A learned German, however, Nork (Festkalender, s. 567.), sees in our Michaelmas Goose the last traces of the goose offered of old to Proserpina, the infernal goddess of death (on which account it is that the figure of this bird is so frequently seen on monumental remains); and also of the offerings (among which the goose figured) formerly made to Odin at this season, a pagan festival which on the introduction of Christianity was not abolished, but transferred to St. Michael.
WILLIAM J. THOMS.
Gravesend Boats (Vol. ii., p. 209.).
—In a letter from Sir Thomas Heneage to Sir Christopher Hatton, dated 2nd May, 1585, given in Nicolas's Memoir of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton (p. 426.), is this passage:
"Her Highness thinketh your house will shortly be like a Gravesend barge, never without a knave, a priest, or a thief," &c.
"Her Highness" was Queen Elizabeth, and the purport of the letter was to convey "her Highness's pleasure" touching one Isaac Higgins, then in the custody of Sir Christopher Hatton.
C. H. COOPER.
Cambridge, Sept. 19. 1851.
Skull-cups.
—There are so very few consecutive and methodical readers left, that it is not surprising that Mr. Blackwell, the editor of Bohn's Mallet, should have adopted the groundless charge of one Magnusen against Olaus Wormius, who understood Ragnar's death-song much better than certain ironical dilettanti of Cockneyland. Charlemagne's secretary, Paul Warnefrid, the Lombard deacon of Aquileia, swears that, about 200 years after the event, King Ratchis had shown him the cup made out of Cunimund's skull, in which Queen Rosamund, his daughter, refused to drink, in the year 574.[15] (Paul. Diac. ii. 8.) Open the Acta Sanctorum for the 1st of May, and they will tell you that the monks of Triers had enchased in silver the skull of St. Theodulf, out of which they administered fever-drink to the sick. Moreover, when, in the year 1465, Leo von Rozmital came to Neuss, he saw a costly tomb wherein lay the blessed Saint Quirinus, and he drank out of his skull-cup. St. Sebastian's skull at Ebersberg, and St. Ernhart's at Ratisbonne, had also been converted into chalices.