VESSELS OF THE BARROWS NOT DOMESTIC. 103 



which is shared by many even in our own country and at the 

 present day. The desire to propitiate them, so that they might 

 not injure the living, has strongly ruled in many different ages 

 and countries ; and one mode of effecting this was by the offering 

 of various things, and amongst them food. The subject is so trite 

 that there needs no reference to particular instances as showing 

 the custom ; it is familiar alike to the student of classical literature, 

 to those who have made acquaintance with early Christian enact- 

 ments, and to all who have investigated the history of modern 

 savages. It is probable then, that in the 'food vessel' and 

 'drinking cup' we see the vases where the offering of food was 

 supplied, which in other cases was placed in the grave without 

 any such enduring receptacle. Nor is it impossible that the 

 various weapons, implements, and ornaments discovered with the 

 bodies may have been deposited there in accordance with the 

 same belief which made the food vase so frequent an accom- 

 paniment of the dead. 



The question whether these various sepulchral vessels were 

 especially made for the purposes of burial, or were originally 

 manufactured for domestic use, has been a subject of controversy 

 amongst those who have given the matter consideration. The 

 greater number of writers have regarded them as having been 

 fabricated for the dead, and not as having ever served the wants 

 of the living, and with them I concur. The late Mr. Albert Way, 

 who took the opposite view, brought forward, in the essay on 

 Welsh sepulture already referred to, several strong reasons in favour 

 of their primary domestic purpose. He there adduces the Roman 

 practice, and thinks it ' highly improbable that, in times of low 

 and inartificial conditions, any objects or fictile vessels should 

 have been specially fabricated for funeral rites 1 .' Mr. Way was 

 so high an authority, and had so much experience and had 

 paid such attention to the subject, that his opinion is of the 

 highest value, and I differ from his conclusions with great hesi- 

 tation. But on the whole, though there is certainly much to be 

 said in favour of their original domestic use, at all events as regards 

 some of the vessels, I think the balance of evidence is against their 

 having been manufactured for any other than sepulchral pur- 

 poses. One of the principal objections to their having been 

 made for domestic use is the coarseness, porousness, and friability 

 of the paste, which in many of them is so great that it seems 



1 Hydriotaphia Cambrensis, p. 70. 



