tual vessels in use by
the pagan northmen who pervaded northern Europe from the 4th century
onward. Saxon graves in Britain have furnished great numbers of drinking
cups and horns, in many cases quite unbroken. From the remains, of which
the chief series are in the British and Liverpool Museums, we can learn
a great deal to amplify the references in literature. The richest single
interment that has yet been found was within the present churchyard at
Taplow. Here under a huge mound lay buried a Saxon chieftain surrounded
by his belongings; arms defensive and offensive, his drinking cups, and
even his game of draughts. The drinking vessels consisted of five cows'
horns and four glass cups. The former were of great size, 2 ft. long,
richly mounted at the mouth and at the point with silver bands embossed
and gilt. The glasses also were of great size and of a type familiar in
Saxon interments. Each was of a trumpet shape, with a small foot, while
the sides were ornamented with hollow pointed tubes bent downwards, and
open on the inner side, so that the liquid would fill them. Such a plan
is most unpractical, and it must have been very difficult to keep the
vessels clean. Glasses of this uncommon form have not been found
elsewhere than in Saxon graves, either in England or in the north of the
continent. Other types are perhaps nearly as characteristic, though of
simpler construction. One of these is a simple cone of glass, sometimes
quite plain, at others ornamented with an applied spiral glass thread,
or more rarely with festoons of white glass embedded in the body of the
vessel. A third form is a plain cup or bowl widely expanded at the mouth
and with a rounded base, so that it could only be set down when empty,
in fact a true "tumbler." This feature is in fact a very common one in
the drinking vessels of the Saxon race. There are many other varieties,
plain cylindrical goblets, generally with ornamental glass threads on
the outside, and a more usual type has a rounded body somewhat of the
shape of an orange with a wide plain mouth. Many of all these classes
were found in the famous cemetery known as the King's Field at Faversham
in Kent (the relics from which are now in the British Museum), at
Chessel Down in the Isle of Wight, and in the cemetery within the
ancient camp on High Down, near Worthing. In Belgium, France and Germany
the same types occur, and even as far north as Scandinavia, where they
are found in association