"1st, Every sentence of the judge; 2nd, Every new song; and 3rd, Every cask of Mead." Mead-making appears to have been regarded by our forefathers as a high and important avocation; at the courts of the Princes of Wales, the mead-maker was the eleventh person in dignity, and took place of the physician. We read in the English History, that Ethelstan a subordinate king of Kent, in the tenth century, on paying a visit to his relation Ethelfleda felt very much delighted that there was no deficiency of mead. According to the custom at royal feasts, it was served up in cut horns and other vessels of various sizes. About the same period, it was customary to allow the monks a sextareum (about a pint) of mead between six of them at dinner, and half the quantity at supper. It was probably the liquor called by Ossian, the joy and strength of shells, with which his heroes were so much delighted; the Caledonian drinking-vessels having consisted of large shells, which are still used by their posterity in some parts of the Highlands. Mention is sometimes made also of the Feast of Shells. Mead was the ideal nectar of the Scandinavian nations, which they expected to quaff in heaven out of the skulls of their enemies; and, as may reasonably be supposed, the liquor which they exalted thus highly in their _imaginary celestial banquets_, was not forgotten at those which they _really_ indulged in _upon earth_. Hence may be inferred the great attention which must have been paid to the culture of the bee in those days, or there could not have been an adequate supply of honey for the production of mead, to satisfy the demand of such thirsty tribes. The mythology of Scandinavia (the religion of our Gothic ancestors) was imparted by Sigge or Odin, a chieftain who migrated from Scythia with the whole of his tribe, and subdued either by arms or arts the northern parts of Europe. From him descended Alaric and Attila. In the singular paradise which Odin sketched for his followers, the principal pleasure was to be derived from war and carnage; after the daily enjoyment of which, they were to sit down to a feast of boar's flesh and mead. The mead was to be handed to them in the skulls of their enemies, by virgins somewhat resembling the houri of the Mahometan paradise, and plentiful draughts were to be taken, until intoxication should crown their felicity. Hence the poet +Penrose+ thus commences his "Carousal of Odin." "Fill the honey'd bev'rage high, Fill the skulls, 'tis Odin's cry! Heard ye not the powerful call, Thundering through the vaulted hall? Fill the meath and spread the board, Vassals of the grisly lord!-- The feast begins, the skull goes round Laughter shouts--the shouts resound!" Hence likewise, in an ode by +Mr. Stirling+, we find the following illustration of the northern Elysium.