SCANDINAVIAN SKULL CUPS.
What a pretty tale was slaughtered when Grenville Piggot pointed out, in his Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, the blundering translation of the passage in an old Scandinavian poem relating to the occupation of the blest in the halls of Valhalla, the Northern paradise! “Soon shall we drink out of the curved horns of the head,” are the words in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog; meaning by this violent figure to say that they would imbibe their liquor out of cups formed from the crooked horns of animals. The first translators, however, not seeing their way clearly, rendered the passage, “Soon shall we drink out of the skulls of our enemies;” and to this strange banqueting there are allusions without end to be met with in our literature. Peter Pindar, for example, once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors.