Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/488

 468 Hi/iory of Domejiic Manners adventure, of fome honourable perfonage, whofe health is drunk to, and he that pledges mud likewife off with his cap, kits his fingers, and bow himlelf in fign of a reverent acceptance. When the leader fees his follower thus prepared, he fups up his broth, turns the bottom of the cup upward, and, in oftentation of his dexterity, gives the cup a phillip to make it cry twango. And thus the firft fcene is afted. The cup being newly replenilhed to the breadth of a hair, he that is the pledger muft now begin his part, and thus it goes round throughout the whole com- pany." In order to afcertain that each perfon had fairly drunk off his cup, in turning it up he was to pour all that remained in it on his nail, and if there were too much to remain as a drop on the nail without running off, he was made to drink his cup full again. This was termed drinking on the nail, for which convivialifts invented a mock Latin phrafe, and called it drinking y}//it'r uagiilitw, or fiiper-naculum. This cuftom of pledging in drinking was as old as the times of the Anglo-Saxons, when it exifted in the " waes heil" and " drinc heil," commemorated in the ftory of the Britilh Vortigern and the Saxon Rowena, and it is alluded to in feveral ballads of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as in that of " King Edward and the Shepherd," where the man who drinks pledges his companion with the word " paffe- lodion," and the other replies by " berafrynde," and in that of "The Kyng and the Hermyt," where the words of pledging and reply are " fufty bandyas," and "ftryke pautnere." Both thefe ballads are printed in Hartlliorne's "Ancient Metrical Tales." The drinking of the healths of abfent individuals appears to have been introduced at a later period, and was carried to its greateft degree of extravagance on the continent. The perfon whofe health a man gave was ufually expefted to be his miftrefsj and in France he was expelled, in doing this, to drink as many times his glafs or cup full of wine as there were letters in her name. Thus, in Ronfard's " Bacchanales," the gallant drinks nine times to his mirtrefs Caffandre, becaufe there were nine letters in her name : — Neuffois, au nom de Caffandre^ Je -vois prendre Neuffois du w» dufacon ; Affin