Your correspondent James Graves seems to consider cooking in a skull impossible. I certainly have never tried it, nor do I wish to express an opinion as to the taste of the Irish or their invaders, A.D. 1315, though methinks those who relished the "flesh" need not have demurred to the pot. But as to the possibility, in Ewbank on Hydraulic Machines, book i. cap. 3., I find the following mention of

"Primitive Boilers.—The gourd is probably the original vessel for heating water, &c. &c., its exterior being kept moistened by water while on the fire, as still practised by some people, while others apply a coating of clay to protect it from the effects of flame."

He then quotes Kotzebue as finding "the Radack Islanders boiling something in cocoa-shells." A primitive Sumatran vessel for boiling rice is the bamboo, which is still used; by the time the rice is dressed the vessel is nearly destroyed by the fire. This destructibility needs hardly to be considered an objection to the "starving fugitives," as plenty of the same kind must have been at hand, and even an Irishman's skull is probably as little inflammable as gourds, cocoa-sells, or bamboos.

J. P. O.

Should the following extract not be considered as bearing on the question, we must admit that it is a remarkable bit of folk lore.

The quotation is second-hand, being taken from the Chronicles of London Bridge, Family Library, p. 436.; the authority is, however, there given. The passage refers to some parties engaged to refine the coinage, and who were taken ill, affected probably by the fumes of arsenic.

"—— the mooste of them in meltinge fell sycke to deathe, wth the sauoure, so as they were advised to drynke in a dead man's skull for theyre recure.

"Whereupon he wth others who had thovergyght of that worke, procured a warrant from the Counsaile to take of the heades vppon London Bridge and make cuppes thereof, whereof they dranke and founde some reliefe, althoughe the moost of them dyed."

This is supposed to have been about 1560 or 1561.

Thomas Lawrence.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch.