Every one knows the legend of the water (or beer) thrown over Sir Walter by his servant when he first saw his master smoking, and imagined he was on fire.  The story was first associated with Raleigh by a writer in 1708 in a magazine called the British Apollo.  According to this yarn Sir Walter usually “indulged himself in Smoaking secretly, two pipes a Day; at which time, he order’d a Simple Fellow, who waited, to bring him up a Tankard of old Ale and Nutmeg, always laying aside the Pipe, when he heard his servant coming.”  On this particular occasion, however, the pipe was not laid aside in time, and the “Simple Fellow,” imagining his master was on fire, as he saw the smoke issuing from his mouth, promptly put the fire out by sousing him with the contents of the tankard.  One difficulty about this story is the alleged secrecy of Raleigh’s indulgence in tobacco.  There seems to be no imaginable reason why he should not have smoked openly.  Later versions turn the ale into water and otherwise vary the story.

But the story was a stock jest long before it was associated with Raleigh.  The earliest example of it occurs in the “Jests” attributed to Richard Tarleton, the famous comic performer of the Elizabethan stage, who died in 1588—­the year of the Armada.  “Tarlton’s Jests” appeared in 1611, and the story in question, which is headed “How Tarlton tooke tobacco at the first comming up of it,” runs as follows: 

“Tarlton, as other gentlemen used, at the first comming up of tobacco, did take it more for fashion’s sake than otherwise, and being in a roome, set between two men overcome with wine, and they never seeing the like, wondered at it, and seeing the vapour come out of Tarlton’s nose, cryed out, fire, fire, and threw a cup of wine in Tarlton’s 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.