TOASTS.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 August 1923, Page 4

TOASTS.

(A. ('. U. D. in Daily Mail.)

To the ancient libations to the sods no doubt can be traced our present habit of drinking toasts, and probably there is, did we hut know them, a long procession of these mundane deities to which we drink.

That our stirrup-cups and our lovirtgciips go back to .Saxon days there can be little doubt, and the ancient ceremonial still observed at City banquets during the passing of the great twohandled loving-cups is a direct survival of days when it was dangerous to drink in the presence of one who was illaffected.

That ■■.St. George for Metric Rugland” was drunk as a toast f have no douht whatever: 1 am almost persuaded that the phrase was really nothing hut it toast, for T am somewhat sceptical i 1 the use of ordered battle-cries in days when armies were feudal and not national,

The Stuart times bring us more knowledge, and though no one doubts that many drank ‘A health unto his Mu jesty.” the words used are not, so far as I know, a matter of record. By Jacobite days the toast had crystallised into "The King.” Whether the Hanoverians drank it with one foot on the table and one foot on the chair, and when the toast had been drunk, the glass was thrown over the shoulder to shiver in pieces on the wall or the Moor in order that it might never he e.-'d thereafter lor any less sacred purpose. And the Jacobites had other observances. I!.aore drinking, the glass was passed over the tiiigor-howl, and they therefore drank to “The King over the water”: this is win- the custom grew up in the Koval Household which forbade the appearance of lirger-bowls npi n llie royal tabio. lint the real Jacobite toast was to "The little gentleman in the black velvet coat,” which, being translated, means the mole that made the molehill which caused King William Ill's horse to stumble when the king fell and received the injuries from which he eventually died.