledged me in this
self-same cup."|
Thus much for toasting amongst the
Eomans, the
only civilised nation who visited England up to the
fifth century, except the Carthaginians and Phoeni-
cians, who simply came over for trade purposes, and
do not seem in any way to have influenced the manners
of the inhabitants. If these customs, or some of
them, had not been adopted by the British before
Agricola's time, it is quite certain that when that
most diplomatic of governors held sway here, he would
teach
thejeunesse doree and coming men of his time
* Museo Borbonico. Vol. VIII. 14. v. 20. f
Persius. Sat. III. 100
X AthenseuF, p. 747. Samuelson, Hist, of Drinlr, p. 9?,
B
26
THE HIST0BY OF TOASTING.
to drink healths to the Emperor, and to
toast the
reigning British belles in brimming bumpers. He
assisted them to build temples, forums, and houses
such as they had never before seen, and by his adroit
flattery he persuaded them to study letters. The
Roman dress, language, and literature spread amongst
the natives, and of course with Roman civilisation,
Roman luxury was introduced. Spacious baths, ele-
gant villas, and sensual banquets, with their attendant
revelry and intoxication, speedily became as palatable
to the new subjects as to their corrupt masters. And,
though we have no instances recorded, there can be
no reasonable doubt that the cups of mead and wine
and the horns of barley beer circulated freely, and
were drunk by the hilarious Britons in honour of and
pro sanitate of everybody and everything.
It seems, then, clear that
health-drinking in England
finds its origin in Roman rather than Saxon influence,
There are those who imagine that it is of Scandinavian
origin, an opinion which they have formed from the
writing of Snorro Sturleson, who says it was customary
to drink the health of Christ, St. Michael, and other
Saints, in the place of Odin, Niord and Frey, the early
objects of their national idolatry.* Mr. Morewood
refers this Scandinavian -practice to the Greeks, by
whom three cups were always taken at their meals ;
* Henderson's
Iceland, II. 67.
THK HISTOBY OF TOASTING.
27
the first dedicated to Mercury, the
second to the
Oraces, and the third to Jupiter, They also drank
healths to all their tutelary deities; to Mercury on
going to bed, in order to have pleasant dreams ; to
Jupiter, as their great preserver, and to other gods for
similar reasons.* The form of toast of the old North-
men is given by Christ, de Scala.t
" Let us drink
ihis cup in the name of the holy Archangel Michael,
begging and praying him to introduce our souls into
the peace of eternal exaltation."
* Morewood,
Hist. Ineb. Zig. t life
of & Wenceslaus.
CHAPTER III
TOASTING AMONG THE SAXONS, DANES AND NORTH-MEN.
Quaint old Geoffrey of Monmouth, whom
Strutt calk
"that arch-dreamer," records in his Chronicle a
memorable health. After Hengist and Horsa had
been invited by the British King Vortigern to assist
him in repelling the raids of the Picts and Scots,
these brothers set up a considerable establishment,
and invited Vortigern to inspect their new buildings
and new soldiers. A banquet followed, at the conclu-
sion of which
a a young lady came out of her chamber
bearing a golden cup full of wine, with which she
approached the King, and making a low courtesy,
said to him, <
Laverd King, Wacht heiV The king
was attracted with her beauty; and calling to his
interpreter, asked him what she said, and what answer
he should make her. * She called you Royal Lord,
said the interpreter, ' and offered to drink your health;
and your answer to her must be "
Drinc heil" ' Vor-
tigern accordingly said " Drinc>heil"
kissed the lady,
who was the most accomplished beauty of the age, and
then drank himself. After this, the monarch made
Tiolent love to the girl, and becoming intoxicated with
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
29
the variety of the drinks, bargained with
Hengist for
the lady, for whom he agreed to give the province of
Kent; they were married that very night, but we are
not told whether the king got sober, though Geoffrey
says that he became exceedingly delighted with his
wife, and that from that time it became the custom
in Britain that he who drank to anyone said, "
Wacht
heil" and he who pledged him answered, "Drincheil"
Some writers have concluded from this account that
Kowena introduced the custom of health-drinking into
England ; but there is nothing whatever to warrant
such a conclusion—though possibly the expression
Wacht keil (or was hell), and Drinc heil may have
become more popular through their use on that
occasion. The British King Vortigern asked his
interpreter the meaning of the Saxon words, for he
was probably only acquainted with the Keltic language;
gallantry would supply his reason for asking what
reply he should make, desiring as he did to win the
girl's favour by answering in her own tongue.
In illustration of the words
Drinc-heil
was-heil, may
be cited the last stanza of the earliest existing carol
known, a carol found on a blank leaf in MS. Bibl.
Keg. 16, E. V1IL, in the British Museum, probably in
use among those professional minstrels who wandered
from castle to castle of the Norman nobility.
" Lords, by Christmas and the host
Of this mansion, hear my toast—
so
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
" Drink it well-
Each must drain his cup of wine,
And I the first will toss off mine:
Thus I advise,
Here then I hid you all Wassail,
Cursed he he who will not say Drink hail."
This rendering is by the Author of
Christmas with
the poets.
Much has been written on the subject of
Wassailing*
The derivation of the term is disputed. More wood
considers it to be compounded of
Waes wishing, and
Mel health. Dr. Brewer derives it from
Wees heel
water (of) health ; as was given by JBoag in the
Imperial Lexicon. Richardson derives it from Wees-
hale
or hal wees, salvus sis, mayst thou be in healths
Dr. Ogilvie suggests Sax,
wcese, perf, subj, second sing.
of wesan to be, and
hcelu, whole, " would thou wert
whole."
Just as the origin of toasting was put
down to the
Saxon, so was that of wassailing. This is a mistake
likewise. The custom is much older. It is mentioned
in Plautus, a Roman writer of the third century B.C.,
and existed among the Britons.* The
Wassail bowl
was an important accessory to Christmas, the New
Year, and twelfth day, in old times. On New Year's
Eve especially, young women went from house to
* Selden,
Not. on Drayt. Pokolb. IX.
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
81
house in their several parishes
carrying the Wassail
Bowl, (called also lamb's wool), made of ale, nutmeg,
sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples. At each
house they sang couplets of homely verses, presented
the drink to the inmate3 whom they favoured, and
expected a gratuity in return. Selden alludes to this
custom:— " The Pope, in sending reliques to Princes,
does as wenches do by their
wassails at New Year's
tide ; they present you with a cup, and you must
drink of a slabby stuff; but the meaning is, you must
give them monies ten times more than it is worth."*
It was the custom, too, for the head of the house to
gather the family around a bowl of spiced ale, from
which he
drank their healths. Then he passed it round*
saying wass kaeL
In the Antiquarian Repertory! is a
woodcut of a
large oak beam which once supported a chimney-piece,
on which is carved a large bowl with the inscription—
wass heil. In this spicy bowl, (which, the writer takes
occasion to note, testifies the goodness of their hearts)
they drowned every former animosity; an example, he
thinks, worthy of imitation. The custom was kept up
throughout the middle ages, both in the monasteries
and in private houses. In front of the Abbot wa3 set
the huge cup called
Poculum Caritatis; from it he
drank to everybody, and all drank to each other. In
*
TahU Talk, Art. Pope.
t Vol. I, p. 218,
82
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
a collection of ordinances for the regulation of
the
royal household, in the reign of Henry VII., on
Twelfth Night, the steward was told when he entered
with the spiced and smoking drink, to cry "Wassail"
three times, to which the Royal Chaplain had to
answer with a song. Till a very few years ago in
Scotland, the custom of the wassail bowl at the end
of the old year wras kept up. Towards midnight, was
got ready a flagon of warm spiced and sweetened ale,
with a trifle of spirit. As old year glided into new,
each member of the family drank from this flagon " «*
good health and a happy new year, and many of them "
to all the rest, with the addition of a song to the tune
of Hey tuttie taitie :
" Weel may we a' be,
111 may we never see,
Here's to the king
And the gude companie !"#
Warton says that the " Gossip's Bowl" in the
Midsummer JSigMs Dream is the same as the
wassail.
The following are examples of Wassailing songs:—.
" Wassail! Wassail! over the town,
Our toast it is white, our ale it is brown :
Our bowl it is made of the mapliu tree,
Wo be good fellowrs all; I drink to thee."
* Chambers'
Booh of Days. Cf. Strutt's
Sports and Pastimes, B. IV.
e. 3. Brand, Popul. Antiq, Append.
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
88
u Here's to---------and his
right ear,
God send our maister a Happy New Year;
A Happy New Year as e'er he did see—
With my wassailing howl I drink to thee."
