1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

Ill

" A flask of cider from his father's vats, Prime, which I knew." Tennyson :

Andlcy Court.

We have little information about cider either from the Greeks or the Latins. It would seem that it was not known to them, if we may trust Ainsworth, who translates cider by succics e pomis expre^sus, and Byzantlus, who gives iuiti\iT}]g (ofi/o?) elS. irordv as the equivalent for cidre} Gerard, in his Histdrie of Plants, published in 1597, says that he saw in the pastures and hedgerows about the grounds of a *' worshipful gentleman," dwelling two miles from Hereford, called M. Roger Bodnome, so many trees of all sorts that the servants drunk for the most part no other drink but that which is made from apples. The quantity, says Gerard, was such that by the report of the gentleman himself, the parson " hath for tithe many hogsheads of Syder." This reference to the servants and the parson drinking it, but not to the " gentleman," seems to show that the liquor was not then held in much esteem. Bacon placed cider after wine, and we have followed in our arrangement of the present volume his august example. This great philosopher speaks of cider and perry as ''notable beverages on sea- voyages." The cider of his day did not, he says, sour by crossing the

He also

and was good against

sea-sickness.

line,

'' wonderful pleasing and refreshing

speaks of cider, a

New Allaniis.

drink," in his

Talmid, Abqdah Zarah, fol. 40, col, 2,

In

a

of tlie

treatise

^

cider is called ''wine of aj>plcs,"