ON SAXOX SITUL^E OR BUCKETS. 99 



Saxon graveyard, at Fairford, we have great pleasure in pre- 

 senting our members with a drawing* and description f of this 

 interesting object. 



The bucket is four inches in height, and consists of nine 

 staves, each one and a -half inch wide. These are bound together 

 by four bands of copper fascia, which surround the wood, and 

 two upright bands of the same metal, to which the handle is 

 attached, five-eights of an inch broad. The handle is three- 

 eights of an inch broad, ornamented on the margins with two 

 rows of incuse quadrangular impressions. The handle, like the 

 metal plates, is exceedingly thin, a fact which is at once a con- 

 vincing proof that these articles were not meant to bear heavy 

 weights. 



Now, as not a little discussion has taken place as to the use of 

 these buckets, we quote the following from an article on them 

 by the late J. Yonge Akerman : " These vessels have been 

 supposed to have been used to hold ale or mead at the Anglo- 

 Saxon feasts, an opinion to which we cannot subscribe. It has 

 been conjectured that the passage in Beowulf, Byelas sealdon 

 icin of wunder-fatum (cupbearers gave wine from wondrous vats), 

 alludes to them ; but it is difficult to conceive how the term 

 "wondrous" could apply to utensils of this description, while 

 the huge vats of the Germans are to this day the wonder of 

 foreigners. In a recent communication, with which we have 

 been favored by the Abbe Cochet, he mentions the fact of his 

 finding in the cemetery of Envermen a bucket containing a 

 glass cup, and hence concludes that the problem of the use of 

 the former is solved, and that they are, in fact, drinking cups. 

 With all due deference for this opinion, we have arrived at a 

 different conclusion. In the Frank graves at Selzen, glass 

 drinking cups were found, protected in a similar manner, but 

 does it not lead to the inference that the larger vessel was in- 

 tended to hold food, and not drink ? From the circumstance of 



*For the block, with the beautiful engraving which accompanies this, we 

 are indebted to the Council of the Archaeological Institute. 



fTlie description is drawn up from the object itself now before as. 