4i Here's to---------and to
his right eye,
God send our mistress a good Christmas pie:
A good Christmas pie as e'er I did see—
With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee."
The following is from Ritson's Ancient
Songs—
' " Jolly Wassail Bowl,
A wassail of good ale,
Well fare the butler's soul,
That setteth this to sale—
Our jolly wassail."
" Good dame, here at your door
Our wassail we begin,
We are all maidens poor,
We now pray let us in,
With our wassail," &c, &c.
One of the earliest wassail songs is
that introduced
by Dissimulation, disguised as a religious person, in
Bale's old play of Kynge Johan, about the middle of
the sixteenth century. He brings in the cup by which
the King is poisoned, stating that it " passith malme-
54
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
saye, capryck, tyre, or ypocras," and
then sings—
11 Wassayle, wassayle out of the
mylke payle,
Wassayle, wassayle as white as my nayle,
Wassayle, wassayle in snowe, froste, and hayle,
Wassayle, wassayle with partriche and rayle,
Wassayle, wassayle that much doth avayle,
Wassayle, wassayle that never wylle fayle."
In Caxton's Chronicle the account of
the death of
King John represents the cup to have been filled with
good ale; and the monk bearing it, knelt down, say-
ing, " Syr, wassayll for euer the dayes so all lyf dronke
ye of so good a cuppe."
In the reign of Charles I. the wassail
bowl was still
in fashion. A few years after, all was changed. John
Taylor, the water poet, complains, " All the harmless
sports, the merry gambols, dances, and friscols .. . are
now extinct and put out of use .. . madness hath
extended itself to the very vegetables ; the senseless
trees, herbs, and weeds are in a profane estimation
amongst them—holly, ivy, mistletoe, rosemary, bays,
are accounted ungodly branches of superstition for your
entertainment. And to roast a sirloin of beef, to
touch a collar of brawn, to take a pie, to put a plum
in the pottage pot, to burn a grep,t candle, or to lay
one block more in the fire for your sake, Master
Christmas, is enough to make a man be suspected and
taken for a Christian, for which he shall be appre^
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
$$
hended for committing high Parliament
Treason."
Wassailing fruit trees on the eve of the Twelfth-
day was a curious custom. The Devonshire farmers
used to proceed to their orchards in the eveningr
together with their farm servants, and carry with them
a large pail full of cider, and roasted apples hissing
therein. They then encircled the most fruitful tree
and drank the following
toast three times. The rest
of the contents were then thrown against the other
trees, as a pledge of a fruitful year.
" Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou may'st bud, and thou may'st blow !
And whence thou may'st bear apples enow !
Hats full! caps fall!
Bushel—bushel—sacks full!
And my pockets full too ! Huzza !"
The Christmas Poems of Robert Herrick
form a
series of themselves. Some are devoted to the Wassail.
One, entitled
6i The Wassail Bowl," addressed to his
friend John Wickes, is noticeable in this connection ;
in which occur the lines :—
" We still sit up,
Sphering about the Wassail cup
To all those times
Which gave me honour for my rhymes."*
* Robert Herrick was born in London, 1591,
graduated at Cam-;
bridge, after which, he spent aome years in London, counting among
36
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
Mr. Blackwell states that before the
introduction of
Christianity the Scandinavians used to meet in select
parties for the purpose of feasting and drinking—used,
in fact, to have regular
drinking bouts, at which he
who drank the deepest or emptied the largest horn at
a single draught was regarded as the hero of the fes-
tival. They were too fond of their ale and mead to
abandon this custom when they became Christians ;
but, as drinking gave rise to quarrels which generally
ended in bloodshed, these private meetings were?
through the influence of the clergy, gradually changed
into public confraternities or guilds, the members of
which, or guild-brethren, as they were called,
pledged
themselves to keep the peace and check intemperance.
The guilds established by the Norwegian King Olaf,
Olaf the Quiet, appear to have been of this descrip-
tion—convivial clubs, in fact, at which " some hilarious
bishop or high dignity of the Church could preside at
his friends Ben Jonson, Selden, Lawes and other
celebrities. In the
year 1629, he was presented to the living of Dean Priors, in Devon-
shire. There he remained for nearly twenty'years, till ejected from
his living on account of his Royalist opinions. On leaving his parish,
deeply regretted by his parishioners who called him their " ancient
and famous poet," he returned to London. His old friends had died.
He soon made new ones; among these were Robert Cotton and Sir
John Denham. At the restoration of Charles II. he was again
admitted to his living, and died Oct, 15, 1674, at the age of eighty-
three. A monument was erected some few years back in Dean
Prior's Church to his memory, by a descendant of the family, the
late and deeply revered William Perry-Herrick, Esq., of Beaumanor
Park, Leicestershire.
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
87
the social board, and empty his cup in
honour of the
patron saint of the guild, without in any way infring-
ing the decorum of his sacred office." In the latter
half of the twelfth century these guilds had become
powerful and influential corporate bodies, and the
guild brethren
pledged each other at their convivial
gatherings to afford mutual aid and protection,especially
in judicial affairs. Blackwell thinks that the various
Worshipful Companies of the City of London are
lineal descendants from the old
drinking bouts of the
Scandinavians ; and certainly the immemorial custom
of the loving-cup, still observed at the City dinners,
lends weight to this opinion.
One point of resemblance between the
Northern and
Scandinavian and the Greek and Roman mythologies
is specially worthy of being pointed out,
i.e., the idea
of a future state of bliss being associated with constant
drinking of huge draughts of mead or wine, and much
intoxication. Thus in the Prose Edda we find Gangler
enquiring of Har what the heroes in Valhalla have to
drink, " or do they only drink water ■?" to which Har
replies, "A very silly question is that, dost thou
imagine that Alfadir would invite Kings and Earls
and other mighty men, and give them to drink nothing
but water ? By my troth, they who had endured great
hardships, and suffered pain and wounds even unto
death, in order to gain Valhalla, would think they had
paid too great a price if they only got water-drink.
;S8
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
But listen: From the she-goat Laerath,
flows mead in
such abundance that every day she fills a stoop which
is so large that all the champions are fall drunken
out of it" And when Gangler asks what are the
amusements of the heroes who have joined Valhalla,
he is told, " Every day as soon as they have dressed
themselves, they ride out into the field, and there fight
till they cut each other in pieces. This is their pas-
time, but when meal-tide approaches,
* From the fray they then ride,
And drink ale with the CEsir.'"
And in the Voluspa of Scemund we read
that in
Okulni stands a palace called Brimir, " the ale-cellars
of the Jotun;" and again in the Edda of Snorre, how
Thor, in the land of the giants, essayed to empty at
one draught the mighty drinking horn which was kept
at the Court of Utgard-Loki, and which anyone who
wished to regain favour after offence was obliged to
drink from. These instances will be sufficient to show
that the old Scandinavians held drinking in as high
esteem, as honourable, and as essential to a state of
future bliss as did the ancient Greeks.
After the Scandinavian sacrifices,
Snorre alleges
that the ancient Northerners used to hold solemn
feasts, when they drank a cup in honour of Alfadir,
known as
OdirCs cup, in order that they might be
victorious in battles, and that the annals of the reign
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
89
might be glorious ; after this they
quaffed cups of ale
or mead to Njord and Frey for a plentiful season"; and
amongst others the cup of the god of poetry and elo-
quence was not forgotten. They also drank to their
heroes, and to such of their comrades as had fallen in
battle, and thus earned a title to live in Valhalla.
The Scandinavians were so addicted to these customs
that the early Christian Missionaries were utterly
unable to abolish them, and so for many centuries the
custom of drinking healths to the Almighty and the
angelic host, was maintained and observed in the
North of Europe.
From Tacitus we learn that the ancient
Germans
passed their time, when not fighting, in feasting and
sleeping, and that the most usual way for a chief to
collect and keep round him a large following of re-
tainers, was by giving magnificent entertainments. It
was at their banquets that the Germans consulted
together on the most important occasions, such as the
election of their princes, making war, and concluding
peace. Mallet says that the ordinary liquors drunk
at these bouts were beer and mead, or when they could
get it, wine, which they drank out of earthen or
wooden pitchers, or from the horns of wild bulls. The
principal person at the table, taking a cup of wine and
rising in his place, saluted by name either the person
next to him, or the one next to him in rank, and then
drank the draught. Having caused the cup to be
40
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
re-filled, he handed it to the one whom
he had saluted';
this person then had to drink off the cup.* This
description differs hafdly at all from the practice
adopted to this day at many social and convivial
meetings. Mallet says that it was at these ancient
feasts that those associations were formed of which
the chief tie was a solemn obligation entered into by
each person to defend and protect his companions at
all risks, and to avenge their deaths at the hazard of
their own lives. This oath was taken and
renewed at
their festivals.
