1863 Cups and their customs

CUPS AND THEIR CUSTOMS.

37

a-days, are restricted to the bed-chamber, where they are taken in cases of catarrh, to act as agreeable sudorifics. They appear to us to be too much associated with tallow applied to the nose, to induce us to give recipes for their composition, although in olden times they seem to have been drunk on festive occasions, as Shakspeare says " We will have a posset at the end of a sea-coal fire ; '^ and Sir John Suckling, who lived in the early part of the 17th century, has in one of his poems the line The Grace-cup and Loving-cup appear to be synony- mous terms for a beverage, the drinking of which has been from time immemorial a great feature at the corporation dinners in London and other large towns, as also at the feasts of the various trade companies and the Inns of Court, — the mixture of which is a compound of wine and spices, formerly called ^^ Sack,^^ and is handed round the table, before the removal of the cloth, in large silver cups, from which no one is allowed to drink before the guest on either side of him has stood up ; the person who drinks then rises and bows to his neighbours. This custom is said to have originated in the precaution to keep the right or dagger hand employed, as it was a frequent practice with the Danes to stab their companions in the back at the time they were drinking. The most notable in- stance of this was the treachery employed by Elfrida, who stabbed King Edward the Martyr at Corfe Castle whilst thus engaged. At the Temple the custom of the '' In came the bridesmaids with the posset."