1863 Cups and their customs

CUPS AND THEIR CUSTOMS.

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pie, and so on; the pins were therefore so many measures to the eompotsLtors^^ making them all drink alike, or the sam^ quantity ; and as the space between each pin was such as to contain a large draught of liquor, the company would be very liable by this method to get drunk, especially when, if they drank short of the pin, or beyond it, they were obliged to drink again. For this reason, in Archbishop AnseWs Canons, made in the Council at London in 1102, priests are enjoined not to go to drinking-bouts, nor to drink to pegs. This shows the antiquity of the invention, which, at least, is as old as the Conquest, There is a cup now in the possession of Henry Howard, Esq., of Corby Castle, which is said to have belonged to Thomas a Becket. is made of ivory set in gold, with an inscription round the edge of it, "Drink thy wine with joy ;^^ and on the lid is engraved the words " Sobrii estote,^^ with the initials T. B. interlaced with a mitre, from which circumstance it is attributed to Thomas a Becket ; but in reality the cup is a work of the 16th century. Among other drinking-vessels, we may also mention a curious cup possessed by the Vintners^ Company, repre- senting a milk- maid carrying a pail on her head. This pail is arranged to act on a swivel ; and so ingeniously is it contrived, that those of the uninitiated who are invited to partake of it invariably receive its contents upon their bosom. In the latter half of the last century, beer was usually carried from the cellar to the table in large tankards made of leather, calledBlackjacks, some of which are still to be found, as also smaller ones more refined in It