Grave-mounds and Their Contents: A Manual of Archæology, as Exemplified in the Burials of the Celtic, the Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon PeriodsJewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William
History
Grave-mounds and Their Contents: A Manual of Archæology, as Exemplified in the Burials of the Celtic, the Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon Periods
Jewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William
Great Britain -- Antiquities; Megalithic monuments -- Great Britain; Mounds -- Great Britain
Anglo-Saxon Period--Buckets--Drinking-cups of wood--Bronze
Bowls--Bronze Boxes--Combs--Tweezers--Châtelaines--Girdle
Ornaments--Keys--Hair-pins--Counters, or Draughtmen, and
Dice--Querns--Triturating Stones, etc.--Conclusion.
Buckets, so called, and very appropriately, from their close
resemblance in form to our modern vessels bearing that name, are
occasionally found in Anglo-Saxon graves. They are small wooden vessels
bound round with hoops or rims of bronze, more or less ornamented,
and have a handle of the same metal arched over their tops. Of course
in every case the wooden staves of which they were composed, and
which were of ash, are decomposed, the hoops, handle, and mountings
alone remaining. They vary very much in size; one from Bourne Park
had the lower hoop twelve inches in diameter, and the upper one ten
inches, and the whole height appears to have been about a foot; the
handle was hooked at its ends exactly the same as in our present
buckets, and fitted into loops on the sides; it had three looped
bronze feet to stand upon. Other examples only measure four or five
inches in diameter. The example here engraved (fig. 460) was found in
Northamptonshire, along with other remains. It is composed of three
encircling hoops of bronze, and has its handle and attachments also of
the same metal.
[Illustration: Fig. 460.]
[Illustration: Fig. 461.]
The next example (fig. 461) is from Fairford, in Gloucestershire, and
is three inches in height, and four inches in diameter. The hoops
and mountings are of bronze. Another example, which I give for the
purpose of comparison, is from Envermeu, in Normandy (fig. 462). Of the
use of these utensils nothing certain, of course, is known, but it is
conjectured they were used for bringing in mead, ale, or wine, to fill
the drinking-cups--the objection to this as a general rule being their
very small size. “The Anglo-Saxon translation of the Book of Judges
(vii. 20) rendered _hydrias confregissent_, by ‘ꞇo-bꞃœcon pa bucaꞅ,’
_i.e._ ‘they broke the buckets.’ A common name for this vessel, which
was properly called _buc_, was _œscen_, signifying literally a vessel
made of ash, the favourite wood of the Anglo-Saxons.”
[Illustration: Fig. 462.]
Drinking-cups were sometimes of wood. Of these, two examples are here
given. The first of these has a rim of brass, the second a like rim
attached by overlapping bands. It has also a number of small bands of
the same metal riveted on to mend cracks in the wood. They were found
in a barrow on Sibertswold Down, in Kent.
[Illustration: Fig. 463.]
[Illustration: Fig. 464.]
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