The plain country fellow, plowman, or clown, is several pegs lower, and described by Bishop Earle as one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lie fallow and untitled.  His hand guides the plow, and the plow his thoughts.  His mind is not much disturbed by objects, but he can fix a half-hour’s contemplation on a good fat cow.  His habitation is under a poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn only by loop-holes that let out the smoke.  Dinner is serious work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labor, and he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef.  His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord and refers it wholly to his discretion, but he is a good Christian in his way, that is, he comes to church in his best clothes, where he is capable only of two prayers—­for rain and fair weather.

The country clergymen, at least those of the lower orders, or readers, were distinguished in Shakespeare’s time by the appellation “Sir,” as Sir Hugh, in the “Merry Wives,” Sir Topas, in “Twelfth Night,” Sir Oliver, in “As You Like It.”  The distinction is marked between priesthood and knighthood when Vista says, “I am one that would rather go with Sir Priest than Sir Knight.”  The clergy were not models of conduct in the days of Elizabeth, but their position excites little wonder when we read that they were often paid less than the cook and the minstrel.

There was great fondness in cottage and hall for merry tales of errant 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 lower,” or taking him “down a peg,” from this custom.