Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/27

Rh of Fiachra, that it might be a reproach to the Momonians for ever, and it might be a trophy over them." Upon this Sullivan observes that putting them to death in the way here described, and burying them around Fiachra, as they would have sat in fetters along the wall of his banqueting hall, consecrated them, as it were, to perpetual hostageship even among the dead.

7. In the Iron Age, the same process of imagination continued to operate. The cemetery of Nordrup, in Zealand, belonging to the earlier Iron Age, yielded (as described by Mr. Henry Petersen in Nordiske Fortidsminder), in connection with the burial of a female, a vase of fluted bronze, a bronze saucepan with a strainer, two goblets of coloured glass, and a beautiful chest-ornament of silver with plates of silver gilt, a silver brooch, an amber bead, twenty-five beads of coloured glass, a small bronze pendant, a box of ointment attached to a little chain, a bone comb, and other objects by which the lady might make herself as splendid in her future state as she had been accustomed to be in her former life. Not far off, in the grave of a man, were a silver brooch, a gold finger-ring, a clay vase, the useful saucepan and strainer, a glass goblet ornamented with excellently designed, painted, and vitrified figures of animals, another adorned with perfectly drawn figures of a bull, a bear, a man, a lion, and a stag, a bronze bucket, the bronze ornaments of a wooden box, and forty-one draughtsmen, eighteen of red glass, and twenty-three of variegated glass; so that he was provided not only with ornaments and food utensils, but also with means of amusement if he could find any one to play with him. Possibly he may have been also provided with a companion for that purpose.

8. In these prehistoric times, another idea attached itself to this imagination of a continued existence. It was that this existence ought to be kept within bounds, and that the dead might make themselves very disagreeable to the survivors if they came up again and mixed with them.