22 Supposed Key, from Kingston Down.

A great variety of household utensils, of different kinds, are also found in the Anglo-Saxon graves. The pottery, when not Roman, is of a rude construction, and, in fact, it is not very abundant, for our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, for several ages after their settlement in this island, seem to have used principally pottery of Roman manufacture. I would merely call your attention to the particular character of several earthenware urns, found in Kent, which Bryan Faussett supposed to be early Romano-British, and of which I shall have to speak again further on. But if the AngloSaxon earthenware was rude and coarse in its character, the case was quite different with the Anglo-Saxon glass, which is rather common in the graves of Kent. The glass of the Anglo-Saxons is fine and delicately thin. It is found chiefly in drinking cups, though a few small basins and bottleshaped vessels of glass have been found. The drinking cups are in shape either pointed at the bottom, or rounded in such a manner that they could never have stood upright, a form which it is supposed was given them to force each drinker to empty his glass at a draught. This practice is understood to have existed down to a much later period, and it is said to have given rise to the name tumbler, applied originally to a drinking glass which was never intended to stand upright. The ornamentation of the AngloSaxon glass, generally consists either of furrows on the surface, or of strings of glass attached to the vessel after it was made. Both these ornaments seem to come fairly under the epithet "twisted," which is often applied to drinking cups in the earliest Anglo-Saxon poetry that has been preserved.

Bowls, large basins, and dishes, of metal, are not unfrequently found in these graves, of such elegant form that we can hardly help supposing them to be of Roman manufacture; and in one instance a bowl of apparently Roman workmanship, was found mended with what were as evidently Saxon materials. Others, however, seem to be Saxon, and prove certainly that the Anglo-Saxons had skilful workmen. These bowls, basins, and dishes,

are usually of bronze, and are often very thickly and well gilt. The metal is generally thin, and it may be remarked as a particular character which distinguishes Anglo-Saxon workmanship from Roman, that the substance is usually thin instead of being massive.

One,

There is another domestic implement which requires particular notice, and which is not uncommon in the Kentish Saxon graves. I mean a bucket, of which, as it has been made generally of wood, there seldom remains more than the hoops, and other bronze or iron work. engraved by Douglas, seems to have been composed almost entirely of brass, or bronze, and iron. The use of these buckets has been the subject of conjecture and of very contrary opinions; but I am inclined to believe that each was the vessel called by the Anglo-Saxons a fæt, or vat, and that its use was to carry into the hall, and convey into the drinking cups of the carousers, the mead, ale, or wine, which they were to drink. These buckets generally possess too much of an ornamental character to have served for any purpose of a less honourable description. The early Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf, (1. 231,) in describing a feast, tells us how

byrelas sealdon

wîn of wunder-fatum.

cup-bearers gave

the wine from wondrous vats.

These vats or buckets are never large. The one engraved by Douglas was only seven inches and a half high; another found in Bourne park, the largest I have seen, was about twelve inches high.*

* I believe I first suggested, in the Archæological Album, this use of the bucket, and it seems to have been generally adopted since; but it has been very recently disputed by Mr. Akerman, in his Pagan Saxondom, p. 56. "These vessels," Mr. Akerman remarks, "have been supposed to have been used to hold ale or mead at the Anglo-Saxon feasts, an opinion to which we cannot subscribe. It has been conjectured that the passage in Beowulf

byrelas sealdon

win of wunder-fatum.

cup-bearers gave
wine from wondrous vats,

alludes to them; but it is difficult to conceive how the term "wondrous" could apply to utensils of this description, while the huge vats of the Germans are to this day the wonder of foreigners."

One would really imagine that Mr. Akerman was joking with my very literal translation of the passage in the Archæological Album; he certainly has taken a wrong impression of the meaning of the original, by arguing on the common modern usage of the English words. Wunder-fatum is certainly represented word for word by wondrous vuts, but the 'vats' of the Anglo-Saxon poet were not such implements as we call by that name now,-fat was the term applied very generally to almost any kind of vessel. Neither would the Anglo-Saxon wunder have presented any difficulty to those who are acquainted with the Anglo-Saxon language, and more especially with its poetry: it simply indicated something excelling in beauty, or form, or some other qualities, the

I will only mention, as a further illustration of the great variety of articles which are found in these Anglo-Saxon graves, and which shew us how little we have hitherto really understood of the degree of civilization existing among the Anglo-Saxons before their conversion to Christianity, that with one interment has been found a pair of compasses. A small pair of dice, found in a grave on Kingston down, leave no doubt that the Anglo-Saxons possessed even the vices 23. Dice from Kingston of civilization, and that one of these was gambling. In several instances scales and weights have occurred. Mr. Rolfe obtained from the interesting cemetery at Osengell a pair of delicately formed bronze scales, with a complete set of weights, all formed from Roman coins. You may observe a set of such coin-weights in the Faussett collection. This leads me to recur to a former statement of the not unfrequent occurrence of Roman coins in these Anglo-Saxon graves, and we have other reasons for believing that Roman money was long in circulation after the Romans

Down.

common examples of the same article, and the real meaning of the words might be given in the English "very beautiful vessels," or "very elegant vessels," which, according to Anglo-Saxon notions of beauty and elegance, is a sufficiently exact description of the buckets of which we are speaking. One thing is certain, that the Anglo Saxon poet who wrote these lines, never imagined that he would be taken as intimating that every time the cup-bearers went round to pour liquor into the cups of the guests, each carried a duplicate of the great tun of Heidelberg in his hand.

