Most of the villagers find their way to this cottage to buy their supply of mead for the festive season. The occupants of the cottage have an ancient recipe from which they concoct this quite potent drink. It is very popular as families gather around a blazing fire at Christmas. There have been many attemps to find out the recipe, but the Mead Cottage dwellers guard their secret well. All they will say is that there's honey and water in it -- which the villagers could have worked out for themselves.
   The cottagers keep their own bees and sell some of their honey throughout the year. But the bulk of it is kept for this festive drink, which they begin making during the summer to be stored for some months before drinking. The cheering results of fermenting honey and water were known in ancient times. The Romans called it "hydromel." It was also drunk by the Greeks, and many a Norse and Anglo-Saxon festival was enlivened with mead.