Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/386

 290 BERKSHIRE ANTIQUITIES. flames and to the earth, of wastmg and dividing the inheritance amongst themselves. The acconnt which I am abont to pro- duce is taken from King Alfred's Saxon version of Orosius, and is given in the words of Dr. Ingram, the translator >, to whom I am indebted for reference to it. And curious though the passage be, as an authentic picture of ancient manners, yet inasmuch as the Estonians, who are spoken of, lived far remote, and nothing appears to bring the case home, j^erhaps the reader might not have been troubled by its transcription, did not unimpeachable evidence from another quarter, namely that of Tacitus in his work De moribus Germanorum, tend to esta- blish a kind of connexion, now inexplicable, between the iEstii or Estonians and the Britons. King Alfred is describing, from the account of Wolfstan, who had seen them, the manners of the Estonians, a people inhabiting Avhat he calls a very ex- tensive country to the east of the mouth of the river Wisle or Vistula"", and the narrative proceeds to the following effect : "There is also this custom with the Estonians, that when any one dies, the corpse continues unburn t with the relatives and friends for at least a month ; sometimes two ; and the bodies of kings and illustrious men, according to their respec- tive wealth, lie sometimes even for half a year before the corpse is burned, and the body continues above ground in the house ; during which time drinking and sports are prolonged, till the day in which the body is consumed. Then, when it is carried to the funeral pile, the substance of the deceased, which re- mains after these drinking festivities and sports, is divided into five or six heaps, sometimes even more, according to the propor- tion of what he happens to be worth. These heaps are so dis- posed, that the largest heap shall be about one mile from the town ; and so gradually the smaller at lesser intervals, till all the wealth is divided, so that the least heap shall be nearest the town where the corpse lies. " Then all those are to be summoned together who have the fleetest horses in the land, for a wager of skill, within the distance of five or six miles from these heaps ; and they all ride a race towards the substance of the deceased. Then conies the man that has the winning horse toward the first and la'rgest heap, and so each after other, till the whole is seized upon. 1 See Dr. Ingram's Inaiigur.il Lecture on tioties. The Estlionia of the maps is now the Utility of Anglo-Saxon Literature, p. called Revel, and is pait of Russia in Eu- 82. rope. ■" So Tacitus calls them i^stiorum na-