From the romance of "Beowulf," a Saxon
poem of
about the middle of the fifth century, supposed to be
a description of events occurring in the Saxon's own
country, but which, from internal evidence, shows the
writer to have been acquainted with Roman architec-
ture, we learn how " it came to the mind of Hrothgar
to build a great mead hall, which was to be the chief
palace." The Queen Wealtheow entered, and served
out wine, first offering the cup to her Lord and Master,
and afterwards to the guests, of whom one was called
Beowulf, This Beowulf had come to free Hrothgar'a
kingdom from a fearful dragon-monster, which the
day after the banquet he succeeded in slaying. To
celebrate this event another entertainment followed
and after dinner a minstrel "again took the harp, the
* Northern Antiquities.
THE HISTOBY OP TOASTING.
41
lay was sung ' the song of the
gleemen,' the joke arose
again, the noise from the benches grew loud," cup-
bearers poured wine from wondrous vessels, and the
queen, under a golden crown, again served the cup to
Hrothgar and the hero Beowulf.
The Saxons were great people for
drinking-vessels.
That they were in the habit of drinking to the health
and memory of the living and dead there is abundant
evidence. Witlaf, King of Mercia, gave the drinking
horn of his table to the Abbey of Orowland, that the
elder monks might drink from it on festivals, and in
their benedictions remember sometimes the soul of the
donor. The Lady Ethelgiva bequeathed two silver
cups to Ramsey Abbey for the use of the brethren in
the refectory, in order that while drink was served in
them her memory might be more firmly imprinted on
their hearts.* Nor can there be any doubt of the use
to which these cups were put by the monks. S. Boni-
face writes to Archbishop Cuthbert in the eighth
century as follows : " In your dioceses certain Bishops
not only do not hinder drunkenness, but they them-
selves indulge in excess of drink, and force others to
drink till they are intoxicated. This is most certainly
a great crime for a servant of God to do or to have
done, since the ancient canons decree that a bishop or
a priest given to drink should either resiga or be
* Fosbrooke,
British Monachitm.
C
42
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
deposed."* S. Gildas decreed that if a
monk through
drinking got thick of speech, so that he could not join
in the Psalmody, he was to be deprived of his supper,
It must not, however, he forgotten that many of the
inmates of the monasteries were laymen. In Strutt's
" Manners and Customs of the English " there are
some interesting plates from old manuscripts illus-
trating Saxon drinking parties. One represents a
group in which the central figure is addressing a
friend on his left, apparently toasting him.
The account generally given of the old
manner of
pledging is this : The person who was going to drink
asked any one of the company that sat next to him
whether he would pledge him, on which, the person
addressed answering that he would, held up his knife
or sword to guard the drinker, for while a man is
drinking, he necessarily is in an unguarded position,
exposed to the treacherous stroke of any sudden or
secret enemy. The idea is founded upon the position
of the parties in the before-mentioned illustration, and
upon the comments of historians on the murder of
King Edward, saint in the calendar of the Church of
England, who, while drinking on horseback at the gate
of Corfe Castle, was stabbed in the back by order of
* Discipline of Drink, p. 77. Sanvuelson,
History of Drink, p. 119.
This author also mentions that in the 9th century the Council of Aix
ordered the abbots to dine in the common refectory with the monks,
to put bounds upon theirjndulgence, ib. p. 132.
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
43
Ills stepmother Elfrida, of notorious
depravity. Feel-
ing the assassin's steel, Edward put spurs to his horse,
but fell exhausted after going a little way, and expired
in a neighbouring marsh. It is stated that the
treachery of this crime created a general distrust and
dread throughout the land. No one would drink
without security from the person beside him that he
was safe while in the act of drinking; hence, it is said,
arose the customary expression at table or in com-
pany,-—"I pledge you " when one person invites
another to drink first.*
On such slight evidence, however, we
cannot accept
this as the origin of the custom, though, perhaps it
may have had something to do with, stimulating the
Saxons to keep up the guilds or jnutuaL protection
and benefit societies, records of some of which, held
at Exeter, Cambridge, Dover, Canterbury, ancTLondon,
are still existing.
It is rather to the drinking bouts of
the old Saxons,
resulting, as we have shown, in the establishment of
gilds, or guilds, which were common in Germany and
elsewhere in North Europe long before the assassina*-
tion of Edward, that we must trace the (maintenance
* Brand,
Pop, Antig. gives another
explanation; He says^ "others
affirm the true sense of the word to be this: That if the person drank
unto, was not disposed to drink himself, he would put another for a
pledge to do it for him, otherwise the party who began would take>
it ill."
44
THE HISTOBY OF TOASTING.
of the practice of pledging in drink :
for it is quite
evident that the English guilds (or gilds) were derived
from those of the Continent, and were continued by
the Saxons after their settlement in this country for
similar purposes to those which originally called them
into existence. Indeed, that there was great need for
some sort of mutual protection (if we may take Dr„
Henry's account of the overbearing demeanour of the-
Danes at this time to be accurate) is evident, when we*
read that if an Englishman presumed to drink in the*
presence of a Dane without the latter's express per-
mission, it was esteemed so great a mark of disrespect
that nothing but instant death could expiate it. "Nay,
the English were so intimidated that they would not
adventure to drink, even when they were so invited,
until the Danes had pledged their honour for their
safety, which introduced the custom of pledging one
another." That the Danes were not only cruel, but
treacherous also, we gather from the curious collection
of ancient Danish ballads translated by R. 0. Prior.
In one very old one, a husband, after treacherously
murdering his wife's twelve brothers during their
sieep, and whilst they were his guests, fills a cup with
their blood, which he brings to his wife that she
might pledge him in it. Many years after, the wife,
in retaliation, whilst her husband's relations are visit-
ing him, steals out of bed at dead of night, murders
them all, fills a cup with their gore, refr.rns to her
THE HISTOEY OF TOASTING.
45
husband's chamber, and while he still sleeps
securely,
ties him hand and foot. She then wakes him, and,
alter mockingly asking him to pledge her in the cup
of blood, despatches him. At that moment their baby
in its cradle wakes up and cries out, so the mother,
fearing lest in after life her son should avenge his
father's murder, makes matters safe by quietly dashing
its brains out.
In another ballad from the same collection, we
learn
how one of the ancient kings of Denmark, dancing at
a wake with a fair peasant girl, requested her to sing
to him, which she did in tones so clear and thrilling
that she woke the Queen Sophie, who had retired to
bed. Her Koyal Highness's curiosity being aroused,
she got up, put on her purple mantle, and went out to
see what sort of girl the songstress might be. On
seeing her husband dancing with the peasant girl, the
queen's jealousy was excited, and she thought it " a
monstrous thing, that Signelille " (the peasant girl)
should " dance with Denmark's king." So she in-
structed one of her attendants to bring her "the
richly-moulded horn" filled with wine, ordering an
Edder-corn (poison) to be first dropped in. Then,
when the king asked his royal consort if she would
not dance with him, Queen Sophie replied—
" Before a place in the dance I fill,
Must drink to my health fair Signelille."
46
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
Signelille accordingly took the horn,
and though she
14 Drank but a sip to quench
her thirst,
Her guileless heart in her bosom burst."
The custom of the northern people to
drink mead
out of the skull of a fallen enemy is proved by
chronicles to have been in use up to the eleventh
century; and the root-word
skoll may be still traced
to this day in the Highland Scotch
skiel (a tub), and
in the Orkneys, where the same word means a flagon.
When Albin slew Cuminum, he
u carried away his
head, and converted it into a drinking-vessel, which
kind of cup with us is called schala." At the period
of the conspiracy of the Earl of Gowrie, one of the
leaders " did drink his
skoll to my Lord Duke ;" and
Calderwood speaks of drinking the king's
skole, which
meant drinking a cup in honour of him, which should
be drunk standing. The fact of drinking out of the
skull of a slain enemy, and the cups of blood in the
Danish ballad, call to mind the account of Plutarch7
that the Egyptians did not drink or offer wine by way
of supplication to the gods, as other nations did, but
only as it bore a resemblance to their enemy's blood.
The Scandinavians regarded as the highest point of
felicity that they hoped to pbtain hereafter, the drink-
ing mead and ale in the Hall of Odin, out of the
skulls of those they had overpowered. This custom
was adopted by other nations. Mandeville tells that
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
47
the old Ghiebres exposed the dead bodies of
their
parents to the fowls of the air, reserving only the
skulls, of which he says, " The son maketh a cuppe,
and therefrom drinketh he with gret devotion." Lord
Byron had a skull mounted into a drinking-cup, and
wrote this inscription on it:—
" Start not, nor deem my spirit fled :
In me behold the only skull
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.
