In the Additional MS. 11,695, in the British Museum, a work of the eleventh century, there are several representations of warriors thus fully armed, very rude and coarse in drawing, but valuable for the clearness with which they represent the military equipment of the time. At folio 194 there is a large figure of a warrior in a mail shirt, a conical helmet, strengthened with iron ribs converging to the apex, the front rib extending downwards, into what is called a nasal, _i.e._, a piece of iron extending downwards over the nose, so as to protect the face from a sword-cut across the upper part of it. At folio 233 of the same MS. is a group of six warriors, two on horseback and four on foot. We find them all with hauberk, iron helmets, round shields, and various kinds of leg defences; they have spears, swords, and one of the horsemen bears a banner of characteristic shape, _i.e._, it is a right-angled triangle, with the shortest side applied to the spear-shaft, so that the right angle is at the bottom. [Illustration: No. 4.] A few extracts from the poem of Beowulf, a curious Saxon fragment, which the best scholars concur in assigning to the end of the eighth century, will help still further to bring these ancient warriors before our mind's eye. Here is a scene in King Hrothgar's hall: "After evening came and Hrothgar had departed to his court, guarded the mansion countless warriors, as they oft ere had done, they bared the bench-floor it was overspread with beds and bolsters, they set at their heads their disks of war, their shield-wood bright; there on the bench was over the noble, easy to be seen, his high martial helm, his ringed byrnie and war-wood stout." Beowulf's funeral pole is said to be-- "with helmets, war brands, and bright byrnies behung." And in this oldest of Scandinavian romances we have the natural reflections-- "the hard helm shall adorned with gold from the fated fall; mortally wounded sleep those who war to rage by trumpet should announce; in like manner the war shirt which in battle stood over the crash of shields the bite of swords shall moulder after the warrior; the byrnie's ring may not after the martial leader go far on the side of heroes; there is no joy of harp no glee-wood's mirth, no good hawk swings through the hall, nor the swift steed tramps the city place. Baleful death has many living kinds sent forth." Reflections which Coleridge summed up in the brief lines-- "Their swords are rust, Their bones are dust, Their souls are with the saints, we trust."