JOHN BARLEYCORN IN SHAKSPERE'S TIMES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1517, 29 January 1886, Page 3

JOHN BARLEYCORN IN SHAKSPERE'S TIMES.

About eight miles down the Avon from Stratford lies the village of Bidford. Here, in Shakspere's days, Norton, mine host of the falcon, brewed a famous ale which Sir Aston Cokain celebrated in 1658 in an epigram addressed to Mr Clement Fisher, of (\V r ilmcote, a village close to Stratford). Tradition goes on to say that at Bidford there were two drinking clubs —the Topers and the Sippers. On a certain Saturday it would appear that Shakspere with a company of friends walked over from Stratford by the pleasant Evesham road to drink a match at Evesham. The Sippers, however, were in full force ; and, as they could do no better, Shakspere and his friends agreed to drink a bout with them at the Falcon. So powerful was Norton's ale that when they set out to walk hom9 to Stratford they got no further than the top of the hill above the village and there lay down, under a crab tree and fell asleep. Early in the morning they were awakened by a little ploughboy whistling as he went to work with his team. Shakspere reproached him for breaking the Sabbath by going to plough. And then the boy told him it was Monday not Sunday morning. The poet and his friends had slept right through the Sabbath. The friends wished to go back to Bidford and begin over again at the Falcon. But Shakspere knew that he had had all the fun that was to be got out of that carouse, and pointing with his fiager to the eight villages that lay within sight of the crab tree, he refused, saying,

There's piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, Haunted Aiilborough, hungry Grafton f

Dudging Exhall, papiet Wixfjrd, Beggarly Broam, and drunken Bidford.