[15] See Grotius's valuable Collection of Gothic and Lombard Historians.
I refer the reader to Jacob Grimm's Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, pp. 143. 146., for further details: he shows that to drink ale out of buigvîdum hausa, can only mean out of "hollow skulls," literally "vacuitas curva."
To prove the antiquity of the custom, Grimm alleges likewise a passage of the Vilkinasaga, in which Völundr, the smith, our Belenger,[16] or Will o' the Wisp, enchases in silver the amputated skulls of Nidads' two boys.
[16] Fœu Bélenger, in one of the dialects of the Low-Norman Isles.
GEORGE MÉTIVIER.
Queries.
Minor Queries.
168. Elizabeth, Equestrian Figure of.
—Doubtless many of your readers have seen in the Exhibition a large equestrian figure of Elizabeth; it is in the N.W. gallery, in one of the large plate cases. Now the horse is described as pacing, which the explanation states was a step taught the horses belonging to the ladies of that period. Query, where a description of pacing, or rules for teaching horses to pace, amble, &c., may be found? for what appears so extraordinary in the figure is that the fore and hind legs of the same side of the horse are extended together, or simultaneously. I have in the Graphic Illustrator a picture of Elizabeth hawking (the figure in the Exhibition may have been copied from the original), where the horse is in the same attitude. I feel anxious to know if that unnatural gait is possible, or whether it is a part or the whole of the pacing step.
THOS. LAWRENCE.