knights, lovers, lords, ladies, dwarfs, friars, thieves, witches,
goblins, for old stories told by the fireside, with a toast of ale on the
hearth, as in Milton's allusion

"---to the nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat"

A designation of winter in "Love's Labour's Lost" is

"When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."

To "turne a crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw
it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a
toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of his wanton pranks:

"And sometimes I lurk in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks against her lips I bob:"

I love no roast, says John Still, in "Gammer Gurton's Needle,"

"I love no rost, but a nut-browne torte,
And a crab layde in the fyre;
A lytle bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire."

In the bibulous days of Shakespeare, the peg tankard, a species of
wassail or wish-health bowl, was still in use. Introduced to restrain
intemperance, it became a cause of it, as every drinker was obliged to
drink down to the peg. We get our expression of taking a man "a peg