1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

DRINKS ANCIENT AND MODERN 19 ating any sort of drinks) you may preserve your juice ofrasberries at the proper season. And when you make your metheglin, decoct your honey and water together, and when it is cold then add your juice of rasberries which was before prepared to keep, and purifie your metheglin by the means before prescrib'd, or ferment it, either by a tost dipp'd in yest, or by putting a spoonful of yest unto it, to which you may add the little bagg of spices before mention'd. Then let it stand about a month to be thorowly "purified, and then bottle it, and preserve it for use, and it may in time become a curious drink." I should think so. This is what Howell (Clerk to the Privy Council in 1640) wrote about metheglin ;— The juice of Bees, not Bacchus, here behold. Which British Bards were wont to qualF of old ; The berries of the grape with Furies swell, But in the honeycomb the Graces dwell. " Neither Sir John Barleycorn or Bacchus had anything to do with it, but it is the pure juice of the bee, the laborious bee, and the king of insects ; the Druids and old British Bards were wont to take a carouse hereof before they entered into their speculations. But this drink always carried a kind of state with it, for it must be attended with a brown toast; nor will it admit but of one good draught, and that in the morning ; ifmore it will keep a humming in the head, and so speak too much of the house it comes from, I mean the hive." M'yes. I question the advisability ofany sort