At Bernay, where 150 of these incense vases were found, the most common arrangement was four in one coffin, two at the head and two at the feet. ----- [Illustration: Fig. 2.—Illumination from a fourteenth century MS., representing incense vases, placed, alternately with candles, round the coffin during the funeral service.] The form of the vase figured is not that of any known variety of urn found with interments of Pagan type. But it closely corresponds with the form of the incense vases represented in an illumination from a manuscript of the fourteenth century (Fig. 2), as placed alternately with candles on the floor round the coffin during the funeral service, and which, as we learn from contemporary documents, were afterwards placed in the grave.[16] In the illumination the red colour of the fire within the vases appears through the holes pierced in their sides. (This cannot be shown in the woodcut here given, but the escaping smoke indicates the position of the apertures). There is in the National Museum another pierced vase, in which the holes have been made when the clay was soft. It was found in 1829, with two others, under a flat stone at the Castle Hill of Rattray in Aberdeenshire. It is here figured (Fig. 3) along with one of the two others found with it, of which the Society possesses a drawing (Fig. 4). From a note attached to the drawing we learn that the three vessels were filled, with ashes when they were first discovered. No other record of the phenomena of this interesting deposit exists; but, from the character of the vessels themselves, which is totally distinct from that of all known types of vessels deposited with Pagan interments in this country, they may be assigned to the class of vessels deposited in Christian graves of twelfth to fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with charcoal and incense. ----- Footnote 16: Two instances are cited by the Abbé Cochet. Claud d’Escarbotte left orders in his will that the young lads, orphans, who were to follow him to the grave should carry each a torch and a pot with incense. Jehan Thelinige described the custom more particularly, for he prescribes in his will that the small pots with the fire and the incense shall be thrown into the grave. In the district of Morvan, says M. Jules Chevrier, the peasants even in our own days continue the custom of using funeral vases. They throw upon the coffin, when it is lowered into the grave, a porringer or some such dish of earthenware which had been ordinarily used by the defunct; and in certain parts of La Bresse they still throw into the grave the holy water vessel which had stood at the feet of the defunct previous to the ceremony of inhumation. ----- [Illustration: Figs. 3, 4.—Clay Vases found at Castle Hill of Rattray, Aberdeenshire (5 inches high).]