Enough has been said as to the use of beer among Eastern nations to disprove the theory of the old author of the _Haven of Health_, who asserts, quoting “Master Eliote” as his authority, that ale was never used as a common drink in any other country than in “England, Scotland, Ireland, and Poile.” { 28}
Ale or beer was in common use in Germany in the time of Tacitus, and Pliny, who may have tasted beer while serving in the army in Germany, says, “All the nations who inhabit the west of Europe have a liquor with which they intoxicate themselves, made of corn and water (_fruge madida_). The manner of making this liquor is somewhat different in Gaul, Spain, and other countries, and it is called by various names; but its nature and properties are everywhere the same. The people of Spain in particular brew this liquor so well that it will keep good for a long time. So exquisite is the ingenuity of mankind in gratifying their vicious appetites, that they have thus invented a method of making water itself intoxicate.” Among the many various kinds of drink so made were _zythum_, _cœlia_, _ceria_, _Cereris vinum_, _curmi_, and _cerevisia_. All these names, except _zythum_, are probably merely local variations of one word, whose British representative may be found in the Welsh _cwrw_.
Turning to the earliest records of the use of malt liquors in this country, we find that, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Britons made use of a very simple diet which consisted chiefly of milk and venison. Their usual drink was water; but upon festive occasions they drank a kind of fermented liquor, made of barley, honey, or apples, and were very quarrelsome in their cups. Dioscorides wrote in the first century that the Britons, instead of wine, use “curmi,” a liquor made from barley. Pytheas (300 B.C.) said a fermented grain liquor was made in Thule.
The drinks in use in this island at the time of its conquest by the Romans seem to have been metheglin, cider, and ale. Metheglin, or mead, was probably the most ancient and universally used of all intoxicating drinks among European nations. Cider is in all probability the next in order of antiquity of the drinks in use amongst our Celtic predecessors. It was made from wild apples, but its use was probably not so wide-spread as that of either mead or ale.
