face. Make no more stirre, quoth Tarlton, the fire is quenched: if
the sheriffes come, it will turne to a fine, as the custome is. And
drinking that againe, fie, sayes the other, what a stinke it makes; I
am almost poysoned. If it offend, saies Tarlton, let every one take a
little of the smell, and so the savour will quickly goe: but tobacco
whiffes made them leave him to pay all."

In the early days of smoking, the smoker was very generally said to
"drink" tobacco.

Another early example of the story occurs in Barnaby Rich's "Irish
Hubbub," 1619, where a "certain Welchman coming newly to London," and
for the first time seeing a man smoking, extinguished the fire with a
"bowle of beere" which he had in his hand.

Various places are traditionally associated with Raleigh's first pipe.
The most surprising claim, perhaps, is that of Penzance, for which
there is really no evidence at all. Miss Courtney, writing in the
_Folk-Lore Journal_, 1887, says: "There is a myth that Sir Walter
Raleigh landed at Penzance Quay when he returned from Virginia, and on
it smoked the first tobacco ever seen in England, but for this I do
not believe that there is the slightest foundation. Several western
ports, both in Devon and Cornwall, make the same boast." Miss Courtney
might have added that Sir Walter never himself visited Virginia at
all.

Another place making a similar claim is Hemstridge, on the Somerset
and Dorset border. Just before reaching Hemstridge from Milborne Port,
at the cross-roads, there is a public-house called the Virginia Inn.
There, it is said, according to Mr. Edward Hutton, in his "Highways