“Come troll the jovial flagon, Come fill the bonny bowl, Come, join in laughing sympathy Of soul with kindred soul.”
A few pages must suffice for a very short notice of this interesting part of our subject.
Anglo-Saxon Tumblers.
Mr. Sharon Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, gives many instances of the high estimation in which cups and drinking vessels were held by our Teutonic forefathers. Even in very early times the precious metals were largely used in their construction, and gold and silver cups are frequently the subjects of Anglo-Saxon bequests. In the old poem Beowulf evidence may be found bearing upon this point. One of the treasures in the ancient barrow guarded by the dragon Grendel is “The solid cup, the costly drinking vessel (drync fœt deore).” Drinking vessels are frequently found in Anglo-Saxon tombs. The cups represented in the cut are made of glass, and were found chiefly in barrows in Kent. They are of the “tumbler” species, i.e., on being filled they must be emptied at a draught, and cannot be set down with any liquor in them. Mr. Wright suggests that the example to the left represents the “twisted” pattern mentioned in Beowulf.
The savage custom, observed both by the Celts and Saxons, of drinking ale or mead from {394} a cup made out of the skull of a fallen foe, has left a trace in mediæval times in the word “scole,” signifying a cup or bowl, and may probably still be recognised in the provincial word “skillet,” which has the same meaning.
Henry, in his History of England, relates that the Celtic inhabitants of the Western Islands of Scotland spoke in their poetical way of intoxicating liquors as “the strength of the shell,” from the fact that they used shells as drinking vessels.
Returning to the Anglo-Saxons—besides metal and glass cups, they used drinking horns, and cups or bowls of wood, and in some respects the horn was the most important of their drinking vessels. Investiture of lands was frequently made by the horn both among the Saxons and Danes. The celebrated Horn of Ulphus, kept in the Sacristy of York Minster, was, according to Camden, given to the Cathedral by a noble Dane named Ulphus, who, when his sons quarrelled as to the succession to his estate, cut short the dispute by repairing to the Minster, and there enfeoffed the Cathedral with all his lands and revenues, draining the horn before the high altar as a pledge and evidence of the gift. The Mercian King Witlaf gave a drinking horn to the Abbey of Croyland “that the elder monks may drink from it on feast days, and remember the soul of the donor.”
Cup found in the Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey.