Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1875 — Taking Down a Peg. [ARTICLE]

Taking Down a Peg.

* According to Rapin, the Saxons were addicted to drink, and used such immense cups that King Edgar, to check this evil habit, ordered certain marks to be made in their cups, at a given height, above which they were forbidden to fill, under a severe penalty. These were called peg-tankards, and a peg-tankard is nowadays a great treasure. A pegtankard hatl on the inside a row of eight pegs, one above another, from top to bottom. It was a noble piece of plate and ordinarily held two quarts, so that there was a gill of ale between each peg. The law was that every person who drank was to open the space between pin and pin, so that the pins were so many measures to make the company all drink alike. ” This," says an authority, “ was a contrivance for merriment, and a pretty sure method of making all the company drunk, especially if it be considered that the rule was that whoever drank short of his pin, or beyond it, was obliged to drink again or even so deep as the next pin.” Conseque»tly in Archbishop Anslem s canons, laid down at the Council of London, A. D. 1102, priests are forbidden “ to drink' to pegs.” The expression to take down a .peg has its origin in tips custom, meaning to abate a man just as the liquor is abated. At Braintree, in Essex, England, from which one of the earliest New England towns takes its name, customs which sprang from peg-tankards lingered even into the present century. Topers partaking of ale divided it' into three draughts—“ neckum, sinkum, squankura” —the word swank being defined in Bailey’s Dictionary as that “ remainder of liquor at the bottom of a tatkard which is just sufficient for one draught, which itis npt accounted good manners to divide, and, according to 4 the quantity, is called a large or a little swank?’ —A’. I'. Times. . 1 To cure scratches in horses, wash the legs with warm, strong soap-suds and then with beqf brine.