" I lived, I loved, I quafiFd like thee :
I died: let earth my bones resign :
Fill up—thou canst not injure me,
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.
11 Better to hold the sparkling
grape,
Than nurse the earthworm's slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet's shape
The drink of gods, than reptile's food.
" Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others let me shine;
And when, alas ! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine ?
" Quaff while thou canst, another race
When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth's embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.
48
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
" Why not ? since through life's little
day
Our heads such sad effects produce ?
Redeemed from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs—to be of use."
The Saxons, we know, used to cut their foreheads, and
let drops of their blood fall into a cup of wine, which
they then drank to the health of any particular beloved
or esteemed friend. That this custom was remembered
and observed so late as the seventeenth century, is
shown by some lines in the
Oxford Drolleryy in which
is a song containing the following lines :—
" I stab'd mine arm to drink her
health,
The more fool I, the more fool I."
Frequent allusions are also made to
this habit in the
plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, to which we shall
refer in speaking of the practice of the custom in
their time.
We may here mention another custom of
health-
drinking at ancient Danish weddings, referred to iu
another ballad in Mr. Prior's collection,
Knight Sti/s
Wedding, namely, the use of two cups, presumably
one being for the use of the person pledging, and the
other for the use of the person pledged. After the
wedding of Stig, the entire party proceeded to the
large hall to participate in the merry-making, and
" As o'er the floor the dancers sped,
The graceful knight the revellers led ;
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
49
Graceful he tripped before the band,
Two silver cups in either hand.
He then to his bride a goblet drained
That aye was best that God ordaiu'd."
In this case it is tolerably certain that the
bride*
groom did not pledge his bride, or vice versa, from any
feeling of insecurity, but merely in compliance with
Mie very old custom of drinking a cup of liquor as a
token of veneration, esteem, or love for anyone.
In connection with drinking healths or toasts at
weddings, it is not out of place to refer to an ancient
Jewish custom, which is still kept up; that of the
bride and bridegroom, immediately after the marriage
ceremony, drinking wine out of the same glass and
then breaking it, the meaning of which, Brand thinks,
is to remind the couple of their mortality ; but a
somewhat analagous observance has been recorded of
lovers drinking solemn toasts to their mistresses and
immediately dashing the goblet down, with a very
•different meaning, which is referred to in some stanzas
of which the first lines run—
11 We break the glass whose sacred
wine
To some beloved name we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,
Might e'er the hallowed cup profane."
Nor should we forget a form of health given in
the
life of Wenceslaus. A person taking the cup cried in
00 THE
HISTORY OF TOASTING.
a loud voice, " In the name of the
blessed archangel
St. Michael, let us drink this cup, begging and pray*
ing that he will think worthy to introduce our souls
to eternal happiness. To this the rest answered
'Amen,'" and the toast was drunk. This testimony
of aifection to saints, as well as to the souls of the-
dead is prohibited in councils. Neubrigensis addsr
that it drove away devils, like monkeys, who sat upon
the shoulders of the visitors.*
The ancient Normans, or Northmen, who
from their
own sterile country (Norway) used, before the ninth
century, to make frequent raids upon the more fruitful
countries towards the south, were constantly assisted
in their attacks on the sea-coast of the Netherlands,
England, and France, by the Danes, and in their
manners and customs they closely resembled them as
they did the Saxons; and their language was originally
much the same as the ancient Danish. It is probable
that the superior natural features of that part of
France we now call Normandy, caused them to make
frequent attacks thereon. In order to rid himself of
the trouble of constantly repelling the invaders,
Charles the Bald King of France at last gave the
earldom of Ohartres to one of the leaders of the
Northmen, by name Hastings or Harding. Subse*
quently Charles the Simple confirmed this grant upon
*■ Fosb.
Cycl. Ant. II. 600.
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
51
Hastings' descendant Rollo, though not
until that
rover had annexed a considerable part of Normandy.
Daring the time that elapsed between this and the
invasion of England by William the Conqueror, the
Normans lost their own tongue and acquired that of
the French ; and out-stripped in civilization their
cousins the Anglo-Saxons and Danes lately settled
in England.
Without trespassing upon irrelevant
matter it is to
be observed that the use of wine amongst the ancient
Normans in many respects closely reflected the cus-
toms of the Saxons and Danes. They indulged in
wine; the clergy especially. And as the ceremonial
observances in drinking were unchanged, so likewise.
was the excess.
Reginald of Durham, the story-writer of
the twelfth
century, in one of his tales makes a party in a private
house sit round the fire and drink together sociably;.
in another he gathers at the house of the parish priest
of Kellow a number of the villagers, who with their
spiritual pastor spent the greater part of the night in
drinking; again we are introduced to a youth who
goes, accompanied by his tutor (a monk), to a tavern,
where they spend the whole evening in drinking, til^
one of them gets so intoxicated that he absolutely
refuses to go home.
These tales of Reginald are undoubtedly
faithful
representations of the manners of that day ; and that
52
THE HISTOBY OF TOASTING.
the clergy of that time were in the
habit of unduly
carousing is quite evident from the canon of Arch-
bishop Anselm, made at the Council in London in
1102, whereby priests are enjoined not to go to
drinking bouts, nor to drink between pins. There is
not the slightest doubt that health-drinking was an
important feature at these drinking bouts, and that
the intemperance thereat was so great as to be a
scandal, not only to the people but to the clergy, who
instead of trying to put down the evil, on the contrary
participated in it.
Excess in ale-drinking had prevailed to
such an
extent in Dunstan's time, and was productive of so
many quarrels, that he was obliged to propound a
law for the regulation and restriction of alehouses,
and also caused the drinking-vessels used at such
places to be furnished with gold or silver pins or pegs
fixed at regular intervals inside, so that when two or
more drank in company out of the same measure, each
might know what was his fair share of the liquor.
CHAPTER IV.
Toasting froh the Twelfth to the
Sixteenth
Century.
At a Lateran Council held in Innocent
III.'s popedom,
the following decree was published:—" Let all clergy-
men diligently abstain from surfeiting and drunken-
ness; for which let them moderate wine from themselves,
and themselves from wine 5 neither let anyone be urged
to drink, since drunkenness doth banish wit and pro-
voke lust. For which purpose we decree that that
abuse shall be utterly abolished, whereby in divers
quarters drinkers do use after their manner to bind
one another to drink equally, and he is most applauded
who makes most people drunk and quaffs off most
carouses. If any offend henceforth in this respect,
let him be suspended from his benefice."
And at the Council of Cologne in 1536 a
decree was
passed to restrain the Popish laity, parish priests, and
clergy from the baleful practices of drinking healths ;
so that down to that date it does not seem that there
had been any diminution of the drunkenness attendant
upon the unbridled wine and beer-bibbing induced by
the custom of toasting, pledging, and health-drinking,
£-k
THE HIST0EY OF TOASTING.
which Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians
had alike,
and independently, indulged in before the Christian
era, and which had been from them transmitted with
scarce any alteration of form or manner to later
generations.
Nearly every monastery in France had
its vineyard,
whereas the ordinary drink of the Anglo-Saxons was
ale and mead, though they sometimes drank wine.
The vine was cultivated in England from the time of
the Roman Emperor Probus, who permitted the plant-
ing of vineyards in this country, both for use and for
pleasure, though most of the wine consumed here was
imported from the Continent. In an early illuminated
Anglo-Saxon calendar are pictorial illustrations of the
seasons, in some of which husbandmen are depicted
pruning and cultivating vines. William of Malmes-
bury praises the Gloucestershire vines, and says that
the wine made from those grapes was but little
inferior to that imported from France. The same
writer tells us that the monks of Glastonbury had,
on special occasions,
u mead in their cans, and wine
in their grace-cup."
The social life of monks has been
reprobated and
in turn defended by historians. Their capacity for
unlimited potations has been cleverly satirized in the
lines—
•• 0 monachi, vestri stomachi sunt
amphora Bacchi,
Tos cstis, Deus est testis, teterrima pestis."
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
55
Nor has the imputation been veiled in
the following
rendering—
" 0 monks, ye reverend drones, your
guts
Of wine are but so many buts ;
You are, God knows (who can abide ye ?)
Of plagues the rankest,
bonajide."
Eabelais seems to have thought better
of them in the
lines—
" The Devil was siek, the Devil a monk
would be ;
The Devil was well, the Devil a monk was be."
