Home › The Swarm › The Swarm: Gudrun

The Swarm: Gudrun

The fatal potency of mead was not ignored even in song, for in the "Elder Edda," where Lok picks a quarrel with Elder, we read: - "For Asi sons the bowl I fill With mead, the source of many an ill." - --- A fearful revenge did Gudrun take upon her husband Atli, in one of the oldest epics of the north. The mead she brewed him was mixed with the blood of his and her sons, because he had killed the brothers of his fierce spouse. When Atli returned from the carnage Gudrun received him. "The bright-faced Gudrun, that fierce lady, hastened to bear the wine to the lords, and in her cruelty to share out the dainty morsels to the pale-faced princes, but to Atli she spoke a word of mockery. 'Thou hast eaten the freshbleeding hearts of thy sons, mixed with honey, thou giver of swords. Now thou shalt digest the gory flesh of man, thou stern king, having eaten of it as a dainty morsel, and sent it as a mess to thy friends. Never shalt thou, merry with ale, call thy two sons, Erp and Eitil, to thy knees from thy high seat. Thou shalt never see in the midst of thy court the young princes shafting their spears, clipping their horses' manes, or spurring their steeds!'" Again, in a fragment of an Atli lay, Atli says to Gudrun: "I dreamed that two hawks flew off my hand, famished for food. I dreamed that in sorrowful mood I ate their hearts all full of blood, dressed with honey."

In the early Christian ages mead was still a favorite drink, and in the "Legends of the Holy Rood," belonging from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, we find it occasionally mentioned.

In the "Dispute between Mary and the Cross" occur these curious lines : - "Adam drowned his ghost in bitter gall; instead of this gall God gave us mead; with sweet mercy the bitterness is quenched." And again in the same legend, - "The fell Jews, stone-hearted in dark sins, have beaten a lamb, - softer than milk or mead mixed together. Like hard stones were the Jews. Softer than dew on the lillyflower, was Christ's body in bloody colours." Mead, or meth, as it is often written, was still a common drink in Chaucer's time, and in the "Knight's Tale," Emelye, going to sacrifice at Diana's altar, took "Hir maydens, that she thider with hir ladde, Ful redily with hem the fyr they hadde, Thencens, the clothes, and the remenant al That to the sacrifyce longen shal; The hornes full of meth, as was the gyse; Ther lakked noght to doon hir sacrifyse."

And in the " Miller's Tale," we are told of the carpenter's wife that, "Hir mouth was swete as bragot or the meeth, Or hord of apples leyd in hey or heeth."

Mead Although the people drank sack instead of mead in Shakespeare's time, the bard of Avon occasionally refers to the older and no longer universal drink. In "Merry Wives of Windsor," Sir Hugh Evans anathematizing Falstaff declares him to be given to "sack and wine, and metheglins," and in " Love's Labour 's Lost" Biron, jesting with the princess, uses the words "metheglin, wort, and malmsey," as illustrations of things that are sweet.

Yet mead was a drink for royalty, concerning which Butler tells us : - "He who liketh to know the many and sundry makings of this wholesome drink must learn it of the ancient Britains: who therein do pass all other people. One excellent receipt I will here recite : and it is of that which our renowned Queen Elisabeth, of happy memory, did so well like, that she would every year have a vessel of it. "The Queen's Metheglin. First, gather a bushel of sweetbriar leaves, and a bushel of thyme, half a bushel of rosemary, and a peck of bay-leaves. Seethe all these (being well washed) in a furnace¹ of fair water; let them boil the space of half an hour, or better: and then pour out all the water and herbs into a vat, and let it stand until it be but milk warm: then strain the water from the herbs, and take to every six gallons of water one gallon of the finest honey, and put it into the boorne, and labor it together half an hour: then let it stand two days, stirring it well twice or thrice each day. Then take the liquor and boil it anew: and when it doth seethe, skim it as long as there remaineth any dross. When it is clear, put it into the vat as before, and there let it be cooled. You must then have in readiness a kiv(e) of new ale or beer, which as soon as you have emptied, suddenly whelm it upside down, and set it up again, and presently put in the metheglin, and let it stand 1 According to Bevan not less than 120 gallons. three days a working. And then tun it up in barrels, tying at every tap-hole (by a pack thread) a little bag of beaten cloves and mace, to the value of an ounce. "It must stand half a year before it is drunk."

Such was the mead of good Queen Bess.

We of to-day would like to taste this beverage so agreeable to the royal palate of another age, but Elizabeth's recipe offers difficulties which few will take the trouble to surmount.

Bevan gives the following recipe for mead, which though it lacks the most attractive ingredients of the queen's drink possesses the advantages of being understandable and simple : - "Dissolve an ounce of cream of tartar in five gallons of boiling water; pour the solution off clear upon twenty pounds of fine honey, boil them together, and remove the scum as it rises. Towards the end of the boiling add an ounce of fine hops; about ten minutes afterwards put the liquor into a tub to cool; when reduced to a temperature of 70° or 80° Fahrenheit, according to the season, add a slice of bread toasted, and smeared over with a very little yeast; the smaller the quantity the better, for yeast invariably spoils the flavor of wines, and where there is a sufficiency of extractive matter in the ingredients employed, it should never be introduced: if fermented in wooden vessels none is required. The liquor should now stand in a warm room, and be stirred occasionally. As soon as it begins to carry a bead it should be tunned, and the cask filled up from time to time from the reserve, till the fermentation has nearly subsided. It should now be bunged down, leaving open a small peg-hole; in a few days this may also be closed, and in about twelve months the wine will be fit to bottle." Those impatient to test the result of their brewing may make their mead thus : - Mead "Wash refuse combs in water, after extracting from them as much of the honey as will run; then boil for a few minutes. This liquor will not require tartar or yeast. It should be tunned as soon as cool, bunged down in three or four days, and drunk in a few weeks."