In the British Museum are some corroded masses of links brought from Nineveh, similar in character to those found at Chester-le-Street, so it may be taken that this kind of armour is of a remote antiquity. The Dano-Anglo-Saxon epic poem of “Beowulf,” written doubtless during the second half of the eighth century, bears frequent reference to the hero’s arms and armour:-- Beowulf maœlode, Beowulf spoke (or sang?), On him byrne scan, He bore his polished byrnie, Searonet seowed The war-net sewn smipes orpanum. by the skill of the smith. This poem has been cited as proof that chain-mail was in use in early Saxon England, and by the Vikings also, and there is some supposed confirmation of this idea as regards the latter in the finds of chain armour in the peat mosses of Denmark, which have been freely ascribed to the fifth and sixth centuries; but this mail is of such excellent workmanship, and so similar to that made at a much later period, as to cast grave doubts on this deduction, and there is really nothing whatever to show that it was of so early a date. Every ring of the Danish mail is interlinked with four surrounding rings, and so on throughout the garment. This is the prevailing fashion of all periods, and there is a great variety of mesh. It would seem that the “war-nets” alluded to in “Beowulf” were not chain-mail at all, but leathern or quilted armour with pieces of iron, shaped like the drawn meshes of a net, or steel rings sewn on to it, and that this combination constituted the “bright byrnie”[4] referred to in the poem, and that the chain-mail found at Vemose, Flensburg, and other places, was made much later. Quite independent of other evidence, the line in the poem, “The war-net sewn by the skill of the smith,” would point to the leathern or quilted tunic being fortified with rings or scales sewn on to the garment; and this was the general method up to and even beyond the time of William the Conqueror. There are, however, other words in the poem referred to, such as “hand-locen” (hand-locked), and “handum gebroden.” The latter words might well read either twisted or embroidered with hands, while both might point to interlinked mail, so it clearly cannot be affirmed with certainty that there were no instances of real chain-mail in use in Britain at this very early period after the Romans; but if there were any hauberks of the kind it might indicate a much greater continuity from the Roman occupation than the historians of those shadowy times have hitherto imagined. Possibly chain-mail was introduced from Asia, through the Vikings, and that the byrnies mentioned in Beowulf were really made of interlinked rings; but it is probable that there was no real chain-mail in Northern Europe between Roman times and the ninth or tenth century. That it was in use in the East at an early period is shown by the discovery of a chain-mail tunic in a “barrow” in the Ukraine.[5]