It is certain that they enjoined
temperance—
" Nee gulosus
In Siversis epulis,
Nee in potu vinolentus."
" Nor dainty in your various meals,
Nor vinolent in drink."*
But whatever their precept their
practise was
undoubtedly censurable too often, hence such satires
as were commonly in vogue. We read of an Abbot
who in order to exhilarate a certain knight, plied him
with choice liquor, in the English fashion. In order
to provoke him to drink more heavily, instead of
was-
• cf. Fabriciufl " Biblioth Med. MU VII. 913.
56
THE HIST0BY OF TOASTING.
heilj the Abbot gave for the
toast the word Pril, to /
which the other was enjoined by the Abbot, instead
of
Drink-heil to reply Wril; and thus drinking and
toasting with
Pril and Wril, and assisted by the
monks, lay brothers, and servants, they went on till
midnight.*
The grace-cup is so intimately
connected with the
custom of health-drinking, pledging and toasting
that some account of it will not be out of place. It
is supposed to be a perpetuation of the
cup of thanks-
giving of the early Jews, alleged to have been taken
by Abraham; and the same as the
cup of salvation
referred to in Psalm cxvi. 13. The cup of undiluted
wine which the Greeks passed round at their feastsr
drinking to the good spirit, and the poculum boni genii
of the Romans, had their origin probably in the
Jewish custom. The cup and its custom were retained
after the introduction of Christianity ; whether, how-
ever, the English name
grace-cup is derived from the
Latin word gratias, or from the fact that it is passed
round immediately after meals at
grace time, is Or
moot point. It is unnecessary to go
into minute
details about the observances connected with drinking
the grace-cup; it will be sufficient to remark that
nearly every religious body, and subsequently nearly
every public corporation, had one of these vessels,
♦ M.S. Cott. Tiber B. B, 13. Cited by
FoaJ>roke.
THE HIST0KY OF TOASTING.
57
which they used with much solemnity on
certain
occasions ; and that in some cases bastard customs
sprang therefrom, as for instance the
Agapce, which
Aubrey says were <6 certain love feasts used in thd
Primitive Church, where all the congregations met
and feasted together after they had received the Holy
Communion, and those that were rich brought for
themselves and the poor, and all ate together for the
increase of mutual love, and for the rich to shew their
kindly charity to the poor." This explanation is given
in connection with an account of a custom observed
by the inhabitants of Danby Wisk, a village in the
North Riding of Yorkshire, where the parishioners
used every Sunday after receiving the Sacrament to go
straight from the church to the ale-house, and there
drink together in testimony of charity and friendship.
There does not seem to have been much difference
between the grace-cup
(poculum caritatis), the wassail-
bowl, and the loving-cup, which still circulates at the
public entertainments of various public bodies. la
fact, the loving-cup now in possession of the Lichfield
Corporation was at one time called
poculum caritatis,
the history of which is interesting. In 1633, one
Elias Ashmole, a wealthy man, and a native of
Lichfield, presented to the bailiffs of his birthplace
a large chased silver drinking bowl and cover, which
had cost him £23 8s. 6d. From that time till the
present day the ceremony of drinking from it with all
s>
58
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
all pomp and formality has been duly
observed at the
corporation feasts and city banquets. On these occa-
sions the mayor always drinks first. In his place at
the head of the table he stands up and takes the cup
in both hands. The person next him on his right
hand and on his left rise also. After drinking he
hands the cup to his right-hand neighbour, when the
person on this one's right rises ; then the cup is passed
across the table to the Mayor's left hand neighbour,
when the person on his left hand rises ; and so on till
the cup is emptied or all have drunk from it, it being
always arranged that the person drinking should have
the person next to him and the one opposite to him
standing while he drinks. In the letter from the
Corporation, thanking Mr. Ashmole for his present, is
the following passage :—u Upon the receipt of your
Poculum Ckaritatis.....we filled
it with
Catholic Wine, and devoted it to a
sober Health to
our most Gracious King, which, being of so large a
continent, passed the hands of thirty to pledge. Nor
did we forget the health of yourself in the next place,
being our great Mecaenas." Nor, in speaking of
grace-cups, should we omit to mention the Durham
Prebend's cup, which is drunk at certain feasts which
the resident Prebendary gives to the City Corporation
and inhabitants, and for which he is, in virtue of
an old charter, allowed a liberal annual sum. The
composition which is drunk on these festive occasions
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
59
is brewed from a very ancient recipe,
and it is served
in the original silver cups, which hold two or three
quarts, and are at least a foot high. A chorister boy
in a black gown, preceded by a verger in a silver-
braided black gown, carries the cups into the ban-
queting-room. A Latin grace is then chanted, the
Prebend gives the boy a shilling, and then verger and
cup-bearer march out of the room, leaving the filled
cups on the table. These are then passed down, one
on each side, and are drunk by each guest in succession
to an appropriate toast. It does not seem that there
was so much formality at Durham as at Lichfield in
the ceremony of drinking, but at Westminster, at the
churchwardens' dinners and parish meetings of St.
Margaret's, the strictest attention was paid to every
detail of formality, which was much the same as at
Lichfield, only that there were always three persons
standing at the same time on the drinker's side of the
table, one on either side of him, who, while he drank the
toast, held over his head the lid of the drinking-vessel.
Mr. Wright* quotes from a thirteenth century ballad
in which is described the hospitality of a feudal castle
offered to a passing knight, how after dinner the party
washed their hands and then drank round, thus :
" Ses mains
Lava et puis l'autre gent toute
Et puis se burent tout a route :"
* " Homes of other Days."
60
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
a proceeding evidently resembling very
closely the-
later age practice of Eotcnds of Toasts, and health-
drinking by people who prided themselves on their
polished civilization. In Edward IV.'s reign, drunk-
enness was such a fruitful source of crime that very
few places were allowed more than two taverns, and
in London itself there were only forty. None but
those who could spend 100 marks a year, or the son of
a Duke, Marquess, Earl, or Baron, were allowed to
keep more than 10 gallons of wine at once ; and only
High Sheriffs, Magistrates of cities, and inhabitants
of fortified towns, might keep vessels of wine for their
own use.
During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth
centuries, though we have no detailed descriptions by
writers of that period of the manners and customs of
the people, there are scattered, through ballads and
romances, allusions which have enabled such inde-
fatigable antiquarians as Mr. Wright to furnish us
with tolerably complete pictures of the domestic life
of our ancestors. The distinguishing feature of this
period is perhaps the prevalence of excess and riot,
and frequent scenes of drunken brawling, often ending
in fierce battles, and even murders. The taverns were
the resort not only of male sots, but gossiping viragoes
spent no inconsiderable portion of their time there.
The drunkards of the time, too, did not even pretend,
as an excuse for their unlimited debauches, to drink
THE HISTOKY OP TOASTING.
61
for the health of their king, or of one
another, hut
prefaced their draughts with meaningless gibberish.
But though the powers that be might
have discoun-
tenanced drinking, yet by their observance of many
curious old ceremonies connected with it, most of
which closely resemble the drinking of healths or
toasting, they virtually encouraged the vice by per-
petuating "an excuse for the glass." From the
" Collection of Ordinances for the Koyal Household of
Henry VII.," it appears that at that time the custom
of two or more people pledging each other in liquor,
all drinking out of the same cup, was discontinued,
and each person had his own separate vessel. In the
same collection are also the regulations for the Court
wassailing, or New Year's health-drinking. It was
also the custom to introduce the drinking of healths
into civic affairs, and the Lord Mayor of London was
wont to appoint the City Sheriffs by the simple process
of drinking a health to them in public. In the year
-----, one-----—■—-, carver to the then
Lord Mayor,
waiting at the civic table, had his
health drunk by
Sir —----------—. Immediately thereupon
the wily
—_——took advantage of the custom, which
was
apparently as unalterable as the "laws of the Medes
and Persians, for we are told that he sate down at the
mayor's table and covered his head, to show, probably,
that he was no longer to be considered an inferior
below the salt, or behind his quondam master's chair ;
62
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
and not only was he confirmed in bis
shrievalty, but
he afterwards actually became Mayor of London. A
lucky health for him, that!
In the reign of Henry VIII., on the
occasion of the
meeting of the French and English monarchs at the
famous Camp du Drap d'Or, a grand banquet wa»
given by the Queen of Francis I. to Henry, at which
the principal toast was couched in terms differing from
the ordinary formula; for instead of drinking for the
health of our king, they proposed and drank for
increase of prosperity.
Health-drinking continued to be a
favourite occu-
pation even at the Court of England in Elizabeth's
reign, and was carried on to such an extent that the
courtiers who made a point of showing their loyalty
in this way became sometimes the worse for drink.
