The fierce and the mute both enjoy it.”
Mead was made from honey and water, fermented, and in many languages its name has a striking similarity. In Greek, honey is methu, in Sanskrit, madhu, and the drink made therefrom in Danish, is miod, in Anglo-Saxon, medu, in Welsh, medd, whence metheglyn—medd, mead, and llyn, liquor. In Beowulf we frequently find mention of the mead-horns, and we see it vividly portrayed in the heading of this chapter, which is taken from the Bayeux Tapestry. These horns were generally those of oxen, although some were made of ivory, and were probably used because fictile ware was so easily broken in those drinking bouts in which they so frequently indulged. Another reason was doubtless that they promoted conviviality, for, like the classical Rhyton, they could not be set down like a bowl, but must either be nursed, or their contents quaffed.
Many examples of drinking horns remain to us, and illustrations of two are here given: one that of Ulph, belonging to, and now kept at, York Minster, and the other the Pusey horn. These are veritable drinking horns; but there are many other tenure horns in existence, which are hunting horns.
The Pusey Horn.
This horn is an old tenure horn. It was once the custom, when making a gift of land, instead of making out a deed of gift, to present some article of personal use, such as a knife, a drinking or hunting horn, and with it the manor or land, the recipient keeping the present, as a proof that the land was given him. This Pusey horn is said to have been given by King Knut to William Pewse, and on the silver-gilt band, to which are appended dog’s legs and feet, is inscribed in Gothic letters—
“Kyng Knowde geve Wyllyam Pewse
This horne to holde by thy lond.”
It is an ox horn, dark brown, and is 25½ inches long, having a silver-gilt rim, and at the small end a hound’s head, also of silver-gilt, which unscrews, thus enabling it to be used either as a drinking or hunting horn.