FIG. 21.—TWO WOODEN CUPS.
FIG. 22.—WOODEN FLAGON, WITH COPPER BANDS.
(In the National Museum of Wales.)
FIGS. 23, 24.—COCOANUT CUPS (SILVER-MOUNTED).
FIG. 25.—COCOANUT FLAGON.
It is said that the pegs were first ordered by Edgar, the Saxon king, to prevent excessive drinking, the tankard being passed round, every man being expected to drink down to the next peg. Heywood, in his Philocathonista, says: "Of drinking cups, divers and sundry sorts we have, some of elm, some of box, and some of maple and holly." According to the quaint spelling of those days there were then in use in Merrie England: "Mazers, noqqins, whiskins, piggins, cringes, ale-bowls, wassel bowls, tankard and kames from a pottle to a pint and from a pint to a gill." The leather cups and tankards or black jacks (see Chapter [VIII]) were mostly used in country places by "shepheards and harvesters." A writer in a work published in the early years of the nineteenth century says: "Besides metal and wood and pottery we have cups of hornes of beasts, of cocker nuts, of goords, of eggs of ostriches, and of the shells of divers fishes."
A simple cocoanut, mounted in silver and made into a cup, perhaps a century or more ago, is by no means to be despised. Some are beautifully polished and ornamented with incised work. Contemporary with the earlier specimens are pots made of ostrich eggs, mounted in silver, regarded of great value in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the university colleges possess fine examples, and there are many in the hands of London silversmiths. Figs. [23] and [24] represent two cocoanut cups with feet of silver, one engraved with the owner's initials, the foot being decorated with bead ornament. Fig. [25] is a cocoanut mounted as a flagon with handle of whalebone and rim and foot of silver. The use of such cups seems to have been very generally distributed all over the world, for there are many South American examples, as well as the English varieties. The gourd, too, was used for similar purposes; the Mexicans made such bowls and cups, finishing them off with silver mounts and sometimes adding silver feet. There are French flasks made of small gourds, sometimes scent flasks being made in the same way, not infrequently decorated with incised inlays of coloured composition on a black ground. Some of the English silversmiths engraved hunting scenes on small flasks made of the rind of a gourd, choosing hunting scenes and birds and familiar outdoor objects.
In Figs. [21] and [21]A are shown two curious old wood drinking cups, and Fig. [22] represents a wooden jug bound with copper.
Horn was a favourite material for cups, sometimes surmounted by elaborate covers and feet of silver. One of the rarest drinking horns, now in Queen's College, Oxford, was presented to the College by the Queen of Edward III in 1340. Of later types there are beakers and tumbler cups, the latter rounded at the base so that they were easily upset, the idea being that they must be emptied at the first draught. From these cups sprang the quaint hunting cups in porcelain, modelled in the form of a hare's head, or like a fox, some of the scarcest being evidently modelled for the fisherman's use, to take the form of a fish's head.
The very remarkable drinking cup shown in Fig. [27] is made of walnut; the ridges, carved in deep relief, stand out boldly, each one being carved, the letters forming a complete metaphor, to which is added the name of its original owner, the inscription reading as follows:—