The virgin queen, to her honour be it said, was na
encourager of this habit, for it is recorded that one
day, observing one of the peers rather jollier in his
manner than usual, she asked him where he had been*
" I' faith, madam," replied he, "drinking your
Majesty's health." " So I thought/' was the cutting
reply ; " and I am sorry for it, for I never fare worse
than when my health is drank."
In the reigns of James I. and Charles L
the custom
of unlimited drinking and pledging healths had
become an almost universal practice at Court, in the
City, and in the country, and was daily observed at
THE HIST0KY OF TOASTING.
63
everybody's table. The fashion was kept
alive by
the support of all classes, it being approved by num-
bers of the nobility, the army, and the Church; and
the drinking of healths was an assiduous complement
at every banquet, feast, and even the most ordinary
meeting in a tap-room or a tavern. People drank to
the health of the king and of everything and every-
body.
Bad as was the condition of affairs in
England, the
Continent of Europe was no better. M. Jacque3
Auguste de Thou, who wrote his
Memoires in 1620,
says of the Germans, " People drink continually, and
return at all hours to do the same thing over again."
M. Misson* remarks :—" The Germans are strange
drinkers . . . everything is transacted over the bottle;
you can do nothing without drinking ... I must
instruct you in the laws they observe in their cups,
laws sacred and inviolable. You must never drink
without drinking someone's healthy which having done,
you must immediately present the glass to the party
you drank to, who must never refuse, but drink it to
the last drop. Reflect a little, I beseech you, on these
customs, and you will see how, and by what means,
it is impossible to cease from drinking. After this
manner one shall never have done. It is a perpetual
circle to drink after the German fashion; it is to
drink for ever."
*
Voyage dy Italie. Vol. I.
§ 9.
CHAPTER V.
Toasting in the Seventeenth Centuky.
In an account of a state banquet given
by James L
to the Spanish Ambassador, we have an interesting
account of the State mode of drinking healths. As
soon as the company was seated, the King sent to
the Ambassador a green branch having some oranges
on it, and a melon, as a graceful compliment to his
country; this offering being duly acknowledged, the
King then rose in his place, uncovered, and drank the
following toast: "'To' the royal family of Spain, and
may the peace be happy and perpetual!" The ducal
Ambassador then rose, and pledged his Majesty by
drinking, and the toast passed round the company to
the great delight of all present; when all had drunk,
the Duke rose a second time, and taking from a side-
board a beautiful agate cup set with diamonds and
rubies, he filled the lid with wine, and, addressing the
King, proposed the health of the Queen, supplicating
his Majesty to pledge him from the cup itself; James
acceded, and passing it round the table it again came
to the Ambassador, who replaced it on the sideboard,
The Duke then rose a third time, apd filling a hand*
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
65
some dragon cup, drank to the Queen
from its lid,
selecting as his toast,'"the health of the King;" and
then the Queen pledged him by deputy, through Don
Blasco de Aragon, who acted as royal cup-bearer. At
this point the King sent a message to the constable
that he might drink the health of Prince Charles ;
after which the King himself gave the health of
Princess Isabelle of Spain. During the remainder of
the banquet a number of other healths were drunk.
Dr. Doran, speaking of the Court of
James I.,
observes that it " was uncleanly enough, but it was
made worse by the example of the Danish King and
his courtiers, on the royal visit to the Stuart. The
Danish custom of
drinking healths was scrupulously
observed, and in a company of twenty, or even thirty,
every person's health was required to be drunk in
rotation. Sometimes a lady or an absent patron was
toasted on the knees, and as a proof of love or loyalty,
the pledger's blood was even mingled with the wine.
It is well known that the ladies of the Court got
1 beastly drunk' in honour of the visit of the King
of Denmark to his sister, the consort of James I."
In 1659 the greatest immorality and
licence pre-
vailed in good society. Gentlemen sat and spent much
of their time in ale houses, drinking a muddy kind of
beverage, and smoking tobacco. In the taverns where
Spanish wine was sold, the custom was so enormous*
that the drawers often acquired sufficient wealth to>
66 THE
HISTORY OF TOASTING.
purchase estates, build fine houses,
and actually buy
their customers out of their possessions. In these*
taverns, where in other cities courtezans would hardly
vouchsafe to be entertained, ladies of high rank were
habituees, and there they drank their " crowned cup*
roundly, strained toasts through their smocks, danced
after the fiddle, and termed it an honourable treat.,r
In the same pamphlet is described* a drunken brawl
at a private house, arising out of the refusal of one of
the company to accept a health that had been proposed.
.* The writers add that these were but too frequent, and
that there existed a class of perfect debauchees, wha
styled themselves Hectors, who in their mad and
inconceivable revels used to pierce their veins to quaff
their own blood ; which some of them did to such
excess that they died of the intemperance. Some of
these, he remarks, spending more than their income,
had recourse to highway robbery to supply the funds
necessary to indulge in their extravagance, often re-
paying on the gibbet what they borrowed on the roadr
We should have no difficulty whatever in filling a
folio volume with the testimony of contemporary
writers of the period, in support of the truth of tbia
representation of the society of that day. One more
instance will suffice, however. In 1657, Reeves writing
of the English, says, "we drink as if (like Phillip) we
* Harleian Miscellany. Vol. X. 194.
THE HISTOBY OF TOASTING.
67
were nothing but sponges to draw up
moisture. There
are many, like Claudius, which seldom go sober over
their thresholds .. . And would to God this were only
a masculine sin, but it hath spread itself into both.
sexes ; neither the bashfulness nor modesty of women
can restrain them from participating in the guilt. . .
Martial need not write of his drunken Fesc,ennia, (nor
iElian of his Clio, for we, among ourselves, may find
a multitude of these intemperate sottish women, which
will quaff with the most riotous, and give
pledge for
pledge, and take off cup for cup. Oh blemish of the
nation, and affrightment to the very heavens !"
The expression " give pledge for pledge
" evidently
means that they would propose a toast as often as it-
came to their turn.
These and the like ceremonies gave rise
to such
wholesale drunkenness that it roused many earnest
men to cry out against the evil. Young wrote, in
1617, " England's Bane ;" Barnaby followed, in 1619,
with " The Irish Hubbub, or English Hue and Cry."
Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, in 1627, let fly his " Woe
to Drunkards;" and closely following him came con-
troversial old William Prynne, who in 1628 put forth
his work entitled, " Health's Sicknesse," " a compen-
dious and briefe discourse ; proving the drinking and
pledging of healthes to be sinfull and utterly vnlawfull
vnto Christians." As a specimen of the quaint phrase--
ology of the book, let me quote his idea of the origin
SS
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
of health-drinking. After relating the
fable from
Plutarch how Jupiter made a feast to the gods, at
which he caused wine to be poured out into a cup and
enjoined them to drink it off, one after the other in
course, he observes, "So it seems the great Deuill-god
Jupiter was the first in venter, founder, and instituter
of our Hellish and Heathenish Healthes;" and a little
further on he says that it is quite clear and evident
" that this drinking and quaffing of healthes had its
originall and birth from Pagans, heathens, and infidels,
yea, from the very Deuill himself; that it is but a
worldly, carnal], prophane, nay, heathenish ar|d deuill-
ish custome, which sauors of nothing else but Pagan-
isme and Gentilisme
\ that it was but the Deuill's
drinke-offering, or a part of that honour, reverance,
worship, seruice, sacrifice, homage, and adoration
which the Gentiles, witches, sorcerers, and infernall
spirits gaue to Belzebub, the prince of deuills, and
euery other deuill-gods, to whose honor, name, and
memory they were first inuented and consecrated."
Richard Brathwait (better known as
drunken Barnaby)
inserts the following rules for drinking healths—" He
that beginnes the health hath his prescribed orders ;
first uncovering his head he takes a full cup in his
hand, and setting his countenance with a grave aspect,
he craves an audience; silence being once obtained, he
begins to breathe out the name peradventure of some
honourable personage, that was worthy of a better
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
6fr
regard than to have his name polluted
at so unfitting
a time, amongst a company of drunkards, but his
health is drunk to, and he that pledges inuSt likewise
off with his cap, kisse his fingers, and bow himself in
sign of a reverent acceptance. When the leader sees
his follower thus prepared, he sups up his breath,
turnes the bottom of his cup upward, and in ostenta-
tion of his dexteritie gives the cup a phillip to make
it cry
twange, and thus the first scene is acted."
