but in other parishes there was a building called "The Church House," where the churchwardens brewed the ale and the people consumed it. At Eastbourne, in Sussex, a singular variety of this custom formerly prevailed. It was locally known as "Sops and

Ale," and is described in Hone's "Every-Day Book."

I will now say a few words about the Old English Alehouse. It was always a great institution in this country, and we find mention of one nine hundred years ago. The alehouse was indicated by a projecting pole, to the top of which was tied a bunch of ivy or some other evergreen, giving it the appearance of a gigantic broom. The origin of the sign has been referred to Roman times, and some see in it a survival of the thyrsus, which was carried in the festivals of Bacchus, and which consisted of a spear whose point was concealed by a bunch of vine leaves or ivy. To the sign of the "wyspe," or bunch of evergreens, we can trace the origin of the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush"; and though the ancient pole has now disappeared, the name of "The Bush Inn" frequently recalls its memory. The bush is occasionally shown in old pictures, and on the Bayeux tapestry will be found a representation of a building adorned with an ale-pole. The author of the old alliterative poem "Piers Plowman" gives us a peep into an alehouse of the Middle Ages. "Glutton," one of his characters, has resolved to amend his ways, and is on his road to church, when the "brewster" meets him and entices him into her alehouse :

Now bigynneth Glotoun for to go to schrifte,
And kaires hym Kirkward his coup to schewe,
Ac Beton the brewestere bad him good morwe,
And axed of hym with that whiderward he wolde.
"To holi cherche," quod he, "for to here masse,
And sithen I will be schryven and synne namore."
"I have gode ale, gossib," quod she, "Glotoun wiltow assaye?"
"Hastow aught in thy purs, any hot spices?"

"I have peper and peones," quod she, "and a pound of garlike,
A ferthyngworth of fenel seed for fastyngdayes."

Thanne goth Glotoun in.

We have a list of the motley and rowdy company of men and women there assembled. Then there follows haggling and wrangling, singing and swearing, laughing, scowling and drinking, until Glutton becomes hopelessly intoxicated and is carried home to bed :

There was laughing and louryng, and "let go the cuppe,"

And seten til evensonge and songen umwhile,

Tyl Glotoun had y-globbed a galoun and a jille.

And in the same poem, another character, Avarice, states that he had

formerly been in the habit of buying barley malt, with which his wife brewed two kinds of ale, one called "penny ale," and the other "pudding ale." These she mixed together, and sold to labourers and such low folk. But the best ale was kept in the landlord's bedroom, and retailed at a groat a gallon, very short measure being served to the customers. "Penny ale" was so called because it was sold at one penny per gallon, and "pudding ale" because of its thick muddy appearance. The nominal value of the groat was four pence.

John Skelton, the poet, has given us a picture of a wayside alehouse, near Leatherhead, Surrey, in King Henry VIII.'s reign. It is kept by a hideous hag, who retails her home-brewed ale to the illfavoured habitués, and receives as payment a miscellany of goods and chattels such as only a modern pawnbroker is able to amass. "The Rhyme of Elynour Rummynge" is a long one, but the following lines will give some idea of its character :—

And this comely dame I understand her name

Is Elynour Rummynge, at home in her wonnynge,
And as men say she dwells in Sothray,

In a certayne stede bysyde Lederhede,

She breweth noppy ale and maketh thereof port sale

To travellers and tinkers and all good ale drinkers.

Instead of coyne and monny, some brynge her a cony,

And some a pot of honny.

Some a salt and some a spone, some theyr hose some theyr shone.
Some bryngeth her husbandes hood because the ale is good.

Another brought her his cap to offer to the ale tap.

Another brought her garlyke hedes, another brought her bedes
Of jet or of cole, to offer to the ale-pole.

And some than sat ryght sad, that nothynge had

There of theyr awne (own), neyther gelt nor pawne,

Such were there menny that had not a penny.

But whan they should walke, were fayne with a chalke

To score on the balke,

Or score on the tayle (tally) God gyve it yll hayle! (ill luck).

"Gammer Gurton's Needle" (1561) relates to the same period, and contains the well-known drinking song, "Back and side go bare, go bare." In the play, the curate is dragged much against his will from his favourite resort, Hobfylcher's alehouse, and bitterly complains that

A man had better twenty times be a ban-dog and bark,
Than here among such a sort be parish priest or clerk,

for he has not time to drink two pots of ale before one of his flock come to trouble him with some unimportant trifle, "not worth a half-pennyworth of ale." If he goes in obedience to the summons,

he will find that some old woman has got a pain in her finger ; but if he does not go, he will discover that he has lost a tithe pig or goose.

It is a somewhat curious fact, that both brewers and retailers of ale were nearly always women. This is illustrated by the two passages just quoted from "Piers Plowman." The words brewster and tapster are feminine forms of brewer and tapper, just as spinster is of spinner, and webster of webber. We still hear of "Brewster " Sessions, but the word has long since lost its primary feminine meaning. In "Elynour Rummynge" we have another of these female retailers of ale, or "ale drapers" as they were familiarly termed. In "Two Gentlemen of Verona" we read, "Item, she brews good ale," and many other examples may be adduced of females filling the two capacities above mentioned.

The old public-houses were not subject to so many legislative restrictions as those of the present day, but in Edward VI.'s reign an Act was passed providing that "none should be admitted to keep a common alehouse except in open sessions or by two justices, and entering into a recognisance to prevent unlawful games and keep good order." It was the Manor which regulated the brewing and selling of ale within its limits. Thus the court-rolls of the Manor of Scotter, in Lincolnshire, show that an order was made in 1562, prohibiting the tenants from brewing at night, probably on account of the danger of setting fire to the farm buildings, which were constructed of wood plastered with mud taken from the roads, and thatched with straw. One of the tenants is directed to take out a license for keeping an alehouse, "according to the statute," and to hang up at his door a sign or ale-wyspe. Tastores serivicie too were appointed for the year.

These tastores or gustatores cervisia, commonly called ale-tasters or ale conners, were officers appointed annually at the court-leet of every manor, and their duty was to see that the ale sold was of the standard quality. The office of ale-taster in the city of London dates back to the time of the Norman conquest.

In the year 1630, England was in the position in which Russia finds herself to-day. The grain crop had failed, not only at home, but in the foreign countries from which we were in the habit of drawing supplies of food, and prices in consequence rose a hundred per cent. A famine seemed imminent, and the justices of the peace throughout the country were directed to take every precaution to prevent the exportation of corn, to restrain the making of malt for purposes of brewing, and to suppress all unnecessary alehouses,

The returns which the justices made show that the offence of keeping an alehouse without a license was a very common one in those days.

The English of the Elizabethan era ate beef-steaks for breakfast, and naturally required a good draught of two-year ale to wash down the substantial meal. We have all heard how the ladies of the Court had each her daily allowance of breakfast ale left at her door in the morning.

In Langland's day, as we have seen, and throughout the fourteenth century, the best ale cost 4d. the gallon. The ordinary drink, seasoned with pepper and garlick, was everywhere retailed at id. a gallon, and "penny ale" must have been as familiar an order as is "four ale" now a days. Pudding ale, "the cheapest and worst," was hardly drinkable unless diluted with some of the penny quality of liquor. The archives of the town of Seaford, in Sussex, record that in the sixteenth century the standard prices of ale, "according to the king's statutes," were as follows:-When under the sieve (¿.e. wort), 14d.; when "stale," or kept for a short period, 1d.; and when "in the huff," that is, fermented and arrived at maturity, 2d. per gallon. Stale ale was more appreciated than its name would lead us to suppose, for an old proverb says:—

Beerum si sit cleerum est sincerum,

Alum si sit stalum non est malum.

I will conclude by calling attention to an old song written in praise of some long-forgotten brewster's ale. It is at least as old as Elizabeth's reign, for the books of the Stationers' Company show that a certain John Danter "entered for his copy a ballad entitled Jone's ale is newe," on the 26th of October, 1594. This entry quite disposes of the opinion expressed in a head-note to a version of the song printed in the Percy Society's Tracts, that it belonged to the period of the Commonwealth. I have frequently heard the song sung in Cumberland, set to a lively air :

The first that came in was a soldier,
With his fire-lock over his shoulder,

I'm sure no man could be bolder

Amongst that jovial crew.

He swore he would fight for England's crown,

Before he'd run his country down,

And every man should spend a crown
While Joan's ale was new, brave boys,
While Joan's ale was new!

THOMAS H. B. GRAHAM.

59

THE STORY OF THE BROAD GAUGE.

The fiat's gone forth that the giants of yore,

The sires that gave breath to the "Dutchman's" loud roar,
Shall be buried in life: and they've tolled the death knell
Of the noble creations of Gooch and Brunel,

We mourn for thy death, dear old Broad Gauge, and sigh
For the exquisite forms which were balm to the eye ;
Creations superb of a far-seeing brain,

No more shall we look on your equals again.

"HOW

P. ARBIE.

OW are the mighty fallen!" The Broad Gauge is a thing of the past. From the evening of May 20, 1892, till the morning of Monday (23rd), the Great Western line from Exeter to Penzance, a distance of 134 miles, together with all the broad gauge branches, was closed for traffic, to allow of the alteration of the gauge to the standard one of this country, viz., 4·8 inches.

The conversion had no doubt been kept in abeyance during the lifetime of the late chairman of the Great Western Railway, Sir Daniel Gooch, who was a pupil of Stephenson, and in 1837 was appointed locomotive superintendent to the Great Western. He was a staunch supporter of, and worked harmoniously with Brunel, winning lasting fame by his celebrated 8-foot "singles," which were first built in 1846, and, to quote Acworth :

No traveller upon the line (unless, perhaps, he should happen to be a shareholder) will see without a pang the stately "Iron Duke," the wandering "Tartar,” or the swift-flying "Swallow" disappear from the road that has known them for over forty years.

No engines in the world have so long and as famous a history as these old engines of Sir Daniel Gooch. Save that they have lost the sentry-box at the back of the tender, from which the guard used to keep watch to see that his train was duly following, they look to-day, with their great 8-foot driving wheels and their old world brass dome and brass wheel covers, just as they must have looked more than forty years ago, when our fathers gaped open-mouthed at the tale of their achievements. And, indeed, their achievements were in sober earnest remarkable enough.

Of what narrow gauge engines can the same be said? We look