Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/52

 3 2 Hijlory of Domefiic Ma7iners occurrence. In 833, a king gave his gilt cup, engraved outiide with vine-drellers figliting dragons, which he called his crofs-bowl, becaufe it had a crofs marked within it, and it had four angles projefting, alfo like a crofs, Thefe cups were given frequently as marks of afFeftion and remembrance. The lady Ethelgiva prefented to the abbey of Ramfey, among other things, " two lilver cups, for the ufe of the brethren in the refeftory, in order that, while drink is ferved in them to the brethren at their repaft, my memory may be more firmly imprinted on their hearts."* It is a curious proof of the value of fuch veflels, that in the pictures of warlike expeditions, where two or three articles are heaped together as a kind of fymbolical reprefentation of the value of the fpoils, veflels of the t table and drinking-cups and drinking-horns are generally included. Our cut. No. 23, reprefents one of thefe groups (taken from the Cottonian O/tfi 11 Manufcript, Claudius, C. viii.) ; it contains a crown, •• / ^-^-/^ a bracelet or ring, two drinking-horns, a iua^, and ]j { L-J. f _ J two other velTels. The drinking-horn was in com- ^^,__^^ '' mon ufe among the Anglo-Saxons. It is feen on ^****-g-^^^^^ the table or in the hands of the drinkers in more /;^:-> ^Zn^A than one of our cuts. In the will of one lli-^-.,4N_j^ ^cX Saxon lady, two buffalo-horns are mentioned ; No z-i. Articles of Value, three homs Worked with gold and filver are men- tioned in one inventory ; and we find four horns enumerated among the eftefts of a monaftic houfe. The Mercian king Witlaf, with fomewhat of the fentiment of the lady Ethelgiva, gave to the abbey of Croyland the horn of his table, " that the elder monks may drink from it on feftivals, and in their benediftions remember fome- times the foul of the donor." The liquors drunk by the Saxons were chiefly ale and mead ; the immenfe quantity of honey that was then produced in this countr}^, as we learn from Domefday-book and other records, fliows us how great muft tenus, dum in els potiis edentibus fratiibus ministratiir, memoiia mci eorum cordibus arctius inculcetur." — Hist, llamesiensis, in Gale, p. 406.
 * " Duos ciphos argenteos .... ad serviendum fratiibiis in refectorio, qua-