According to all these writers, the
drunkenness that
prevailed at the beginning of, indeed throughout this
seventeenth century was something alarming. In
the record of deaths from drunkenness, Ward states
that he omits those resulting from carts passing over
the bodies of intoxicants wallowing in the road, as
they are too numerous to record. And Charles II.
issued a " Proclamation against Prophaneness " on
May 30, 1660, of which the subjoined forms part :—
" There are likewise a set of men of
whom we have
heard much, and are sufficiently ashamed, who spend
their time in taverns, tippling-houses, and debauches,
giving no other evidence of affection for us but in
drinking our health, and inveighing against all others
who are not of their own dissolute temper."
Louis XIV. observed the effect that the
drinking of
healths produced upon the nation, so he disused the
custom in his own case, and did away with the wine
courtesies of his Court.
70
THE HISTOBY OF TOASTING.
Besides those objectors to the custom
of health-
drinking whose works we have mentioned, Sir Matthew
Hale, Lord Chief Justice, left the following injunction
to his grandchildren : "I will not have you begin or
pledge any health, for it is become one of the greatest
artifices of drinking and occasions of quarrelling in
the kingdom. If you pledge one health you oblige
yourself to pledge another, and a third, and so onward;
and if you pledge as many as will be drank, you must
be debauched and drunk. If they will needs know the
reason of your refusal, it is a fair answer: "That
your grandfather, who brought you up, from whom,
under God, you have the estate you enjoy or expect,
left this in command with you, that you should never
begin or pledge a health." Of similar stuff to Sir
Matthew must old John Bruen have been made, of
whom we are told how one day, when he was at a high
sheriff's feast, when several lords temporal and spiritual
were present, someone began a health to the prince,
which, after the manner of that time, was received
and kept up by each guest with a great deal of cere-
monial solemnity. When it came to Bruen's turn to
drink, he declined to do so, observing that the service
they thought they were paying their prince was a very
solemn one, which he had never required, and which
he would never give them any thanks for. Being still
pressed to drink, as a pledge that he accepted the
health, he made this mild and gentle answer only :
THE HISTORY OP TOASTING.
71
" You may drink to his health,
and I will pray for his
health and drink for mine own, and so I wish you may
do for yours. And so he put it off, and passed it over,
never sorting with them, nor yielding to any of their
solemn ceremonies in the act."
Probably it was such instances of
resolute temper-
ance that inspired the poet when he penned the
following lines :—
" Even from my heart much health I
wish.
No health I'll wash with drink,
Healths wish'd, not wash'd, in words, not wine,
To be the best I think."*
Though toasting, as we have shown, was
by no
means a new custom in England, it appears from
some of the writers, who so bitterly inveighed against
England's drunkenness in the seventeenth century,
that it had received a new lease of popularity from
the troops who had been engaged in the Netherlands,
the custom of drinking healths being then almost
universal amongst the Dutch. Chamberlayne thus
attempts to account for the spread of this vice :—"As
the English, returning from the wars in the Holy
Land, brought home the foul disease of leprosy, now
almost extinct here . . .. so3 in our father's days, the
* Witt's "Kecreat.," London, 1767.
72
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
English, returning from service in the
Netherlands,
brought with them the foul vice of drunkenness; asr
besides other testimonies, the term of carouse, from
gar auz9 all out,
learnt of the High Dutch in the same
service; so quaff,
&c. This vice of late was morer
though at present so much that some persons, and
those of quality, may not safely be visited in an after-
noon without running the hazard of excessive drinking
of healths (whereby, in a short time, twice as much
liquor is consumed as by the Dutch, whosip and prate)
*r
and in some places it is esteemed a piece of wit to
make a man drunk ; for which purpose some swilling,.
insipid buffoon is always at hand. However, it may
be truly affirmed that at present there is generally less-
excess in drinking (especially about London) since the
use of coffee."
That women as well as men indulged in
the practice
of drinking healths, Thomes Hall bears testimony to
in his "Funebria Florae"
a pamphlet setting forth
the wholesale depravity and wantonness engendered
by the Maypole festivities, amongst the abuses of
which was undue toasting. " In some places," says
he, " maids drink healths upon their knees. 'Tis vile
in men but abominable in women."
In one of Dekker's plays, published in
1630, one
of the characters is asked : "Will you fall on your
maribones and pledge this health, 'tis to my mis-
tress ?" Allusion is also made in the second act of
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
IB
Marmion's Antiquary to " spending whole
nights
drinking a health." Ward also refers to tc pot-wits
and spirits of the buttery," who
bared their knees to
drink healths, whetted their wit with wine, and armed
their courage with pot-harness. And Thomas Young
confesses, to his grief of conscience, that he himself
had been an actor in the business of drinking healths
kneeling.
In 1698, a Frenchman, Misson, published
his obser-
vations on England and the English, and referred
particularly to the custom of drinking healths, a
custom, he observed, almost abolished among French
people of any distinction. But here, to have drunk
at table without making it the occasion of a toast
would have been considered not only an act of incivility
but also as drinking on the sly. The universal manner
of observing the custom was, for the person to whose
health another drank, to remain perfectly motionless
from the moment his name was uttered until the con^
elusion of the health draught. " If, for instance, he
is in the act of taking something from a dish, he must
suddenly stop, return his fork or spoon to its place,
and wait, without stirring more than a stone until the
other has drunk;" after this the ceremony is con-
cluded by the person whose health has been drunk
making a low bow. M. Misson makes great fun of
the manners he describes ; but is he quite accurate in
Baying that in 1697 the custom of health-drinking waa
E
74
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
almost entirely abolished in good
French society ? Not
many years before, Pepys had made an entry in his
incomparable
Diary, how on a certain day he went
"To the Rhenish Wine house, where Mr. Moore '
showed me the French manner when a health is
\
drunk, to bow to bim that drunk to you, and then
apply yourself to him whose lady's health is drunk, <
and then the person that you drink to, which I never
knew before ; but it seems it ia now the fashion." Of
the accuracy of this account there can be no dispute.
The way in which anything or anybody
that one
drank a health to came to be called a toast has baffled
derivation hunters of all degrees, and we are no wiser
to-day than we were in 1709, when Isaac Bickerstaffe,
in the twenty-fourth number of the newly-established
Tatler, attempted to settle the matter by saying how,
at Bath in the time of Charles II., a celebrated beauty
happened to be in the Cross-Bath, and out of the
crowd of her admirers who were in the room, one of
them took from her bath a cup of the water, in which
the lady was standing and drank her health to the
company. Another of her admirers who was present,
being half intoxicated, instead of pledging or drinking
in response to the sentiment, announced his intention
of jumping into the water and carrying off the bather
swearing that though he liked not the liquor, yet he
would have
the toast He was opposed in his
resolution, yet this whim gave foundation to the
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
15
present honour which is due to the lady
we mention
in our liquor, who has ever since been called a toast.
It is far more likely that, as Ellis observes, the use of
the word on this occasion was a
consequence of its
previous employment for alike purpose, and not the
cause of its being adopted. It is probable that
toast
came to be used in the sense it is stated to have been
by the bath gallant gradually, at first meaning a mere
material relish or improvement to a glass of liquor,
and afterwards getting to be applied to the
tc senti-
mental relish," or, as Sheridan truly calls it, the
u excuse for the glass." Toasted bread formed a
favourite addition to English drinks so early as the
sixteenth century, and in the cups of sack and punch,
brown toasts frequently floated at the top. In Wyther's
u Abuses Stript and Whipt" (published 1613) mention
is made of a draught " that must be spiced with a
nut-browne tost."
The wits and beauties of the Court of
Charles II.
were partial to a toast in their drinks, and pledging
^each other. It was also a point of gallantry for a
beau to drink as many cups as there were letters in
the name of the lady toasted. This was after the
fashion of the Eoman mode of drinking the health of
their Emperor;
e.g. Germanicus was celebrated with
ten, Caesar with six. The Jacobite manner of drinking
the Pretender's health was by first placing a bowl of
water on the table, and then giving the usual toast,
76
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
"The King!" which meant 'over the water.'* In
1680 appeared a doggrel poem written by Captain
Batcliffjf which was at the time most popular. Jupiter
is represented with other gods on Olympus, hearing for
the first time of the new drink just invented, and
determined to try it. There we read—
" This bowl being finished, a health was began,
Quoth Jove—let it be to a creature called Man;
'Tis to him alone this pleasure we owe,
For heaven was never true heaven till now.
Since the gods and poor mortals thus do agree,
Here's a health unto Charles his Majesty.''
