It would be more proper to speak of the Lewis chess pieces as several sets, for there are some pieces enough for five or six. They are sixty-seven in number—six kings, five queens, thirteen bishops, fourteen knights, nineteen pawns, and ten (so-called) warders, which took the place of the modern rook or castle. This large collection was discovered by a labourer digging a sandbank, and every piece is accurately described in detail by Sir F. Madden in a paper read before the Society of antiquaries in 1832. They are all carved out of walrus ivory. Upon this material Sir Frederic observes that “the estimation in which the teeth of the walrus were held by the northern nations rendered them a present worthy of royalty; and this circumstance is confirmed by a tradition preserved in the curious saga of Kröka the crafty, who lived in the tenth century.” [The saga itself is believed to have been written in the fourteenth century.] “It is there related, that Gunner, prefect of Greenland, wishing to conciliate the favour of Harald Hardraad, king of Norway (A.D. 1050), sent him the three most precious gifts the island could produce. These were, 1, a white bear; 2, a _chess-table_, or set of _chessmen_, exquisitely carved; 3, a skull of the Rostungr (or _walrus_) with the teeth fastened in it, and ornamented with gold.” The best Icelandic scholars take the term _Tan-Tabl_ in the sense of _chessmen made of the teeth of the walrus_. [Illustration] Chessmen were occasionally made of considerably larger size. There is a good example of this kind in the South Kensington collection, no. 8987; and another, of which a woodcut is given, is in the British museum. This last remarkable piece was presented in 1856, by Sir Henry Cole. Scarcely less common than chessmen are small round pieces, generally of the tusk of the walrus, which were used for a game probably like the modern game of draughts, and to which frequent allusion is found in mediæval books under the name of “tables.” The mirror cases give us several representations of people engaged at this game, usually a lady and a gentleman. There seem to have been fewer pieces used than in our own days, and a smaller board or table. These draughtsmen are almost all of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and the subjects men and animals, with scroll ornament interlacing. Occasionally a single bird or a dragon fills the centre space. Some of the decorations of the old church of Shobdon in Herefordshire (pulled down about 100 years ago) were similar to the carvings upon the draughtsmen and other works of that kind. These also were of the twelfth century. One pillar was ornamented with a series of small medallions tied together, exactly like the old draughtsmen. They are engraved, from fragments of three of the principal arches still preserved, in the first volume of the Archæological journal. [Illustration]