Anglo Saxon Food

By Peter C Horn

The four alcoholic drinks of the Anglo-Saxons were beor, ealu, medu and win. Today we have similar names for some alcoholic drinks, i.e. beer, ale, mead and wine, and it is commonly, and quite naturally, assumed that our modern drinks must be similar to those bearing similar names in Old English.

However, some writers have expressed doubts as to whether beor was in fact a malt-based drink similar to beer today. It has been suggested that the drink the Anglo-Saxons called beor was in fact the drink we now call cider. It has also been suggested that beor was a strong alcoholic, sweet fruit-juice; a short drink sipped from little cups. Of course both these suggestions cannot be correct, at least not at the same period of time. The following is mainly an attempt to see if there is any evidence for or against either of these suggestions. Also will be examined a related problem, namely, if Anglo-Saxon beor was similar to the drink we now call beer, how did beor differ from the drink they called ealu (ale)?

Old English beor is a very early drink-name. Compounds such as beorsele (beer-hall) and gebeorscipe (drinking party) show that the name beor had been in existence long enough for it to be used in a general sense to mean ‘strong alcoholic drink,’ in addition to its use as the name of a specific alcoholic beverage. Thus we have Gif ∂onne on gebeorscipe (Ine’s Laws AD688-94); and beorsele appearing only in early poetical texts and therefore indicating a term going back to the pagan period. It would certainly be extremely strange if a name for a high-status drink, drunk in the pagan beer-halls, was derived from monastic Latin.

From the Roman, Cornelius Tacitus, born c. AD 56, we learn that the alcoholic drink of the Germanic folk was a liquor made from barley, or other grain, fermented to produce a certain resemblance to wine (Germania: 23). It is interesting that Tacitus does not mention mead or cider. The drink of the Germanic folk, or at least their main drink, was, it seems, the drink that today we call beer or ale. We know from the Old English medicinal recipes that beor was much stronger than ealu and it would seem natural to assume that beor was the drink of the warriors in the Hall and ealu was the drink of the members of the family.

WINE

When Tacitus says that Germanic beer had a ‘resemblance to wine’ he perhaps should be taken as meaning that, not having vineyards at that time, the Germans made their alcoholic drink from barley, which they grew in quantity, and that this was their equivalent alcoholic drink to the Roman wine made from grapes. In other words, the Romans drank wine and the Germans drank beer. He probably did not mean that the Germans were trying, and failing, to make a drink up to the standard of Roman wine. This insulting view was however promoted by the Roman elite at a later date, for example by the Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus (AD 331-365) who maintained that Roman wine was like nectar whereas Germanic beer stank like a Billy-goat.

From the 7th century AD the Anglo-Saxons had a small number of vineyards and, to some little extent , adopted the Roman drink. But wine was never plentiful throughout the period and was therefore expensive and available only to a relatively small number of wealthy people. In Ælfric’s Colloquy the conversation runs as follows:

Ond hwæt drincst ∂u? (And what do you drink?) Ealu, gif ic hæbbe, o∂∂e wæter gif ic næbbe ealu (Ale, if I have it, or water if I have no ale)

Ne drincst ∂u win? (Do you not drink wine) Ic ne eom swa swedig ∂æt ic mæge bicgean me win. (I am not so wealthy that I may buy wine)

There was a warmer climatic phase from the 9th – 13th centuries, when it would have been easier to cultivate vines in England, though wine was still not drunk, certainly in any quantity, by the mass of the people. In his description of Britain in the middle of the 8th century, Bede says that vines grow ‘in some places’ (on summum stowum wingeardas growa∂). Wine was mainly produced for personal comsumption by the lord and his retinue (Hagen p.221) and later for those in the great monasteries.

Few monasteries were without a vineyard. Wine was needed for the Eucharist and the monks were usually allowed generous amounts for their own consumption. In the Old English medicinal recipes wine appears more frequently than any other alcoholic drink. This is partly due to the fact that the vineyards and the medicinal texts are both closely associated with the monasteries. In addition, the great use of wine reflects the Mediterranean origin of many of the recipes.

Wine has by far the greatest number of name compounds. According to Fell, the name win has fifty compounds whereas beor has eleven. Hagen points out that many of the win compounds are functional and descriptive, relating to wine production; for example, winbeam (vine), winberige (grape), wingeard (vineyard), Wingeardseax (pruning knife), winreafetian (gather grapes), winwringe (wine press) and winwyrcend (wine dresser). In passing, it should be noted that beor does not have these functional compounds. If the term beor was used by the Anglo-Saxons to mean cider, then we would expect to see compounds of the word beor relating to cider production; but there are none. This is a strong indication that beor was not cider.

Wine was not an early, traditional drink of the Anglo-Saxons. From early, pagan times their high-status, strong alcoholic drinks were beor and medu (mead). These were the drinks of the warriors in the Hall and thus we have the terms beorsele (Beer Hall) and meduhealle (Mead Hall). Mead is a honey-based drink and it has been suggested that Beor was also a sweet drink. But having two high-status sweet drinks seems to reflect Roman rather than Germanic practice. One would have thought that beor would have been the strong drink made from barley mentioned by Tacitus, thus providing a choice between a sweetish drink (mead) and a thirst-quenching bitter drink (beor).

Mead and other Honey-based Drinks

The name mead does not seem to have germanic origins. Thus we have not only OE medu, OFris mede, OHG medo and ON mio∂r, all drinks made from honey and water, but also Lith medus and OSlav medu, meaning honey and Greek medu meaning wine and Sanskrit madhu meaning honey-sweet wine. Therefore others had ancient drinks similar to the mead of the Germanic folk.

The plant called in Old English Meduwyrt is usually taken to be, and probably was, the plant we now call meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria). This is often said to be a plant used by the Anglo-Saxons to give additional flavour to their mead.

In addition to mead there were a number of foreign drinks, some mentioned

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