The young men of this period certainly had
peculiar
notions of showing their affection by drinking the
most nauseous and disgusting draughts imaginable
to the health of any fair beauty of the hour. In the
" Humourous Lieutenant" of Beaumont and Fletcher,,
allusion is made to the custom then prevalent of gen-
tlemen stabbing and cutting themselves, and mingling
their blood with the wine in which they toasted their
mistresses ; and it is to this custom that Shakespeare
makes the Prince of Morocco allude in the
Merchant
of Venice, when he speaks of making an " incision for
your love." Jonson, in
i( Cynthia's Revels," mentions*
a representative lover, " stabbing himself and drinking
* Terrington,
Cooling Cups, *J* Bacchanalia Ccelestia.
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
77
healths, or writing languishing letters in his
blood ;
whilst in the Palinode occurs the following:
" From stabbing of arms, flap-dragons, healths,
whiffs,
And all such swaggering humours,
Good Mercury defend us."
And in "Oxford Drollery" is a song in which the
following passage occurs :
" I stabbed mine arm to drink her health,
The more fool I, the more fool I;"
and in the next verse reference is made to
another
custom of kneeling whilst drinking healths :
" I will no more her servant be,
The wiser I, the wiser I,
Nor pledge her health upon my knee."
Hall states that there were some who drank
healths
on their knees, as the scholars at the University. The
same quaint divine lets us know, too, that there were
some (not many, he hoped) who put their own blood
into their drink and then quaffed a health to the
king, and to the confusion of Sion and its King. So
that the young Hectors not only cultivated habits of
revolting barbarity, but also linked them with blas-
phemy. But there was one other way of drinking
Jiealths still to be told, a piece of unparalleled
78
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
tomfoolery—that of toasting a lady in
some nau-
seous decoction. When this fashion was popular,
two students at Oxford were each enamoured of the
reigning belle of that sober University, and as a test
of the relative depth of their devotion they applied
themselves to toasting her in the manner we have
mentioned. One, determined to prove that his love
did not stick at trifles, took a spoonful of soot, mixed
it with his wine, and drank off the mixture. His
companion, determined not to be outdone, brought
from his closet a phial of ink, which he drank, ex-
claiming, "Io triumphe and Miss Molly." These
crack-brained young men also esteemed it a great
privilege to get possession of any great beauty's shoe,
in order that they might ladle wine out of a bowl
down their throats with it, the while they drank to
the " lady of little worth " or the
" light-heeled mis-
tress " who had been its former wearer.
John Evelyn, in his inimitable Diary,
states that,
at the proclamation of James II., 1685, there was
present, in the market-place at Bromley, a contingent
of the Kentish Troop, over 500 strong, two of the
royal trumpeters, and an innumerable crowd of on-
lookers, in presence of whom, after the reading of the
official document, the sheriff, the' commander of the
troop and his officers, and the principal gentlemen
present, drank His Majesty's health in " a flint glass
of a yard long "—rather an unwieldly and uncomfort-
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
79
able drinking vessel, though doubtless
the ordeal of
drinking His Majesty's health on all State occasions
was taken into consideration in summing up the
services of the different officials when the time came
for rewarding them.
And if great glasses of a yard long
were used in
drinking healths on State occasions, what shall we
say to the vessels at private parties ! At the marriage
festivities of Lady Eoss, in 1693, at Bel voir Castle,
after a most magnificent supper, all the guests pro-
ceeded to the great hall, where a
great cistern of sack
posset was discovered, and at once began the drinking
of healths by old and young alike, at first in spoons,
and afterwards in silver cups : and though there were
many to drink each health, and a variety of toasts
were given, it was discovered after an hour's hot service
that the posset had not sunk an inch (?) in the cistern,
" which made my Lady Rutland call in all the family
[? domestics], and then,
upon their knees, the bride
and bridegroom's health, with prosperity and happi-
ness, was drunk in tankards brimful of sack posset."
CHAPTER VI.
Toasting in the Eighteenth Century.
It was amidst this condition of things
that the pious
zeal and indignation were aroused of Dr. Peter Browne,
Bishop of Cork, who in 1716 wrote " A Discourse of
Drinking Healths," in which he strongly condemned
the practice on theological, moral, and common-sense
grounds, of opinion that it had its origin in Pagan
usages, though he is vague as to the particular custom
out of which it arose. He classifies the various accept-
ations of a
health under six heads :—(1) When a curse
or imprecation is intended upon the person drinking,
or (2) upon any other person
\ (3) when one drinks in
honourable remembrance of absent living friends ; or
(4) by way of wishing others health and prosperity;
or (5) in token of our respect and goodwill to another,
or approbation of any affair ; and (6) as an outward
indication of our loyalty. All such health-drinking,
the learned prelate urges, is incompatible with the
duty of good Christians, whom he exhorts to suppress
the practice. He also cites an interesting formula
used by the Jews in drinking, which is the first in-
stance, to my knowledge, of a curse being intended
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
81
instead of an expression of goodwill;
the words, upon
the authority of Buxtorf, meaning in their ordinary
•signification, "much good may it do you;" but the
utterer thereof, by a kind of mental reservation or
adaptation, implied a curse—nay, as many curses as
the letters stand for, viz., 165.*
Nor should mention be omitted of a
curious work
by Heywood,f who enumerates the various kinds of
drinking cups then in use. He says, " of drinking
cups divers and sundry sorts we have, some of elme,
some of box, some of maple, some of holly, &c.
Mazers, broad-mouthed dishes, noggins, whiskins,
* In 1713, Dr. Browne, Bishop of Cork, delivered
a discourse to the
-clergy of his diocese, against drinking in remembrance of the dead*
which he published in pamphlet form. This was followed by a
-second pamphlet, wherein he refuted charges that his critics had
made, to the effect that he was actuated by a spirit of hostility to
the memory of William III., it being well known that the Bishop
was an extreme tory, and he had laid particular stress on the pre-
valent custom of drinking to the ' * Immortal Memory of William
III." This again excited considerable adverse criticism; and in
1716 Dr. Browne launched forth a somewhat exhaustive
Discourse of
Drinking Healths. But though he handles his theme very ably, the
tract is no more than a concise epitome of the arguments and author-
ities used by the puritan writers of the previous century. It has
been stated that the bishop did not make many converts by his
brochures ; that, on the contrary, the custom of drinking to William's
" immortal memory'* increased, and that to the original form of the
toast was tacked on a scurrilous expression indicative of the extreme
•contempt in which the author of the diatribes was held.
t
Philocathonista, or, the Drunkard
opened, dissected and anato-
mized, Lond. 1635, p. 45,
82
THE HISTORY OF TOASTI270.
crinzei, ale-bowles, wassel-bowles,
court-dishes, tank-
ards, kannes, from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a.
gill. Other bottles we have of leather. Small jacks
we have in many ale-houses of the citie and suburbs
r
tipt with silver, besides the great black jacks and
bombards at the court, which when the Frenchmen
first saw, they reported at their returne into their
countrey, that the Englishmen used to drinke out of
their bootes. We have besides cups made of homes*
of beasts, of cocker nuts, of goords, of the eggs of
estriches ; others made of the shells of divers fishes
brought from the Indies and other places, and shining
like mother of pearle. Every taverne can afford you
flat bowles, French bowles, bonnet cups, beare bowles,.
beakers ; and private householders can furnish their
cupboards with flagons, tankards, beere cups, wine*
bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all
over."
All through the eighteenth century the
fashionable
world, the upper ten, in London, seem to have found
pleasure in the greatest dissipation. It was about the
middle of this century that Horace Walpole, the
man
of refinement and education, found pleasure in fre-
quenting Yauxhall Gardens in the company of Lady
Petersham (who went in defiance of her husband's
wishes), and the fast Harry Vane. He thought it
great fun when the antics and idiocy of the latter
collected a crowd of revellers round their box, to
THE HISTORY OF TOASTING.
83-
whom healths were drunk in bowls of
punch with the
utmost familiarity. Ladies drank healths, too, at
public entertainments ; and it was only gallantry on
the part of George II., when, at a public masquerader
taking a lady to the sideboard for a glass of wine, he
passed off what might have been construed into a
charge of treason. She, ignorant who her partner
was, took the glass, and called upon the King to
pledge her in a health to the Pretender. " With all
my heart," replied George, " I am always happy to
drink to the health of unfortunate princes." Not so
lucky was James Swallow, jeweller, of Durham, who
was tried at the assizes there, in 1746, for drinking
a certain king's health, though we are not told with
what result.
The Kev. Alexander Carlyle in his
Autobiography,
gives plenty of illustrations of the hard drinking
which prevailed in Scotland in his time among all
classes, clergymen not excluded. To be a three or
five-bottle man was rather a recommendation than a
disgrace. Carlyle records waiting at Dumfries on the
occasion of the election of magistrates, expressly that
they might drink the new provost's health
