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The Swarm: Mead

MEAD MEAD, made from honey and water fermented, was the wine of the Northern peoples, being to them what the Blessed Soma juice was to the Hindus, palm and date wine to the Egyptians, and the fermented juice of the grape to the Greeks and Romans.

The Hindus also used mead, though as a more common drink, and we know it was used in Greece and Italy both as a drink and for sacrifices.

Apollonius Rhodius, about 235 b.c., in his "Argonauts," tells that before embarking they rested on the shore. "And beside them lay vast stores of food and sweet mead, which cupbearers drew forth in beakers."

And again he says of Idas, one of the Argonauts, - "He spake; and grasping in both hands a full goblet, drank off the pure sweet mead."

When about to start they made their oblations, as Apollonius Rhodius takes care to inform us, - "And now were the cables drawn in, and they poured a cup of mead upon the sea."

The Abyssinians are also known to have used mead; in short, nearly all peoples at some time or other have valued it.

But it is in the heroic Northern age that we find mead the drink of the heroes. In the great feasting halls fair hands held the cup that crowned the feast.

Mead These cups were sometimes "golden goblets;" again, they were "horns" made from ox-horns or earlier from the capacious horns of the orochs curiously carved, often of enormous size, and frequently supplied with feet so that they could be set down when full.