Such was the fit source of this vile custom, which is further confirmed by the barbarous dialect it introduced into our language; all the terms of drinking which once abounded with us are, without exception, of a base northern origin.[158] But the best account I can find of all the refinements of this new science of potation, when it seems to have reached its height, is in our Tom Nash, who being himself one of these deep experimental philosophers, is likely to disclose all the mysteries of the craft.

He says—­“Now, he is nobody that cannot drink super-nagulum; carouse the hunter’s hoope; quaff vpse freeze crosse; with healths, gloves, mumpes, frolickes, and a thousand such domineering inventions."[159]

Drinking super-nagulum, that is, on the nail, is a device, which Nash says is new come out of France:  but it had probably a northern origin, for far northward it still exists.  This new device consisted in this, that after a man, says Nash, hath turned up the bottom of the cup to drop it on his nail, and make a pearl with what is left, which if it shed, and cannot make it stand on, by reason there is too much, he must drink again for his penance.

The custom is also alluded to by Bishop Hall in his satirical romance of “Mundus alter et idem,” “A Discovery of a New World,” a work which probably Swift read, and did not forget.  The Duke of Tenter-belly in his oration, when he drinks off his large goblet of twelve quarts, on his election, exclaims, should he be false to their laws—­“Let never this goodly-formed goblet of wine go jovially through me; and then he set it to his mouth, stole it off every drop, save a little remainder, which he was by custom to set upon his thumb’s nail, and lick it off as he did.”

The phrase is in Fletcher: 

    I am thine ad unguem—­

that is, he would drink with his friend to the last.  In a manuscript letter of the times, I find an account of Columbo, the Spanish ambassador, being at Oxford, and drinking healths to the Infanta.  The writer adds—­“I shall not tell you how our doctors pledged healths to the Infanta and the arch-duchess; and if any left too big a snuff, Columbo would cry, Supernaculum! supernaculum!"[160]

This Bacchic freak seems still preserved:  for a recent traveller, Sir George Mackenzie, has noticed the custom in his Travels through Iceland.  “His host having filled a silver cup to the brim, and put on the cover, then held it towards the person who sat next to him, and desired him to take off the cover, and look into the cup, a ceremony intended to secure fair play in filling it.  He drank our health, desiring to be excused from emptying the cup, on account of the indifferent state of his health; but we were informed at the same time that if any one of us should neglect any part of the ceremony, or fail to invert the cup, placing the edge on one of the thumbs as a proof that we had swallowed every drop, the defaulter would be obliged by the laws of drinking to fill the cup again, and drink it off a second time.  In spite of their utmost exertions, the penalty of a second draught was incurred by two of the company; we were dreading the consequences of having swallowed so much wine, and in terror lest the cup should be sent round again.”