Mr. Akerman goes on to say :-"In a recent communication with which we have been favoured by the Abbé Cochet, he mentions the fact of his finding in the cemetery of Envermeu a bucket containing a glass cup, and hence concludes that the problem of the use of the former is solved, and that they are, in fact, drinking cups. With all deference for this opinion, we have arrived at a different conclusion. In the Frank graves at Selzen, glass drinking cups were found, protected in a similar manner, but does it not lead to the inference that the larger vessel was intended to hold food and not drink? From the circumstance of their being discovered in the graves of either sex, it seems highly probable that these buckets were used for spoon-meat, and are, in fact, porringers." I must confess that I cannot at all understand the train of reasoning by which Mr. Akerman arrives at these inferences and probabilities, which appear to me to be mere gratuitous assumptions. He seems to argue, moreover, as though the worthy and learned Abbé and I had supposed that these buckets were drinking vessels, which is not the case; but I must say, that until I see better reasons against it than are advanced here, I feel inclined to adhere to the explanation I have suggested, which seems to me a very natural and reasonable one. I agree with the Abbé Cochet that the finding of the drinking glass in the bucket is to some degree a confirmation of my opinion, as it seems to imply a connection between the uses of the two articles. Mr. Akerman should have given us some authority for believing that the Anglo-Saxons did eat spoon-meat in the way he seems to suppose, or that any people in Western Europe ever eat out of buckets. I have been reminded that the practice of serving out the ale or other liquor in vessels closely resembling the Anglo-Saxon buckets still prevails in England, with the only difference that these vessels are made of tin, and that, instead of being named buckets or vats, they are simply called cans.

relinquished the island. Coins even of the eastern emperors were brought hither, perhaps by traders, long after the fall of the empire of the west. In one of the graves at Osengell was found a gold coin, in a very perfect condition, as though it had not long left the mint, of the Emperor Justin, who reigned at Constantinople from 518 to 527. We know that the early Anglo-Saxon coins, known as sceattas, were copied from the Roman coinage, principally from the coins of the Constantine family, which were so largely circulated in this country. These sceattas, which were of silver, have been found in the Kentish graves. In a grave opened by Lord Londesborough's directions, on the Breach down, the remains of what appeared to be a small purse presented themselves, among which were four silver sceattas. Coins of the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks are also found, and in the Faussett collection there was one of Clovis. Setting aside all other evidence of the date to which these interments belong, the comparison of these coins is decisive. Having alluded to the presence of coins which must have been brought hither from Constantinople, I must also mention the by no means unusual occurrence of an article which we should certainly not have expected to find there, namely, cowrie shells, which I believe are only found on the shores of the Pacific. Several of these will be observed in the Faussett collection.

You will bear in mind that all I have yet said relates to the contents of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries found in Kent, and I must now recall your attention to the particular construction of the Anglo-Saxon grave. The barrows of other peoples are generally raised above ground, without any, or with very slight excavation, and the interment was usually placed on the surface of the ground. The Anglo-Saxons, on the contrary, dug a rather deep rectangular grave, sometimes small, but often of considerable dimensions; that from which Mr. Faussett procured his largest gold fibula was six feet deep, ten feet long, and eight feet broad, and one, at the opening of which I assisted, in Bourne park, was fourteen feet long, more than four feet deep, and about eight feet broad; the deposit was laid on the floor of the grave, which was then filled up with earth, and a mound raised above it. The pagan Saxon graves were in fact exactly the type of our ordinary churchyard graves, except that the mound was circular and generally larger. The circumstances of the interment are often interesting, though they have been hitherto less noticed than the articles found in the grave. In general,

each grave contains only a single skeleton, but this is not always the case, and in some of the graves at Osengell, in the Isle of Thanet, which I assisted in opening with Mr. Rolfe, a grave contained two, or even three bodies. In the arrangements of such interments I remarked evidences of domestic sentiment of the most refined character. Where two bodies were laid in one grave, they were generally those of a male and female, no doubt of a man and his wife, and they were usually laid side by side, and arm in arm, with their mouths turned towards each other, and close together, as though taking a last embrace. In one grave I found the bodies of a man and his wife, and daughter, a little girl, as appeared by the remains of her personal ornaments. The lady lay in the middle, enfolding in her right arm the left arm of her husband, and holding with her other that of her daughter. We are led almost naturally to ask, what event can thus have swept over the homestead, to have destroyed perhaps whole families together? for from the appearances of the grave, I am satisfied that in each case the whole interment was made at once. Perhaps it was a destructive pestilence; or, when we consider that this cemetery crowned an extensive down which overlooked the sea, it may have been equally ruthless pirates, who, in their sudden descents on the coast, spared neither age nor sex, leaving, on their departure, husbands, and wives, and children, to receive interment together from the hands of those who had escaped the scourge under which they fell.

There is another circumstance which I have remarked not unfrequently in the Kentish cemeteries, where the mound was of any magnitude. When the workmen opened the mound, human bones appeared here and there scattered about in it in a manner which led us at first to suppose that the grave had been opened before, and almost caused us to desist from exploring it further. When, however, we opened the grave itself, we found that the original deposit had not been disturbed, and that the few bones found in the mound must have been deposited there quite independent of it. This has occurred to me so often, that I think it cannot be accidental, and I am inclined to believe that, at all events in certain cases which we have not the means of knowing, it was the practice to kill a slave or a captive, and throw his remains into the mound as a sacrifice to the spirit of the tenant of the tomb below.

The cemeteries in eastern Kent, lying generally upon downs which had