1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

44

was sold to a goldsmith, who took away from it

those

was adorned, and the

tippings of gold wherewith it

gold chain affixed thereto ; since which, the horn it- self, being cut in ivory in an eight square form, came to the hands of Thomas, late Lord Fairfax." He, dying in 1671, it came into the possession of his next relation, Henry, Lord Fairfax, who restored its ornaments in silver-gilt, and restored it to the cathe- dral authorities. It bears the following inscription :

" CORNV HOC, VlPHVS IN OCCIDENTALI PARTE Deir^ prtnceps, vna cum omnibvs terris et redditibvs suis glim donavit. Amissvm vel abreptvm. Henricvs DOM. Fairfax demvm restitvit. Dec. et capit. de novo ornavit. A.D. MDC. LXXV."

Most of us know Longfellow's poem of King Wit- lafs drinking horn, a story which may be found"" in Ingulphus, who says that Witlaf, King of Mercia, who lived in the reign of Egbert, gave to the Abbey of Croyland the horn used at his own table, for the elder monks of the house to drink out of it on festivals and saints' days, and that when they gave thanks, they might remember the soul of Witlaf the donor. That they had some horn of the kind is probable, for the same chronicler says that when the monastery was almost destroyed by fire, this horn was saved. Besides the liquors above mentioned, the Anglo- Saxons had others, as we see in a passage of Henry of Huntingdon (lib. vi.), which is probably an inven-